I swallow at the thought of those images. Were these the prophecies that Gaelia had mentioned?
I slide out of his bed. “Des, they showed me things,” I say.
I rub the skin where they touched me, noticing the beginnings of several bruises. “I saw cages of women, a throne, a forest, and a man with antlers.”
“A man with antlers,” the Bargainer repeats, his face grim.
“Does that help?” I ask.
“Unfortunately, cherub,” he says, “it does.”
He will find you.
He always finds the ones he wants.
He’s already begun the hunt.
He’ll make you his, just like our mothers.
I sit inside Des’s guestroom, my eyes absently staring out the window at the dark night.
What have I done? I thought I’d been helping Des—and Gaelia—by interviewing those kids. A part of me had been proud of the fact that they’d talked to me when the Bargainer had been so sure they wouldn’t.
But now … like Gaelia, I felt deep in my bones that the children’s’ words hadn’t been empty. That, irrational though it might be, I’d just caught the attention of whatever thing Des has been hunting.
Only now it’s hunting me.
I draw in a deep, stuttering breath.
I need to leave this place—this house—with all of its connections to the Otherworld. Hell, there’s a portal a few doors down from my room. It doesn’t matter if the creature lives in another realm; so long as it knows how to manipulate ley lines, it would only take an instant for it to come crawling to earth.
I begin changing into the now dry—if salt encrusted—clothes I wore here, and swipe up the few items that I came with.
I can feel the same paranoia that claimed the royal nursemaid now crawling up my spine.
I’m hooking in my earring when I hear the door to my room open and feel an ominous presence at my back.
“You’re leaving.”
A thrill races down my arms at that silky smooth voice.
I turn to the Bargainer. “I’m not staying here.”
“Your ex will find you if you go back to your place.” His arms are folded.
Displeased.
“Who says I’m going back?” I totally am.
“Where else would you go?”
“I have friends.” Okay, I have a friend. One. Temper. And she’s probably furious with me at the moment for going AWOL on her.
“You’re not going back to their places.” It’s not a command, just a statement of fact.
“So what if I go home?” I would much rather face off Eli, who cares about me, who’s hurt and angry, who I can control if need be, than stay here and chance meeting an enemy that not even Des understands.
The air stirs, and suddenly, the Bargainer is at my side, his lips pressed against my ear. “If you go home, I’ll likely have to steal you back from your ex, and that will displease me greatly.”
I turn to look at him. “At the moment, Des, your feelings aren’t my biggest concern.”
The Bargainer stares at me for a beat. “You’re scared of staying here,” he says, reading me. He tilts his head, his eyes narrowing. “You think I’d let anything happen to you in my house?” I swear the man grows bigger, his presence overwhelming.
Judging by the look in his eye, I’ve offended the King of the Night.
Whatever.
I tear my gaze away and head towards the door.
A second later, the Bargainer materializes in the doorway, blocking my exit. His hands grip the top of the doorframe. Unwillingly, my eyes move to those toned arms of his.
“What if I told you that you couldn’t go?” he says, his voice hypnotic. “That I wanted you to stay and use up some more of my beads?”
I don’t actually think he would try to keep me here. He’s wanted nothing to do with me for so long that I can’t really imagine our relationship any other way.
“I wouldn’t believe you,” I say. “Now please, move.”
Des is staring at me strangely. He releases the doorframe and prowls forward. “Truth or dare?”
I back up, suddenly nervous at the look in his eyes.
“Des …”
“Dare,” he breathes.
In the next instant, he’s on me, his hands roughly cupping my cheeks. His mouth crashes into mine, his lips demanding.
Des is kissing me, and God is it savage.
I kiss him back without thinking, swept up into the taste of him and the feel of him holding me.
I’m supposed to be leaving, reclaiming my house and my life, but nope. It’s not going to happen, not while Des is demonstrating all the ways my taste in men was spot on when I was a teenager.
I’m backing up, and one of the Bargainer’s hands has dropped to my thigh, exposed by the high slits of my dress. His fingers move up and down the skin, up and down.
My back bumps into the wall. Des cages me in, holding me hostage with his body. My lips part, and Des’s tongue sweeps inside my mouth, claiming mine.
His hand moves to my breast, and I arch into him, my breath leaving me.
“Gods, Callie,” he rasps, “the wait … nearly unendurable …”
Des’s wings materialize, spreading out and closing over the wall around me. While I kiss him, I begin to run my fingertips over them.
He groans, leaning into my touch. “Feels too good.”
He slips a hand beneath my shirt, and palms a breast, making really hot noises into my mouth as he acquaints himself with it.
My knees go weak at his touch, and he slips a leg between them, holding me up.
My skin begins to glow. I want to cry, this feels so right. Every one of his touches has felt right since the moment we met.
“Truth or dare?” he whispers.
Do I even care at this point?
“Truth,” I murmur against his lips, refusing to give into my baser impulses.
He pulls away from the kiss long enough to glance down at my swollen lips, a hungry look in his eye. “What did you miss the most about me while I was gone?” he asks.
I have to breathe several times to collect myself. His question is like cold water dousing a flame.
His magic encircles me, forcing the answer out. “Everything. I missed literally everything about you while you were gone.”
Des stares at me, his chest rising and falling as he catches his breath. His hand slips out from beneath my shirt, and his knuckles stroke my cheek. “You don’t know what your words do to me.”
“I wish I did.” All this giving on my end, all of this taking on his. This isn’t what healthy relationships are made of.
He runs his fingers down my arms. “Stay, and I will tell you.”
What I would give for that! To know exactly how he feels for me. I almost fall for it, just as I have everything else about this man. I’m about to start nodding when I remember.
Des is a fairy, a trickster. He collects secrets for a living, he doesn’t give them up. And he’s never been open to me in the past. He’s not going to start tonight.
I made a promise to myself after Des left my life, a promise to be independent. To not allow men like him to destroy my world. And now the very man who forced me to make that promise wants to burrow his way under my skin and into my heart once more.
I’d be the worst sort of person if I broke that promise at the first sign of temptation.
I run my hands through my hair. What am I doing? Really, what am I doing? I search the ground, as though it holds the answers. Then, letting my hands fall to my sides, I push past him.
It’s been a long fucking day. I want my comfy PJs, a bowl of cereal, and some trashy TV I can fall asleep to.
In fro
nt of me, the door to the guestroom slams shut.
… But apparently what I want isn’t going to be all that easy to get.
I turn, exasperated, only to yelp.
The Bargainer crowds me, looking like he’s about to rain retribution down on my ass.
“Don’t go,” he says. Even though he looks mad, his words are soft.
That in and of itself makes me hesitate.
So close to giving in.
“Why, Des?” My eyes move over his face. I can still taste him on my lips. “Why do you want me to stay so badly?”
A muscle in his jaw feathers. There are a hundred plausible lies he can feed me, but he doesn’t voice a single one.
I wait. And wait.
His answer never comes.
I sigh and turn around, heading to the door. The air thickens, the static electricity of it raising the hairs on my arm. That’s my biggest cue that Des is displeased. I’m practically suffocating on his power.
When I glance back again, his wings are out. They keep flaring and retracting.
Not displeased, I correct, out of control. He’s about to lose his shit.
Half of me thinks he won’t let me go. And a large, twisted part of me wouldn’t entirely mind that.
Instead, the heaviness in the air dissipates, and his wings fold tight to his back.
“Fine, cherub. I’ll take you home.”
Once we touch down in my backyard, Des checks the perimeter of my house, then my rooms, a manic look in his eye.
I’m still too shocked by my surroundings to do much more than stare. I forgot I had a grown werewolf trapped on my property. My place is in tatters.
As the Bargainer moves through my house, his magic mends the worst of the damage. Shredded walls are fixed, my smashed table snaps back into place, the splintered wood fitting itself back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Shattered windows seal themselves back together.
Des comes into the living room, looking agitated, his towering frame full of pent up energy. “Everything’s clear,” he reports, running a hand through his hair. “There were two Politia officers parked down the street, but I sent them off. You should be safe for another day.”
A day is all I need to hunt down Eli’s furry ass and then rip him a new one.
“Thank you,” I say, motioning vaguely around me towards the damage he fixed, and you know, scaring off the supernatural po-po, who’d cart me off to jail the first chance they got. It’s still surreal to think I’m currently on the Wanted List.
The Bargainer hesitates, fighting to hold his tongue. I know he doesn’t want me to be here.
“Stay safe, cherub,” he finally says. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening.” He crosses the room, heading to the door out to my backyard, not sparing me another glance.
That shouldn’t hurt, none of this should hurt. But it all does. I don’t want him to go. My heart wants to give into him even if my mind knows better.
Halfway to the door, he pauses. Swearing under his breath, he turns and stalks back to me. He wraps a hand around my waist and takes my lips savagely.
I gasp into his mouth as he grinds into me. The kiss is over as soon as it’s begun.
He releases me roughly. “If you want to see me for any reason before tomorrow, you know how to get ahold of me.” He backs up. “I’ll be waiting.”
And then he’s gone.
Chapter 15
March, seven years ago
“Tell me about your mother,” Des says across from me.
The two of us play poker and drink booze in my dorm room, while outside a rainstorm batters against the windows.
The booze had been his idea. “A little corruption will do you good, cherub,” he’d said when he’d appeared in my room with the bottle, winking at me.
I’d sputtered at the sight of the alcohol. “That’s not allowed.”
“Do I look like the kind of guy that follows the rules?” With his leather pants and inked arm on display, he most definitely didn’t.
So reluctantly, I’d rinsed out my mug and my water glass and let the Bargainer pour us each a glass of “really fucking good” Scotch.
It tastes about as good as a dirty rim job.
“My mother?” I now say as Des deals out a new hand.
I pick up my cards distractedly, until I see the hand he dealt me.
Three tens. For once I have a chance at winning a round.
His eyes flick from me to the back of my cards, then back to me. “Three of a kind,” he says, guessing my hand.
I glance down at the tens in my hand. “You cheated.”
He picks up his drink and takes a swallow, his muscular frame rippling in a very pleasing way as he does so. “If only. You’re easy to read, cherub. Now,” he says, setting down his glass. He looks coolly at his own cards, “tell me about your mother.”
I fold my hand, taking a sip of the Scotch and wincing a little when it hits my tongue.
My mother’s one of those subjects that I never talk about. What’s the use? It’s just one more sad story; my life has enough of them.
But the way Des is looking at me, I’m not going to casually be able to change the subject.
“I don’t remember much about her,” I say. “She died when I was eight.”
Des is no longer paying attention to the game or the drink. Those two sentences are all it takes to divert his entire focus.
“How did she die?”
I shake my head. “She was murdered while she and my stepdad were on vacation. It was a mistake. They were aiming for my stepfather, but ended up shooting her instead.” My stepfather, who was a seer. He’d failed to foresee it—or maybe he had foreseen it but couldn’t or wouldn’t stop it.
Innocent or guilty, that night haunted him.
“Her death was why he drank.” And his drinking was why …
I suppress my shudder.
“Where were you when this happened?” Des asks. He still has a calm, lazy look about him, but I swear it’s just as much of an act as his poker face is.
“Home with a nanny. They liked to go on vacation without kids.”
I know how my life sounds. Cold and brittle. And that was the truth of it. Technically, I had everything—looks and money to go along with it.
No one would suspect that there were long stretches of time when I was left alone in my stepfather’s Hollywood mansion, with only a nanny and my stepfather’s driver to look after me. Business always came first.
No one would suspect that those long stretches of loneliness were so much better than when he returned from trips. He’d see me and fall right back into another bottle.
And then …
Well, those are more memories I try not to dwell on.
My skin still crawls anyway.
“Why was anyone trying to kill your stepfather?” Des asks, our game of poker utterly forgotten.
I shrug. “Hugh Anders liked money. And he didn’t care who his clients were.” Mafia bosses. Cartel lords. Sheiks with links to terrorist groups. He brought enough of his work home for me to see it all. “It made him a very rich man, and it made him a lot of enemies.”
Maybe that was why he had the Bargainer’s calling card in his kitchen drawer. A man like my stepfather walked around with a target on his back.
“Did you ever do business with him—before you met me?” I ask.
I hadn’t meant to voice that particular question, and now I find myself holding my breath. I don’t think he knew him. The Bargainer hadn’t acted like he knew him when I first called on him, but Des was made of secrets. What if he had known my stepfather? What if he’d helped him, the guy that abused me? The man that either directly or indirectly led to my mother’s death?
Just the possibility
has my stomach turning.
Des shakes his head. “Never met the guy until he was swimming in a pool of his own blood.”
The image of his dead body flashes before my eyes.
“How about your birth father?” Des asks. “What was he like?”
“A nobody,” I say, peering into my glass. “My mother accidently got pregnant when she was eighteen. I don’t think she knew who the father was; he was never listed on my birth certificate.”
“Hmm,” Des murmurs as he absently swirls his drink, his gaze distant.
I don’t know what he’s thinking, only what I would be—that my parents sound like shitty people. My mother, who was interested in giving me a good life, but didn’t want much to do with it; my father, whose greatest contribution was his sperm; and my stepfather, who starred in all my most vivid nightmares.
“Why don’t you tell me about your parents,” I say, eager to take the spotlight off of me.
Des leans back and squints at me, a slow smile curling his lips. I can’t stop staring at him.
“We share similar tragedies, cherub,” he says, still smiling, though now it seems a bit bitter.
My eyebrows rise at his words. A fae king sharing anything in common with his human charity case?
I find that doubtful.
He pushes himself to his feet. “I’ve got work to do. Keep the Scotch—and for the love of the gods, practice drinking without wincing.” He turns to the door.
I don’t bother trying to convince him to stay, though I want to badly. I already know he won’t. Especially not after our—my—little heart-to-heart. Sometimes I imagine the Bargainer’s mind is a vault. Secrets go in and they don’t come out.
He pauses, then gives me a look over his shoulder, and his expression says it all. I may not have told him about how my stepfather abused me, but he knows.
“For the record, cherub,” he says, “if your stepfather were alive, he wouldn’t be for long.” There’s steel in his eyes.
And then, like magic, he disappears into the night.