Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) (9 page)

“Oh, yeah?” I inquired in suggestive tones. “I thought you showed me that last night.”

“Very funny. Seriously, get into some clothes. We can shower later.”

I didn’t miss the “we” in that sentence and wondered if I was finally going to find out whether that big shower really did work well for two. But I figured I could leave that for now, so I retrieved my clothes from where I’d tossed them over a chair last night, right before collapsing into bed, and climbed back into them. Connor did the same, putting on his underwear and jeans, then a T-shirt and sweater. He pulled on his socks and shoes, heavy quasi-hiking boots similar to what I’d seen Damon wearing a few days earlier, while I slid into my riding boots.

“Come on,” Connor said, and I followed him downstairs, running my fingers through my hair and wishing I had an elastic band to pull it back. It felt like a snarled mess.

We paused at the coat closet. He reached in and handed me a beautiful knee-length wool coat in a deep shade of green. Stuffed into the pockets were a pair of flannel-lined black leather gloves. I gave him a questioning look.

“Well, we kind of hoped you wouldn’t be stuck in here indefinitely. Marie picked that out when she was buying some other things for you. Does it fit okay?”

“It’s perfect,” I said, slipping it on and buttoning it up.

At the same time he was getting into his charcoal-gray peacoat. “Good. Let’s go.”

He opened the front door, and I followed him into the hallway, eyeing my surroundings with interest. After all, when I was brought here, I’d been blindfolded and hadn’t seen anything of the place except the interior of Connor’s apartment. The hallway was a short one, with a door directly opposite the one we exited now, and then a staircase leading down. The floor was wood, the walls brick. And it was cold in here, much colder than inside the apartment, which led me to believe that no one bothered to heat the interior corridor.

“What’s over there?” I asked, pointing at the door across the landing. “Another apartment?”

“Well, it was, but I bought the whole building, with the gallery and both apartments. I use that one for my studio now.”

As I pondered that, we went down the stairs to the ground floor of the building, and through another short hallway that opened directly outside. As soon as Connor opened the door, a gust of freezing air hit my face, and I blinked, then quickly pulled the gloves out of my coat pockets and pulled them on.

Connor didn’t miss much. He saw what I was doing, and remarked, “A little colder than Jerome?”

“Just a little,” I replied, trying to keep my teeth from chattering and only partially succeeding. Actually, I was sort of shocked by how much colder it was here, considering that Jerome in December wasn’t exactly sunny Palm Beach, either. But this was the kind of cold that actually made your teeth hurt. I wondered what the temperature was.

“I’ll get the heater going once we’re in the car. It’s just over here.”

I noticed that an alley backed up to the brick building, and behind the building were a few spots with little “reserved” signs in front of them. In one of those parking spaces was a shiny dark green Toyota FJ Cruiser, the kind of vehicle I’d secretly coveted for a few years, even though I’d known it was silly to want a second vehicle when my Aunt Rachel and I did perfectly well sharing the Jeep.

Connor pulled out his keys and used the remote to unlock it, while I trailed after him and then went over to the passenger side. I couldn’t help wondering how much money the Wilcoxes really had. Sure, we McAllisters were definitely comfortable, but we didn’t flaunt our wealth. After seeing Damon’s Range Rover, and noting the way Connor didn’t seem to particularly care how much things cost, I had to think that they were doing okay. More than okay, actually.

I waited until we were both inside and he’d gotten the engine going and the heater running before I asked, “Just how rich are you?”

He let out a sound that almost sounded like a snort. “Whoa. Are you after me for my money, Angela?”

I shot him a pained look.

“We do all right,” he replied as he backed the SUV out of its parking spot and then headed down the alley. Just after that we turned onto a one-way street, and then another, until we were out on the main road.

The side streets hadn’t been plowed yet, and I noticed Connor had engaged the four-wheel drive and then kept it slow.

We cut through an area of mixed residences and small businesses, then turned onto Highway 180. Well, it called itself a highway, but as with 89A back in Jerome, it was really a two-lane road. Here there were heaps of snow piled up along the sidewalks, and I couldn’t help pitying the poor snow plow drivers who had to get up at o’dark-thirty on Christmas morning to make sure the streets were clear. At that point we were heading out of the town, toward the snowy peaks to the north and west of Flagstaff proper. I wondered where we were going, and hoped Connor wasn’t planning to take me cross-country skiing or something.

“Just all right?” I pressed.

Although the highway was plowed, it was still slick and treacherous. He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he replied, “What does it matter?”

“I’m just curious. I mean, the McAllisters are certainly comfortable, but we’re not riding around in brand-new Range Rovers, either. Just part of the whole flying-under-the-radar thing.”

“Let’s just say we have a different attitude about that.” He paused at a stop sign, then turned right. Here, the road wasn’t plowed, and we were back in four-wheel drive as we headed up the steep, narrow lane. “If people in our clan have the power of seeing, then we don’t have a problem with using that power to…help things out a little.”

Which I supposed was his way of saying that there were people in his clan who could see the future and use that knowledge to play the stock market or bet on horses or whatever it took to generate some extra income. One could say it was a victimless crime — I mean, I sure wasn’t going to shed any tears over someone taking advantage of a few Wall Street types — but that just wasn’t how we McAllisters did things.

Oh, well, Dorothy, you’re not in Jerome anymore
. I shrugged and said only, “Well, it seems to be working for you.”

He grinned. “What, no lecture on the immorality of us Wilcoxes using our powers for selfish gain? You must be tired.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and turned to look out the window. Dark pine forest surrounded us now, the branches of the trees only lightly dusted with snow, but the ground beneath them was obscured by what looked like at least two feet of drifts.

The badly paved lane gave way to…nothing. Well, I supposed in the summer it was probably gravel, or maybe even dirt, but right now we were just plowing our way across virgin snow. I gripped what Sydney liked to call the “Jesus handle” on the roof of the SUV and hoped that Connor knew what he was doing.

To my relief, he stopped the Cruiser a minute or so later. “I’ll come around and open the door for you,” he said. “The footing can be a little tricky.”

I didn’t protest. The last thing I wanted was to climb out of the SUV and slip and slide down the mountain. Or hill, I corrected myself; off to my left I could see the top of Humphreys Peak, probably several thousand feet above where we were, wisps of cloud sitting on it like a halo, and so I knew we weren’t on a mountaintop. Not technically, anyway.

Snow crunched as Connor came around the back of the vehicle, then paused on my side and opened the door. “Here you go,” he told me, reaching up to take my hand and help me down to the ground.

Those rubber-soled boots had been more a prescient purchase than I’d imagined. Even with his strong fingers holding mine so I wouldn’t lose my footing, I could still feel my feet begin to slide and then catch as the treads on my boots finally gained a purchase. I clung to him as we walked a few paces away from the Cruiser, then asked, “So what are we doing here, exactly?”

“Look,” he said, and used his free arm to make an expansive gesture toward the pine woods around us, the looming San Francisco Peaks, the glistening snow banks. Here, you would never think you were close to a city of sixty thousand. We might have been the only two people in the world.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. Funny — I never thought I’d use that word to describe the home of the Wilcox clan, but it was true. This didn’t look like Mordor at all.

“I like to come up here to get away from things. Walking in the woods helps to clear my head. Down there” — he jerked a thumb somewhere to the south and east — “things can intrude too much. But up here I don’t have to think about being a Wilcox or the
primus
’s brother or any of that. I guess that’s why I wanted you to come up here with me. Because whatever comes next, remember that it’s only a small part of the picture.”

Following his gaze, I looked at the ponderosa pines looming around us, the purple-indigo of the mountains, the aching blue of the sky. There were the faintest, thinnest streaks of clouds painted against that sky, like the traceries in a stained-glass window, and somehow I felt as if I stood in a cathedral, hushed and quiet and holy.

Movement caught my eye, and I held my breath. From within a stand of pine a large mule deer buck stepped forth, then paused. His antlers were sharp and dark against the snow-covered branches around him. For the longest moment he stood there, black eyes fixed on Connor and me. Then he dipped his head, as if acknowledging us, before turning and heading back into the forest.

Connor’s gloved fingers tightened around mine. He was silent for a few seconds, watching the spot in the trees where the buck had disappeared. At last he expelled a breath, which wisped up into the frigid air, then said,“Well, it appears as if the lord of the forest has given us his blessing.”

“I - I guess so.”

He bent and kissed me, his mouth warm even though the air was bitterly cold. “I don’t think there’s any way to top that. Besides, your lips are starting to look a little blue. I’d better get you back and get some breakfast inside you.”

Breakfast sounded wonderful. Christmas dinner had been a very long time ago. “Are you cooking for me?”

“Since I don’t want to poison you, no. I’ll take you someplace that makes the best omelettes you’ve ever had.”

“And they’re open on Christmas?” I asked. Somehow I found that hard to believe.

“Three hundred and sixty-five days a year,” he replied as he opened the car door for me, then helped me in.

My stomach growled, and in that moment I didn’t really care that I had snarled hair and no makeup on and was wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before. “Sounds fabulous.”

W
ell
, it wasn’t exactly fabulous, just a little diner off Highway 180 on the way back to town, but they were open, and the food was good — although I wasn’t quite ready to admit that their omelettes might be just as good as Aunt Rachel’s — and nobody seemed to give a damn what I looked like. The waitress gave Connor a hearty hello and took our orders promptly, and returned even more quickly with some much-needed coffee.

I waited until she was gone, then asked quietly, “Does she know?”

He seemed to guess right away what I was really asking. “No. This place isn’t a Wilcox hangout. My friend Darren brought a group of us here once when we were going out to do some cross-country skiing, and I’ve been coming back ever since. Sometimes it’s nice to be in a place where no one knows much about you.”

That made a lot of sense. Being the brother of the
primus
— especially when that
primus
was Damon Wilcox — couldn’t have been too easy. Anonymity had its attractions.

“Okay,” I said. “Then it looks like it’s back to the weather for a convenient topic of conversation.”

He shook his head, then replied in resigned tones, “If you must.”

I laughed. He’d been right — it did feel good to be away and out, someplace where no one knew who you were or what crazy circumstances had brought you there.

Too bad I knew that sensation of ease couldn’t possibly last.

A
fter breakfast
we went back to the apartment. By then it was nearly ten, but we still had plenty of time; apparently the potluck didn’t start until two. And I could tell exactly what Connor had in mind when he pulled off his sweater and T-shirt, then asked, “Ready for a shower?”

Without waiting for a reply, he undid the buttons on my cardigan and eased it off my shoulders, then drew my camisole over my head. Already heat was beginning to swirl through me in anticipation of him touching me once again. Goddess knows I wanted to touch him as well, draw my fingers over that smooth skin of his so I could feel the muscles beneath, then take him in my hands and feel his rock-hard arousal.

“Almost as ready as you,” I replied, and brushed my fingertips against the bulge in his boxer-briefs, then laughed as he gasped. He reached for me, but I slipped out of his grasp and ran up the stairs, with him only a pace or two behind.

We burst into the bathroom, and he caught me and pulled me against him, kissing my mouth, my neck, moving down to my breast. Impatiently, he grappled with the hooks on the back of my bra, then flung it away in the general direction of the clothes hamper. His hands moved over my naked breasts, squeezing the nipples ever so slightly.

I gasped. “I thought we were taking a shower,” I told him, words too breathless to constitute a true rebuke.

“I’m getting to it.” He released my nipples and tucked his thumbs in the waistband of my panties, yanking them down and tossing them to land on top of my discarded bra.

Not to be outdone, I did the same with his boxer-briefs, although a little more gently, easing them over the erection straining the fabric.

“Now we shower,” he said, and turned away from me so he could get the water going.

I already knew it heated up fast here, much faster than back in Aunt Rachel’s apartment or the house I now owned, so when he picked me up a few seconds later and carried me into the shower stall, at least I didn’t have to worry about getting hit by a blast of freezing water. No, it was already hot, steam beginning to curl up toward the ceiling.

He grabbed the bottle of shampoo and poured some into the palm of his hand, then began working it into my hair. Although I’d had other people wash my hair before — most notably Sydney, who tended to use me as her guinea pig when it came to practicing cosmetology techniques — never before had it felt so completely sensuous. His powerful hands kneaded into my scalp, and I closed my eyes, almost moaning at the contact.

“Your turn,” I said, once he lifted his hands away and I had rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. I put some in the palms of my hands and reached up to massage it through his heavy locks. His eyes closed, and I watched as the water caught in his long lashes and glittered there like diamonds. It was a reach for me, since he was a good deal taller than I, but I didn’t mind too much — I stood close enough that my breasts brushed against his chest, and he let out a groan.

“Okay, enough of that,” he growled, and tipped his head back so he could wash away the shampoo.

Then he was reaching for me, mouth finding mine. With one hand I took hold of him, felt how hard he was, how ready. I stroked up, and down, and he moaned. After what he had done for me the night before, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to go down to my knees on the tiled floor, to touch my tongue to his tip as the water sluiced over me. He gasped, and I pulled him into my mouth, sucking on him, taking in as much as I could manage, then slowly slid back down to his tip before moving upward again.

“I was right,” he gasped. “You McAllisters are trying to kill me.”

In response, I moved my tongue down the length of his shaft and tried not to giggle.

“Evil, evil witch.” And he pulled me off him, lifting me up so that suddenly my back was against the tiled wall of the shower stall and he was pushing up against me, almost sliding in. Then he stopped. “Shit.”

“What?” I gasped.

“Should’ve brought a condom in here with me.”

Logically, I knew that was the best way to handle this. But I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want anything to ruin this moment. “It’s all right,” I told him. “I have a spell that’ll handle it. The pregnancy thing, I mean. As for the rest of it — ” I paused. “I know I’m not your first. But you’ve always been safe, right?”

“Always,” he said at once. “Even when they didn’t want to. I figured my life was complicated enough.”

“Then we’re fine.” I shut my eyes, murmuring inwardly,
Blessed Goddess, now is not the time. Bestow your blessings elsewhere.
As Aunt Rachel had said, simple. But it was effective…at least, that was what she had told me. Tiny Jerome would have been completely overrun with McAllisters if we hadn’t been mindful of such things. And sometimes, the reason for using the contraceptive spell was even more serious than that. For all her other strengths, Great-Aunt Ruby did not fare well in childbirth, and made sure to only have her two sons.

“We’re more than fine,” Connor said, and kissed me on the mouth, tongue touching mine, even as I felt him push against me, thrust inside, filling me once more. I wrapped my legs around his narrow hips and moved with him, the sensation of him being within me even more delicious now that we had nothing separating us. It was only flesh to flesh, Connor and Angela, the heat and the need building, building until we cried out as one, our bodies crashing through the climax at the same time. I felt him stagger, but then his grip on me tightened, still holding me in place, until the last ripples of the orgasm faded away.

We were both silent for a minute, breathing heavily. Then he smiled and pulled away from me before lowering me ever so gently to the shower floor. His chest moved up and down, glinting as the hot water still fell upon it, but he seemed to recover himself and shot me a wicked grin.

“Conditioner?” he asked, reaching for the bottle.

A
few hours
later we were back in the FJ, heading out of the downtown section of Flagstaff and up toward the hills, going in the same direction we had that morning, although we passed the turn-off that had led up into the woods and continued to follow the road as it wound through the rolling landscape on its way out of town. By then there were more people on the highway — possibly heading to their own holiday parties. However, I sort of doubted most of them were going to the kind of get-together that lay at the end of our route.

I don’t know if I was fidgeting or what, but Connor lifted one hand briefly from the steering wheel to give my fingers a reassuring squeeze before redirecting his attention to the icy road. “It’ll be fine,” he said. A quick glance over at me, and he added, “You’re beautiful.”

Despite my nerves, which felt as if they had all been twisted into a knot and then dumped somewhere in my stomach, I had to smile. After we’d emerged from the shower, laughing and tingling, I’d gotten serious as soon as I contemplated having to face a horde of Wilcoxes. Guessing my mood, Connor had left me to primp, a process that took much longer than it normally would. I didn’t have much to work with, my wardrobe here consisting of five camisoles, three pairs of jeans, and three sweaters. I had to recycle one of the sweaters I’d worn over the weekend, but I had to hope it would be enough. Then of course I berated myself for caring what the Wilcox clan might think of me. It seemed I couldn’t win either way.

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this potluck thing,” I told him, trying to keep my tone light even as I stared out the window at the snowy woods passing by and wondered how far out of Flagstaff proper Damon lived. The houses were set far apart here, and getting bigger. It looked as if the Wilcox
primus
lived in what Sydney liked to refer to as “Richie-Rich Land.”

“It got started back during World War Two, from what I’ve heard,” Connor said. “The Wilcoxes actually marry civilians a good bit, and I guess one of the wives got this idea that everyone should do more together as a family. There was some rationing during the war, so they decided to pool their resources and make it easier on everyone that way. And the tradition just sort of kept up after that.”

That all sounded perfectly pleasant and innocuous…or would if you didn’t know anything about the Wilcoxes and their history. However, what Connor had just related to me did jibe with what Margot Emory had revealed during our talk, that the Wilcox clan, having a smaller pool of family members to work with in the beginning, often married civilians to keep themselves from getting too inbred. I wondered how they selected these people. Did they truly care for them, or simply choose those who were attractive, intelligent, resourceful…whatever qualities might do best to improve their “breed”?

It was a question I decided I really didn’t want to ask Connor. Not when I was about to meet a bunch of people who were the result of such matches, anyway.

We turned off the “highway” and onto a smaller lane that curved around past some eye-popping mansions, then pulled into a wooded drive already choked with cars. Apparently even here the clan was following protocol, though, since there was still room to maneuver, and a choice spot left open right in front of the multi-bayed garage. The house itself was massive and sprawling, its peaked roofs heavy with snow.

I stared at it, wide-eyed. “Okay, and no one thinks it’s odd that a college professor lives in a place like this? I mean, I know they make a little more than minimum wage, but this looks like something from one of those shows on HGTV where they give you tours of celebrity houses. My friend Sydney loves those.”

A shrug as he turned off the engine. “We just say it was our father’s investments. He owned property all over town, so no one thinks it’s that strange.”

“It still seems like a lot of house for just one person,” I replied, then unfastened my seatbelt.

He shot me an unreadable look. “Well, he hadn’t really planned to be living here alone.”

No, I suppose he hadn’t. I realized then that this was where Damon Wilcox would have brought me, if he’d succeeded in his mad plan and actually forced a consort bond upon me.

For a long moment, I said nothing, only stared at the house. Connor reached out and took my hand in his. “You don’t — don’t regret anything, do you?”

At first I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. Then I realized he was uncertain, was wondering if some part of me wouldn’t have rather been here in this mansion than in his apartment, which, while very nice, was an order of magnitude removed from this place. “Goddess, no!” I replied with such vehemence that he startled a bit. “I would rather be stuck in a drafty single-wide with you than be here with your brother.”

“Well,” he said, sending me a relieved grin, “I wouldn’t exactly call my apartment a single-wide.”

“No, of course not. I love your apartment. It’s cozy and warm, and just right. Besides,” I added, recalling the open countryside we’d just driven through, “I have a feeling you’d have to go a lot farther to get some decent tapas in this place.”

He actually laughed at that. “You’re right. I can’t guarantee you tapas today, but we usually put on a pretty good spread. So let’s go. I’m hungry…we used up all that breakfast.”

That we did. I’d actually begun to feel a bit peckish right before we left the apartment, although now my appetite seemed to have taken a back seat to nerves. “Okay,” I said reluctantly. I’d agreed to this, so sitting in the car and not moving at this point was a little silly. The time for protests was long past.

I wrapped my fingers around the door handle, opened it, and got out. The biting air was all around me, although a little more bearable now, since the sun had been up for hours, and the temperature had warmed a bit. Most of the snow had already melted off the tree branches, although it was still thick on the ground.

Connor paused at the hatch to the Cruiser’s cargo compartment and got out the two bottles of wine we were contributing to the potluck. His cousin Marie, whoever she was, had supposedly already brought up the tamales I’d made, but at least this way we weren’t walking in empty-handed. Then he came up to me and took my hand with his free one.

“Ready?”

I nodded. No, I wasn’t ready — talk about walking into the lion’s den — but I certainly couldn’t back out now.

He squeezed my fingers. “It’ll be fine. Like I said, we don’t bite…much.”

Even in the freezing air, I could feel my cheeks flush. I’d done my best to arrange my hair so it covered some of the more obvious bite marks on my neck, but they were still there. The little supply of makeup I’d been given hadn’t included foundation or cover-up; I didn’t know if that was a vote of confidence for the quality of my complexion, or that whoever had been buying the stuff didn’t trust themselves to get me a correct match. Either way, I’d been pretty limited in what I could do to make it look as if Connor and I hadn’t spent the last eighteen hours jumping one another’s bones.

I’d asked him if he could do anything about it, just a little camouflage spell or something, but he’d shaken his head. “No, I can only alter my own appearance. I can’t do anything about those.” And he’d reached out to brush his fingers against the smudged-looking bruises on the side of my neck.

Just that light touch was enough to ignite the fire within me once more, but somehow I’d managed to push it away. I certainly didn’t have time for another shower at that point, and I was already nervous enough about facing the Wilcox clan without walking into Damon Wilcox’s house reeking of sex.

Now I saw that someone had swept the snow off the walk leading to that house, so the footing wasn’t as treacherous as I’d feared. I still clung to Connor’s hand, just to be safe. Or maybe that was just me trying to get whatever reassurance I could.

The oversized door had an equally oversized pine wreath, complete with red bow, hanging from it. I wondered if Damon himself had put it there, or whether one of his relatives had hung it to give the place a more festive look. Somehow I just couldn’t imagine Damon Wilcox being the cheery holiday-decorating type. Then again, I never could have imagined him hosting a potluck, either.