Page 76 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
"I would know if another man touched you."
"This is getting very antiquated," she scoffed. "Next, you're going to tell me that I can't sleep with anyone but you. Well, forget that, I can sleep with whoever I want to."
"Try it and whoever you choose to share yourself with will die." The last was said through his teeth.
"What?You can't do that. That's insane."
"I can and I will." He grabbed her and pressed his hand to her stomach. "You carry my child. We are destined for each other."
"I don't believe in destiny or prophecies. That's your delusion, not mine."
"How else do you explain me fathering a child? I am Death, Tierra. In all the lifetimes I have lived, and the women I have lain with, never did I need to worry about contraception. It took you, an earth witch, aprophesiedearth witch, for me to be able to propagate. It’s not only destiny, it's a fucking miracle."
"Or curse," she countered, feeling panic that never seemed far when discussing this subject. "Have you thought of that? We're pawns in theprophesiedApocalypse. I'm sure your fellow Horsemen are saying the same things about this child that my sisters are."
"You do not carry the Antichrist."
"Can you say that for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt?"
A pulse throbbed in his temple and he took his time answering.
"No."
"No!You weren'tsupposedto say no! You were supposed to reassure me." She buried her hands in her hair, covering her ears. She'd give anything to have unheard what he'd just said.
Good goddess, if he didn't know that this...childshe carried wasn't some evil seed, how was she to believe it? Based on how she felt most of the time, she probably was possessed by a demon. Case in point, she didn't do things like run off and cavort with strange men, and they didn't get much stranger than the Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And now she'd run off with him twice. Ever since she'd met Killian Bane, she hadn't been herself.
She'd given him her virginity because he was what? Hot? Convenient?
Well, not convenient, that wasn't the right word. He wasthere. Like a mountain that needed to be climbed, or an artesian spring to drink from, and she'd never had her thirst quenched. A woman ravenous and he was a mana from heaven.
Who wouldn't want to sleep with him? Look at him. Chest bare and chiseled, pale and perfect like a marble statue, but warm to the touch. And she so wanted to touch him. Reach out and stroke the downy softness of his feathers, feel the hardened muscles of his body.
Damn it, this is not helping.
"Tierra, listen to me. We will get through this. Together."
"No, we won't. We are on opposite sides of a very big war. One I wanted no part of nor did I ask for. And I'm compromised, possibly carrying something fromThe ExorcistorChildren of the Corn."
"Stop this now." He took her shoulders in his large hands and gave her a hard shake. "I've seen our child's soul, remember? Demons don't have souls."
She was afraid to hope, to grasp for the thin thread he offered. "And the Antichrist, does he have a soul?"
"That I don't know. But consider this. What if our child—created out of darkness and light, life and death—is the one soul on the planet who can stop the Apocalypse?"
5
Killian smoothed Tierra's hair back from her face. Fear and hope warred in emerald eyes deeper and more mysterious in the light of the blood moon. Gently, he pulled her into his arms and offered her something he'd never given anyone.
Comfort.
Greedily, he took solace from her in return as he held her. He breathed in her intoxicating scent of blue moon roses, delicate and enchanting, with hints of lavender that soothed the beast inside him and tendered his touch.
Ever so lightly, he traced the shape of her face, over her sharp cheekbones, dusted with a spattering of fairy freckles, along her stubborn jaw, to her neck where her pulse throbbed under his fingertips.
Her heart beat in time with his.
Fast and frantic with need.
