Crimson Cove (17 page)

“Can you feel it now?”

I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensory detail around me—the way the fire popped and crackled against the whoosh of wind blowing inside the chimney; the warmth of Bane’s large foot in my lap, the texture of his coarse leg hair under my fingertips; and outside, the smell of rain, bitter and thick, the taste of honeysuckle and ozone on the wind. But no Elam, no quiet purr of its signature humming to me. There wasn’t even the faintest hint of the ley lines against the storm.

“Storm is messing with the lines.” I frowned, focusing on the silence.

“No, it’s not.”

When I looked up, Bane was watching me. His throat worked, voice low, guarded and I swear I thought I saw a spark of red light pulsing from his fingertips. “I’m blocking it from you.”

“Why?”

“To help you concentrate, listen for the Elam.” He stretched out his hand and didn’t seem to notice the small flicker of reddish light glowing from his palm. “Come here. I’ll help you focus.”

My memory was frayed, but I did remember that spark. There was no way I’d invite it back. It had taken a wickedly strong memory charm to keep Bane’s mind clear of the last time that flicker had appeared. I was in no rush to work that kind of spell again.

Instead, I pulled my legs close, looping my arms to mimic having a chill. “No. That’s alright. I can’t hear it.”

“I know. I’ll help you.” When I didn’t look at him, Bane nudged my foot. “What’s the problem?” He looked down at his hand when I glanced at it. “What…”

“It’s probably the storm. I told you. It interferes with the lines.”

There was something in the stare he gave me that felt like an accusation. And then he truly noticed the small spark of light working over his fingertips, sparking out toward me as he reached in my direction. It caught him off guard. Curiously, he stretched his long fingers, moved them in succession like a piano player working through scales, and each fragment of movement ushered up that same red spark—a tingling streak of energy that felt damn familiar. He moved faster, fingers becoming a line of movement until that spark crackled, shot out and zapped me right as he waved his fingers at my hand.

“Ow.”

Scrambling back, my hand on the floor, I managed to get far enough away from him to catch a breath. But the cabin was tiny and the air so thick that my head swam from the heat and the recoil from my thoughts and the magical energy pulsing around the room.

There came a swift flash of memory, a slice of images that I’d tried to forget but could not completely erase from my mind—that light pulsing, circling. Our small, childish fingers touching and connecting, our twelve-year-old limbs brushing together and then jerking apart as that light tried to consume us, and oh, the classroom and Bane’s hands all over me, touching, feeling, gripping and that constant red light clouding around the room, inside our heads, surrounding us, joining us together.

This meant finality. It meant completion and Bane did not remember. The flashes came to me disjointed, but still they came and the one I clearly remembered—our melding in that classroom—was the one that hung in my mind. It was the one that made the most sense.

“Jani…” he started, following me, coming to his knees despite his bad ankle, crawling so close that I had nowhere to go. “You’ve been keeping something from me. I see it. Even in the damn dark I can see it. It’s everywhere.” Bane moved his warm fingers to my bottom lip and let his thumb glide across my cheekbone. “You refuse to meet my eyes. You avoid me when I stare too long.”

“You always stare too long.”

“I can’t help that.”

He was massive, a sweltering cloud that collected energy, that absorbed emotion so that it became consuming—a vacuous funnel that craved the things it did not need but took what it wanted. That was Bane. He took control but for the life of me I could not see past letting him take what had always been his.

“Tell me my daydream was invented. That dream of being in the classroom with you.” There was a challenge in his voice that reminded me of us as children huddled and scared, taunting and fearless. But I wouldn’t answer, couldn’t tell him something that would hurry along his anger. It would be heavy enough when it came. 

“Jani,” he said, coming so close that I could smell the sweat from his skin and hear the tiny rasp that caught in his throat.

“You’ll hate me.” It was as close to an explanation as I could offer.

              Bane pressed his hand against my cheek, the touch warm and soft but with that small red current still working behind his skin, still flirted with me to cry out that he was mine. “Never, little witch.”

              Give and take. He wanted, needed, but didn’t understand why. He didn’t remember and at that moment, I could not bring myself to remind him. It would hurt too much. But the warmth in his hand, the sweet, honeysuckle scent from his skin weaving like a spell of its own making, intoxicating me, lulling me closer and closer until only Bane—the sound, feel and smell of him took up all the space in my head. There was only this man. There was only this moment.

Both belonged to me. 

Our mouths came close together, our breaths heated and dampened our faces, our lips—bringing us to the blistering, bated breath before the race begins. A small incline, the minutest stretch of my neck and that mouth, that tongue would belong to me. It was different from the night he spelled me. There was no primeval encouragement from the lines egging us on, inching us closer and closer toward our most basic urges. This was more and somehow with Bane’s face so close to mine, with his fingers tugging on the back of my hair, I knew that one kiss would unhinge me. It would change everything and there would be no stopping us.

“I…this…” my words got stuck somewhere around the back of my throat, clung tight against the hot breath that fanned out when Bane rested his forehead against mine, when he moved his mouth to kiss between my eyebrows.

“This isn’t normal, Jani. This…” he paused, shuddering when that pulsing red light shot across his skin, hovering near his fingertips. “Someone spelled us.”

              Blinking, nodding, it was all I could manage. Bane was too strong, the heat in the room too full, the air too thick. Yes, someone had been spelled—him. Someone had done the spelling—me. But really I was a coward, scared of what he’d think, say, damn well do if he found out I’d taken his memories from before. Even if it was for the best, I’d still lied to him—the lie of omission. I’d blocked him and kept for myself something I had no business hiding away.

But Bane seemed content to ignore the past. He seemed mesmerized by the moment, fascinated by the play of reddish light on our skin and that whip of succulent heat that warmed us every time he moved his fingers across my collarbone. “I think I know what this is, Jani, but, it makes no sense. Nothing between us, then or now, ever made sense to me.” And it wouldn’t, not to him, not with the understanding I’d taken from him when I blocked his memories. He kept flirting closer to the truth, skating the surface of what that light meant and where he’d seen it before. I couldn’t let him find out, not like that. Not just then.

“Bane,” I said, pulling him closer, loving the low, deep throttle of his voice vibrating when my nails slid up his neck. “You watched over me. Protected me.”

              “Did I scare you then?”

“Always,” I said, feeling brave, reckless. I exhaled, staring in his eyes like I wasn’t a coward. “But I loved you for it.”

One swift nod, as though he’d made up some silent decision on his own and Bane picked me up, pulling me closer, his arm around my waist and that busted ankle injury forgotten in his smooth haste to kiss me.

His look was feral and possessive, and even though some loud,
loud
voice in my head told me to stop him, reminded me that it was my job to stop him, I was powerless against the rush of his mouth against my neck and the greedy hold of his massive hand cupping my hip.

              “This isn’t…this won’t lead anywhere…” There was little fight in my protest, my words meant to stop him, only contradicted by how I stretched my neck, giving him greater access to my skin.

              “It already has. It started a long time ago.”

“It didn’t…”

“Yes, Jani,” he said, shutting me up with that wide mouth, with the slip of his tongue along my bottom lip. “Every look back then to right now, I was saying the same thing. Every single one.”

My body felt electrified, stunted by Bane’s confession, crippled by the light heat collecting around us. If I asked and was disappointed, I’d lose nothing. I had claimed him long ago and had lived with the empty feeling of that for years. If he claimed me now, not remembering a thing and discovered later how badly I’d betrayed him, could I stand the notion that I was his and he no longer wanted me?

Risk and rules. My life existed around both and just for a moment with Bane watching me, with him waiting for permission he didn’t seem familiar with ever having to wait for, I wanted to take something for myself. Just once. “Do I have to ask?”

“No,” he said, his bottom lid twitching as he watched me, “just look a little deeper.”

              And I did as Bane held my face in his hand. I looked beyond the veneer he wanted the world to see. I saw pass the expectations, the certainty of what his life was meant to be. There was no alpha wizard, training to lead his coven to the future. There was no looming, angry man keeping everyone away in some bland effort to protect himself from the world around him.

              Right then, there was only Bane. That open, real nexus that had touched mine ten years before. The protector who guarded me from threats that weren’t real, and those that were.

              Propriety required that I back away. Tradition, adherence to the way of things in the Cove, told me I had no business touching him. But I was damn tired of doing things I should do instead of things I wanted to.

              “Bane…” there was a pause in the name, a small reluctance I wasn’t sure I’d ignore and when he moved my head, tilting my face to look down at me fully, I thought for a second he expected me to reject him. 

There was only enough time for two blinks as he watched me, his scrutiny all encompassing, making me tremble, before Bane shook his head, then gripped my face to kiss me.  It began simply, tenderly, then his deep breaths grew labored the longer his kissed me. The desperate, greedy noises he made set off something ancient and wild in the pit of my stomach.

His fingers went near my scalp to grip my hair, preventing me from moving away from him—as if I would.  His tongue dipped hard and certain, his teeth sucking in my bottom lip. He pulled away, resting his forehead on mine, exhaling hard, labored breaths, only for a moment before he took to staring at me again, giving me that same genuine expression, the same piercing concentration that could have been anger but was most likely desperation. 

              Swallowing, Bane released a breath.  “Tell me you want me. Not because I’m asking you, but because you mean it.”  His voice was soft, but I could hear the quiet frenzy in it. “Tell me the truth.” Bane pulled me closer, placing his hands on either side of my face, making my heart drum in wild, hard beats. “Tell me, Jani. Tell me now.” He wasn’t begging, though the tone of his voice, the low gruffness of the timbre and the narrowed slant of his eyes told me how badly he needed to know.

              We take life as it comes. The challenges set in front of us become hurdles we must jump. And when you are a lower coven witch in a town obsessed with breeding, when the people you love most in the world are part of that obsession, you take what little you can, when you can.

              Bane was all I wanted. He wasn’t for me. He wasn’t mine, not in the way that our world determined. But just then, I forgot. Just then, I let myself keep forgetting.

              “Never wanted anything more.”

His hair was thick, curled with a wave and it slid between my fingers as I yanked him close, an insistent jerk that would bring his mouth to mine. The response was immediate, heady and my loud whine echoed around the room when Bane gripped me, his touch penetrating. 

Counter and counterpoint we came at each other—me clinging to him, him insisting, gripping as we kissed, as we moved together against the walls of that tiny cabin, onto the rough wool rug on the floor. My clothes gave way in his desperate, eager movements, his mouth touching each inch of exposed skin he uncovered. Bane was just able to stay upright, then stretched as he gripped me tighter, twisting our bodies so that he hovered over me. I smiled, watching him tear away his shirt, dislodge his body from fabric in a frenzy of movements, until he was naked above me—so beautiful, so male with wide shoulders like looked like marble, a chest and stomach fit and fierce from the labor of effort. Runes covered his chest, zigzagged between the small patch of hair on his chest. He smelled wild, like the forest and my fingers ached to touch every beautiful inch of naked skin. Bane stared down, his lips rolled between his teeth, his nostrils flaring as his gaze moved over my skin. 

My fingernails ran along the deep indentions of his torso, across the considerable sinew of his chest, down to the lean ridges of his stomach, admiring the form of him, the etched precision of his body and he let me, enjoyed my touch, his eyes rolling up, his hands guiding my wrists over his chest, his hips, within the soft hair trailing down his stomach.