T is for Temptation (12 page)

“You’re not a witch.” Jake cleared his throat, touched a finger to her cheek, and exhaled in relief when nothing happened.

“How do you explain the gladiators?”

Her belligerent tone took him aback. The brown blanket slipped off one shoulder, and she sat up and stuck a red-painted fingernail into his chest.

“There must be a logical explanation.” He shifted in the chair.

“Like?”

He flinched when her nails stabbed his bare flesh and grabbed one hand.

“Damn it, woman. You have the nerve to be angry with me?” He snatched her other hand before it made contact with his chest. “Who’s the loony claiming to be a witch?”

“You think I’m insane, do you?” Her voice rose exponentially with each word, and her eyelids squeezed shut.

A chunk of ice hit Jake’s temple and bounced onto his thigh. He tried to move his feet. They were stuck. He lowered his gaze. Mud covered his legs up to his knees.

“How do you like being knee-deep?” She giggled.

Hailstones rained down on him. His temper exploded. He crooked an elbow over his face and covered his penis with one cupped hand in a futile attempt at protecting his more vulnerable parts against the torrent of hard, icy chunks.

“Ouch,” he howled. “This isn’t funny.”

Her eyes widened. She bunched a fist over her mouth and pointed, but he heard her stifled chortles. Jake ground his teeth as he whipped his head around.

Vikings.

A band of blue-painted, near-naked giants wielding swords and bellowing grisly war cries raced towards them. He didn’t hesitate, instead pulled Tee into his arms, slanted his mouth over hers, and drank hungrily, hoping it would work. His life depended on it.

The icy wind disappeared, replaced by a balmy breeze, which cocooned their seated, embracing bodies. Music tinkled in the background, and he sank into soft upholstery. Her tongue tickled the roof of his mouth, tracing a tantalizing path.

“You taste like heaven, babe.”

Distracted, aroused, and aching, Jake nibbled on her full lower lip and tugged the blanket down, his hands cupping her breasts. Desperate for more, he dove into Tee’s moist warmth and rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

Thunder boomed. He froze and pushed away from her, and his eyes flitted around the room. Harbor Lodge, they were safe in the small cottage. She sat in his lap with the dry brown throw wrapped loosely around her body. The blue cloth blanket lay across his pelvis.

“I always wondered what all the fuss was about.”

She smiled at him, reached up, and outlined his lips with a finger.

“This is the reason you didn’t want me to kiss you.” The words warped his reality. Yet her witch claim fit so many puzzle pieces into place, even if it tested his sanity.

Nodding, she sat up and pulled the cover over her shoulders, clutching the ends together at her chest. Rose petals swirled through the air. He caught one in his hand, his mind fogged.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I? This is another Tee fantasy. Okay, I give in. Be a witch, be my witch, for the next two weeks.”

“Another Tee fantasy?”

“You’ve no idea how many ways I’ve—” Jake bit his tongue. Women didn’t like that word. He stroked a stray curl behind her ear and continued speaking. “Made love to you in my mind.”

“Oh.” She nibbled the tip of one finger. “How often?”

For a few seconds, he forgot everything that just happened, enthralled by her charming oblivion. Didn’t she know how sexy she was, with that mesmerizing blend of lush sensuality, innocence, and adorableness, as if the vileness of the world had never touched her? Her husband had spurned her; she should be a bitter, vicious bitch. He studied her rosy cheeks and surrendered to the moment, knowing he would do almost anything to make love to her again, properly this time.

She thought she was a witch.

He had secret visions.

Which was more improbable?

Who was more insane?

Hell, nothing made sense.

“Okay, let’s get back to this witch thing. Am I going to have Vikings and gladiators at my back every time I kiss you?”

He chucked her chin, hoping against hope some miracle happened, and her answer would negate the events of the morning.

“I wished the Vikings on you.” She shook her head. “I don’t know where the gladiators came from.”

“You wished savages with swords on me and kept me stuck in mud on purpose?” The soft-spoken question belied the heated anger in his veins. Determined not to venture into her jumbled reality, Jake gritted his teeth. He would not fall for her hallucinations. Witches didn’t exist. Shooting a surreptitious glance at his feet and finding them clean and dry, every bunched muscle shuddered in relief.

She nodded.

He closed his eyes and counted to ten.

All of his remorse about using her diminished. Two weeks of hot animal sex, and then goodbye, he’d have no guilty conscience, not after spending time with a delusional woman. A soft tickling down his chest sidetracked his thoughts.

A shower of rose petals fell around them, over them, in a gentle shower.

Okay.

He forced his eyes to the ceiling; the pink flowers seemed to hover about four feet above Tee’s head. His gut clenched and he un-balled his fisted hands. Deal with one issue at a time. Break this down to the smallest element.

“Back to kissing, do gladiators appear every time?”

Maybe it was some sort of hypnotic trick. They certainly had seemed real, the Vikings too. However, he and Tee were both clean and dry, and that disproved everything, didn’t it? After all, he had been knee-deep in mud. But, his logic reared, they’d both seen the same things. An amazing coincidence? He squelched all thoughts in that direction. On the plane ride home, he would analyze the situation objectively. For now he’d do anything to get her back into bed.

“Gladiators haven’t happened before, but other things have. I’ve only kissed three, no, now four men. Actually, two were boys—one on my thirteenth birthday and then another, a couple of weeks later.”

“What happened?” He squelched his instinctive immediate reaction to her words. The realization that he would be the first for her for all things sexual crowding into one notion,
mine, all mine.

Random tangential images zizagged through his mind. He glanced down at the chair now covered by a couple of inches of dusky pink rose petals, his gaze switching to the cupcakes, flitting to her dry clean body.

“We were playing spin the bottle.”

Her fingers loosened their fierce grip on the chenille material. He caught a glimpse of her peach-pink nipple. None of this made any sense, in particular, the exponential leap of desire flaring in his groin. Two weeks to quench his hunger for this weird woman—he could put up with anything for a fortnight.

“We’re still not sure what happened exactly.”

Jake covered her mouth with the tip of his forefinger. He swallowed the gigantic lump in his throat knowing he shouldn’t ask the question.

“We?” he croaked.

Tee met his eyes then. She grimaced and shrugged.

“My friend Dee was part of the group. She’s a witch too. Anyway, the boy and I ended up in a Cinderella carriage drawn by horses with uniformed footmen. I think that happened because we’d just been to
Disneyworld
for the first time. Somehow, things became confused in my mind.
Dee
got me out of there just as the whole thing disappeared. Two weeks later, she decided I should try it again, sort of test it out. I never really liked the other guy, but he was convenient. That time bats appeared, hundreds of bats.”

Flummoxed, Jake lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her palm, playing for time. It didn’t matter. The whole situation seemed like one strange, nightmarish roller coaster ride with no end in sight.

“Bats?”

The fire roared into a blaze, snapping and crackling.

“Yes.”

“Did Tony know about, that you? Is that why he said you were repulsive?” He trailed off, repressed a shudder of revulsion, and thought maybe it was a good thing and maybe it would appease his lust for her.

She pushed away from his chest.

“Nothing happened when he kissed me, nothing at all. That’s one of the reasons I let the marriage happen. He seemed safe.”

“How did he find out?”

“I was prepared to let him, um, have sex. On our honeymoon night, when he tried, um, penetration, we sort of ended up with the Vikings. I seem to have a knack for the early 1500s.”

“And?”

“I got us back to the right time, and he hit me so hard I went flying across our hotel room.”

“That bastard hurt you?” Rage coursed through his veins.

“I took him back to the Vikings and let them have a go at him. He never touched me again.”

“Why didn’t you divorce him?”

“My parents don’t acknowledge my witchy powers, and my mother, in particular, refuses to discuss the strange things that happened before I learned a little self-control.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t discuss it with them and if Dad knew he’d hit me, he would have had him thrown in jail.”

She shrugged.

“Do your parents know? About you?”

“We’ve never actually discussed it. I tried a few times, but my mother refuses to acknowledge that I’m a little peculiar.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

“Tony had connections, Jake, and a divorce would’ve meant an ugly public battle.”

A glacier crept up his spine, chilling his flesh and sending every hair perpendicular.

“What happened later on?”

“I did everything I could to lead a separate life, spent a lot of time here in
Barbados
. When I heard he’d died, I felt I’d been given a new lease on life. No one will ever have control over me again.”

“How does it work, this power of yours?”

In a crazy, oxymoronic way, things now began to make sense. He suppressed a mournful groan. Tee was a witch, and she had cast a spell over him.

“Unreliably. It’s always been like that. I’ve learned over the years how to prevent it from happening, most of the time, anyway. When I’m emotional I can’t control it.”

She slid off his lap and moved to stand between the fireplace and the open window. Dark clouds, laden with moisture, carpeted a sky illuminated by a sickle-shaped sliver of moonlight. A hard rain began falling, and drops sputtered in gusts against the glass pane. Blazing flames morphed into glowing logs licking irregular, tentative flares.

“My special ability, that’s what
Dee
calls our talents, is a conjuring one. I think of something and it appears, not that it works all the time. If I’m upset, things go wrong.” She turned a deep pink. “I must have equated you or your kiss with gladiators somehow. I know I associate the rose petals with my grandmother. I think I inherited my powers from her. They certainly don’t come from Tricia.”

“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get you a glass of wine.”

All the color had drained out of Tee’s complexion, and he grew apprehensive of her fainting.