Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (16 page)

He studied me from hooded eyes. “Come to me.” He murmured the words in a low rumble that made goose bumps rise on my arms.

“Chance.” My voice rose and fell on an exaggerated whine and sounded especially grating after his rumble.

He said nothing more, only sat there, gazing at me with those half-lidded green eyes. In the semi-darkness, they were almost mossy, rather than their normal bright green. His denim encased legs spread comfortably, but I was anything but comfortable looking at the long legged picture of sex sprawled in my secret space. Wearing a long sleeved, white shirt with only his hands and neck bare, he presented the picture of decorum. Yet there was something decidedly lethal about him.

Another wave of dizziness pressed behind my eyelids. Shimmering with power as the dust motes twinkled in the winter light, he waited for my next move. A shaft of sunlight broke the grey that had dominated the day so far and illuminated his enticing energy. A dry, burning sensation began to crackle along my flesh. The solution lay in him. I simply had to reach out and he would make the weakness go away. Chance’s light and energy pulsed from his flesh just for me, and I had not even opened my powers yet.

He practically radiated vigor. Regrettably, he also radiated a pull that had nothing to do with energy.

I walked to him, but stopped just out of reach and continued my silent study.

“Rules pause while you feed.” One auburn brow quirked at me in challenge.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I licked lips suddenly gone dry. I watched him watch me. A pulse throbbed in my body that had nothing to do with the hunger and yet made the hunger all the worse.

“No one is here. If you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do right now?”

I blinked and shook my head.
Nothing
. I would do nothing but feed from him. That summed up all I wanted. He represented a means to an end. Nothing more. I lied to myself. He provided something so much more, something so terribly real sitting there watching and waiting for me.

“I can’t think right now.” That was not a lie. Grey spots started to swim in my vision. The hunger came like that. I could not put it off. I went from fine, to worse, to desperately bad too quickly.

“So don’t think. What do you want, Janie?”

I glared at him, but he swam a bit. His image cleared then went fuzzy then lit with a glare of light. “You’re trying to take advantage of the fact that I am weak again.” I didn’t hide the accusation in my tone.

“Oh, yeah.” His hoarse voice made part of me hungry in a way that had nothing to do with feeding. “You may be hungry for power, but did it occur to you that I’m addicted, too? The more I feed you, the more I need you. Come to me. Ease this want.”

“I can’t.” I wanted to close the space between us. Our knees practically touched, and still he had not moved a muscle. His hands spread across the back of the couch, and I noticed that they clutched the pillows as if to keep from reaching for me. His knuckles grew white from tension. Maybe he was not as relaxed as he pretended. The thought offered little comfort. I couldn’t think clearly enough to remember why exactly I couldn’t do what we both wanted. At that moment, it did seem like a good idea to crawl into his lap and suck him into me.

“Janie.” He whispered my name and need hummed in his voice.

A part of me had to answer.

After a pause, far too brief for my well-being, those half-lidded eyes opened and focused fully on mine. The intense green drew me. Irresistible. Fated. “Come to me,” he repeated.

Through a new wave of dry, burning, siren hunger, I could no longer remember why touching him was such a terrible idea. He would feed me. I crawled across his legs and pressed him into the couch. I did not bother to sing to him. It would not work with this prey anyway. I caught his curls and tugged his head back to pin him to the sofa.

His hands and arms closed around me and my legs wrapped around his body to hold him in place. Even if he stood, he could not escape.

I jerked his head, tugging that hair hard. His eyes went a little wild and his breath came out in a sigh. “I do not like your games when I am starving, Chance.” With that, I closed my mouth over his and demanded his power.

His light came up and met mine like an inferno. Energy swept into me and quickly satisfied the burning ache. But for the first time when I had my fill, rather than stop, I continued to pull. He tried to draw back but I sucked more of the light. I tugged on his power, the very essence that ran his brain. Call it his soul, call it the electricity of the mind, whatever it was, I tugged on it rather than taking only that which flowed to me. At the same time, I pulled his hair and tilted his head back and arched over him. I stretched his neck and drew him in as if to drink him all in one long gulp. When I had gotten that extra bit, I tried to shove it back at him.

He writhed up against me when I pushed it down his throat. His fingers dug into my hips and a long, sensual, guttural sound escaped from him. I shoved his own power down his throat. In my head, where feelings had taste and color, the moment tinted blue and tasted of the sea. The power ran from me to him and pulsed with a surge of sheer electricity.

His hands tangled in my hair and his body twisted mine. He pressed me into the couch in one long waving move. “What are you doing?” He growled into my ear and bit the lobe.

“You like games.” Flying on a rush of power, the breathy sound of my own voice surprised me. “I thought you should taste my power.”

“Shit.” His voice was barely audible. “Your learning curve is interesting, you know that?”

I caught his mouth with mine. His tongue stroked mine, and its warmth filled me before he thrust power at me again. A testing swirl of energy slid down my throat, and I shivered for him. He tasted of a storm, moist and enticing like the spring. My eyes closed and areas far below my brain tightened. All that I had went wet and ready for his naked skin on mine. On a sigh, I writhed for him.

I tugged again on his hair and he met my gaze. His grin held sheer devilry. I caught his lips and shoved the power back.

His hands squeezed me. His body tightened and bucked against me, and he growled low in his chest. I wondered if he even realized he had growled. He came up for air like a man from a pool of water and looked at me with laughing eyes.

I met them with a smile of my own. “Did you know we could do that?”

He rubbed on the tattoo on my neck, and I wriggled upward to rub my body against him. My breathing grew harsh and rapid.

“Not that exactly, no. Apparently, there are endless surprises in store for us. If you would just stop fighting me.” He whispered into my neck and began to nibble his way across my flesh.

My body lit on fire. I had never needed to finish that race to completion more in my life. Chance’s touch represented everything I’d ever wanted a lover to be. But I stilled because of what he had said not because of what he did. Fighting him? Yes, I had to fight him.
Damn it.
He had done it again.

With one swift move, that worked largely because I did it out of nowhere, I dumped Chance off me and onto the floor.

He landed on his ass with an uncharacteristic lack of grace. I stared at the ceiling. It was my turn to clutch the couch cushions and relearn how to breathe. I stared upward, anywhere but at him, and convinced myself not to roll off the couch on top of Chance and finish what I had started.

My body insisted I take what I wanted. My mind screamed.
What are you doing?
 

“Well, I guess that means you’re feeling better.” He spoke from the floor with a dry sort of humor.

I snorted. I choked. I burst into semi-hysterical laughter. I rolled onto my side and looked at him. He sat, hands on his knees, smiling at me. “You don’t give up, do you?”

He grinned, unrepentant. “Nope.”

I curled into myself, holding onto my body to stop it from shattering. The scent of summer storm lingered everywhere he had touched. His curls hung like burnt amber in the light with its dancing dust motes that tangoed more quickly since we had moved the air around. His eyes glittered like green gems. His smile held a little regret, but not much, as he studied me. Almost as if he really saw me for the first time. As if he alone saw all my flaws, all my strengths and liked me just fine because of them. Not many men saw a woman like that. Not really.

 “I don’t give up either.”

As I issued the warning, he shifted to his side and propped up on an elbow, his grin and gorgeous eyes closer than I could handle objectively. “That’s part of the attraction. I like that you’re strong enough to fight me. We both know eventually I will win, but I like that you’re tough enough not to give up easily. That means no one else will ever beat you down.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You don’t know that.”

He leaned in suddenly in one of those moves almost too quick to track with the naked eye. His eyes, inches from mine, flashed gold. “I know what you are. You are mine.”

His lips closed over mine in a kiss so sweet as to be nearly heartbreaking. The surprising tenderness threw me. I had expected the kiss to be possessive, or perhaps fiery. Instead, it tasted so sweet, so tender…
so something unnamable
. A kiss unlike any he had given me before. I closed my eyes and for a moment, I floated, suspended on a wave, on the edge of something bigger than myself and then—

He disappeared.

I opened my eyes to an empty room. Even his coat had gone. I curled tighter into a ball and stared at the wall, heart confused. What had that moment of gentleness meant? The feeding I understood. The sexual tension I got. The soul mate thing I could handle so long as it seemed to revolve mostly around sexual tension and hunger. But that last kiss disturbed me in a way beyond the physical. I shuddered and sat up. It was better not to think too deeply about anything having to do with Chance. Nothing good would come of it.

It was a sad day when anything seemed stickier to think about than tea with my mother. After one last glance back at the couch, I grabbed my coat and headed to the house rather than lay there focusing on him. Vickie had had a long visit with my mother, so I barely felt guilty as I collected my fiancé and my daughter and headed back to Odd Stuff.

~~~

When we got there, I left them both with Mia and headed upstairs. She still sneezed spells at random, but they were better off with her for a while. She and Sven promised they could cover things while I grabbed a nap.

Upstairs, I curled into a knot on the couch and closed my eyes. I fought images of curling into his arms and letting what wanted to happen just happen. His final tender kiss tempted me to call him despite all the reasons I should not. I stuffed a pillow over my head but it did not block him out.

I wondered if anything would.

CHAPTER Ten

I woke and stretched, realizing that I had not eaten in a long time. Perhaps my weakening to Chance stemmed from the lack of regular food. If I started eating more human food, maybe then I could stave off the siren stuff for longer periods of time. I had no guarantees on any of this, but it was worth a shot. Better than the alternative idea that I was too weak to resist him or my feelings for him. Or worse, that I did not want to and I still lied to myself. Or worse yet, that I didn’t know what I wanted.

I refused even to think about the alternatives because, really, I wasn’t eating. I would eat more and be fine. And I would stop feeding off Chance. Although I felt certain he had not intended me to realize it, I leaned on him too much. His comment about becoming addicted to me also stuck in my head.

I wanted to say that it stuck in my head in a bad way. Like I was appalled by the thought of his dependence on me. Shocked by the idea that I would rather have him need to feed me than hurt humans or Vance and, gee, wasn’t that wrong, too? But that wasn’t it at all.

If I were honest with myself, which I tried really hard to be, what bothered me was that the thought of him addicted to me oddly aroused all my senses. It had an appeal that held no rational logic at all. A shivery appeal like the satisfaction and thrill one might get from holding a cobra. A single bite could be lethal but who could resist the feel of that cold, sleek skin shivering beneath the palm? Even someone completely grossed out by the idea and scared of the snake could not resist the temptation of a touch.

Chance’s energy and heat were like that. I could lie to myself and pretend horror at my own monstrous attraction to becoming Chance’s drug of choice, but it felt good. It didn’t have to make sense. It just hit me on a whoo-hoo spot. I could pretend all day long, but I could not make his presence less enticing or make myself any more resistant to his touch.

I did not want to think about him. Hopes of sleeping off the worst of the earlier episode had been a good chunk of why I needed a nap in the first place. I needed a distraction so I decided to root everyone else up before I foraged for food.

When I got downstairs, I found Vickie hanging upside down by her tail, and I did a double take to be sure I saw what I was seeing. I tilted my head further to meet her eye to eye and she giggled hysterically.

“Hey, Mom! How was your nap?”

 I glared at Mia.

“What?” Mia raised her hands in defense.

I gestured. Like I had to ask?

“She found out the tail was strong. I didn’t do anything!” Mia waved her arms in frustration.

I scowled at her. “Strong.” I don’t think my voice could have sounded much drier.

“Yup. Isn’t it cool, Mom?” Vickie’s face had turned red from being upside down and her hair hung in black and purple locks around her flushed face.

Then the bell dinged on the Odd Stuff entrance and we all turned. As the door had been locked and no one had come in all day, it got my attention pretty quick. The fact that a person had come through a locked door surprised me. The fact the stranger had walked through a spelled door sent my protective instincts into overdrive. Mia was not the least of all witches, so when she put stay away spells on her doors, most people stayed away. This person walked in like neither the lock or the spell bothered him in the least. Like he entered any old opening and then calmly closed the door behind him.