It curled her toes as an almost electric pulse of pleasure shivered up her spine. She was so aroused it hurt, so wet she could hear him fucking her as sharply as she felt it.
And still, he held her gaze.
“One more time,” he commanded, each word punctuated by a rough advance. “Come for me. On me.”
She could almost taste his hunger, intent and carnal, a longing for nothing else so much as her pleasure. She
laughed
, a shaky sound that trembled just as much as the rest of her. “If I come, you’ll stop. You can’t stop—ever—”
“I’ll start again,” he promised. “Every damn time.”
No reason to hold back, and no way she could. Her defenses stripped, she wrapped herself around him, clung to the only thing left in her world as it spun down to the room, the bed. Him. A perfect, frozen moment of bliss, something made for the two of them.
He came when she did, driving deep and catching her mouth, smothering their moans as his body crashed into hers. He shuddered above her, rode her pleasure until they both fell still.
He was heavy, bearing her to the bed until it was difficult to breathe. Just in case he thought about moving, Anna held on to him, her face against his neck.
“Hey.” He slipped a hand under her head, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She heard the truth in the words, felt it in her gut, but it couldn’t hold her panic at bay. “I know.”
Patrick propped himself up and lifted a hand to her face. His thumb brushed her cheek, wiping away a tear she hadn’t realized was there. “But you don’t believe, not yet, and that’s okay.”
Mortified, she closed her eyes. “It’s not— It isn’t you I don’t trust. I swear.”
“Hey. Look at me.”
She did. His eyes had gone back to their normal color, that achingly familiar blue, the sparks either quenched or burned away. “What?”
“I said it’s okay.” He brushed his thumb over her cheek again. “I know.”
Maybe he did. And maybe it really would be okay, because he truly understood how petrifying it was to need someone more than you needed to protect yourself. More than you needed to survive.
Chapter Fourteen
When Michelle announced the spell was ready, Patrick had braced himself for another visit to her magic-heavy workroom. Instead she led him and Anna outside, past the guest house and around the barn, to where Luciano and Andrew were stacking hay bales at one end of a fenced-off riding circle.
His sword was shoved point first into a bale of hay near the gate, like it was waiting for the one true king’s cowboy cousin. Patrick’s hands itched to wrap around the hilt, but he kept his feet planted as Michelle offered him a plain silver kitchen knife. “The first part is simple. Blood the charm, blood the sword. The magic is already there, the blood will forge the connection.”
Patrick took the knife and rested the blade against his palm. “What’s the second part?”
Michelle’s sudden smile held a feral edge. “You practice using it.”
Anna tilted her head. “You up for a little sparring, McNamara?”
The last thing he was up for was aiming his out-of-control magic anywhere near her, but his panic would only lead to hers. So he conjured his best leer. “You want me to swing my magic sword at you?”
“Kinky.” She gravitated toward an ax leaning against a section of the fence. It was the same one Michelle had shown him, the one she’d said was meant for warriors. Anna lifted it with lazy comfort and faced him.
Christ, she was hot.
“Patrick,” Michelle broke in, her voice crisp and amused. “Blood the weapon. I promise, I’ll have you take your magic out on something inanimate before you face Anna.”
Either his tension was obvious, or his feelings were. He dragged the blade across his skin and ignored the sting as blood welled up.
It always came down to blood in the end.
Two steps took him within reach of the sword. He gripped the charm first, smearing blood over the wooden disc. Something shivered up his spine, a prickle of tangible anticipation, and beneath it—
The magic in your blood is tainted. Don’t do this. Don’t give it power.
“You’ve never hurt me,” Anna said softly. “You never would.”
“I wouldn’t,” he agreed just as quietly. “Can’t say the same about what’s inside me, can we?”
She blinked—and then scowled. “I can. You don’t think it’s the same thing as your father, do you? Someone you care about, or even an innocent bystander? They’re not
him
. And anyone who did what he did—” She bit off the words.
Patrick forced in a steadying breath, letting the chill air burn his lungs and clear his head. She was right, but that paled next to the knowledge that she believed in him. This was his only hope at control, at survival.
Bracing himself, Patrick closed his hand around the leather-wrapped hilt.
The world exploded.
Every sense went haywire at once. The gentle breeze roared past his ears with the enraged shriek of a hurricane. He could taste Anna in the air, and he dragged her intoxicating scent deeper as a defense against all things that made a horse ranch a shitty fucking place for someone with a preternatural sense of smell.
“You’re all right.” Anna’s soft voice, but it smashed into his head so painfully his skull must have fractured into a thousand pieces. Any brains he had would be liquefied soon anyway, because magic, pure fucking
power
was racing through his veins. It burned so hot he could follow the path, up his legs, crashing into his mind, burning back through his chest and down his arms—
His palms tingled.
The world blurred.
The bale of hay burst into furious blue flames that incinerated the stalks of wheat and left him unharmed, even as they climbed hungrily toward the sky.
Those same flames licked over Anna’s skin, climbing up her bare arms as she reached for him. He could feel their heat as they singed the grass, and one look at the wary distance Michelle had put between them told him she could feel it too. But Anna’s hand closed over his wrist, and he shuddered at the sensation, as if her fingertips had stroked him everywhere. “Be careful.”
She swallowed hard, but held on. “I told you—you wouldn’t hurt me.”
The tip of the sword was buried in the scrubby dirt now. He stared at it, his mind still reeling, and said the only thing he could think of. “If I don’t hold this thing in the air above my head, Kat’s going to murder me in Ben’s memory, isn’t she?”
“Probably.” Anna stepped back. A red haze shrouded her movements, clear and deep, with white flashes bursting through the color. Blinking dispersed it, and another careful breath helped clear the fuzzy edges of his vision.
It didn’t stop the sword from burning. Patrick raised the tip until the blade was parallel to the ground and watched, fascinated, as the flames danced along the length with no respect for the wind or the natural properties of fire.
He glanced at Michelle. “How do I make this stop?”
She stared back at him and answered seriously. “You could try asking it.”
Patrick felt his eyebrows drawing together and smoothed his expression before he could get caught glaring at the Seer. Nothing in her expression said she was teasing him, but there was a glint in her dark eyes that he’d have called mischief if he’d seen it in Nick’s.
He leaned closer to Anna. “Is she making fun of me?”
“Maybe a little,” she admitted.
Great. The most powerful spell caster in North America was punking him.
It might be funny to her, but all of Patrick’s hopes, his entire fucking future was tied up in those writhing flames. He tilted the sword higher and stared at the glowing blade as he whispered a prayer to any god or gods who might be listening.
Make this work. Make me whole.
He opened his mouth to speak, and the fire snuffed out.
Michelle’s delighted laughter snapped his head around. “Oh, this is good,” she said, and for the first time she looked almost like her twin sister—bright-eyed and excited. “This is even better than I expected. You must have tremendous willpower.”
“I could have told you that.” Anna lifted the ax again. “Let’s go.”
“Not so fast.” Andrew laid a hand on her shoulder. He had a sword of his own, albeit one that didn’t vibrate with magic. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.”
Andrew couldn’t have as much training with a sword as he did—it wasn’t exactly a skill set they taught in architect school—but Patrick had seen the bastard move. Shifter speed and strength could make up the difference awful fast.
Maybe his magic sword was supposed to change that. “All right, but someone better tell Kat her boyfriend’s about to get into a sword fight. I’m not listening to her whine if she misses it.”
Michelle pulled open the gate and gestured to the fenced enclosure. “She’ll have plenty of opportunities. You need practice.”
“So do I.” Andrew swung his arm in a lazy arc that had steel flashing in the sunlight. “I picked this up because of you, you know.”
Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? How’d that happen?”
The man’s expression sobered. “Visited Ben once. He had a sword in his living room, told me it belonged to his brother, the badass bounty hunter. So I figured if there were guys with blades out there, it couldn’t hurt to know my way around one.”
It should have been a punch to the gut, but he could imagine Ben’s face, the affected exasperation that barely covered his pride. Ben had always urged him to slow down, take it easy, but he’d never once told Patrick that what he was doing was wrong. The look in his brother’s eyes had been his twisted version of a mirror—as long as he saw a badass hero reflected back at him, it meant he wasn’t a monster.
He stole a quick glance at Anna as he paced to the center of the ring, and found her watching him intently. She’d never be a mirror, not unless it was the funhouse kind, where everything he did was gold and everything she felt was shit. A recipe for a perfect fucking storm of good intentions and bad ideas.
He still wanted her.
His skin prickled, electricity rippling up from the hilt in his hand, and he barely turned in time to block Andrew’s first swing—a blow aimed directly at his head.
Steel rang against steel, and Patrick tightened his grip and broke away to regroup. “Have you practiced with a lot of non-shifters? Because I’m not as fast as you.”
Anymore. Damn it.
“Does that matter?”
Only if I want to survive.
Patrick gave his new sword a few experimental swings to test its balance, distracted anew by how damn right the thing felt in his hands. It was back to looking like nothing more than plain, polished steel, but
he
felt different. Loose and easy in a way he hadn’t felt in years.
Whatever spell Michelle had cast, it hadn’t made him whole. It had made him free.
Andrew was still watching him, the question hanging in the air, so Patrick smiled. “I guess we’ll find out,” he said, before swinging for Andrew’s chest.
Andrew barely blocked the attack, tipping the blade away from his skin with the edge of his sword. “Not bad,” he murmured, though the words seemed slow, somehow. Slurred.
His pulse beating strong and steady in his ears, Patrick twisted and came in from the other side in a swing that felt like it took forever. Andrew should have been able to parry it easily.
Instead, it sliced across the man’s arm, drawing a thin line of blood.
Swearing, Patrick pulled the blow before it could cut more deeply and danced back two steps. Andrew turned his head in slow motion, still struggling to react, and he wasn’t the only one. Beyond him, Patrick could see Luciano’s hand drifting up to shade his eyes, and Kat balanced precariously as she swung a leg over the fence.
The whole fucking world was crawling by, and it would have been the coolest thing he’d ever seen if he knew how to stop it.
As if the thought had prompted it, the world snapped back around him with an audible
click
, just in time for Andrew to drop his sword.
“Ow, shit.” He pressed a hand to the wound, and blood welled between his fingers as he stared at Patrick. “I barely saw you move.”
“Everything was slowed down but me.” Patrick tilted his head. “Is that how shifters see the world? Like time is stopped?”
“Something like that.” Andrew laughed suddenly. “And you were worried.”
His own smile felt cathartic. “Maybe a little. Michelle could have told me that would happen.”
“No, I couldn’t have,” Michelle called from the fence. “All I did was give you a way to channel your power. Anything you make happen, that’s coming from inside of you.”
After all the time he’d spent envying shapeshifters and their speed, it made a crazy sort of sense. “I guess the trick is getting used to it.” He lifted the sword with a questioning look at Andrew. “Still willing to practice?”
The man raised his hand. Blood marred his skin, but the cut had already healed. He grinned, retrieved his sword and held both arms out at his sides. “Bring it.”
When she didn’t know what else to do, she cleaned. Some people might tackle laundry or the bathroom floor, maybe rearrange their closet.