Flamebound (5 page)

That care is gone now, and—I'm afraid—so is the light.

How can it not be after what I've seen since my gift came to me? After what I've seen and done? Even Lily's been affected by the stain working its way through me. But at least she can still find her way back.

The thought comes out of nowhere and makes me shakier than I already am. Part of me wants to end this now, to run screaming out of the room as if my hair's on fire. But that won't solve anything.

Plus, the reading still needs to be finished, the spread closed. And maybe, just maybe, a clue can be found that will help Nate. I hold on to that thought, keep it in the forefront of my mind, going over it again and again like a chant.

Or a prayer.

The last card is the Ten of Swords. I'm shuddering before Lily even picks it up, the fear overwhelming now. It's inside me, pinging around. Ripping at me until I can barely think, barely breathe.

There's a part of me that recognizes this feeling. There's no compulsion, no need to go tearing out of the house in search of something—someone—but the rest is the same. The sickness, the horror, the plea deep inside me for this to be something, anything, other than what I think it is.

The Ten of Swords is an ending, not a beginning, and now that I understand where it's positioned, it seems so much more menacing than I originally gave it credit for. This is the warning, the finale. The card that suggests there is no more to know, no more to learn, nothing else to find. If this is the advice position—what we're supposed to do to help find Shelby—then it's pretty much as nefarious a card as I have ever seen. It implies there's nothing else. No chance to save Shelby. No chance to set things right.

But I won't accept that. I can't. Otherwise, what's the point of having power?

Lily intones a few words—ritual words in ancient Egyptian—as she closes out the spread. Then she turns to me, face white and eyes alarmed. “Xandra, are you all right?”

I try to tell her that I'm fine, but my teeth are chattering so badly that I can't get the words out.

“Damn it!” she yells, reaching for the blanket off the back of the couch. “You're freezing.”

She throws it over my shoulders, starts to wrap it around me, but before she's done much more than close the two sides together, a powerful knock sounds against the wood of the front door.

Lily jumps and I can see the indecision on her face even through the pain wracking my body. Should she open the door or not? Normally, we'd let it go, but whoever's on the other side sounds like he or she means business. She looks at me, but I'm in no shape to make the call. I'm a trembling, aching mess currently one step away from being scared of my own shadow.

Seconds later, the choice is taken out of our hands. There's a loud pop followed by a wrenching noise. The door flies open to reveal Declan standing at the threshold.

And he doesn't look happy.

“W
hat the hell have you done to yourself?” he demands, storming through the small foyer and into the living room. A careless flick of his hand has the door slamming closed behind him while a second flick has the tarot cards flying off the table like confetti.

He's at the couch now, all tense and brooding and completely pissed off as he stares down at me. “This is what you blew me off for?” He picks me up as if I weigh nothing and starts to carry me down the hallway toward my room.

Lily runs behind us. “Is she okay?” my best friend asks anxiously.

“She will be.” Declan barely glances at her. “I'll take it from here.”

Lily doesn't argue. I think Declan intimidates her way more than she wants to admit. So I start to protest—he can't just barge in here and take control whenever he wants—but the warmth of his body seeping into mine feels so good. So safe. Already the chills are calming down to a more reasonable level. And the pain, while not completely gone, is a lot better as well.

“What are you doing to me?” I finally ask. My teeth are still chattering, but at least the words are recognizable now. “How can you—”

“I'm taking care of you,” he answers. “Which I would have been doing all along if you'd told me what you planned to do.”

He sets me down on my bed without another word, crosses to my bathroom. Seconds later, I hear him turn on the bathtub tap.

Then he's back, stripping off my jeans and shoes and sweater like I'm a child. Or an invalid. Again I think about protesting, but it feels good for him to be in charge, just feels good to let him handle the details when my brain and body are so overloaded I can barely remember to breathe.

When I'm finally naked, Declan picks me back up and carries me into the bathroom. The water hasn't gotten very high yet, so he grabs a towel and wraps it around me. Then he sits on the thick edge of my bathtub with me on his lap, and starts to rock. He croons wordlessly to me as he does.

“I'm okay,” I tell him. Not that I want him to stop, but as we sit here, I realize that I'm not the only one shaking.

“I know.” He grinds the words out between clenched teeth.

I struggle against his hold a little, sitting up so that I can look into his face. It's drawn and tight, cheeks hollowed out and eyes burning. He looks like a different man than the one I went to bed with this morning—he's frazzled and worried and completely stressed out. It hurts me to see him this way, especially because I know I'm responsible. My magic, the way I live my life, is doing this to him.

“I'm sorry.” Now I'm the one holding him.

For long seconds he doesn't answer, just presses me against him. He holds me tighter, then slips the towel from around me and lowers me gently into the bathwater.

It's hot—really hot—and it feels good. The last of the achy, cold feeling leaves me, a strange, floaty lethargy taking its place. My eyelids want to drift closed, but I don't let them. I need to talk to Declan about Shelby, need to tell him what I felt. What the tarot cards said. See if he can help.

But first I want to know how he knew that I was in trouble. We're soulbound, yes, but I can't sense him when we're apart. I don't know his mood or what he's doing or if he's in danger. So how did he know that I needed help, needed him?

I ask him, and his first response is a searing look and an even more searing kiss. “I felt your distress. I didn't know what was causing it, didn't know if you were in danger, if you'd found another body, if someone was hurting you.” He closes his eyes and shudders as his hands reach for mine.

This time, I do let my eyes close as I settle against the back of the bathtub. He needs a minute to regain his equilibrium and so do I. I hate how vulnerable I always appear to Declan. I want him to think of me as strong and smart and capable, not some damsel constantly in need of being rescued.

And yet I have to admit that it feels nice. Not the being rescued part, but the knowing someone cares, really cares, about what happens to me on a very different level than my family or my friends.

Declan shifts, slides over, and I open my eyes just in time to see his still-jean-covered legs slide into the water on either side of my shoulders. Then he's leaning down, pressing kisses against my temple, over my hair. “I need a minute,” he says softly. “To convince myself that you're really okay.”

I don't move, don't breathe, terrified of doing something to end this moment. Declan is never unsteady, never exposed, never vulnerable. Not in front of me or anyone else. The fact that he is now, and that he's sharing it with me—even if it's only because he can't help himself—is a huge concession on his part. I want to savor it. Not because I enjoy seeing Declan shaken up and worried, but because I know this is another step toward intimacy, another step down the path Declan and I are destined to walk together.

I don't know how things are going to end between us—though there's a big part of me that is sure this will end badly—and for once I don't care. Everything in me yearns toward him, wants to protect him. To share with him. To love him.

The word catches me off guard, freaks me out a little, so I shove it down deep inside me. I'm already feeling vulnerable and confused. The last thing I need to do is try to deal with feelings like that in addition to the others that are ricocheting around inside me like bullets gone terribly awry.

Eventually Declan raises his head and the iron grip he has around me slowly loosens. I bite my lip to keep from whimpering, from begging him to hold me just a little longer. I expect him to move away, to complain about my carelessness or the fact that his jeans are soaked up to the knee.

He does none of the above. Instead, he reaches for the bath gel I keep on the shelf that runs beside the tub. It's homemade—a relaxing blend of lavender, rosemary and ylang-ylang made especially for me by my sister Rachael. She's the healer in the family, and the one who makes herbal shampoos and lotions and a million other things.

Declan squeezes some of the bath gel onto his hands, rubs them together. Then he leans forward and glides those hands all over me. He starts at my neck, skims down my back and then up my arms to my collarbone before going lower to tickle my ribs and belly button.

My pulse quickens—I can't help it, can't control it. I never can when Declan is touching me—even now, when I know what he's doing is meant to soothe and relax me. My whole body goes on alert, my sex softening as my nipples harden.

I know he sees my response, feels the restless way I start to move in the water. But he doesn't pause what he's doing. He soaps his way over my stomach and up my rib cage before gliding his hands up and over my breasts with the utmost care.

I gasp, arch into his touch. I can't help it. Even upset, I long to feel his hands on my breasts, long for him to cup the weight of them while he pinches my nipples just the way I like.

He doesn't do that, though. Instead, he skims over them like they're just another part of my body. Then he moves lower to soap up my thighs and knees and calves. He's gentle with me, tender, careful not to press against any of the fading bruises left over from my encounter with the madman. I know it drives him nuts to see them, but tonight he doesn't show his angst by so much as an uneven breath or muffled curse.

When he's washed every part of me—even my toes—Declan turns the water back on and rinses me thoroughly. Then reaches for the plastic cup I keep on the same shelf and fills it up.

“Scoot down,” he tells me in a voice filled with gravel, the first indication I have that he isn't quite as unaffected as he's trying to make me believe. I do what he says, and he tips my head back before slowly, carefully pouring the water over my hair.

He squirts some shampoo into his hand, then begins gently combing it through my hair. The last of the panic and confusion ebbs away under his tender ministrations, utter relaxation taking the place of those feelings. My eyes start to close, but I force them open, keeping them fastened on his.

Lying here in this bathtub as he cares for me, I feel more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. And also more protected. Declan's face is only a few inches above mine, his eyes locked onto mine as he washes my hair with a gentleness I didn't know he had in him. In their depths I see him, really see him in a way I'm not sure I ever have before.

There's torment there, a dark fire he doesn't even try to hide.

Strength, more of it than I think even he realizes.

Rage, a slow burn that blankets everything going on inside him.

And deep inside, locked behind the few emotions he doesn't mind showing, is love. Kindness. Tenderness. For me. I know it's all there for me.

I know he feels it, too. This nebulous connection between us, different from the soulbound thing but no less powerful for all of its delicate fragility.

He starts to rinse my hair out and I reach a hand up because I can't stand the pain of not touching him for one more second. I brush my thumb over those insanely perfect lips of his, cupping his cheek with my hand. His breathing hitches, stops. Then he turns into my touch and presses a warm, lingering kiss in the center of my palm.

“Declan. I . . .” I don't know what to say, don't even know what I want to say.

“Sssh.” He places a wet finger against my lips. “I've got you, Xandra. I swear I've got you.”

The emotion in his eyes grows more raw and powerful with each second that passes and still I don't look away. I can't. I'm trapped like a moth around a flame, desperate for whatever part of him he'll let me have.

I know it's in my eyes, know he must see my own vulnerability and desperate need as clearly as I see his. And in this one tremulous but perfect moment, it feels right. In a world spinning so rapidly beyond my control, it feels . . . good.

He conditions my hair with the same care that he washed it and by the time he's done, I'm shaking all over again, this time for very different reasons. He pops the drain, helps me stand, then dries me off before sweeping me back into his arms and carrying me to my bed.

Then he moves to my dresser, one of the few things that didn't burn in the fire I set last week with my less-than-stellar magic. He pulls out a nightshirt. But when he comes back to me and tries to slip it over my head, I rip it from his hands. Throw it across the room. And reach for him. Just him.

He meets me halfway, slams his mouth down on mine in a kiss so intense, so powerful, so
possessive
that it feels like a brand. Which should offend my feminist sensibilities but doesn't because the kiss I'm giving him is exactly the same.

Lust—raw, carnal, overwhelming—rises up in me. I reach for the hem of his T-shirt and fumble the thing over his head before going for the button on his jeans. They prove to be more difficult, not just because my hands are shaking so badly, but because the bottom half of each leg is wet and heavy and clinging to his calves.

He curses as he wrestles with them, his voice a low, guttural growl. Seconds later he gives up the fight, mutters a spell that has the jeans disappearing into thin air. Any other time I'd probably be awed—transubstantiation is a rare gift in the Hekan world, and a difficult task no matter how talented the practitioner. But right now all I care about is that Declan is naked and aroused and pressed intimately against me.

I wrap my arms and legs around him, desperate—starved—for the feel of him inside me. He has other ideas, though, and as he presses slow, sweet kisses to my throat and shoulders, I know he plans another long, drawn-out seduction.

I can't take that, though, not now when my entire body is threatening to spontaneously combust. Bracing a foot on the bed for leverage, I roll us over until I'm the one on top, looking down at him.

His eyes are dark and bottomless, filled with the same urgency that's tearing at me with razor-sharp claws. I push myself into a sitting position, then sink down on him in a move so smooth and quick, it has me moaning and him jerking beneath me.

Desperate—delirious—with desire, I start to move, settling into a rhythm that has Declan's body arching beneath mine and his eyes rolling back in his head. One of his hands goes to my breast, pinching and plucking at my nipple, while the other fastens itself to my hip in a gesture so possessive it takes away what little breath I've managed to hold on to. And then he's lifting his hips, driving himself deeper inside me.

The tension is building inside me, hotter and sweeter and more desperate than ever until nothing matters but Declan and the way he feels inside me, the pleasure that slams through me with every stroke, every touch, every breath.

Declan is close, too. I can feel it in the rock-hard thighs that have gone rigid beneath me and the strong fingers that clutch my hips so tightly that I may very well have new bruises when this is over. I don't mind—it's exhilarating, not to mention sexy as hell, to know that I've driven him to this—that I've brought a man of Declan's strength to the brink of mindlessness.

Sensation swamps me at the thought and my eyes drift closed. I'm right there at the edge, my body poised to explode with just one more—

“Xandra.”

My eyes spring open at the dark command in Declan's voice and once again lock onto his. It's what he wanted, what he needed. And—I'm not surprised at all to realize—that it's what I so desperately needed from him as well. Proof that there's a connection between us.

Declan chooses that moment to slide his hand up from my breast to my collarbone, his long fingers circling my neck in a moment of utter domination, utter possession that might have felt threatening if it was anyone but him holding me like that. But it is Declan, and his touch feels both as hot as hell and as natural as breathing to me.

His thumb comes up, rubs over my lips again. This time I bite him, hard, and that's all it takes. His hips slam into mine and I shatter. He's right there with me, and as his body pulses against mine—as he empties himself into me—the pleasure swamps me, takes me over.