KICK ASS: A Boxed Set (38 page)

She was strong, this woman. Strong, but damaged. And with Rafe’s own personal history, he was the last man who could offer her solace.

If he was still a man.

At this moment, he knew not what he was. Trapped within the stone, he could think and suffer as a man, but he could not feel the mist of the night on his skin or the ground beneath his feet. Or a woman’s mouth pressed intimately to his. And until Mariah, he had not craved the sensations. Not once.

But now it was all he could think about. The kiss had not been real, but the dream had made his blood rush in his ears. As if he had tasted her, the flavors of her lips lingered on his tongue. Strong, smooth whiskey and sweet feminine warmth had intoxicated him for hours.

He could see nothing from inside the bag where she’d stored the stone, but he experienced a change in atmosphere. The stone suddenly grew moist and hot, and he guessed the temperature had changed to match the air outside. He’d never visited a climate such as this, but he did not have to be free of the curse to know that he’d somehow been transported to a foreign land.

Hours had gone by. Only a few days ago, the passage of time would have been inconsequential, but ever since Mariah dug his prison out of the Valoren dirt, he’d suffered every excruciating minute with an awareness he did not want.

He attempted to block out the murmurs and mumblings of conversation outside the bag, but without trying, he understood that she was attempting to find lodging under a name that was not her own. Once the bartering was complete and a swooping upward ride ended, he heard a door open, then close. Locks snapped into place, and the soft bounce of a cushion jolted him. Had she tossed the bag onto a bed?

Again, he heard a succession of opening and closing doors. The slide of curtains. Clicking noises he could not identify. Suddenly he heard a loud, trilling sound, this time from within the bag. Her hand brushed against the stone as she dug inside, and again, he was overwhelmed with emotions he did not wish to feel. Desire. Longing. Lust.

She cursed, then pulled him out. The need to touch her, taste her, possess her, increased to dizzying proportions.

The room was dark. She’d pulled down the shades, and only the golden glow from strangely steady lanterns illuminated the room. Her brown hair caught the light, reflecting a fiery red he longed to slide his hands through. Her eyes, warm as topaz, widened at the sight of him.

The chirping noise stopped. For the first time, she inspected the stone that contained him. Every stop on the route to this place had been quick, and her mistrust had been overwhelming. But here she felt safe.

With the precision of a craftsman perusing the workmanship of a rival, she thrust the stone beneath the light and examined every crevice and curve. When she nicked the center of the stone with her thumbnail, a dizzying shiver ran the length of his spine. She raised the stone to her lips, expelled a mint-infused breath over him, then rubbed the stone vigorously against her breasts, throwing him into a conflagration of need versus resistance. He had to use the entire force of his will to remain inside the stone.

“Just what are you?” she asked.

Your darkest nightmare
, he thought.

With a gasp, she dropped the stone and screamed.

Four

Had she heard him?

Rafe watched her intently as the trilling noise again broke through the shocked silence. Mariah had already backed away, from where he’d landed on a cushioned floor. She tripped near the bed, fumbling as she scooped a slim metal case from her sack on the bed. Her gaze darted nervously between the stone on the ground and the odd case in her hand, which continued to emit noises not unlike the skylarks that had once perched in the willow outside his window.

She flipped open the metal ease and then stomped about as if the innards had revealed distressing news. After a long glance in his direction, she pressed the device with her thumb, then held it to her ear. Her eyes, however, darted back to him, entrapped in the stone, every few seconds.

“Hunter here,” she said to the device. Her voice held none of the anxiety Rafe felt washing off her body in waves. She was putting on a show, but for whom? There was no one in the room other than him… of this he was certain.

After observing her for a full minute, he guessed that the device she spoke into allowed her to communicate with someone who was not there. Someone she knew. Rafe’s mind whirled. Did Mariah have magic of her own? How else could she perform such a marvel? And yet, if she possessed powers, why could she not save herself at the cliff in Valoren?

Though Rafe had not ventured from the stone, he understood that she’d traveled a great distance in a short amount of time. Snippets of conversation led him to believe they were in a different country, one far removed from his homeland. To his left, a black box blinked green numbers. Did they represent the time? And though the windows were closed, a cool breeze riffled through the room.

Apparently, the device she spoke into was part of her everyday world, a world that contained many mysteries Rafe had no desire to solve. And yet, he could not help but watch her as she paced about, exchanging conversation as if she communicated with distant compatriots regularly, and without concentration or incantation.

Rafe’s learned eldest brother, Damon, had often spoken of many conceived inventions that would have allowed for magic in the everyday world. What would Rafe’s ancestors have thought about such marvels as pistols and telescopes? They’d likely be as confused as he was, but at least he knew that he’d been thrust forward in time, into a world wholly unlike his own. Logically, that world must have changed. And with it, so had methods of communication.

He would simply have to listen and learn and observe.

“No, Senor Velez, I haven’t found the coins yet,” Mariah explained. “I was just in Chiapas last week and I—”

She stopped speaking, and her gaze shifted back to the stone. Rafe could tell from her expression that she was only half listening to the voice speaking directly into her ear through the strange metal box. She approached Rafe’s prison with caution, kicking the edge with the toe of her boot, then hopping away as if she expected someone to jump out at her. Well, it would not be him. No matter how the temptation to emerge pulled at him, he resisted. If his speaking had terrified her, he could only imagine the crazed consequences of his appearing from nowhere.

Though she did not seem the fearful type, Mariah Hunter did appear to be a sensible woman who harnessed her fear and turned it to her advantage, but whoever she spoke with now frightened her. And she’d been startled to hear Rafe’s voice. Yet despite her apprehension, she approached the stone again and knelt, her elbow on her knee and her chin resting on her fist. Her eyes narrowed with curiosity.

He could hear the tinny sound of a voice emerging from out of the slim silver device, which, now that he could see it more closely, resembled a decorative case often used for snuff. The idea that people could converse over any distance with no more than a piece of metal as their conduit fascinated him.

“Yes, I understand that you invested a lot of money,” she said, her tone distracted. “But these things happen. You knew the risks.”

With a jolt, she moved the box abruptly away from her ear. The harsh voice inside the box increased in both volume and anger.

“I need more time,” she said finally.

Rafe sensed her annoyance increase as she pushed any fear completely aside.

“A week?”

She paced around the room now, stopping once to glance out of the window. When she moved the shade, no light came into the room. Rafe assumed this meant the hour was late. For a split second, he allowed himself to wonder what view existed outside the window, and the thought increased the drag he’d been fighting since she first touched the stone.

He resisted again, something that became easier after she walked away.

“What if I find you something even more valuable than the Mayan coins?” she asked.

Her smile was enhanced by a cunning light in her eyes, a gleam suddenly in balance with the rest of her face. Rafe watched in wonder. Her anxiety dissipated as her sense of control increased. Her excitement and anticipation seeped into the stone, even from a distance, building his curiosity to unbearable levels.

She was no ordinary woman. He sensed that she fed on risk and danger. He couldn’t remember experiencing such an intimate connection to someone he’d never yet touched. Never
would
touch.

His resistance to the pull faltered, but did not break.

“Well,” she said, “I may have something interesting for you. I’m doing research. I’ll be back in touch when I know more. You could end up recouping your investment and making a tidy profit. That’s win-win, yes?”

Her smile broadened. She said good-bye, tossed the silver case onto the bed and threw her hands up with an excited whoop. With her exhilaration canceling out her wariness, she scooped the stone into her palm and talked to it directly.

“I don’t know what you are, but if you get me out of this fix, you’ll be worth all the added craziness you’ve brought into my life.”

Rafe concentrated on remaining silent. He washed his thoughts of any possible response, focusing instead on the nothingness that had been his only company for centuries. Mariah continued to eye the stone quizzically, then finally tossed it onto the bed, double-checked the lock on the door and then proceeded to remove her clothes.

Rafe knew he should look away. But as she peeled her snug shirt from her skin, revealing a lacy contraption that buoyed her breasts, the distinction between right and wrong disappeared. Like a man, she wore breeches that reached her ankles, but the fabric hugged her hips and buttocks, with shocking emphasis on the parts of her that were, undeniably, female.

She flicked a button at her waist and, seconds later, shimmied and undulated provocatively until only the lace on her breasts and a sheer scrap of silk cut into a triangle at the apex of her thighs kept her from total nakedness.

Had he a mouth, Rafe knew it would have watered.

He had to look away or douse the room in darkness to preserve the privacy she had no idea she did not have. Suddenly, the lanterns she’d lit upon entering the room flickered, then went out.

“Strike me, what now?” she shouted, frustrated.

She stumbled away and then a light from a smaller room behind her flicked on. Backlit, her body tortured him anew. She was lithe and slim, yet muscled. Her skin glistened as if she’d spent her whole life in the sun.

Despite the wrongness, he wanted to see all of her. The lights in the room came back on. She gasped, eyed the stone warily again, then whispered something to herself that he could not hear, though her uncertainty rang loud and clear. She closed the door to the smaller room with a decisive bang.

Moments later he heard water, as if a rainstorm had started inside the tiny room where Mariah had disappeared. After a while, steam seeped from a gap between the door and the floor. Water? Inside? And how had it heated so quickly? He sensed no fire. Saw no maid to draw a bath.

This woman brought him nothing but confusion and conflict. He had not wanted to leave Valoren. He’d never wanted to know the world outside of his homeland. Unlike his brothers, Rafe had been born in the Gypsy colony, and unlike his sister, who longed to explore, Rafe had never entertained any desire to leave. Now, trapped within Rogan’s magical stone, he had no choice but to go wherever this woman took him.

And added to his torture now was Mariah Hunter herself. She moved with the same sensuality as the wind in a storm, possessing all the same flashes of emotion, the same thunderous desires. Her tempestuous emotions wreaked havoc on his long-dormant abilities to care about the world outside. Long ago, he’d come to terms with his fate—or at the very least, he’d forgotten how to rage against it. What point did fighting serve? No matter how he’d once tried, no matter what he’d lost, he could not free himself from his magical prison.

And yet, until he’d crossed paths with Mariah Hunter, he’d never experienced the incredible pull he suspected would lead him to the outside. All he had to do was surrender. Give in. Trust that submitting would not result in something worse than perpetual imprisonment.

Suddenly, the memory of his first hours trapped inside Rogan’s marker rushed back at him. Pain slashed at his nonexistent innards. He tried to push the images away, but he had nowhere to hide from the anguish, nowhere to run from the guilt.

He remembered little of what happened to him immediately after he’d drawn his dagger to destroy Rogan’s mark on the gemstone embedded in the unfinished gate. He recalled a flash of light, intense pain—and then nothing. Only at daybreak had he determined that he’d been magically sucked inside the stone he’d attempted to destroy, unable to free himself or communicate with anyone who passed.

Unfortunately, the only people entering the village through the unfinished gate were the soldiers. They’d marched in just after dawn, as he’d learned they would when he’d ridden reconnaissance for his brothers the night before. The mercenary army had carried swords and bayonets and shields, as if the tiny community of peaceful Romani would offer resistance. He heard the paid fighters curse the emptiness of the village, endured the sound of the leaders ordering the scouts into the mountains to search the caves. Trapped inside the stone, he could not warn his people—he could not help his wife.

And then she appeared.

Irika
.

As if he’d conjured her with Rogan’s black magic—the same way he’d saved Mariah from falling off the cliff—his wife had appeared.

Had he magically summoned Irika to her death? Though his memory was untested, he recalled hearing his wife desperately shout his name before she’d crossed into his line of vision. Why had his beloved, strong-willed wife left the safety of the caves? To search for him? Had she mistaken the marauding army for allies of his father, the former governor, instead of enemies of the Romani clan?

He’d never know. Her calls for him had nonetheless sealed her fate. In seconds, a soldier had captured her, slammed her to her knees and held a blade to her throat while he shouted for his superior. Quickly surrounded, Irika was assailed by questions about the whereabouts of Rogan and the Gypsy inhabitants of the village.