My Forbidden Desire (7 page)

“I don’t have a robe that will fit you.”

“So?”

To his surprise, she reached out and brushed his hair over his ear. He gripped the counter hard, because, man, having her touch him was giving him urges he shouldn’t be having. Her hair glinted silver in the light, and she smiled at him like she cared about his condition. “Beautiful as you are, Xia of the fantastic”—her gaze swept down and then back to his face—“eyes, we just don’t know each other well enough for you to be naked in my kitchen.”

Just like a human to be hung up over nudity. He took the towel from her. He wasn’t hard or anything, but hey, he wasn’t that far from a boner, and there wasn’t anyone controlling his responses anymore. If he wanted to act on his impulses, he could. So, she was right. The towel was a good thing. He concentrated on her face even though he would have preferred to concentrate on those two lonely buttons holding together her shirt.

“Thanks,” he said. He hadn’t had consensual sex with a witch in too many years to count, so there was no telling what he’d do if he got a hard-on for her. In the process of wrapping the towel around his waist, he increased the distance between them. No way was he back in control. And it was up to him to keep what control he had. Freedom could be a bitch.

“You’re welcome.” She headed for the door that led to the back stairs, but she turned around before she got there. “You know, you’re not so bad when you try to be nice.”

“It’s not easy.” He looked down as he brought the end of the towel around his hip. “Damn thing’s pink.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’re man enough to carry it off. Or are you afraid you aren’t pretty in pink?”

“Baby, I’m so pretty in pink, I’m worried you won’t be able to help yourself.” He tucked in the top of the towel and stood with his hands on his hips. “I don’t mind not wearing it.” He waited a beat. Sure enough, she was looking at him again, but he couldn’t tell if she was pissed off or trying not to laugh. When she didn’t come back with a smart-ass put-down—mages and witches didn’t tolerate much shit from his kind—he said softly, “For you, baby, I’ll take it off.” He braced himself for the smack-down that was coming for sure.

“But my clothes stay on, Xia, so where does that leave you?”

“Same place as ever, I guess.” He shrugged. “All alone with your pink towels.”

“Don’t go making me actually like you.”

He walked over to her and didn’t even care that he was feeling her and the talisman both or that it was cranking him something fierce. She was standing near the door that led downstairs—the kitchen was so small, just about anywhere was near the door—and Xia put his hands on either side of the frame. He leaned in until she practically had her back to the wooden surface. “You did good tonight. Kept your head on straight.”

“Thanks.”

“You get any more of those feelings, you let me know.”

Slowly, she tilted her head back until it rested against the door, and then she smiled and his blood about boiled. “What feelings would those be?”

His stomach did a little flip. “The ones where you’re okay with me not wearing this towel.” To his amped-up vision, the shadow panther on her belly glowed a soft gray. And, uh-oh, she did not have on a bra. What would she do if he reached over and undid those buttons? His head was so full of the fantasy of reaching in and unfastening her shirt that well, hell, he reached in and—she went completely stiff. “What?”

“Something’s coming.” She spoke at the same time he heard the kitchen window crack.

He lunged for his knife on the counter where Alexandrine had set it down. He had a grip on the hilt when the proofing around the back staircase door gave way. The magic tearing away scraped like sandpaper over his heart. A split second before the door burst open, Alexandrine threw herself to the floor. Her evasive action was why the mageheld who came through didn’t kill her with his first strike. But she was on her back when the fiend jumped her. Her knee in his crotch barely slowed him. She gave him a damn hard strike, too.

With the window rattling like a train, Xia launched himself at the mageheld and grabbed the thing by his chin. He had one clawed hand on the leather thong around her neck and was tugging, but Alexandrine went wild. Fucking wild. Hell, she practically threw the mageheld off her. Magic burned in his bones, and as Xia crouched down and drove his knife into the fiend’s lumbar spine, he recognized a mix of magekind and demon in what she was pulling, and all of it was focused on the thing on top of her.

The mageheld went down hard on the kitchen floor, and Xia wasn’t at all sure if he’d killed him or if Alexandrine had. The window stopped rattling. Silence fell.

She scrambled out from under the body, eyes big, breathing hard. There wasn’t a mark on her, but her shirt was completely shredded. No need to wonder anymore what she looked like without her shirt. “You okay?” he asked.

His towel was on the floor, and he stooped for it so she could cover herself. But she just stood there, taking deep shuddering breaths and staring at the dead mageheld like she thought it would get up and try for seconds.

“Alexandrine,” he said.

No reaction from her.

He went to her and awkwardly draped the towel around her as he tried not to look or touch. He wasn’t exactly having pure thoughts. She wasn’t aware of much, and she continued to radiate that weird mix of power. He didn’t think that could be doing anything but getting her even more tightly wound up with the talisman. A similar process had nearly killed Carson Philips when she got on the wrong side of an unstable talisman. “Baby,” he said, keeping a hand on her shoulder so the towel wouldn’t fall completely off her. “Sit down, okay?”

She looked at him. “He was going to kill me.”

He adjusted the towel, but she wasn’t helping, and he was seeing more than he should. “I know, baby.” He touched her cheek, and she let him. So he kept doing it. Her skin was shockingly soft. “He didn’t have any choice. None of them do.”

She leaned her face into his fingers. “That isn’t right,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. Her eyes were big and wide, and Xia didn’t mind so much looking into them. He was actually kind of liking it. Physically, he wasn’t too far from changing, and there was magic and some pretty freaking raw lust flowing through him right now.

“If it weren’t for you,” she said, “I’d be dead.”

“Nah.” He stepped away. He had some things to take care of to make sure they didn’t get overrun again, and besides, he didn’t think she’d appreciate him putting his hands all over her, which is what he wanted to do right now. “I think you offed that one yourself.”

Her gaze swept over him, and when she got back to his face after maybe a little longer than was safe for either of them, he cocked his head and shrugged. She held out the towel to him, and a bunch of stuff happened all in the space of a second or two.

He looked. And jaysus, she was just gorgeous. He had wet dreams about women who looked like her. He said, “Fuck,” because he felt like a jackass for looking and getting off on it.

Alexandrine looked down at herself, then turned bright red and said, “Oh.” She covered herself with the towel. “Well, that was embarrassing.”

He tried a smile. “I guess we’re even, then.”

“I guess so.” And she smiled back a little, and they were actually kind of okay. Amazing. He figured that wouldn’t last long, since they were on opposite sides of the species fence, but it was nice for now.

“Look,” he said. “I need to clean up here, but I could use your help, if you don’t mind. Mostly to let me know if you feel them coming on again.” Hell must be covered in ice about now: He was actually asking a witch for help. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Be with you in a minute, all right?” he asked. He answered her unspoken question by looking at the dead fiend. Gotta take care of the dead. She nodded and walked out, with him looking at her naked back all the way.

Damn, he really, really wanted to get in her pants. And he really, really hoped his case of the hots for Alexandrine Marit came to a quick end. Because otherwise he was fucked.

Chapter 6

A
lexandrine walked out holding the damn towel across her chest, wigged out by Xia’s silence and his reason for remaining behind. She didn’t want to know anything about what was involved in getting rid of a body, so the faster she got out, the better. Her back itched the whole way from the kitchen to the living room: little icy-crawly fingers skittering up and down her spine. Other than that, she was numb.

In her bedroom, the lights were still off, but gadget lights were back. Light from the street filtered down the hall through the front windows. One quick check showed the clock by her bed glowing 3:13. She dropped the towel and went to her dresser for a bra and a fresh shirt. Her shirt was ruined, in complete tatters.
Oh, my God.
She’d flashed Xia. More than a flash. She’d stood there like a dork, handing him the towel and giving him all day to look. To be fair, he hadn’t taken advantage or been an enormous jackass about it, but he’d definitely looked. No pretending he hadn’t.

New shirt on and safely buttoned, she sat on the edge of her bed and bent over, holding her head in her hands. Xia the Jerk had gotten an eyeful of her, and he hadn’t been a jerk about it. Go figure. And then there was the attack and nearly getting killed. She was shaking, but she wasn’t feeling any emotion. That couldn’t last. The crash was coming; the only question was when.

“Hey.”

She jumped because she hadn’t heard Xia walking toward her room. Damn, that was creepy the way he could move without making any noise. The man—or whatever he was, and Alexandrine was now very sure he wasn’t a human male—made a very large darkened shape in her doorway. “Yes?”

“I’m done.” She watched him put a hand up high on the doorjamb. And, yeah, still naked, and he still didn’t care. She couldn’t see much in the darkness, but she could see enough. After a bit of silence, he said, “I could use some help with the rest, if you don’t mind.”

It was probably killing him to sound so nice. She shook her head. “All I want is a nice calm life where my biggest challenge is practicing magic that almost never works. That’s all. Really.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.”

He wasn’t looking at her like he was remembering her flashing him, which she appreciated a lot. “They’re going to come back, aren’t they?”

“Sometime between now and dawn, I’d guess.”

She pushed herself off her bed. “Rasmus Kessler doesn’t know who I am. He doesn’t know anything about me. I doubt he even remembers he gave me away.”

“Number one, yes, he does. Number two, so what? He wants that talisman, and he’s coming after you for it, whether you’re Alexandrine Marit or Mother Theresa.”

“Mother Theresa is dead.” She was cracking up. Totally losing it. Inside she was nothing but one huge hollow. Nothing left. Inside, she needed something to keep her from falling apart, but she couldn’t find a crutch to get her around this. She had a permanent sense of impending disaster that just wouldn’t go away. No matter what happened or what she did, apparently her life was in the toilet. Right now, though, she was stuck walking a high-wire without a net. “Okay. My dad the infamous mage Rasmus Kessler, who you hate worse than poison, who you hate probably more than even me, doesn’t care if I die as long as he gets my amulet.”

“Talisman.”

“Fine. Talisman.” She plopped back onto the bed and grabbed a handful of her comforter. “Heading for the hills sounds like a good idea about now. There’s a way to the garage from the garbage area. We can go out the back, and no one will know we even left.” Xia remained in the shadows, but she was seeing better now. He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I don’t have a car, but we can walk out the side door and get a cab or jump onto the bus.”

“It’s not safe out there.”

“And it’s safe here?”

“Safer than if we’re outside,” he said. “I can control what happens in here. Outside…” From the doorway, he shook his head. “Not as easy.”

What a thought, that there were magehelds out there just waiting to crunch on her bones and spit them out. In her head, Alexandrine imagined monsters squatting in alleys and doorways, salivating and rubbing misshapen hands over the prospect of catching her first. “What are we going to do, then?”

“Do some cleanup and sit tight.”

She looked at her clock. Three twenty-one in the morning. She was going to be a wreck when her alarm went off. If she lived that long. She hated feeling powerless. The fact that Xia believed he could handle this didn’t help her at all. No way was she going to rely on someone else to save her ass. Not happening.

“Sit tight?” she said. This was stupid, talking to each other across the room. She let out a breath and walked to the door. She didn’t look. Much. He moved aside and followed her to the living room. She turned around and put her hand on her hips. “You think I don’t get that you’re hoping my father will show up and give you a chance to kill him. Well, get real, Xia, because one thing I’m not is stupid. You want to kill Rasmus Kessler, and you’re hoping I’m the bait that gets him here.”

He wasn’t bothered in the least, was he? “Until it’s full-on daylight, it’s safer in here than out there.”

“So,” she said calmly. Or tried to speak calmly, anyway. She was dimly aware that she did not sound calm. “You’re no different than Rasmus Kessler.”