Prince by Blood and Bone: A Fantasy Romance of the Black Court (Tales of the Black Court) (10 page)

He swallowed. This was it. He was anxious to get it over with, but so afraid to start. “What if it doesn’t work?” he asked, and closed his eyes at the tremble in his own voice.

When he opened them, her beautiful expression was full of sympathy, making him wish he’d drawn his hood up over his face and hidden his own betraying eyes.

“It might not work.”

The hackles raised on his neck. “Don’t say that! You’ll screw it up.”

She shook her head. “I might screw it up anyway. This spell is jerry-rigged as it is. I’ve already told you I’m a sucky witch and even though most of the spell is readable, I’m worried about the last few words.” She juggled the knife, censer, bowl of herbs, the last unlit pillar candle, and a lit taper in a small holder and carried them over to the circle, placing them by the northern candle inside the circle, but outside of the pentacle. “What if the piece we’re missing at the end is essential?”

He checked the bowl, three quarters of the moon’s face now showed in the water. “It’s time.”

“Kian?” He looked up at the question in her voice. “You know once we start, we can’t stop. The spell is very clear.”

He swallowed, hesitant and apprehensive despite his sure knowledge that this was his only course of action. “I know.”

“I mean it.” She gave him a stern look. “It says I must chant until the smoke clears. I don’t know what that means, but the warnings are dire if I stop.”

“Don’t stop,” he said. “Follow the spell.”

She held his gaze, and he wondered if she hesitated because she worried about him, or if it was just her lack of self-confidence. Then her eyes dropped and the moment was gone.

“All right. We’ll do it. And afterward, in the morning, I’ll leave to find my family.”

He nodded.

“We begin,” she said. And she dropped her robe.

For a moment he forgot why he was there. She was perfection.

Full tip-tilted breasts, strong abdomen, and long, lean thighs. His cock rose, and he thanked Danu that the witch was now entirely focused on her spell work and couldn’t see what his curse had wrought under his cloak. No sane woman would want the monstrosity his mother had cursed him with between his legs. No human woman for sure. But possibly, after tonight, he’d be back to normal. And his mother, with her twisted sense of humor, could rot in hell.

Bryanna started with the topmost candle and walked the outer circle. “Guardians of the North, I give you respect and ask you for your protection as we cast our magics.” She lit the candle and moved on. One by one, working her way sunwise around the circle until all four were lit and she stood where she’d started. She planted her feet. Her body tensed and she lifted her arms. “Blessed Danu, I ask thee for protection and help tonight as I cast this spell.” There was a shift in the air.

A rainbow of light started at her feet and spread up her body, along her thighs and pelvis, up her stomach and breasts, until her entire body glowed with a silvery rainbow. The hairs on his pelt tingled and lifted, and he wished he could touch her skin. Share in her power. Drink from her aura.

She picked up the knife, and using the point, traced the circle, leaving a thick glowing line of magic along the chalk. As she reached the starting point, the silver gleam expanded, reaching up, until the entire circle was encased in a glowing transparent dome of light, and the shield was set.

Her form blurred by the magic between them, Bryanna walked the exterior of the pentacle within the circle, swinging the censer and purifying the space, her words now silent inside the dome’s protection. The pungent scent of smoking sage rose into the air as Bryanna bent low to the ground and cut a door in the dome with the knife.

“Let he who asks to be healed enter the sacred circle.”

Kian bit down on his fear and dropped his cloak. Bryanna averted her eyes.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and forced his legs to move and carry him into the circle.

Bryanna closed the door with the point of her knife, and the magic snapped closed. Now inside the dome, swirls of heavy power pulsed around him like a living, breathing thing, caressing his body and lifting the tips of his fur.

Bryanna had left one side of the pentacle un-chalked. She motioned him in, her face turned away from his body. He stalked inside, aware she saw the worst of his curse now that he was completely exposed. It shouldn’t matter to him. It would be over tonight. Somehow, someway, he would make sure it was over.

She uttered the first words of the spell and drew the last line. Electric blue light sprang up over the pentacle’s chalk lines, and he was sealed in. Now, there was no going back.

Locked inside the magical barrier, Kian knelt down as he’d been instructed. Outside, Bryanna’s body undulated and swayed as she chanted. Light pulsed into and through her body in increasing waves until she almost flickered.

She picked up the stone bowl of herbs and paced five times around the pentacle, grinding the herbs with a pestle as she walked and chanted, infusing the herbs with the spell. At her fifth pass, she stopped and poured in some wine and tilted the lit taper. The bowl caught fire and flared.

A cloud of pungent smoke rose. Bryanna caught the cloud between her hands, holding it there and shaping it into a ball as she whispered to the smoke. It flashed yellow, then green, then blue, then back to a lurid shade of yellow. She blew at the smoke, and the ball flew out of her hands and crossed the blue light barrier of the pentacle’s wards. The wards sizzled and flared and Kian braced himself for impact.

The ball hit him and exploded, expanding to envelope him in blinding, stinking smoke that reeked of carrion, and blood, and wine. He fought to breathe, gasping for fresh air and inhaling nothing but smoke. The spell burned its way into his throat, down into his lungs, and he choked.

He flung himself from side to side, instinct pushing him to flee the stinking haze. He hit the side of the pentacle. Light flashed. The stench of his own flesh burning rose and he fell down, convulsing. The scorching in his lungs spread through his flesh, searing him from the inside out.

His joints popped and snapped. He writhed on the floor encased in a cloud of blinding smoke, burning and bursting in agony, trying to shut out the sound of his own hoarse screams.

Inside the spell’s circle Bryanna waited and chanted, her limbs shaking as the words of the spell continued to tumble out of her mouth. The power she’d asked for throbbed in her veins. She held it back, controlling the flow as she focused on reciting the spell over and over. Behind the pentacle’s thick wall of smoke came a terrible popping and ripping. And Kian’s wrenching screams.

The screaming stopped.

The ugly yellow miasma inside the pentacle began to clear, and she finished the last stanza of the spell. Peering past the electric blue barriers and into the smoke she saw a crumpled, nude man lying unbearably still.

The center of her chest seized.

He looked dead.

“Kian!” She grabbed her knife and inserted the point into the magical blue wall of the pentacle. Electricity zapped her, and she dropped the knife. Reaching inside herself for the silvery power she grasped the hilt in her numb fingers and inserted the knife again. This time she held on through the pain and cut a door into the protective wall from the tip of the star to the joint where the next point started. The energy flared then faded to a cool, humming glow as she mastered the wards and entered the pentacle.

He lay on the stone tiles, his face concealed by a swath of streaky brown hair. At least six and a half feet tall, with clean arms and legs built of lean muscle that ran along his thighs, back, and biceps. His skin was a shade of white so pale it nearly glowed. And he wasn’t breathing.

She dropped the knife. Kneeling down, she took his shoulder and worked to turn him over, his head lolling to the side.

His eyes were closed. She stroked his exotic face, composed of sharp cheekbones and sensual lips, brushed his hair back, and tucked it behind a delicate pointed ear. Leaning in close to his mouth and nose, she listened, desperate to hear breathing sounds. But there were none.

“Kian!” She shook his shoulder and his head bobbed. Placing two fingers below the corner of his jaw, she felt for a pulse. “Damn it!”

Praying to Danu, she rolled him to his back, pressed on his chest, and performed CPR. Pushing to the beat she closed her eyes and reached down into the earth for more power. Energy from deep under the palace sprang to her call, flowing in from the ground and coursing up the inside of her bones. The surprising flood of power eagerly poured out her palms and into Kian in a surge of light and energy and magic.

His body bucked, and the power under her skin pulsed in response. Air rushed in and out of his lungs, and his eyelids fluttered open. His violet eyes glowed with the magic of the spell and her breath caught. The magic called to her and the power racing through her body answered.

He lifted his face, every inch the Fae Lord, and she trembled in response. He flexed his long, elegant hand experimentally and his incredible purple eyes glowed with fierce joy. She fell into his gaze and the silvery power inside her soared and reached out to him, dragging her with it.

“Bryanna,” he said, in a voice rough and ragged with need. His eyes glittered with a hunger so intense she could taste it on her lips, feel it on her skin. She had a brief sane thought that she didn’t know him, shouldn’t do this, that having sex with him would be a disaster. But the magic drove it from her brain until all she could think about was the pulsating need to touch his ivory pale skin, to slide her naked body against his. The need to take him in and complete the spell.

His arms wrapped around her and he crushed her mouth with his. He tasted of wild mint and fresh air, and she devoured his mouth with her own. Liquid heat spilled through her, power surging through her body and into him though her palms, her skin, and the connection of their lips.

He kissed her with an unstoppable hunger and she lost all sense of where she was and who she was, surrendering to his heat and the hunger of the magic skimming along her skin.

Kian’s fingers played down her back, skimming her waist, her hips, and stroking along the curve of her ass. She shuddered. He pulled her on top of him where he lay on the stone floor, and she went eagerly, rubbing along his length and settling him between her legs, something deep inside her acknowledging that even here, he was perfect. She rubbed back and forth, and he kissed her, desire spiraling deep inside her core.

She delved deeper, and the power chased in and out, building her lust to a frenzy of desire. “Now,” she commanded, and he lifted her up and balanced her on his tip. She paused on the edge of ecstasy before she lowered on to his shaft, widening and stretching to take his full length in.

Magic slammed through her, and she came hard, his fingers digging into her hips, moving her up and down as he seized and orgasmed with a few bare thrusts.

Power flared. Light exploded and died away. The last of the blue wards on the pentacle faded, and they were left curled one on top of the other inside the dome of her protective circle.

“What the hell just happened?” She’d done what she never thought she could. She’d worked a major healing spell and it had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, ending in sex with a man who quite possibly was one of the sexiest men she’d ever seen. A man whom she’d never see again after tonight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kian stared into Bryanna’s eyes, panting hard, and watching the silvery power slip away from her skin. The spell dissipated around them, and suddenly he felt the cold hard stones of the workroom floor digging into his back.

“Hi,” he said.

Her lips curved up a small amount and her chin ducked down. She started to get off of him.

His cock slipped out and he gripped her hips reflexively. “Stay. Please.” He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to hold onto this moment and their shared pleasure. He had a strong feeling that if she got up, he’d lose whatever ephemeral bond held them together. “I just want to enjoy this, enjoy you, for a moment longer.”

She flushed under her tan. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know the spell would ask for this.” She waved her hands along their bodies. “Those damn faded lines.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He grinned. “I’m not. The Goddess sometimes surprises us.”

She squirmed, and he reluctantly relaxed his fingers, let his hands drop from her hips, and released her.

Hands.

Adrenaline spiked in his blood, kicking him into fight or flight mode and giving him nowhere to go. Kian sat up and stared at his trembling hands, flexing, and fisting, and turning them back and forth, his heart thundering in his throat. “You did it,” he rasped out.

He took inventory of his body from all ten of his toes, to his overgrown hair, wondering at the gift that was his flesh. He hadn’t really let himself hope that a mere witch could do what years of his struggles hadn’t been able to achieve——the banishment of his mother’s curse.

Bryanna rose, picked up her knife, and closed the circle down. He barely registered her thanks to the Goddess and the four guardian directions as she blew out the candles. “How does it feel?” she asked and picked up her robe, wrapping and belting it tight.