Lure of the Wicked (27 page)

“Fine,” she said, but pointed a finger at Jessie. “But if I’m going to be playing doctor for you, then you’re training with me.”

Jessie’s smile flipped crookedly. “I’m pretty good at the control stuff already, but if you want, I can sit in.”

“I don’t mean with witchcraft,” Naomi said, and knew she sounded smug. Silas’s features suddenly took on a worried glower. “I mean training, hand to hand, self-defense, cripple and run. You fight like a girl, princess.”

Jessie opened her mouth. Hesitated.

Silas slid both hands down her arms and murmured, “You don’t have to, but like I said, she was better than me.”

Jessie’s eyes narrowed as they met Naomi’s. “Deal.”

Success. Pounding the blond princess’ face into a mat would give her something else to think about.

The empty nights were something else, but if she was lucky, between magic control and bone-rattling beat-downs, she’d be too tired to do anything but sleep. Dreamlessly.

“We still need somewhere to start.” Naomi sighed, but at least her fingers uncurled. Tension leaked out of her, leaving behind a weariness—a soul-deep ache that hadn’t left her since Timeless.

Silas nodded. “Give me a few weeks. You ladies work on your lessons and whatever—”

Jessie snorted. “Way to make it sound like a knitting circle.”

“—and I’ll see what I can rustle up,” Silas said over her, but he drew her back into his arms. Rested his chin atop her blond hair with so much obvious devotion, Naomi had to look away. Her throat ached.

“Where?” Jessie asked.

“I might have a few ideas. It’ll take time.”

“Oh-kay,” Naomi drawled. And turned back to point at Silas, her eyes narrowed. “But I want something from you, too.”

“Name it,” he said, so seriously that for a moment the words froze on her tongue.

Damn it. The man had a way of getting around even her. Missionaries, once. Partners for life. Slowly her lips curved into a wide, wicked smile. “Anything?”

“Fuck me,” Silas muttered, and Matilda gave a crack of laughter. “Yes,” he said warily. “Anything.”

“Good. There’s a name of a guy who owes me. I want you to collect some things from him.”

“Things?” She tapped her lip with her index finger, and Silas’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Oh. Why not? Sure, I’ll get you your face full of metal again.”

They were all smiling, she noticed. Relaxing.

Maybe, just maybe, she could get there, too. Given enough time.

Enough space from the city that had almost claimed her life.

From the man who had tried his damnedest to get his fingers into her heart.

“Great.” She jerked her head back toward the house. “Let’s get started on this shit, then. The sooner we get all this out of the way, the sooner we go back and kick ass, right?”

“Right,” Jessie said, and took Silas’s hand in hers, fingers lacing tightly. They moved almost as one, Naomi realized, watching them go. Step by step, his longer stride shortened to match hers. He tipped his head over hers as Jessie said something up at him, and his chuckles resonated like thunder.

Beside her, Matilda sighed. “Love, huh?”

“I guess.”

The woman smiled. Crooked, rueful. “So.”

Naomi glanced at her. Narrowed her eyes at the gleam she found reflected in Matilda’s. That knowing fucking gleam again. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking of dismantling one of the wards I’ve got placed on this sanctuary,” she said, as conversational as if she was talking about the clouds.

Why the fuck would she care? Naomi turned back toward the path, shaking her head. She didn’t have the time, the patience, for this.

“Not the protective ones, of course,” Matilda said, following behind her. “Just the one that detects falsehoods spoken in the area.”

Falsehoods.

He was there, I was there. He’s a good lay, and that’s it.

Naomi stopped so suddenly, she half expected the woman to collide into her back. That she didn’t told Naomi everything she needed to know. She spun, fists tight, murder in her voice as she warned, “You stay the hell out of my life.”

The woman smiled. Sad. “I can’t, my dear. You’re in my home. You’re part of this—” One hand swept across the foliage, the bay. Sanctuary. “And for reasons I know I’ll learn someday, Silas truly admires you.”

Tears clogged her throat. Burned her eyes. She swallowed hard. “Phin Clarke,” she said, every word strained through a crack in her heart that she didn’t dare acknowledge, “belongs topside. That’s his life. It’s where his grieving mother is, it’s where his friends are. It’s where his money is. He can rebuild his spa and his life and mourn in peace.
That’s
what matters.”

Matilda nodded. Slowly. “I understand what you’re saying. And,” she added quietly, “what you’re not. I’ll respect your request, Naomi West, and leave you only with this piece of advice.”

“Can I stop you?”

Matilda’s smile gentled. “The ache never really goes away. But it eases, with time. I’ll try to keep your mind busy.”

The tears threatened to overwhelm her as Naomi nodded curtly. “Thank you,” she managed.

Matilda passed her, pausing only long enough to lay a wrinkled hand over Naomi’s chest. Just over her heart. “I’ll give you some time to settle. We’ll see you back inside when you’re ready.”

As the witch walked away, Naomi stared at the obsidian flagstone beneath the sole of one boot. A symbol was etched into it, something she supposed was witchy. But even if she knew how to read witch symbols, she couldn’t. Her vision blurred as the tears finally slid over her lashes.

Relieved.

He’d get over her. He’d find a pretty girl to love and spoil; an adoring thing with soft hands and sweet smiles. Who liked leather seats and champagne, and didn’t have a network map of scars over her silken skin.

Maybe he’d go back to Andy.

Her lips curved, but even Naomi knew how sad her smile really was. Deliberately, she drew her arm over her eyes, her mouth, and carefully rearranged her expression into one of determination.

“All right,” she told the air as she strode back to the house. “A few weeks. And then ready or not, I am
so
getting out there and kicking ass.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he storm roiled overhead, twisting, coiling knots of black and gray. Lightning arced across it, lit up the mass of clouds like a flare of purple-white light smothered in a black veil.

It wouldn’t rain with weather like this. This was New Seattle’s winter specialty. Freezing-ass cold and wired to blow. But the charge in the air was only one part electricity.

The rest was all her.

For the first time in twenty-seven fucking days, Naomi was on a mission.

The past month had been hard. On all of them. The secret cove had been great for healing her array of bloody wounds and bruises, but a month of constant supervision and unending exercises in witchcraft left Naomi ready to reconsider her newly found aversion to homicide.

Jessie and Silas had both struggled to find a balance with her that didn’t tread on dangerous ground, and the older witch still got the hell on Naomi’s nerves. She felt as much a part of them as a wolf in a herd of sheepdogs.

But it
was
getting better. Even she noticed it. Slowly, surely, she was coming to adapt to her new role as—her lips twitched—healer. Whatever the hell that meant.

Still, they didn’t have much to
do
, and that was the wedge that still kept them going for each other’s throats. It was hard to act when the city still crawled with missionaries and Church men; when the bounty on her head was still fresh enough that any hunter with something to prove would be keeping an eye out.

It had been Silas who saved her, and them, from a bitterly sardonic rant regarding the more murderous characteristics of knitting needles. “You’re going to go get us some work,” he’d said. “It’s time to get off our asses, don’t you think?”

Fuck, yeah.

Thunder overwhelmed the faint hum of the lower-level electricity. As she watched, gauging her next move from the shadows of an alley, the few lights in the apartment building flickered.

So did every light on the block.

Well, wasn’t that just peachy? The city had more than enough generators topside, but if the lights went out here, it’d be nothing but black. And silent. Perhaps for days.

Breaking and entry in the dead quiet seemed a really bad idea.

Play nice
, Jessie had warned her.

Naomi smiled as she sprinted across the road.
Nice
was all she played these days. It wasn’t her fault that her
nice
and Jessie’s
nice
didn’t match up exactly.

Jessie’s
nice
involved way,
way
more effort.

The grass crackled under her feet, already frosted into brown icicles. She left dark footprints behind her, but that was exactly why she came at the rendezvous point from the side.

Her mission was pretty simple, really. Naomi slid onto the stoop, reached up, and caught the dim side bulb in her gloved fingers. A deft twist, a jiggle, and the light guttered out.

Inside she’d find the apartment number with a contact waiting for her. She was to make sure the place was secure, get to the contact, and give him the small packet Jessie had put in her satchel.

Simple.

She felt a little like a dog getting a pat on the head, but Naomi would take it. She was sick to death of being cooped up while they waited for some kind of sign.

Even if Matilda’s heated waters felt like a small slice of heaven on her faded bruises.

Keeping a wary eye on the streets, Naomi tucked her hand behind her back and tested the knob. It squeaked as it turned, but it did turn.

Did nobody believe in locked doors around here?

The lights along the street guttered again, flashed on and off as the city struggled to feed power to the impoverished levels. As thunder boomed, loud enough to rattle the slat wall, Naomi slipped inside and shut the door gently behind her.

The hall was like every other lower city hall she’d ever been in. Dingy, drab. Stained by life and time.

Grimacing, she slid her tongue along the silver ring at her lower lip and checked the door numbers as she passed. She walked quickly, soundlessly.

The appointed apartment was at the end of a short hall, its painted numbers all but peeled off the door. The outfacing window beside it had been boarded up long enough ago that the nails had eaten rust stains into the plaster. If she had to get out in a pinch, those boards would give way before she did.

“Is this guy trustworthy?” she’d asked Silas while Matilda and Jessie prepared for her departure.

He’d shot her a look that Naomi couldn’t read, inscrutable as all hell. “Probably.”

Naomi realized that she’d taken that at face value, and that said a hell of a lot about her new role in life. A missionary could trust her allies. She could rely on the rumors of Church justice to keep her contacts thinking twice.

A witch had a lot more to worry about.
Probably
was just another way of saying,
There’s no other choice
.

Holding her breath, Naomi leaned into the door and pressed her ear tightly to the wood. Her fingertips hovered over the worn, stained panel. No sound. Not even the vibrations of footsteps. For a full five minutes, she didn’t move, strained to listen.

All she heard was thunder, waves upon waves of it crashing overhead. It shook the building with every wild boom. Shattered through her bones as if the storm raged immediately overhead.

If the contact was in there, he was either asleep or had the patience of a saint.

She reached for the doorknob as the walls trembled around her. The echoes of a powerful blast of thunder shimmered into another. The door eased open—unlocked again, for God’s sake—and creaked in the sudden, pitch-black silence of lost electricity.

Shit.

Naomi stilled, holding her breath as she waited to hear movement. Breathing. Footsteps, cursing, anything. Here and there, clips of activity filtered through the walls, the ceiling, but inside the black apartment, nothing so much as stirred.

If she said hello first, would it earn her a bullet for her trouble? Or a knife in the dark?

Grimly she slid through the half-open door, her eyes too wide, aching as she tried to see something, anything.

The faintest traces of light slipped through the windows between electrical flares. As it streaked through the room in shattered increments, Naomi picked out a single, open room. Furniture was sparse enough to afford her a clear path from wall to wall, only a single rickety table and one chair beside it.

Opposite, one corner boasted a mattress on the floor heaped with blankets. The kitchen was a tiny affair of peeling tiled floor and two cabinets, most of the space taken up by a small refrigerator and a two-burner stove.

She crossed the apartment in a few short strides, her grin a deep curl of memory, rueful annoyance. She’d spent more than her fair share of days in places like this.

Wordlessly she picked up the cracked mug on the table and tucked it under her nose. She grimaced when the dark, earthy fragrance of plain black tea filled her senses.

Its warmth seeped into her gloves, and she stilled.

Wood creaked behind her.

The mug fell from her fingers as she whirled. It shattered at her feet, sprayed cheap pottery and tea as she reached for the gun she no longer carried.

That she lunged away from the table, away from the figure looming out of the dark was more a credit to her reflexes than it was to her brain. That had stalled when she’d found no gun to hold on to.

Fuck.

A flashlight clicked on, ripped through the dark and her night vision. She flinched, threw up a hand as the beam caught her squarely in the face. “Jesus bastard Christ, what are you trying to do? Scare me to death?”

“I like the lip ring.”

Her heart slammed in her chest.

Oh, God. Oh, no; oh,
shit
.

His voice came at her like a knife, like a whip that cracked over her skin and left her bleeding. Again. That voice. So easy, so casual, so . . . fucking
Phin
.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.

And lunged at him.

The flashlight clattered to the floor.

Naomi ignored it. Ignored the cold, the thunder, the lightning that painted everything in a pearlescent tableau. All she cared about was Phin, his shirt in her hands, his lips on hers, his skin, his fingers. He caught her, his fingers wrenching at her coat as she panted for the breath she didn’t have enough of.

Somehow he managed to get her coat unzipped. Managed to tear open the laces of her fake corset, peel off the long-sleeved shirt seconds behind. Somehow she wrestled him out of his sweater, feeling as if they waltzed across the empty floor.

She fused her lips to his, kissed him with everything she’d thought she’d forgotten in a month. Everything she never could have admitted. Struggling, straining to reach the mattress, he seized her head in his large, warm hands, swept his tongue past her lips, and claimed the warm cavern of her mouth as his own. Demanded her gasps and her broken breath.

He swallowed her low, ragged sounds of fury, of need; so many emotions, she couldn’t acknowledge them all.

And then they were skin to skin. Naked, straining in the sporadic staccato of lightning and rolling thunder. The hard planes of his chest flattened against her breasts as they fell to the mattress, as she wrapped her legs around his waist and helped him guide himself into her wet, welcoming body, inch by staggering, gasping inch.

He kissed her bottom lip, tongue swirling over the metal ring curved around the center of it, kissed her chin, her neck. His tongue dipped into the hollow of her throat as he thrust deep inside her body; lips, tongue, hands, and body stroking every velvet inch of her in that perfect way only he knew how.

In that perfect way that she only craved from him.

It was always him.

Naomi arched, sweat blooming over her skin as she cried out, again and again, moving in time with his thrusts, threading her fingers through his curly hair and holding his head to her breast. Urging him on. Urging him for more.

Needing everything he had.

The mattress creaked, old springs musical accompaniment to the slow, coiling tide rising in her chest. In her belly. It filled her body, welling up beneath her skin until her ears rang with it and she couldn’t breathe. He slid in and out of her, long powerful strokes, filled his hands with her body and his lips with the fragrance of her skin, and she trembled on that verge.

He caught her hips, tilted her just so, and hesitated. Shaking, his voice raw, Phin whispered, “I still love you.”

She sucked in a breath.

He plunged deep, held her hips, locked her to him as she shattered, wave after wave of pulsing, liquid heat roiling inside her skin. It bent everything she knew until there was only wicked, torturous pleasure, a release so wound up it caught her breath in a wild cry.

He shuddered with her, fingers tense at her waist, eyes dark and glittering in the faint glow of the forgotten flashlight. Watching her. Drinking her in.

She panted for breath as he sank to the mattress, forearms braced on either side of her shoulders. She struggled to think through the miasma of confusion, of warm, liquid aftershocks and fear.

Naomi closed her eyes as she tried to even her breathing.

It just made her that much more aware of his weight pinning her to the bed, heavy and sure. So warm. Of his heartbeat slamming against his chest.

Of his breath, a caress against her shoulder and neck.

And his finger, broad and firm against her bottom lip. “Stop it.”

Despite herself, her mouth curved up. “Stop what?”

“Thinking.” He traced her mouth, her nose and the completely healed skin there. Her cheek. He brushed aside her hair, tendrils of searing violet woven through the much shorter black edges. “If you keep at it, you’ll talk yourself out of this.”

Her smile faded. “This.”

“Don’t make me do it all over again. I will, you know,” he warned. “If I have to take one for the team, I’m up for that challenge.”

Naomi’s eyes snapped open, narrowed just as fast. “What the hell.” Anger snapped a live wire from the struggling part of her brain to her nerves. She shoved at his chest until he leaned away, sliding over to brace an elbow on the mattress.

She sat up, averting her eyes from his body, gloriously naked and painted in muted gold and shattered washes of white.

He was too much. Too gorgeous, too naked, too . . . sure.

Swearing under her breath, Naomi climbed from the bed and padded across the floor. She made it halfway to the flashlight before she rounded on him, fury all but spewing fire from her tongue. “You have a lot of nerve.”

Propping his head up on one hand, Phin lazily trailed his gaze across her exposed flesh. Throat to breasts, which pebbled into tight buds under his hot gaze. Over her ribs, heaving with the effort of maintaining at least some semblance of cool.

To her hips, and the dark tattoo just over the dark thatch of hair between her legs.

Her fists clenched. “A lot of nerve,” she repeated flatly. “Phin, what are you doing here?”

“I love you.” His gaze snapped back to hers, steady and too damn certain. “And yes, I’m going to keep saying that until it gets through your thick head. I love you, Naomi.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know me from—”

“You look great in a dress,” Phin broke in, every word a conversational dart. He shifted, eased to his knees on the mattress, as beautiful as a god kneeling on a pedestal. Naomi’s throat went tight.

“That was—”

He grinned, a flash of even teeth in the dark. “You looked pretty good in the cinched-in getup you wore when you got here, but you look absolutely incredible now.”

She folded her arms over her chest, knowing how ridiculous the gesture was. She was naked.

So was he.

That long, liquid pull of awareness coiled deep in her belly. Again. Still.

“You hate massages,” he continued evenly, steadily. “But you love
my
massages.”

She flushed. Heat swept into her cheeks, her ears, Jesus, her chest.