Shattered Souls (25 page)

They belonged together. She walked in both worlds now. He’d be her anchor so she never drifted too far from her true calling or her life in the real world. Her fate might have been sealed by her birth into her magical family, but his had been sealed the moment he’d fallen in love with Cait O’Connell.

Whether she liked it or not, she wasn’t shaking him loose ever again.

Chapter Nineteen

Cait held the key in her hand, the one that didn’t open any true lock but that represented Morin’s willingness for her to return. Her other hand tingled as she wrapped it around the brass knob and pushed inside.

The gaslights were dimmed. Shadows lurked among the book racks in the back of the shop. Without calling out, she knew where she would find him and that he wasn’t sleeping.

A wave of warmth washed over her skin. An unwelcome tease, because she had no intention of letting him lure her into anything more than what she needed—an infusion of power.

Already she feared how that infusion would happen. Sex magic provided the strongest binding agent, but she knew inside herself that betraying Sam would compromise not only their relationship but the magic she needed to become impervious to the demon. No room existed for self-doubt or regrets. When she left here, she needed to be strong, not divided in her loyalties or confidence.

Taking a candle from one of the long wooden tables, she scraped a match and lit it, waiting until the flame flickered and then strengthened, casting a golden glow that pushed away the shadows. Cait walked past the shelves to the back of the room, to the iron spiral staircase that led to Morin’s chambers above.

With each step she remembered the one and only time she’d made this journey. The night she’d thrown herself at him, and he’d taken her virginity.

Despite his hesitation when she’d first arrived, he’d been patient with her, loving in his actions. Introducing her to passion with so much skill that she’d been reluctant to take another lover because she’d known she’d be disappointed.

Years later, Sam had been the first man she’d met who’d tempted her to try. Not that he’d gone after her. First, they’d become partners and found they worked well together. But the enforced day-to-day intimacy had taken a toll on their libidos. They’d snapped and snarled, both knowing instinctively they needed to put up walls to keep the growing passion from erupting and possibly destroying a good partnership.

When they’d finally given in to the tension, the intensity of that first joining had shocked them both. There had been no going back, even though the secrets she’d kept had weighed on her conscience.

At the top of the staircase, she blew out the candle. No artificial light was needed. A large, convex skylight, framed in iron, magnified the light from the full moon beaming through the window. The bedroom was bathed in silver light.

“I’ve been thinking about the last time you were here.” Morin’s voice came from the bed; just as before, he sat up, rich brocade covers draping his hips.

Déjà vu hit. She didn’t dare look down at the juncture of his thighs. Instead, she walked around the edges of the large room, a finger touching the top of his large, carved dresser, then the basin with its urn and bowl. She dipped her fingers into the water. Chilled. Fresh. A mystery she hadn’t known was a mystery. How did he do that? “I remember,” she murmured, moving along, touching the glass in the French doors that opened into the dark alley. “You were patient.” She tried the handle, but it was locked.
From the outside?

Covers stirred. “We were good together,” he said in his rich, silky tones.

Her head turned. She met his secretive gaze with a hard one of her own. “But you didn’t love me.”

His mouth curved into a tight smile. “I couldn’t, though I wanted to.”

“My mother understood that.” She swallowed against a dry throat. “Knew you would hurt me in the long run.”

“Which is no doubt why she tried to cast that damnable spell. You blamed me.”

Cait sighed. Her shoulders fell. “I blamed myself just as much.” She trailed her fingers along a table, another piled high with books. What was it with the books? What did he seek? “You didn’t come to her funeral,” she said, her tone flat.

His eyes glittered in the darkness.

She drew a deep breath that rattled in her chest. “Another sin I laid at your doorstep. But I understand now, Morin.” She stopped at the foot of his bed and set her hands on the footboard, wanting something to hold. “You didn’t come because you couldn’t.”

Morin glanced away, then slid both legs over the side of the bed and rose. He wore silk drawstring pants, much to her relief. “What else do you understand, my love?” he asked, lifting a hand to skim the backs of his fingers down one cheek.

At his touch, she drew back. “That this shop, where time stands still, has kept you from aging. What I don’t know is whether this was your choice, your spell, or whether you are trapped. You’re Worthen’s mage, aren’t you? It was your woman, your love, he killed.”

Morin stood, his beautiful face still, but his dark, haunted eyes gazing at her, unfocused. “I lusted for a woman who could never be mine,” he said, his voice hollow. “I made a deal, suffered watching the consequences while Worthen and his beast destroyed his family.”

“How could you?”

He blinked, and his features tightened into a devastating mask. “I loved her, Caitlyn. She never allowed even a moment’s thought for what our future together might be because I wasn’t born into her circle. She flirted, teased until I couldn’t sleep. I played with spells to create little delights. Hummingbirds and butterflies would light on her hands. Moonlight glittered on her skin. And yet, she never once allowed me so much as a kiss.” His lips curved into a ravaged smile. “I grew bitter. When Worthen approached me, asking me to help him call his demon, and said that I could have her, that she would be my reward, I was desperate enough to say yes.”

“Why not just cast a love spell?” Her heart pounded. “Why not force that kiss you wanted so badly, like I did to you?”

“I wanted Melanie to love me for myself, but she was a vapid, shallow woman, willing to trade a man who would truly love her for one who would give her wealth.” He raised a closed fist. His face twisted with hate. “I wanted revenge! To own her and for her to know she had no choice in the matter. The demon would serve her to me to do as I pleased, and I imagined every way I would humiliate her.”

At his sides, his hands remained curled. “But the night he was to bring her to me, he entered her bedroom and murdered her, taking her essence. When I heard, I retreated to this shop. Her father came to my door with his henchmen, torches lit, ready to burn my store and me to the ground. I was ready to die. However, they demanded I stop the demon first. They had tried, but he was impervious to their weapons and to fire.

“I used magic to repel his invasion so that when he touched me, he wouldn’t cross. We laid a trap, caged him. I welded the strap around his chin and wrapped him in linens soaked in dragon tree oil. He awoke immobile, and we carried him to the bunker, where we buried him. When we were done, and the bunker was encased in brick, they stood around me. Melanie’s father was ready to set me afire, but they wanted my shop destroyed as well, so they marched me back. Once inside…I waited.”

Morin swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple gliding down and then up. His eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “I saw them through the window, pushing carts of hay against the storefront and lighting it on fire. And I rebelled.” His smile was thin. “I wasn’t nearly so brave as I should have been. I cast the spell to protect the shop, to make it and me disappear.”

“Have you never tried to undo it?”

“I have. But I believe I was infected with the darkness that surrounded Worthen. That whatever power he still possessed, although he lay smothering in the dark, increased my own powers temporarily. I’m not strong enough now to free myself.”

A pang of sympathy tightened in her chest. “Have you sought help?”

“Countless times. From others.”

“My mother?”

His head dipped. “Yes.”

“Are you hoping that I will help you?”

His dark eyes glittered. “If you fight him and win…”

Cait turned away, her stomach suddenly queasy. Her seduction had been
his
all along. He’d played with her, schooled her, just so that he would find an escape from his self-made prison. Her mother had known this, had tried to stop him by ending their relationship. Not because she’d been jealous, but because she’d feared for her daughter’s fate.

“I’m such an idiot,” she whispered, regret heavy in her words.

His hands cupped her shoulders. “No, don’t think for a moment that I don’t care. I do.”

She shook off his hands and turned to face him. “You’re a selfish man, Morin Montague. You led my mother on. Me as well. You would send me to trap a demon, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because you think I’ll take something from him. That he might infect me with some of his power. Why would you want that for me?”

Morin raked a hand through his long hair, his face screwing up in despair. “Cait, I am here. Always here. Do you have any idea what waiting is like? To know time marches on outside this place, but I can do nothing? Time doesn’t move until someone enters and resets it. When you leave tonight, it will stay dark until someone else comes. Sometimes, the waiting makes me mad.”

Despite the fact he’d brought this curse upon himself, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Cait imagined Morin here, waiting for visitors, but she knew instinctively that he’d only had Celeste in all the years since she’d last seen him. No wonder he’d been so pleased when she’d shown up in his shop again.

“I want another chance, Cait. A chance to do some good.”

“Again, for selfish motives,” she snarled, “to save your own soul.”

“But you don’t believe in souls,” he said, his voice dropping again into a seductive rumble.

Cait huffed. “I believe the dead are around us. I see them.”

His brow rose like a dark wing. “And you don’t believe in souls? That there’s a higher power moving us around like chess pieces?”

“Do I believe I’m serving some higher purpose?” She shook her head. “I’m not…spiritual. I don’t think about souls or Powers That Be. I live in the here and now. And all I want is what you can give me to defeat Worthen’s demon.” Her body stiffened. “I don’t give a fuck about you, Morin. Maybe you belong in here, away from the world, because all you do is hurt the women around you.”

His head jerked back as though she’d struck him.

And though tempted to take the words back, he’d needed to hear them as much as she’d needed to say them.

He exhaled slowly, his mouth straightening into a thin, grim line. “I will help you with what you need,” he said flatly. “And ask no more. I want no harm to come to you. Not by him. Not by me. You’re right. I’ve done enough.”

Cait blinked away tears she hadn’t realized welled in her eyes. She sniffed and straightened her shoulders. “Tell me what to do.”

A glimmer of a wry smile inched up the corners of his mouth. “Remove your clothes.”

Heat flashed over her skin, and she shook her head. “I won’t betray Sam.”

“Nothing of a sexual nature will happen between us, darling Cait, but you must draw the moon into your skin. Your
naked
skin. And I must touch you, freely. What you choose to tell your Sam is entirely your business. I won’t ever speak of it.”

He’d never speak of it to Sam because she’d never return. But she kept from making that declaration. He’d kept secrets. So could she.

Angry with herself, with him, she peeled away her jacket, her soft cotton shirt, her boots and blue jeans, dropping the items on a nearby chair. When she stood nude, she ignored his glance, which raked her frame, ignored the stiff cock tenting his pajama bottoms. While they wouldn’t consummate this spell, she knew intuitively that they would cross a line. That she had to surrender her arousal and accept his in return to make the spell strong. How she would muster feelings that felt as cold as ash in light of her revulsion for everything he’d done, she didn’t know.

He walked toward the center of the room, standing directly beneath the skylight. Moonlight painted his hair a blue-black, his skin silver. Every muscle of his shoulders and belly was outlined in light and shadow. He was beautiful, like some dark angel…but not for her.

With his dark eyes gleaming, he cleared his face of the tension from everything they’d said. Drew on the calm, just as he’d taught her to do. “You mustn’t think of Sam. Not now. I know he’s part of you. That you loved each other before you came here. I smell him on you, but I have to forget about him as well. We have to make this about us. About what we once shared. Come.” He lifted his hand, palm up, and curled his fingers to summon her.

Her feet dragged on the wooden floor, but she went, her hesitation all show. She reached for his hand and felt a slight tremble in his fingertips when she slid her palm atop his.

Glancing up, she caught a flicker of regret chasing across his face before he closed his eyes for a moment and cleared his expression. And although the things he’d told her repelled her, reinforced why she should never love him, the younger Cait, the one so enamored she’d flung herself at him, remembered.

Morin opened his eyes and reached to tip up her chin. His head bent. Warmth spread through her even before his lips touched hers. But the kiss didn’t invade. It remained chaste, innocent. The younger Cait inside her blossomed. Her chest filled with old yearnings—for connection, approval…love. Yes, she could remember how the emotions had felt. Was he summoning these emotions from her? Had they been inside her all along?

When he lifted his head, he stared down into her face. He touched her hair, threading his fingers through it, then combed downward to place it behind her shoulders. Then he touched her shoulders, fingers cupping the corners, and turned her to face away. She let her head fall back against his shoulder, drank in the warmth he sent, and the light from the bright full moon filled her.