Page 129 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
“Here we are.” Nick stalked into a copse of trees. A sleek, white car lurked within the shadows, its exotic headlights shaped like nostrils flaring in the darkness.
“Hol-ee shit,” Moira gasped as they drew closer. “Is that a Ferrari
Italia 458?”
Nick halted abruptly. “You know cars?”
“Are you kiddin’ me? I worked in Uncle Red’s shop since I was big enough to hold a socket wrench. Back home, I drove a ’69 Plymouth Barracuda.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll spread your legs on the hood of this car,” Nick warned.
“Hey, it ain’t my fault you’ve got the libido of a two-peter jack rabbit. I just miss tearing up the back roads, hearing the Badger growl…”
“You’ll get to hear Magnus growl. I don’t think he’ll disappoint.”
“Wait a minute,” Moira said. “Thisis Magnus? I thought when you saidmount, you meant he’d be an actual horse.”
“Why have only one horse when I can have 600?” Nick asked.
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Moira admitted.
Nick walked around to the passenger’s side, and with a flash of headlights and the requisite beep, the door opened, and he deposited Moira in the buttery black leather seat.
When Nick slipped into the driver’s side and turned the engine over, the low, throaty growl sent a reckless rush of adrenaline down Moira’s spine.
The very air between them felt electric with possibility, thick with the new intimacy between them, saturated with the sensual scent of leather, Nick’s aftershave, and the man himself. The immortal sent to destroy her.
“Fast.” Moira ran her fingers along the leather dash, marveling at a display that seemed more appropriate to a spaceship.
Nick caught her hand and slid it downward, but surprised her by guiding it to the jutting leather stick shift instead of his crotch.
“Wanna shift?” he invited her.
“Does a woodpecker shit splinters?” she replied.
“For our purposes, I’m going to assume that’s a yes. Shall we?”
As it turned out, they worked the powerful machine much like they had worked each other’s bodies—with a precision that seemed born more than learned.
Nick had opened the moon roof, allowing the wind to whip her drying hair into a frenzy as they navigated the frontage road circumscribing the bay at speeds neither would have dared in the daytime. Only when they neared the turn off that would send them up the winding road to Siren’s Cry did Moira downshift, hesitating as her heart decided to rent a condo in her throat.
From this spot, she traced the treacherous lines of Siren’s Cry as it jutted out above the ocean, calmer tonight than most in her recollection. The shadows of monoliths were barely visible beyond the thick gathering of trees. The Standing Stones.
Where they had seen their mother.
Where Tierra had discovered her crown and wand.
Where she would die so her sisters could live.
She damn near hit her head on the Ferrari’s roof when Nick Kingswood wrapped his hand around hers on the stick shift. The same current that had shocked them both so on their first meeting still leapt between their twined fingers.
“You take over,” Moira insisted. “I don’t think I can.” Nick nodded, understanding.
He guided Magnus expertly up the winding road, braking and downshifting in perfect time with every curve, much as he had reverenced her own body with a skilled and masterful hand.
Magnus slowed to a halt a ways down the road from the stand of trees beyond which the Standing Stones kept their silent vigil.
They sat together in the car, staring out at them in silence.
