My Darkest Passion (37 page)
“Starving. Something smells wonderful.”
“Sit up, then.” He handed her a violet mug of coffee.
“Oh, oh, thank you.” She pushed herself up and took a sip. “Perfect. You are a god.”
“Do you want to eat in bed, or should I take this to the other room?”
She patted the mattress. “Here. And you sit, too.”
He arranged the tray, and she touched a petal of the daisy. “This is pretty.” She looked at him and smiled, and it hit him right in the heart, how her face lit up with pleasure. “Yellow. Like your eyes, sometimes.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
By then she’d taken a mouthful of pancake, and she closed her eyes in bliss.
“I hope that means I haven’t lost my touch. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything in the kitchen more complicated than toast.”
When her mouth was empty, she said, “Almost better than sex.” She held out a forkful to him, her cupped hand underneath to catch any drippings. “See?”
She ate breakfast, and he sat beside her while she did, thinking that he liked having her here with him. At his house. He liked that he’d made her happy. She drank her coffee, savored it, and when she put it down mostly empty, he leaned in and kissed her again. He drew back a little, his arm around her. “What I like,” he said, “is that you know what I am.”
“Nikodemus knew, too.”
“He did.”
She swallowed the last mouthful of coffee and bit of pancake. “A god. You are a god.”
He gave her a smile because she made his world perfect. “If you want to put a ring on it, you let me know.”
“Really? Where?”
“Not on my dick, that’s all I ask.”
S
ix weeks after Harsh’s second oath to her, Addison sank onto the couch in the bedroom of his very large house and relaxed for the first time in hours. Harsh’s bedroom. Her bedroom. Their bedroom. Alone at last, after spending most of the last few days with Tau and the others.
Five days without a break from magehelds who were sent after Nikodemus’s sworn kin, their minds destroyed, turned into little more than killing machines. Some of them were young. Barely past their transformation, and it was sick, that. What mages like Infante had been doing all this time.
“Hey,” she said when Harsh walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel.
“Hey.” He touched three fingers to his forehead. Funny how she’d gotten used to that. “Good day?”
“Bodega Bay is officially ours now.” She rearranged the pillows under her back.
Harsh walked over and kissed her forehead. “Excellent news.”
“Tau is fucking bad ass. I’m telling you.”
“I believe you.”
“When do you get off training duty?” The most powerful or talented of Nikodemus’s aligned kin took turns working with Maddy Winters and her troupe of misfit magic users. Harsh had been sitting in on the sessions, getting up close and personal with his mage side. She was hoping he’d learned a few more tricks, the way he had last time. Because his homework was fun.
“A couple more days, I think. What’s that?” He dipped his head in the direction of her lap where she’d set a small box.
“This?” She blocked off her nerves. He wasn’t going to say no, but she was still worried that he would, or that she’d bungle this, or that it wouldn’t turn out to be the gesture she’d imagined. “I went shopping before I came home.”
“You hate shopping.” He planted both hands on the back of the couch. As bad ass as Tau, to be honest.
“Remember you said to let you know if I ever wanted to put a ring on it?”
“Yes.”
“I decided I do.” She picked up the box and removed the top. “Here.”
He didn’t take it from her right away. “What?”
“You chicken.”
“Hardly.”
“It’s not a cock ring, okay? Open it.”
“Is it the blue hair that makes you like this? Because, Addison, I’m starting to think the dye is affecting your brain.”
“Har, har. You are so funny.”
He looked in the box. “These are?”
“One’s for me,” she said just slowly enough for him to know she was being deliberately annoying. “And the other one is for you. I was going on the assumption that you won’t have much of a healing period.”
“Not much of one, no.”
Here was the part where she could crash and burn. “I used my first paycheck and got you an aquamarine because it matches my eyes. The yellow diamond is mine, because it matches yours.” She touched his left ear. “Yours goes in your ear. Totally kick-ass look for you.”
He looked up from the box. “And where does yours go?”
“Where the hell do you think, Dr. Marit?”
He went still for the space of two breaths. Then he grinned in this heinously sexy way and just when she was thinking he’d learned a new trick and was trying it out on her, he said, “I love you, Addison.”
Her heart lurched, and she leaned toward him. “I love you, too. In fact, I went shopping today because I love you. I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you know.” She stripped off her shirt and reached around for the fastening of her bra. “Now, you better tell me you have sterile equipment and that you can call on your medical training to do this right.”
“Oh, I do. I promise you, I do.”
“God, you’re hot when you know I’m doing you six ways from Sunday.”
“And you,” he said. “My warlord. You are my darkest passion.”
MY DARKEST PASSION
BY
CAROLYN JEWEL
I owe a lot to some very talented people. I’m saying
thank you
here, but in a mystical order known only to myself: Robin Harders, Carolyn Crane, Meghan Hogue, my agent Kristin Nelson, Julie McDermott. My sister Marguerite.
Also, I acknowledge that I sometimes drive my son crazy. I am so proud of the young man he’s become.
Beloved pets, you help keep me sane: Fudge, Bella (I forgive you for eating my CSS book), Abu, Jake.
RIP: Mel, the mean rooster. You were mean to the very end.
Blood-twins
: A bonded pair of demons who share a permanent magical connection. They may be biologically related and/or same-sex. Antisocial and prone to psychosis.
Copa:
A plant derivative of a yellow-ochre color when processed. Has a mild psychotropic effect on the Kin, who use it for relaxation. For mages, the drug increases magical abilities and is highly addictive.
Cracking
(
a talisman
): A mage or witch may crack open a talisman in order to absorb the life force therein and magically prolong his or her life. Requires a sacrificial murder.
Demon:
Any one of a number of shape-shifting magical beings whose chief characteristic is, as far as the magekind are concerned, the ability to possess and control a human. They are psychically bound beings. They typically possess multiple physical forms, at least one of which is recognizably human. Before relations with the magekind exploded into war, they frequently bonded with the magekind. Demons can procreate with humans, but the demon must be in his or her true form.
Entelechy:
Demons not born from a human parent. Most are thousands of years old and extremely powerful.
Fealty:
Magically binding oath between a warlord and another demon, one of the magekind, or a human. Mutually protective. For the one swearing fealty, a broken oath results in severe harm or even death. A warlord who behaves capriciously with his sworn kin risks severing the bond. A warlord gains power through these oaths. A warlord can swear fealty to another warlord.
Fiend:
Subspecies of demon.
Hotblood:
An epithet the magekind use to refer to demons.
Kin:
What demons collectively call each other. Socially divided into various factions seeking power over other warlord-led factions.
Mage:
Human man who possesses magic. A sorcerer. See also magekind.
Magekind:
Humans who possess magic. The magekind arose to protect vanilla humans from the depredations of demons, a very real threat.
Mageheld:
Demon under the complete control of one of the magekind. A slave.
Severing:
The act of removing a mageheld from the control of a mage or witch, through the use of magic.
Talisman:
A usually small object holding the life force of a demon. The kin sometimes create talismans by consent if another demon is no longer able to take physical form. The magekind have learned to create talismans through ritual murder. A talisman confers additional magical power on the mage who has it. Sometimes requires an additional sacrifice. See also cracking (a talisman).
Vanilla:
A human with no magic or, pejoratively, one of the magekind with little power.
Warlord:
A demon who leads some number of other demons, who have sworn fealty. Usually a natural leader possessing far more magic than others of the Kin. Magekind and vanilla humans can swear fealty to a warlord.
Witch:
A human woman who possesses magic. A sorceress. See also magekind.
My Darkest Passion
Table of Contents
Carolyn Jewel was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has three cats and a dog. Also a son. One of the cats is his. Visit her on the web at
www.carolynjewel.com
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Paranormal Romance
My Immortals Series
My Wicked Enemy
, Book 1
My Forbidden Desire
, RITA finalist, Parnormal Romance, Book 2
My Immortal Assassin
, Book 3
My Dangerous Pleasure
, Book 4
Free Fall
, Book 4.5 (a novella)
My Darkest Passion
, Book 5
Other Paranormal Romance
A Darker Crimson
, Book 4 of the
Crimson City series
Historical Romance
Reforming the Scoundrels Series
Not Wicked Enough
, Book 1
Not Proper Enough
, Book 2
The Sinclair Sisters Series
Other Historical Romance
Scandal
, RITA finalist, Best Regency Historical
Indiscreet
, Winner, Bookseller’s Best, Best Short Historical
My Wicked Enemy
My Immortals Series
, Book 1
S
omeone was following her. Carson recognized him from her stop at the sidewalk coffee vendor twenty minutes ago. She was at a Chinatown intersection, waiting for the walk signal to change color. And so was he. The same man. For one thing, his height was unmistakable. People crowded the corner, waiting like she was. When she glanced over her shoulder, she recognized him because she’d seen him twice already. His gaze swept across her, and she looked away quickly. Her heart beat so hard and so fast she had to breathe through her mouth. Streaks of color flashed at the edges of her vision, a sure precursor to total debilitation. If Magellan had sent him, she was as good as dead.
Please,
she thought.
Don’t let me have an episode. Not now.
Her coffee was long gone, even though she clutched her empty cardboard cup, and she still had a splitting headache. In an hour, maybe less, she’d be prostrate, unable to do anything but lie in a darkened room and wait for her
episode
to fade. The outside clamor wasn’t helping. She wasn’t used to the noise or the sheer number of people around her. Carson rarely spent time in public. Almost never. By herself?