Page 103 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Water. In pipes.
Someone, and Moira had a pretty decent guesswho, had just turned on a shower. Close enough for her to feel the presence of moisture through the solid wood door to her left. Her chest went still, her eyes open in lidless concentration. The only movement in the entire stretched ‘X’ of her bound form were her lips, curving into a slow smile.
She’d been working on a little something. Something she’d been dying to try out. Delicious tingling stole over her, through her as each water molecule of moisture responded to her. Her cells, their cells, one in purpose. Only when she felt the wholeness of them heeding her call did she pull their heat into her body, leaving the water spraying from several shower heads at the body of Nick Kingswood at exactly two degrees above freezing. She thought the extra degrees especially magnanimous in light of all the general fuckery he’d dragged into her life.
“Fuck!”The hollered curse in that smooth, smoky baritone widened Moira’s smile.
And for my next trick...a magician’s voice announced in her head.
Moira beckoned the droplets to increase their pace. Just a titch. Say, about the velocity of a firehose?
They seemed all too eager to comply.
“Jesus fucking Christ! Holy fuck!”
And would the moisture collected around the glass shower door care to freeze, perhaps? she wordlessly requested. Just enough to prevent someone from opening it without a few solid body blocks, of course.
Not a problem.
Moira heard the squeaking of taps attempting to be turned off, then glass violently rattling. At this point, Nick’s curses devolved into a language she didn’t speak but could still take the general meaning of.
When it finally flung open, the wooden door followed almost at once, and Moira was confronted with the towering, naked, dripping frame of Conquest, with naught but a towel held to his admittedly impressive crotch.
“Good morning, Sunshine.” Moira greeted Nick with her most beatific smile. “Well, don’t you look like a drowned possum? Didn’t your momma ever teach you to dry off while you’re on the shower mat?”
Droplets hung jewel-like from the tips of Nick’s disheveled hair, the exact color of a roux allowed to sizzle past brick brown. His eyes, usually the exact shade of sunlight through a good Tennessee whisky, had darkened considerably. Water droplets under her control only moments earlier willfully disobeyed her just for the chance to glide down the channels provided by his pectoral muscles, abdominals, and the dangerous ledge where his abdomen cut a deep “V” into his lean hips.
And the rest of him…Lord, but Moira couldn’t let herself look for fear of what he’d see reflected in her liquid aquamarine eyes. She already knew what hid under that slate-gray towel, and he’d drop it in a second if the distraction would give him an advantage.
Seeing Nicholas Kingswood bare-ass naked would be enough to drive any woman straight past distraction and right over the cliff beyond it. Maybe she hadn’t thought out this part of her plan so well.
“Problems with your plumbing?” she asked, sweet as sugared honey.
His chest rose and fell, his breath practically steaming from flared nostrils. He advanced to the bed with startling speed, drops of water falling from his body onto Moira’s cheeks like rain as he seized her shackled wrists with hands equally unyielding.
His mouth hovered over hers. Close enough for her to feel his heated words against her lips when he spoke at last.
“While you are under my roof, I would advise you against provoking me.”
“On account of you don’t like what cold water does to your tally whacker?” This shot? A total bluff. Simple math told Moira that if he had both hands on her wrists, he had no hands on his towel. What she saw out of the corner of her eye hadn’t been affected by the icy spray one lick.
Lick.Now there was an interesting idea.
“From this moment forward, every breath you take is given by my grace. As you are mine to destroy, your life is over the second I decide it’s so. And understand this,Moira Jo—” An involuntary shudder worked its way up her spine with her name on his lips and her water on his body “—I am the only one in this house who has any interest in prolonging it.”
“You want I should scare up a blue ribbon for you? Cheeto won one at the county fair once for Most Charming Animal. Can’t say that it applies to you much, but I don’t guess he’d mind sharing. Come to think if it, Nick Kingswood sharing a ribbon with a pig makes an awful lot of sense.”
Nick’s eyes darkened further at the mention of her familiar, a teacup pig that just happen to belch fire when stirred up.
Nick had made the mistake of shaking him up like a little tank of nitroglycerine and was relieved of his eyebrows for the privilege.
“You don’t have any idea the danger you’re in, do you?”
“What? You mean with the zombies, five seals out of seven more busted than a poker player on Sunday morning, two of my sisters seduced by the dark arts, the third knocked up with Death’s spawn, Satan herself clamoring to turn me into some strappy sandals, and waking up chained to the bed of an apocalyptic horseman sent to destroy me personally?” Moira paused, allowing herself an unbroken gaze straight into those amber eyes as water drops now warmed by his body continued to rain down. “You’re right. I don’t have me the first god-damn clue.”
Surprise softened the hard angles of Conquest’s face. He hadn’t expected her to understand. Most folks didn’t when it came right down to it. For Moira, gifted with a large rack and about the worst backwater drawl a body could have, she’d encountered the same reaction all her life.
No one expected much from her, and she was happy to give them about what they expected.
