Blood of the White Witch (17 page)

I nodded my head in defeat.

“So abstinence it is,” I said flatly, even
though I knew not being pregnant was the best thing for us right
now.

“Yes,” he replied.

He held me tightly for a long time as we
both contemplated our future. We probably would have stood that way
forever, not wanting to let go, but my stomach chose that moment to
begin growling loudly.

He laughed then, a little, and the sound
broke the tension of the moment we had been sharing.

“Shall we eat this food we have?” he asked
me while he looked over at it questioningly.

“I’m afraid to,” I answered honestly, eyeing
it distastefully as well. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” he
said, leading me over to the table.

He waved both of his hands over the tray
slowly, back and forth. I began to notice little droplets that
lifted up off the food, floating into the air until he could
actually catch them with his hand.

He carried the vile liquid into the bathroom
sink, dropping it in the basin and washing his hands.

“Now I think you should try it as well,” he
suggested to me. “Just to make sure we got everything.”

I followed his instructions and did the same
as he had. Nothing else came to the surface.

“Let’s eat,” he said with a smile, reverting
to his ever impeccable manners and holding out a chair politely for
me to sit down in.

“I’m still afraid,” I said nervously,
sliding into the seat.

“Well, if we don’t eat, we’ll die, and I’m
not ready to go that route just yet. Are you?” he replied, and he
scooted his chair over next to me so he could hold my hand.

I shook my head in denial. He was right.

He picked up a fork and dug right in, and I
forced myself to do the same, not wanting him to think I was a
coward.

The food was actually delicious, and I found
myself even wanting seconds after my first helping. I hadn’t
realized how hungry I really was.

When we were finished, we both went over to
lie on the bed together. I placed my head in the crook of his arm
with one arm draped lazily over his waist.

“So what do you want to do tonight?” he
asked with a soft laugh while he ran his hand up and down my
arm.

“Talk?” I responded, feeling sure it was
probably the safest venue for us to take right now.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” He
smiled, albeit jokingly, but I could still hear the hint of sadness
in his voice. “What do you want to talk about?

“Whatever you want is fine with me,” I said,
wanting only to hear his voice floating comfortably beside me.

He thought about this for a moment.

“How about you tell me what you were
thinking the first time you ever laid eyes on me,” he finally
said.

“That’s easy,” I said, smiling at the
memories while they graced my mind once again. “My first thought
was that I had just seen the most handsome person who’d ever
stepped foot on this planet.”

“And the second?” he asked, laughing.

“The next thought was pure depression,
because I knew he would never even notice that I existed,” I
replied, remembering how crestfallen I had been.

“Look how wrong you were.” He smiled
widely.

Vance paced the small room like a caged
animal, and I could feel the tension rolling off him in waves.

We had been here for a very long time. Days,
weeks, months, I didn’t really know. We had no way to gauge the
time or whether it was day or night. Occasionally, meals would
arrive for us on what we assumed was a somewhat regular
schedule.

Vance had tried to attack when the door was
opened again, but it had activated the shield, bouncing his magic
harmfully around the room before it dissipated. He never tried
again after that.

We hadn’t seen Krista anymore, though Vance
asked if he could see her regularly. No one would ever respond to
his inquiry. In fact, no one spoke to us at all if possible. We
hadn’t even seen Douglas and Fiona again. Our only contact was with
Colin and Darcy when they delivered the things we needed.

Vance had used our spare time to coach me in
learning to channel some of my powers more efficiently which helped
the flow seem a little easier to me though I still didn’t feel like
it was a natural thing to me. Try as I might, magic was just not
the first thing I fell back on in any given situation. I often
became discouraged when he would set up little tests for me to
magically respond to. More often than not I responded with a
completely human reaction, being momentarily stunned or dumbfounded
until I realized he was trying to illicit a magical response from
me. To his credit, he never lost patience with me and always
encouraged me.

He had also used the opportunity to try to
test out some of his new powers. Even though he knew he had
acquired all of Damien’s magic, he didn’t necessarily know what
those powers were since they weren’t natural to him. He had to just
try things and see if he could do them. He had discovered that
there was now an electrical element to his magic that hadn’t been
there before. He could send out sharp bursts and shocks of
electricity. He began practicing things with it. This course of
action had occasionally led to disastrous situations, though, since
he wasn’t well in control of these new-found abilities yet.

On one occasion, when experimenting with
some new energy forces, he accidentally blew up our bed while I was
sitting on it. I wasn’t hurt, thankfully, since only the bed frame
and not the mattress was destroyed, but he had determined in that
moment there would no longer be testing of powers until we were
safely escaped from this place.

By this time we had resorted almost
exclusively to talking. We had talked to each other until we had
nothing left to talk about. That proved to be a dangerous thing for
us, as our long-term, self-proclaimed abstinence would become
unbearable and we would then resort to kissing.

This is what led to our current situation.
We had been involved in a pretty heated exchange that was very hard
for either of us to stop. With an amazing bout of restraint, Vance
had finally sprung up from the bed and I could feel the emotions
about to boil over inside him.

I stayed where I was, not interrupting him.
I knew he needed to vent some steam somehow, and if pacing the
floor was helping him, then so be it. I also knew if I went to
comfort him it would be disastrous for us both. One touch would
send us spiraling over the edge of the cliff we were so
precariously dangling from now.

Leaning up against the wall, I pulled my
knees up under my chin, laying my head on them and wrapping my arms
around my legs. I let my eyes drift over Vance’s anxiously moving
form.

He had worked out every day we had been
stuck in here. Push ups, sit ups, and any other exercise he could
invent by using objects in the room. I knew it was one of the main
ways he burned off his frustrations. The side effect of it,
however, had been that his already perfectly sleek body had become
even more so.

This, of course, made my mouth water for him
even more. I couldn’t resist gliding my hands over those perfectly
sculpted muscles, touching that wonderful physique over and over
again. Even now, just watching him move was making my heart race
even faster with desire for him.

“Portia!” he growled sharply under his
breath. “You have got to start thinking about something else! This
isn’t helping!”

“Sorry,” I muttered quietly, and I shut my
eyes to his image in front of me, trying desperately to move my
thoughts on to a different subject.

My attention was instantly averted when we
both heard the lock in the door slide, signaling that someone was
about to enter.

Vance was over to the door in two strides,
waiting for the unsuspecting person. He lifted his hand, ready to
attack whoever was about to enter.

To our surprise, Fiona stepped into the
room, causing him to hesitate a second.

“I wouldn’t do it,” she said when she looked
at his raised hand. “It would result in Portia getting hurt.”

He glared at her violently before he lowered
his hand, just as Douglas stepped in behind her.

Fiona turned toward me then.

“Hello, Portia. How are you feeling?” she
asked, almost sounding like she really cared.

I didn’t say anything but did feel a moment
of surprise since she had never seemed too concerned about me
before.

Fiona walked over to where I was sitting on
the bed and thrust her hand up against my stomach. She started
pushing around in a hard deep motion.

“What are you doing?” I asked angrily,
trying to push her hand away from my body.

“Don’t touch her!” Vance spoke, and he moved
toward us threateningly.

Fiona stepped away from me, not even looking
at Vance, and she and Douglas disappeared outside the door, sliding
the lock behind them.

“What was that all about?” I asked, looking
at Vance to see the same perplexed look on his face that was on
mine.

He shook his head while he stared at me.

This time we heard the metal plate on the
door open. We turned to see Douglas standing behind the barred
opening.

“Fiona informs me that Portia is not with
child,” he said with a disapproving look on his face.

“And?” Vance asked with a raised
eyebrow.

“You haven’t been sleeping with her,”
Douglas stated flatly.

“Oh, I’ve been sleeping with her,” Vance
replied sardonically. “It just so happens that is all I’ve been
doing.”

“I admit. I am surprised,” Douglas said. “I
didn’t think you would be able to resist her this long.”

Vance moved forward, stepping closer to
toward the door, a menacing look flashing over his face.

“When it comes to my wife, I’ll do anything
it takes to protect her.” He glared at Douglas, his sultry voice
sounding low and deadly.

“Well, you might want to consider this
then,” Douglas answered. “We have been very kind. There is nothing
preventing us from taking you out of here and performing a demon
conversion on you. That would guarantee that you would have
relations with your wife.”

“There’s only one problem with that,” Vance
replied, not backing down an inch at the threat. “If you convert
me, the chances are that I’d kill her before I’d get around to
being intimate with her.”

Douglas paused for a moment as if
considering this, before shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

“I guess we’ll have to go with plan B then,”
he said turning to gesture toward something unseen.

“Which is what?” Vance asked
suspiciously.

“That if you won’t sleep with your wife,
then we’ll get someone else who will,” he said with a grin.

Brian Fitzgerald’s face appeared in the
doorway with a smile.

“It would be my pleasure, uncle,” he said,
his grin widening, and he looked lustfully over at me.

Vance moved and was at the door faster than
anything I had ever seen in my life, anger rolling through him.

“You stay away from her!” he growled,
reaching through the bars to grab Brian around the neck. “So help
me I’ll kill you right here if you even so much as look at her
again!”

I could see his hand begin to heat up to the
violent red color it did when he had melted the doorknob at
Damien’s penthouse when he had come to rescue me.

Brian began choking violently, and Douglas
grabbed his shoulders to force him back out of Vance’s reach.

“Do you hear me?” Vance was still yelling
through the door. “If you even speak her name, you’re dead!”

Douglas stepped back up toward the opening,
being careful to stay at arms length, out of Vance’s grasp.

“If you don’t do what we’ve asked, then this
is what will happen, no matter what you threaten,” he stated
flatly.

Vance threw a fireball at both of them then,
causing them to dive to the side before some unseen person slammed
the metal plate shut once again, forcing him to yank his arm back
inside before they locked it firmly in place.

He was shaking with rage when he turned to
face me, crossing to me instantly and grabbing me into his
arms.

“I’ll never let them take you!” he said,
crushing me to him, and I could actually feel him trembling.
“Never, ever! I’d have to die first.”

He kissed me roughly, then, hard and
passionate, and I knew he was really afraid for me, us, him.

“What do we do now?” I asked when I pushed
back from him, breaking the kiss after a long moment.

He pushed my hair back from my face and
searched my gaze.

“I don’t know, Portia. Of course I want to
be with you in the way they’re demanding, but we just can’t,” he
said. “We’re going to have to try to plan an escape somehow. I
won’t let them give you to Brian.”

His hands were shaky against my face. He was
having a very hard time controlling his emotions.

“I love you,” I said to him, wanting to ease
his frustration somehow. “I’ll do whatever you feel is best for
us.”

He dropped his hands from my face then,
moving to continue his pacing. Had the floor been carpeted, he
would have worn a hole in it by now.

“That’s the problem,” he answered me. “I
have no idea what’s best for us.”

The room was silent for a moment as we both
contemplated our situation.

“Vance? Do you think my parents might be
here by now?” I asked. “I mean we’ve obviously been missing for
some length of time. Surely someone has noticed by now that we’re
gone.”

“I’ve thought a lot about that,” he replied.
“I’m certain if they were aware we’re missing then they’re probably
here.”

“How could they not be aware?” I asked,
puzzled.

“They could have demons impersonating us for
all I know,” he replied with a slight shrug of one shoulder.