Page 39 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
"Did the tattoo show up before or after the demon?"
"After," he answered in a monotone. His body tensed.
"They don't fight?"
"The angel doesn't speak." He turned away to focus on the coffee.
The waning daylight from the nearby window caught on one of the two medallions dangling from his neck. How had she not noticed the pendant had a picture of an angel?
Fascinating. The Christian god protected him.
"Coffee is almost ready." He glanced over his shoulder. "I know you witches have a thing for tea, but I’m not a fan of the stuff. Too easy to slip something extra into herbal crap."
"Caffeine of any variety is good. I’m not a snob about tea. Technically, I could slip something into coffee just as easily as tea." She compressed her lips to hold back a smile.
The strength of him captivated her. Energy flowed through his muscles down to his strong forearms, which had been wrapped around her last night. He made her feel safe, something she hadn’t experienced in…not since long before he’d been cursed. "Where are my pants?"
"Washed them. They’re in the dryer. They had blood all over them from you wiping your hands."
A man who did laundry? What sort of unicorn was this? "Thanks."
She tugged at the edge of the T-shirt that barely came to her upper thighs.
"You ready to accept my plan? We'll go see my brothers and deal with this curse once and for all?"
She squirmed and faked interest in a woven placemat on the counter.
"With powerful magic comes a high price that must be paid."Her father’s words had haunted her for years. That was about the only piece of magical wisdom he'd imparted. The cost to undo the curse required the "greatest sacrifice." At least, that’s what the Sanskrit on the back of the scroll read.
Greatest sacrifice.She assumed that was a euphemism for death. What greater sacrifice could there be? After she’d originally cast the lycans’ curse, she’d been depleted of magic for a year. Not all of it, but more than what the alteration to Shane’s curse cost her. What’d been left hadn’t been enough to do even small parlor tricks like change her appearance or cast a solid invisibility spell. She’d worked at various jobs over the years to make enough to survive and get her hair style and color changed when needed.
"Did you hear me?" he asked.
She hadn’t responded to his question. "I understand the curse is your priority."
He ran a hand through his hair. "It’s way more than that. We can’t live like this anymore. Either one of us. You can’t keep running. My brothers and I can't be leashed to the Crown any longer. We want lives…to find something meaningful beyond hunting immortal threats."
"You're so principled that you'll probably still chase immortal threats if the curse is gone."
"Perhaps. There have been too many cases where the threat didn't need to die, where it was a misunderstanding, but our old handler and the former queen didn't care. They feared what they didn't understand. I don't understand the new king's motivations yet. If we resist an order, the curse punishes us and tries to kill us. Roman almost died earlier this year from resisting."
"Reversing it won’t be simple." She looked straight ahead, realizing she barely came up to his nipples.Stop getting distracted. This is important to him. Scares the hell out of me, but we should talk about it.One small step forward and she could have one of the round pink disks in her mouth.
"Stop staring like you’d enjoy licking them."
"Are you a mind reader?" She moistened her lips and chanced a peek upward. "You’d like for me to lick way more than your nipples, wouldn’t you?"
"You’re distracting me." With a growl he lifted her and put her in one of the bar height chairs that pushed up to the counter. Not quite on an even level, but he wedged himself between her legs.
"I didn’t know you could be so easily sidetracked," she said. Her voice had gone husky as she let her gaze drop back to his chest and down his body.
"Only you do this to me." He leaned close and said hoarsely, "This, whatever it is that we agree can’t happen between us, is driving me out of my mind. It was supposed to end with the mirror trick."
"Tough to erase something I didn’t intentionally set in motion. There's no spell." She reached out tentatively and traced the muscles along his strong shoulders. They twitched and tensed under her touch. "Your skin is so warm. I’ve never seen someone react like you do from just a fingertip touch."
"Stop touching me."
"I should, but I’m a witch. I can’t resist this kind of temptation, even though I know this is about to become my worst decision ever. Everything about you is addictive. I want more."
