A dark-haired, dreadfully sexy sorcerer sat in the copper-edged pentagram inset into the white-painted wood-slat flooring of the barn loft. Aiden had been fortifying the rune-etched, five-pointed star for the last three months, starting by adding smaller pentagrams at each point. At the beginning of May, he had embedded a black gemstone — obsidian — in the heart of each smaller star, then conducted tests for two more weeks. It had taken most of those first months to source the volcanic rock in a size and quality that satisfied the sorcerer. More glyphs had been carved into the stones themselves.
Dark-blue magic gleamed from the runes inked across Aiden’s bare chest, shoulders, back, arms, and legs. I’d been exceedingly helpful with the hard-to-reach areas. Then — again, terribly helpfully — I had powered up the sorcerer until he’d groaned and panted under the onslaught of my touch. My magic.
Crouched an arm’s length away with my blades at the ready, I grinned at the remembrance. The lingering pleasure still warmed my own limbs.
Aiden laughed at me huskily, flashing a toothy grin. His bright-blue eyes blazed with power. He was holding an envelope sealed with dark-blue wax in both hands. His long, dexterous fingers were each tipped in sparkly pink nail polish.
The manicure was a remnant of our most recent visit from Opal. The young witch had insisted she needed to practice casting during a break from the Academy, and Aiden was perpetually obliging when it came to the dream walker’s wants and needs. My own fingers and toes were currently bright green. And I’d been completely — irrationally — upset when I noted upon waking that morning that two of my fingernails had been chipped.
No matter how much I adored my life in general, Opal’s absence always left me feeling a little hollow.
Drawing my attention back to the present, Aiden muttered an arcane word in that unique language he used. Magic snapped into place, sealing him within the main copper pentagram. The sorcerer quietly voiced another command, and the black stones in the five outer pentagrams flared with power.
Opal was safely at the Academy. Christopher and Paisley had left two days previously to join Samantha in Budapest. The telekinetic had been tracking Bee — aka Amanda Smith, aka one of the Five — across Eastern Europe for weeks now, but the path was cold, and the telepath was still missing. Daniel had surfaced long enough to check in, confirm that he didn’t know where Bee was either, and then go dark again. He was on his own separate mission.
In the end, Christopher had wanted to help make certain that Bee was okay, and I wasn’t his keeper. Paisley seemed amenable to doing some tracking, and I trusted that she would listen to the clairvoyant. So other than the chickens and the cows, the sorcerer and I were the only ones remaining on the property.
Which was good. Because it was time to deal with Kader Azar.
Aiden’s father, and a key member of the former Collective — aka one of my creators.
Aiden had invested three months into fortifying the pentagram just so he could open the letter that his brother, Isa Azar, had hand delivered last February.
“Ready or not,” the sorcerer said. Then he winked at me.
A flicker of warmth — desire mixing with a gleeful anticipation — flitted through my stomach. My magically sharpened, black-coated steel blades sat by my knees on the wood-slat flooring. The open loft was at my back, with the barn doors thrown wide open below. Aiden’s SUV was still parked beside the barn, but I’d moved the Mustang out, parking it by the house. It was likely that a ton of magic was about to be tossed around, and Lani Zachery would not be pleased if we ruined the car’s paint, which was still the original clearwater aqua. Or the aqua vinyl seating, for that matter.
Each time Lani caught me driving around with Paisley, I could tell that the full-time mechanic, part-time intuitive had a difficult time not losing her mind. Lani’s latent witch magic manifested in an innate sense of when something needed to be fixed and how to fix it. More so since I’d amplified her.
Aiden held the envelope forward, his attention riveted to the rune-embossed wax seal. He murmured quietly under his breath, repeating a short phrase that stirred the magic within the pentagram. Power I could see but not feel.
I had another chance to wish that Aiden had agreed to have me in the pentagram with him, amplifying him at the same time as he opened the missive from his father.
We had fought over it.
Concern had sharpened my words, but experience tempered Aiden’s response. In the end, experience won, and I’d agreed to the sequence of events we were about to execute.
Aiden snapped the wax seal. It sounded like the explosive concussion of a high-caliber gun, discharging close enough that I expected to be winged by a bullet.
Nothing else happened.
Aiden laughed, quietly relieved.
Then a dark, shadowy pulse of power reached out from the broken seal, striking Aiden’s chest.
He grunted, pained. Magic flared through the runes inked across every bare section of his body.
My blades suddenly appeared in my hands. I wrapped my fingers around the hilts on instinct, though I hadn’t consciously reached for them. Damn it. I must have inadvertently triggered the intricate retrieval spell that Aiden had fixed in one of the three raw-diamond gemstones embedded in each of the hilts, wasting the energy it had taken him to cast it in my momentary rush of panic.
The shadowed spell expanded across Aiden’s chest. He snarled, dropping the envelope to reach for the magic. The malicious shadow stretched, expanding until it looked suspiciously like a hand with five digits. A hand trying to grab the sorcerer?
All at once, the obsidian stones in the outer, smaller pentagrams flared, becoming brighter and brighter until I had to narrow my eyes against their intense blue glow.
The black stone nearest Aiden’s right knee cracked.
Then another stone. And another.
Five loud, sharp pops.
The magic died within each obsidian gem.
“Fuck!” Aiden snarled. Shuddering with the effort, he cupped his hands before him, fingers spread wide as he began muttering a melodic phrase over and over. The ink-etched runes on his upper chest and shoulders shifted, as if they were being pulled into or siphoned by the shadow hand.
No.
Not siphoned.
Aiden was somehow using the inked runes to feed the spell trying to grab hold of him. More symbols slid up and over the sorcerer’s shoulders and arms, leaving the deeply tanned skin of first his wrists, then his forearms bare.
Sweat broke out on his forehead.
I shifted, bringing my blades forward.
“No, Emma,” Aiden grunted. “I’m handling it.”
I stilled, trusting his expertise. Trusting him.
Even I could learn. It was just that the lessons involving Aiden, involving any of those I cared about, took longer to absorb.
My heart hammered annoyingly in my chest. But as I watched, the shadow hand was drawn from Aiden’s chest. It coalesced into a dark, seething ball of power suspended between the sorcerer’s outstretched fingers. More runes were quickly stripped from Aiden’s legs, abdomen, and lower rib cage, running up to his shoulders and then down his arms as he continued to feed the spell. The sphere darkened, simmering between Aiden’s hands but no longer touching his skin. I could see lightning strikes of power coursing within it, emanating from Aiden’s fingertips.
With his body now completely stripped of the magical protections we’d spent hours putting in place and powering up, Aiden began condensing the spell he now held firmly, compressing it between his palms. Then, his chest heaving with the effort, he folded the spell in on itself.
The now-tiny black sphere dissolved with an audible snap.
I waited, blades still poised to slash and rend. All my senses were on alert, reaching through the stillness of the loft, of the upper suite behind Aiden, and of the barn around us. Waiting for the next assault.
Nothing else happened.
Aiden raised his head, grimacing. Power brought forth by his anger blazed in his eyes. Tension was etched through his stubbled jaw. He locked me in place with a soul-searing gaze.
Sometimes he was so breathtakingly beautiful that my heart actually stuttered at the sight of him. Not that I would ever voice such an outrageously idiotic thought out loud.
“Well …” Aiden’s voice was husky, as if he had torn his throat raw while dealing with the magic, even though he’d barely spoken. “He knows where I am.”
I couldn’t help the smile that etched itself across my face. Anticipating facing Kader Azar shouldn’t have filled me with such deadly glee. I didn’t bother tamping down on my reaction, though. That wasn’t how Aiden and I were together. We kept nothing hidden between us. Nothing important in the here and now, at least.
“We knew that was a possibility,” I said.
Aiden bared his teeth, snarling through whatever residual pain he was still fighting. “Powerful bastard.”
“We knew that too, Aiden.”
He huffed, shaking his head. “Powerful enough to embed a forced-recall teleportation spell in a fucking wax seal?”
I shrugged. “Probably took him months to cast. And you thwarted it in less than a minute.”
Aiden laughed darkly, wiping his brow with a shaky hand. “Months? I would have thought a spell of that magnitude was impossible.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t like dealing in impossibilities — because I often proved certain impossible things wholly possible just by existing.
“Sorry. Forgot.” Aiden’s words were blunt, but he wasn’t angry at me. He shook his head as if clearing it. “And that felt like a lifetime, not just a minute or two.”
I set one of my blades down, shifting forward until I could tease my fingers against the barrier of magic that still simmered between us, still sealing Aiden within the main pentagram. “Look how powerful you are, sorcerer,” I purred. “How magnificent.”
A lazy smile overtook the sharpness that had been etched into Aiden’s features by pain and anger. His shoulders relaxed slightly. “Oh, yes, amplifier?” he murmured. “Liked that, did you?”
I just grinned back at him. I wasn’t a skilled flirt, but I could try. For Aiden.
Laughing, he retrieved the envelope from the floor, opening it and extracting a folded single-page note from within.
The smile slipped from his face as he read the letter.
Magic flared through the rune-etched copper pentagram again. Magic involuntarily triggered by the sorcerer’s reaction to whatever his father had written, I guessed.
The obsidian stones continued to smolder at the five points of the pentagram. The inlaid copper surrounding those stones had also darkened, as if tarnished or discolored by heat.
Aiden finally looked up. His expression was hard. Unreadable. Not the usual carefully blank countenance that meant he was working through a problem in his head. It looked now as if something was hidden under his skin, ready to seethe, to roil.
He read the missive a second time, then crumpled it. Then he just stared at it clenched in his fist. Seemingly lost in his thoughts.
The sorcerer stood. Still not looking at me, or filling me in. And suddenly, the feeling in my stomach wasn’t at all gleeful. The emotion that had collected there felt much, much closer to a churning maw of … something. Concern, maybe. But more as though I was already somehow on the losing side of this pending conflict, without even having gotten a chance to fight.
I straightened as well, still playing my fingers across the barrier of power that stood between us. I kept the blade clenched in my other hand lowered.
Aiden stepped from the pentagram, effortlessly extinguishing the magic that sealed it. My hand fell without the barrier to support it, hanging uselessly in the narrow space that stood between us, our shoulders almost brushing but not quite.
I tilted my head, trying to read Aiden’s expression, but his gaze was fixed somewhere ahead of him. Or perhaps he wasn’t looking at anything at all. Then he inhaled deeply. Exhaling harshly, he pressed the envelope and the crumpled letter into my hand and turned away from me.
I closed my fingers around the envelope and the letter, not picking up any of the magic the wax seal had so obviously contained. That spell had been wholly extinguished by Aiden.
The dark-haired sorcerer hesitated just before loosening his grip on the envelope we now both held, as if remembering something. He angled his shoulders toward me just enough to brush a light kiss across my lips. His magic was dim, but not completely drained. Fighting off his father’s attempted teleportation had cost him. The obsidian stones and all the magic he’d invested in the extra fortifications would have to be replaced and duplicated as well. Three months of work. Three months of living with me, amplified passively while we slept together or had sex, and of being actively amplified when casting together.
Kader Azar was far too powerful.
Aiden walked away wordlessly, crossing around the dormant pentagram through the open door that led to the studio suite.
I held onto the envelope and the crumpled letter, unsure if I should follow him or not. When I walked away from someone, it was generally because I wanted to be left alone. And I was at the point now where I tried to not leave a room unless I meant it. That was another learning curve when dealing with anyone who wasn’t blood bound to me — specifically, Aiden and Opal. I couldn’t get away from the other four that made us the Five even if I tried. But walking away from Aiden in the middle of an argument hurt the sorcerer. If I was overwhelmed, I now told him so. And I never wanted to act like I was abandoning Opal, even when I needed space to think.
All the way through the suite now, Aiden opened the door that led to the small landing at the top of the exterior stairs. He stepped out, standing in the sunlight and drawing in long, steadying breaths.
I understood that impulse, and the relief achieved by standing with the property spread before me, knowing I was home. A spark of satisfaction drove away my trepidation. Aiden felt that now too. That grounding.
I glanced down at the note crumpled in my hand. The dark-blue wax seal had snapped cleanly in half. The rune that had been pressed into the wax had disappeared, and the magic once embedded in it had been expelled. At least as far as my senses could tell. I picked up power easier from people than I did with magical spells or objects.
I smoothed the thick, slightly rough paper open, reading.
Aiden. My son.
I’m dying.
I desire to see you before I leave this too-mortal coil.
Forever your father.
The signature — a stylized K and A — was so elaborate that I didn’t doubt it also functioned as some sort of magical rune when inked by Kader Azar. Presumably a spell that informed the sorcerer when and where his letters were opened.
Well. That was unexpected.
And damn it.
Aiden’s father was dying.
Unless it was a trick of some sort? But I had no idea what benefit there would have been in lying. If Kader wanted to speak to his son, I was certain he could find another way. And based on Isa’s overt desire to usurp his father as the head of the Azar cabal, admitting that he was dying placed the sorcerer Azar in an unstable position — though Isa had claimed to not know the contents of the letter when he’d handed it to Aiden.
I was waffling, standing in the loft, watching the obsidian stones smolder, while pretending I could sort things out in my head that I had no actual context for. I should have been engaging with Aiden, including him in the conversation, the decision-making process. More so than normal even, since the situation involved his actual blood relationships.
And if Aiden had needed to be alone to sort out things, he would have actually left the building.
Still holding the letter, I skirted the pentagram, following the sorcerer through the loft suite. The day was warm, but the painted wood-slat flooring was cool under my bare feet. The double bed situated to my right had been made up. A diamond-and-pink-dogwood-patterned quilt that I’d recently purchased from Hannah Stewart’s thrift shop was tightly tucked in on three sides. Two pillows in plain white cotton cases lay flat against the brass headboard, not propped up.
Christopher must have made the bed before he left. Because not including the quilt, it had been made with the precision that had been drilled into us as children by the Collective.
The Collective.
Of which Kader Azar was one of the main members. One of the inner circle that had spent over a hundred years entwining magic and genetics to create me, create us. The Five.
Christopher more often opted for throwing an overly large down duvet across his own bed. If he slept with covers at all. His mind must have been elsewhere when he made up the bed in the loft.
I hesitated.
Why was I obsessing about the bed? Aiden hadn’t slept in the loft since the first night I’d asked him to join me in my own bed.
No. That wasn’t what was bothering me.
Why would Christopher have felt the need to make the bed at all before he left?
Damn it.
Again.
Apparently, we were expecting a guest. And the clairvoyant hadn’t bothered to mention it. Either that, or the branch of the immediate future he’d seen before he left wasn’t solidified. He might have picked up only a glimmer of the possibility, but nothing substantial. He could also be planning on returning with Fish or Bee in tow, with the bed made up for one of them. Even though I’d made it clear that I wasn’t interested in any sort of reunion for the Five.
Shoving thoughts of close-mouthed clairvoyants away, I swiftly crossed through the suite, stepping up beside Aiden on the upper landing of the exterior stairs. Any serious conversation I’d had with Christopher lately was still muddied by the memory of the clairvoyant throwing me in front of a death curse in February, three months ago. No matter how rational I strived to be, I apparently couldn’t force myself to so easily forgive that incident. That choice on his part. So I hadn’t been surprised when Christopher announced he was joining Samantha on her next mission in her hunt for Bee, even though it was planting season.
Brushing my shoulder against Aiden’s arm, I folded and tucked the missive from his father into the pocket of my light-blue linen sundress. Together, the sorcerer and I gazed out at the back half of the property.
The main garden spread out immediately below us, only a third of its raised beds planted. Beyond the fenced field that was currently seeded as hay for the cows, a forested area bordered Cowichan Lake. The large, white-sided, red-metal-roofed house sprawled to our immediate right. New vintage lace-edged curtains framed the windows of my bedroom on the upper corner. A breeze stirred the wind chimes I’d hung on the lower back porch a week before.
I was actually surprised the wind chimes were still in one piece. Paisley had been eyeing them darkly for days, presumably for disturbing her afternoon sun naps.
From my vantage point, the seedlings in the nearest beds were points of green within lush, dark-brown soil. The peas weren’t bearing yet, but we’d been picking at the lettuce and other greens already.
“At least Christopher got the tomatoes planted before he left,” I said.
Aiden grunted quietly. “I told him I’d finish digging the compost into the empty beds and keep an eye on the temperature at night for the peppers and cucumbers.”
Christopher had an elaborate self-watering system of grow lights and heating mats set up on the workbench in the barn. The chicks that had hatched in the midst of the chaos in February were now in a temporary grow-out coop in the orchard, only a few weeks away from being transitioned into the main coop.
“He won’t be gone that long,” I murmured.
Aiden glanced my way. “You know? Or you’re guessing?”
“He made the bed in the loft.”
Aiden flinched, whirling to look behind us as if he expected to be attacked. Then he muttered to himself darkly. A curse, I thought, based on the magic that shifted through his words. Or perhaps a protection spell.
“Warding off evil?” I asked playfully.
Aiden grimaced, wrapping his hands over the top railing so tightly that his knuckles whitened. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cajole him through whatever he needed to work out. A decision based on his father’s request, I presumed. A reaction to Kader Azar’s attempt to take that decision away from him with a ridiculously powerful teleportation spell.
“Christopher had me help him set up a bed in the empty bedroom as well.” Aiden’s tone was calmer than his body language. He shifted his gaze back out to the expanse of the property. “I assumed it was for Samantha.”
“Might be,” I said. “Long term. But my point is, if Christopher’s expecting visitors, he won’t be gone long enough for us to worry about needing to plant the peppers.”
Aiden nodded, only half listening to me. I brushed my fingers against his forearm. He had waxed almost all of his body hair in order to apply the runes. And now, stripped of their magic-imbued ink, he looked naked. Exposed. His muscles shifted under my touch, but Aiden kept staring outward, breathing in the warm spring air steadily, efficiently.
My latent empathy triggered with our skin-to-skin contact, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Aiden was frustrated. Pained, though not physically hurt. A hint of doubt and trepidation underlaid those main emotions.
“He must have known you’d be able to counter the teleportation spell,” I said, trying to address the whisper of doubt I felt from him. “Given the wording of the letter itself.”
“ ‘Forever your father,’ ” he muttered darkly.
Ah, that was what was bothering him. The claiming. “The Collective is big on ownership.”
“Unfortunately, I share enough of his blood that he can actually claim me. Bend me to his will.”
“No,” I said. “Not anymore. You’re too powerful for him now. The spell you just thwarted tells you that.”
Aiden sighed, shaking his head and dropping it forward. He laughed shakily. Then he sobered, still looking away from me. “No. You’re too powerful for him.”
A tiny fissure cracked open in my chest, right under the spot that still occasionally ached from the death curse. A completely psychosomatic pain that felt utterly real.
Aiden snarled quietly, then reached for me, tugging me against his chest. He pressed a harsh kiss to my temple. “I’m acting like an idiot. I’m sorry.”
I spread my hand across his bare, smooth chest, over his heart. “We’re a ‘we’ now,” I whispered.
“Yes. Goddamn it.” He squeezed me tightly, then even tighter. “We … we are too strong for him. Together. I agree. I just …” He glanced out at the garden again. “I feel like … like I’m about to lose … all of this …”
His declaration — echoing my own trepidation from a few moments before — made me feel raw. Aiden was usually so steadfast. “Including me?”
He shook his head, seemingly incapable of expressing himself. Empathically, I could feel the jumble of his emotions, with a layer of frustration that was no doubt all about himself and his father over top of it all.
Aiden sighed, easing his hold on me to run his fingers through my hair, then down my spine to rest at the small of my back. I leaned into him, not certain if I was trying to comfort him or myself. Both, perhaps.
And I decided that was okay.
Silence fell between us, comfortable and warm. I could hear the chickens cackling away. They had spent the winter and early spring foraging in the garden, fertilizing it, but we’d moved their coop into the orchard at the beginning of the month so they wouldn’t tear up the young seedlings. The plum trees were already setting fruit. The apple and pear trees were in full bloom.
I enjoyed lingering in the orchard after letting the chickens out of the coop every morning, watching the mason bees coming and going from their ‘condo’ as they industriously filled in its channels with mud and pollen, collected from the fruit blossoms and the orchard grass that Christopher had planted so he didn’t need to mow around the trees.
“I idolized him.” Aiden’s raw voice cut through the pleasantly warm air.
My heart pinched with what felt like shared grief, though I wasn’t certain I’d ever experienced such a thing. Loving someone — multiple someones — had hurt me in so many different ways, more than any knife or magical wound ever had. I healed quickly, far quicker than most Adepts. Definitely far more quickly than other amplifiers. Stolen juice, Samantha would have called it. Stolen power. But my robust magical healing didn’t work on emotional wounds.
“I idolized him for years …” Aiden trailed off, continuing to gaze over the gardens.
“Until you discovered what he did to your mother,” I said softly. Not wanting to interject, but wanting to participate in the conversation. Neither of us talked about the past much. Only when we were pushed to do so by external circumstances.
And Kader Azar had just given us a hard shove.
Aiden laughed ruefully, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Honestly? Not even then. Because she stayed.”
“After the enchantment wore off?” Kader Azar had entranced Aiden’s mother, Cerise Myers, because he coveted her particular brand of witch magic. He’d entrapped her into a coerced, long-term sexual liaison that had resulted in Aiden. That much I knew.
“She was seventeen when he saw her. Took her. Wooed her on the streets of Paris, according to him. Deep layers of beguilement take time to anchor. Weeks, months. Even for a sorcerer as powerful as Kader Azar was, even thirty-three years ago.” The rawness was easing from Aiden’s tone, as if he was working through it with each word he spoke. “Cerise was nineteen when she had me. He removed the last of the beguilement spells a few months after I was born. She could have left.”
“But he used you as leverage.”
“Of course he did,” Aiden snarled darkly. “Maintaining the spells took too much energy.”
“And the experiment had been completed.”
Aiden looked at me sharply. But his expression softened as he absorbed my implication. “Yes. I suppose. Though he wouldn’t know whether it worked until my magic matured.”
“All experiments run their course,” I said ruefully.
Aiden caressed a fingertip lightly across my cheekbone, pinning me in place with his sharp, bright-blue gaze. “Some more successfully than others.”
I grinned. A fierce flush of my earlier anticipation returned. “And sometimes, those same experiments blow up, taking their creators with them.”
“No, Emma.” Aiden gently placed the heel of his hand over my heart, fingers spreading along my collarbone. “No blowing yourself up. Surviving him is the best way forward.”
“Then that applies to you as well.”
“Of course.” He smiled, though the expression didn’t reach his eyes or mitigate the frustrated anger I was still picking up empathically.
“What do you want to do?”
“Absolutely nothing. He can rot for all I care.”
I felt the lie the moment he uttered it.
I had never felt a falsehood from Aiden before. Not ever. We didn’t lie to each other. Not directly. I started to call him on it.
But then I realized he was lying to himself more than to me.
“You were telling me something? About your childhood?” I asked instead. Because even as emotionally stunted as I was, I knew he wasn’t going to figure out what he wanted to do about Kader Azar without taking some time. Given the content of his father’s letter, though, we didn’t have much time. So talking was the next-best strategy. We had already fortified the house and property, built up Aiden’s weapons cache, and powered up my blades.
And I had just wasted the retrieval spell that had taken Aiden over a week to tie to me, slowly coaxing my magic into accepting it. I’d had to absorb the spell, cast by the sorcerer, over and over — once again stealing the magic for myself — before it could become something I could personally wield.
Aiden pressed another kiss to my forehead, murmuring, “Can we continue this conversation over iced tea? And ginger snaps?”
“It’s a little early for tea,” I groused.
He laughed. And that genuine joy swamped the anger he’d been struggling to hold at bay. I could actually feel his ire ebb away from our empathic connection. A connection that was only ever a brush of fingertips away for us. Or even better, a touch of lips to lips … or other intimate places.
“All right,” I said huffily, covering my own rising desire because the timing seemed inappropriate. “Just this once.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist, turning us toward the stairs. The embrace made traversing those stairs awkward, but I didn’t complain.
I adored my home and my partner. And it seemed very likely that I was about to kick some serious ass. Ass that — if I was being completely honest with myself — I’d been eager to kick for many, many years.
Kader Azar knew where Aiden was. And if and when he came to collect his son, he would find me waiting.
A pleased grin spread over my face. Apparently, it wasn’t just the little things that made me happy.
Aiden placed his iPad on the small round table set before the cushioned patio chairs as I poured the iced tea. I added a couple of teaspoons of sugar to both glasses. The Ceylon black tea was more traditionally flavored and slightly too bitter for me without sugar. Plus, I’d oversteeped it. I had rectified the error by cold-brewing a second pitcher of my favorite fruit tea, but it wasn’t ready yet.
I curled my legs underneath me, nibbling on a ginger snap and watching Aiden out of the corner of my eye as he opened an app on the iPad, signed into it, then checked to see if Opal was online yet. Her profile picture — a recent shot that Aiden had taken of the young witch with her arms wrapped around Paisley’s neck — wasn’t accompanied by a green dot. Our daily chat was earlier on Fridays because Opal had a break in her schedule before an early dinner. Plus, oddly, the Academy’s time zone was three hours ahead of us, even though the campus Christopher and I had taken Opal to was just outside Seattle.
The Wi-Fi was strong enough to pick up a call on the patio, but Aiden had upgraded and started paying for a data package when Opal went back to school. So we’d never miss a call from the young witch. Just one more reason I was utterly enamored with the sorcerer — our priorities aligned.
“Friday night is movie and sushi night,” I murmured, licking the ginger snap’s brown sugar from my lips. “She won’t want to talk for long.”
Aiden’s gaze snagged on my mouth. He didn’t answer me.
I took another small bite of the cookie. But before I could do anything more to tease him, Aiden leaned over. Practically knocking the cookie and my hand aside, he laid a blistering kiss on me.
I abandoned the cookie, shifting halfway out of my chair to meet his sudden intensity with my own. He’d been quiet and withdrawn as we’d put together the tea and headed out onto the back patio. But now his fierce desire overwhelmed the lingering anger and uncertainty that I’d felt empathically when I touched him. Though as usual, his expression revealed none of that inner turmoil.
His tongue teasing mine, Aiden hauled me into his lap. I settled awkwardly with my legs hanging over the arm of his chair. But when I tried to shift, he pinned me in place by slipping a hand up my leg — and without any preamble, he pushed my panties to the side.
I gasped into his mouth.
He grinned wickedly, transferring his lips and tongue to my neck, only to dart back quickly to plunder my mouth. As if he needed me, needed this connection, in order to survive the next few moments.
I spread my legs for him — somehow having the wherewithal amid the mounting desire and heat building at the apex of my thighs to lean over and place the iPad flat on the table.
I was fairly certain we had to accept the call from Opal before the camera triggered, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Aiden’s grip across my back tightened — I had one of his arms still pinned under me — and he groaned into my mouth, dipping his fingers into my heat, then slipping up to tease exactly where I wanted him. I pressed against his fingers, trying to shift so that I could free my own hands and reciprocate.
“Breasts,” Aiden snarled.
I blinked, not quite certain what he meant, not by tone at least.
He flashed me an almost-feral grin. “I’ve only got the one free hand, and I don’t want to move it. Not in any way that it isn’t already being moved.”
“Okay,” I panted.
He increased the pace and pressure of his fingers between my legs. “You have perfectly useable hands —”
“The position is awkward for —”
“Not for what I want.”
The deep heat in my core was spreading, radiating across my belly and down my thighs. I was having a difficult time concentrating on anything other than the pleasure Aiden was effortlessly coaxing from me. “Which is?”
“Lean back,” he demanded quietly.
A slow smile spread over my face as I followed his direction. One of my arms was twisted behind me, hand braced on the arm of Aiden’s chair, holding me upright.
Aiden grunted, satisfied. “Now open your dress.”
With my free hand, I loosened the wide belt of my wrap dress. Then I tugged the front-wrapped fabric slightly open, widening the vee of the neckline. The linen dress softened every time I washed it, but was still thick enough that I didn’t bother wearing a bra underneath.
I managed to get one breast partly exposed before Aiden leaned over and took the already-taut nipple in his mouth. Pleasure exploded, deepening the build I was already trying to keep under control. I gasped.
“Yes,” Aiden murmured, transferring his attention to kissing the flesh of my breast. Then, tugging the other side of the dress open with his teeth, he focused on my other breast. “Yes, my Emma.”
I was panting, moaning quietly, shifting my free hand to press just above my mound through my dress. Aiden had shown me that pressing like that, even rubbing in time with his ministrations, intensified my orgasms.
“Yes, Emma,” Aiden repeated between sucks and gentle nips. “Come for me, my Emma.”
My head fell back. I forgot about feeling awkward, about not contributing. A wave of fierce satisfaction filtered empathically through from everywhere Aiden touched me. I wasn’t certain why pleasuring me was grounding him, settling him, but it obviously was.
The bottom of my feet started to tingle. I stretched into the pleasure, tensing all the muscles in my legs and abdomen, riding an almost-painful wave of pleasure as it arced up through me, then exploded.
I cried out. Loudly. Bucking under Aiden’s hand as he continued to caress me through the crest of my orgasm. “Aiden, I —”
He sucked my nipple into his mouth.
I moaned, panting, as residual spasms of pleasure racked me.
Aiden slowed the pace of his fingers between my legs, but didn’t stop.
I grasped his wrist. “I don’t think I can make it a second time without —”
He kissed me tenderly, slowing his ministrations further until he was just teasing me, slipping to and fro in my heat.
I kissed him back, groaning into his mouth as a second wave of pleasure built between my legs, then crested so quickly that it seemed to come out of nowhere. I cried out, again bucking under his fingers.
He cupped his hand over my mound, just holding me as the spike of pleasure settled into a satiated warmth between my legs. A slight breeze prickled across my nipples.
I opened my eyes to meet Aiden’s soul-searing gaze. “Well, you seem pleased with yourself, sorcerer.”
He grinned. His smile was softer, less feral.
I shifted into a more comfortable position in his lap, brushing the hair that had fallen over his brow to the side. He reached up, capturing my hand and kissing the palm. I curled my fingers into his cheek, enjoying the rasp of his stubble on my skin while I tried to sort out the emotions I could feel coming from the sorcerer. He did seem satisfied, more settled. But there was something else still lurking behind it all.
Apparently, I was going to have to use words to figure it out. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said lazily. As if he’d just been the one to orgasm rather abruptly. Twice.
Okay, I’d guessed wrong. “You’re not going anywhere.”
His shoulders stiffened, just for a moment. Then he smoothed his fingers down my arm, enjoying the skin contact. “I might need to —”
“No.”
“No?”
“Yes, no. You’re not going anywhere.”
He blinked at me, then smiled and frowned at the same time. A sense of being pleased but concerned filtered through to me.
“We’re a we,” I reiterated.
“Yes.”
“I’m just going to repeat that. A lot.”
He nodded. “I seem to need it repeated.”
A little pinpoint of pain opened up in my chest. Damn it. I hated that. I was a rational being. “Because you doubt me? My commitment?”
“No.” His tone was rough, blunt. “No, Emma. I just … completely irrationally … I just don’t want to expose you.”
“To who?” I asked, genuinely confused. “The other members of the Collective?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not being …” He cleared his throat, then shook his head, changing his mind about what he wanted to say. “This is what I want. Here with you, and Opal and Paisley.”
“And possibly the other four,” I murmured.
He smirked in agreement. “I’m not interested in getting pulled into whatever game my father has going on. I won’t be his pawn, and I won’t allow him access to you. Not if I can help it.”
I just looked at him, listening. The chances of Kader Azar not at least sending an emissary to follow up on his letter to his son were exceedingly slim.
Aiden growled quietly, then hissed as if displeased at himself. At his reaction. “I know … I know, we talked about it …”
“We didn’t discuss the possibility that he might be reaching out for non-nefarious reasons.”
“Everything he does is nefarious!”
“Okay.”
“Emma … I … I know you know …” Aiden clenched his hands to fists, getting a handful of my dress in each, then immediately relaxed his grip.
I trailed my fingers up his forearm, and he sighed, relaxing his head back against the chair. I shifted in his lap, wiggling my ass just a little. Playfully.
A slow grin replaced the anger that had been edging his expression. His eyelids became heavy. He reached into the loose front of my dress to caress my breast, slipping his fingers underneath, taking the weight in his palm as he lightly flicked the nipple until it tightened and rose under his thumb.
“Bedroom,” I murmured.
“I’m not going to get any farther than the kitchen table.”
“That works.” I straightened, capturing his mouth in mine as I shifted to straddle him.
He grabbed my ass, tucking me as close as the chair would allow. It wasn’t close enough, so he shifted out from the chair, perching nearer the edge so I could rub myself against his hardening length.
I had no issue with Aiden working out what he was feeling, and what he wanted to do about it, while having sex. Or rather, after having sex.
A trill sounded behind us.
Too mechanical for a bird …
“Opal!” I gasped into Aiden’s mouth.
He laughed, far too pleased by his ability to distract me.
I jumped off him, tugging down my dress and cinching the belt. Aiden, still smirking, simply crossed his legs and reached for the iPad.
I sat down, picked up my iced tea, and pressed it against my neck, alternating sides. “I’ll be paying you back, sorcerer.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Twice?”
I growled playfully. “The once will sideline you so badly you won’t have the use of your legs for hours afterward.”
He laughed huskily. “Threats, amplifier. I like it.”
“I don’t threaten.” I grinned at him, then met him halfway as he leaned over to brush his lips against mine.
Then he flipped the iPad over, propped it up, and accepted the call from Opal.
The young witch appeared on the screen, chin propped on her hands, earbuds in her ears, and a wild halo of sun-streaked dark-brown curls all around her head. She grinned, flicking her brown-flecked blue eyes between the two of us, taking in the iced tea in my hand and the ginger snaps Aiden had grabbed from the plate next to the iPad.
“Hey,” she cried. “It’s too early for tea!”
My chest warmed, as it always did whenever I caught sight of her crooked eyeteeth. Soon, she was going to ask permission to get her teeth fixed. And I was going to have to say yes.
“Aiden begged,” I said.
Opal nodded. “There should be two tea times anyway. One before lunch, and then the regular one before dinner.”
“Only logical,” Aiden said agreeably.
The thirteen-year-old pouted playfully. “But now I want ginger snaps.”
“Tell us about your day,” I said, leaning back in my chair, curling my legs underneath me.
Opal huffed, playfully indignant that I wasn’t going to indulge her about the lack of ginger snaps. But then she glanced around as if to make sure she was alone. Technology only worked in the designated media rooms of the Academy. Not in the dorms. At least not reliably.
A wide grin spread across the witch’s face as she whispered, “Emily totally snuck an artifact in … from home, you know. We’re researching it.”
“Emily?” I murmured quietly to Aiden. Opal hadn’t made many friends at the Academy, at least not initially. But in the past two months, she’d started to mention more names. Work and study partners mostly, but a few burgeoning friendships as well.
“Necromancer,” Aiden murmured back. “Powerful family from the east coast of Canada. The Hawes. Old bloodline. Emily is the youngest by over a decade. The last generation was plagued with males.”
Opal pointed her finger at Aiden. “You’d better not be checking up on me, sorcerer.”
“Did you expect anything else?” I asked lightly, incredibly grateful for the sorcerer at my side. For so many reasons that I was losing count.
Opal huffed, crossing her arms. “No.”
“The artifact?” Aiden prompted.
The witch’s grin returned in an instant. Opal shifted forward, her animated face completely filling the screen, eyes flashing — with mischief. “It contains a spirit.”
“Of course it does,” I murmured.
“A trapped spirit?” Aiden said, sounding completely intrigued. “In an amulet?”
“A tiny music box. At least we think it’s a music box, because it’s got little gold feet …” Opal raised three fingers. “It’s oval, and this wide, and, like, no longer than my forefinger. Gold with some sort of blue stone with gold dust in it. It’s runed and everything. Emily thinks it’s a great-grandmother who, like, went crazy and then had to be trapped in it.”
That didn’t sound right. “After she died?” I asked.
Opal shrugged.
“The stone is probably lapis lazuli.” Aiden tilted his head thoughtfully. “So the gold flecks are actually pyrite. Fool’s gold. Perhaps crafted so a necromancer could draw from the death magic contained in the artifact … to augment their own casting? Is that ability specially tied to the Hawes bloodline?”
Opal tugged a notebook in front of her, picking up the silver-etched fountain pen that Aiden had given her for passing her term exams, and rapidly jotting down some notes. “Don’t know. I’ll add that to our list of things to figure out. We’re working on the inscription on the bottom first. It isn’t English.”
“Makes sense,” Aiden said, ginger snaps and tea forgotten. “The inscription might let you know what, or who, you’re dealing with. I would then suggest researching the great-grandmother and understanding her power set before moving forward with tapping into the power of the artifact.”
Tapping into the power of the artifact sounded like a terrible idea, even if Opal — as a witch — wouldn’t be the one to wield whatever magic was housed in the music box. I leaned forward, physically inserting myself into the conversation. “Is this something your principal should know about?” I asked. “Should she be overseeing your research? Or one of the professors of necromancy?”
Aiden, in person, and Opal, on the iPad, looked at me with mirrored looks of horror.
“No way!” the witch declared.
“Absolutely not,” the sorcerer said, seemingly aghast.
I sighed, giving Aiden a look.
He winked at me, then turned back to Opal. “Just don’t try to open it. Not unwarded.”
Opal snorted. “What am I, an idiot?” Then she spun around in her seat, responding to something off-screen. She nodded and waved in apparent agreement, then turned back to us. “Got to go! Sushi! We’re watching Captain Marvel! And it’s still in the theaters!”
I had no idea what that was, other than an apparently military-themed movie. I had even less idea why the Academy would choose something like that for their magically inclined students to watch. “Okay. But listen to —”
Opal disconnected the call.
I blinked at the blank screen, then gave Aiden a look.
He laughed. “You know it’s a dud.”
“What?”
“The artifact. The music box. You think the Hawes family just left an heirloom of power out for the youngest necromancer in a generation to purloin?”
“So it’s a … test?”
Aiden shrugged. “A harmless game. But yes, a bit of intrigue. A focus for Emily’s power while she’s learning.”
I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t like games.
Aiden laughed. Then he stretched out his legs and patted his lap. “I believe you were threatening me with a sexual act so intense that it would wear me out for days.”
I grinned at him, unfolding my legs and setting my iced tea down on the table next to the iPad.
Aiden kept his gaze on me and a soft smile on his face as I crossed to climb back into his lap. He grabbed my ass with both hands as I captured his bottom lip between my teeth, playfully.
“I wouldn’t mind being worn out,” he whispered against my kisses. “Wrung out … just … without thought … for a little while.”
“I’m happy to oblige,” I murmured, wiggling off him and stepping back.
He groaned. But his feigned dissatisfaction was quickly quashed as I undid my dress, slipping it from my shoulders. Then, clad only in my lace thong, I crossed into the kitchen, teasing over my shoulder, “You said something about the kitchen table?”
Aiden was on his feet and after me without another breath. Without another word. And, hopefully, without another thought of his father’s machinations.