My Soul to Keep (7 page)

The witch bolted toward the open door, like a crazed creature seeking its last chance at survival.

In a flash, Sorcha sprang, launching herself over her. She landed on the balls of her feet before the witch, the stinging cold wind at her back.

Unarmed, she could at least keep her penned. Until she reclaimed her sword from Jonah, anyway.

“Going somewhere?” Sorcha hissed, her voice altered, thick in her mouth. With a growl, she grabbed a lamp near the door and knocked the shade free. She tossed the cold, solid metal pole in her hands, figuring it could work to slice off a head.

Just as she hauled back the pole, she was yanked by her hair and flung through the air. She hit a wall and landed on her side. Scalp stinging, she swallowed a cry.

Shaking with fury, she lifted herself up and watched through slitted eyes as Jonah stood between
her and her prey, a great wall of muscle shielding the murdering bitch. Betrayal stung her, flayed her like a whip. He was so quick she had not even seen him move.

Jonah,
her mind seethed, any lingering tenderness for him dying instantly.

“Go,” he barked over his shoulder at Tresa, motioning with an angry wave. “Flee this place.”

Tresa turned for the door. Jonah protecting her—it was more than Sorcha could stand!

“No!” Sorcha shouted, surging forward as the demon witch escaped out into the ice-burned wasteland. She quickly became obscured in the white swirls of freezing wind.

With a wild glance around, Sorcha spotted her sword where Jonah had abandoned it. Sprinting across the room, she snatched it off the ground, ready to give chase, but Jonah blocked her.

“Get out of my way,” she hissed, flexing her grip.

He shook his head warningly. “You're in too deep here, Sorcha.”

“Yeah?” She glanced beyond his shoulder, spotting the dark smudge of Tresa shrinking on the snow-craggy landscape.

She was getting away.
Gervaise's killer was getting away.

All her probing, waiting … for nothing. Desperation
hammered against her pulse. She had to go after her.

“I've faced worse than you.” It was a miracle that she'd survived that year before she met Gervaise, alone, a scavenger on the streets, fleeing man and lycan predator alike. In those days she still hadn't transitioned, but that hadn't stopped every lycan within miles from sniffing her out.

Jonah smiled a humorless grin. Pity lurked in the curving lips.
Pity
. Again. It had always been pity with him. He'd never looked at her as an equal, as a potential mate. That's why she'd left that night.

To see that same smile on his face now drove her over the edge. With an enraged cry, she lunged forward, arm raised, knowing the saber wouldn't kill him, not a dovenatu, but it sure as hell would hurt. And hurting him sounded pretty good right about now.

All these years she'd thought him dead. Instead, he was running around protecting the likes of Tresa. It was beyond imagining. She almost wished him dead … or at least she wished she'd never found out he was alive. She would rather have kept the bittersweet memory of him. Better than this reality.

He sidestepped the sword, so that she only grazed his shoulder. He glanced at the blood welling
through his coat. The wound would have been deeper if not for his thick winter gear. “You're out for blood?” he murmured, his voice lethally soft, deep and intense, silently questioning:
Is this the way it has become between us?

“I didn't come here to play. Let me pass and you may still live.” She shrugged aside the whispering voice that asked if she could really kill Jonah. For all that had happened, all the bitter feelings he roused, he was a part of her past … her beginning. Could she snuff out that life?

She swallowed the tightness in her throat and allowed herself to be honest with herself. Okay, she couldn't kill him. But he didn't need to know that.

“You packing silver?” He cocked his head to the side, a muscle feathering the flesh of his jaw. “Explosives?”

She looked over his shoulder again, craning her neck desperately for a glimpse of Tresa. Nothing.

He continued, “Because I'm not.”

Her gaze inched back to him.

He held his hands palms out. “You want a go-round, Sorcha? 'Cause we can beat each other to death all day and never die.”

“You're right.” Sighing—and hoping she didn't exaggerate the effort—she turned with feigned defeat. “All right. I guess this is pointless …”

She waited, let a moment pass for her words to sink in …

“I'm glad you feel that—”

She whirled.

His eyes flickered with the barest surprise as she barreled past him, striking his shoulder with her fist to push him out of her way.

He stumbled, caught off guard. Righting himself, he caught her around the waist with one arm.

Air crashed through her lips as he lifted her off her feet. That steel band of his arm shot a hot ripple through her. Shock and awareness. She couldn't recall a time when he'd ever held her so intimately, their bodies locked flush together. Never when she was a woman. She could feel the wild pounding of his heart against her, and her body reacted, came to aching life.

A sound, almost like a growl, burned in her ears. It was with some shock she realized it was
her
.

It was unique and not a little terrifying to have met her match—to be so vulnerable again. She almost felt like that helpless fifteen-year-old once more. Almost.

Clutched close to him, her body tingled. Her stomach clenched. This was Jonah. She had never thought him cruel or sadistic. Not like her father. Jonah had never been heavy-handed, forcing her
into extreme situations just to see if he could urge her through Initiation.

Even though Jonah had acted as her father's henchman, he stood apart from all the brutality, especially anything that might have caused her harm. He'd tried to help her, spare her … and comfort her when he couldn't. Those memories were dangerous. They made her body soften against him, the backs of her knees quiver. The growl at the back of her throat turned into a purr. In that moment, it was as if they were the only two people on earth.

His arm muscles bunched. His hand on her hip spread wide, fingers fanning out, each one a separate brand, searing her through her layers of clothing.

He said her name, the sound soft and dragging, ruffling the loose strands of silky hair near her ear.

It sucked the fight from her, urged her to melt into him. The muscles in her neck loosened, sagging her head back into his shoulder.

His fingers brushed her cheek, the barest touch. “Sorcha,” he said again, sighed really. “I … I missed you.”

A shudder racked her.
He
missed
her
? Right.

She jerked her head away from him. No.
Hell, no!

Remembering her purpose—and that he intended to keep her from it—she kicked his knee out with the heel of her boot, satisfied at the crunch of bone. He released her, cursing in pain.

She dropped to her feet. Panting, warm and flushed despite the arctic temperature, she jerked her gaze back to the open door.
Tresa.
She dove for the opening, screaming when a rough hand clamped around her ankle and brought her down hard.

Her body crashed flat, stretched out on the wood floor. She twisted around and kicked.

He dodged the attack of her boots, his expression furious, eyes like ice, the flame at the center twisting blue-cold.

“Stop that,” he hissed, crawling up the length of her and flattening his chest over her, trapping her arms at her sides.

“Go to hell!”

His body pressed, hard and heavy, like a rock weighing her down. His face loomed above hers, so close she could see the tiny white scar above his right eyebrow. She'd always wondered about that. It had to have happened when he was a boy. Before his Initiation, before she knew him.

She released a ragged breath. The hot air fanned against his face in a frothy white cloud.
They'd never touched like this, body to body. Adult male to adult female. As a girl, she had fantasized about it, but it never came close to happening.

Her heart hammered with alarming speed against her too-tight chest and she worried that he heard it. Felt it. Read more into it than fear and panic. She couldn't have that.

Like lycans, dovenatus were a primal species, driven by their more fevered emotions. Emotions like lust.

Shaming warmth pervaded her. He might get it into his head that she
wanted
him to take her right here, like a pair of rutting animals.

“Are you going to quit this stupid game?” he demanded, his voice a hard bite on the air. Hardly the sound of a man driven by insatiable desire … and a part of her bristled at that, even as another part breathed a small sigh of relief. Some things never changed. She didn't affect him
then,
and she didn't affect him
now.

The familiar burn of shame crept over her, reminding her of the girl she had once been, longing for his attention, craving his love. She had wanted him to be her first kiss. Her first. Period.

She stifled a snort. She was more experienced now. She'd tasted desire and wouldn't fool herself into thinking this man could deliver what no other could. If she had an itch, she would get it scratched
by some other … as soon as she got away from him and finished her business with Tresa.

“Well,” he demanded, “are you going to quit?”

“What? You want me to say ‘uncle'?” She sneered at the sudden memory. That had been the only word she could say to get him to stop tickling her as a girl.

His lips twitched and something inside her froze at that. It was like a flash, a glimpse into the past, when she could amuse him and make him grin. “Something like that,” he murmured.

Mentally shaking herself, she glanced desperately to the door again. She could still overtake the witch if she escaped now. Although immortal, demon witches didn't possess any of the super speed or strength of dovenatus or lycans. They had their gifts, their magic, but nothing else. Right now, Tresa was a normal woman out there running at snail speed through the tundra. It didn't matter that she'd gotten a head start. Sorcha could track her down in moments.

As though he read her mind, his chest sank ever deeper over hers, pinning her, crushing her achy breasts. “You're not going after her.”

“You'll have to kill me to stop me.” Bold words, and she meant them.

His gaze narrowed, scanning her face, looking at her, truly looking, probing her every feature
as if he was trying to understand this new Sorcha.

“But then you were always good at killing.” Her voice lashed out as quickly as a whip finding exposed flesh. The killing had bothered him, then. The bloodshed. He had confided as much. She almost felt wrong to throw that back in his face.

“I don't have to kill you,” he drawled in a smoky voice that made her insides quiver. “I can just keep you here long enough for Tresa to get away, put enough distance between her and us that you won't even know where to start hunting for her again.”

Her chest clenched as she thought about how long it could take for her to find the elusive witch. How long she might be alone with Jonah. How long before he was satisfied that the witch was well and truly out of tracking range. How long could he possibly trap her in this remote location?

Utterly, wretchedly alone with him.

He glanced away from her face, scanning the large, well-appointed great room. He looked back at her. “I'm certain we can find something to pass the time. Do you still read? I see a bookcase.”

She blinked. “Funny.” She surged against him in an effort to throw him off her again. Useless. “Too bad I'm not staying.”

The light at the centers of his eyes intensified. Suddenly the hard press of his body over
hers became too much. Her breasts, her hips, her thighs, everything quivered and ached and softened against his hard lines, melding them, fusing them into one. Her mouth watered, words impossible to form.

“'Course.” His voice rumbled up from his chest and into hers. “I'm sure we can come up with more interesting things to do.”

Sorcha.
Jonah reeled, overcome with the reality of her, the incredible sight. The emotion in her outraged expression made her more closely resemble the girl of memory, the Sorcha he thought dead, lost to him forever. The girl he had failed.

He might have celebrated coming face-to-face with her. If she hadn't been the woman he was here to stop—
kill,
if need be. If the press of her body against his didn't send the blood smoldering in his veins.

Except that this was Sorcha.
Sorcha
. Someone he had only ever viewed with tenderness, a little sister he must protect. The desire pumping through him made him feel base and foul. He shouldn't find the press of her body so arousing, even if it was a normal reaction. Physiological. They were of the same species, after all. Naturally drawn to each other.

It was this Ivo had counted on. He had believed the instincts of their kind would eventually force
Jonah to breed with Sorcha. Of course Ivo had been wrong to assume he was a mindless rutting animal.

His jaw clenched. He hadn't been that beast all those years ago.

And he wasn't now.

He was something more. Something better than a hybrid lycan. Something with a conscience.

If he listened to Darby and any other member of her coven, they would have him believe he was their salvation—a demon slayer fated to the task of protecting white witches from demons.

It shouldn't matter that Sorcha was the female he'd come here to stop.

But it did.

He couldn't take his gaze from her face, devouring the sight of her, the face that had changed, and yet was still the same in so many ways. Her doe eyes, her soft mouth …

He shook his head. What was she doing here? Hunting Tresa?