Protecting His Witch (Entangled Covet) (Keeper Of The Veil series Book 1) (9 page)

The thought of Kat turning to another man like his wife had… He couldn’t go there. That was a homicide destined to happen. A fathomless pit of black jealousy gave way to a crushing possessiveness. He needed all men to fear the repercussions of wanting what was his. He’d already marked her, which meant any druid would know to whom she belonged and would keep away.

Yet, it wasn’t enough. He needed her. Beyond his terror of her rejection, he wanted to belong to her.

A blast of cold shot down his spine. This went far beyond a paltry curse. This was hard-core bonding shit. The instinct to freak clutched the inside of his skull. He swallowed the urge to jump from the bed and scream denial. He refused to get sucked back into the druid world. He didn’t want to do this with a Pleiades. Aw Christ, why did she have to be one of those fucking witches? Why couldn’t she just be a run-of-the-mill druidess or even a low-level witch? That he could handle.

And shit, he’d forgotten protection. This was the only woman with whom he lost his mind and had gone without twice. With other women, he religiously protected during sex.

He rolled to his side and released her onto the bed beside him. She was so beautiful. Her auburn lashes fell across her freckled cheek, which now sported a beard burn that he wasn’t the least bit guilty about. Hell, beautiful didn’t do her justice.

He forced the lust and hunger into a black box in his brain and closed the lid. They needed to do some serious talking. To get her straight on what was going on. Once she accepted the truth that she was a Pleiades, then he’d heal that wound on her arm as proof of his abilities.

He plucked his dog tags off the bedside table. “We need to talk about these.”

She rolled toward him, her eyes wide with apprehension. “Who captured you back then?”

“It really was you, wasn’t it? I was blinded from some drug the OLM used and weak. They’d done…a lot for many days. I’d just about given up.”

She brushed aside the hair on his forehead. “Why did those people do that to you?”

“They hunt people with supernatural abilities to torture and learn about our gifts.”

Her eyes widened. She pushed away from him to sit up. “What? You’re admitting you have
gifts
? You have supernatural abilities that those wackos would target you for?”

He nodded and bit back a
You do, too
.

“What are your gifts?”

He blew out a rough breath. “Healing myself, and others. I’m not like Wolverine, but I can heal fast.”

She ran her hand over the sutured area on her arm. “I did wonder how it healed so fast. I could almost take out the sutures. I might do that at work. Thanks.” She cupped his cheek. “It’s pretty cool you have that ability. I’m glad I could help you escape. I held onto those tags for you.”

He ran his finger over the letters on the tags and gruffly said, “Thanks.” Then he draped them back around her neck. “They belong here.” His finger trailed down the chain to the cleft between her breasts. “I like the thought of them resting here. How’d you get out of there that day?”

Her gaze darted away from his. “I slipped out.”

Damn it. He just revealed one of his biggest secrets. And she wasn’t ready to talk about being Pleiades? He blurted out, “You had a C-section?” The minute the question popped out of his mouth he wanted to take it back. How idiotic to release that question unfiltered from his brain to mouth, even if it was his most pressing question. He ran a finger over her scar.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her eyes drifted closed.

“When?”

Her eyelids opened, revealing a crushing pain. Tears clung to her eyelashes. “Nine years ago.”

“Nine? Were you pregnant when you found me in that OLM facility?”

“I had lost him a few months before.”

He couldn’t move air through his lungs while his mind did a quick calculation.
Oh God, no.
He dreaded the truth. But had to know. His throat was so dry he could barely speak. “Was it?”

Tears overflowed her lids. “Yes. He was…yours. I can’t take the pill due to some really bad reactions to the medication. Then I met you and protection definitely wasn’t on either of our minds that night. A month later I discovered…” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I didn’t quit school, but had to drop out for a semester due to issues with the pregnancy. I went to a shelter for girls for a while since I couldn’t live at school. My only family was my aunt, who had pretty much kicked me out of her life at that point. She and I didn’t really have a relationship since I was adopted. The woman was a die-hard Christian fundamentalist…the shame of promiscuity and all that jazz.”

He pulled her tight to his body. Her tears wet his chest.
Holy hell.
She went through it alone. In a shelter for homeless pregnant women. Impotent fury pressed at him with the need to destroy something. He would’ve had every resource for her. There wasn’t even a question in his mind that he would’ve done anything. But she wouldn’t have needed medicine. He could’ve fixed whatever was wrong with her and the baby. Quinn could’ve taught him how. Before he’d died. He wondered why she hadn’t considered abortion, even though the thought was abhorrent to him.

As if she’d heard him, she said, “I wanted him so badly. I was mad at you for what happened afterward. And for what you said after we were together. That night seemed magical, and then you pushed me out. But I wanted the baby. He was a gift, but just so weak from the start. Heart defect. He was too little to be born, but my OB didn’t think he’d make it to full term. They thought if they brought him out, did heart surgery, and stuck him in one of those incubators for a few months they could save him. Three months early. He was so tiny.” She bent her head as her body jerked with sobs. “Twenty-four hours. That was all the life he got.”

“Christ, I’m sorry.”
A son.
They lost a son. The agony of it burned. He swiped his hand across his moist eyes.

She hugged him tight. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for crying all over you. For falling apart after us doing that, which was great. Don’t get me wrong. But mostly I’m sorry I lost him. I tried so hard—”

“Don’t apologize.” He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “It wasn’t your fault. Why didn’t you shift dimensions and find me?”

“You know about it? About this world-changing thing?”

“A little bit. Why didn’t you try to come to me?”

She chewed on her lip. “I didn’t know how. I don’t have much control over the world changes, even now. They’re dimensions? I never thought of that.”

He pulled her tight to his body and whispered, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there to save him.”

“I can’t have more children. At least my OB recommended not to try again. I had some complications post-op. Almost died.”

She almost died.
Terror squeezed his gut.

“I named him Matthew,” she whispered.

“Oh my God.” He groaned and pulled her tighter to him as grief racked her body. His mind splintered into a million shades of shock and pain.

As her tears eased, he asked, “What kind of complications did you have?” She had to be able to have children. She was the flagship of her Pleiad line.

“Uterine infection. Bleeding. My doctor said it wouldn’t be advisable to try it again. I probably could, but shouldn’t. I might not live through it. As I said before, I don’t do well with birth control…so I just avoided until…and we just…oh God.” She wiped her tears and suppressed several hiccup sobs.

He didn’t miss the implication. She hadn’t been with anyone since the last time they were together. Joy exploded in his chest. She belonged to him. Only him. Dark possession clouded his mind. She would only belong to him. Forever.

Oh hell no. The suffocating terror of entrapment consumed his mind. And gave him focus. They might have good chemistry and he might feel connected to her, but forever? If she was Pleiad, and he was her destined…
oh shit
. This might be the real deal. He wanted to blame their wild chemistry on a curse, but this might be an authentic destined bond. He despised the thought some larger force pushed them together, even if he couldn’t imagine being with any other woman. He sure as hell didn’t want her seeking out another man.

He said, “We need to talk about what you are. What I am—”

Commotion rose outside the bedroom door. Matt heard a familiar muffled woman’s voice. He rolled onto his back and groaned as he threw an arm over his eyes. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”
Déjà vu
. Another girlfriend encounter after mind-blowing sex with Kat.

She raised her head from his chest to stare wide-eyed at the door. “It’s her, isn’t it? Your fiancée. The clothing designer.”

Matt gently rolled away from her. “She’s not my fiancée. Don’t leave. We still need to talk. We have many things to discuss.” He fastened his pants and pulled on the discarded T-shirt. He ran a hand through his black hair, ineffectively smoothing its ruffled appearance.

“Is this a habit of yours? Being unfaithful to girlfriends?”

Matt halted with his hand on the door handle. He turned his head to Kat and shot her a crooked half smile. “Only when you decide to
jump
into my world.” He pointed at her. “Don’t leave.”

Matt entered the hall just as Cindy crested the top of the stairs. He closed the door to the bedroom behind him.

Cindy was cleverly dressed, as usual, in colors meant to accent her spray tan and make her baby-blue eyes pop. All that didn’t make up for the emaciation she forced on herself, as if she was in competition with the models that displayed her fashions. The bodice of her gown sagged a bit loosely around her chest, suggesting recent weight loss.

She flipped her long hair and marched up to him. After scanning his rumpled disarray, betrayal transformed her face. Her palm connected with his cheek with an echoing crack. “Bastard! Who’s in that room?”

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “Why are you here?”
And how the hell did you get past security and Sam?
he thought.

“I flew back today. Didn’t you get the message?”

Matt shook his head and rubbed his cheek. Despite the fact they’d never established their relationship to be monogamous and that he had no plans for matrimony with her, he still felt culpable for hurting her.

“How dare you?” Tears trekked down her cheeks.

“Cindy, we never agreed to be exclusive. I certainly didn’t propose.”

Her face drained of color. “Everyone warned me about you. They said you’d fuck anything with two legs. That’s what caused your first wife to OD.”

Matt swallowed his anger. “You should go.”

Cindy pushed past him and threw open the bedroom door. Her gaze homed in on Kat. He recognized the sly look on Cindy’s face.

Oh shit
.

“I just wanted to see who Matt used for the little fling we agreed he needed before we get married. He’s already admitted you were nothing more than an itch.” She turned and closed the bedroom door behind her.

“Get out.”

Cindy smiled and mouthed, “Fuck you.” Her spiked heels clicked angrily down the hall away from him.

An energy buzz surrounded his senses. For several seconds he was confused. Then he knew. Kat was leaving. Jumping! His chest squeezed like he was in a pressure tank, and he sucked hard to inflate his lungs. He charged into the bedroom.

Her green eyes narrowed. “I’m leaving before you tell me to this time.” Her form flickered.

“No! Goddamn it. Don’t you dare shift dimensions before we can talk about what’s going on and what you are.”

In one blink of his eyes she was gone. He punched the mattress where she’d lain just seconds before.

Chapter Twelve

Damn Matt Ryan. Used by him again. A fling? She thought they had connected. And built upon what they had years ago. That hadn’t felt like just another one-time screw. She thought she read genuine sadness from him about the baby. What an idealistic idiot she was.

How could he possibly consider marrying that Cindy woman? No one with any proprietary thoughts about him would allow another woman to touch him, let alone have a sanctified fling. Images of Matt with Cindy tortured her brain. She forced herself to breathe slowly and beat back the pain in her chest.

The coldly rational side of her mind pointed out that she could be pregnant again. By him. She wouldn’t survive it, and not just from a medical perspective. It would kill her this time, if she lost another child. Panic hit. Her chest clinched tight until she could barely breathe.

Don’t think about it
, she ordered herself.
Chances are low. Timing is wrong.

She focused on thinking of nothing. Meditating on clean, pure nothing.

But his final words replayed in her head over and over:
Don’t you dare shift dimensions before we can talk about what’s going on and what you are.

He knew she was a jumper and called her a witch. A witch? She couldn’t do fictional witchy things, although it might be cool to start a candle with a finger snap or stir her cup from a distance. Maybe she could do those things. She’d just never tried. Regardless, she wondered how long he’d known what she was.

A loud knock resonated through her apartment from the front door.

Kat dragged herself upright, grabbed her robe from the bathroom, and headed toward the front door. Peeping through the door’s privacy hole, she saw Riley. She leaned her head against the door and groaned. It wasn’t a.m.; it was p.m. He wanted to drag her to that Wiccan thing.

His muffled voice filtered through the door. “I can hear you. Open up.”

She unlatched the chain, threw the dead bolt, and opened the door wide.

Riley gave her a good once-over. “Well, don’t you just look like shit. Is that beard burn on your cheek?”

“Shut up.”

“It happened again, didn’t it? You disappeared.” He gave her a thorough once-over with a knowing leer. “And got busy.”

Her cheeks flamed. “I’m not really up to attending a Wiccan thing tonight.”

Riley pushed through the door into her apartment. “Listen, girlie-girl, I covered for you at work today. You owe me. Just remember you were visiting your sick aunt in Wilmington. Of course, our boss thinks you’re interviewing for a new job down there.” Riley headed for the kitchen and helped himself to bottled water from her fridge. After a big slog, he leaned against the counter and smiled. “On a scale of one to ten, how hot was he?”

She scowled.

“One to ten?” he prompted while waving the bottle in her direction.

“Twenty.” A small smile broke on her face. “I’m taking a shower.”

Riley laughed. “Just be sure to put on something other than that ratty robe. Jesus, when did you buy that thing? Last century? We need to go shopping and get you some sexy clothes. Make it a speedy shower. We are going to the meeting.”

“I’m too tired,” she yelled from the bathroom.

“I don’t care if you had three days of gymnastics with Mr. Twenty. You’ve got a problem. This woman might have answers.”

She stepped into the shower and sighed as the warm water soothed her skin. As much as she hated to admit it, Riley might be right. She needed answers.

…

A discordant chime rang out.

Riley led Kat to a space on the floor. “Take a seat. We all sit in as much of a circle as possible. Our High Priestess, Amy, will likely start us out.”

A short redhead with wildly askew brown hair wearing Birkenstocks and a billowing black skirt made some broad motions with her arm spreading the smoke from incense around her body. “Welcome brothers and sisters. Today I am so pleased to introduce Charlotte Stratford, who visits us again from…” Amy glanced sidelong at the blonde sitting next to her, who had to be well into her late forties.

“Alabama,” Charlotte said in a deep Southern drawl. She pushed at her blond hair, which was pulled into a loose, chaotic bun. Little could be discerned of her body beneath a teal, gauzy dress. As she shifted, the multitude of crystals around her neck tinkled softly.

“Right. She’s going to speak to us about time travel,” resumed Amy.

Time travel?
Kat was suddenly very interested in this speaker.

“Thanks, y’all, for inviting me into your midst today. I’m not going to speak about time travel.” Charlotte rolled her gray eyes. “Come on. That’s ridiculous. Instead, I’d like to discuss the Pleiades, the women of Greek mythology who supposedly form this constellation.”

Kat sat up straight, goose bumps popping out on her arms.

“They were seven sisters. The myths written of the Pleiades sisters are confusing and often contradictory, but intriguing. The myth recounts that after seven years of being pursued by Orion, the sisters were each given the option to escape to an alternate dimension and avoid Orion’s advances, if she wanted. That which we see twinkling in the sky is but a reflection of the path she travels from one aspect of the universe to another.”

Charlotte paused and made eye contact with Kat. She said slowly, “From one dimension of this world to another.” A disturbing glint of knowledge shone in her pale, perceptive gaze when it locked onto hers. Charlotte’s gaze drifted to Kat’s wrist.

She pulled her shirtsleeve over the mark.

The older woman’s mouth curved into a small smile.

Kat’s spine went rigid, warning chills racing down her back. This woman knew about her. And that freaked her out.

Charlotte smiled. “The sisters are the keepers of the veil. This is where Greek myth meets Celtic Druidic legend. It is said the Pleiades must convene on the last night of Samhain, that’s November second, every twenty years to assure the ancestors all is well in our world. If not, the ancestors will cross in anger. Then chaos will ensue. And that means Armageddon.”

Amy interrupted with a know-it-all tone. “That makes no sense. Druids revere the spirits of the departed. They think of them as sources of guidance and inspiration. Not as evil.”

Charlotte nodded. “Absolutely. On this day of Samhain, it is essential that the Pleiades commune with their descendants. If not, they risk inciting the wrath of gods. And then the veil will fall, allowing those ancestors to cross.”

Someone asked, “Aren’t the Pleiades immortal goddesses? If so, I don’t understand how they’d have dead descendants.”

Charlotte shifted her legs. “Well…we’ve all heard of the promiscuity of the Greek deities, have we not? These women are their human descendants. The first daughter in each line inherits the Pleiades’ gifts.”

Memories that didn’t make sense skittered through Kat’s brain. Charlotte’s Greek myth was a childhood tale she’d heard before. Many times. Only never from the family she grew up with in South Carolina. Instead, she envisioned a pretty redhead. The myth she’d been told claimed the descendant women were human and they could travel between dimensions, but Kat recalled more details than Charlotte had revealed. Details about the sisters. There were seven, each gifted with unique abilities that were passed to the first daughter in each line. Their protectors were the Sentry druids, who not only revered them, but also amongst that warrior elite lay a destined match for each of those seven women, a love that couldn’t be denied.

Her mind skittered to Matt.

Her storyteller of memory had been one of those women. A beautiful strawberry-blonde Pleiad with freckles across her nose and cheeks. A woman she had called…

Mommy.

Chills exploded down her arms. A confusing vision materialized in her mind. A memory?

“Why are we here, Mommy?” Kat squinted against the pain of the light hitting her eyes. She clung tightly to her mother’s neck. The smell of salty air close to an ocean hit her sensitive nose, and the sound of waves echoed in her ears.

“Katie-kat, you’ve got to let go.”

“No, Mommy. I want to go back to the zoo. You promised we’d see the giraffes today. You want to leave me here. I can read your thoughts. I know it’s true ’cause you’re crying.”

“Those bad men shot me with a dart full of medicine that’s going to make me die unless they give me the antidote. My only chance to see you again is to go back. To get the good drug that will cure me. These bad men don’t know about you. They must never find out about you. They don’t care that you’re only ten. They’ll hurt you. I need you to stay here until I can come get you.”

“You’re going to die? I’m scared, Mommy.” Kat fought as her mother pried her arms from around her neck. “I love you, Mommy. Mommy! Don’t leave me.”

“You’ve got to be Mommy’s brave girl now, sweetheart. I love you. And I need you to survive.” She gave Kat a hug and kissed her. “Someday you may understand. Your father may never forgive me for this. I’m sorry.”

Kat pressed on her eyeballs to ease the pounding head pain. When that failed, she massaged each eye socket, an acupuncture move a colleague mentioned years ago. It’d worked before for mini-migraines. Abruptly, the pain cleared. Hallelujah. Was that a memory or a movie scene? Seemed so real. Grief clouded her mind. Grief over what? Loss of that woman in the weird vision?

She couldn’t recall anything about the woman other than that fleeting memory. She pushed her brain to remember something else. Anything that might explain what was happening to her. Pressing her mind for more info was like flailing against a wall.

Nothing.

Her reward was a throbbing headache so brutal that her stomach knotted. She whispered to Riley, “I’ve got to go. Must’ve been something in the cake, but I feel like I’m going to puke.”

Kat got up and walked briskly toward the front door. She hadn’t realized how stifled she’d felt until she was outside in the crisp evening air. She closed her eyes and focused on the image of the strawberry-blonde woman with the long hair.

A new memory surfaced. It was associated with intense embarrassment. She had dropped a pan of brownie dough on the kitchen floor before it made it to the oven. Brownies she needed for her class Christmas party. Comforting laughter surrounded her seconds before long blonde hair and warmth enclosed her in a hug.

Her life here in this dimension was a sham. Who was she? And where was her mother? And her real father. Of him, she recalled nothing.