The Protectors Christmas Box Set (sexy paranormal romances) (36 page)

“I gave fair warning,” Ballou said. “I clearly told them that Manelin wouldn’t appreciate any interference. Sneaking up on me from behind…that is rather dishonorable, don’t you think?”

Faith barely heard the madman. She couldn’t, not when she was still trying to comprehend what she was seeing.

Her parents were dead
.

* * * * *

A wicked storm stirred the summer air, sending a sharp breeze whipping around Horace’s face as he made his way across the cedar-lined street and toward the house where his instincts told him he’d find Faith.

“Wait.” Brendan grabbed Horace’s shoulder and nearly ripped it out of its socket. “There’s Dallas. She can tell us what’s going on.”

As they approached, Dallas’s upturned gaze remained intently focused on a point above the house.

“Trouble?” Brendan asked.

“In spades,” she said, her voice strained. “I’ve been busy keeping the universe from ripping open.” They followed Dallas’s gaze. An ominous willowy light spiraled up and up to a point high in the sky where dark clouds continued to gather. Lightning rippled through the air.

“She’s doing that?” Horace demanded, hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t true.

“That’s all her,” Dallas said. Her delicate features had tightened from the strain of keeping the rift in the universe from spreading. “And your assassin is in there with her.”

* * * * *

“No!” Faith screamed. “Nooooo!”

“I do apologize, my queen.”

My parents!

The bastard!

“What did you do to them?” Tears spilled over onto her cheeks. Heedless of his gun, she rushed him and beat her fists against his chest. “Why?”

She’d brought a killer to her parents’doorstep. She should have never come here. This was her fault. All her fault.

“Unfortunately, I have to kill you now.” He pressed the gun to her forehead. “But perhaps it’s for the best. Perhaps I’m doing you a favor.”

“Go to hell,” she growled. Anger exploded from her skin like a bomb.

* * * * *

“Dammit, no! Stop!” Horace broke through the heavy oak door and charged into the room just as Ballou burst into a cloud of black smoke. A piece of smoldering black cloth floated across the toe of Horace’s expensive loafers and landed on the richly hued orange and red Oriental carpet.

Fury swirled in the light blue eyes that turned toward him. The hard orbs reminded him of a hurricane raging in a tropical sea. Faith had encased herself inside a golden cocoon. Sparks sizzled in the air, her expression raw and overflowing with power. It was both the most terrifying and beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

“Faith, honey, you need to stop,” he said with greater care this time.

“He killed them.” Faith’s voice crackled with electricity.

Horace glanced at the two humans lying motionless on the floor. Though shallow, they were breathing. If he had to guess, he’d say they’d both survive.

“I know you’re upset, sweetie, but you need to calm down.”

“He killed my parents.” A sudden crack of thunder shook the house. “He
killed
them.”

“They aren’t dead,” Horace said, holding his hands in front of him as he crossed the room toward her.

Brendan and Dallas rushed into the room.

“Horace, I can’t contain what’s happening any longer. We have to stop her,” Dallas shouted. “It’s almost too late now. The universe is being torn to pieces.”

Faith turned her intense glowing blue gaze toward them. Fury sparkled like rubies around her head.

“No!” Horace shouted, but his warning came too late. Fields of lightning shot out from her fingertips, striking first Dallas and then Brendan. They crumpled like a pair of paper dolls.

“Forgive me, love.” He crossed the room with preternatural speed and punched his beloved in the jaw with enough force to knock her unconscious. He caught her as she fell and hugged her tightly against his chest. She looked so fragile. Her silky skin too easily torn. Her delicate bones too easily broken. She reminded him of a beautiful bird with golden plumage. A priceless treasure that needed to be coddled and protected.

He’d never owned anything so precious. And now that she belonged to him, and he to her, he feared he’d already ruined her.

“Forgive me,” Horace whispered.

Everything had spun out of control so quickly. Too quickly.

Damn.

Damn.

Damn.

No matter how hard he fought for her, Horace doubted he was going to be able to save Faith.

* * * * *

“I’ve tied her to the bed upstairs and bolted the door,” Horace announced as he descended the narrow staircase.

No one gathered at the café said a word. They simply watched him.

“She told me a man named Manelin had sent Ballou to kill the both of us. She called him a prince.”

The silence hung heavy in the room. It made him uneasy.

“Though the power is not contained, as soon as I’d assured her that her parents were safe and healthy and let her use my cell phone to talk with them, she stopped glowing so brightly.”

He couldn’t read minds, but he knew what they had to be thinking. Hell, he was thinking it himself.

The very threads of the universe were still on the verge of tearing apart. A low rumbling thunder had followed them as they’d driven across town and the sky had turned as dark as midnight above the café.

“She’s still in quite a temper,”he admitted.

Dallas bit her quivering lower lip and blinked her red-rimmed eyes several times as if desperate to hold back a flood of tears.

Brendan pulled his wife into his arms and shook his head. “The damned universe is falling apart,” he murmured. “What else can he do?”

And it was the truth.

“I’ve created a monster.” Horace wanted to bare his chest and suffer in Faith’s place.

He no longer felt a nagging ache when he wondered why he shouldn’t have sex with a human. He now knew the answer. “I have no choice. I’ll have to kill her.”

The Council kept a ceremonial knife they used whenever they needed to sever the line between the source of all power and a rogue
Protector
. One cut and it would be done.

Her power.

Her life.

Her soul.

Gone.

Forever
.

Horace had no choice. He had to protect the humans. And right now, Faith’s very existence threatened every living creature on earth. She had to die.

“There might be another way,” Stone said.

Horace had a sinking feeling he knew what Stone was about to say. And he didn’t want to hear it.

“No, Stone, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even suggest it. It probably won’t work.” And he’d put too much of his heart on the line already.

“If you’re not willing to take her to your bed, I’d be more than—” Stone started to say but abruptly was cut off when Horace took an aggressive step toward the man Horace had once unquestionably accepted as the leader of
the Protectors
.

Stone cleared his throat. “She’ll die if we turn away from her. And at the rate she’s going, she’ll take the whole world down with her.”

“You can’t guarantee it will work!” Horace dredged a frustrated hand through his hair.

“So you’d rather kill her?” Stone asked.

“No! No, of course not.”

“Then you’ll—?”

“No!” Horace turned away from his friends. “I can’t. I won’t.”

“Keep your emotions out of it. Think of it as just sex. Sex with a beautiful woman. Certainly you can force yourself to do the deed with her without getting all tangled up with her emotionally.”

That was the problem. He already cared for Faith and wanted her. Her body, her heart,
her love
. She already had the power to hurt him. To destroy him.

“Sex is what started this,” Stone continued. “She took your powers while you were connected. You need to reopen that connection and get those powers back.”

“But it might not work. I might not be able to get them back.” How in the hell could Horace have sex with Faith while knowing he might still have to kill her? How could he even touch her with something like that weighing on his mind?

Damn her. He didn’t want anything to do with her. But she’d made it impossible to ignore her.

And now he was going to have to kill her.

* * * * *

“I don’t like you right now,” Faith said. She turned her head away from Horace when he came through the bedroom door. He’d used rough cords to tie her wrists and ankles to a silk-covered bed in the middle of an exotically decorated room. Golden drapes covered the windows. Exquisitely hand-painted satin panels hung from the walls.

She’d been set up in the midst of luxury and left bound with hard ropes and alone to contemplate her fate for what felt like hours.

As Faith fumed sparks sizzled and popped all around her. “I’m not your sex slave. You have no right to treat me like an object with no other purpose than to wait for you to notice me. I will not salivate at the sound of your snapping fingers.” Not her. She wasn’t anybody’s sex slave. Especially not
his
.

But she
was
salivating at the sight of him.

He raised a brow. An excruciatingly handsome brow.

“You’re the enemy,” she continued, talking more to herself than to Horace. He was the enemy…albeit an extremely well built enemy with a handsome face that had the power to turn a woman’s knees to water.

She’d spent the time he’d left her alone cursing him, hating him.

Damn her traitorous heart. He took one step toward her. His strong, demanding gaze pressed her deeper into the soft mattress, pinning her there. His white teeth flashed in the dim light. And her heart just about jumped to the ceiling. Excitement bubbled in her belly.

God, she was glad he’d come back for her. He was here in this luxurious bedroom.

Her angry faded as she thought about how he might touch her. She closed her eyes against the aching need his return had sparked. Big mistake. Closing her eyes only gave her imagination the freedom to run wild.

She could clearly picture how he might take his hand and stroke her up the length of her thigh. Or tease and nibble on her lips until they felt swollen and tingly.

No! She shook her head. She couldn’t let her thoughts stray in that direction. If she had any hope of keeping her freedom, she needed to stay strong against him. For all she knew, he could be using his mind games against her right now. For all she knew, he could be using his
non-human
powers to plant the desires that were beating against her chest. He could be playing her like a puppet.

“I mean it,” she said, gritting her teeth against the sound of desire in her breathless voice. “I
really
don’t like you right now.”

“Good. I’m not feeling particularly friendly toward you, either,” he bit back.

“Then don’t do this.” She tugged on the ropes binding her. “Let me go. Pretend we never met.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because you stole my powers, dammit! And you’re about to explode like a freaking Roman candle.”

She could feel the frightening force welling within her. This was
his
magic? It shouldn’t be inside her, but it was. And it continued to grow stronger. Soon, ropes wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the evil boiling inside her veins at bay.

“It’s not evil, Faith. It’s power. Power in its purest form,” he said. “Power you’re not equipped to control.”

“Because I’m human?”

Horace shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Not really helpful.”

“No,” he agreed. “I wished I knew how to fix this. I wish I knew how to tame the powers swirling inside you. Hell, I wish I knew how to get them back.”

“But you don’t?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.” Horace unsheathed a long, slightly curved knife. Though the construction was ancient—Phoenician perhaps—it had been well cared for. A ceremonial weapon. A weapon used in ancient sacrifices.

Faith’s heart thudded against her chest. “Don’t make me beg for my life,” she whispered.

The knife stood between them.

“I wouldn’t think of it.” With the knife still in his hand, Horace crawled onto the bed. He swung his leg over her and straddled her hips.

Faith bucked and twisted against the ropes holding her, desperate to break free, desperate to stop him from using that knife on her. “No! No! Please! There has to be another way!”

Tears pooled in her eyes.

“Damn you,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss was bruising and demanding. His strong tongue nudged at her mouth, urging her to part her lips.

She did. And bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

He moaned, but refused to back off. His mouth battled hers.

She could feel his drugging, seductive power overtaking her. Her body heated as his kisses urged her to submit. His voice whispered in her mind.

Give yourself to me. Submit.

The tips of her fingers tingled. And the apex of her legs throbbed as his strong tongue mated with her mouth.

“
Ohhh
…” A few days ago—and without the knife hanging between them—kissing Horace like this would have been a fantasy come true. Well, she might not have been the one tied up. The ropes chaffed. Silk scarves would have been a better choice. Not that she enjoyed being tied up. But still, sex with Horace—in his bed—had been a fantasy that had kept her up late at night. Something about him made her forget herself. She’d been drawn to him even before he’d made those wretched marks and had entangled her soul with his.

Despite every effort to resist him, her lips softened. She surged up, straining against her bonds and drank in the passion that flared between them like liquid fire.

He groaned his approval. “Yes, Faith. Open for me. I want to mark you again. Lord, I don’t know why, but I burn to do it, to make you mine,” he ground the words against her mouth. “There’s no turning back. Do you understand that? If you let do this, you’ll be mine. Forever.”