Black Aura (8 page)

She’d also purchased an old birch wand. She didn’t believe in witches or wizards, in wands or potions or whatever, maybe not even tarot, though tarot was interesting. No, the wand was just a cool stick with a wicked purple crystal on the end, which she would pry out one day and then ditch the stick more than likely.

“What’s your dad been up to? I saw him and the Howards’ newest renter going at it outside the coffee shop.” Yancey stacked three books on the counter and put a bundle of herbs on it as well.

“Yeah, well, that’s Dad for you. Throwing romance away.” She grinned. “He’s good actually. Finding new talent or trying to.”

“No lack of wannabes in this town.”

She smiled at Yancey and picked up a book on herbs. Herbology was another interest she had. There were almost as many holistic or organic food stores here in Taos as there were galleries. She didn’t want to buy a weed for this or that ailment or need just because the bottle said it was good for her. She wanted to actually know and understand what these things were used for. Her shrink and her dad both wanted her to be interested in things, to have a hobby. For now, her hobbies varied and included learning and reading about various topics.

“That’s a good one,” Yancey told her.

She flipped through the book, noticed it not only gave directions to make tonics and infusions but also topical creams. There were both drawings and photos of the plants, with bold cautions and warnings. Huh. She skimmed on through it. “I’ll take it.”

While he rang her up, Yancey asked, “So what are your plans? Decide on the graphic arts school?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea yet. It’ll come to me. For now, I’m just helping Dad and that’s enough.”

“Getting your bearings is important,” Yancey told her. “It’s always important to know where you stand and who you are.”

So it was.

“Any new friends? I heard you and that Lake lady were spending time together.”

Yancey always had the latest gossip. The fact people wanted to talk about her was both intriguing and disturbing.

“Yeah, she’s really nice.”

Yancey leaned closer. “I heard she’s gifted too. Ran her own shop in Sedona. You might find that friendship useful,” he added.

“Well, Lake’s nice and she’s helping me with some stuff.” She wasn’t really in the mood to chat. “Thanks, Yance. I’ve got to get going.” She grabbed her bag and shoved out the door. The alley as usual was dark and dreary. She looked up and noticed the low-hanging snow clouds. She was so ready for spring. Real spring and melting, not more snow. But it was going to snow. She knew it. When she reached the edge of the alley that led onto the street, she took a deep breath and the bands around her chest loosened.

Maybe she’d wait awhile before she went back into the bookstore again. She glanced over her shoulder. Why did she seem to feel more darkness when she visited it now? Why did a place that once called to her, seem to turn her off now?

Confidence…

Lake said to believe in herself. Time to try that. She
would
try doing that. So if the bookstore bothered her this much, she’d just not come again—for a while anyway.

Taking a deep breath, she walked back towards the gallery.

***

Max sighed and knocked on the door. He waited and then waited a bit more. Finally, the door jerked open and Lake stood on the other side, glaring at him.

He was used to seeing her in purple, or copper, though usually black. But today she wore an oversized cream sweater, the top bunched and thick around her neck, the bottom hanging past her hips. Those long, trim legs were encased in some sort of creamy tights or something. Leggings. His daughter called those leggings. Whatever. Her thick red braid lay over her shoulder. Her eyes seemed even greener this evening.

Eyes that still glared at him.

Hell.

“Can,” he said, clearing his throat, “I come in?”

She tapped her long purple nails against the doorframe—once, twice—then she stepped back and let him in. Thankfully. It was cold outside.

“Thanks.”

She shut the door behind him, never taking her eyes off him. “If I hadn’t let you in, you’d have wanted to stay and talk on the stoop and then I’d be colder than I am already and that’s never a good thing.”

“Yeah, it’s cold.” He jerked his head to the large picture window and balcony doors that overlooked the front street and his gallery. “The snowstorm is supposed to hit soon.”

“That’s what I heard.” She stared at him for a minute more and then walked towards the fireplace and tossed in another log.

“You want a cup of tea or coffee? Water?”

Twilight was falling, the evening going soft pink-purple. He’d closed his shop early and had hurried over here thinking he needed to speak to her. What the hell had he been thinking?

“Whatever’s fine. Or nothing.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, rocked up on the balls of his feet and said, “Look, I wanted to apologize.”

“Really?” She sat on the deep plush couch and sipped from a thick blue mug.

“Not gonna be easy,” he muttered, looking at the floor.

“Honey, I’m
never
easy.”

He glanced at her from beneath his lashes. “Oh, of that I’m very certain.”

A smiled tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Lake. I didn’t mean to be so rude and…” And what?

“A jerk?” she supplied.

“A jerk. An ass.”

“A fool.” She smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes, as she looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Though ass works too.”

He took a deep breath and strode to the fireplace, stretching his hands out towards it. “And I just wanted to apologize and explain that you were right. I was painting you with my issues. I don’t mean to, but…”

“But?” she asked.

He shrugged. “When Alyssa is mentioned, I just get…I get…” Hell. He raked his hands through his hair.

“Protective. Worried. Scared.”

The woman was no idiot. Probably why he liked her. “Yeah, all those things.”

“I know,” she said softly. When he turned back to her, she continued, “I’m sorry too. I have a quick temper in some regards. Not most, but you question my integrity and I can be quick to jump in.”

“I noticed.”

For a moment neither said a word. Finally she patted the cushions beside her.

Thank God. He took a slow breath, walked over and sat down. “I didn’t think I’d get past the ‘I’m sorry’ before you slammed the door shut on me.”

She grinned and took another drink. “I thought about it.”

He sat back and put his arm on the back of the couch. After only a moment’s hesitation, she leaned into him, pulling her legs up under her. The fire crackled and danced as they simply watched it.

“Can we try again?” he asked quietly. Hoping. Maybe she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.

She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “I like Alyssa and we’re going to meet at least once a day for however long she wants to.”

He thought about that. He scratched the side of his mouth with his finger. “Okay.” He might be worried about her, but he’d seen something that day he hadn’t seen in a long time. Still staring at the flames dancing, he said, “I saw you, both of you out on the balcony. She laughed.” The flames, dark blue, licked the log. “I haven’t seen her laugh like that in so long, I honestly can’t remember.” A lump formed in his throat. “She used to be carefree when she was very little, and she’d laugh like that. I couldn’t hear her, not from the gallery, but still, I knew what it would sound like.”

She breathed deeply and patted his thigh. “She knows. I’m not trying to take anything from you. I’m not a threat to your daughter, you know, or your relationship with her.”

He swallowed and turned his head to look at her. “You wouldn’t mean to be. But I worry about what she’ll do when you go back to wherever, Sedona, wasn’t it? When you go back there to run your shop, what will she do?”

For a moment she didn’t say anything, then she shifted so they more faced each other than not. “Max. I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone later than that. I’ve never lived that way. Alyssa’s nineteen and if I go back to Sedona, then she can visit if she wants. There’re also these inventions known to many as the phone and email and texting. I’m not going to drop her. You can’t wall her up, Max. You’ll put her in danger if you do that.”

He frowned. “I know. I remember something my grandmother said once, and my mom agreed with her. That Alyssa needed to experience things with her talents, openly and freely without any threat or anxiety of rejection, for her to truly understand who she was.”

“She’s got a pretty damned good handle on who she is, who others are.”

He raised a brow.

“Really. Thanks to
you
.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

She lifted her hand and ran her fingers through the hair on the side of his head. “I do. She said as much, though I won’t tell you anything else we talked about. But she loves you, and I think it says a lot that she’s comfortable enough with you to discuss some of the things that happen to her, that she experiences.”

He hadn’t really thought of that. “Still, doesn’t feel like enough.”

She smiled. “Not to you, maybe.”

He thought about that for a while.

He reached for her hand and kissed her wrist, watching as her eyes darkened. “So are we okay?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and looked into his eyes. “Are we?”

“It feels like it,” he admitted.

She took a deep breath. “Max. I don’t know how to tell you…” Her lips pressed together before she continued. “You’ve been honest with me, so I’ll be honest with you. I like Alyssa. I see some of me—very little, granted—in her. But that vulnerability, wanting acceptance, is something I understand all too well. I have this urgency to help her, this feeling that she’s going to need my help.”

“For—”

She held up her hand and interrupted him. “I like you, I like her. I’m not using either one of you to get to the other, and I don’t want to have to worry that I’m going to offend or upset you because of something I did with your daughter and—”

“As long as you’re not getting her drunk or into drugs, or setting her up for sex dates, I’m good.”

She blinked. “I’m not that bad an influence.” She tilted her head. “Well, maybe once upon a time, but not in a long, long time, thank you very much.”

He took a deep breath. “Or into the dark arts.”

This time, she blinked three times. “Dark arts?”

He sighed and sat up, put his elbows on his knees. “My grandmother and mother were gifted.” To hell with it. Honesty. He wanted honesty, he’d have to give it as well. “Upon occasion I get feelings, or intuitional guides. I get all that. But I also know that some of this stuff can pull you in, way in and be very, very dangerous. I don’t want Alyssa there.”

“I’m not into the occult, though that probably depends on who you’d ask.”

“No, I get it.” He raked his hands through his hair again.

“I promise not to get her drunk, high, or strung out. Nor will I push her into any sexual situations, or into the dark occult.”

He huffed a breath and stared at the red threads of the woven rug on the floor. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

She laughed. “No. Well, maybe just a little. She’s on the cusp of adulthood and is going to experiment with things we adults would rather she didn’t.”

“Nineteen going on forty.” He leaned back, feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time.

“She’s an old soul.”

He grinned. “My grandmother used to say the same thing.” He opened his eyes and stared at her. Giving in to impulse, he reached up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before gently pulling her towards him.

“You know what else pissed me off today?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “Besides my charming self?”

“I didn’t get to do this, this morning.” He closed the distance between them and kissed her. The fire crackled and popped.

She tasted like coffee and dark secrets. Secrets he wanted to learn, and understand. Secrets he wanted to discover and explore, very,
very
slowly.

“And I was worried I would never get to do this again.” He kissed her, long and hard. “You taste good,” he said against her mouth.

“So do you.”

The kiss turned from merely tasting to something more. He wasn’t sure which one of them started it, but soon all he could see, taste, feel, was Lake.

Her mouth slanted over his again and again as her tongue dueled and parried with his. Just as he started to pull back, she nipped his lip. “Nu-uh. You’re not going anywhere. Not yet.”

She wrapped her arms around him and climbed on top of him, pushing him back into the couch.

He looked at her, at the wicked gleam in those amazing green eyes.

“Promise?” he asked, leaning up to nuzzle the side of her neck. She smelled of some scent he couldn’t pinpoint, heady and dark, and tempting as hell.

“And then some.” She leaned her head back, but he tugged her closer and licked a line from her collarbone up to her ear, gently pulling the lobe between his teeth and nibbling.

His hands found the bottom of the large sweater and he slipped beneath. Finally. Her skin was warm and silky soft. He wanted to taste every last inch of her.

Her fingers played with the hair at the back of his neck, sending shivers down his spine from the simple contact.

“This is sad,” he muttered.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

He leaned back slowly, leaving his hands under her sweater, slowly caressing from her back to her ribcage and up to just shy of her breasts.

“Really? And why is that?”

A slow, sexy grin on those wide lips made him think of all the things he’d love to do to that mouth. “Oh, just that it’s either been a really, really long time or you’re gonna be great in bed.”

He leaned in and nipped her chin, kissed down the side of her neck as his hands spanned her waist, squeezing her hip bones. Her moan pulled a smile from him. Desire thrummed through his system. He wanted to take, but he also wanted to spend hours enjoying her. “I want to know all your secrets.” He trailed his fingers back and forth beneath her breasts, the lace of her bra light and caressing against his fingertips. “Exactly how long has it been for you?”