Janine Luscher’s spell hit Atticus square in the chest just as the magic Marga was weaving fused around them. The air shimmered, charged with power that seeped into his bones and changed the fabric of his being. For the span of a heartbeat lasting an eternity, every fiber in his body, down to the faintest pulse of his energy, merged with the age-old magic this world breathed. If not for the death grip Marga had on his hand, he would have dissolved into the power holding together the layers of time, space, and beyond.
But she never let him go.
When everything around him shifted and the world itself split into a thousand shards of untapped possibilities, Marga’s hand pulled him through, rooted him. The air fused back together, and all around him, the dizzying kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and scents dimmed as one reality took over and solidified.
He only had a brief moment to blink at their new surroundings—a quiet street sw
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Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 10
He watched her walk toward the car, and for the first time in decades, he felt like he’d done something right in his life.“Gateway Transit Center?” Marga slanted a skeptical look at Atticus as he pulled the car to a stop in the deserted parking lot across from the MAX rail station. His shrug made the leather jacket creak. “It’s a good hunting ground.” At that, she silently raised an eyebrow to emphasize her glare. “You want me to take pain from someone who deserves it—this is the venue for it. Lots of lowlifes milling about.” Shutting off the engine, he leaned back in the seat and regarded her for a moment, shadows playing about his eyes. “You’ll wait here in the car.” “Like hell I will. I’m not letting you loose to hunt on your own.” His aura whispered of darkness barely contained. “You don’t want to see
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 11
Darkness curled around Marga.This, however, was different from the cold black swallowing her whole amid her crumbling world. Instead of the icy, numbing nausea that had crawled into her every cell, the darkness enveloping her now was rich, velvety, warm. Cocooning her, humming around her, it pulsed in sync with the beat of her heart.A part of her recognized the lethal edge in this dark energy, reminded her of the destruction this power had wrought just shortly before. She knew the danger whispering underneath it. And yet, as the darkness stroked along her senses, mingled with her own magic, nurtured it, something within Marga unfurled in the complete absence of fear.Taking a deep breath, she inhaled Atticus distinctive male scent, and opened her eyes—to darkness, again. She still couldn’t see a thing. A slight shifting of her position told her why. Atticus had curled her up in his lap, her head pressed facedown into his chest, and he’d wrapp
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 12
Marga sobered as if thrown in an icy Norwegian fjord, and she took a wary step back. “You’re an incubus?” Known for their overwhelming sexual magnetism and the nasty habit of impregnating any female that wasn’t up a tree by the count of three. That explained the underlying hint of danger she’d sensed beneath the outward attraction, the sense of wrong she’d gotten despite her uncontrollable surge of lust.Benjamin bowed. “At your service, darling.”She cleared her throat and inched further away. “Thanks, but I can service myself quite well.”At Atticus laughter, barely hidden in a cough, she realized what she’d said, her face flushing with heat.“Although,” Atticus said to her, grinning broadly, “you might have to work a bit harder for that now since we had to abandon your vibrator along with your car.”She flailed with her hands. “It’s an MP3 playe
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 13
She banged her head back against the seat and uttered a cute sound of frustration. “Gods, getting some straight info out of you is like pulling teeth. What did you do to piss off your own kind?” “Must be my stunning good looks. They just can’t take the combined force of my gorgeousness.” Even without looking, he knew she glared at him. It made him want to laugh. “Spill it already, Mr. Self-Absorbed!” “All right, all right,” he whined, “I’m telling! Just please, please don’t witch-slap me.” Putting a hand up as if to shield his head from a blow, he gave a mock sob. The Marga-glare intensified, and he grinned, slanting a glance at her. “What I’m doing for you now…Well, I used to do that for a living.” “Annoying the hell out of people?” He chuckled at that. &ldqu
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 14
Her face, already scorched, became impossibly hotter. “I can’t tell you.” Even though she might have been so forward as to jump his bones, she hadn’t shed all her inhibitions yet. Thinking about it was one thing, doing it another—but saying it? And dammit, he was cocky enough already—she almost snickered at that pun—there was no need to tell him how mouthwatering his—“I can’t.” Grabbing her ankles, he pulled her down toward him, until she lay flat on her back underneath his overpowering frame. “Yes, you can.” His hands, hot, branding, running over her hips, up to her waist, pulling off her sweater. “Tell me.” “No.” “Hmm.” A kiss on her belly. “Later, then.” It sounded like a mix between a promise and a threat. He nuzzled the curve of her waist, one hand sliding under her back, unhooking her bra. A sigh e
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 15
Marga awoke to the faint sound of her cell phone ringing. With an effort, she pried her eyes open. The pull of sleep was so strong, it took her a moment to see anything at all, to get her brain working in a logical way. Her bones were molten in her body, every single muscle weighed down by blocks of concrete. She peered at the clock on the nightstand. It was half past four in the afternoon—they’d only slept about three hours. No wonder I feel like something the cat has dragged in. The phone was still ringing, the sound coming through the open door to the hallway where she’d dumped her purse earlier. With a groan of exhaustion, Marga disentangled herself from Atticus, who had wrapped himself around her in his sneaky, monopolizing way. She wriggled free of one of his arms and one leg, but as soon as she pried off the other two limbs, the first two snuck around her again. “Atticus. Phone. Need to answer.” He grunte
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 16
At his words, Marga had grown still in his embrace, so quiet she didn’t even breathe. Once again, Atticus cursed his dull daytime senses, which left him guessing at her feelings in a vacuum. He had no idea how his revelation had affected her when she was withdrawn like this, whether he’d inadvertently broken the fragility he held in his arms. She’d seemed so deeply vulnerable after she’d cried, so brittle as to crumble at the slightest misplaced touch, that he’d known, instinctively, he could crush her with one careless word. And that, he’d realized with surprise, would crush him as well. So, in a visceral response to this vulnerability in her that cut right through him, he’d decided to share with her the most painful part of his past, of himself, something he’d never spoken of to anyone else. Not even Benjamin, whom he considered the closest friend he had, knew how Atticus sister had died, let alone that he
Forbidden Desire CHAPTER 17
Words drifted through the black velvet veiling Marga’s mind. Murmurs, spoken in hushed tones, the voices familiar. Something about them should have alerted her. If only she could remember what… If only her head didn’t feel as if it were about to split from the inside out, as if weighed down by a hundred tons of concrete and still pulsating painfully with every slow beat of her heart. It was always like this after giving back to the Powers That Be. Giving back… Yes, that was what had happened. A sliver of a memory pierced the haze inside her mind. A car. Pain. Magic, bleeding from her body. Strong arms, holding her with such care. Atticus. Marga sat up with a start as it all came crashing back, at the same moment as the identity of the voices registered. The niggling feeling she’d had formed into a certainty that chilled her blood. Her rash movement spiked another throbbing wave of pain in her hea