Broken Pentacle

While Sky struggled to come up with something to ease the awkward silence between them, Alec settled in the armchair at the foot of her bed. Well, someone’s bed. Zach said the second safe house belonged to witches who were on a PR trip to Canada, trying to ensure that Jaimis’s following of dark lords ‑‑ a misnomer, since he’d recruited as many female as male witches ‑‑ wouldn’t spread north.

Alec shifted awkwardly, as if he were trying to decide what to do with his hands. “You look good.”

“Not being cut up to the consistency of hamburger suits me.”

Alec winced, and she regretted her cheeky reply. You’d think after everything that happened she could learn to control her mouth. Some time past midnight but a long time shy of dawn ‑‑ and still shaken by the evidence that Jaimis knew she and Alec were back in the States ‑‑ her self-control seemed limited at best.

“Sorry. It’s just strange…seeing you again.” If anyone had written an etiquette book on reuniting with fellow trauma victims, she had yet to read it. “I don’t know what to say to you ‑‑ where to start.”

The dizzying pull toward him flared hot again, ripping through her until she clenched her nails into her palms to fight the urge to reach out and run her hands along his chest. After what Jaimis had done to her, she’d thought she’d lost the ability to feel intense arousal, her lust as broken as her magic.

But in a handful of hours, two men had woken something raw and hot from its year-long slumber. Goddess help her, she didn’t want to think about what might happen if the beast came out to play. Sky the Dom had died in Jaimis’s basement dungeon, and she had neither the will nor the energy to reinvent herself with the one person who knew exactly what she’d suffered at the rogue’s hand. Now Zach…that held possibilities. But Alec, goddess, how could she even hold him without sinking back into the horrors?

Alec moved from the chair to the end of the bed, careful not to crowd her but obviously seeking contact. With a shaky breath, Sky reached out and touched his hand. Although her shields held at full force, thoughts and images leaped across at the contact. Mostly she saw fragments from the time he’d spent convalescing in Sweden. Go figure. The senator managed to end up at a mountain resort, and she got a year with a bunch of goats in Mexico. Guess it was a fitting punishment.

When Alec winced, she knew he’d picked up that last bit. Whatever fragile connection stretched between them, her psychic abilities latched onto the link and refused to let go.

“Senator Kouklakis died ‑‑ I got a new identity to go with the Swedish vacation. Alec Brennan, eccentric drifter.”

“You miss it? Political life?” Images of him wheeling and dealing on the Senate floor flooded her head. Of course he missed it. “Hey, I’ve got my shields up a mile high. Stay out of my head.”

“Not trying to get in it. I’m shielded, too.” He hesitated, then reached up to push a mass of wavy brown hair away from his face. “And I miss politics less than I thought. What’s happening now, dealing with Jaimis, this is more important.”

Sky watched in fascination as he worried strands of hair between his thumb and forefinger. With his hair wild around his shoulders, he looked fierce and untamed. Golden skin stretched across lean, runner’s muscles, interrupted only by his jade green boxer shorts.

Those first few weeks they’d spent healing at Sorren’s estate, Alec had clung to the trappings of civilization, wrapping himself in designer suits, regardless of his raw back and battered psyche. But gone were the two-hundred-dollar haircut, blond highlights, and butter-soft shoes that probably cost more than her house. Strike that ‑‑ her former house, long since consigned to ashes by a bunch of anti-witch vigilantes.

“The wild man image suits you.” Despite herself, she inched closer, drawn by the musky male scent mingled with traces of soap and shampoo. She hesitated, then rested her palm over his wrist. A riot of heat rose from her belly and spread upward toward her breasts.

“I missed you, after Sorren moved us out of the country to safer ground.” Something about him plucked an emotional chord deep inside her.

The man was almost old enough to be her father ‑‑ never mind the deceptive youthfulness characteristic of witches. Hell, she was closer in age to his son, Matt, than she was to Alec. And yet, the pull between them was unmistakable.

Feeling vulnerable in the face of emotions she couldn’t understand, Sky wrapped the terrycloth robe tighter around her, a thin shield between her and disappointment. Alec regarded her, his clear, brown eyes flecked with amber, and when the silence stretched between them, she looked down at her legs crossed yoga-style on the blue bedspread.

“Your hair’s longer. I like it that way, like a black waterfall down your back.” Alec swallowed audibly. “You don’t wear it long to hide ‑‑ I mean, you don’t still have…”

The pain in his voice spurred her into action. “No. Here, see?” She untied the loosely knotted belt of her borrowed robe, let the folds of terrycloth drop around her waist, turned, and lifted her hair clear of her back. “The witch healers did their jobs well.”

Bending forward, she let him study the unmarred expanse of skin. She shivered when he trailed his fingers along her spine and explored smooth flesh where she knew he remembered a mess of healing lacerations. Relaxing under his gentle exploration, she let her face rest on her arms and enjoyed the liquid fire that followed his touch along her skin.

“Only one lash was too deep to erase the scar.” Never mind the million scars on the inside. She sat up and lifted the soft terrycloth clear of her left thigh, guiding Alec’s hand over the crescent moon-shaped scar no longer than her thumb.

“Mine’s here.” Alec eased the boxers down on his right side, revealing a jagged scar a hand span long across his hip. “The rest healed clean.”

Without thinking, Sky bent down and kissed the tip of the puckered flesh, then trailed a row of kisses along the length of the scar. Startled, she felt Alec claw his way into her head again, hungry and amazed at her casual acceptance of the ugly mark.

“What Jaimis did to us, the way he tied our fates together, it’s like he was some sort of dark artist…” Alec’s breath came in short gasps as Sky kissed her way along the length of the raised line of tissue again. “And after a point, he’d shed so much of our blood that it was like mixing paint, blending the colors until he left some of each of us with the other.”

Fuck. Damned if she’d let him see her cry. “Those six weeks when we were too sick to travel, you could always think of something to make me laugh through the pain.”

She left the rest unsaid. And you were the only one who could help me cry.

“That’s what you want? To cry? Or to laugh?” Alec helped her sit up beside him, cradling her chin in his palm, and she leaned forward, seeking a kiss, a caress, anything to ease the thirst she had for him. “Because whatever we do here tonight, I need to understand what you need.”

Broken Pentacle Available Now at Loose Id.