Deception (21 page)

“Stop,” he ordered, appearing beside her.

She appeared as well, unable to move as she took in his singed hair and inflamed flesh – partially healed burns glistening in the twilight. Damn, she’d done a number on him, and it made her feel good and wicked all at once. The bastard deserved to burn, but she hated being the one to do it.

He leaned closer, and she cringed.

“Look at me,” he whispered. “Look into my eyes. It shouldn't be hard. They're your two favorite colors.”

She looked, but she didn't like what she found. Yes, they were green and blue, but she hated them.

“Keep looking,” he demanded, “and listen to me. I can take care of you better than anyone else. I can give you things they can't, and provide you with a safe life, which is something you’ll never have outside of our union. You’re more valuable than you can possibly comprehend, and that makes you a marked witch. You’ll never make it without me, Layla. You have too much going for you, and too many people who want it for themselves, people who could wipe out every magician in Oregon if they wanted to. Now, I could have left you to your fate. I could have safely settled down in a remote location with dozens of witches foaming at the mouth to kiss my feet and lick my balls, and I could have lived like that forever without a care in the world. But I didn’t. I risked everything – my freedom, my pride, my life and my soul – to save you. And by saving you, I’m saving your family, because they’ll never make it with you around. You are a liability nobody wants unless it’s for all the wrong reasons. But I’m different from them. I can relate to you like no one else, and I can keep you safe from dangers they know nothing about.” He paused, his slanted eyebrows betraying a hint of vulnerability as he searched the air around her. “Are you getting it?” he implored. “Do you see how much I’ve sacrificed to help you, how much effort I've put into saving you? Surely that proves I care, that I want a good life for you, and that I’ve loved you longer than Quin has known you.”

He was a maniac. This wizard looking at her was broken and didn't work right. He had no idea what love was or how to go about getting it. “No,” she shouted, surprised by the strength in her voice. “Your wicked actions have shown me how much you love yourself while proving you don't have the ability to love anything else. You're all backward. This isn't love. It's madness and selfishness. Your misguided behavior has been sad, hurtful and disastrous on so many levels. You've ruined people's lives and you've done it all for nothing. Not even you will like this fairy tale's ending, because I'll die before I accept anything you have to offer. You've wreaked havoc on everyone for no reason.”

His face reddened as he breathed through his nose. “I don't understand you.”

“I'm sure you don't, because you can't understand anything other than your own greedy desires. People don't always get what they want, Finley. Nobody gets it all. Life isn't fair. That's just the way it is. What makes you think you’re the exception? And don't say power, because power isn't everything. It's not your ticket into other people's cookie jars.”

“I have no cookie jar. It was stolen from me.”

“But you still have your life, and you're wasting it.”

“No, I'm rebuilding it. Someone else tore it down. Now I'm piecing it back together, bigger and better. And even though there are thousands of witches who’d kill to share this life with me, I’m giving it to you, because without me, you have no life.”

“You’re an arrogant ass, you know? Not all women are power-hungry ball-lickers. And Agro wouldn’t be after me if it weren’t for you. My life was finally turning around and you ruined it.”

“If you think Agro’s your biggest problem, you’re not listening.”

“Oh, I know. I’m staring my biggest problem right in the eye. You haven’t saved shit. You’re destroying the most beautiful thing I’ve had in over three years. If this is what my life amounts to now, Agro can have it.”

His jaw flexed as his brow furrowed. “You’d rather hand your life to Agro than me?”

“I’d rather die than touch either of you.”

“Why?”

“Let me count the ways,” she ranted. “You’re hateful, egotistical, oh, and you kidnapped me so you could tie me up and torture me. Not exactly a dream list, Finley, and if you can’t see that for yourself, you’re demented beyond repair.”

She jolted as he jumped to his feet and shouted. “Stop!”

“You asked why,” she returned, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

“I'm not crazy, Layla. Things are very clear for me. This isn't insanity. It's determination and preservation. It isn't selfishness either. It's claiming what's rightfully mine while giving you the same. You and I are much alike, but the difference is – I know our worth and the dangers we face, while you don’t know shit. Not about yourself, the enemy, or the world. You have no idea what you’re up against, and worse than that, you have no idea what kind of life you deserve or how to go about getting it. Well that's fine, because I'm getting it for both of us.”

“What happened to you, Finley? How did you get like this? You have a whacked out view of morality; a distorted definition of love; there’s a chip on your shoulder that’s almost as big as your huge head; and your sense of entitlement is infuriating. You act like you’re owed something by everyone you meet, so tell me – why on earth should you be so damn privileged?”

“My woes are the same as yours, Layla. I've just woken up to mine while you're still turning a blind eye to yours.”

“So your parents died? That's what all this is about?”

“That's not all you and I have suffered through, not even close. And of course my parents are dead. When you’re born with powers like ours, you don’t get to sail through life with a cozy family.”

“I did,” Layla corrected. “Until you came along.”

“Bullshit. You lived a boring ass life with one woman who wasn’t strong enough to live through her fifties and sentenced you to three years of mind-altering isolation. But you’re right, you sailed much smoother than I. While you hid in your shell, I got to take your place in hell. And trust me, I didn’t have my parents there. I was a toddler when they died.”

“Who killed them?” Layla pressed, trying to decipher his ambiguous explanations. “Was it Agro? Because if that's the case, you're even more twisted than I thought.”

He’d been running healing hands over his arms; now he stopped and coldly stared at her. “Agro and his mutts would cower in fear before the people who stole breath from my parents, but they’ll never get the chance, because I killed the bastards three years ago. Eventually, once you've accepted me and we've improved your powers, Agro will pay for your parents' deaths. I'll make sure you get your revenge, and let me tell you…” He paused, breathing deep as his eyes rolled back. “…it's a sweet sensation.”

Layla’s stomach churned as acid licked her throat. He talked of murder as if it were a fantastic orgasm, like killing someone was equal to running across the finish line in a tough race. He was proud and thrilled about it.

She swallowed her gag and shook her pounding head. “I'm not as hell bent on revenge as you are, Finley. You claim I lack rationality, but it's your reasoning that's so deluded. I may have a broken heart, but yours is black.”

His magic gripped her shoulders, and she yelped as the mystical force jerked her into a sitting position.

“My heart is not black,” he scolded. “It's broken, just like yours. We'll mend them together.”

“My heart was mending fine until you came along.”

“Damn it, Layla. Why are you fighting this so hard? All that lies out there is danger, heartbreak and death, but I’m offering you the world, a world without pain where we make the rules, a world where we can cultivate the life that was stolen from us. You didn’t deserve your fate, your parents’ death, the fact that you spent twenty-one years unaware of who you are and what you can do. And I didn’t deserve my fate, a life harder than you can possibly imagine, a life you’ll end up living if you don’t accept my help. If anyone in this world is deserving of freedom and the finer things in life, it’s us. Not only because we're powerful, but because we've been robbed of what should have been ours to begin with. I'm taking my life back, and I'm doing it with you by my side, because together, we're a force to be reckoned with, and no one will dare defy us. They'll fall on their faces to give us the benefit of the doubt and the shirts off their backs. And you know what? I'm going to let them.”

Layla was tired of his psychotic nonsense. It grated on the head as fiercely as it grated on the heart; and trying to reason with him was like reasoning with a boulder. Nevertheless, she attempted to drill her point in one more time. “Whether or not we deserved the hell we’ve been through isn’t the point, Finley. No one deserves that. We got dealt shitty hands and it sucks, but that doesn't mean the whole world owes us, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean I owe you. I didn't kill your parents. That’s on deranged and misguided magicians drunk on power – people like Agro. People like you.”

A flash of orange lit up the space between them, and in the split-second Layla blinked, flaming whips unfurled from his fingertips. She cringed and gritted her teeth, but that didn’t stop the scream that ripped from her throat when the magic lashed out, carving flesh from multiple parts of her body.

“Don't compare me to those murderers,” he shouted. “I’m not them. And you have more to do with my problems than you know.”

“What are you talking about?” she cried. “What did I do?”

“Someday I’ll tell you,” he sidestepped, “once you stop being a mouthy bitch with a mission to piss me off.”

Oh, she was so not sticking around that long. Stifling hiccups and sobs, she looked down, searching her body through blurry tears. The outside edges of her clothes were singed from her own fire magic, and her shirt was splattered with the blood he'd spit at her after she bit his lip. Her ankles and wrists were bound by translucent cords too stiff to budge, and the magic around her wrists extended around her waist, securing her arms to her stomach. Bleeding gashes traced the paths taken by his blazing whips, which had traveled nearly every sensitive part of her body. She felt the burn on her cheeks, her ribs and the sides of her neck, as well as the backs of her knees and the insides of her elbows.

Her head swayed as she stared at the blood trickling down her right forearm. Then she looked at the wounds stretching over her ribs, watching blood seep through her pretty, white chiffon tunic. The moisture left her susceptible to the breeze swirling around the clearing, and her achy body shivered as she raised her gaze to Finley.

She imagined him catching fire, and not in a daydream kind of way, but in a
I want to see you die
kind of way. She tried to burst him into flames, but he didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink, so she tried summoning fire in her head, but the warm blaze never came. Shit. He’d told the truth about blocking her magic, and that left her only one option.

“You know what this reminds me of?” she asked, too drained to express how much she despised him, how pissed she was… or how sad she was.

“Let’s hear it?” he returned, squarely facing her.

She slowly raised her weary gaze. “It reminds me of something Agro would do.”

The blazing whips materialized once more, traveling the exact same flesh as before, and she thought she might pass out as the wounds deepened and her vision flashed. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked her lips into her teeth, biting back a scream, and he cursed as he knelt beside her.

She tried to wiggle away, but he roughly took her by the chin and touched the sizzling lacerations on her neck. “Hold still,” he ordered, using magic to enforce the demand. “I’m sealing them.”

Petrified, terrified and hurting, Layla watched his face as he closed her wounds and stopped the bleeding, but the pain absolutely remained.

“You enrage me like few before you,” he lectured. “Why are you purposely pushing my buttons?”

“Because,” she breathed. “I’m done with you.”

“Not by a long shot.”

“You never had a shot, and this won’t last through the night. I won’t let it.”

“You think?” He positioned a hand below her bound wrists, stretching his palm and fingers across her bare belly. “Did you have sex with Quin?”

Her eyes widened as her throat swelled. “That’s none of your business.”

“No matter,” he mumbled, removing his hand. “You’re not knocked up.”

Dread clutched Layla’s chest, making it hard to breathe or speak. “What’s it to you?”

“It’s everything to me,” he answered, soberly staring into her eyes. “You have a choice to make, and you have to make it now, because I need you to stay healthy. You and I are bound together by too many similarities and circumstances to disregard. Your existence coincides with mine for a reason. You're supposed to be my mate, Layla. You're supposed to bear my children and share my magic while sharing yours with me. We’re supposed to protect each other. It’s the only way we can live the life we deserve, and that's what's going to happen. No matter what. But your insolence is pushing buttons I didn’t even know I have, and I can't keep hurting you, so you have two choices - either be good and learn to accept this life, or I’ll force you to accept it by giving you a reason to be good.”

She thought she knew what he was getting at, but refused to acknowledge it. “There’s no reason good enough to enslave myself to you.”