If Wishes Were Horses (22 page)

He dug his fingers into her waist, moving his grip up to either side of her spine,then back down, clutching her  hips. Even as he realized something was wrong, his body refused to  acknowledge the warning. His frustration and pent up desire for Sarah exploded, the orgasm ripping through him,  leaving him  torn between horror and pain.

He had only known Chief Sarah Wylde for two days, but Justin Herne was a manwho noticed details, not just as a shopkeeper, but as a man who revered that which wasprecious. Under his right palm, he knew there was supposed to be the smooth, satin circle of a bullet scar. There was none.

He snarled his frustration as his cock was  milked dry by the being upon him. As his hands clutched in an involuntary clamp on  its hips, the Sarah image wavered and he saw the being’s true eyes, the eyes he had seen in Lorraine’s face so many years ago, when what he had thought had been a dream had led to the best miracle and worst nightmare of his life.

“Don’t,” Justin gasped, “don’t—”

The Sarah creature shook its head, put its hands over Justin’s at its hips, then  the

touch was gone.

Justin blinked. He was alone, the incubus gone, only the tangled sheets and  trembling post-orgasmic state of his body telling him what had just transpired was real. Even that would not have convinced him, if  he had not been father to an angel because  of a similar visit over eight years ago.

He rolled over, grabbed the phone, knocked it off its pedestal. “Son of a —” He scrambled for it, snatched it  up. The phone rang and rang, and he swore again when he got Sarah’s machine. “Sarah, this is Justin. Pick up. Please, it’s urgent. It’s about the  murder.”

He waited, snarled when she  did not pick up the phone.  He broke the connection,

made the call to the uniform working dispatch in Lilesville on graveyard shift.

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“She called about an hour ago,” the rookie said. “Said she was still feeling under the

weather and wouldn’t likely be in this morning.”

“Where’d she call from?”

“She said she was at home.”

All the alarm bells went off. In Justin’s  gut, his head, in every nerve and muscle including the ones that tightened his grip  on the phone until his knuckles whitened.  “Thanks.”

He held the buzzing receiver against his forehead for a long moment. He might be overreacting, but his intuition told  him he wasn’t. It told him he needed help and Sarah needed protection, fast. Lori had been born  almost nine months to  the day from when the incubus first visited him. When it took  semen, it went immediately to the person whose form it had assumed. That was the only clue to a pattern they had, and thatperson would be Sarah.

His first reaction was to protect her, to call  the rookie back and  say whatever heneeded to say to get the entire force screaming  over to her house with sirens  and lightsblazing. The police would be able to scare off  the incubus, but they would not be able toanticipate the next victim.

Inexplicably, his gaze fell on the article from  the Chicago Times that he had  left out.  He remembered Sarah’s face as she talked to the kids about drugs, not in acondescending way, but in the way someone talked who really cared, who believed thatshe was responsible for every face out in that audience.

“…we’d have to find him and close in  around him before he knew we were there.”

Sarah was a police officer, sworn to protect and serve. She would want to protect her people,  and the people in this town  were his as well. He and the coven were the only ones capable of stopping the thing, but the cost might be Sarah’s life.

“No, damn it.” He erupted from the bed, grabbing for the nearest pair of pants. “It’s not taking her. It’s not.”

He hit  the preset button to  dial  Linda as he  took the stairs to the lower level three at a time. “Oh, God, Sarah,” he  murmured as  he listened to the ring. “Hang on, baby. I’m coming.”

* * * * *

He couldn’t possibly have the nerve to break into her house again.

Who was she kidding? This was Justin Herne,  the man of steel when it came to nerve. Defying a homicide investigation, telling the cop in charge he would pick andchoose what information he cared to divulge, fucking the sheriff in the neighboring county half-blind, making her fall for him.

She shrugged irritably into her robe. She should take her gun, but he might interpret that as a sentimental gesture.

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How fondly  would he think of it if she actually shot him this time? In a place where it might do some good.

She really needed to start locking that door. Bolting it.  Booby trapping it  with hot oil and barbed spikes.

Sarah moved up the hallway and saw firelight. Despite the warming weather, shehad built a fire earlier in the evening. She had been feeling a cold in her bones that cameas much from the drain of her turbulent emotions  as  her  lack  of  body  fat.  It  had  beenembers when she went to bed, but apparently  he had stoked it  up, thinking that theromantic gesture would warm her. He was in for a surprise. It was going to take thefires of hell to melt the  icy frost she felt for him right now.

She stepped into her sitting room and he  turned from  where he  stood before the fire.

It was a good thing she hadn’t brought  the gun, because it would have droppedfrom nerveless fingers.

He was naked, long muscles  outlined and  praised by the fire, from the taut  right buttock on which he rested most of his weight to the smooth landscape across his broad back. A wave of desire  struck her,  so strong  it made her knees weak.  Attraction vibratedbeneath his skin, called to her body as nothing ever had, so her pussy immediatelypulsed at high alert, as  if seconds away from climax.

It was Justin. It wasn’t Justin. Two parts of her brain processed what her eyes saw and spat out entirely different data. Unfortunately, the part that told her it  was Justin was in charge of her body, moving it forward toward the being from which her heart screamed she should retreat.

The dark eye beckoned her with no more than a flicker of movement, a slight curveof that sensual mouth that she could already imagine  moving over her skin, branding, sucking, kissing, biting, marking her, leaving no crevice unexplored. Her pussy tightened,  her breasts ached, and  when he  reached out, his long fingers closing over herwrist, she shuddered, a quivering sigh escaping her.

“Sarah,” he  whispered. “I want you.”

He’s a stranger. He’s the incubus.

“I want you. Only you. I can make everything not matter. Don’t fight me. I only want to bring you pleasure like you’ve never known.”

His hands moved over her shoulders, curled in the neck of her robe, peeled it back over her shoulders. Sarah stood in his armspan, feeling his cool hands on her skin, thefirelight behind him warming her calves. His  touch was ten times more potent than  his gaze, and the moment his fingers slid over  her breasts she came, hard, her fingersgripping his arms in shock as she rocked  forward on her toes, her forehead pressed against his chest. He did no  more than tweak her nipples gently, prolonging the climax.  Her arousal ran down her legs and he caught  some of it in his other hand that dippedbetween her legs and found her.

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She writhed, her body still spasming from the aftershock of one climax even as hestarted stroking her impossibly toward a second.

“You’re mine, Sarah,” Justin’s face and voice filled her senses. She was headed to the floor, her body held in his arms. She didn’t fight. She couldn’t. “You’re too precious a gift for this world. I think you belong in mine.”

Her will shrieked at her body to move, to  resist. She had read stories of people put under for surgery who didn’t go under but  were paralyzed, unable to tell the doctor they were awake and feeling everything. Or  pets, tranquilized  for airline flight, toolethargic to move but terrified to the bone.

An icy ball of terror surrounded her will, watching her body offer itself to a being she knew was not Justin, hearing his words  and knowing what they meant. She was unable to do more than  observe herself willingly and eagerly open  herself to  him as he lowered himself between her thighs, his cock erect and potent. It brushed  her and she cried out, a sound of pleasure that ricocheted  off the scream of denial inside her head.

Being in control was  important to a cop,  important to Sarah. Perversely, she had gone into situations where she knew control of the outcome wasn’t possible. But she was always able to be in control of herself,  of Sarah. The day she had dragged herself to her feet and made it across fifty feet of  blood-soaked concrete floor, she had  known herlife was likely about to be taken from her. However, she still had  the choice.  She could cross that floor to do the job or run.

Justin had known her  fear of that loss of self  from  the beginning. So even when he cuffed her to her bed, there had been that still moment, that tender  kiss, that acknowledgement of her, who she was, her soul. His  own had  reached out to touch it, so that what they were doing had been something they were doing to each other, even though she  had been scared to death and more  aroused than she’d ever been in  her life.

Until now.  But this was different. There was no pause, no touching of souls, not even a chance to catch her breath. He was  yanking her body’s reaction from her like adoctor using a hammer on her knee joints,  driving her up and over pinnacles at breakneck speed before she was ready for them, a spiraling whirlwind  where theorgasms were just leading to even more gripping climaxes, an ocean of heat suddenly invaded by ice as he drove into her. The  contrast brought forth another orgasm that wrenched open something inside her that shouldn’t be opened, so her scream was torn between pleasure and pain, leaving her nowhere to hide or run.

The cold spread through her and she shuddered in the grip between frost and pleasure.

His cock drove into her again, with such  force their bodies moved backwards on thehearth rug, and her hair, trapped under her shoulders, tugged her head back so he could sink his teeth into her throat. Her traitorous legs rose, clasped around his hips, her breath panting, lips moist from the cold  breath coming from between his. His hands moved down her sides, over her ribs, under  her to cup her breasts, then between them to stroke her clit at their joining.

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“Come for me again, Sarah.  Hard. Bring my come into  you, milk me for your  pleasure.”

She now understood how much power  she had  held. Justin had  desired her, wanted her, overwhelmed her with her body’s responses to him. But it had been
 
her
 
response always, not something he manipulated from her as she had accused him of  doing.  She might have  held  onto that cowardly  belief if  she didn’t have this  moment to compare it to. She had wanted what  he had been offering, fiercely.

Pleasure. Warmth. Affection. Friendship. All  the potentials for love had been in his  touch, his eyes and his  voice from the very  beginning, and time and rationality had  had nothing to do with it. Her heart had known  from the first moment, and had joined with  her body and soul in responding to the same remarkable  response from his.

This being had locked her heart and soul  away from her body, and those elements  were prisoners inside her head as all the sensual centers of her physical self rose up in response to his seductive powers. They dragged the rest of her screaming toward the icy abyss the cold darkness of his eyes promised.

Oh, God. Justin, help me.

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Chapter 15

The bastard had somehow taken or hidden his car keys.

He didn’t want to delay Linda in getting to  Sarah with the coven, so Justin took the forest paths. He had not bothered with a shirt, so the perspiration gleamed on hisshoulders. His bare feet pounded the earth,  and blood roared in his ears. He felt the texture of Sarah’s skin under his damp palms,  the scent of her hair brush his nose andmouth as he drew in gulps of air. Her blue  eyes, wary, distrustful. Glazed with desire.  Her smile. Her quiet words to  him in the deepest part of  the night, murmured againsthis ear as her arms came around his shoulders.

She was his. His to love, his to protect. Danger was a  scent around her that grewwith every stride he made toward her, fueling his body’s speed until there was no hesitation in his movements, even when his instincts guided him off the path to take a more direct route to  her house. His spirit rose  within him, pulling on  the energies of thenight, the energies that were a part of him.  His legs lengthened, grew even stronger. He felt the weight of  the antlers on his skull,  weapons of defense as much as the flashing dark hooves and the powerful muscles that gathered and sailed him over fallen trees inhis path. He was an eternal force of protection, the will of  man and  God coming together for one purpose. To save life, and love. To protect.

He heard the chanting as he got closer. He broke from  the clearing behind Sarah’shome and saw them, five women in contemporary dress, everything from hastily pulledon jeans to nightshirts and slippers. Appearance had been irrelevant. They had comeimmediately, knowing what they  faced. They drew toward the house from the five cardinal points, shrinking the circle, binding what was inside the four walls of thatcottage. Justin sensed the creature, knew it  was there, and rage filled his senses.