Found (Book One of the Castle Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (11 page)

His words were calm and measured, and Hailey wanted nothing more than to reach for him.

“Hailey, only you can decide how you feel about what happened. I’m a major in the Magus Corps. That means I walk with death as my companion. I have for many years, and I am used to it in a way that I think few people in the world can be. It was wrong of me to ask you to brush it aside.”

“Kieran, I don’t know if I can ever see things the way that you do.”

“You don’t need to.”

Kieran’s face was a mask, but she knew him too well by now to think that he was emotionless.

“You have a choice,” he continued. “No matter what, you will always have a choice. You can stay here. If you choose to do that, I will support your decision to the utmost of my ability. If they try to force you out, I will put in my resignation as a member of the Magus Corps and then they will have me to contend with.”

“Kieran!”

His smile was lopsided.

“There’s an old quote that goes ‘My country right or wrong. If right to be maintained, and if wrong to be set right.’ If the Magus Corps would force you to do something like this that you don’t want to do, they are not an organization that I wish to serve. It is as simple as that. If you want to come to Wyoming, you could do a great deal of good. You could save lives. You could change the world. But it must be your choice. No matter what you do, I will of course try to protect you. I will do everything that I can to make sure that you have what you need.”

“And you?”

He looked startled.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you need?”

Kieran let out a long breath, and Hailey wondered how long it had been since he had been asked that.

“I need you,” he said simply. “No matter what, I need you safe, and I want you happy.”

It was everything that she wanted to hear, or nearly so. She wondered why it didn’t make her happy.

“I’m sorry,” she forced herself to say. “I just don’t know.”

And she didn’t. The choices were simply too great.

“What can I give you that will help?”

There was no blame in his voice, only an endless readiness to be of service, to aid, to help, to give her what she needed.

“Time,” she said finally. “Give me time.”

“All I can give you,” he swore, and he reached for her hand over the water.

She took it, and though every instinct in her body told her to leap across and to be with him, she didn’t.

“Thank you.”

Her words hung in the air. After a long moment, they let go, and Kieran turned away. She watched him go, and it felt like a loss.

She didn’t know what to do with her emotions then, so she walked into the forest. Perhaps she would find where Merit was nesting that day, or perhaps she would see Cavanaugh. She knew the woods well enough, she didn’t fear getting lost.

It turned out that getting lost wasn’t what she had to fear. She was aware of a blur of motion to her right and a rustle of brambles that told her that someone didn’t care about being hidden anymore. That was all she knew before a rag soaked in strong chemicals was pressed against her face. Her vision went dark, and all she could think of was Kieran.

WHEN HAILEY’S VISION returned, she was first aware of a smoky scent. Something was on fire, and there was a rankness to it that made her twitch.

“So sleeping beauty awakens.”

She turned to see an older man dressed in rugged outdoor clothing watching her from a chair. She was laid on a bed, comfortable enough except that her hands and feet were bound. She could tell she was in a cabin, and with a sickening plummet of her stomach, she realized it was the same one where she and Kieran had killed the Templars. She remembered the three bowls on the table––this was the third man. Outside the broken window, she could see that it was nearly pitch black. She had been unconscious for a while.

“What manner of woman are you?” he asked politely enough. “See, I’ve known my share of witches. None of them are like you. Are you some kind of new thing?”

“I’m not a witch at all,” she said, and the man moved so fast that she could barely believe it.

He stepped close and slapped her. As pain lanced through her jaw, her head snapped sideways. Rough fingers grabbed her chin, bringing her face back to him. Stars flitted at the periphery of her narrowing vision. His face was twisted with fury and, when he shouted, it was with the voice of a demon.

“Liar!” he screamed, letting her go with a shove. “I know you’re a liar. I saw what you did that night! You looked at a man, and he fell dead! You and your warlock, you killed them with your powers!”

Hailey watched in terror as the man visibly regained his composure. In a split second, he was calm again. He looked like a friendly old man, the type she might meet at any small store in the world, and that made his outburst even more frightening.

“All right. We both want things. I want the truth, and that’s a small enough thing to want in these dark times, don’t you think? What do you want?”

“I want you to let me go,” Hailey said urgently.
 

If he was calm, perhaps he would listen to reason.

“No, you don’t want to be let go,” he said patiently, unbuttoning her coat.

Her heart leapt into her throat as she watched each button come undone. Delicately, he lifted the bottom of her sweater. As he laid her midriff bare, Hailey sucked in a shaky breath. When his rough fingers grazed her skin, she shuddered.
 

“What you want,” he said calmly, sliding his fingers back the other way, “is to stay whole.”

Hailey’s eyes widened as he crossed the cabin to the fire. It was bright and crackling cheerfully. When he pulled a poker from its coals, the end gleamed a dull, ashy orange.

“Yes, you want to stay whole. Now, what manner of thing are you?”

“I…I’m a witch, but I’m a bad one. There’s nothing that I can do. Nothing!”

“Liar.”

This time the accusation was punctuated with a quick stab of the poker. Though she writhed desperately, it managed to graze her side. To her horror she heard the sizzle and then felt the blistering pain. Hailey screamed, emptying her lungs.

“Now try again. What manner of thing are you?”

For all the pain, Hailey felt a numbing calm. She realized in a distant kind of way that she was in shock. When her answer failed to come, he brought the poker to her again. It was slower this time. The searing heat moved over the first burn and touched down beside it. She jerked convulsively in the restraints.

“I’m a witch!” she screamed, and he took the poker away. She gasped for air. “But I can’t do magic.” Pain radiated from her side, flooding through her. She’d have doubled over if she could. “I can’t do magic.” She gulped for air. “Not without another witch or warlock.”

The man looked thoughtful, and he nodded. Through the haze of pain, Hailey stared at his face, waiting for his reaction, knowing her life depended on it.

“What happens if you have another witch present?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but she realized that the chill in the cabin was growing worse. It had gone from cold to bone-chilling, making her teeth chatter. She looked up just in time to see blades of ice form out of nowhere, and just as the old man noticed them, they spun towards him.

His shriek was terrible. The blades of ice had flown to his body as if drawn there. He was still wailing when Kieran rushed through the door.

Hailey had never seen anyone so angry. His face was a mask of fury, and now she had an idea why the Magus Corps was so feared. For what they needed to protect, they had to be utterly ruthless, completely without mercy.

A larger blade of ice appeared out of the air, and though Hailey couldn’t see its descent, she heard the old man’s final groan when it struck home. Only then did Kieran turn to her, the fury melting into something else. His face blanched.

“Hailey, gods above, he hurt you.”

Kieran conjured more ice and cupped it carefully against her wounds. She hissed at the contact, but then relaxed when the cool relieved some of the pain.

“Get me out of here, Kieran, please,” she whispered, and he nodded.

• • • • •

Kieran knew how lucky he was. He knew it was a miracle that Merit had come looking for him when Hailey was taken. He knew that it was against all odds that Cavanaugh had tracked Hailey to the cabin. He knew it was almost beyond belief that Hailey had had the strength to teleport them back, this time directly to the infirmary. But then she’d gone frighteningly limp, and he’d laid her gently on the table. The silent witch had taken one look at her, and bustled about for a salve. The wounds weren’t life-threatening. They would heal well after magical intervention, for which he was very grateful.

They had both been very lucky.

So why did he feel like he had lost everything?

He knew what she had seen when he had killed that Templar. She had seen the full force of his fury and his ability to do whatever he had to do. Few people could live with it, and Hailey was very young. She had every right to be frightened.

And she’d been tortured.

Even now he could picture her ashen face, and his hands bunched into fists.

But it had been three days since he had rescued her from that cabin, and still she was nowhere to be seen. Kieran had taken one of the rooms that Donato had offered him just to be close, but his only visitors were the boy Luca, and Beatrice who told him to be hopeful. She spoke quietly of Hailey’s nightmares lessening.

Hailey needed time to recover, and to think on what she really wanted, but Kieran realized with a pang that he didn’t have that time. There was work he needed to get back to. He had to realize that this was a closed chapter in their time together, and with a heart that felt like it was turned to lead, he sent a message to Hailey telling her he was leaving the next day.

He was at the gates of the monastery just a little after dawn. He had said farewell to Beatrice and Luca and exchanged courtesies with Donato. Now all that was left was Hailey.

He waited, and after a few moments, he heard her familiar steps. Kieran turned, and to his shock, he saw that she had a suitcase with her.

“Hailey?”

“You gave me time, and I made a decision,” she said softly. “I choose this. I choose you.”

He couldn’t resist her. He never could. Careful of her side, Kieran pulled her into his arms for a deep kiss.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you in this moment and for every one that comes after.”

“No matter where we go?”

“I will love you everywhere in the world and every moment that passes on it.”

Her smile lit up like fireworks, and she kissed him hard on the mouth.

THREE DAYS LATER, they were seated in the private first class cabin of a jet headed from Rome to New York. Hailey couldn’t believe how fast life had changed, and though a part of her shied away from the challenges ahead, another part of her felt calm and ready.

Instead of her normal jeans and sweaters, she wore a light sleeveless green dress instead. It made Kieran smile and he’d told her she looked like a huldra, one of the enchanting forest women from his homeland.

“Do I really enchant you?” she said, trying to sound sultry.
 

It sounded ridiculous, and she made a face, but he laughed.

“Never doubt it,” he promised. “It doesn’t matter what you wear, but I’ll admit I have a taste for you in green.”

Something about the way his voice dropped on the word
taste
made her blush, and to hide her fluster, she pulled the scratchy blanket up to her chin defiantly. Something about that motion only made him eye her more avidly, and she could feel the familiar heat that he could invoke so easily rise in her body. They had barely been able to keep their hands off of each other since she had agreed to come with him.

She bit her lip, and glanced around. They were in the seats closest to the pilot’s cockpit, and the man seated across the aisle from them had been drinking since takeoff. He was nodding off now, and she turned back to find Kieran watching her.

“I think I’m going to get some sleep,” she said primly, and from under the blanket, she took his hand.

“That’s a very good idea,” Kieran agreed pleasantly. “It’s going to be another eight hours before we land in New York.”

Hailey blushed when she felt him tug the hem of her dress up, and then it was just the warmth of his hand gliding over her knee. She shivered, and his hand grazed against the tender skin of her thigh. There was something deliciously illicit about pretending to be drowsing when he was touching her so intimately. She kept herself perfectly still as he touched her thighs, encouraging them to spread for his hand.

He stilled, the only indication that he had discovered that Hailey hadn’t bothered with panties that morning.

“Beautiful little witch.”
 

It was uttered so softly that she could have imagined it, but she knew she hadn’t.

Slowly, his fingertips traced her slit, brushing the light dusting of hair there. She kept her breathing as even as she could, when his fingers became firmer. He was avoiding her clit, instead choosing to tease her over and over again until her folds parted easily for him.

His fingers were moving more smoothly against her flesh as she grew more aroused, and for a brief moment, she knew for sure that she wouldn’t be satisfied with his fingers, skilled though they were. Images of sneaking into the bathroom, of finding the pleasure that they both needed, filled her mind, but before she could do that, he ghosted his fingertip over her clit.

It was all she could do not to arch against his touch and whimper for more. She wondered if she would always crave his touch like this, if they would always hunger for each other. There was a day soon in the future, she knew, when he would ask to initiate her. Sex without barriers of any kind would make her effectively immortal the way that he was. It symbolized an eternity together, and when he asked, she knew she would say yes.

He toyed with her, all the while playing with the tumbler of whiskey in his free hand. For all the world, he looked like a man lost in his thoughts when his companion slumbered. No one would know from looking at him that he had his hand nestled in her most tender parts, driving her insane.