His Witch To Keep (Keepers of the Veil) (2 page)

Get your head out of the gutter.
He’d proved he wasn’t looking for more of that from her when he’d ditched her. She asked, “Is that the price tag?”

“Yes.” Something primal and possessive flashed in his eyes. That instantaneous flare was so intense it shot heat straight to her center and ignited a buzzing in her ears.

Her mind scrolled images of the Sentry men, each powerful and handsome. Her mental page turning paused on Eli Morgan—not that they had anything actively sexual in their relationship, but she trusted him. She’d considered confiding in Eli about this mess. She replied, “No. There’s no druid.”

His eyes narrowed. “But there is one that interests you.”

“Jealous?” She bit her lip against a smile. The infamous Shadow was not the cold psychopath many believed.

His gaze slid to her lips. “Did he make you scream your pleasure like you did for me?”

A final cut popped the zip tie around her wrists. She stepped into him and pressed her knife against his dark shirt, targeting the vulnerable area near his belly button. She glanced upward and grinned, enjoying his surprise. “Was I the last woman to drive you to your knees with desire? Can’t stand not knowing if it was the same for me?”

Memory of her mouth on him and of him crying out her name skittered through her mind. She shoved her body’s wicked desire into a dark corner of her brain.

“You think I can’t disarm you of that toy?” Humor swirled in that statement, but respect reflected in his gaze.

His head moved toward hers. Her body screamed
hallelujah
at the possibility of him taking this to the ne
xt level. He whispered near her ear, “Will you come away with me tonight?”

The question dripped with suggestion.

Images of the last time he’d whispered that, of when she’d accepted, slideshowed angles of his sculpted naked perfection in her mind. Her body voted a resounding
hell yes
. Her brain spat out,
absolutely not
. She shook her head and dropped the knife away from his abdomen. She wouldn’t hurt him. But she refused to give in again to this insane reaction her body reserved for him.

He kissed the arch of her ear. A shiver shot through her shoulders. He whispered, “When you are in over your head, contact me. If you get hurt before you phone me…I won’t like that.”

He fingered a strand of her hair that must’ve escaped the ball cap. A deep chuckle echoed in her ear. That rich low sound cramped her belly with longing. She bet her natural red peeked through on the strand he chose. No matter how often she dyed her hair the darkest black, the natural red shed the color within weeks, sometimes days. That night when they were together she’d let that little factoid slip out.

“I can take care of myself,” she gritted out.

He slid her cell phone beneath her shirt’s collar. Into her bra.

“How the hell did you get my cell?”

He chuckled and handed her the laptop. “I placed explosives.” He rolled his watch. “You have four minutes to depart. I suggest you travel to your other dimension.”

Then he was gone.

She slow-blinked, staring at the vacant space he’d occupied seconds ago. Explosives? He’d been following her since she’d arrived. And he’d had enough time to place explosives? Maybe he’d been in here before she entered. That man was intimidating. And annoying.

She unleashed a string of curses and smacked her palm against the wall behind her. The outburst did little to dispel her frustration and shot bloody droplets from her wrist lacerations everywhere. Had she been patient, he probably would’ve released her and she wouldn’t now be cut. But damn him and his games. Her body raged for his touch. At the same time she longed to punch him, perhaps even break his cheekbone.

Her cell phone vibrated. She’d set it to do-not-disturb before she started this tonight.

She dug it out of her shirt.

New text message from Dangerous Guy:
Leave. Now.

Dangerous Guy? She fumed over the fact he’d pinched her phone
and
had time to program it. And he knew her password. Brilliant and scary.

Her phone buzzed again. Dangerous Guy:
You are in over your head. Admit it.

She bit her lip against a smile while her stomach squeezed with all the excitement of a teenager getting a text from her major crush. This was him flirting.
God, you’re pitiful.
“Go to hell,” she mumbled.

Her phone dinged again. His text read:
We’re both going to hell if you don’t leave.

Her heart raced. She glanced around, wondering how close he was. “Fine,” she said loudly. “I’m leaving.”

She initiated the transition to her alternate dimension, to that other world where the year was the same but the people and politics were different. This was the one place she was guaranteed to be safe. Each of the seven alternate dimensions had been created long ago by Zeus in order for the original Pleiades to avoid the unwanted advances of Orion as he chased each of them unmercifully.

Pressure compressed her body and spun her mind. Upon arrival at the house on the Scottish coast, which had been in her family for decades, she remained still and mentally ticked off the seconds until shift blindness passed. Her retinas burned and refused to function when she cracked her eyelids too early. Over the years she’d found no way to circumvent this weakness after a dimension hop.

While she waited, Alexi’s words echoed in her brain. In over her head? She’d reached the drowning point. There was little hope her sister’s captors would gladly release her even after Serenity completed this insane quest. They’d offered no clear demands other than she retrieve these items and not recruit help, which left her confused and desperate. That combination led to mistakes and bad decisions.
Like almost sleeping with Alexi again.

She was smart and trained, but after days of nonstop stress in motion she was an exhausted, emotional mess. She needed help. But she couldn’t afford Alexi’s price: another shattered heart.

Chapter Two

W
hat if she’d said yes?

Alexi pulled the collar of his long wool coat up around his neck to ward off the blistering winter wind as he strode up the sidewalk in downtown D.C. toward the coffeehouse. The possibility of her yes, of one more night with her, swirled in his brain. Touching Serenity last night had been a mistake. He could’ve tranqed her and never laid a finger on her silky pale skin. But when it came to that woman, he couldn’t keep a lid on his emotions, nor resist touching. Her smooth British accent slid through his mind. Heat zipped raw lust down his spine.

He’d threatened her a little bit just to see her blue eyes smoke with defiance as she struggled to deny the chemistry zinging between them. Sparring with her always excited him. He adored the chase, and she provided the ultimate prey. She didn’t flinch like most people when their sixth sense warned he posed a danger they couldn’t escape if he chose to attack. Every time he and Serenity faced off, she jumped right in and gave it back to him.

He admired her lack of fear in the face of conflict but wished she didn’t enjoy danger. She’d grown to be a damned good operative since her recruitment after college, or she used to be when she’d worked for MI6. The agency had “retired” her a few months ago. He might’ve had a hand in that early leave as a roundabout way to protect her, but she hadn’t freelanced until now. She’d bought a house on Long Island, close to her druid protectors, and kept a low profile of spa visits and shopping excursions. Boring as hell. He understood her need to work. He’d be edgy to do something of substance within days. But these two sloppy jobs in the past week were highly uncharacteristic.

Stop thinking about her.
He needed all his focus on this upcoming meeting. He pushed into the coffeehouse and claimed the opposite side of a red vinyl booth across from his Russian handler, Lebedev. The morning coffee rush was in full swing. Most of the tables were occupied with commuters preparing for their cubicle workdays by sucking down high-octane drinks while scrolling through screens on various electronics. Patrons ignored the chaos with concerted efforts to avoid eye contact. The perfect meeting location.

Lebedev closed his laptop and adjusted his wire-rim glasses. His pin-striped white shirt and red tie broadcast boring government employee and camouflaged him in anonymity. He sipped a drink, leveled his dark, dead eyes on Alexi, and smirked. He slid a closed cup toward him. With a perfect American accent, he said, “I bought you a coffee.”

Alexi glanced at the cup but didn’t drink. “Why am I here?”

“We have a new job for you.” Lebedev nudged the coffee closer.

“What kind of job?” Irritation crowded his brain. He didn’t have time for more side shit right now. He also distrusted Lebedev. The man might claim loyalty to Russia and take orders from the same government intelligence branch that contracted Alexi, but Lebedev worked his own angles. Who knew what kind of poison he’d added to the coffee.

“This is an additional.”

Additional to what?
Russia didn’t have him contracted for any jobs right now.

Lebedev swirled his drink and stared at him over the top of his wire-frame glasses. “A second chance, you might say.”

His brows shot up. He hated he’d just betrayed his surprise. Dread cinched its fist around his stomach. They wanted him to kill Serenity. There was nothing else he hadn’t accomplished the first time. The memory of his face-off with her flashed through his brain. In its aftermath he recalled her screaming her release as he traced the Celtic Dara knot tattooed on her naked hip. With other women, sex was about physical release without commitment. That night with Serenity had been unexpected. Addictive. And life altering. Something changed that night from protection only to wanting everything. But he couldn’t allow himself to become trapped in the tangle of emotions she stirred up. Especially not right now.

Lebedev traced cracks on the tabletop with a solitary finger. “This should be an easy one for you. But she did escape you once. Perhaps…you are not the best choice?” His gaze popped up, filled with calculated challenge.

This was a test of loyalty and resolve. For him there was no question when it came to allegiance. “Who requests this?”

“High up.”

“I will need confirmation from
his
email. Not yours. You know that.”

“The email has already been sent to you.”

“From
him
?”

“Yes.” Lebedev’s right eyelid twitched, a tell Alexi had identified a few months ago that signaled a lie. “We will pay you your usual.”

There wasn’t a usual for homeland hits; each was uniquely negotiated. This bottom dweller didn’t handle finances. Lebedev planned something personal. Was he stupid? No one fucked around with assassins. He’d kill the Russian, but only after Lebedev divulged who else had been contracted for this job, and who wanted her dead. “Then, consider it done.”

Alexi slid from the booth and exited the coffeehouse. Protective fury swirled in his brain as he walked away from the coffeehouse. Nothing made him crazier than knowing someone or something threatened Serenity. He took a few deep breaths. The image of her aroused blue gaze from last night opened the vault of naked Serenity images. They bombarded his mind, distracting him. He almost slammed into a woman with a stroller waiting at a stoplight. The naked mental snapshots of her continued to torture him, reminding him he wanted so much more from her than he was allowed.

He couldn’t offer Serenity a life together, and she deserved everything. He repeated that slowly in his mind, as he’d done hundreds of times a day for years. It didn’t help.

She’d been dead right last night. She was the only woman who’d ever driven him to his knees without lifting steel. She wielded the ultimate weapon against him, his kryptonite—her touch. Now that he’d been close to her again, he didn’t want to ignore the riptide of desire that had been coiling in his balls since the moment he fled from her months ago. One more night might rid her from his system once and for all.

No…hell no. The woman needed his help to resolve whatever shitfest she’d landed in. Protection only, not seduction.

Damn it, Serenity was trouble for him. He lived by the mantra of duty and caution. But this one woman represented his single greatest threat. For her he’d disregarded duty and responsibility countless times, thrown caution to the wind and risked death. And he’d do it again.

He’d been born into duty. As a demigod descendant, a death reaper, his first commitment was to serve the god of the underworld, Hades, as a conduit to usher evil souls to hell. He wasn’t allowed a personal life—too risky both for him and his loved ones. No family. No long-term relationship. Minimal contact with his brother in order to keep Nikolai, the future father of the next-generation death reaper, safe. At least, those were the rules laid down by the death reaper who served before him, his uncle. Alexi was mortal. And, eventually, like all before him, he would die.

As his fixation on Serenity had intensified over the past year, he questioned who decreed the rules. Hades, who had never confirmed such? Or were they mandated at random by a sexually repressed early death reaper? Still, living by the rules had never steered him wrong.

That first moment he met Serenity he’d recognized her as a Chosen—a woman destined to mother a next-generation death reaper. And, therefore, definitely not
his
. He wasn’t supposed to want her to the point of distraction. Protection only. He should’ve given his brother the protective duty the moment he realized his interest in her became a mind-numbing addiction.

Nikolai could claim Serenity and keep her. That thought swirled acridly in his brain. He hated his brother for the potential. A blazing need to annihilate any man who considered seducing Serenity had him fisting his hands so tight his fingers tingled with needles of pain.

He massaged his forehead when images of an unfamiliar male poured into his brain, courtesy of Hades. This soul was now slated to be shuttled into the underworld for his many fetid deeds—sins in the eyes of most. Hades only chose the most corrupt, the immoral, the insane, and the evil, to rip out of life early and suck into hell. Initially, Alexi rebelled against being the weapon of the underworld god. He’d learned the hard way that refusal to complete the god’s death dictates was painful. Now he accepted these deaths as a given. These evil persons should not remain free. Some would argue murder was the ultimate sin. He agreed and had no illusions an afterlife that included heaven awaited him.

A dart hit his arm. Fucking Lebedev.

He used his gift of short-term future glimpsing and weighed his options. The drug would take much longer to affect him than a human, although in a minute he’d be feeling it. He could annihilate Lebedev’s goons and kidnap Lebedev to get answers later—probably his best plan. Or he could test his bond with Serenity. He wanted to know if she’d come to him when he hung at the precipice of death. No. He wouldn’t put her at risk.

He pivoted and jabbed the closest would-be kidnapper in the neck, immobilizing him. Another two darts hit him.

His vision blurred.

Three darkly clad figures surrounded him. They didn’t want him to kill Serenity. They wanted him to lead them to her.

As he stumbled from the drug’s effect, one of the guys caught him in a headlock. “The coffee would’ve been easier.”