In the Company of Witches (46 page)

Raina hugged them all to her fiercely. Her babies were growing up, but not in the bad way for sex demons. Maybe her magic was helping them with that. The demolished fountain had been cleaned up, other sculpture pieces placed on the broken portions to make it look like a decorated ancient ruin, rather than the aftermath of a fight. She might just leave it that way for a while.

“Time for her to get some rest,” Mikhael told them firmly, nudging Gina gently out of his path as he bent down, picked her up again. She could walk, but from his expression, she decided she’d wait to argue with him in private. Plus, it was three levels of stairs.

When they reached her room, she glanced toward the balcony, where Cathair was nested in leaves, shredded cardboard and down, arranged inside the cup of a thick
Baywatch
beach towel and a ragged box top. The ragged top suggested Cathair had added the shredded cardboard pieces to his nest. “Ramona’s doing?” Raina asked.

“She said he won’t be up to perching for a few days.” In fact, the raven had his head under his wing, snoozing deep.

“I didn’t think ravens could snore.”

“Well, he’s a badass. Taking out eagles and all.”

“Ruby told me what you did.” Her gaze turned to him. “You shouldn’t have…but I’m glad you did. He means a lot to me.”

“I know. Maybe next time, both he and his mistress will be a little less badass, live to fight another day. Let someone else do their fighting for them.”

“You have any recommendations on that? My last protector got knocked out by lawn ornamentation. I need someone tougher.”

“Keep it up,” he warned. “You won’t always be recuperating.”

She smiled, closed her eyes. But her hand tightened on him and she couldn’t help the tremor that ran through her arm. It was too close, all of it. Sensing it, he slid into the bed with her, holding her against his body. The shaking became worse, an ache that crashed over her, all of it coming together in one wave now that she was safe in her room, safe with him.

She was making noises against his chest that made her heart feel as if it were being shredded like that cardboard. Goddess, she wished she could cry.

“I’m here,” he murmured. “I’m here, Raina. I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. Sshh. You’re breaking my heart. Please stop.”

She nodded against him but had to keep on for a while, until she exhausted herself. When she slowed down, he was rocking her. She liked the fact he didn’t try to make her talk, didn’t talk much himself. It made things easier, less complicated.

“Sleep, baby. When you wake, I’m going to show you an entirely different side of Hell. A much better one.”

She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for her to return to the Underworld anytime this century, even if there was a part that looked like Wonka’s chocolate factory. She didn’t have the energy to argue, though. Ramona had slipped her one of those sleep tonics, saying it would make the trip easier. Plus she had more bruises and healing cuts than the loser of a prize fight. Only she’d won. In a lot of different ways. She hoped.

She slipped off into dreams with a vague protest. She felt his lips curve against her temple. That was all right. They weren’t going to be able to tell her what to do forever. She’d let it go. For now.

S
INCE SHE’D BEEN WRAPPED UP IN SOMETHING LIKE A
potato bag on her last trip into the Underworld, she wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but it turned out that Mikhael didn’t take her down a long bumpy tunnel, through an ominous gateway or across the River Styx. He simply flew through the sky; then there was a shimmer of energy over them and they were somewhere else entirely. Belowground.

Even trusting Mikhael, she was tense, but when they materialized, she was greeted by an image that was more out of Arthurian legend than Faustian. A crystal cave. Letting go of his hand, she slid her hand along walls glittering with stones the colors of flame, opal and fiery topaz. There were stalactites and stalagmites with rainbows of earthen colors. It was breathtaking. Light came from somewhere, a random dance of starlight in the room.

“The crystals have a variety of magical properties, and they’re organic. Periodically they’re harvested, used for different energy work, here and above.”

There was heat here, but a heat that comforted and reassured, not the kind that burned flesh. When she put her hand to that burn on her throat, his overlaid it. He pressed his body up against her, providing reassurance, comfort.

“It’s all right.” She swallowed. “It’s a reminder that I beat her.”

“You had some help.”

“A little bit.” Then her voice softened, remembering Isaac. “A lot, actually.”

He slid his arm around her waist. “He’s in the Underworld now, going through Redemption. Tough, but not anywhere near as punitive as what he was originally facing, thanks to his sacrifice for you. You affected him, made him want to be something different. He’ll have another chance, another life. I misjudged him.”

“No, you didn’t. But he overcame what he was, in a moment when it really mattered. I’ll pray for him.”

“Come with me.” Taking her hand, he guided her onward, out of that chamber and through a couple more like it, and then into a cavern that opened up wide and tall, where the stalagmites and stalactites met like the pillars of an ancient temple. They were a clear quartz crystal, a constant flow of water down their surface making them glisten.

Water dripped from the walls as well, then down across the ground, over flat layered rocks and into a hot spring. Turning in a circle, taking in all angles of the chamber, something stirred deep inside Raina. That odd ache was in her throat, but there was something different about it. As she moved forward, Mikhael released her hand. She felt him watching her as she reached out, touched the walls.

She gasped, feeling a reaction to it, a reaction she’d never had before. When she touched her face, she came away with wetness. She turned to face Mikhael, emotions rolling through her chest, uncertain, vulnerable.

“This is where the tears of the tearless witches go,” he said softly. He came to her, captured one as it came from her eye. “In this chamber, a tearless witch may cry.”

She swallowed, gazed up at him. “Why?”

“Because I want to give you things no one else has. Now and always. I want you to heal from those things that have been done to you, to know that you can give your heart to me and I’ll take care of it. I never want to cause a single tear of yours to come to this place from you.”

She moved into his arms as those tears flowed. It was like it had been in her attic room, before she slept, only now it was even more powerful, the waves getting stronger and stronger. But it was okay. For the first time in her life, she experienced the catharsis of female weeping, of crying over her lost childhood, the things she’d seen done to her parents, to others of her kind. She cried for nearly losing Cathair, for what Mikhael and her friends had done for her.

And she cried for every time she’d watched
Titanic
, and Rose had told Jack she’d never let go. As well as when she’d told him she believed him innocent of stealing the blue diamond, not because she’d been given proof, but because she’d believed in him in her heart, above everything and everyone else.

Mikhael sat down on a rock near the edge of the pool, keeping her against his chest. While she cried, he patiently slid off her shoes and his own so they could put their feet into the salt water, and then he kept holding her until she ran out. For a long time, he didn’t say anything, just let her gaze into that multifaceted pool, at all the tears of tearless witches. She wondered what they wished they could cry about.

Like the crystal caves, there was no evidence of a light source, but a dim glow made the water sparkle.

“Can we swim in it?” she asked at last.

“Only if you’re naked. There are strict rules.”

She smiled. “I would never doubt the word of a Dark Guardian, but since it’s you…I think you’re full of it, Mikhael Roman.”

Nevertheless, she pushed away from him, rose and pulled her dress over her head, letting it drop to the side. She was wearing nothing under it, because he’d told her to wear only the velvet dress that clung to her curves. She liked pleasing him, liked the way he reacted when she did as he commanded. It made her react as well.

Stepping into the water, she followed the layered rock steps until the water lapped at her ribs, just under her breasts. Turning, she dropped beneath the water’s surface, not at all surprised when he touched her, drew her up. He was naked, too.

“I think only witches are allowed in the tearless witch pool.”

“Call a lifeguard.”

She rested her hands on his hips, splaying her fingers over all the delicious muscle on his abdomen and chest until she reached his shoulders. When his fingers tangled in her heavy wet hair, she tilted her head at the pressure he exercised upon it, holding her captive as he bent and suckled the tears of witches off her throat.

“Will you say it again?” she whispered.

“What?” He murmured it against her skin.

“What you said…when you caught me.”

He nodded against her collarbone, kept kissing her, making his way down to her breast. Tendrils of lust unfurled in lazy pleasure everywhere he touched, but she managed to give him a push.

“What?” he asked. “You meant now?”

This time she slipped from his grasp in truth, giving him a splash directly in the face. She evaded him for a solid three seconds before he caught her. He lifted her up against him, guiding her thighs around his hips, his arm banding around her back as he stroked into a deeper part of the pool, where her feet couldn’t touch but his could, where she depended on him to keep her above the water. Or take her under, as their desire might dictate.

His cock slid against her sex. “Put me inside you,” he said, low. “I want to feel your hands.”

When she gave his testicles a little scrape with her nails, he bit her neck in response. She slid her fingers over him, her knuckles brushing her mound as she adjusted and he helped, shifting so she could angle him into her. The moment she was in the right position, he took over, tightening his arm around her back and hips, closing the distance and sliding in deep.

She hummed at the fullness, the near-painful stretch swiftly replaced with something else. He kissed her forever, taking a nip at her tongue as he withdrew, pushed back in.

He could get her aroused with only a look, but as hard as he was, as insistent, she was aware she could do the same, with no more than a lazy, hip-swinging walk into the water.

“Mikhael…please.”

He lifted his head, those intriguing eyes studying her. So much unknown about him, but she had a feeling he’d open that treasure room for her now and again, whenever she desired, because she and she alone had that key. His mouth curved, and she liked the way it looked. It was pretty damn close to a smile. He had a sadistic side, but this wasn’t that. It wasn’t the torment of making her beg that turned him on. It was the fact that she would do it for him, that she trusted him with that side of herself. It flat-out turned him on when she begged, driven by raw need, lust…love.

“Please.” She curved her arms around his shoulders, bringing her breasts up against his chest, pressing as close to him as she could get, one body, one heart, one shared soul. “Please. Tell me. I’m yours.”

He shuddered. Exultation swept her, the knowledge that this ownership went two ways and would grow deeper and more binding with every passing moment.

“I love you, Raina. Always and forever. You have my heart. You’ll have it long after you’re gone and I’ve grieved you thousands of years.”

The thought of him grieving made her heart hurt, and she locked her hands around his neck, pulling herself up to kiss him back fiercely. “I’ll be such a pain in your ass, you’ll be happy to be rid of me.”

He touched her face, not smiling. Not saying anything. So she caught his hand, held it tightly. “I’ll never be gone,” she promised. “If Isaac can have another life, then so can I. I’ll come back to you again and again.”

When she saw raw emotion in those eyes, her heart cracked open entirely, giving him everything. “I love you, Mikhael. Always and forever. Through every life, now until eternity.”

He shifted his hand to her nape, thrust, withdrew, took himself into her deep and slow, making her thighs tremble. She squeezed down on him, giving as good as she was getting, and was rewarded by the quiver in those powerful hands.

“Come with me,” she said. “Together.”

The climax made the water ripple all around them. Their cries echoed throughout the chamber, surrounding and reinforcing the pledges they’d made here. The pleasure of it brought tears to her eyes again. Unashamed, she baptized his shoulders with them, until he pulled her head back and kissed every one of them away.

T
HEY LAY ON THAT FLAT SERIES OF STEPS, HALF IN AND
half out of the pool, the water lapping along their hips as she curved into the side of his body. He was stroking her hair.

Raina pressed a kiss into his chest, played with the silken line down his abdomen. She wanted to swim some more, so she sat up, stretched, then stroked off into the water. It was shaped like a figure eight, so she made a couple passes, pausing under a waterfall to let the warm, salty water splash over her face, her breasts, before stroking his way again.

He was up on his elbows, watching her. He made quite a picture, sprawled out like that. His cock was stirring again, a wonderfully promising reaction. She didn’t want to leave here until they’d done this at least two more times. After all, the law of three was very important to witches.

“I just had a thought.”

“I bet.” She gave him a sultry look. “Want to come bring that impressive thought over here?”

“Nymphomaniac.”

“Sex demon,” she corrected.

“Same thing.” But he slid fully into the water, lazy and dangerous as a crocodile. She held her ground until he was there in front of her, just his head above the surface of the water, for he stayed on his knees so he could wrap his arms around her hips.