Mystical Seduction: full-length sensual paranormal romance (The Protectors) (16 page)

“I know you’re upset, sweetie, but you need to calm down.”

“He killed my parents.” A sudden crack of thunder shook the
house. “He
killed
them.”

“They aren’t dead,” Horace said, holding his hands in front
of him as he crossed the room toward her.

Brendan and Dallas rushed into the room.

“Horace, I can’t contain what’s happening any longer. We
have to stop her,” Dallas shouted. “It’s almost too late now. The universe is
being torn to pieces.”

Faith turned her intense glowing blue gaze toward them. Fury
sparkled like rubies around her head.

“No!” Horace shouted, but his warning came too late. Fields
of lightning shot out from her fingertips, striking first Dallas and then
Brendan. They crumpled like a pair of paper dolls.

“Forgive me, love.” He crossed the room with preternatural
speed and punched his beloved in the jaw with enough force to knock her
unconscious. He caught her as she fell and hugged her tightly against his
chest. She looked so fragile. Her silky skin too easily torn. Her delicate
bones too easily broken. She reminded him of a beautiful bird with golden
plumage. A priceless treasure that needed to be coddled and protected.

He’d never owned anything so precious. And now that she
belonged to him, and he to her, he feared he’d already ruined her.

“Forgive me,” Horace whispered.

Everything had spun out of control so quickly. Too quickly.

Damn.

Damn.

Damn.

No matter how hard he fought for her, Horace doubted he was
going to be able to save Faith.

* * * *

“I’ve tied her to the bed upstairs and bolted the door,” Horace
announced as he descended the narrow staircase.

No one gathered at the café said a word. They simply watched
him.

“She told me a man named Manelin had sent Ballou to kill the
both of us. She called him a prince.”

The silence hung heavy in the room. It made him uneasy.

“Though the power is not contained, as soon as I’d assured
her that her parents were safe and healthy and let her use my cell phone to
talk with them, she stopped glowing so brightly.”

He couldn’t read minds, but he knew what they had to be
thinking. Hell, he was thinking it himself.

The very threads of the universe were still on the verge of
tearing apart. A low rumbling thunder had followed them as they’d driven across
town and the sky had turned as dark as midnight above the café.

“She’s still in quite a temper,”he admitted.

Dallas bit her quivering lower lip and blinked her
red-rimmed eyes several times as if desperate to hold back a flood of tears.

Brendan pulled his wife into his arms and shook his head.
“The damned universe is falling apart,” he murmured. “What else can he do?”

And it was the truth.

“I’ve created a monster.” Horace wanted to bare his chest
and suffer in Faith’s place.

He no longer felt a nagging ache when he wondered why he shouldn’t
have sex with a human. He now knew the answer. “I have no choice. I’ll have to
kill her.”

The Council kept a ceremonial knife they used whenever they
needed to sever the line between the source of all power and a rogue
Protector
.
One cut and it would be done.

Her power.

Her life.

Her soul.

Gone.

Forever
.

Horace had no choice. He had to protect the humans. And
right now, Faith’s very existence threatened every living creature on earth.
She had to die.

“There might be another way,” Stone said.

Horace had a sinking feeling he knew what Stone was about to
say. And he didn’t want to hear it.

“No, Stone, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even
suggest it. It probably won’t work.” And he’d put too much of his heart on the
line already.

“If you’re not willing to take her to your bed, I’d be more
than—” Stone started to say but abruptly was cut off when Horace took an
aggressive step toward the man Horace had once unquestionably accepted as the
leader of
the Protectors
.

Stone cleared his throat. “She’ll die if we turn away from
her. And at the rate she’s going, she’ll take the whole world down with her.”

“You can’t guarantee it will work!” Horace dredged a
frustrated hand through his hair.

“So you’d rather kill her?” Stone asked.

“No! No, of course not.”

“Then you’ll—?”

“No!” Horace turned away from his friends. “I can’t. I
won’t.”

“Keep your emotions out of it. Think of it as just sex. Sex
with a beautiful woman. Certainly you can force yourself to do the deed with
her without getting all tangled up with her emotionally.”

That was the problem. He already cared for Faith and wanted
her. Her body, her heart,
her love
. She already had the power to hurt
him. To destroy him.

“Sex is what started this,” Stone continued. “She took your
powers while you were connected. You need to reopen that connection and get
those powers back.”

“But it might not work. I might not be able to get them
back.” How in the hell could Horace have sex with Faith while knowing he might
still have to kill her? How could he even touch her with something like that
weighing on his mind?

Damn her. He didn’t want anything to do with her. But she’d
made it impossible to ignore her.

And now he was going to have to kill her.

* * * *

“I don’t like you right now,” Faith said. She turned her
head away from Horace when he came through the bedroom door. He’d used rough
cords to tie her wrists and ankles to a silk-covered bed in the middle of an
exotically decorated room. Golden drapes covered the windows. Exquisitely hand-painted
satin panels hung from the walls.

She’d been set up in the midst of luxury and left bound with
hard ropes and alone to contemplate her fate for what felt like hours.

As Faith fumed sparks sizzled and popped all around her.
“I’m not your sex slave. You have no right to treat me like an object with no
other purpose than to wait for you to notice me. I will not salivate at the
sound of your snapping fingers.” Not her. She wasn’t anybody’s sex slave.
Especially not
his
.

But she
was
salivating at the sight of him.

He raised a brow. An excruciatingly handsome brow.

“You’re the enemy,” she continued, talking more to herself
than to Horace. He was the enemy…albeit an extremely well built enemy with a
handsome face that had the power to turn a woman’s knees to water.

She’d spent the time he’d left her alone cursing him, hating
him.

Damn her traitorous heart. He took one step toward her. His
strong, demanding gaze pressed her deeper into the soft mattress, pinning her
there. His white teeth flashed in the dim light. And her heart just about
jumped to the ceiling. Excitement bubbled in her belly.

God, she was glad he’d come back for her. He was here in
this luxurious bedroom.

Her angry faded as she thought about how he might touch her.
She closed her eyes against the aching need his return had sparked. Big
mistake. Closing her eyes only gave her imagination the freedom to run wild.

She could clearly picture how he might take his hand and
stroke her up the length of her thigh. Or tease and nibble on her lips until
they felt swollen and tingly.

No! She shook her head. She couldn’t let her thoughts stray
in that direction. If she had any hope of keeping her freedom, she needed to
stay strong against him. For all she knew, he could be using his mind games
against her right now. For all she knew, he could be using his
non-human
powers to plant the desires that were beating against her chest. He could be
playing her like a puppet.

“I mean it,” she said, gritting her teeth against the sound
of desire in her breathless voice. “I
really
don’t like you right now.”

“Good. I’m not feeling particularly friendly toward you,
either,” he bit back.

“Then don’t do this.” She tugged on the ropes binding her.
“Let me go. Pretend we never met.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because you stole my powers, dammit! And you’re about to
explode like a freaking Roman candle.”

She could feel the frightening force welling within her. This
was
his
magic? It shouldn’t be inside her, but it was. And it continued
to grow stronger. Soon, ropes wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the evil
boiling inside her veins at bay.

“It’s not evil, Faith. It’s power. Power in its purest form,”
he said. “Power you’re not equipped to control.”

“Because I’m human?”

Horace shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Not really helpful.”

“No,” he agreed. “I wished I knew how to fix this. I wish I
knew how to tame the powers swirling inside you. Hell, I wish I knew how to get
them back.”

“But you don’t?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.” Horace unsheathed a long, slightly
curved knife. Though the construction was ancient—Phoenician perhaps—it had
been well cared for. A ceremonial weapon. A weapon used in ancient sacrifices.

Faith’s heart thudded against her chest. “Don’t make me beg
for my life,” she whispered.

The knife stood between them.

“I wouldn’t think of it.” With the knife still in his hand,
Horace crawled onto the bed. He swung his leg over her and straddled her hips.

Faith bucked and twisted against the ropes holding her, desperate
to break free, desperate to stop him from using that knife on her. “No! No!
Please! There has to be another way!”

Tears pooled in her eyes.

“Damn you,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss was bruising and demanding. His strong tongue nudged
at her mouth, urging her to part her lips.

She did. And bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

He moaned, but refused to back off. His mouth battled hers.

She could feel his drugging, seductive power overtaking her.
Her body heated as his kisses urged her to submit. His voice whispered in her
mind.

Give yourself to me. Submit.

The tips of her fingers tingled. And the apex of her legs
throbbed as his strong tongue mated with her mouth.

“
Ohhh
…” A few days ago—and without the knife hanging
between them—kissing Horace like this would have been a fantasy come true.
Well, she might not have been the one tied up. The ropes chaffed. Silk scarves
would have been a better choice. Not that she enjoyed being tied up. But still,
sex with Horace—in his bed—had been a fantasy that had kept her up late at
night. Something about him made her forget herself. She’d been drawn to him
even before he’d made those wretched marks and had entangled her soul with his.

Despite every effort to resist him, her lips softened. She surged
up, straining against her bonds and drank in the passion that flared between
them like liquid fire.

He groaned his approval. “Yes, Faith. Open for me. I want to
mark you again. Lord, I don’t know why, but I burn to do it, to make you mine,”
he ground the words against her mouth. “There’s no turning back. Do you
understand that? If you let do this, you’ll be mine. Forever.”

He pressed his thick erection against her leg. She nipped
his neck.

“Ballou called me your queen, you should know,” she said as
he caressed her through her clothes. “He said you should treat me better. I
don’t think he would have approved of you tying me to your bed against my
will.”

His hands stilled and he met her gaze. “In this bed, with
me, you are a queen.”

“He also said you botched our mating. What do you think he’d
meant by that?”

Horace drew a slow breath. “He was a murderous madman. It
would be a waste of our time to try and figure out what his ravings could mean.”
But his brows sank as he continued to study Faith as carefully as a doctor
would a critically ill patient. He knew something, and it troubled him.

“Don’t ask,” he said. “I wish I knew what was going on. I
wish I could tell you that everything would turn out okay. But I can’t. All I
can do is—”

He lifted the knife.

She closed her eyes and turned her head away. She held her
breath, waiting for him to cut her, to hurt her. “
No
.”

But instead of pain, she felt the bonds holding her left
wrist fall away.

She opened her eyes as he cut through the rope and freed her
right wrist.

“It was either free you or cut your clothes from your body,”
he explained as he freed her ankles. He took a moment and rubbed her raw skin
before straddling her again. “And I like how this tunic top shows off your
curves. It’d be a crime to destroy it.”

She squirmed as he stripped the top off over her head.

His hand brushed the bare skin on her belly. With just that
touch, she parted her thighs. Had he used his mind games to make her do that,
or had she acted on her own desires?

She didn’t know.

It was the not knowing that both terrified and thrilled her.
Her heart beat wildly. Her thoughts spun out of control. She knew what was
going to happen in this room…with him. He planned to make love to her.

And then what? Would he then kill her with his ceremonial
knife?

Why shouldn’t he want to get one last joy ride and mark her again
as his before he did the deed?

“You’re a monster, a non-human, mind-controlling monster,” she
growled as she stripped off his clothes. And then she worked on sliding her own
pants down over her hips.

“And yet you still want me,” he countered before claiming
her lips.

Damn him. He was right. She wanted him. Had always wanted
him. They were meant to be together. Dammit, despite everything, she loved him.
With a shout of frustration, she tore away from his kisses and dug her teeth
into his forearm, drawing blood.