As if in response to what he was doing, Tatyana lifted her hands and slid them into the dampness of his hair at the back of his neck. A shocking bolt of stimulation ricocheted down his spine and into southern territories in his body, forcing muscles and flesh to clench in awareness and arousal. He grew hard. Oh, so very hard. His cock lengthened and thickened and heated with the fury of an undeniable arousal. Gritting his teeth, Hunter released his hold on her hair and reached up for the busy fingers crawling over his scalp. The minute she felt his hands on hers, she resisted his attempt to remove her touch, making a sound of protest that contained enough fear to cut him to the quick.
Then she found her voice; a hoarse, weak conglomeration of sounds that barely qualified as speech. Her crossed wires apparently didn’t allow for English, so she was wrenching out Russian that was more an attempt to get impressions across than it was to make conversation.
“Cold ... warm from you ... Hunter ... need you...” she rasped, turning her face into his neck so the words floated up his throat like heated puffs of erotica. Her lips brushed his pulse as they moved, lighting fires in his bloodstream that radiated heat like a sun, going through his entire body until he felt as though he was burning everywhere with unfathomable need.
“Here’s some more tea. This will help sedate her so she can sleep. Rest will clear her mind.” Annali turned around to face Hunter as she spoke and it was all she could do not to react outwardly at the sight that greeted her.
Hunter stood before the table, between the knees of their patient, wrapped up tightly in her hold while she nuzzled and cuddled him as if he were a huge, warm-blooded teddy bear. Meanwhile, the male witch had his eyes closed tightly and a priceless expression on his strained features. It was a cross between perplexity and raw sexual tension. Taking pity on him, she pressed her lips together and wiped all traces of humor from her expression. Hunter tried to draw away from the feminine trap he was ensnared in as Annali approached. It was unfeasible for him to do so without distressing Tatyana, so he relented with a sigh and turned a speaking gaze on Annali.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” she said, a giggle escaping her. “She’s probably working on nothing but instinct and rudimentary thoughts after having her brain fried like that. Obviously she equates you with security and, umm”—Annali edited herself innocently—“sanctuary.”
It was hard for her to keep a straight face as she said that. Presently, Tatyana combed her hands through his hair, down his neck and around his shoulders before heading back again. Somehow Annali managed to contain herself enough to have mercy on him when she saw how badly flushed the back of his neck was, even his ears tipped pink. She knew Hunter wouldn’t be so flustered if he weren’t already deeply attracted to Tatyana. He was trying to be gallant under impossible temptation, poor baby.
“Here, Tatyana,” Anna offered with brusque efficiency, pressing the cup on her patient as she wriggled between the two of them enough to give Hunter some desperately needed breathing space. Annali heard him swearing vehemently under his breath in Romany. When she glanced at him, he had his back to her and his hands locked into fists so tight his knuckles had gone white. She pressed the tea on Tatyana. “Good girl,” she praised every few swallows, managing to keep the other woman’s attention while Hunter regained some composure. When he finally turned to face them, his expression was like grim stone and a quick pulse flickered at the base of his clenched jaw.
“I’m going to see her settled for the night and find myself some dry clothes. Tell Ryce I’ll be down to keep watch.”
Annali hardly thought that was likely. Hunter was so obviously exhausted. He showed every sign of having pushed himself too far. But, as always when she dealt with the coven males, Annali kept her mothering to herself. They would only argue with her anyway. Nature would force his compliance, she thought as she smiled slyly and flicked a glance at the insensate Tatyana. And nature would no doubt use every trick in the book to get her way.
Annali gave Hunter a noncommittal nod and stepped away from his target, watching as he swung Tatyana into his arms and carried her from the room.
Hunter flew up the stairs as if demons from the depths of hell were nipping at his heels. All he wanted was to see his charge safely into bed and to get himself dry and warm. It wasn’t until he reached the top of the stairs that he realized there wasn’t a room readied for Tatyana. So Hunter simply brought her into his own suite. He would arrange for a separate room after he returned below stairs.
He turned down the bed and slid her between the chilled sheets. There was a steady fire in the hearth in the outer room, but the bedroom was nippy. He set the thermostat, but he was still fighting off chills as he sought dry clothes from the wardrobe across from the bed. He stripped and re-dressed in a pair of gray sweats. He was searching for a warm shirt when he glanced in the mirror. The door to the wardrobe had tilted to reflect the occupant of the bed back at him. She was sitting up, her eyes wide and fascinated as she watched him. Hunter went exceedingly still for a beat, then he quickly reminded himself that, as disoriented as she was, it couldn’t matter that he’d unthinkingly stripped completely naked a moment ago.
No. It didn’t make any difference, he assured himself. She wouldn’t even remember tonight by the time morning came around.
He rounded the bed and reached to ease her back into the pillows.
“Angel, you really need to rest.”
The concept was apparently acceptable to her. She slid over to the opposite pillow as she grabbed his hand with surprising strength, dragging him toward herself, obviously intending for him to lie next to her. Resigning himself to the idea that he was a louse and a pushover all in one, Hunter slid down into the bed beside her. He was barely in contact with the bedding before she’d wrapped herself fully around him, squeezing him like a sexy, wriggly python. It was relentlessly blissful. Tatyana had incredible curves and her enthusiasm was like a fantasy. Not just because of her sexuality, although he certainly acknowledged he was enjoying it a whole hell of a lot, but also because of the sheer affection she was giving him.
He’d always craved this kind of enthusiastic physical affection from a woman. He’d grown up with zero physical connection with his parents, dark warlocks who offered their offspring nothing outside of the material. Braen and his other brothers had taken pleasure in the family’s wealth and power, but Hunter had suffered in that cold, controlled atmosphere.
Now he was with a stranger who was bathing him in eager warmth, and it was like knocking on the gates of nirvana. Selfishly, he soaked in it, his arms circling her luscious body tightly. Tatyana was coiled around him, muttering happy, contented Russian to him that took away a lot of the guilt he felt for taking advantage of the situation. It was clear from the disjointed mumblings that she needed this as badly as he did, that her preservation instincts demanded it from him. Hunter knew that a large part of her reaction was the blood exchange; but that logic couldn’t remove the peace he felt tightly holding a living being who wanted no one else to hold her but him.
He would go down to Ryce just as soon as she fell asleep.
“Annali, I’m waiting.”
Ryce hadn’t even bothered getting out of his wet clothing. As soon as he had repaired the window to Gracelynne’s suite and had seen her safely at rest, he had stormed off in search of Dimitre’s lover. Now he stood on the threshold of her bedroom as she shivered her way out of her clothes and into a warm dry robe.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked quietly, not looking at him as she wrapped up her wet hair in a fresh towel.
“I want you to say Dimitre didn’t tell you about Tatyana either, Annie. I can almost forgive him, based on his newness to all of this and the fact that we are still working on settling his questions, concerns, and fears, but by the Lady, Annali, you should know better!”
“Ryce ...” Annali sighed and faced him, hands on her hips. “Are you angry for Tatyana’s sake because I didn’t tell you or are you ang
ry because you think I betrayed your trust?”
“Think? There’s no damn thinking about it, Annali! You didn’t just betray me, you betrayed the tenets of the Craft! Ones you swore to uphold. Does that change now because you are in love with a man?”
“Hmm. Let me think about that,” she shot back with sarcasm. “Meanwhile, why don’t you tell me about your betrayal of my trust? You know, a trust you swore to uphold the day you rescued me and brought me into this house? Or does that change because I am in love with a man?”
The accusation brought the High Priest up short, taking a serious amount of wind out of his outrage. “What are you talking about?” he demanded, although without force or righteousness. He didn’t realize that the lack of emphasis only reawakened Annali’s suspicions.
“I am talking about you sending my lover off with Kaia on her ‘lecture circuit.’ Like you would really let her go away on something like that when we are under such heavy threat? And that you sent her with Dimitre ‘for protection’? He is the least skilled of all of us, despite the impressiveness of his power. Power is nothing until you learn to wield it effectively. You have pounded that message into me for eleven years.”
“Annie...”
“Don’t you ‘Annie’ me! You sent him somewhere dangerous and you made him swear not to tell me, didn’t you? You are always preaching about how you want us all to find love and have families and real lives outside of the Craft one day, and what do you do at the very first opportunity? You take a man who I need to trust more than anything and you ask him to lie to me! Well, he didn’t lie to me, and he didn’t break his word to you because that is how important both of those things are. Instead, he came to me and said, ‘Honey, I’ve been sworn not to tell you the truth about what I am doing, so I won’t. But I won’t lie to you about it either.’ ” Annali took a very deep breath.
“So when I tell you that Dimitre has been thrashing out what to do about his beloved baby sister until he has been tied into knots over it, then you need to know I am not exaggerating. Did I know? Of course I did. He tells me everything because that is how important I am to him. But he wanted to never tell her, or you, that she was a dormant witch, and I talked him out of that. I made him realize how dangerous it was to leave her out there uninformed.
“He was going to tell both of you by winter’s end. But you know how proud he is. He wanted to be strong and in control before he thought about bringing his baby sister over into danger. He wanted to know he had placed his trust in the right people before telling her to trust them as well. It’s only been two months since he was forced to cross over! Since he became a witch with this incredible power over the workings of time, power that he barely controls. Can you blame him for using caution when it comes to the girl he has practically raised since she was born?
“I’m sorry I withheld information from you and this coven. The moment I saw her here I knew it had been a mistake and I was going to tell you as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I know that doesn’t make it right, but I was going to make her safe. You know I would never risk letting what happened to me, happen to her.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Ryce exhaled with tense frustration as he sat down on Annali’s bed. For the moment she and Dimitre were sharing Annali’s suite. Soon the suite on the third floor would be finished for them, and their future family whenever they chose to start one. It was Ryce’s dream for all of them to live up on that third floor one day, all with families and a second generation of Willow Coven witches running around.
Annali was right, it had been wrong for him to make Dimitre lie to her, and he was glad the Tempus witch had found a way around it that kept both of his promises. It was one of the reasons he liked the man so much. He was intelligent and damn clever. Two qualities Ryce could already see in Dimitre’s young sibling.
“Are you going to tell me where Kaia and Dimitre are, or is it still necessary to lie to me?”
Ryce shook his head. “No, love. Of course. I sent them to spy on the Pennsylvania coven.”
“Oh my sweet Goddess,” Annali gasped, her horror making her go pale, pale white.
“I didn’t know it was Hawthorn Coven ... or rather, Belladonna Coven. I had no idea it was Braen and all of them behind this. I should have known. I should have suspected there would be a reason why a new coven would decide to take us on first thing.”
“Ryce, you have to get them out of there! You have to call them back before they are discovered!”
“I know that. But it’s night, and that’s when Kaia and Dimitre are most active watching the warlocks. They won’t be back to their rooms until dawn. They certainly wouldn’t bring cells with them that could alert anyone to their presence.”
“What about a telepathy spell? You are more than strong enough to reach that far,” Annali insisted, her hands gripping the tie to her robe in agitation.
“Annie, love, it’s the same thing as using a cell. Sure, I’ll reach them, but they are on enemy territory. A spell that powerful will alert anyone even remotely adept to their presence. Please, try and stay calm,” he urged her, getting up and moving to hug her. “Dimitre will be fine. His power is undefeatable unless Belladonna has acquired a dark Tempus. Hunter was just telling me what the odds of even finding a sane or in control Tempus are.”
“Sanity never stopped a dark coven before,” she bit out. “Evan was as mad as they came and he was High Cleric when they were called Hawthorn Coven.”
“Yes, and he is a corpse with its head severed from its shoulders thanks to Hunter’s blade. Braen is headed for the same fate.”
“Braen.” Annali shuddered at the mention of Evan’s former protégé’s name. She buried her face against Ryce’s damp shirt.
“Something you need to talk about, honey?” he asked tentatively.
This was always a minefield. Whenever dark memories of her past loomed up between them, Ryce had to be very careful. He’d been successful at it for eleven years, and just because Dimitre had appeared to take Annali the rest of the way it didn’t mean he couldn’t still be her best confidant when she needed him.
“Let’s just say that along with raping and torturing me those two weeks, Evan got a big kick out of enlisting Braen’s help so he could watch everything from an observer’s perspective.”
“Oh, Annie ...” Ryce whispered, closing his eyes and kissing her temple gently. “You never said a word about this.”
“You know why I couldn’t. Hunter would have gone ballistic, and it would have forced him on a road he might not have come back from. If you think losing him for a decade was hard on us, Ryce, imagine what it would feel like to lose him forever. That’s what would have happened,” Annali insisted. “His psyche would have been completely destroyed in the process of hunting down and assassinating his very own blood. I could never tell him that his brother had a hand in my hell, not once I learned they were related.”
“Hunter has no loyalty to Braen. He broke from the cold, contemptuous ways of his family completely when he joined with me all those years ago. To him, Braen is just another warlock. Now, he is also the leader of the coven threatening Willow Coven, and Hunter is our Sentinel again. After facing his brother tonight, don’t you think Hunter already knows it will be his job to kill Braen?”
“But then it will be because of his duty to the coven ... not because he is avenging me. It may seem trivial or splitting hairs to you,” she said, lowering her lilac eyes to the floor, “but it is important to me. And he is older now. Wiser and more skilled. It is different to face something like this at the age of thirty-four instead of the age of twenty-three.”
“These are not trivial points,” Ryce assured her softly, his hug tightening around her. “Nothing about this ever was. And you are right. This will be no easy task for him, but I believe he has the strength to face it now. A strength that he did not have back then.”
“He has found the strength to face a lot of things, if he has come back here,” she pointed out. “It wi
ll be rough when Asher returns to find him here.”
“I expect as much,” Ryce said. “So does Hunter.”
“But you didn’t warn Asher he was coming, did you?” She pulled back to look at him. “Do you really think that springing Hunter on Asher is the best thing to do? Or were you just saving yourself a few days of grief in the interim?”
“The decision was mine to make. Asher might have been the only dissident, but if I had asked for coven opinion I would have had to respect his pain and arguments. I cannot afford the luxury of that kind of fairness and democracy. If I pander to everyone’s emotions, I will be unable to lead this coven or ensure our survival.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “And make no mistake, love, we are fighting for our survival here. It was only by the intervention of our blessed Goddess that we found Gracelynne before she was murdered. Providence and dumb luck saved us from being torn to shreds that day they attacked us on the trail.”
“The Great Mother sent Dimitre to save us. To save me, especially. Perhaps this time she has sent us Tatyana for an even larger purpose.”
“To save us?” Ryce asked with a smile for her romanticism.
“To save someone,” she stipulated.
Annali had a pretty good guess who that someone might be.
Chapter Nine
Okay.
She had been a very, very, very bad girl.
Tatyana confessed to the sin with a mental plea for forgiveness, exhaling as silently as she could manage. She was staring at an incredibly gorgeous man who was sleeping like a boy prince beside her. His face was just this side of angelic, what with that freaking adorable smattering of freckles that made him just about as irresistible in sleep as he was conscious. Consciousness, however, added a virility factor that sent angelic and adorable on a hike and welcomed the substance of sex and magnetism instead.