In the Company of Witches (3 page)

As she watched him approach, Raina agreed, enough that she wondered if Mikhael also had some incubus blood. Though he was built much bigger than most incubus males, the sinuous muscle and broad shoulders, as well as the way he moved, the intensity of his eyes, flex of his hands, were all designed to make a woman think of sex. When he finished his stroll across her lawn, he might try to dismember the incubus behind her or do something equally nefarious to her, yet all she could think about were tangled sheets, those muscles slick under her palms, his body moving upon her.

Ruby had been pretty obsessed with him for a while, and she could see why.

She wouldn’t fall under the same spell as Ruby, though, because sex didn’t matter. It could be strong, passionate, overwhelming, but in the end, it was a moment balanced against the whole-rest-of-your-life kind of shit. So she set it aside and focused on what mattered—whether she was going to have to kick his ass. On her home turf, she was unbeatable. Most of the time.

“Dark Guardian.” She nodded. “Fancy seeing you all the way out here on a Sunday night. We’re closed. If you come back tomorrow night, perhaps we can meet your needs.”

Mikhael glanced at the incubus cowering behind her. “He took something of Lucifer’s. Lucifer wants it back.”

You dumb bastard.
Raina looked down at the creature, who was staring at Mikhael as if he held a death notice in hand. Except for his drop-dead sex appeal, Mikhael did look as emotionally invested as a bored collection agent who regularly de-limbed individuals.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We didn’t get around to names. You are?”

Shifting his terrified gaze up to her, the incubus blinked in surprise, probably at her pleasant tone. “R-Reginald.”

“A fake name will do right now.” She nodded. Spoke succinctly and slow. “Reginald, you’ve taken one of Lucifer’s toys. They’re very possessive of their toys in the Underworld. If you have his toy, you need to give it back, because it’s not nice to take other people’s toys. Do you have the toy?”

“N-No, I don’t have it.”

“I see.” She looked at Mikhael. “Seems we have a conundrum. He has sanctuary here. Until I can get to the bottom of this, maybe you can just go away. Give me your cell number and I’ll text you.”

Mikhael pivoted, made a gesture. That minuscule movement had the incubus whimpering, quailing into a smaller ball behind her. However, Mikhael’s head tilt said he wanted her to step toward him for a semiprivate word. There was command in that motion, which annoyed her, more because something in her responded to it than the fact he did it. She drew closer with an arched brow that said she recognized the command and was unimpressed by it. Her protections on the incubus remained firmly in place.

Because of her shorter stature, close proximity required that she tilt her head to stare into his face, which was an advantage she wouldn’t give him. Instead she looked past his shoulder, staring at the woods, waiting for what he had to say. He bent his head, the heat of his breath stirring against her ear.

“I will incinerate him where he lies, witch. I will also do the same to you, your house and everyone in it, before you have the chance to cast your next spell. Is he worth that to you?”

His low tone wasn’t for the incubus’s benefit, she was sure. His concentrated intensity was enough to command attention without him ever having to raise his voice. Ruby had said he had a prominent Russian accent. It wasn’t that pronounced now, suggesting it had been exaggerated for the role he’d played with her, a gunrunner, but it wasn’t false. It was still there, a faint hint that gave his speech a rhythmic cadence intriguing in the deep timbre. She shifted her gaze up to his, locked. “You can huff and puff all you want, big bad wolf. This house isn’t blowing down.”

“You think I’m bluffing?”

“No, I think you’re testing. If you’d intended to do such a thing, you’d have already done it. Regardless, I won’t be your doormat. If you want to slaughter us for your information, you go right ahead.”

His face was so close to hers, it brushed those tempting strands of hair along his forehead against her brow. Her protection allowed that simple penetration, but it was almost as ground-rocking as a face punch. His gaze dropped with interested speculation to her mouth. She suppressed the flutter in her throat, the need to swallow.

Something in the dark eyes flickered. “All right, Raina. What would you propose?”

“You know my name.” That was unexpected, but then, she knew his, didn’t she? They probably had the same source of information.

“Dark Guardians know everyone’s name.”

“How lovely. You never have that awkward moment at parties where you can’t put a name to a familiar face.”

He didn’t blink. “I can read your mind. That’s how I know.”

“You’re lying.” She stepped back, a deliberate insertion of space, not a retreat.

He flashed a dangerous smile that wasn’t a smile. It was a baring of teeth. “You’re calling me a liar?”

“If it rubs your fur the right way, yes. Perhaps even if it rubs it the wrong way. Some cats like that.”

His gaze swept over her, a gesture that felt like a full-body stroke. “I’m afraid I’m here to rub
your
fur the wrong way, because I am taking that thing that’s behind you.”

“Only over my dead body. Are you willing to push it that far?”

“Now who’s bluffing?” But he sighed. “Help me find what I need, and then I will be out of your hair, all those wonderful miles of it.” As his attention slid over it, she could visualize the two of them naked, his fingers buried in her hair, tugging her scalp as he pulled her to him for another taste of his demanding mouth.

Okay, he might not be an incubus, but his sensual compulsion worked on her, which didn’t ever happen. If this was a natural gift, she wanted to figure out how to bottle and sell it for a 50 percent mark up. She quelled her shiver of reaction. “Give him time to calm down; let me discuss his options with him. He’s not going anywhere. What he’s stolen, does it jeopardize anyone’s life tonight?”

“Unlikely. There are too many of us out there looking for signs of it.”

“Fine, then. You can go help them. If he doesn’t have it, you’re wasting your time being here anyway. I can question him, keep him secure, while you do that.”

“He took it, Raina. The question is why and for whom, and where it is now, because it’s not with him. You can talk to him, but only while I’m present.”

“Then there won’t be a lot of talking. There will be gibberish and pissing himself, because you scare him half to death.”

“Do you find mescary?” He raised a brow.

She snorted. “In your dreams.”

“Yes.” He gave her an appraising look. “You do not fear, but you respond well to certain…types of intimidation. Elevated pulse, increased breath. A lovely flush across your skin. Desire often reads like fear.”

“Oh, for the love of the gods, Mikhael, you know you have an effect on a woman’s body, the same way I have an effect on a man’s. It doesn’t mean anything more than adding jam to toast.”

His gaze lifted to hers. “You know my name.”

“Maybe
I
read minds. For real, no faking.”

“Ruby described me.”

“Yes, bad breath, warts and all.”

Goddess, she needed to stop goading him. Every time he got that dangerous glint in his eyes, things went to liquid in her knees and stomach. But now he moved his attention to the incubus.

“How do you know he’ll tell you the truth?” he asked.

“I don’t know if he will. But I will get the truth from him. That’s my particular gift. It’s what we do here.” A bordello was as much a confessional as a church. Most of her clients thought they checked their souls at her threshold. She knew differently.

Reginald kept his eyes down, fingers dug into the earth so his dirty knuckles were white. He wore only torn jeans, his slim, leanly muscled body scratched and bug bitten from his trek through the swamp.

“All right,” the Dark Guardian said. “You can try.”

“Wonderful.” She offered a sarcastic curtsy that made his eyes narrow. Yet when she knelt to touch Reginald’s arm, she let out the relieved sigh she’d been holding. She kept those protections locked down tight, though. She trusted only a couple people and, in the words of Nicolas Cage in
Con Air
,
“One of them is me. The other’s not you.”

“Follow me,” she said to the incubus. “Let’s talk, then we’ll get you a bath and some clean clothes.”

2

M
IKHAEL KNEW THE WITCH WANTED HIM GONE, BUT
that wasn’t going to happen. He did agree there was a slim possibility the incubus might be more forthcoming if he were less obtrusive. At least under
her
methods. So he hung back as she took the sex demon through the foyer, toward her main parlor. He sauntered along behind, taking in the polished oak floor, painted beadboard and floral wallpaper of the graceful plantation home. When she walked, she lit wall sconces with an absent wave of her hand. She preferred candlelight to electric, though it appeared the house supplied both.

Erotic artwork lined the hallway, a cornucopia of possibilities. Clients could simply point and say, “I want that position, that fetish, that…” He paused, tilted his head, but the angle change didn’t help. Whatever that was. And he considered himself fairly well trained in the erotic arts. He’d ask her later, before he gutted Reginald for the information she wouldn’t get. She probably wouldn’t want to answer his sex questions after he stained her Persian rugs with incubus excretions. Perhaps she could loan him a plastic tarp from her garden shed.

The large parlor was where the clients warmed up to their à la carte choices with drinks and the chance to view the male and female offerings. To human eyes, her stable comprised mesmerizing men and women in a variety of flavors. To the paranormal world, they were a demon-Fae crossbreed species, a walking death sentence when they coupled with a human. But Raina’s powers, the complicated enchantments woven over the house, permeating every room, kept that from happening. The witch, who was half succubus herself, had figured out how to let succubi and incubi feed without killing their meal. It was a remarkable accomplishment. One fraught with risk, to her and to those who came here, but she struck him as a woman most comfortable on the knife-edge she’d learned to walk.

When he’d seen her standing over the incubus, he’d expected her to be beautiful and mesmerizing. That went along with the whole succubus thing. She had rich dark hair, grown all the way to her hips in a tempting old-fashioned way, thick and curling. Her hips were generous, and those breasts were worth a nice, long look. Firm and large, not grotesquely out of proportion. The dark green velvet dress clung to her buttocks, enhancing their sway, the brush of her hair across them.

Her body was built for sex. She was quite aware of it on multiple levels—as a succubus, as a witch and a woman. But the way a woman looked didn’t enchant him the way it did most males. He could see the under layer, which distorted the surface. Every soul’s true nature was a mix of good and bad, so the physical appearance was an average of the compendium to him.

However, what he saw beneath Raina’s surface, behind those exotic green and gold eyes, was complex, unexpected. She embraced her female side fully, no need to put males down to increase her sense of power; in fact, he sensed a deep appreciation of males in her makeup, of their strengths and the roles they could play in women’s lives. But he also picked up an unusual sense of self-containment to her. A perfect sphere that could repel penetration or incursion. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t need a man as she wasn’t seeking one. A puzzle, because she carried a tremendous capacity for passion and love.

Intriguing, but not his main focus. He’d ponder the rest later, because he was a carnal male who enjoyed his pleasures, but right now, it was all business. He sensed that in her, too, that she didn’t mix business with other things. He appreciated it, even as he perversely wanted to mess with it.

She’d called his bluff about plundering her mind, though it wasn’t a complete bluff. He
could
read the surface of a mind, the way he could deduce the color, texture and weight of a flower with a look. Things like a name quivered in the mind’s foyer, just behind the skull’s fragile shell. To reach more private rooms, he had to dig deeper. A Dark Guardian didn’t do that unless he had cause, because a deeper excavation was like scooping out the inside of a melon.