He paused and then, choosing not to overthink it, hit send.
Gawain"s reply was a few minutes in coming. I"m glad she"s okay. I filled the others in earlier, after I left. We"re all moving into position so that none of us are too far away. Call us for backup if you need to.
I will.
The conversation finished, Nikolas pocketed his phone. He paused to consider the shadowed manor house sprawling over the shattered land magic. It was an ugly, useless building, sitting on a cursed location. The G.o.ds only knew what Sophie saw in it.
Turning his back on the manor house, he strode back to the cottage.
Inside, everything was quiet. Sophie"s luggage had disappeared, while his go-bag still rested in the corner nearest the door. The puck was nowhere to be seen. Walking through the small place, he saw that the bedroom was darkened and the door half shut.
Gently he pushed the door open wider to look inside. As it creaked on its hinges, Sophie"s weary voice said, "I don"t recall inviting you in here."
Thanks for asking, a.s.shole.
Neither of them had to say it.
She had taken a blanket from the linen cupboard and curled up on the bed wrapped in it, atop the bare mattress.
"Too tired to make the bed, I see," he said quietly.
"I"m clean, dry, warm, and horizontal. And alive. It"ll do for tonight." She shifted under the blanket and grunted. "The bed can get made tomorrow."
He had spent far too many nights with much the same reduced survival list, and he almost turned to go, but that quiet sound of pain, and the memory of how stiffly she had been moving after the pub battle stopped him.
Slowly he said, "I know you"re still in pain. I can help you and give you the chance to get some real rest."
For a long moment he thought she might ignore him. Then she sighed, and the curled knot under the blanket unfurled. "Come in."
He pushed the door open the rest of the way and prowled in. That was when he saw the puck. Robin had been perched on the headboard. His dark eyes glistened in the shadows. What was he thinking?
As Nikolas approached, Robin slipped down off the headboard and disappeared into another part of the cottage. With a frown, he watched the puck leave. He would never understand Robin, no matter how long either of them lived.
Then he stood by the bed, looking down at Sophie. Even in a shadowed room as dark as this, her eyes gathered every particle of light and magnified them, gleaming like stars. He could see she was uncomfortable with him standing over her, so he nudged her thigh. As she shifted, he sat on the edge of the mattress.
"Watch yourself," he said. Reaching over to shade her eyes, he turned on the bedside lamp. Underneath his palm, he saw her wince.
"Is the light really necessary?" she said grumpily.
"I don"t know." He removed his hand and watched her squint.
"How did you not get splashed with blood?" she muttered, eyeing his shirt with resentment. "I almost drowned in it."
"I was moving fast, while you were on the floor. I got some splashed on my legs." He angled his head. "Show me where you hurt."
She grimaced. "Just a.s.sume if it"s between the top of my head and the bottom of my feet, it hurts."
"You said you pulled something in your side. Was that the place you got shot?"
With a sigh, she replied, "One of them."
She had been shot multiple times. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly as he absorbed the news. When he was confident that he could sound calm and steady, he urged her, "Show me."
She sighed again, this time impatiently, and flung back one corner of the blanket. Underneath, she wore a spaghetti strap tank top and matching shorts that were very short. They showed off the long line of her slender, muscled legs. She pulled up one corner of the tank, and he saw the scar.
It was a skewed starburst of ridged, livid flesh under the right side of her rib cage, still new enough that the redness hadn"t had a chance to fade. Not questioning his impulse-not thinking about anything other than reacting to the visual evidence of how her life had been in jeopardy-he touched the ridged scar lightly with the tips of his fingers.
Watching him, she said nothing, did nothing, although he could tell by her clenched tension that something about revealing the injury was difficult for her.
"Where else were you shot?" he murmured.
"Right thigh, left shoulder." She clipped out the words.
Now that she had mentioned it, he could see the edge of the scar peeking out from the tank top, in the flesh of her shoulder, just over her right breast. So her body had been strained on both sides tonight.
He could also see large bruises and contusions on her legs and arms. No doubt she had them on her back as well. She had hit the floor hard, and the Hound had landed its full, considerable weight on top of her.
This time, without asking, he took the edge of the blanket and lifted it farther to reveal the jagged slash on her leg. The scar was a violation of that beautiful, creamy cinnamon-speckled skin. She would have needed surgery on all three wounds. He had known she was still recovering somehow, but this was more, and far worse, than he had imagined.
With gentle firmness, he laid one hand flat on her abdomen, covering the scar. With his right hand, he covered the scar on her shoulder. She took hold of his wrists but didn"t try to force him away.
Then in his native tongue he said the invocation for healing, and Power flowed into her until her body glowed with it. Connected to her as he was, he could sense her pain lessen. Torn, inflamed muscles eased, and the ma.s.sive bruises faded. They didn"t disappear totally and still showed like faint shadows of mortality darkening her skin. But the deep, livid red was gone.
When he was finished, he didn"t lift his hands from her body. Instead, carefully pressing down, he leaned over her and met her wide, questioning eyes, his expression hard.
"You had no business running into that pub, Sophie Ross," he said, quietly stern. "No business, especially with serious injuries that are still so fresh."
She said in a steady voice, "f.u.c.k you, Nikolas whatever-the-f.u.c.k your last f.u.c.king name is. I was going to say thank you, but then you ruined the f.u.c.king moment."
"Sevigny," he said.
He could see in her expression that, exhausted or not, she had clearly meant to rip into him some more for his high-handed att.i.tude, but at that, she paused, thrown off stride.
"It"s my last f.u.c.king name," he told her. "Sevigny. And you say "f.u.c.k" too often."
Something sparked in her eyes, and he could tell she almost-almost-smiled. "f.u.c.k yeah, I do. And it"s none of your f.u.c.king business how often I say "f.u.c.k." Nor is it any of your f.u.c.king business if I choose to run into a pub because people are being attacked, if I rescue a dog who"s been abused, or if I decide to f.u.c.king jaywalk just because I feel like it-"
"You"re actually maddening," he said on a note of discovery. "You. Madden. Me."
She rolled her eyes. "Do I look like I care? Let me lay out a few more things for you. Don"t a.s.sume I give a s.h.i.t what you think. Don"t expect me to believe the world revolves around you-because it doesn"t, bucko. It doesn"t. And don"t think just because you helped me to feel better-thank you, by the way, I really do feel better-that I"m going to start paying attention to anything you say to me."
"Oh dear Lord and Lady," Nikolas said. "Cease talking."
She frowned at him, and from the uncomprehending expression in her eyes, he realized he had slipped into the old tongue again.
"Mmm-hmm, and when you talk like that?" she said, drawing a circle with a forefinger in front of his face. "You just sound stuck-up, because you know I don"t understand a single word you"re saying."
He glared at her. "Stuck-up."
She nodded. As tired as she looked, the dark shadows under her eyes had lightened, and her eyes sparkled with irate feeling. She repeated, "Stuck-up."
What an idiotic, immature thing to say. From out of nowhere, a bolt of laughter shot up. He stamped on it hard. She was being ludicrous, and what"s more, he suspected she knew it and didn"t care.
Underneath his hands, her skin felt luxuriously soft and warm. He could feel the rhythm of her breathing. It felt like a heartbeat. It felt alive and vital and as necessary as air or water.
She was something so foreign to how he had grown accustomed to living he didn"t even have words to express it. He thought his sh.e.l.l of isolation had become immutable, irreversible, but with a few words and that diamond-like fire in her eyes, she shattered it.
So much hunger came roaring out from the same, deep, mysterious place the laughter had come from. So much. His fingers tightened on her soft flesh. She opened her mouth, and he could tell from the saucy spark in her expression that she wasn"t done telling him off.
Instead of listening to any more of her lecture, he came down on her, torso to torso. "You"re a d.a.m.n mouthy broad," he said and kissed her.
Her curved, generous lips were as soft as they looked. As his body came over hers, the sensation of her lying underneath him satisfied something deep and primal in him.
He could feel the curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her narrower, slighter bone structure. Her warmth burned him, and that mouth, that mouth, he had never felt before the kind of hunger he did as he conquered that soft, lush mouth.
After a moment of shocked stillness came the biggest surprise of all. She tilted her head and kissed him back, molding her lips to his, shifting as he shifted, giving way as he pressed hard for entrance and plunged his tongue deep inside her. He could feel every single one of her fingers as she threaded them through his hair in a caress that sent a shock of pleasure through his entire body.
He couldn"t remember the last time he had been touched with any kind of sensuality or affection. That part of his nature had been cold and unused for so long it roared to life with the strength of a tidal wave.
Hungrily he ate at her. He ravaged her mouth as if it were the first meal he had seen in years. Another shock of awareness bolted through him as her tongue dueled with his.
She lifted her head off the pillow in order to kiss him back, following him up eagerly as he tried to ease back to take a breath, to take stock. Her fingers worked at the back of his neck, wordlessly asking him for more.
It brought him down again. Cupping her head in both hands, he kissed her wildly while his c.o.c.k stiffened into a hard, painful spike of hunger that he pressed against the curve of her hip. Her legs shifted restlessly, entwining with his.
Just like that, he was crazy to discover what she felt like naked. As he cupped her breast, he could feel the jut of her nipple through the thin material. It would be as plush as her mouth and just as pink. Maybe a darker, dusky rose.
It would taste fantastic. She had generous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The curve fit beautifully into his hand. He molded the lush mound of flesh while he licked at her mouth. Her breath was coming fast, soft, urgent puffs of air against his heated skin, egging him onward.
Her fingers closed around his wrist, and she turned her face away from his kiss. "Stop," she said, her voice strangled. "This-we-I shouldn"t be doing this."
Nikolas froze. His heart pounded as he tried to make sense of what she was saying.
Then her words sank in, and they leveraged a glimmer of sanity into his overheated, l.u.s.t-filled brain.
Her heart was pounding as hard as his, and they were both breathing heavily, the sound ragged in the quiet room.
Her expression held a wry vulnerability he had not seen in her before. Carefully he lifted his hand from her breast and told her, "I had not intended for this to happen."
"No," she said. "Of course you hadn"t. Neither had I. You are not one of my short-term goals, and you have no part in my life plan."
"And you are certainly not in my agenda, in any way." He narrowed his eyes. "I don"t even like you."
She threw open her arms and let them fall onto the bed. "Exactly! I don"t like you either! In fact, you"re pretty insufferable."
At that, he c.o.c.ked his head and glared. "As are you."
She shrugged. "I"m blaming my part in all of this on jet lag. I haven"t slept in so long everything feels unreal. Why not kiss the hot guy in my bed? It"s all a dream anyway, ha-ha. You"re going to have to come up with an explanation for your own behavior."
"I have no explanation," he said between his teeth. "This is inexplicable. You"re a pain in the a.s.s, you make foolhardy, dangerous decisions, and I don"t think you know how to have a normal conversation."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly while something darkened in her expression. Something that might look a little like disappointment. "Glad we cleared that up."
His eyes dropped to watch her lips form the words.
And then there was that mouth of hers, that outrageously sensual, generous, responsive mouth. He bent forward again slowly, giving her plenty of time to respond as he lowered his mouth to hers. She scowled but didn"t push him away, nor did she say anything, and as his lips brushed hers, she lifted up her face to kiss him back again.
This time the kiss he gave her was gentle and fleeting, while his unruly c.o.c.k throbbed with the most painful hard-on he"d ever had, and all he wanted to do was rip her clothes off and take her until she screamed with pleasure.
As he lifted his head, he told her, "Sleep now. Tomorrow you can show me how to make the colloidal silver and cast the rune."
A glint appeared in her eye, which was his warning. "Can I? Oh, thank you, thank you! I"m so glad I can do this since I had absolutely nothing else on my agenda for the day tomorrow, other than serving your needs. a.s.shole."
Earlier, her insouciance had made him angry, but this time he laughed. When she would have said more, he put his hand over her mouth.
Looking into her angry eyes, he said, "And when you teach me, I am going to get you a gun, along with silver bullets. It won"t be legal, so you"ll have to keep it hidden, but at least you"ll have an effective weapon you can use if you run across another lycanthrope, and you won"t have to rely on your contact spells."
Her expression changed, the anger vaporizing. As he lifted his hand away, she said, "You"ve got a deal."
"Get some rest." He lifted off her, and in the absence of her body in alignment with his, the air felt cold.
It wasn"t cold enough.
As she curled in the blanket, he left the room, pulling the door closed but not latching it. He grabbed his bag from the kitchen and stepped into the bathroom to take a biting cold shower. Only then did his erection finally subside.
Afterward, he grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and went to the sitting room. The settee wouldn"t be the worst place he had used for a bed.
Robin perched on the arm of a chair near the gas fire, his skinny, hairy arms wrapped around himself. When Nikolas entered the room, the puck glanced at him, then went back to staring at the fire.
Nonverbal, Sophie had said. Possibly trauma induced.
As Nikolas stretched out on the settee and plumped a pillow under his head, he said quietly, "Good night, Robin."
Just before he closed his eyes, the monkey slipped off the chair and loped back to the bedroom.
Chapter Nine.
When Nikolas left the bedroom, Sophie half expected she would lie awake and kick herself for indulging in that stupid kiss. Instead, she fell immediately into a dark pit and slept like the dead, without dreams, until she came alert with a jerk.
The feeling was reminiscent of the first time she had laid eyes on Nikolas, in that blasted vision back in LA. She could sense the day had advanced well past early morning. Ugh, at this rate, she was never going to get her days and nights sorted out. At least she had slept, really slept, and not tossed and turned from nightmares all night long.