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  I put my hands on my hips. “You turned me down. And I’ve been turned down enough in my life that I don’t need that shit. I don’t care how busy we are.”

  He stared at me and I stared right back. “You think because I stopped you, I don’t want to fuck you until you can’t stand?” He pushed his way into the bathroom, but I didn’t retreat very far. I was holding my ground on this one.

  I poked him in the chest with one finger. “You know how many times I’ve had men turn me down? First because I was chubby, and then because of my scars. So, it doesn’t matter that I lost a few pounds or that the scars don’t truly bother me, it’s all connected. I’m tired of men telling me they are too tired, not up to it, that we’ll fuck later, because later never comes and I have a goddamn libido like a teenage boy in his prime!” I shouted the words at him, truths that I’d held tightly to me for my whole life. Sex was important to me. It told me I was desirable and attractive, that the man I was with wanted to be with me and maybe those things were wrong. I was probably totally fucked up but I didn’t care.

  I wanted what I wanted.

  Corbin gave a rueful shake of his head, a wry twist of a grin on his lips. “Dominique, please. I will make you a promise. Once we know you are safe, once we are done with this war, then I will never turn you down again.”

  “Unless you make me forget about you,” I pointed out. Sterling’s words had been clear. Once this was all done, they would wipe my memory and leave me with nothing of them. It was like my own delusions were blackmailing me.

  His eyes narrowed. “We can fight it.”

  My chin dropped to my chest, shame rushing through me along with a big breath of air. “I’m sorry that I put my own hang-ups on you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “At least you told me.” He brushed a hand over my forehead, tucking my hair back. “It’s not easy to be truly honest about your hang-ups. Far harder than telling me you like to have your ass smacked occasionally.”

  I blushed. “I’ve read about it, and it . . . it turns me on. Never found someone willing.”

  He kissed me and I leaned into him, my hands on his pecs. “Good to know.”

  I smiled and stepped back. “So, you call the other guys, and I’ll get cleaned up.”

  “They’re in the kitchen already.”

  I frowned as a thought rolled through me. “Why the kitchen again?”

  He directed me to the shower, flicked the water on and then helped me in. The water was a perfect temperature and it didn’t hurt that Corbin got in with me, his hands making quick work of the soap, lathering my body. I held my hands over my head and did a slow turn while he soaped my body.

  “The kitchen is always central to the home, and its where most . . .women feel comfortable.” He stumbled over that last bit and I twisted around.

  “Women feel comfortable in the kitchen?” There was more than a little bite to my words. What the hell was this sexist crap now?

  He grimaced. “That sounds totally sexist,” he echoed my thoughts, “and I didn’t mean it to. But . . .we think you might be a witch and witches gravitate toward the hearth of a home. It’s where their magic is centered.”

  My jaw dropped and he turned me around, helped me rinse off and then lifted me out of the tub. My brain would not move forward, though, and I stood there on the bath mat drip drying because I couldn’t seem to get my body to do as I asked. Which was grab a towel and dry off.

  Corbin turned the water off and stepped out beside me. “I know it’s a bit of a shock.”

  “I don’t think I’m a witch.” I finally managed to do something, even if it was just to speak a denial.

  “It’s a possibility.” He said, “there aren’t many reasons for why you would be singled out and have glyphs carved into your skin. A new witch is one of them.”

  He handed me a towel and I slowly got to work drying the last few drops of water off.

  “No,” I shook my head, “the kitchen isn’t where I feel the most at home.” I hung the towel up and went back to the bedroom, thinking about where I felt most at home. Outside probably, or maybe my own bedroom, my sanctuary.

  My body was pleasantly sore and here and there my inner muscles clenched as if remembering one of the orgasms. I found a long-sleeved loose sweater and a pair of yoga pants that clung to my curves.

  I hadn’t been kidding when I’d told Corbin I’d been chubby before. Maybe that was a bit of an under exaggeration. I’d lost nearly sixty pounds to get to where I was now. Rose had been the one to help me get to the point where I wouldn’t take no for an answer when it came to my weight loss. I was proud of what I’d done. But sometimes, I still saw myself as the chubby chick which made it hard to move forward at times.

  Dressed once more, I searched for my phone. It had somehow ended up under my bed and I was on my knees, bent over when Corbin came out of the bathroom.

  “Nice. Let’s remember that for next time.” He swatted my ass as he drew close and I jerked up hard, my phone in my hand and my body tingling wildly from that single swat. Yeah, we were definitely going in that direction. Next time.

  I gripped my phone. “I’ll be out in a minute. I just need to check on Rose.”

  He bent and kissed me gently, then left me to my phone call. The hospital admin staffer picked up on the second ring.

  “Hi, I’m calling to check on Rose Duvall. I can’t get in because of the snowstorm. Could I possibly talk to Dr. Etterson?” I said.

  “Etterson? There is no doctor Etterson,” she said.

  “Seventh floor, maybe he’s new?” I frowned as I spoke because I knew he wasn’t new. I’d seen him in the ER. “About five nine, maybe in his fifties, salt and pepper hair.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, he’s not a doctor here. But your friend Rose could use some company.”

  “She’s awake?” I let out a sigh of relief. “That’s wonderful—”

  “No, she’s not awake.” There was a great deal of caution in how the staffer was speaking to me and I didn’t like it. My guts clenched.

  “What’s wrong? Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know what you were told, but she’s in rough shape. We aren’t sure she’ll survive the week. Maybe even the next few days.”

  Chapter 8

  The nurse’s words were like a thunderclap in my ear, making me deaf to anything else she might have said. I held the phone to me, shock filtering through me for the first ten seconds because there was no way that Rose was dying. That wasn’t possible. The doctor had said she just needed rest.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle the sob as the truth hit me and I slid to my knees. I blubbered through my fingers. “No, the doctor said I should leave her alone. That I should let her get some rest!”

  “I’m sorry, again, that doctor Etterson does not work here. Whoever you spoke to was not a doctor. As soon as this storm subsides, I think you should come see her. Say your goodbyes.”

  She hung up on me and I didn’t blame her, though I did wonder if she was related to the 9-1-1 operator I’d dealt with earlier. Then her words sank in. Say my goodbyes? No, that couldn’t be.

  I clutched the phone and ran into the kitchen. Diego was the only one of the four men waiting for me. His dark eyes swept over me once. “What’s wrong, Dominique?”

  I grabbed his arm. “Rose. She’s ...she’s dying. I have to get to her.”

  “The others have gone to investigate something in our home, to see if there were any batches of the kortine removed around the time you were attacked. They left me to watch over you.”

  “You have a binding on you too, right?”

  “Which means we can’t do anything outside of the rules,” he said. “I cannot leave here without the others,” he said.

  I swallowed hard. “And you can’t take me to the hospital. You can’t tell me anything until that binding is gone, right? I mean, if I can remove it, you could help me get to the hospital, through the storm?”

  He didn’t so much a
s blink those big brown eyes.

  I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, my mind racing. “I have to get to Rose, but I want you to come with me which means I need to figure out how to take your binding off.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s not possible.”

  I drew a breath. “Wrong thing to say to me.” I slid my hands under his cloak, and then under his shirt. His body tensed as I felt up and down his torso, focusing on the feel that I recalled from the binding around Corbin’s neck.

  “Pants off,” I said.

  His eyes widened but he didn’t so much as crack a smile. The fear in me was too heavy, which left no room for teasing, not when Rose’s life was on the line. I had to get to her, and that meant breaking the binding on Diego.

  He undid his belt and slid his pants to the floor baring his thickly muscles thighs. I ran my hands over his hips and on either side of those thighs until I was on my knees right in front of him. I ran my hands over his legs with my eyes closed because if I opened them I was looking straight at his cock, which was most certainly enjoying the attention I was giving his body.

  “Dios mio,” he muttered. “You are killing me.”

  “I’m going as fast as I can.” I bit my lower lip and tipped my head back.

  He groaned. “That look is not helping.”

  I bit my lip harder to keep my mind on why I was doing this, for Rose, and not the sensation of his muscles flexing and dancing under my fingers. I slid my hands to his inner thighs and ran them upward. Diego groaned again and put his hands on the top of my head, words I didn’t understand flowing off his tongue.

  “Stop that,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”

  He grunted. “You can keep looking. I’d suggest higher.”

  My lips twitched, but it was my fingers I focused on. His inner thigh was coated in something that felt like the strands of a rope. Why the rope wouldn’t be around his neck, I didn’t understand.

  I dug my fingers into the binding I couldn’t see, and as soon as my fingers slid under it, it flashed to life, a bright red rope. Heat snapped through my fingers, the same as had happened with Corbin.

  Diego snarled and his hands tightened on me ever so slightly. “That is not comfortable.”

  “I’ll go fast.” I stared at the throbbing red rope that tightened with every second. I yanked at it, pulling it away from his skin but it kept sticking back to him like it had glue on it. The heat in my hands spiked and I whimpered, anger and pain making my movements jerky.

  “Damn it!” Fear for Rose and anger that anyone would bind Diego like this against his will combined inside me, and my hands dug deeper into the rope, splintering the spell at a speed that made what I’d done for Corbin look like a turtle’s pace.

  This time the rope fought back, lashing around my wrists, moving from his thigh to my arms, just like a snake. I grabbed what I could of it with both hands. “No, this is not happening!”

  Like a solar flare, the heat shot up, and I screamed as it constricted on my arms and on Diego’s leg at the same time. I didn’t let go, I had to believe I could destroy it, just like I’d destroyed the binding on Corbin.

  Sweat rolled down my arms and I wasn’t sure if it was the heat of the rope or the exertion of hanging onto it.

  Diego stumbled back as the last of the rope fell to the floor at my feet, flashed, and then dissolved into nothing.

  He stared at me from the far side of the kitchen. “That compulsion has been on me for years. I . . . I almost don’t know how to feel.”

  I grabbed his pants from the floor and tossed them at him. “Feel great and free because we need to get to Rose now.”

  He strode across to me, bent and kissed me so gently that it was if a butterfly had landed on my lips. “I will thank you properly when this is all taken care of.”

  “Deal,” I whispered back. “Now hurry, please, Rose is in trouble.”

  He nodded, snapped his fingers and his magic coursed down his arms, circled around him and he went from pant-less to pants on in a literal blink of an eye.

  “Think you can do that for me sometime? Maybe add an updo for my hair?” I turned away, ran to my room and grabbed a pair of socks, boots, jacket and my wallet. I stuffed the wallet and my phone into the coat pocket. I looked at Diego who just stood in my kitchen, his hood up, quietly waiting for me.

  There was a calmness to him that drew me, like the eye of a storm. I held my hand out and he reached for me. “We will not need your vehicle.”

  “We won’t?”

  He shook his head. “Now that I am free from the binding, we can travel together.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant until I saw the blue magic dancing up and down his arms, highlighting tattoos I’d not seen before in the shadows of my dream. Each tattoo had a glyph, not unlike my own.

  “These are like my scars,” I whispered, shock filtering through me.

  “That we need to discuss, too. For now, let us get you to Rose. Take my other hand.” He held out his free hand and I took it in my own. The second our fingers wrapped around one another there was a jolt of power and the blue magic ripped around us in a spinning vortex.

  Eye of the storm indeed. Diego didn’t so much as flinch as the world around us spun and danced, as the kitchen disappeared.

  I didn’t close my eyes, much as the spinning upset my equilibrium. I wanted to see what he was doing because touching him while the magic coursed through his skin sparked an answering sense of power within me.

  I blinked and my sight was gone. I clutched at Diego. “Where are we?”

  “The basement of the hospital,” he let go of one hand and held the other up as a bright blue-white light flared over his fingers, illuminating the space. The room was mostly empty with just a few boxes here and there. He led me to the door, and the blue light flared around the knob.

  “Locked?” I asked.

  “Not anymore.” He glanced back at me, a smile on his lips. I reached up with my free hand and touched his face.

  “Thank you.”

  “No,” he shook his head as he opened the door. “Thank you for trusting me even though I kept things from you.”

  I sighed. “I know things aren’t always what they seem. And I saw the binding on you. As long as you promise to be honest with me from here on out.”

  “Of course.” He tugged me to his side, bent and kissed me quickly, but even in that brief touch the sharp pull of energy between us sparkled and danced, electric on my skin.

  He swallowed hard. “Hurry up to your friend. I will check the hospital to make sure it is safe.”

  “Wait,” I put a hand on his back stopping him as he stepped away from me. “What do you mean if it’s safe?”

  He shook his head. “I believe that whoever scarred you may still be trying to hurt you now by hurting your friend. It . . .it is one way to bring someone’s power to life. To give them someone they love to protect.”

  I clapped my hands over my mouth. “You mean it might be my fault that Rose was injured?”

  Diego shook his head. “Not your fault, never. Go to her. I will be there as soon as I can.”

  I watched him stride away from me, his wide back fading into nothing between one step and the next.

  I stumbled up a short flight of concrete steps to another door. That was locked. I smacked the flat of my hand against the door several times, anger getting the better of me. Mostly anger at myself.

  The door knob rattled and I stepped back, down the first step. Orange sparkles danced and jogged over the handle.

  None of my men had magic with orange.

  I spun and ran down the steps, sliding to a stop at the bottom and leaping to the right. There were three stacks of boxes and I ducked behind them as the door creaked open.

  “Ms. Swift, it’s Dr. Etterson. I know you are in here.”

  My jaw dropped. Dr. Etterson had magic? Of course, it made a wicked sort of sense. The nurses didn’t know a Dr. Etterson, and he’d been at both my incident at the
ER with my scars, and he’d told me to leave Rose when she was dying. I clutched my hands into fists at my sides. The sound of his feet on the steps told me he was drawing closer. He passed by the boxes going straight for the room that Diego and I had arrived in. His back was to me.

  I let out a slow breath, and started around the edge of the boxes, working my way toward the door at the top of the stair. I glanced back as Dr. Etterson stepped into the darkness of the storage room, his hand raised above his head with a light over it, just like Diego.

  I sprinted up the stairs on my toes, my steps silent. At the top of the stairs I didn’t look back but kept running knowing that Etterson—if that was even his real name—would not be far behind.

  I ran for all I was worth until I hit the bank of elevators. I could take them, but would that be obvious? I hit the call button, all but dancing on the spot. If I could throw Etterson off, it would buy me time because there was no doubt he’d know where I was going. But which way would give me the most time?

  The elevator doors binged open and I stepped in and hit the button for every floor, all the way to the twentieth. Then I hit the button to shut the doors. As they slid shut, I leapt back through and ran away from the elevator toward the stairwell on the opposite side of the door that led into the basement room. Maybe it wasn’t much of a diversion, but it was all I had.

  I pushed the door to the stairs open as quietly as I could and slid through, holding the handle as I shut it behind me so there would be no loud bang. Even so, the click sounded like the hammer of a gun as it shut tightly.

  I didn’t wait to see if Etterson noticed. I turned and ran up the stairs, grabbing at the railing with each step to pull myself along faster. I thought I’d outfoxed him until I reached the fifth floor. Behind me there was a thunderous boom that sounded like a bomb had gone off and Etterson’s voice rolled up to me.

  “Dominique, stop.”

  My feet started to slow and I cried out. “NO!”

  There was a tingle in my legs like I stood on a battery and I leapt forward once more, not really sure what had just happened. What was going on? Did I even want to know?