Gone With the Witch (23 page)

He didn't want to touch another woman, but he didn't
want commitment, either. Yet separating himself from
Storm didn't bear thinking about. He should put a stop to this zany romp down fireworks lane, this false sense of happiness, but having her was like a glimpse of paradise that he couldn't let go.

In the midst of their erotic dance, which had gone on for
so long, her tongue ring doing wild things to his dragon, Aiden feared this was an out-of-body view of life as he wished it could be, without secrets, with a partner who understood and accepted him—red violet flaws and all—and
liked him anyway. Liked him, lusted after him, the way
he ... liked ... and lusted after her.

If only he'd shared his every secret while he had the chance.

Storm raised her head, tilted it. "It's not your fault that
Claudette died in that car accident. You shouldn't feel guilty.
And while we're on the subject, I don't believe it
was
the
dragon that kept you celibate, but your guilt over Claudette."

Ah, and there it was, his last secret, laid ugly
bare
, ex
cept that Storm was the one who'd bared it. "You spook me
when you read me like that," Aiden said as he stood and got
out of the spa in a snit.

"I didn't mean to send you running for your shell," she said, rising like a water goddess with moonbeams for a gown.

"That turtle talk is getting old," he snapped, annoyed she
was still turning him on when he was ... well ... annoyed. "What am I, a dragon or a turtle? Pick one or the other. Which is it?"

"Turtles and dragons have a lot in common," she explained. "You may be inclined toward both. You can have two totems, you know?"

"
And that's another thing. What the hell is a totem?"
His anger came from all the foreign emotions he couldn't
name, he thought. And rather than wallow in and enjoy this
sexually stimulating nonrelationship of theirs, he feared it would disappear, pink-dicked idiot that he was.

Storm took his hand, and her touch was enough to
soothe him. He brought her fingers to his lips, he was so grateful.

"An
animal totem," Storm explained, unaware of his rioting emotions, "represents elements of your deepest self, including some of the qualities you might someday need
that are hidden inside you. Don't feel that the turtle is weak
because it's small. It's a powerful totem said to have
brought the earth up from the sea on its back to give people
a place to live. For my own totems, I chose the sea horse in
addition to the dragon, and a sea horse, as you've discovered, is much smaller than a turtle."

Aiden lowered himself to sit on the side of the spa, his dragon clearly passed out on the edge, his gaze focused on a blue-haired
goth
with a huge heart.

She gave his dragon a pointed look and raised a determined brow.

Aiden shook his head. "You wake
him,
you have to pay
the price, though I think he's in a coma. What do the
dragon and turtle have in common?"

"Okay. Ahem." Storm cleared her throat and tried to di
rect her gaze away from Triton, but when she couldn't
seem to resist, she turned her back on him. "The dragon
and the turtle are both water creatures," she said, facing a wall depicting a shimmering, underwater, silk seascape.

Aiden slipped back into the spa to see her beautiful
face. "Continue, please."

"Both a
re
one with the environment. They have amazing
survival skills and strategies, and they can sense vibrations
on land and in water that warn of danger. I'm not putting
you down when I call you a turtle, except for the hiding
part, which you've aced. But 'I love that the turtle awakens the senses on both the physical and spi
ri
tual levels by stimulating psychic awareness, especially clairaudience."

Aiden perked up at that. "Do you mean that by my very
nature, 'I stimulate your ability to hear those babies crying
when you're near me? Snapdragon, you have a truly
skewed way of thinking."

"One baby cries when I'm near you.
Yours.
Don't go taking credit for my gifts, now." Storm ran both her hands up his chest and along his shoulders and arms. "Both the turtle and the dragon have nearly impenetrable shells."

"Hey, I'm penetrable."

She scoffed. "Please, if the hard shell fits, wear it. The turtle teaches us not to gather more possessions than we need and to choose our responsibilities wisely."

"That, 'I can get behind." He slid around her and pulled her against him, her back against his front, and he rubbed
her silk-soft belly to heighten her arousal, as he felt Elektra
practically calling to Triton ... again.

"One more thing," Storm said. "The link between water and land has significance for both dragon and turtle—as it does for the sea horse—in terms of where they raise their family. That's why 'I think you like the island."

"I'm not raising a family."

"Not
yet."

"Okay smart-ass. How about 'I tell you something about yourself? 'I don't know from totems, but this is what I've discovered about the Storm witch. Inside, you're hiding a child playing dress-up, a child filled with wonder, lovable, charming, and enchanting."

"Don't be an idiot. I'm none of those things."

"Outside, you're the cryptic cynic, a brilliant goth, world-weary, who works overtime to keep your child inside. But when you're not looking, and the child escapes into the woman, you're a stunner."

"Shuddup!"
She pushed him away and went to pout on the opposite side of the huge scallop.

That girl did not like being understood, Aiden thought, any more than he did, he supposed. "Too bad you don't let
your inner child stick around," he said. "You cover the slip
with a rant or a stinging insult, anything to turn the attention away from your true self."

Storm continued sulking, her arms crossed in a protective
gesture, her blue hair doing the natural in the moist heat—curling in every direction, and turning him on like crazy.

"You are so full of turtle poop," she said. "Go hide in your shell."

"There she is, the rebel
goth
who can't deal. You don't
react well to emotion, mainly because you don't know how,
'I suspect. You slip into rebel mode whenever anyone
reveals your character, because revealing your true self scares you half to death."

Aiden knew that the only way to get Storm out of rebel mode was to give her an easy out, so he changed the subject. "Will you give me an A for reading you right, if I admit that you read
me
right? My guilt over Claudette eats
away at me. If only 'I hadn't done ... what 'I did ... that
made Claudette dump me, she would have stayed, and not
been in that car accident. If not for me, she'd be alive
today ... somewhere"

"Enough." Storm got out of the tub, and Aiden followed.

She handed him a hotel robe from the closet and
wrapped one around herself, another form of self-
protection.

"Do you know how insane you sound?" she asked.

"As insane as a woman who can hear a phantom baby crying, a woman who stands in front of a moving motor coach ... and stops it!
A woman who fights a stranger in a mall for a kid that might well have been his?"

"Yeah, that's how stupid you sound. Let's get some
sleep. I'm beat"

"I can't imagine why." Aiden dropped his robe and
threw back the covers, spreading sex toys like glitter on the
Oriental carpet.

Storm nodded. "That's what I'm saying."

She fell asleep quickly, but something, or everything, she said was combating his guilt and fear and wreaking
havoc in his mind, and he couldn't make it stop. As a
matter of fact, his thoughts were becoming more focused and more brilliant by the minute.

Aiden got up, put on his robe, and took his cell phone
into the bathroom, where he speed-dialed King's cell.
"King," Aiden said softly. "I hope I'm not interrupting the

honeymoon
, but do you have plans for the windmill on the
island? I wanna buy it. I'm thinking of turning it into a
house, actually." Aiden rolled his eyes. "I
know
I can't
drive a windmill."

After King agreed, Aiden made another call. "Morgan. Hi, am I interrupting your sex life?
Same to you.
You
have a sex slave? Hah. You should be so lucky. Hey, remember the plans you drew up for Windmill Cottage? Well, dig them out and start turning the place into a house. I just bought the windmill from King. No, I am
not
done to a
turn and ready to be served with garlic potatoes!" Not
quite.

When Aiden got back into bed, he closed his eyes, and sleep came with satisfaction.

A few hours later, the phone on the nightstand rang.
"Spell them," Storm grumbled from the depths of her pillow.

Aiden answered, listened to the surprising voice at the opposite end of the line, agreed, hung up, and rolled into Storm's waiting arms.

"Well, are you gonna tell me?" she asked.

"We have a breakfast date."

"With who?
Nobody knows we're here."

"Think again."

"I can't imagi—not ... Marvelanne?"

Chapter Thirty-one

 
•

STORM got out of bed and went to the deck to look out over the ocean. "Marvelanne's up to something," she said.

Aiden brought Storm's robe and wrapped it around her from behind, holding her as they stood together, showing her without words that he was there for her. "Yes, she's up to something. Shower for two?" he asked.

She turned in his arms, the wicked tilt to her brow
meant to entice. "I'm too tense."

She was playing hard to get. "I can fix that"

"I doubt it."

Triton was up for the challenge.

As they stepped out of the shower an hour later, Aiden felt like crowing, because he
had
fixed her tension ... until they got off the elevator.

At the appointed spot, around the corner from the
casino, they waited for Marvelanne, but by the time their coffee arrived, she still wasn't there.

The diner's red and gray plastic and Formica was not reproduction retro but the real thing. Duct tape played a big

role
in the seating decor. A dive, maybe, but their coffee tasted better than at any big-name corner coffee shop.

Aiden tested the sixties tabletop music selector, put in
a quarter, pressed a couple of buttons, and the jukebox
clicked and whirred. “Angel Baby" wafted from gigundous
fifty-year-old speakers.

Storm leaned against him, and Aiden kissed her temple. "I can't take away the case of nerves you're cultivating, but
I'm here for you"

"You don't know how much that means to me."
Marvelanne arrived twenty minutes late.

Aiden frowned. "I thought you were bringing someone for us to meet."

Storm rounded on him. "You didn't tell me that!”

“
Don't grind your teeth," he cautioned. "It's not good
for the jaw."

"You should know."

A waitress removed the condiments and sugar packets with an evil eye toward Marvelanne, and Storm's eyes twinkled, though she' gave none of her amusement away. Aiden cleared his throat to keep from chuckling.

"My guest will be along in a minute," Marvelanne said before she ordered the lumberjack breakfast with a side of
grits. Once the waitress left, Marvelanne fished a paper
from her uniform pocket and looked up at them. The eight
and-a-half-by-eleven colored picture looked like it had
been printed from a computer. Marvelanne handed it to Storm. "I wanted you to know," Marvelanne said, "that I don't invite every good-looking
goth
at the casino to have dinner with me. That won a photography prize on the Internet, by the way. You're pretty, you and your sisters."