"No." I shook my head, cutting off Zoey's insight entirely as I walked out of the conservatory towards the sounds of life and warmth that echoed from the kitchen.
Dimitri was already there, dressed impeccably in a way that had me untucking his shirt and running my hands beneath the material, across his chest.
This was what I needed - him - us - our connection.
His fingers tilted my face up towards his as he brushed his lips against mine in greeting. But I didn't want the feather light kiss he offered, nor did I want the light gentle touch of his caress. I wanted him to remind me.
My tongue darted out, sliding between his lips as he inhaled, and as soon as his own tongue met mine, as his mouth began to move beneath my lips, the numbness began to thaw, and suddenly I was okay because I was Corinne, and he was Dimitri, and there was a rightness to that.
I felt his groan vibrate beneath my fingers pressed against his chest, but too soon he was pulling away from me, untangling his lips from mine, and it took me a full minute to realize why he had halted our connection.
Zoey's voice sounded behind me, but I had missed more than half of what she had said. Dimitri's eyes blazed into mine as he offered me a small smile before turning me in his arms to face the room.
"Thank fuck." Ravi grinned over his mug of caffeine. "I thought I was going to have to slink out of here before the two of you mauled each other."
My cheeks heated as I allowed my body to push back against the strength of Dimitri.
"Careful." His growled warning set fire to my blood. It was the same tone he used with me as I lay before him, pressed against our sheets. Only this time it was used in an entirely different context.
Ravi dipped his head in apology before Zoey spoke once more.
As my gaze landed on my friend, I realized that Brenna and Marie stood right behind her in a gathering of sorts.
"Grams called me back."
I straightened in response, suddenly far more interested in what Zoey had to say than I had been in the conservatory.
"You need to offer a sacrifice."
"But I offered my blood?" I squinted at her as I forced myself to try and connect the missing dots to understand what she was saying.
"It wasn't a big enough sacrifice. You offered the gods of old a death and then tried to revoke it. So in order to get the candle to burn, you need to offer them a sacrifice in the form of another death."
Her words wrapped their icy tentacles around my chest, freezing me in the space where indecision thrived and self-hatred was harvested.
"I'm not damning someone else to death." The words rushed out of me as my mind begged to dispute the words she had just spoken, but even as she said them, I had felt the truth in her statement - knew that I would need to offer up far more than I had in order to overturn the curse.
"Not a person, but a creature - an animal."
"I have to kill an animal?" My lids fluttered in a series of rapid blinks as my mind felt sluggish, working through the various possibilities far too slowly for my liking.
Zoey's pained eyes met mine as she nodded.
“I'll do it for her.” Dimitri's rumbled voice made me love him all the more, but he didn't understand how Magick worked - didn't understand that it was my sacrifice to make.
Zoey simply shook her head, as if the act of speaking was far too painful.
"If we're going to do the sacrifice, it needs to be under the light of the moon - that's what Zoey's grandmother said." Brenna was the one to fill in the grey areas that were so desperately needed to fill in the picture.
I would have to sacrifice an animal under the light of the moon tonight if I wanted to save Lauren's unborn baby. It seemed almost archaic, but this was dark Magick at its core, and I couldn’t afford to get cold feet about it.
At least I had a day to collect myself - to choose the course of my actions.
Zoey bit her lip, halting any words she wished to say in their tracks. And this time when the buzzer rang through the house, the feeling of relief was almost palpable, allowing us to shelve this discussion - this decision - for later in the day.
Ravi prowled towards the door, his body language portraying the ferocity of a panther protecting its claw.
As he swung the front door open, Maxine's lithe body arched in the doorway, and where Marie's aura was all sex appeal and subtle French charm, Maxine was pure sex.