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“She’s there?” Seth yelled, and I held the phone away from my ear. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, where a headache began to beat against my skull. “Can we talk about this later?” I said to Seth. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“And to think I’d actually called you to apologize, asshole.” He hung up on me. Again. This shit was beginning to get old.
I tossed my phone onto my bed and turned my gaze to Audrey, who regarded me with enough suspicion to cause a seed of doubt to settle in my gut. “I’m sorry, baby. What did you need?”
She gathered the towel tighter around her chest. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Seth.” Panic clawed at my throat as I felt her retreat, and it was my own damn fault. I shouldn’t have answered his call. It accomplished nothing.
She stared at her toes. “He heard me.”
“Yeah.” What else could I say?
“Are you fighting because of me? I don’t want that, Wes. You’re family, and that relationship is so much more important than whatever it is we’re doing.”
My panic was in full-on red alert mode. She was killing me, shredding me apart from the inside, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Because she didn’t even know she was doing it. She didn’t realize that there was nothing and no one more important to me than her.
I needed to tread carefully here. “The issues between me and Seth have been happening for years. It’s coming to a head, but I promise, I won’t drag you into it.”
“Okay.” She took a step back. “I’m going to finish getting ready, then we can go.”
She still eyed me with that hint of mistrust, but at least her shoulders had relaxed. Not all the way there, but it wasn’t fair for me to expect us to be. We had a lot of shit to work through. Years of hurt and misunderstandings couldn’t be undone with a single night of life-altering orgasms. Regrettably. It took a lot more for the long haul, but I was in, one hundred percent.
After she finished showering, she stepped out of the bathroom with my briefs rolled over her hips and my T-shirt hanging over her tiny frame like a dress. All the blood in my system immediately drained to my dick. Seeing her in my clothes brought out something primitive and protective in me. Her skin flushed as I approached.
I tugged on the hemline. “This is a good look for you. I like it.”
“Yeah?” She ran a finger up and down my abs, a spark of gold lighting up her hand. “How bad do you want to fuck me while I’m wearing your shirt?”
Christ. The mouth on this woman. It was a wonder I could even think straight with how hard the need for her pounded through my cock. “We’re about to find out.”
She squealed as I lifted her off her feet and dropped her down on the bed before covering her body with mine. We had time. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour. My lips trailed up her neck while she squirmed beneath me. Maybe I’d be a little late getting her home.
The last thing I wanted to do was leave my bed to take Audrey home. If it were up to me, I would’ve called in sick and spent the day making love to her until she was boneless and worn out and the only sound she could make was my name as I drove her to pleasure again and again. But this was her busiest time of year, and losing even one day would cost her weeks of winter income. Not something she would thank me for in the long run.
So here we were, trudging through the woods at the ass-crack of dawn, hoping to sneak her into her condo through the back way so the town wouldn’t talk. Though they’d be talking soon enough anyway. There was no way we’d be able to keep this a secret for long. If the fucking suit I’d be wearing later didn’t give me away, the stupidly satisfied look on my face would do the trick.
About halfway up the trail that led to her spring, the sky seemed to darken as the sunrise approached, rather than the other way around. Strange. A sense of unease wrapped my muscles around my spine. Audrey gazed at the sky, her expression pinched with worry. Midnight tendrils of smoke leaked out of the forest. I grabbed her hand, pushing my energy into hers.
“Ready for this?” I asked.
She widened her stance and squared her shoulders. “Damn right I am.”
Pride swept through me at the determined look on her face. She was in her element, charged with the power that flowed through both of us. Even when the curse had crawled inside her mind last time, she found her strength and fought it.
The smoke continued to climb, building a wall around us. If it functioned anything like it had last week, it would soon try to drown us in painful memories. Dragging us to a place that took more mental strength than raw power to defeat. Only a few quick ones had flashed through my mind last time, since the curse had focused its energy on Audrey, but those few were enough to make my blood run cold.
Audrey hadn’t been truthful with me about what the smoke had done to her—I knew that at the time and let her keep those pieces to herself—but now that I knew she’d been there that night at Seth’s, I had a pretty good idea of where it’d taken her.
We beat it last time, though. As long as we didn’t let the past consume us, I didn’t worry about our ability to defeat it again. We just had to keep fighting, as many times as necessary, until we figured out what we needed to do to put our magic back into the stones and bind the curse for good. Hopefully before it took a corporeal form. Or worse, trapped us all here, plunging us into total darkness while it sunk the earth into the ocean.
Her hand shone with that brilliant golden light as gray clouds gathered over her head, larger than anything she’d been able to produce to date. Either the practicing was paying off, or I was right about our emotional connection needing to be just as strong as our physical one. Sharp whips of lightning struck from the ground up, driving the smoke back, leaving a metallic tang in the air. I held on to Audrey with one hand, letting the two of us build enough power to work on our own. Her rain hit my lightning and lashed at the smoke seeping between the breaks in our magic.
“As soon as we’ve got a high enough charge, let’s take it on either side and try to trap it between us, like we did last time,” I said.
She nodded, setting the plan in place. The smoke reached a peak and closed over our heads. Audrey’s clouds disappeared into the shadowed mist that surrounded us. Total darkness blocked her from my line of sight, but she gripped me tighter. Like she needed reassurance that I was still beside her, still connected, even though we couldn’t see our own hands in front of us. Not even the light from our palms could penetrate the smoke.
