The smoke curling off the sage stick grew thicker as it rose between them, and then, out of the smoke, came the shape of a raven. The image of the raven swirled and became distorted, and out of the distortion rose a more human shape, transforming from a smoke-created image into a spirit, someone so real, you could almost touch him.
“Hey, Tam, did you ever look at your cards again?” the apparition asked, by way of introduction, as if they’d recently had a conversation.
How often did she call this guy up? The spirit eyed Cain with a smirk that the demon didn’t particularly care for.
Tam opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “Hey, Henry. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“You mean up here in Stepford Heaven?”
Tam giggled and Cain had the odd urge to kill someone that was already dead. She seemed so relaxed around this Henry guy, and Cain knew that even if it wasn’t like that now, at one point in time, they’d been lovers. He could just tell these things. He growled.
The witch arched a brow.
“Looks like your boyfriend is getting a bit territorial over here,” Henry said.
“I’m not her boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
The indignant rebuttals came out of the two of them simultaneously, but the therian just chuckled. “Young love,” he said with a sigh. Then he laughed. “Or is that an inappropriate description for two people of your advanced ages?”
Cain was ready to let go of Tam’s hands to make the guy disappear. Worse than someone he might have to compete with was someone who could see things a bit too clearly. Not love, just that something was brewing. It was easy for people to confuse sex with love. He saw it all the time. Powerful attraction and love weren’t the same thing. He knew it, and he assumed Tam knew it. Where that left them, he wasn’t sure, but he was ready to break the connection and end the séance before it had really begun if it meant he wouldn’t have to keep thinking about it.
The witch held on tighter and shot him a glare. “No, I haven’t looked at my cards again,” she said, turning her attention back to Henry. “My stuff has been locked up. But we’ve got something more important to talk about. I’m sure you know Jack is on the hunt again. He came to me in a dream a little while ago. I was wondering if you could sense the connection, and if so, if you could help us find him.”
The apparition closed his eyes, seeming to be in deep concentration. When he opened them, he said, “The connection is thinning, but it’s there. I can try to trace it and see what I can find out from there. Do you want to call me back here tomorrow night for the report?”
“Yes, thank you,” Tam said.
Henry looked at Cain in an assessing way that made the demon’s skin crawl, then he looked back at Tam and smiled. “You’ve got your tools back now, right?”
The uncertain way she looked at Cain made him feel guilty for some reason.
“Do I?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cain said, not looking at the spirit.
“Look at your cards again, and really listen to them this time.”
Tam let go of Cain’s hands and Henry disappeared. She put the sage stick out in the clay dish and Cain began to get up.
“Wait,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I need to take down the protective barrier first.” She closed her eyes again and whispered something, then opened them.
“That’s it?” It was less of a show than Cain expected, which made him leery of the whole situation.
“That’s it,” she said.
He ran a finger through the salt on the ground, smearing the circle. He didn’t feel any push-back.
“What? You don’t trust me?”
“You better hope for your own sake that I can,” he retorted, flashing the ring that protected him. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he was using a small piece of jewelry to protect himself from a girl. It wouldn’t do anything good for his reputation.
She gathered her things, making a convincing show of ignoring him.
“I hope you don’t think you’re leaving now,” he said, moving toward her, glad he hadn’t bothered with clothing. It made it easier to tempt her when her access was so easy. Now to get her out of those jeans. Annoyingly Anna and Luc had done her laundry, and she was back to wearing jeans instead of the clothing from the trunk. He much preferred her in the demon-concubine look. If she were his mate, he’d use her first power against her and make sure she wore what he wanted at all times. She wouldn’t be able to sneak off without his knowledge and change, seeing as it wouldn’t be possible for her to be solid or interact with physical things unless he was there touching her. He’d always liked that perk of the demon mating.
He grimaced, trying to dislodge the thought from his brain. Not about wardrobe, about mating. He wasn’t taking a mate. Why would he do such a ridiculous thing and give up his freedoms? Lonely or not, the mating ritual was irreversible. And if it had seemed like eternity alone, it really would be eternity together. At least now he had an option to end his loneliness. If he took a mate, he wouldn’t have the option to go back. On the surface, he realized such reasoning made him look crazy, but forever was a long time. He’d gotten the tiniest taste of it in his eight thousand years as a demon, and he knew that was only the beginning.
Tam dropped her bags. “Did you have something else in mind?” The tone in her voice made it clear she knew exactly what was on his mind. What was always on his mind.
He backed her against the wall of the cave. “You woke me from a nice dream. Then you had the audacity to stop me because you needed your energy for magic. I was very accommodating for you, I expect you’ll be accommodating for me.”
He smirked when his double entendre, complete with filthy mental pictures, hit their mark. She was lovely when she gasped and flushed like that. Her gaze drifted south and then back up again to his face quickly, as if caught with her hands in the cookie jar.
“Touch me,” Cain said. He gasped when her small hand closed around him, touching him like only a woman with over a thousand years experience could. He’d never understand the male fixation with a virgin. It didn’t matter who else had been there first. Every bit of experience was something you didn’t have to teach her.
Despite how good her hand felt on him, his mind was too distracted. He wondered if the thing about conserving her magical energy to do the séance was true. Maybe the amount of bells and whistles didn’t indicate how much energy one was using. Maybe it took a lot of energy and magical concentration to hold a spirit to this plane long enough for a chat. What did he know about the finer details of magic? He’d spent the better part of his existence avoiding it as much as possible, just as someone highly flammable would avoid fire.
She sagged against him as his mouth found hers. She was so warm and sweet and pliable this way. He needed less and less of the demon thrall to get her to this place. He suspected if he held out, she’d beg him to keep her, no matter what she said to the contrary. Her body told truths that her mind could only begin to imagine. And what would he do then? Laugh and kill her like he’d said?
He growled angrily against her mouth. If this game went on much longer, he’d lose because he’d keep her. And if he went down that road, how much farther before he lost his mind entirely and became so attached that what Luc had done with Anna started to look good?
He’d already had the urge to mix their blood to protect her, but from what? It only worked against demons, and no one in his dimension would dare defy him on this. No, it was simply a need to possess, and now that his immediate fears over her hexing him were gone, that need made itself known more loudly.
“Oww!” Tam said.
A second later he was on the ground across the cave, smarting from an energy ball burn. He rubbed his shoulder. They didn’t usually do the fighting thing after the foreplay thing had started. No matter what she said, she liked screwing him too much to interrupt their momentum.
“What the f**k did you bite me for?” She wiped the blood off her lip with the back of her hand, looking equal parts hurt and angry, like for a moment she had trusted him. At least within certain perimeters.
His eyes widened. No. His fangs had come out while he’d been focused elsewhere, but biting her wasn’t the thing that had him panicked. Somehow, he’d drawn his own blood as well. He felt the tiny sting of throbbing pain in his tongue. Had their blood mixed? It wasn’t the traditional ritual. Not like Luc had done.
Luc had taken a knife to Anna’s hand, then cut his and mixed them together good and proper. He hadn’t hesitated to protect her. Whether his brother had known it would initiate the first stages of the mating ritual, who could say? Surely what Cain had just done wasn’t enough for that level of psychic connection. Yes, he still had free will in all of this, and more or less, so did Tam even if it had worked, but it wasn’t something to cheer about. It was dangerous.
After all the trouble he’d gone through to protect himself from her, his instincts wanted the opposite. He stood and wiped the sand off him.
“If you think you can start hurting me, just because I can’t hex you...”
“It’s not like that, Tam. It was an accident.”
She must have seen the honesty in his eyes, because her anger deflated.
“I think I just marked you, though. As mine.”
Though he knew she wanted him, he expected a momentary flutter of revulsion to cross her face, but all he saw was peace. Then all at once it was gone, replaced by suspicion and a fear that seemed strange and incongruous on her face with regards to him.
“Is this your idea of a joke?”
“Am I laughing?” He came closer and licked the last bit of blood off her lip. Her blood was already inside him, and his in her, so there was no sense in leaving a mess behind. What was done was done, assuming it counted as a true mark.
“I’m not even sure I marked you. I just think it’s possible,” he clarified.