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He toppled her into the bed and came down over her, holding her lifted arms out to either side as she struggled against his superior strength. Straddling her, his knees holding her hips in place, he stared down at her flushed face, and saw both desire and anger in her expression.
“Do you think I’ll let you rape me?” she spat the words at him.
“It wouldn’t be rape, and we both know it. You want me.”
Breathing hard, Mercy narrowed her gaze and focused on him.
He bellowed in pain, and rolled off her and onto his side. Damn her! She’d sent a psychic punch straight to the most vulnerable area of his anatomy, the equivalent of kneeing him in the groin. While he caught his breath and mumbled curses, she got out of bed and walked to the door. Pausing, she glanced over her shoulder.
“I allow you to live only because of Eve,” she said.
He shot a spray of fire arrows at her, their glowing tips outlining the space around her body. She extinguished them before they singed the door behind her.
“You may wish me dead, but you won’t kill me.” His cold stare pinned her to the spot. “And I won’t kill you. Not until I’ve fucked you again.”
TEN
Judah had spent the entire morning with Eve. Under Mercy’s supervision, of course. She had tried to stay in the background, at least part of the time, but she didn’t trust Judah enough to leave her daughter alone with him. Watching father and daughter together exposed her to a side of Judah that she hated to admit existed. In his fascination with and adoration of his child, Judah seemed no different than any Raintree father. He played games with Eve, read to her, ate a mid-morning snack of fruit, cheese and crackers with her, and watched as she tested several of her powers. He instructed her on how to channel her abilities and use them properly. He praised her when she succeeded, and when she failed, he told her that she simply needed more practice.
Kindness, patience and the ability to love were not traits she would ever have associated with Judah Ansara. Since she had fled from his bed that morning seven years ago, she had thought of him as a charmer, a seducer, an uncaring, unfeeling son of a bitch. She had hated him for being an Ansara, a clan she had been taught from childhood were the spawn of the devil.
“Let’s go on a picnic,” Eve insisted when Sidonia had inquired if “that man” would be staying for lunch.
“Eve, honey, I don’t think—” Mercy tried to object.
“A picnic is a great idea.” Judah winked at Eve. “Why don’t you and I raid the kitchen and put our picnic lunch together while your mother changes clothes.”
Mercy glanced down at her attire: neat navy gabardine trousers, a tan cotton sweater, and sensible navy loafers. What was wrong with what she was wearing?
As if reading her mind—God, had he?—Judah said, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in jeans or shorts?”
“Yeah, Mommy. Put on shorts like I’ve got on.”
“I’ll change before we leave.” Mercy recognized defeat and accepted it, at least on this one issue. “For now, I’ll go with y’all to kitchen and help fix our picnic lunch.” In her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of Sidonia shaking her head disapprovingly.
Half an hour later, Mercy, in cut-off jeans and a red T-shirt, found herself sitting on an old quilt spread out under a huge oak tree in the middle of a nearby meadow. Not a single cloud marred the crisp blue sky. The afternoon June sun filtered through the tree branches, dappling golden shards of light around and over them.
Eve chattered away as she munched on her chicken salad sandwich and potato chips. Judah got a word in edgewise occasionally and seemed amused by his magpie daughter’s endless babble. Several times during the meal, Mercy noticed Judah checking his wristwatch. And when he thought she wasn’t looking, he stared at her. She pretended not to notice the way he was studying her.
After gobbling up two chocolate chip cookies and washing them down with milk from her thermos, Eve bounded up off the quilt and looked from Judah to Mercy. “I want to practice some more.” She ran several yards away and said, “Watch, Mother. Look at me, Daddy.”
Without waiting for permission, Eve concentrated very hard, and gradually her feet lifted off the ground a few inches. Then a foot. Two feet. Three feet.
“Be careful,” Mercy cautioned.
“Daddy, what’s this called?” Eve asked, spreading her arms and waving them up and down, as if they were wings.
“Levitation,” Judah replied as Eve rose a good ten feet off the ground.
“Oh, that’s right. Mother told me. Lev-i-ta-tion.”
Leaning forward, intending to intervene and catch Eve if she fell, Mercy held her breath. If only Eve weren’t so headstrong and adventurous.
“You’re overprotective.” Judah manacled Mercy’s wrist. “Let her have some fun. She just wants our attention and our approval.”
Mercy glowered at him. “Eve has been the center of my existence since the day she was born. But it’s my job as her mother to approve of appropriate behavior and disapprove of what’s inappropriate. And more than anything else, it is my duty to protect her, even if that means protecting her from herself.”
Judah grunted. “You’ve lived in fear that the Ansara in her would come out, haven’t you? Every time she’s acted up, been unruly, thrown a temper tantrum, you’ve wondered if it was a sign of the innate evil side of her nature—the Ansara in her.”
