Page 2 of Immortal Burden

I took him in.

Despite the dress code that the invite for today’s event had stressed, he wasn’t donning a tailcoat. Instead, he was clad in a pair of leather pants, a rumpled white shirt with a lipstick stain on the collar, and a navy sports jacket that looked like it’d been trodden on several times over. It was a messy version of his go-to look.

Something caught my eye and I hastily looked away. Pointing to his crotch, I told him, “Fly.”

He smiled with amusement and grabbed at the zipper, struggling more than was normal for such a simple task. “Damn Ella,” he muttered. “I told her if she played with it, she had to put it back where she found it afterward.”

Urgh. I screwed up my face at his words. “Do your shirt up while you’re at it,” I told him, still avoiding looking directly at him. The thing was only being held together by a single button at the bottom, baring most of his tanned torso, his six-pack abs on full display like some kind of offering to anyone looking his way. Not to mention, his nipple hoops. The things looked like they were sparkling every time they caught the light of the midday sun overhead.

“Blushing now, huh?”

My gaze inadvertently snapped to him.

“Excuse me?”

“You always did get a little shy right before we got down and dirty. Mia Snow, the innocent little lamb.” He stepped up close, still fighting to do up his buttons. He just didn’t have the dexterity to perform the task in his inebriated state. “You do realize what a turn on that is?”

“Save your seductive crap for the faery, Casanova,” I muttered. “Here,” I said, jerking him to me by his belt buckle. I set about quickly doing up the rest of his buttons.

He beamed down at me.

“Don’t,” I scolded, knowing he was reading into it. “I’m just trying to speed this along, so we can get inside and do this thing.”

“Not the top one!”

I rolled my eyes and undid it again.

“I need some evidence of my personal style remaining.”

Yeah, that was the true reason.

Liar.

It was all about calling attention to himself—from any available being within range of him.

“You were supposed to wear a tailcoat.”

He shrugged. “This Coven needs to lighten up. They could use a little modernizing. I’m just opening their eyes to the possibility.”

That was extreme wishful thinking. The Maven Coven had been around for over a thousand years. Their methods and classicist stance had proved very successful. The Coven boasted an elite academy that produced the most powerful and accomplished magic-wielders in the world, Ryker and I being two of them. This place had not only been my training ground, but my surrogate family. I’d grown up here since I’d been left to them as a baby.

Ryker didn’t have that depth of connection, as he had come to them in his twenties, but he did owe them a debt, much like mine. If it hadn’t been for them, his path would’ve been shockingly different.

At one point, the Coven he’d belonged to, the Lotus Coven, had stood for light, protection, and justice, much like the Maven Coven. But, following the passing of his mother, Ursula, his father, Gabriel, had set about changing all of that. Dramatically, so. Dangerously, so. Gabriel had turned to his son as a tool with which to maintain his standing in the magical community, and to increase his power and territory. He’d attempted to wield Ryker like a weapon, a weapon of destruction and darkness, abusing his power. That was when Ryker had fled to the Maven Coven. Fortunately, the Coven had been able to set him back on a path of good, re-training him in the areas that Gabriel had attempted to corrupt in him. His father had come for him, to forcibly extract him, but Ryker’s power and expertise had grown enough where he’d been able to resist. Not to mention, I may have helped out a little. Between us, we’d defeated the misguided megalomaniac and he’d been banished to the Void, a holding facility where those who abused their magical gifts ended up.

Ryker caught me off guard then, as he reached out and grasped a strand of my hair, one of the vibrant blue streaks that framed my face, running it between his fingers. His eyes wandered over the rest of it, the midnight-black portion that cascaded down past my shoulders. “You look absolutely ravishing,” he breathed, taking in my striking royal-blue peplum waisted designer gown that dipped into a sharp ‘V’ at the bust, emphasizing my cleavage in a definitive, yet, classy way.

“Ryker—” I protested, pulling from his hold on my hair.

He grinned at the sight of my shoes. “You brought out the big guns,” he commented of my royal blue Manolos with a dazzling jeweled buckle.

The intensity sparking in his eyes unnerved me way too much. I had to step back further, hoping the increased physical distance would force an emotional one.

I shook my head, drawing in a breath to center myself. “Look, Ry, are you going to be able to do this?” I reached for him, telling him, “You know what? I’ll just spell you sober.”

He dodged my attempt to grasp his hand to perform the spell. “No!” he cried.

“Why not?”

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