Raisonne Curse (14 page)

Wyatt lifted his eyebrows at her expression, glanced over her shoulder—obviously checking on his brother—before bringing his amused gaze back to hers. He held something out to her. “He likes to sleep in these.”

She resisted the urge to tell him Pryor preferred sleeping nude because for all she knew that wasn’t true. They’d spent one full night in bed together and part of a day. What did she really know about this man?

Other than that she was head over heels in love with him already—even if she didn’t just admit that fully out loud to him.

She thanked Wyatt for the pants and handed them to Pryor, who was laughing softly behind her as she shut the door. “They don’t know how to take you. You should have run screaming from the house after what you saw last night. Any woman I’ve ever met would have been long gone by now.”

“Then you’ve been meeting the wrong kind of women. Your brothers too.” She turned back to the door. “Come on. You need to sleep and I could tell Wyatt did too. We’ll get out of his way.”

“He’s right. You are kind of bossy.”

She stopped and turned to him. “Right now, I don’t know what I am. All I know is that my curse is gone. Completely gone. What you did for me yesterday was incredible and I’m so thankful, but I’m also royally pissed off that you’d put yourself in danger like that. I’m surprised your brothers aren’t chasing me out of this house for that reason too. They love you.” She thought of the way they’d held on to him in that swamp, the way they’d tried to take away some of his pain. “A lot. They should hate me for that lime bath.”

“Why? You weren’t even awake when I did it. You couldn’t have stopped me. They know that. I explained it to them.” He swayed.

“Shit. Come on.” She held out her hand and felt something inside her—that tight knot of fear—loosen when he felt warm and alive against her skin. She almost had run last night because those skeletal faces were the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen. But the last thing she wanted to be was a wimp. And the last thing she wanted to do was leave this man. At this point, it felt like maybe this was a forever sort of thing they had going on between them. Fast or not, it felt solid and strong and maybe his brothers could see it. It certainly felt like it would be visible from the stars.

Wyatt was slumped on the floor, his back to the wall in the hallway. She waited for him to get up and go into his room before she shut Pryor’s bedroom door. For some reason, she felt a little protective toward his brothers too. Well, maybe Wyatt. She thought of him standing there, taking on his brother’s pain.

Mercer had too.

Sighing, she leaned her forehead on the back of Pryor’s door a moment before turning toward him. He was crawling under the red comforter they’d left in a heap on the middle of the bed, cursing when the sheets underneath tangled around his legs. She walked over and helped straighten them up over him.

“Since I obviously can’t talk you out of leaving yet, come here.” He held out his hand to her and she crawled under the covers with him.

Pryor tucked her close to his body, wrapped one arm under her neck and held her close around her back with the other. He sighed into her hair. “You feel so good against me.”

“You do too.” She held him just as tightly back. Warm skin, beating heart. He was okay. He was alive. His face was again his own. She finally let herself relax.

“You’ll still be here when I wake up, right? Because we have to talk more.”

“I have no plans to leave this house today.” In fact, after being up all night, all she wanted was to sleep here next to him.

It took her a while. She lay there and stared at his sleeping face, hating the lines of exhaustion, the paleness of lips that usually looked healthy and tempting in that suggestive grin. He held on to her in his sleep.

Tight. Like he never wanted to let her go.

When Pryor woke, the house was dark and the most amazing scents were in the air. The faint sounds of his brothers’ deeper voices came up the stairs. He got out of bed, expecting to feel pain in all his muscles and was surprised when he didn’t. He flexed his hands, stared at them, turned them over to find clear palms.

What the hell?

Doing that spell alone should have taken days to work out of his body. His brothers must have taken on more than usual. Wyatt’s laughter sounded downstairs. He seemed fine. Great, even. Pryor grabbed a T-shirt out of his dresser and put it on. He headed downstairs and sniffed in appreciation as he walked into the kitchen to find both his brothers chopping vegetables while something sizzled on the stove. Moochon stood next to Elita at the stove, like he guarded her.

Pryor had to stop himself from sighing. No doubt now that even his dog had become attached to her.

“Woman already knows your favorite foods, Pryor. You’re in big trouble.” Wyatt sawed through a carrot.

Elita glanced over at his cutting board and winced. “Really?” She grabbed the knife out of Wyatt’s hands. “You designed this perfect kitchen and you don’t know to use a better knife than this for carrots? It’s a shame.” She smiled at Pryor.

It was hesitant and so damned sweet, he crossed the kitchen to frame her face with his hands and kiss her. She didn’t hesitate to kiss him back and he would have kept on kissing her if his oldest brother hadn’t cleared his throat.

He pulled back, smiled down at her, then let her go. “Thanks for earlier.”

“Anytime,” she muttered, her cheeks red as she glanced at his brothers.

“What did she do earlier that requires thanks? Other than give you a bath, you lucky, lucky man.” Wyatt gave Elita a smile Pryor had seen charm many a lady out of her underwear.

He pointed his finger at Wyatt’s nose. “Hey now. Be good. Mine.” He wished he could pull the word right back into his mouth before it was all the way out. He had no business staking any claims here—even if he wanted to something fierce.

Elita opened her mouth and he knew she was about to complain about his word, but for some reason, she snapped her mouth shut and turned even more red. She walked to the stove and stirred something in his grandmother’s skillet. Moochon quietly followed her and it warmed his heart when her free hand landed on his dog’s head to scratch him lovingly.

“So how did she know you love Andouille more than you love air?” Wyatt asked.

“Maybe because there is more of that sausage than anything else in this kitchen,” Elita retorted. “Didn’t take a genius to know someone here loves the stuff.” She threw a shy smile at Pryor over her shoulder. “It’s just a simple jambalaya with the sausage and some of our leftovers.”

“Simple jambalaya, she says.” Wyatt laughed and poked his silent older brother in the arm. “She’s cooking your favorite thing too, Merce.”

“I would have picked something else if I’d known that,” Elita muttered.

Pryor walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He sat on one of the barstools and watched his oldest brother quietly chop onions. Mercer never cooked, so he must feel he needed to make up for something. The way Elita went out of her way to ignore him told him he was right on the mark. A fierce protective anger hit him—shocked him. But he had to ask. “What happened last night before you two came out with me?”

Wyatt cursed and paid closer attention to the carrots he was butchering. Elita’s shoulders snapped straight and she threw an angry glance at Mercer.

Pryor set his beer down, narrowed his eyes. “What’d you do, Mercer?”

“What I had to,” his brother muttered.

Elita spun around and pointed her wooden spoon. “He locked me in the guest house, that’s what he did.”

“Obviously didn’t work. You got out.” Mercer growled and stabbed at another onion to bring it to the huge pile he’d already made.

Pryor couldn’t imagine what they’d need that many onions for.

Mercer surreptitiously wiped under his eyes with his shoulder. A dark spot showed on the dark blue T-shirt and Pryor had to work hard to hold back a smirk. Elita hated cutting onions, she’d told him that. And there was no way she’d need that many. He had to chomp down on his lip to keep from laughing. Big brother was being punished. Pryor hadn’t seen this side to Elita before and he kind of liked it. Especially since it wasn’t directed at him.

There were so many things to still learn about the fascinating woman.

“Do you know how I got out?” She stomped over to Mercer and tilted her head way back. She stood there until Mercer finally met her gaze. “I had to climb out of the window and down a tree. It looks like someone took a cheese grater to my stomach and the insides of my thighs!”

Pryor grimaced, tried to remember how far that tree was to the window. She must have jumped. He closed his eyes at the thought of how terrified she must have been. And how determined to get to him—that didn’t escape his thoughts.

“I’ve got a bruise the size of your foot on my thigh where you kicked the hell out of me.” Mercer stabbed an onion. “I think we’re even.”

“Oh, Mr. Bernaux, we’re not even close.” She grabbed a handful of the chopped onions and went back to the stove.

Mercer looked at the pile that was left, then at the onions she must have set next to the block and smirked. Elita, mumbling to herself, let a quietly begging Moochon out of the house before she disappeared into the pantry. Mercer looked up and caught Pryor’s eye. Pryor gave him the cheekiest grin he could manage and laughed when his brother chuckled.

“She’s a keeper, Pryor,” he said softly.

“I figured that out immediately,” Pryor said just as quietly back, all his good humor flying out the window. “And it’s gonna kill me to let her go.”

Chapter Fourteen

Elita heard Pryor’s quietly spoken words and stood in the pantry until she could get her temper under control. She stared at the bare shelf in front of her, clenched her hands into fists. Still, he
still
, planned to halt this wonderful thing they had between them. She stood there, breathing hard, trying to gather up the courage to just walk away then and there. But just like the night before, she couldn’t. Couldn’t and didn’t want to. Damn him.

“Damn you,” she muttered as she came out of the pantry. Knowing her face was probably stark white because of the pain shredding her insides, she faced him from across the room. He looked so sexy under the kitchen lights, so much better than he had this morning in here. “Damn you.”

He stood up.

“No. You stay right there.” She set everything down on the counter and wiped her hands down the front of the sweats she’d borrowed from Pryor. She took several deep breaths again, before aiming her gaze back at him. She could still see both his brothers. They’d stopped what they were doing as they watched her.

Before she could speak, Mercer cleared his throat. “I have to tell you all something really important.”

“It can wait,” Elita said through gritted teeth without looking directly at him. “Pryor and I need to have a talk. Right now.”

Mercer shook his head. “It really can’t wait. It affects us all—even you.”

She stopped fuming at Pryor and really looked at his brother.

Mercer’s face had gone pale behind that dark beard. “When we were young, our uncles died because they tried to help someone with a hex while they were away from the house.”

“Pryor told me about this,” Elita said, frowning. “I know what you’re going to try and do. Warn me away.”

He set down his knife and held up one hand. “Please, just listen.” He looked at Pryor. “It was the Raisonne curse.”

Elita sucked in a breath and held it. Everyone in the room was silent as they tried to process the announcement. Felt like a gray fog filled the air as everything seemed to go surreal. The scent of cooking sausage and onions filling the room—so at odds with the bomb Mercer had just dropped. The sizzle of noise coming from that skillet—covering up the pounding of her heartbeat. In a daze, Elita walked over and switched off the burner, then moved the cast iron pan to another one. The whole time, she blinked and shook.

“Why didn’t we know that?” Pryor finally asked.

“Because our father didn’t want you to know. Elita’s grandmother had come here and he and our uncles had tried to break it and couldn’t. Couldn’t. Not with all three of them and not here.” His own struggle with that knowledge was so obvious in his tone. “Apparently, even though they’d failed, the backlash was horrible. Lasted for weeks. It’s why he always insisted we keep trying until something works.”

“How is that possible?” Pryor sat back down on the stool, cradled his beer between his hands. “All three should have been able to do it here. We had all the right supplies growing up. Everything they would have needed.”

Wyatt nodded. “He’s right. I was told the Bernaux could always break every curse out there. But what would have made them try away, then? If they knew it couldn’t be done here? I know we were young, but I don’t remember them—” He stopped talking and slumped. “I think I know what happened.”

Elita did too. “They were asked outright while away from here,” she whispered, her heart starting to beat even harder as her anxiety level rose. Something told her she knew exactly who’d asked because Ma’man had specifically told her she’d come here. “My mother?”

Wyatt nodded. “The other Elita Raisonne. She ran into them in a bar and I don’t know the whole story, but some kind of accident hurt her badly that night. She asked for help. They didn’t make it back.”

Elita reached out to hold on to the counter, and shut her eyes. “I remember this. I remember her getting hurt in a bar.” Her eyes flew open. “That’s when she changed. She always had trouble keeping a job before that, but she’d dealt with things just fine. After she got hurt, she just seemed to give up. She became—” She choked on the tangled lump of grief and memories in her throat. “She quit trying.”

“This doesn’t make sense.” Pryor stood up again, then walked toward her. “If all three of them couldn’t break the curse, how did I do it with her?” He pulled Elita into his arms and held her tight to him.

She clasped her arms around his back because she couldn’t stop shaking. He could have died. Sounds like he should have—breaking the hex all by himself like that. “What if they hadn’t come home last night, Pryor?” she asked, her mouth against the T-shirt over his chest.

“But they did.” He cupped the back of her head, stroked her hair.

“If we hadn’t, Pryor, you would have died. Do you know our rental car broke down two miles away from here? We had to walk. Something was keeping us from helping.” Mercer turned, leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. His scowl was dark. “That’s why I asked you—”

“Told me,” Pryor broke in, anger lacing his tone.

Mercer growled. “Asked, told, it doesn’t fucking matter. My reasons were important.”

“Then you should have shared those reasons,” Pryor insisted, his voice rumbling against the ear she still had to his chest. “You’re still trying to protect us.”

“He’s right, Merce,” Wyatt said. “We’re grown damned men. You should have told us all of this a long time ago.”

Mercer’s big shoulders slumped. “You’re both right. Okay? Both of you. If I’d told you this maybe you would have waited until we got here, Pryor.” He held up his hand when Pryor started to speak. “No, I know. Not after the boat crash. Not with her unconscious like that.” His bark of a laugh held no humor. “And both Wyatt and I would have done the same damned thing.”

Elita smiled at Wyatt when he nodded at her.

“Maybe I broke the spell from her because it’s weaker now.” Pryor walked back to get his beer, but tugged her along with him like he wasn’t ready to let her go.

“Yeah,” Wyatt agreed. “The curse was actually put on the grandmother, so it would be strongest there.”

“And more than likely, it’s even stronger now that you got it off one of the women who shared the burden,” Mercer finished.

Elita gasped and pulled away from Pryor to face his brother. “Stronger? Like it will hurt them more?” She put her hands over her mouth.
Ava hadn’t answered her phone
.

He nodded. “Maybe. I hope not. I don’t know. If we knew exactly what kind of curse Rattrap used in the beginning, we’d be better equipped to fight this.”

She sank onto the stool Pryor had sat on earlier, her elbows hitting the granite counter top hard as she raked her hands through her hair.

“Elita,” Pryor said, touching her back. “We have to help them.”

“Oh no.” She shook her head. “You heard him. Your uncles died trying to help us. Maybe Audrey’s shaman can help. She’s bound to call any day to check in.”

“My uncles died because they did it away from here. I helped you and lived.”

“Barely,” she choked out. She turned and held on to his arms, stared up into his face. “You don’t understand. I saw you.
Saw you!
What you and your brothers go through. Maybe there’s another way. Plus, Mercer just said they tried to get it off Ma’man and failed. What if by taking it off me, it’s worse on Ma’man? He said it took weeks for them to recover after they tried to help her.”

He cupped her cheeks. “But what if we just needed to start with the threads and work our way back to the center?”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said, coming around the island to stand next to his brother. “What if taking it off the cousins, where the curse is weakest, will let us to destroy it at its source?”

“But Mercer said it’s probably stronger on them now.” Elita couldn’t stand the images going through her imagination like wildfire. More ghosts, more painful accidents…and what about the smudge man? Was he more now too? She shuddered, worried to death about her family.

“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Wyatt quipped, flashing her a grin that was too much like Pryor’s for her peace of mind.

She shut her eyes. “I bet my mother figured out that’s why your uncle died. She used to be such a good person before she changed. Knowing something like that? It would have destroyed her. I knew she’d walked in front of that truck on purpose.”

Mercer came around the island to stand with his brothers. “I heard about her death a couple of years after all this happened here. I always wondered.”

She wanted to ask how their father died but knowing everything she did now, it was easy to figure out. His brothers had died and someone had come here, asking for help. She had this image of a man, looking so much like Pryor—a man broken from the loss of his brothers and knowing what he faced—walking out alone into that swamp. He’d probably lived through smaller hex breaking spells for a while, each time wondering if one would be too strong, if he’d be there in the morning for his sons.

Hot tears scalded her eyes and she turned away from the brothers.

“Hey now,” Pryor said, pulling her back around.

She blinked up at him, trying to stop the rising tide of wretched sobs flowing up her throat.

He turned his head, looked at his brothers, and barked out an order. “Give us a few minutes.”

Mercer clasped his shoulder and squeezed before offering her a quick smile and nodding. She closed her eyes and kept them closed, even when she heard the screen door close behind them.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Pryor, her voice low and husky with effort to hold back the crying. “I started thinking about your father and oh, your poor grandmother. No wonder she looked so sad in those pictures. No wonder she cries.” She shut up, not knowing if Pryor could hear the woman’s sobs that she could no longer make out.

“You heard
Mamere
, huh?” Pryor pushed hair off her face. “I hear all of them and have since you came here. We all, my brothers and I, used to sometimes hear them after she died. For years, the whispers and her cries had stopped. We always believed it was because they heard us make the pact that we’d never have families of our own and let this curse die out with us. All that noise went away when we did that.” His smile was rueful. “And it all came back the second you walked in this house. It was like they instantly knew that pact was no longer gonna hold. When that awful hope came back.”

She frowned, not understanding. “Hope is a good thing—it’s what keeps most of us going. You have to believe things will get better or what else do you have?”

“But sometimes, having no hope is the ultimate comfort. You let things go and you accept your fate. That’s what my brothers and I did. We let our wishes for families of our own go. Before then, we looked for ways to stop it, thought maybe if we had just one child—” He looked away from her before swallowing hard. “We weren’t living while we were hoping. It can be paralyzing. Even my father said that hope was what made him think his curse wouldn’t move on to us. He never planned to have Wyatt or me, you know?”

She stared up at him, understanding exactly what he was saying. “You’re telling me that you can’t risk being with me.” She briefly shut her eyes as hot tears scalded the backs of them.

“I can’t.”

“I’m in love with you, Pryor.” She blinked back the tears. “Your brothers think you feel the same.”

“They know me.” He reached up to touch her cheek, then tucked her hair behind her ear. “I love you too. I knew I would right around the same time the ghosts of my family did. But Elita, if we stay together, you’d have to give up so much. You’d have to live here, for one.”

“Eventually, I’d like to. It’s beautiful here. Why would I hate that?”

“This monster of a house needs a lot of work still. Outside of this kitchen, a lot of things break down, a lot of folks are still wary of us, we can never be away from here for very long, and it takes a good hour to go into town for shopping—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “You’re taking a while to get there, but you’re talking about having children, really. Right?”

Pain streaked through his expression, tightened his lips. He nodded. “You could never have children with me.”

“So you were ready to push me away on the chance of possible children who might never have existed?”

“It’s asking a lot, Elita. Trust me. I want children pretty badly. Always have and I know for a fact my brother Mercer does as well. Wyatt already made sure he’d never have any and he didn’t talk for nearly a month after he did it. It’s like having families are wired into our souls.”

She winced. To be that young and to have to make that kind of decision already.

She went still.

Pryor was telling her she’d have to make that very same decision. She could never have children if she stayed here. Could never put them through the absolute hell these brothers went through. Just the thought of watching a child of hers go through that made her ill. She touched her suddenly churning stomach, trying to calm it down.

“You thought of it, didn’t you? What it would be like if me and my brothers died and your children were dragged out to that swamp to suffer.” Pryor walked to the other side of the island, his movements stiff. “I’ve pictured that very thing more times than I can remember. I will never let that happen. And I can’t ask you to give up the possibility of a family. There’s nothing more important in this world than family. So I can’t.”

“I never planned to have kids because of the family curse that plagues my own.”

He watched her silently for a moment. “It’s not just that. There’s also the problem with your attraction to me being caused by the magic.”

She scowled, shook her head. “That’s stupid bullshit and you know it.”

“I don’t. My mother walked away from all of us because what she felt wasn’t real.”

“How do you know that? Maybe she was just a bitch, Pryor.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t belittle what I feel for you as nothing more than a reaction to your hands on me. Wait.” She stopped, felt heat blaze in her cheeks. “That didn’t sound right.”

His laughter was deep and full and it warmed her heart.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she snapped. “Trust me. What I feel is real and I can’t see anything making me walk away from it.” She paused, looked at the window over the sink, at the black of the night beyond. “You talk as if we can never have a family and you haven’t once brought up adoption. Right now, I’m interested in being with you and you only, but at some point, why couldn’t we adopt a child?”