Page 64 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

TWENTY-FOUR

He’d missed my eye, but the pain from the slashes was unbearable. My mother had said that the wards would hurt as they unraveled, but they didn’t hurt as much as Duncan’s betrayal. He’d also been in pain, I told myself. He knew that if I saw his face there would be no chance of his being freed from the enchantment, but what kind of monster was he?

The thought made the slashes across my face throb and the barbed coils tighten around my heart. I had to get inside and tend to my wounds…find a healing spell…or call Diana. I tried to get to my feet, but slipped on the porch’s wet floorboards and fell painfully to my knees, my limbs flailing, weak and helpless. Instead of gaining power from cutting the wards, I’d crippled myself. What if they had become so intertwined with who I was that I couldn’t live without them? What if my chains had become the strongest part of me?

Clinging to the porch rail, I struggled to my feet, took a tentative step toward the door, and fell flat on my face.

I turned my damaged cheek away from the floorboards. The rain was still blowing onto the porch, soaking my face.All I could think of was how Duncan had struck me and left me. My tears mingled with the rain, stinging the cuts on my face…and then I felt a hand on my back and one on my face.

Then strong warm hands moved down my back, my legs, my arms, their touch gentle but firm, feeling, I thought, for broken bones.

I’m broken inside, I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t. Razor wire gripped my throat. Besides, I liked how these hands felt. They were turning me over now, cradling my face, stroking wet hair away from the gashes. A face came blurrily into focus. Not Duncan’s.

“Bill?” I managed in a hoarse croak.

He looked up, startled, his brown eyes flaring like hot coals.

“Who did this?” he growled. Anger transformed him from an unassuming handyman to something quite different. For a moment I was frightened, but then he cupped his hand around my face and the fear slipped away—but not his anger. “Was it that blond man?”

“’s complicated,” I managed.

“No, it’s not,” Bill muttered, sliding his hands under me and then scooping me up into his arms. “It’s really very simple. No one should hurt you. No one. Not ever.” He kept up this monologue—more than he’d said in the two days I’d known him—as he carried me inside and upstairs to my bedroom. I rested my head on his chest and felt his words as a reassuring rumble that made the barbed-wire coils inside me loosen their grip. When he laid me down on my bed, Bill’s monologue had turned into a list of rather colorful things he was going to do to Duncan Laird. I must have briefly lost consciousness because when I next came to, Bill was gently swabbing my face with a washcloth and singing. It was thesong I’d heard him singing once before. It had sounded familiar then, but the words weren’t in English.

“That’s pretty,” I whispered. “What is it?”

“Just an old song my mother used to sing to me…Hey, you’re shivering. Are you cold?” he asked, drawing a blanket up over me. “I should have taken off your wet clothes…”

“Too much a gentleman, eh?” I quipped through chattering teeth.

“Not anymore,” he said, unbuttoning my damp dress. “I promise not to look—” His voice froze, his eyes widening as he stared at my chest.

“Hey! That’slooking!”

“I’m an idiot,” he said, stripping off my dress. “There’s poison spreading through your body.”

I looked down and saw jagged red lines—like claw marks—spreading across my skin. The red made them look like burns, but they felt like ice daggers ripping open my chest.

“So…cold…” I bit out between shudders.

Bill gave me a frantic look and then started to chafe my skin with his hands. He started with my legs, working his hands up my calves, then my thighs. He did my arms next. Wherever he touched my skin warmed, and the red marks faded. It felt so good I forgot to be embarrassed that he was rubbing his hands all over my naked body—or to wonder how he knew what to do—but when he came to my chest he looked up at me and I saw that he hadn’t forgotten.

“I have to keep your circulation going to get rid of the poison…especially around your heart.”

“It’s okay,” I said, taking his hand and placing it over my left breast. The blood rose to his face and his eyes widened and seemed to burn into mine, then he bent his head and carefully, methodically stroked my breasts and my throat. The red marks faded under his hands and warmth poured into mybody. When he reached my stomach, the warmth pooled in my navel and cascaded down my legs like a waterfall. I’d felt like this before but at the moment I couldn’t remember when. Nothing seemed to exist but Bill’s hands touching me…caressing me…

Then his touch changed: his hands moved slower, lingered, and trembled.Hewas trembling, I saw when I looked at him, shaking as if he’d absorbed the poison into him. His eyes caught mine and I felt something click. The wards that had been loosened inside me began to melt. When he met my eyes, he took his hands off me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” he began. Bill was always apologizing to me, I realized. And yet he had been unfailingly kind and gentle to me since we’d met—only two days ago, a little voice reminded me. But I shushed that voice. Looking into his eyes, I felt I’d known him forever. His hands on me were more right than anything I had experienced since…well, sinceforever. I wanted them on me again.Right now.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I murmured as I pulled his head down to mine and found his lips. He moaned as he kissed me, something between a growl and a purr, a deep sound that I felt reverberating in his chest as I slid my hands beneath his shirt. There was tension in his body, as if he was holding himself very tight, afraid he might hurt me. I pressed against him and forced his mouth open with my tongue, wanting to break through.

There are some things better than safe, my mother had said.

He gasped and pulled back, looking into my eyes, a question in his, and then, as if that question had been answered, he slid one arm under my hips, sliding between my legs. I felt him hard, straining against his jeans, pressed against my belly. I struggled with buttons while he stripped off that damnedflannel shirt. Beneath it his chest was smooth, his skin golden. I ran my hand over those smooth rippling muscles and heard him gasp as my hand brushed against his erection.

“Kay-lex!”My name came out as a growl—when had he learned to say it right? I thought—and then he was inside me and I didn’t think at all.

I woke up the next morning reaching for Bill and found myself alone. A terrible emptiness swept over me, then longing, followed by embarrassment—I slept with a man I barely knew!—and the fear that it had all been a dream. But then I heard noises from downstairs, a clanking of pans that suggested Bill hadn’t fled. Relief flooded me as I reached for a robe and started downstairs…but stopped in my bedroom doorway. From here I saw the open door to Liam’s study…Liam’semptystudy. That’s where my last impetuous affair had gotten me, pining for a man who wasn’t even entirely human.

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