Something About Witches (31 page)

When he brought them up again, she clutched his shoulders, wanting him to thrust, but instead he pulled out. Turned her around, and with an effortless move that took her breath, he lifted her and slid back in at the proper angle from behind. Bringing her back against his body with a hand on her throat and his other hand low, just above her mound, he kept himself deep inside despite the precarious angle. She wanted to lean forward, wanted him to be able to drive into her, but he held her there, making small, incremental
movements that caused her to squirm, tiny, pleasurable shocks going through her.

“Derek.”

“Sshhh. Just feel it, Ruby. Feel what I am to you. Trust me. Relax.”

She couldn’t relax, not with him doing that, but she relaxed her need to try to direct things, instead experiencing the incredible sensations he was giving her. There were definite advantages to being with a guy who was centuries old, because he’d had lots of time to practice. The male libido never faded away, God bless it, as long as the body was strong enough to sustain it. And Derek was all power in this moment.

His fingers slipped over her clit, massaged, and she cried out. Her back arched, her breasts thrusting out, needing attention as well. The water lapped over them, increasing the sensation of friction over her nipples. She struggled instinctively, wanting more, wanting to go over, but abruptly he stilled again, his fingers a maddening pressure on her tender tissues, his hand locked in a gentle squeeze on her throat, holding her in place.

“Ruby…. take me to our daughter.”

S
HE’D BEEN ON THE CUSP OF ONE OF THOSE LONG CLIMAXES
like the endless stretch and twist of a rubber band. Now it came back with a snap, stinging her with reality. She wanted to move, but of course Derek had her pinned like a butterfly, his cock deep inside of her, that immovable hand upon her throat. A vivid reminder that she could run from him, but she could never resist him.

“No.” She shook her head, almost violently. “No. You promised not to read me.”

“It happened during the Great Rite. There was nothing I could do about it. The knowledge just unfolded in front of me.”

“Then pretend you didn’t see it, because no. I won’t.” With a burst of manic strength, she shoved away, breaking their connection, and backed across the pool. He turned to face her but didn’t move, those blue eyes dangerously still on her face.

“You have to, Ruby. She’s my daughter, too.”

“You won’t understand.” She made it to the pool edge, lifted herself out. Wanting her robe, she snatched at the bundle he’d left there. When she threw it on, she realized she’d picked up Derek’s. The robe came past her knees, the sleeves flopping over her wrists. She didn’t care. She began to retreat. Damn gravel path. She picked herself over it, tried to bolt when he came up behind her. When he caught her wrist, her reaction was instinct, power sizzling through her skin, sparking off his palm. Instead of letting her go, he countered. She cried out as the shock jolted through her nerve centers, forcing her to one knee.

With a curse, he caught her up, carried her back to the smoother concrete collar around the pool. When he let her back down, he held on to her wrist, his expression dark. “You try that again, I will wear your ass out,” he said. “I can get a lot rougher, and you can’t stand against me, Ruby. Now that I know you have a taste for rougher, I’m not concerned about being gentle.”

It wasn’t like Derek to be cruel, but she had enough sense to understand why he was struggling with his temper. She’d been lying to him. He’d known that for a while, obviously, but now he’d seen the truth behind the lie. She didn’t blame him for being angry with her. Hell, she wouldn’t blame him for kicking the shit out of her if she pushed him to it. She thought she might prefer that to the alternative, so she stubbornly locked her jaw, closing her arms around herself.

“You want me to rip it from your mind?” When he bent close, she closed her eyes tight, locking her arms even harder around herself. His breath was hot on her face. “Ruby, cat’s out of the bag. It’s time to come clean.”

“You do what you have to do. If you’re that much of a bastard.”

“Ruby, for God’s sake, she’s my child, too.”

“She’s safe,” she burst out in a near scream, startling him. “She’s happy. Leave her be. Just leave her be. Let her stay that way.
You left.
You left. You didn’t care.”

“You told me to go,” he shouted back. “In every way, you made it clear you didn’t want me around. You used a fucking soul spell on me.”

“You weren’t supposed to listen! You never listen. You always railroad over everything I say or do, and that one time, I needed you to be that sexist bastard, to be stronger than the magic I used, and you weren’t. You didn’t.”

Derek didn’t know whether to laugh bitterly or scream himself, but then she tried to bolt again. When he snagged her sleeve, she came out of the robe, but it hung her up enough that she tripped in her attempt to get away from him. She went down with a cry.

The gravel would cut her knees, so he reacted on instinct, lunging forward. He controlled the descent, so that her knee landed on the top of his foot. As he knelt behind her, holding her between his thighs, he wanted to be furious. But all of a sudden, he couldn’t think of whipping her around to face him, shaking her to make her listen. Instead, that small sphere of light was in the forefront of his mind, the tiny hand pressed against it.

He wrapped his arms around her, wouldn’t let her shake him off. He found himself murmuring to her despite his helpless rage, his frustration with her, him and all of it.

“Okay. I’m here, baby. I’m here. I should have been here and I wasn’t. Please tell me. Tell me what happened.”

She was crying, having trouble breathing. He thought she was trying to speak, but then he realized she was trying to sing. That same little lullaby he’d heard her croon to herself a couple times now. She was trying to calm herself down with it. He picked it up, hummed it with her, stroking her
hair, cursing his ineptitude for dealing with this, but in truth, he didn’t know if there was a proper way to handle it. He couldn’t remain detached, in control, and he didn’t think she needed that at the moment anyway.

He set his jaw, thinking about what she needed, what was required. It might be the wrong way to go, but if he was wrong, it could be rectified fairly quickly. Holding tight to her and the robe, he concentrated, and took them somewhere else.

T
HEY MATERIALIZED IN HER GUN SHOP, DARK AND
locked up for her absence. He’d had them appear in her back stockroom and repair workshop, not wanting to take the chance some late-night pedestrians might be walking by the storefront. Seeing two naked people kneeling on the floor would be unsettling, like the opening of a Terminator movie.

A glance around showed him it was a good choice, because the back workshop was also the way to the upper level, where she kept her living quarters. Lifting her in his arms, he tried not to be concerned that she was still humming that lullaby in broken tones. It was as if she hadn’t noticed them disappearing from one place and reappearing in another, hundreds of miles away. He carried her up that staircase, a quick focus and tiny frisson of sparks unlocking the door to her apartment.

When he kicked it closed behind him, he saw a one-bedroom with a kitchenette, bathroom and small sitting room. The Ruby he’d known had loved flowers, knickknacks, had crystals hanging in her windows for both their aesthetic as well as their magical properties. The girl loved a sparkly. Colorful pillows and throws had always punctuated her living space.

Except for some small detritus— a coffee cup left in the dish drainer, the half-open door of the closet revealing an amazingly small amount of clothing and shoes for a woman,
there was nothing of Ruby here. By the bed were a couple paperbacks on magical theory, some gun catalogs, and a no-frills radio.

It was like looking at a halfway house for a released convict. The convict didn’t accumulate much because she didn’t really believe she was out of prison.

He let her feet down. She’d quieted, and though she was still trembling, she seemed calmer. As he shrugged into his robe, belted it, he moved to the closet. A thin ritual robe wouldn’t be warm enough for her. His throat constricted as he found the most accessible article of clothing, hung on a hook instead of a rack amid the others. It was one of his long-sleeved shirts, obviously worn often.

Bringing it back to her, he threaded her arms into it. It fell to her knees and had long sleeves he rolled up for her so they were between elbow and wrist. She stared at his chest, her tawny brown hair falling forward over her pale cheek as he dressed her. It made her look young, whereas when she lifted her eyes, they were impossibly old, even more ancient than himself.

Taking her hands, he guided her over to the bed. Laid her down on it and himself behind her. He opened his robe, draped it over her and pulled her into the warmth of his naked body. He crooked his knees up behind her. As he did, his still-firm cock nudged her buttocks. Following instinct, he gripped her thigh, a mute command. With a tiny sigh, she let her thighs loosen and he slid back into her, lodging himself deep, holding her there on him while she quaked at the intimacy of that connection, what it symbolized.

“I’m here,” he said softly. “I’m a part of you. Tell me, Ruby. Close your eyes and tell me. Tell both of us.”

It took a long time, and he had to ask a couple more times, but he made sure he did it gently, a quiet sound in the dark room, like a request from her own mind.

“Eight months,” she whispered at last. He had his arm under her head, and her hand crept into his palm, her fingers
tangling with his own. “She was eight months old. I could feel her, moving inside of me. Sometimes I think she laughed. I didn’t think a baby could laugh in the womb, but with every month, my joy having her there just grew. I don’t know if I made her laugh, or she gave me the joy, or if they fed each other, but it didn’t matter. I could feel her soul, Derek. She was inside of mine. Still is.”

That uneasiness stirred again, but he left it alone for now. His fingers tightened on hers, a silent appeal to go on. He didn’t want to get too demanding about it, didn’t want to do anything to make her falter now that she’d begun. Though in truth there was a part of him that didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to know.

“Her energy sparked mine. All those years where the magic was a dull flicker, an unpredictable flash…. all those years of Mother telling me I wasn’t gifted with any power at all. Then, all of a sudden, I had this
flood
. It frightened me, the strength of it, because I could tell it wasn’t hers. She somehow brought mine to life.”

The emotionally abused child became a mother, and the mother discovered a tiger in herself to protect her own child. It made perfect sense to Derek.

“But I screwed up. Because I was scared, I didn’t do anything with it. I kept a lid on it, didn’t tell anyone. I was too intimidated to understand how to manage it.”

“Oh, Ruby.”

“My mother told me, Derek.” Ruby twisted her head to look up into his face, so close to her own. “She said if I ever discovered any natural ability, I needed to hide it, ignore it, keep it dormant. Otherwise it would come to tragedy. She said she saw it.”

“You know why I didn’t like your mother, Ruby?” He managed it in measured tones, but he gave her the edge of his anger because it was on her behalf. “She was like a cop who abuses power. There’s nothing worse, when the person who’s all about protection, justice, someone you should be
able to trust implicitly, betrays that trust and cloaks it behind the badge.”

“But she knew things—”

“Yes, she was a great Seer. She was never wrong. And because she was never wrong, she lied to you, told you things that weren’t true because what she truly saw was that you would surpass her.”

Ruby stared up at him. Derek touched her face, caressed the line of her cheek, still tracked with drying tears. “Your mother was a great Seer, but she was a competitive, selfish bitch who feared being eclipsed by her own daughter. Most parents, they hope their children will go further and be even more than they are, because that’s part of a parent’s love. She couldn’t get there. She was too afraid of being forgotten.” He bared his teeth in a humorless smile. “It’s one of the reasons I do my best never to think of her. It’s my small spite, but there you are. I love you too much to ever think well of her.”

She swallowed against his hold. “You aren’t going to love who I am after this.”

He made a tiny movement that lodged him deeper inside her, made her bite her lip, her fingers tighten on his arm. “Ruby, if I was dead as a post and dismembered and ingested by a Grat demon, I would still love you. Keep talking.”

The combination of devotion and impatient tone almost made her smile. He felt the tentative curve of her lips against his biceps as she turned her head away again. But he also felt her fear, and something far darker, ready to fight against whatever his reaction was. So he kept it easy, realizing he might be dealing with a wild animal. A wild animal with unpredictable powers.

“The magic was so powerful, I didn’t realize it would be noticed, even if I kept it locked up inside me. I was bringing home groceries one night….”

Cold gathered in his vitals, remembering Raina’s words.
She was thrown on his windshield, with fireworks…
. He
tightened his arm around her, cupping her breast to stroke the outer curve, soothing and pleasuring, reminding her he was here.

“I was carrying two sacks of groceries. Fresh fruit. The market had mangoes, and I was excited about that. I was remembering when you and I had mangoes and wine, a picnic on the floor of my very first apartment.”

“I remember.” Though Mary had left her nothing, Ruby had been thrilled when she was making just enough on her Witches R Us salary to set herself up in her own place. He would have helped her out financially in a heartbeat, but he’d understood the significance of the moment for her, a value that couldn’t be measured in dollars.

“I wanted to re-create that night. I wasn’t drinking wine, of course, but I’d gotten one of those sparkling grape juices. I was going to spread a blanket out on the floor of my place, light candles, pretend you were there.”