Never Been Witched (6 page)

Two seconds after meeting Destiny, their first meeting, they’d sized each other up, circled with palpable mistrust, and scoffed when the other spoke, which might have been attraction, or the fear of it. Story of his life.

Had it been attraction, dislike, or jealousy? He’d intercepted Destiny’s triplet connection, recognized and envied it with a rage of regret, because he’d lost its like, his twin connection, when Meggie passed.

He’d mocked Aiden and King for correctly picking Harmony and Storm from the triplet lineup, but damned if he didn’t think he could spot Destiny as his in the clone line now.

But love connected Aiden and King with Destiny’s sisters, married love—not an option for him. Who would have him anyway?

Not Destiny.

He could admit his connection to her. Lust. The kind a man got from being parched in the desert his whole life. Down-and-dirty lust that could only be cured with down-and-dirty sex. Temporary fix. Good enough.

Sex for fun. He wondered if she might be up for it.

Not a good time to ask with a bed staring them both down.

“I can sleep here,” she said, indicating the bed in the first bedroom they’d come to. Too much to hope, he supposed, that his prayers had been answered.

She ran a loving hand over the ornate brass headboard. “I love old brass beds.”

“You want this bed?”

“Sure. It’s gorgeous.” She tested the mattress by pushing on it, unknowingly wiggling her ass his way again. “Nice and soft.”

“Looks firm to me. Oh, you mean the mattress. Okay by me. Do you sleep on the right or the left? Or we could share the middle.”

“Never mind, smut brain, I’ll pick another, since I take it this one is yours?”

Morgan left her cart where it stood and followed Destiny in silence from room to room, some rooms with chairs or tables, one that was book-lined, one he’d made into a studio for his drawing table and architectural supplies.

She stopped in the doorway of the last bedroom. “Shriveling scrying balls! Only one bed? Harmony said the place was furnished.”

He didn’t understand her exclamation, but he didn’t think he’d like his balls shriveled, whatever she named them.

“And not a sofa in the place,” he added, crossing his arms so he could cross his legs, because he’d already come to the conclusion she was working her way up to: one bed, two people.

She lost the starch in her stance. “Sleeping bag?” she asked with hope, her voice so soft, she was giving him another rare peek at her vulnerable side, which derailed his train of thought and allowed him to stand straighter.

“Sorry.” Morgan let her lead the way back to his room.

Since the starch returned to her spine on the way, he wondered what ploy he was in for. She looked at the bed, at him, claimed the bed by planting her fine ass on it, instead of him—he should be so lucky—and folded her arms. “Bummer,” she said. “You’re not gonna be very comfortable on the floor.”

He straightened, caught by surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a gentleman, so you will, of course, sleep on the parlor rug. That’s got to be the softest—”

“It’s threadbare. This rug is at least newer and thicker, and you’re not as heavy as me, so you won’t feel the hard—”

“It’s practically
beneath
the bed,” she said, examining it, “except for a body-sized scrap. I most certainly will not like it, because I’m not sleeping on it. I’ll take the bed, because I know a gentleman like you would insist, thank you very much. You could sleep on the floor. In one of the other bedrooms, because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”

His body sure in blood-pumping Hades knew that; it was trying to sit up and beg. “I’m sleeping in
this
room,” Morgan said. “It’s the coolest in the summer and the warmest in winter. In the autumn, like now, it’s nothing short of spectacular. For that reason, I took that bed apart and moved it here, from a hot and stale front bedroom, piece by piece, thirteen years ago. The ocean may be cold at night—to which I can personally attest—but we’re having a great Indian summer, and with the daytime heat still heavy in the air, the breeze in here is unmatched.”

He realized he was rambling, but he was also ticked and getting warm, finally, and
she
might be growing a conscience, judging by the way she nibbled the side of a polka-dot thumbnail.

He removed a layer of sweats, almost embarrassed to have another layer beneath them.

“Okay, you can stay in this room,” she said with less of an edge, “but this rug doesn’t look half as comfortable as the one in the parlor.”

His frustration had done nothing but rise enough to shoot off the charts since she woke him and beat the crap out of him, so at this point, anger seemed a wasted effort. “If we listen, I think we can hear them snickering,” he said.

She leaned forward. “Who?”

“King and Harmony in Scotland. They planned this.”

“The rats! It would serve them right if we got along.”

His head came up, as did his suspicion.

She shrugged. “Not that it’s possible.”

“Right.” Of course, right. “Did your sister tell you to bring your own bedding, at least? Because that’s mine on the bed.”

“Yes, she did, but she didn’t say to bring a bed, the brat. Fortunately for both of us, my bedding’s right here in the cart that didn’t drown.” Destiny pulled out her blankets and sheets and handed them to him.

“You brought three blankets?” he asked. “Counting the one I soaked when you put it over my shoulders. Did I say thanks?”

She nodded. “I was planning peaceful picnics with my paintings and my thoughts. One blanket for the sand—”

“You planned to be a sand-witch?”

She raised a disgusted brow and unbuttoned her jeans, while the devil in his sweats stood to cheer. “One blanket for grassy picnics, and one to sleep beneath. With no washer, three made sense.” She slipped her jeans down her legs to reveal a pair of bikini panties as sea green as her tee. Yawning, she climbed into the center of
his
double bed.

As she did, he read, When Hell Freezes Over, printed across her green silk ass. And didn’t he know it.

“Hell is not a positive word,” he said. “Your rules.”

“It is when it makes my point.”

“How convenient.” It sure was making his point, and he meant that in a purely sexual way. His mouth went dry, and his palms began to sweat. For a minute, he couldn’t believe he was looking at his fantasy in the flesh. He blinked to erase the hallucination or wake up, but Destiny remained curled up right there in her underwear before his greedy eyes. “Look who’s sleeping in my bed.”

“Gentlemen prefer witches,” she said with an ass wiggle, the stripped tease.

Morgan looked beyond the ceiling toward the celestial abode of his former boss.
Good one, taunting me with my own wicked fantasies, but I’m still not going back.

He yearned, he drooled, and he ached to climb in with her, if only she’d let him practice his newfound skills. He supposed he could ask. But how?
I have a brass boner that likes your ass? I have a loner boner; won’t you play with it? Would you care to taste my T(rex)bone? Want a little steak sauce with that?

I can make you scream with pleasure
. Now that’s the kind of thing men said—men who lost their virginity in fifth grade and never finished school.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard-on.

She lifted her head. “Aren’t you going to get ready for bed?”

“Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?”

“Brushed before I left home. Haven’t eaten a thing. Not letting you claim the bed while I brush again.” She opened an eye and looked over her shoulder at him. “Are you going to stand there watching me all night?”

He’d probably like that. For a man like him, it’d be like foreplay.

Morgan didn’t know where else to look, or what else to do—literally—so he turned to action. The brass bed weighed a ton in pieces, so there was no moving it to give him more rug, but enough of it stuck out from beneath the bed to give him a bit of padding. He folded two blankets, one atop the other, to add to his “mattress,” then he used one of her sheets as a blanket to keep his loose-cannon dick under wraps.

It didn’t take a minute to realize this was like sleeping on a slab of concrete. The floor creaked when he moved.

His bed creaked when she moved, and every time it did, he heard it say, “Dumb ass.”

He’d never noticed the squeaky springs, and he’d certainly never seen their underbelly in moonlight. Hadn’t wanted to, though he might have agreed to it, if it meant getting Destiny in the sack. But he preferred to be in there with her.

“Dumb ass. Dumb ass. Dumb ass.” He was ashamed of himself for being mocked by his own bed and for taking it lying down to boot. How much torture would he put up with?

“Light?” she asked.

Damn—slam!
He raised his chin so he could see the switch, far away, three feet above him, and upside down. “You can reach it. It’s on your left.”

As he watched, she slapped the wall behind her a few times, putting so much energy into it—not!—she didn’t so much as jiggle a bedspring, and still he felt like a dumb ass.

“Can’t find it,” she said, yawning again.

From day one, she had a way of inflicting a unique form of torture on him, like wood slivers beneath his fingernails. Torture Destiny style, times ten. Nobody had ever managed to piss him off quite so thoroughly and seductively. Maybe there was something to her claim to magic.

Morgan got up to turn off the light but made the mistake of looking down at her; silver star earrings, butterfly pendant between her breasts, seahorse cuff bracelet on her right wrist, tiny butterfly tattoo on her left ankle. A goddess. A paradox. A pain in the ass!

He yanked one of his pillows out from beneath her head.

“Hey!” She frowned at him over her shoulder. “You know, you’ve got kind of a red haze overwhelming your aura. You should calm down.”

“That’s it! Don’t look now, but hell
is
freezing over.” He slapped her on the ass a good one. “Move over, brat.”

Chapter Eight

“YOU’RE a bully,” she said.

“I’m a man, and this is my bed. Move that sassy ass, or I’ll move it for you.” Spanking that ass sounded pretty good, too. Did that make him a sicko?

Obviously, sharing the bed didn’t appeal. The pillow that smacked him in the head was his first clue. The goddess of Destiny standing on his bed raising her fist was his second.

She tried for a right hook, but he caught her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. “I’ve been battered enough for one night, thank you very much.” He carried her from room to room, upstairs and down, occasionally finding it necessary to keep her ass in place. He didn’t mind a bit. “Stop me when you see a floor that looks comfortable,” he said, “because
I’m
sleeping in my bed. Now, you can sleep there with me, Wonderbrat, but you can’t sleep there alone.”

She wiggled in his arms. “You son of a sea cock! You just want to have it all your way.”

“You bet your flying buttress. My mother would have a heart attack, by the way, if she heard a woman say
cock
, but mine is quite happy, thank you, because you’re getting me hot with all that wiggling.”

She stilled.

“Is cock a positive word?” he asked, because she seemed taken by this conversation.

“I like cocks,” she said. “Generally speaking, yes. Cocks are positive.”

He cleared his throat. “I can’t use the plural, but I am fond of my own.”

“I can’t say, since I haven’t seen yours yet.”

Yet? His knees about buckled. “I’ll introduce you sometime.”

“We’ll see.”

At least that wasn’t a firm no. With her still over his shoulder, and her ass in his peripheral vision, they stood in the keeper’s room, surrounded by shelves of oil lanterns, measuring cups, pitchers, a box marked Wicks, two funnels, three cans of kerosene, and a fire bucket. “Does this room suit you?”

“Spell you!”

“Aw, use the
F
word, I’ll take you up on it, and neither of us will care where we sleep.”

She gasped. “I never use the
F
word. Say
pluck
if you must, and only in an emergency.”

“Did I say that out loud? Sorry, you bring out the beast in me.” Morgan stood the stunner on the floor for the sake of his sanity.

She straightened her Licensed to Thrill bare-midriff T-shirt and When Hell Freezes Over panties, the vast expanse of curvaceous skin between them a fine, bronze tan.

“You’re acting like a frustrated bear,” she said, recalling his attention.

A frustrated male bear,
he agreed mentally, because he needed to get laid.

“I am not sleeping on
any
floor,” she said, swinging her hair for emphasis.

“Neither am I. Glad that’s settled.” He took her by the hand and tugged her back to
their
bedroom. “What’s the difference between me three feet away or one foot away?”

“Six inches,” she said.

He gave her a double take. “You must have failed math.”

She smirked. “You must have failed sex ed.”

“Ah, now I get your drift, Kismet. You figure if I face you from a foot away, we’ll be six inches apart?”

“Right. This isn’t a king, you know.”

“Nor a queen, and
neither
are you. You’ve underestimated my inches, by the way, but what say we keep my impressive manly length
safe
from your womanly wiles and hang a curtain between us?”

“
It Happened One Night
style? You’re kidding?”

“Get over it. Sure we’d be stuck in the same bed, but sleeping separately, more or less. I’d do my best, but I am a man.”

“Your point?”

“Exactly.”

She slithered close enough for her bare midriff to touch him, and he sure wished he’d taken his shirt off. She ran a hand around his earlobe. “You think I’ll turn you on?”