“And say what?”
“I see your point.”
She looked so afraid, he hugged her to him. “Don’t worry, precious, we’ll sort this.” He kissed her forehead. She was cold and afraid and he sensed that she was shocked to the core and closing up inside as the knowledge sank into her. He couldn’t let that happen.
Taking her hand, he led her on and through the last of the trees. They had reached the low metal fence at the side of the main road, atop the cliff. They weren’t far from the place where they had first met. If only he could have foreseen all this back then. He would have sent her on her way and things would have been different.
Zoë put her hands on her thighs and bent over, struggling to control her breathing. The rain was bouncing off the road. The lights at the crossroads up ahead made it look even more dramatic than it already was.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen, today,” she said, straightening up. “I was upset.”
“Hey now, I should have found a way to tell you, a better way.” He pushed her wet hair back from her face. She was shivering violently. Part of it was shock, he was sure of that. “Not far now, there’s a place we can go, over there on the other side of the road.”
When she nodded, he clambered over the metal roadside fence, then gestured her closer and helped her to do the same. She stumbled over the barrier. With her hand in his, he listened for traffic. Nothing, except the crash of thunder and lightning in the forest behind them. It was going to run a while yet, and it would take its toll. There were huge stores of energy bound up in it, he could sense it. When he’d drawn on the natural forces he hadn’t been totally in control. The destruction didn’t lie easily with him, but nature would renew what was good. Nodding at her, he set off again and they darted across the road.
There was a cabin in the far woods on the other side of the east coast main road. He’d discovered it when he was tracing the ley lines in the area, a one-roomed wooden hut with a stone hearth, sturdily built, possibly an old shepherd’s keep.
“My heel,” Zoë said, limping to a halt beside him. The elegant heel was bent right off at the base. “I caught it back there. It’s given way.”
Lifting her in his arms, he kissed her forehead.
She clung to him, shivering, horribly wet and scared half to death. His resolve to undo the damage deepened as he covered the last few yards. When he set her on her feet next to the cabin door, he held her around her shoulders and squeezed her. “We can rest here.”
Tugging the padlock, he whispered his command. At the very same time he was ruing the fact he’d had to use his magic so often this night. It tore him apart. He had no choice, because he’d rather lay his life on the line than risk Zoë’s for another moment. Several bright, jagged sparks of fire leapt off the padlock and he tugged it free. The door creaked open.
Zoë pointed at the door frame. In the moonlight he could just make out what she was looking at. A spindly black spider disappeared off into the darkness. “Our friend came to see us again.”
The comment made him smile. Things had changed since that first day, in so many ways. He lifted her and carried her inside. Although empty and disused, the cabin had retained much of the heat from earlier in the day and there was a slight fragrance of camphor wood in the air, making it more pleasant than it might have been. The floor was boarded and he would make it comfortable enough to shelter until dawn, when he would fetch transport.
He set Zoë down in the middle of the room. “Stand right here a moment. I need to secure this place.”
She nodded, staring up at him for reassurance. It pained him to see the confusion in her eyes. It also gave his craft potency because it was him she was looking to, him that she had called for back there at the clearing, and that gave him the strength of a hundred men. It was a twisted reaction, to be sure, and he could only roll with what this situation was doing to him. He kissed her gently, reassuring her. A simmering arousal flamed in her, and he identified with it, responding, before he set about securing the small cabin.
There were no curtains on the two small windows to the front of the property and he filled the windows with reflective light and then paced the edge of the interior walls, chanting a boundary spell. Pointing at one corner he led a line of fire around the edges of the floor. Lifting his arms over his head, he directed the seams of fire. They shot up the walls, spangling, and then closed into a central point on the beamed ceiling.
Zoë stared at the spectacle. “You scare me,” she stated, simply. “This scares me.”
That pained him deeply, but he understood it all too well, because of his parents. His mother’s sacrifice on his behalf had been great. She’d given up the chance to be a proper mother to him, and he didn’t want history to repeat itself. He didn’t want his elemental magic to drive a wedge between him and Zoë, the way it had his parents. He strode back to her, taking her into his arms.
“No need for you to be scared of me, sweetheart. It’s everybody else who needs to fear me, if they ever try to lay another finger on you.” He kissed the top of her head, and was greatly relieved when he felt her hand curve around his waist. “You’re safe now,” he added.
She nodded, but he could tell she was still unsure as she watched the lines on the walls and ceiling fizz and settle into a warm glow.
He squatted at her feet and set about getting her out of her wet things. Lifting one foot, then the other, he took off her sandals. They were beyond a heel repair. She watched him as he undressed her, as if she were afraid he would disappear if she took her eyes off him. Rising to his feet he peeled her wet dress up from the hemline, encouraging her to lift her arms above her head.
After he’d helped her out of her underwear, she stood in front of him, entirely naked, shivering. He dropped the clothes to the floor, and rubbed her arms, drawing on some of the sexual energy between them to warm the room. Light from the spell he’d lodged in the walls shone on the side of her face, and his jaw tightened as he considered what might have happened if he hadn’t got there in time. He bit back the rising tide of anger he felt when he considered how they meant to use Zoë.
“She’s inside me, isn’t she?” she whispered, staring up at him.
He shook his head.
If there was any possessing to be done around here, it was him that was going to do it. “Now that I know, I vow to stop it, to turn it back.”
He wanted her so much, desire was driving him more than any other cause or ideal that he had ever held sacred before.
Kicking off his boots, he peeled his wet T-shirt off and opened his belt, shoving his jeans and jockey shorts down and off. Zoë watched, and the way she looked at him, with a haze of lust in her aura, sent his blood south. He pulled her back into his arms as soon as he was naked, and the heat between them grew and multiplied, warming the room, drying them both.
She reached around his neck, her hands on his hair as it dried under her fingers. Her eyes were wide and her lips were parted.