44 Jasper #2
I only moved in here after Mom’s death. My childhood room is down the hall. It’s possible some girl or another passed out in that bed after a drunken night of fooling around. I did most of my nocturnal activities out of this house as a kid—the lighthouse, the woods, the bed of my truck.
There’s something strangely domestic about having Birdie lying in this bed .
. . in this room. The high priest’s inner sanctum.
I should be objecting to this. She’s all but a stranger to me.
In five days, I’ve let her onto my island and into my life.
Now she’s in my house, in my coven, lying half-naked in my bed.
Birdie Rhodes.
I roll to my side, facing her back in the dark. The light from the moon is faint tonight, a silvery glow through my curtains. Her hair spills over onto my pillow. The hill of her shoulder slopes down her side, framing the curve of her hip.
Who is she?
“Please,” she says on a breath, the sound almost a whimper. “Jasper, just touch me—”
I’m already moving, closing the space between us.
I don’t even care that Dáinn is watching.
I reach out with both hands and pull her in against me.
She doesn’t fight it, not now that we’re in the dark.
With the lights on we’re still Jasper and Birdie.
Boss and employee. Witch and human. There are rules. Boundaries.
With the lights off, I’m slipping a hand up under her shirt to cup her breast and she’s tangling our legs together, tucking herself against me. With the lights off, we can give in to whatever this is between us. This magnetic pull. This . . . gravity.
I don’t know who she is. But I think she’s mine. “Sleep,” I soothe, kissing the back of her head.
She sighs against me, her hips pressed snug against the hard ridge of my cock. Her breast is warm in my palm. Her body relaxes. Soon, she sleeps. I’m lying on the edge of sleep too when I feel a hand brush through my hair. I flinch awake, my eyes alert.
The wraith is floating there in the dark, stretched out on the bed on the other side of Birdie. He has one skeletal hand in my hair, one on her sleeping shoulder. “This is the best night of my life.”
I glare at him, nodding down at Birdie in silent warning.
He shrugs. “She’s asleep.”
“She could wake up,” I whisper.
“She won’t. She’s a heavy sleeper.” I can’t see within his cowl, but I feel his contentment as he gazes down at her. “She looks just like a little kitten. I think she likes your body warmth.”
I press my face to the back of her hair and breathe her in, my hand flexing on the soft swell of her breast. “How badly do you want to eat us right now?”
He sighs. “Sweet witch, you have no idea.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not for eating.”
“I can’t fast forever.” He sits up slightly, not jostling the bed at all. “Speaking of . . . there’s something I’d like to do with Birdie tomorrow. With your blessing, of course.”
“My blessing?”
“She’s in your coven now. I’m not sure of all the rules . . .”
I roll my eyes. “Since when do my coven’s rules matter? You’ll do what you want either way.”
“As I respect you, I’d like to try and respect your rules,” he intones with a solemn nod.
“What do you want with Birdie?”
“I want to take her off island to meet my mage—”
“Out of the fucking question. Are you kidding me?” My anxiety surges along with my irritation as I feel myself tuck her in closer. The need to protect her is a distraction I can’t afford.
“Jasper, this has to happen,” the wraith counters. “You heard her tonight. She’s as curious as we are to know how and why she affects me so. And, as you say, I’m only asking as a formality.” His skeletal fingers stroke along the curve of her T-shirt-clad shoulder. Birdie hums, soothed by his touch.
I clench my jaw tight, keeping my voice low. “I’m not sending her off island into the clutches of some greedy mage.”
“I’ll be there to protect her,” he assures me. “Trust me, the most that will happen is that she’ll be invited to participate in an autopsy . . . or perhaps an orgy.”
This is such a bad idea. I’ve only known one other mage in my life, and he was a total disaster.
He called himself Leo. My gran maintained a long-suffering courtship with him for decades.
He had this squirrel familiar named Buttons that always bit me.
Every few years, Leo and Buttons came around and stayed for a few months before leaving Gran brokenhearted again.
The reputations of mages are all the same: slippery, aloof, devious, and cunning to a fault. I hate to think I’ll have to trust another one. This time it will be with our actual lives, not just my gran’s messy love life.
Resigned, I sigh. “If she’s going, I’m going too.”
The wraith brightens. “You would leave the island?”
“I’m not a hermit, Dáinn. And with this evil eye charm, no one will see me, right? Can we trust your mage to keep our secrets?”
He nods his cowled head. “I trust him enough for this.”
Not a ringing endorsement.
I relax my hold on Birdie. “She goes, I go.”
Reaching out, he brushes his skeletal hand through my hair again. “The plan improves leaps and bounds.”
“Dáinn?”
“Yes, sweet witch.”
“Stop petting me like a cat.”
His hand stills.
I look to the woman sleeping in my arms. So soft and delicate, a lamb amongst wolves.
I hate that I can’t protect her from the world .
. . from us. I’ll do my best to keep my own impulses in check, but I have no weapons to fight the will of a determined wraith.
“Are you still planning to haunt her in the morning?”
“The haunt is over,” Dáinn replies in his rasping voice. “I know what I want, and I intend to get it. This is the hunt, Jasper. Birdie is mine. You both are. Tomorrow, she’ll finally begin to understand exactly what that means.”