Something sparked in her eyes, and he could tell she almost—almost—smiled. “Fuck yeah, I do. And it’s none of your fucking business how often I say ‘fuck.’ Nor is it any of your fucking business if I choose to run into a pub because people are being attacked, if I rescue a dog who’s been abused, or if I decide to fucking jaywalk just because I feel like it—”
“You’re actually maddening,” he said on a note of discovery. “You. Madden. Me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do I look like I care? Let me lay out a few more things for you. Don’t assume I give a shit what you think. Don’t expect me to believe the world revolves around you—because it doesn’t, bucko. It doesn’t. And don’t think just because you helped me to feel better—thank you, by the way, I really do feel better—that I’m going to start paying attention to anything you say to me.”
“Oh dear Lord and Lady,” Nikolas said. “Cease talking.”
She frowned at him, and from the uncomprehending expression in her eyes, he realized he had slipped into the old tongue again.
“Mmm-hmm, and when you talk like that?” she said, drawing a circle with a forefinger in front of his face. “You just sound stuck-up, because you know I don’t understand a single word you’re saying.”
He glared at her. “Stuck-up.”
She nodded. As tired as she looked, the dark shadows under her eyes had lightened, and her eyes sparkled with irate feeling. She repeated, “Stuck-up.”
What an idiotic, immature thing to say. From out of nowhere, a bolt of laughter shot up. He stamped on it hard. She was being ludicrous, and what’s more, he suspected she knew it and didn’t care.
Underneath his hands, her skin felt luxuriously soft and warm. He could feel the rhythm of her breathing. It felt like a heartbeat. It felt alive and vital and as necessary as air or water.
She was something so foreign to how he had grown accustomed to living he didn’t even have words to express it. He thought his shell of isolation had become immutable, irreversible, but with a few words and that diamond-like fire in her eyes, she shattered it.
So much hunger came roaring out from the same, deep, mysterious place the laughter had come from. So much. His fingers tightened on her soft flesh. She opened her mouth, and he could tell from the saucy spark in her expression that she wasn’t done telling him off.
Instead of listening to any more of her lecture, he came down on her, torso to torso. “You’re a damn mouthy broad,” he said and kissed her.
Her curved, generous lips were as soft as they looked. As his body came over hers, the sensation of her lying underneath him satisfied something deep and primal in him.
He could feel the curve of her breasts, her narrower, slighter bone structure. Her warmth burned him, and that mouth, that mouth, he had never felt before the kind of hunger he did as he conquered that soft, lush mouth.
After a moment of shocked stillness came the biggest surprise of all. She tilted her head and kissed him back, molding her lips to his, shifting as he shifted, giving way as he pressed hard for entrance and plunged his tongue deep inside her. He could feel every single one of her fingers as she threaded them through his hair in a caress that sent a shock of pleasure through his entire body.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had been touched with any kind of sensuality or affection. That part of his nature had been cold and unused for so long it roared to life with the strength of a tidal wave.
Hungrily he ate at her. He ravaged her mouth as if it were the first meal he had seen in years. Another shock of awareness bolted through him as her tongue dueled with his.
She lifted her head off the pillow in order to kiss him back, following him up eagerly as he tried to ease back to take a breath, to take stock. Her fingers worked at the back of his neck, wordlessly asking him for more.
It brought him down again. Cupping her head in both hands, he kissed her wildly while his cock stiffened into a hard, painful spike of hunger that he pressed against the curve of her hip. Her legs shifted restlessly, entwining with his.
Just like that, he was crazy to discover what she felt like naked. As he cupped her breast, he could feel the jut of her nipple through the thin material. It would be as plush as her mouth and just as pink. Maybe a darker, dusky rose.
It would taste fantastic. She had generous breasts. The curve fit beautifully into his hand. He molded the lush mound of flesh while he licked at her mouth. Her breath was coming fast, soft, urgent puffs of air against his heated skin, egging him onward.
Her fingers closed around his wrist, and she turned her face away from his kiss. “Stop,” she said, her voice strangled. “This—we—I shouldn’t be doing this.”
Nikolas froze. His heart pounded as he tried to make sense of what she was saying.
Then her words sank in, and they leveraged a glimmer of sanity into his overheated, lust-filled brain.
Her heart was pounding as hard as his, and they were both breathing heavily, the sound ragged in the quiet room.
Her expression held a wry vulnerability he had not seen in her before. Carefully he lifted his hand from her breast and told her, “I had not intended for this to happen.”
“No,” she said. “Of course you hadn’t. Neither had I. You are not one of my short-term goals, and you have no part in my life plan.”
“And you are certainly not in my agenda, in any way.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t even like you.”
She threw open her arms and let them fall onto the bed. “Exactly! I don’t like you either! In fact, you’re pretty insufferable.”
At that, he cocked his head and glared. “As are you.”
She shrugged. “I’m blaming my part in all of this on jet lag. I haven’t slept in so long everything feels unreal. Why not kiss the hot guy in my bed? It’s all a dream anyway, ha-ha. You’re going to have to come up with an explanation for your own behavior.”
“I have no explanation,” he said between his teeth. “This is inexplicable. You’re a pain in the ass, you make foolhardy, dangerous decisions, and I don’t think you know how to have a normal conversation.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly while something darkened in her expression. Something that might look a little like disappointment. “Glad we cleared that up.”
His eyes dropped to watch her lips form the words.
And then there was that mouth of hers, that outrageously sensual, generous, responsive mouth. He bent forward again slowly, giving her plenty of time to respond as he lowered his mouth to hers. She scowled but didn’t push him away, nor did she say anything, and as his lips brushed hers, she lifted up her face to kiss him back again.
This time the kiss he gave her was gentle and fleeting, while his unruly cock throbbed with the most painful hard-on he’d ever had, and all he wanted to do was rip her clothes off and take her until she screamed with pleasure.
As he lifted his head, he told her, “Sleep now. Tomorrow you can show me how to make the colloidal silver and cast the rune.”
A glint appeared in her eye, which was his warning. “Can I? Oh, thank you, thank you! I’m so glad I can do this since I had absolutely nothing else on my agenda for the day tomorrow, other than serving your needs. Asshole.”
Earlier, her insouciance had made him angry, but this time he laughed. When she would have said more, he put his hand over her mouth.
Looking into her angry eyes, he said, “And when you teach me, I am going to get you a gun, along with silver bullets. It won’t be legal, so you’ll have to keep it hidden, but at least you’ll have an effective weapon you can use if you run across another lycanthrope, and you won’t have to rely on your contact spells.”
Her expression changed, the anger vaporizing. As he lifted his hand away, she said, “You’ve got a deal.”
“Get some rest.” He lifted off her, and in the absence of her body in alignment with his, the air felt cold.
It wasn’t cold enough.
As she curled in the blanket, he
left the room, pulling the door closed but not latching it. He grabbed his bag from the kitchen and stepped into the bathroom to take a biting cold shower. Only then did his erection finally subside.
Afterward, he grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and went to the sitting room. The settee wouldn’t be the worst place he had used for a bed.
Robin perched on the arm of a chair near the gas fire, his skinny, hairy arms wrapped around himself. When Nikolas entered the room, the puck glanced at him, then went back to staring at the fire.
Nonverbal, Sophie had said. Possibly trauma induced.
As Nikolas stretched out on the settee and plumped a pillow under his head, he said quietly, “Good night, Robin.”
Just before he closed his eyes, the monkey slipped off the chair and loped back to the bedroom.
Chapter Nine
When Nikolas left the bedroom, Sophie half expected she would lie awake and kick herself for indulging in that stupid kiss. Instead, she fell immediately into a dark pit and slept like the dead, without dreams, until she came alert with a jerk.
The feeling was reminiscent of the first time she had laid eyes on Nikolas, in that blasted vision back in LA. She could sense the day had advanced well past early morning. Ugh, at this rate, she was never going to get her days and nights sorted out. At least she had slept, really slept, and not tossed and turned from nightmares all night long.
A slow, rhythmic scraping sounded from somewhere else in the cottage. It sounded metallic and grated on her nerves. Pushing out of bed, she ran her hands through her hair in a lame effort to tame it somewhat, but it sprang from her fingers in a wild, untamed mess.
She felt dull and hungover, and oh my God, had she really kissed Nikolas last night? Where was her sanity?
I’m not just blaming it on jet lag, she thought. I’m blaming it on post-battle emotions.
She knew others who experienced post-battle highs. The guys she had worked with at the precinct were often edgy and boisterous after a conflict involving violence, and those who were unattached often indulged in one-night stands.
But she never had.
She glared at the bed as if it were responsible for her own lapse in judgment, while the memory of Nikolas’s mouth moving over hers sent a thrill of remembered heat through her body. He was off-the-charts sexy, damn it, and an asshole, two things that were, apparently, her kryptonite.
Sophie Ross, she told herself, you need therapy in the worst way.
Just don’t kiss assholes. That’s all you’ve got to do. You can eat anything you want, drink anything you want, you can do anything else that you want, and if you get into that house like you think you can, you’ll be able to sleep in every morning all you want.
You have one job. Just don’t kiss assholes.
The cottage was cool, and she shivered as she dug through her luggage for a pair of flannel pants and a long-sleeved knit shirt. Donning the clothes, she slipped her feet into flip-flop sandals and went to see what was making that irritating noise.
She found Nikolas in the kitchen. He appeared to have recently showered. He wore another pair of black pants, but he hadn’t put on a shirt yet, and his hair was wet and slicked back, outlining the strong, graceful bone structure of his head, neck, and shoulders.
He had positioned his chair so that he sat in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the window, and he was running a whetstone along the edge of his sword, sharpening it with slow, steady strokes.
She glared at him. His beauty was hard and uncompromising and completely, entirely masculine. Without a shirt, she could see scars on his torso, and for all his lean height, he had the bulky muscle of a swordsman across his shoulders and down his arms and back. The slanting sunlight sliced across his face, highlighting the sharp cheekbones, the bold, straight nose and lean jaw, and it lit the flat surface of his signet ring into a blaze of fiery gold.
So he was mouthwateringly handsome. Inhumanly handsome. So what. Enjoy the view while you’ve got it.
Just don’t kiss assholes. One job, Sophie. Only one.
“I don’t know how you can stand to sit there without your shirt on.” Her voice was too husky, and she was blaming that on having just gotten up. “I’m freezing.”
He glanced at her, a sharp, piercing look, then went back to sharpening his sword. “It’s not so bad in the sunlight. If you want to take the chill out of the kitchen, you can fire up the stove. There’s not much to eat for breakfast. You can have dry toast and black tea if you want.”
She gave the large, foreign stove a leery look. Paul, the solicitor, had called it an Aga, but it looked like a machine out of a 1950s sci-fi film. “Not much to eat? What happened to the box of stuff Maggie gave us last night?”
“A certain puck must have gotten into the supplies.” His voice was dry as he bent his head over his sword. “When I got up, I found all the eggs had been sucked out of their shells. He also ate the butter and cheese, and drank the milk. On the upside, the cottage is sparkling clean, which was a surprise since usually brownies are the ones that like to clean house.”
When she started to laugh, he gave her a speaking look.
She moved to fill the teakettle with water and set it on the stove. “I won’t hold it against him. He was painfully thin when I found him. If he can eat his fill enough times, he probably won’t need to clean out the kitchen.”
The monkey appeared at the top of the fridge and jumped to land on her shoulder. His little fingers began to work through her hair. She tilted her head to give him a leery glance. As long as he wasn’t pinching her, she supposed he wasn’t doing any harm. Looking through cupboards, she found an ancient, heavy toaster and plugged it in.
“Do you want toast?” she asked Nikolas. The prosaic, domestic question sounded odd to her ears. They barely knew each other, and they had argued for most of that time.
And kissed once. Her cheeks heated, and she was glad she had her back to him.
“Yes.” He paused. Maybe the exchange sounded odd to him too. “Thank you.”
While the water heated for tea, she popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, then turned to lean against the counter to watch Nikolas work, remembering the flashes she had seen of him in the fight. He had been quick, fierce, and powerful, and her first impression had been accurate—he knew his sword like it was an extension of his own body.
Sophie didn’t know much about swords, but even she could tell his was a beautiful, sleek work of art. Silver was worked into the flat of the blade in a Celtic-looking pattern. She squatted in front of it, and Nikolas paused with the whetstone as he watched her. His expression was unreadable. What did he see what he looked at her?
With light fingers, she touched the blade. “The silver. Does it help when you’re fighting a lycanthrope?”
“Yes,” he said. “When I cut them with this, they can’t heal at an accelerated rate. They bleed, and they die.”
“I should have studied swordwork.” She sighed.
“You have no business engaging a lycanthrope anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” he told her. “They’re faster, at least twice as heavy, and much stronger than you. You’re lucky you lived through last night.”
She glowered at him. If he hadn’t spoken in such a cool, analytical way, she would have bristled more than she had, but the truth was, he was right. The kettle whistled, and she rose to make the tea. “Maybe so, but I regret nothing. Arran and Maggie are still alive.”
He set aside the whetstone and sheathed the sword. “About that offer I made, to get you a gun and silver bullets. I should have asked. Can you shoot?”
“I don’t have much experience with rifles or shotguns, but I’m experienced with a handgun. I prefer carrying a Glock.”
As she finished putting together their Spartan breakfast, the monkey left her shoulder and climbed up to the top of the fridge. While he had been riding on her shoulder, he had done something to her hair. She wasn’t sure what, but it felt like he had worked several braids
through the unruly mass, and at least it kept it off her face at the moment.
“How good?” Nikolas asked.
She handed him a mug of tea and a plate of toast. “Good. I hit what I’m aiming at.”
“That’s the weapon you need against a lycanthrope.” He bit into a piece of toast with strong, white teeth. “But if the authorities caught you with it, you’d be deported. You might possibly face jail time, unless…”
As he paused, she leaned forward. “Unless what?”
“Unless you become a member of the Dark Court, perhaps in a consulting capacity, much like the work you did in LA. If you’re affiliated officially to our demesne, you would have weapons privileges.” His eyelids lowered, shielding his expression. “I’m not necessarily offering the position to you. I’m just saying that would be one way to solve the problem if you were caught with the gun in your possession.”
She frowned. “Okay. The pro is, it would give me some legal protection, if I ever end up needing it.”
“The con is, you would become publicly associated with the Dark Court, and you would absolutely become a target for Isabeau and her Hounds. Right now you exist with some anonymity and ambiguity. There’s nothing tying you to us. There’s just a few accidental meetings. Robin and I could disappear, and your story could be that you helped a stray dog and gave it to its owner—me—and you don’t know anything else about either of us. You don’t know where we went or where we live.”
She breathed deeply and nodded. “You’ll get me the gun and the silver bullets.”
“I promised I would, and I will. And you’ll show me how to make the colloidal silver and cast the rune.”
“I said I would,” she told him. “And I will. If the situation comes up, and I’m caught with the gun, I’ll say I’m a member of the Dark Court, and you’ll back me up?”
The stern, beautiful line of his mouth twisted as if he tasted something sour. “Yes. If it comes to that.”
“Well, it may not. It’s not like I’m going to be walking down the town’s high street waving the gun in the air. I’ll keep it tucked out of sight but on hand, just in case.” She smiled. “Okay, fair enough. I’ll feel better having it as backup.”