Mystical Seduction: full-length sensual paranormal romance (The Protectors) (6 page)

“Who are you people?” she demanded. She looked and sounded
fearless. But she shivered in the circle of Horace’s arms. “
What
are
you?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Stone said. His voice sounded
soft and gentle. Safe. He focused all his attention on Faith. Horace, standing
so close, could feel the waves of Stone’s magical power rolling over him. He
tried not to imagine what such intense power must have been doing to Faith.

Faith blinked up at Stone. Her expression relaxed, and then
went blank.

“Nothing out of the ordinary happened tonight,” Stone told
her, using his powers to bend her memories.

Faith nodded.

“You had fun with your friends and then went home at
closing.”

Faith nodded again.

“You had a good night’s sleep. And you will wake up in the
morning feeling happy and rested.”

“
Yes
,” Faith said, her voice was flat, lifeless.
Stone rifled through her purse and handed her a set of car keys.

“Will she be okay to drive like that?” Horace asked. Faith
seemed so out of it. Like a vital part of her had been pushed away.

“She should be.”

And just like that, it was all over.

Just a few months earlier Brendan had been furious when
Stone had used his powers to control Dallas’s mind.

Horace, oddly enough, felt faintly relieved that someone
else was handling matters. Of course, there was one major difference between his
situation and Brendan’s. Brendan loved his Dallas St. John. He’d ended up
marrying her.

This thing between Horace and Faith…it was just lust. Raw.
Primal. Lust. They would never be permanent lovers. He’d made a huge mistake by
acting on his urges in the first place. If Stone could fix things by blurring Faith’s
memory of tonight, so much the better.

Horace pulled Faith to his chest and wrapped his arms around
her. He reverently kissed the top of her head.

“Thank you,” he whispered. And because he knew she wouldn’t
remember any of this, he spoke a truth he hadn’t realized was true until the
words had formed on his lips, “If not for who I am—what I am—I could easily see
myself falling for someone exactly like you.”

Such a shame, really. Because of what had happened to Horace
all those years ago, and what he had become, there could never be anything
between them.

But it hurt his head to think about that.

So he didn’t.

The alarm clock beside Faith’s bed wailed like a blasted foghorn.
Faith groaned as she sleepily rolled over to slap the snooze button. She really
needed to get up. She had an early class. And she couldn’t skip it since, as a
graduate teaching assistant, it was her class to teach. Even knowing that, she
couldn’t find the energy to move.

Her entire body felt stiff and drowsy. Muscles not used to
action ached from the alleyway encounter. Had that really been her? She’d thrown
herself at Horace. Though there’d been a connection between the two of them,
Horace had done his best to discourage her. To keep…
that
…from happening.

And he’d marked her. The spot where he’d bitten her ached
this morning. Not an altogether unpleasant sensation. Despite the dull throb of
bruised skin, the mark he’d made on her breast left her feeling slightly
aroused and anxious.

Don’t think about that. I need to put him and what he did
to me out of my mind
, a calm, soothing voice inside her urged. Forget him
and forget everything that happened last night.

Nothing happened last night. She’d gone home early.

Faith curled deeper into the covers, nodding her head in
agreement with her inner voice. She should forget. She should…

Suddenly she remembered something she would never, ever
forget. With a frustrated scream, Faith jolted up in bed.

That jerk!

After they had acted so impetuously in the alleyway, but
before all the weird stuff—or had that been a foggy dream?—Horace had started
to tell her that what they’d done had been a one-time thing. That there could
never be anything between them.

Well, buster, Faith didn’t do one-night-stands. She didn’t
give sex to men in order to make herself feel special or sexy. She made
connections. She cultivated relationships. Sure, sex might come into the
equation pretty quick. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t already started
calculating the likelihood of a happily-ever-after.

But Horace had made himself clear. He didn’t want a
relationship or any kind of forever. And after what she saw last night, she
couldn’t be sure she did either. At least, not with him. A man had shot him in
cold blood.

Cold blood
.

The memory made her shiver. Though she didn’t know anything
about these things, it sure as hell hadn’t been a crime of passion but a
chillingly pre-planned murder attempt.

Any normal person would have been scared shitless and
knocking people over to call the police. But not Horace.

She’d gotten the feeling he’d expected something like that
to happen. And when she’d tried to call 911, he’d snatched the phone away.
Bleeding and dying, he’d wrenched the phone from her. Why would he do that?

Something fishy is going on.

Most likely illegal
.

She should have never had sex with Horace…a virtual
stranger. What had gotten into her? Could getting her tongue pierced have so
thoroughly gone to her head? How was she going to face him tonight—or any
night—with
that
between them?

Despite the summer heat, Faith tossed her covers over her
head and planned to stay under there forever.

“Damn, girl!” Kimmi’s voice was muffled thanks to Faith’s
thick quilt. “What happened in your bedroom last night?”

“Go away.”

“I brought coffee,” Kimmi said. “I thought that after our
late night you might need help getting to you 8:15 class. Are you sure you’re
okay?”

“I’m not going to the class. I’m not leaving this bed.”

“Now you’re really scaring me, Faith. What happened at the
club after I left you?”

The shush-shush sound of furniture being pushed around
preceded Kimmi’s weight beside her as the bed dipped. Kimmi slipped her arm
under the covers and put her hand on Faith’s arm.

“Talk to me. You were there for me all through the Jasper
affair, and you know nothing could get worst than that.”

“Jasper was cheating on his wife, and he got his jollies
beating you up.”

“See.” An edge crept into Kimmi’s cheery voice. “Nothing
could be worse than that. What happened?”

Faith swallowed hard. She did need to talk about it. Hiding
under her covers would only work for so long. She would eventually get hungry.

“I had sex with him,” she admitted as she peeked out from
under the covers.

“With the hunk who’d set off sparks?”

Faith nodded glumly.

“Well, happy birthday to you after all!”

“He told me it was a one-time thing.”

“So? At least you had last night. Aren’t you the one who is
usually telling me to live a little?”

“Afterwards…” She still couldn’t believe it. “He told me
that it was a one-time thing after we had sex…against a wall…in the club’s
alleyway.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“So, what did you tell him?” Kimmi asked. “I can’t imagine you
took the news quietly.”

“I didn’t get the chance to say anything.” She closed her
eyes. Why did it hurt so much to remember. “Someone shot him.”

Kimmi gasped.

“It gets worse.”

“How? I can’t imagine anything worse.” Then she asked with a
rush, “
You
weren’t hurt, were you?

“No, thank goodness. I’m okay. Sort of.”

“Then what happened? He didn’t die, did he?”

“No, he didn’t die.” That was the problem. He should have
died.

Faith still couldn’t understand how someone could survive after
losing that much blood. And not only had he survived…he was completely healed
minutes after being shot.

She had done something to him.

But what?

And how?

“What? What happened? Tell me!” Kimmi demanded.

Faith opened her mouth to say,
I healed him
. The
words were there. She heard the thoughts clearly enough. But then…not a sound.
Not a whimper.

Nothing.

“I-I—” she finally forced the words to stutter out of her
mouth. But before she could say anything else a blinding pain gripped her. “
I’m
going to be sick
.”

Faith pushed her way out of the bed and tripped over a pile
of clothes that shouldn’t have been in the middle of the room, and stubbed her
toe on a dresser that shouldn’t have been there either. Hopping the rest of the
way, she made it to the bathroom just in time to heave the contents of her
stomach into the toilet. Afterwards, she gurgled with mouthwash. Twice. It made
her feel a little better.

Her head still throbbed, though. Faith didn’t dare wonder
why. She wasn’t in the mood for a repeat performance in the bathroom.

She almost never threw up. Traveling the world had given her
a cast-iron stomach. Only, this morning it felt like a mariachi band was
celebrating a fiesta in the pit of her belly.

Had Horace or that odd friend of his slipped her a drug to
make her forget about the shooting? To confuse her about what had really
happened?

Faith gripped her stomach, desperate to quiet that jittery
band in her belly. Every time she thought about Horace and his club the acid in
her stomach danced around with a chaotic beat.

She stepped out of the bathroom. “Kimmie, maybe I should—” Her
gaze floated over her cozy bedroom and she froze. “
What the hell happened in
here last night
?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking you!” Kimmi yelled from where
she was still sitting on the bed.

Every piece of clothing that had once hung in the closet or
been neatly folded in her dresser drawers were now scattered across the bedroom
floor. The dressers—including a heavy six-foot-tall wardrobe that she’d
inherited from her grandmother—had been pushed away from the walls. One had
tipped over. The wood on its back had cracked. The full-length mirror had been
shattered.

“It wasn’t like this when I got home,” Faith said as she
rubbed her hands over her eyes. Perhaps if she rubbed hard enough everything
would all go back to normal.

“You mean you slept through someone doing this to your room?”
Kimmi frowned. “How much did you drink last night?”

“You know I never have much more than one or two glasses of
wine.”

“Drugs?”

“You know I would never—” Faith refused to acknowledge such
an insulting question. She may have been slightly reckless in her life, but
never—ever—had she abused drugs. She’d seen firsthand the ravages of drugs
while traveling with her parents into some of the poorest regions of the world.
But hadn’t she just wondered the same thing herself? She rubbed at the chill
that suddenly filled her body. “Maybe Horace slipped me something. I feel
horrible this morning.”

“He must have. How else could you have managed to sleep when
something like this was happening in your own bedroom? Or perhaps you did this
in a drug-induced fit of rage?”

“That must be it. I must have done this.”

You sure did,
a voice inside her head shouted.
But
not with your hands
.

She shook her head.

Why not believe that your anger and frustration over
Horace’s rejection could manifest itself physically?

Why not? She’d already fallen down the rabbit hole…saved a
man with a gaping chest wound by wishing hard enough. If she believed that, why
not believe this, too?

Faith rubbed her hands over her face. It hurt like the devil
to think about last night or anything that involved Horace.

“I think I must be losing my mind,” she whispered.

She needed to talk with Horace.

But he didn’t want to see her again.

Well, Horace hadn’t actually said that. What he’d said had
made
her
not want to see
him
again, though. Horace had rejected
her right after they’d had sex. Perhaps she’d done something wrong. What if she
was a terrible lover? Come to think of it, no man had ever before praised her
skills. How could she face him…and
that
? Something else teased at her
mind, something she needed to remember, something that would make everything
else easier to handle.

He’d told her something. She foggily remembered him kissing
her forehead. Supporting her. Rubbing her back and making her feel safe.
What
had he said right before she’d left the club to go home?

She started gathering clothes from the floor, hoping that
the end results would make an outfit. She had two shirts. She dropped one and
picked up a pair of jeans. Underwear. Where in the world had her underwear
gone?

She peered under the bed and found a lump of panties.

“What’s going on?” Kimmi peered under the bed as well. Their
gazes met. “Why are you muttering to yourself?”

“I’m making plans.” Faith grabbed her underwear and crawled
out from under the bed. “I’m going to do what any good researcher would do—follow
the only lead I have.”
Horace
.

“You have a class to teach this morning.”

“Right, my class.” Faith slipped off her oversized sleep
shirt and pulled on a loose-fitting green tunic that had once been hanging in
the back of her closet but was now in a pile in the middle of her floor. “Could
you please call Professor Newitt and tell him I won’t be able to make my
morning class?”

“Not until you tell me what you’re planning to do.” Kimmi
snatched up the jeans Faith had been eyeing off the floor and held them
hostage.

“I need to go to the club and to find Horace.”

“And do what?” Kimmi sidestepped Faith when she tried to get
her jeans from Kimmi. “I’m not going to give you these until I know you’re not
going to go do something you might regret.”