Page 44 of A Touch of Brimstone

“Sometimes Helena doesn’t like me very much.”

I wasn’t sure she even loved him. I saw the rampant hate in her eyes and the thirst for retaliation.

“What about you?”

“Sometimes I don’t like her, either.”

That was fair. Three years older than my twenty-three-year-old brother, I got into fights with him that devolved into childish antics. But I could proudly report neither one of us clawed each other’s face or held a broken bottle to the other’s throat. Despite our fights, we still loved each other. I wasn’t sure that was true with him and Helena.

“Our conversation, we never finished it,” he reminded me. I wondered if he didn’t like revealing that part of him or being reminded of the dysfunction of their relationship.

“Is there anything more to discuss? Based on what Helena said, you’d never make a promise to protect my life.”

His jaw clenched and with some effort, it relaxed. “You would like a way to return here on your own, correct?”

This was his concession and the only thing I’d get from him.

“It would make things easier.” My heart pounded at the anticipation of some freedom. Leniency in supervision would give me some options of escape if necessary.

He nodded once. “I think that’s a good idea. I will make those arrangements.”

When he started in my direction, I shuffled back a few steps, increasingly aware of his all-consuming presence. There was a feeling of something ominous and foreboding lurking just barely below the surface.

I held my breath, realizing they were coming at rapid clicks at his approach. He touched my hair, running his hand lightly over the loose strands that had fallen from my ponytail, twining them around his fingers, holding my eyes the entire time. With one quick jerk, he pulled out some strands and was at the door before I could react.

“What’s wrong with you! Why are you trying to bald me?”

Chuckling, he knelt at the threshold, laying the strands across it. He whispered, said a few words, and as at my home, light flashed before revealing a diaphanous wall that quickly faded.

“No one can enter, not even me.” Then he was gone.

I wasn’t sure if it was irritation, or the tingling from my hair being yanked out, or disappointment in myself for my fleeting moment of wanting a little more. There was a part of me curious to know what it would feel like to have his supple lips on mine. Did he have the same ardent intensity during sex? My intrigue hadn’t stopped there. My thoughts and eyes had lingered over the shirt molded to what was an obviously well-sculpted chest and stomach.

Luna, I scolded myself, forcing my thoughts to the members of the Conventicle and how they had looked at him, and the cool indifference in his eyes when he bared his neck to his sister. How could I forget the malicious intent in his face when he circled me in fire? And I had to remember what Helena said about the volatility of his protection of my life. Hormones be damned. He was not the guy I should fawn over.

14

Heading straight to the library, the only thing that kept me from rushing back to work and ignoring the croissants I saw left on the counter for breakfast as I passed the kitchen was Anand seated at the counter beckoning me to join him.

I took it as a good sign. Riding on the high of optimism, I took my wins where I could find them. Soon I would be able to freely move between this world and mine. I hoped Dominic had agreed because he was confident we’d break the spells today. I was extremely hopeful of that, too.

Twenty minutes into working in the spellbook room, Anand seated in the chair closest to the door and engrossed in a book from the main library, keeping that flourish of hope burning was becoming more difficult. Suspicion dominated.

“Are you here as a companion, or security?” I asked, looking up from the book I’d been going through.

His lips lifted into a pleasing curl. “Companion.” Despite it being a total lie, his gentle demeanor would have made a less cynical person believe it.

It only made me more curious about him and the people who lived in the Underworld.

“You’re not related to Dominic and Helena, are you?”

He shook his head. Based on the blithe look that coursed over his face and gleamed in his eyes, he knew I was grasping for information and he wasn’t going to offer it freely. I missed Nailah.

“Nailah doesn’t live here?”

“That information you know already. I took her home.”

It was my time to nod.

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