My Forbidden Desire (3 page)

“So?” Blue Eyes said. One word and it was golden. The man had a beautiful voice.
The better to take your soul, my dear.

She had to tilt her chin to look into his face, and that didn’t happen to her often. He wore leather pants, black gloves, black boots, and a zipped-up leather jacket. Black, of course. A motorcycle helmet was tucked under one arm. Ah. The jackass on the bike. Up close, his eyes remained a freaky neon blue. “Nice to meet you, whoever you are.” She gave him a fake smile and hoped he didn’t notice she was trembling. “But I don’t want you here. I’m sorry Harsh wasted your time. Go home.”

Nothing happened. No change whatsoever in her premonition state; no sense of relief at having done the right thing. No diminution in her physical reactions. And no sense of what it was she was supposed to do to avoid the bad. But nothing was worse, either.

“Alexandrine,” Harsh said from behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder. “You are
not
,” she said without smiling, “the boss of me.”

Harsh shook his head. One of those secret communication head shakes. Not directed at her but at his Painful-Death-is-my-middle-name buddy. She whipped her head back to the man in front of her.

Blue Eyes stared at her hand on his leather jacket like she’d just slimed him, and then he stared at her. She had time to register the fact that he was gorgeous. The way a tiger is gorgeous. Not one in the zoo, either, but a wild one. One who hadn’t eaten in a week and thought she looked like dinner in an easy-open package. He stood a head taller than her without even trying. “Fuck off, witch.”

Well. That sure let the cat out of the bag, now, didn’t it? How the hell did he know that? Or maybe he was just lucky in his choice of name to call her.

“O-kaaay,” she whispered.

He sidestepped her and headed for Harsh. She turned around and got a view of him from the back. Right. Black leather. There weren’t many guys who could pull off black leather. His leathers had a lived-in look, and he totally pulled it off without looking like a doof. He and Harsh did some complicated hand thing with each other. All very male bondingish.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

Blue Eyes turned his head to look at her. “Yeah.” His gaze traveled up and down her in a slow, half-curious, half-insulting sexual examination. “And then I said fuck off. Maybe you should go do that.”

Alexandrine started a silent count to ten. She got to three. “Get him out of here, Harsh.”

Harsh took a deep breath. “Alexandrine, this is Xia. As you may have guessed, he’s a barbarian. Xia, my sister Alexandrine. She’s off limits.”

She made a face at them both. “Charmed, I’m not. Get out.”

Harsh gave her a poisonous look, but Xia got one, too. At least they were even in the deadly glare department. “Both of you need to behave. Please.”

Xia threw his helmet on her couch and then threw his very large body after it. She was damn lucky he didn’t break anything. He picked up one of her purple silk accent pillows and tossed it at the opposite end of the couch. Apparently, purple offended him. Then he unzipped his jacket and draped his arms along the back of the sofa. Was her couch too girly for him? Black velvet with purple and turquoise pillows wasn’t manly enough? Come on. She hoped her girly couch was killing him. His T-shirt was plain white and tucked into his pants. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t even the tiniest bit of excess anything protruding over his waist. Single-digit percent body fat. The guy was seriously scary.

“Make yourself at home,” she said. “You have five minutes.”

“Xia,” Harsh said. He tugged on his long hair. “For just once, could you pretend to be civilized?”

“What for?”

“Are all your new friends this nice, Harsh?” Alexandrine asked.

Xia glared at her. She looked at her brother for a bit. No help was coming from him. She studied Xia, hoping for some inspiration about how to dislodge him from her couch. The hilt of a knife stuck out of a dull black sheath clipped to his waist. A shiver of fear rolled down her spine at the sight of the weapon, and, creepily, Xia smiled like he could taste her reaction.

Another shiver jellied her knees. She knew in her bones he’d used that knife to kill people and wouldn’t think twice about doing so again. She needed every ounce of her nerve to turn her back on him. “Okay, Harsh. You need to explain this.” She held up her hands. Thank God they didn’t shake. What the hell kind of trouble was headed her way that Harsh wanted someone like Xia staying with her? “You need to tell me exactly why you want Killer here to stay. You owe me that much.”

Harsh sat on her favorite recliner. Also black velvet. “You e-mailed Álvaro Magellan.”

“So?” What witch worth her soul didn’t want to meet the great Álvaro Magellan? Not that Harsh knew that. Except, he knew about Magellan, and he knew about her e-mail. Her stomach got tight with tension.

“And you sent a photograph.”

“It wasn’t a kinky shot.” Her joke might as well have been attached to a lead balloon. Ka-thud. She itched between her shoulder blades, but she didn’t check to see if Xia was staring at her back. He was. She felt his stare in her bones the way you feel the one from a psychopathic axe murderer sizing you up as his next victim. But he wasn’t an axe murderer. If anything, he was a knife murderer but not intending, yet, to use his on her. “So?”

“So, Alexandrine, there are people who know about you now.” Harsh leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. He blew out a breath to get his hair off his face. Another chill ran down her spine. For the first time since he’d decided to pop back into her life, he was telling her the unvarnished truth. “People who won’t hesitate to kill you for that amulet.”

“Oh, shit,” she whispered. No wonder she was having such a hard time with her premonition. The danger was twofold, the events unfolding because she’d contacted Magellan and because of Xia the Barbarian. True, she had sent a picture of a stone amulet to Álvaro Magellan. She’d needed an in, and since part of Magellan’s cover was his expertise in such things, she’d gone to the trouble of getting a reference from a Berkeley prof who specialized in the subject. He had, naturally, given her Magellan’s name. Her prof friend was an expert in trinkets of ancient Middle Eastern origin. Magellan was The Expert. If anyone could identify what her amulet was and provide a clue as to its provenance if it turned out to be the real deal, that person was Álvaro Magellan. So said her friend the professor.

Heck, yeah, she thought. All she wanted to know was whether her amulet was the real deal and whether she was wasting her time trying to use it. She didn’t see the big deal with that. “It is valuable, then,” she said.

“Valuable enough to kill for,” Harsh said without any change in his expression.

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“The way I’m not joking about Xia staying with you.”

God, what a thought. “I am absolutely not letting Killer stay here.”

“He’s the only one I trust to keep you alive.”

“But why? Magellan isn’t going to come after me,” she said. Damn, but she was still getting chills. “In case you didn’t hear, he’s dead.”

Total silence. The silence behind her was deepest of all. Killer Boy was taking the quiet and making it bigger. On purpose.

“You are
not
sitting here telling me someone wants to kill me over a bit of carved rock. Hell, I don’t even know for sure if it’s real.”

“It’s real,” Killer said.

She felt the weight of the amulet’s cord around her neck. “Real schmeal. It doesn’t do anything, so I guess it doesn’t matter.” She put that out there on purpose, and neither man looked even a little confused about what she meant.

She wanted Xia gone, but she hadn’t flashed on getting him to leave as being her course of action. Usually once she’d identified a source of danger, she also knew what to do. In this case, there were two causes for her premonitional heebie-jeebies; Xia himself and whatever had been set in action with Magellan and her amulet. It was possible that those inciting events were setting off conflicting resolutions. Great. Just great.

“How long have you had it?” Harsh asked.

She wanted like anything to sit on the couch, but Xia was there taking up all the room. She stayed on her feet. “Since Turkey.” Harsh’s eyebrows rose. “Nine months, give or take.”

“Can I see it?”

Instinctively, she reached for her magic to protect herself if they tried to take it from her. Like that would do any good. Xia let out a growl. An honest-to-goodness wolf in-the-wilderness growl. He sat up straight, and the back of Alexandrine’s head turned into a block of ice. Her magic sputtered out. No surprise there, unfortunately. Damn, that man was scary.

Harsh narrowed his eyes at her. Xia was sitting up, his back ramrod straight, staring at her with pure hate in his eyes. And that didn’t set her off. It should have. A look like that directed at her from a guy she knew was about as bad as they come? She ought to have reacted.

“Alexandrine?” Harsh said.

“What?”

“May I please see the amulet?”

The thing was, she didn’t want to show anyone her amulet. Not out of distrust exactly, but more in an unpleasant,
precioussssss
sort of way. She sure as hell hoped she wasn’t turning into Golem from
Lord of the Rings
, all wigged out over the Ring. And if she was developing that kind of sicko relationship with her amulet, wasn’t that a freaking creepy thing to discover? She balled her hands into fists to keep herself from touching the cord. She knew, objectively, that showing Harsh her amulet was no big deal. He wasn’t going to steal it or refuse to give it back. But her hands refused to cooperate, and what came out of her mouth was, “What for? Seems to me you two know all about it. Why do you need to see it?”

Harsh shrugged. But his eyes did that flicker thing again, which was seriously unsettling to watch. Trick of the light, right? “Just curious.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach. “I don’t have it with me right now.”

“She’s wearing it,” Xia said.

Alexandrine turned around. “What, you think you know what color underwear I have on, too?”

Xia stared at her with his neon blue eyes. The center of her chest frosted over. Her vision must be going off, because it looked to her like Xia’s eyes were changing color, flickering between shades of blue, gray, and white. Xia mouthed the words
fuck you
at her.

Harsh said, “Cut it out.” His phone went off again.

“She’s lying,” Xia said. “I can feel the talisman. She’s wearing it.”

“Harsh speaking.”

“You know you’re a jerk, right?” she said to Xia. “A major, A-one, top-of-the-line, first-class jerk. Your parents must be so proud.”

He gave her another fuck-you look. “I’m the jerk who’s going to keep your head attached to your neck.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re a fucking witch.” He took off his jacket and threw it on top of his helmet. Yes, single-digit body fat. “And a liar.”

“Yes,” Harsh said into the phone. “In about an hour.”

“Oh, no,” she said. She put her hands on her hips and gave Xia her Black Glare of Death. Didn’t do much but, then, she hadn’t thought it would. He stretched his arms along the top of the couch. His skin was two shades darker than golden brown, total turn-on there. She liked them tall, dark, and drop-dead yummy. He had muscles that looked like they worked hard and often. They weren’t there for show, she thought. Whatever he did required ruthless use of his body. “Don’t be getting comfortable,” she told him. “You’re not staying.”

He leaned back and smirked at her. “Oh, yes, I am, baby.”

Chapter 3

W
itch or not, Xia thought as he watched Alexandrine Marit stare down her brother, she was his type. Tall. Long-legged. Nice chest. Didn’t mind wearing clothes that showed her body. Hip-hugger jeans; he was a total fan of the fashion. He liked blondes just fine, and she was way blond. Practically white-blond. He could do without the short hair—that gave him the creeps—but to be fair, the cut did good things to her cheekbones. The way her shirt did good things to her chest. Maybe her boobs could be bigger, but she wasn’t deficient or anything like that. All in all, Alexandrine Marit came in a nice package. Be righteous to have a piece of that. If she weren’t a witch, he’d be all over her.

“He’s not staying,” she told her brother.

“Yes, he is.”

Xia stuck out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. This was fun, watching the two of them face off. He’d say this about the witch—she wasn’t afraid of Harsh.

She put her hands on her hips, and that lifted the hem of her shirt just enough to give him a view of pale skin. He wondered if she was wearing a thong. He sure as hell wasn’t seeing any panty lines. “No. He’s not.”

“You’re the one who let Magellan know you existed, Alexandrine. They know about you now.”

“They? Who the hell is
they
, Harsh?”

“Who do you think? The mages. Real ones,” Harsh said. “People who make you insignificant.”

“Thanks.” She took it pretty well, even though anybody could tell that hearing Harsh talk about the mage-kind had set her back a step or two.