That wasn’t part of the ritual but I didn’t fight it. No, I needed it. He needed it. We both tasted each other with fervor, our tongues doing an age-old dance. He pulled away, flushed, and looked down at me. His eyes were wide and wild, filled to the brim with the same sense of desire and need that was currently plaguing me.

  A jolt of excitement went through me when he cupped my cheeks in both his large hands. He drew my lips to his again and the rush of heat from before came back with a vengeance.

  I wanted him. I wanted him more than I could remember ever wanting anything. No more dithering around. No more excuses. It was time… time to fully consecrate our desire for one another.

  He slipped his hand behind my back and pulled me against him as he deepened our kiss. I melted into that masterful embrace and mewed slightly when I felt his fingers on my breasts, teasing my nipples through the thin layer of my lace bra.

  He tasted a thousand times better than I ever remembered. I wanted to wrap my body around his and savor every delectable second while satisfying my deepest desire.

  His powerful hands slipped around my waist. They migrated up my ribs in time to the rhythm of our kisses. Those kisses never seemed to end and neither did his hands. They kept traveling all over my body as he explored my skin with his satin touch.

  He broke contact with my mouth and his eyes caught me in their unbreakable sway. He held me captive while he flicked the back of my bra open.

  My body exploded in volcanic passion. I was really going to do this. We were really going to do this. My every nerve and sinew burned for him—burned in a way I’d never felt before. Of course I’d had lovers in the past. Quite a few of them, actually, but never had I desired a man as much as I desired Lorcan. It wasn’t just desire—it was need. I needed him. It was almost as if I had to have him—that I couldn’t draw another breath, nor would my heart beat another beat unless I had Lorcan at this exact moment.

  A breeze blowing through the slightly opened window brushed against my already erect nipples. Lorcan pulled away from my mouth and looked down at my breasts, as my nipples hardened even further. He was now seeing more of me than he’d ever seen before and that fact thrilled me. And, owing to the expression on his face, it also thrilled him.

  I trembled at the look in his eyes, the look that said he had me exactly where he wanted me. My breasts were completely exposed to his touch, but when his hand floated up, it moved to my chin. He hauled my mouth to his for one more drunken kiss.

  I felt wobbly all over as an overpowering torrent of sensation and emotion poured through me. I surrendered to it utterly. I wanted this and had wanted it for a long time, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time. And now I was going to get exactly what I wanted.

  But, Wanda, I started to argue with myself.

  No, there were no buts. This was going to happen. It needed to happen.

  His tongue continued to explore my mouth as that commanding hand glided down my neck. He ripped off my mouth and I watched as his fangs elongated before my eyes, sharpening into fine points that were razor sharp.

  I didn’t care.

  He looked at me for maybe another second and in that second I could see something glaze over his eyes—a reddish haze. Blood lust.

  And blood lust meant…

  Lorcan plunged for my neck, opening his mouth wide as his fangs glistened in the moonlight streaming through the window.

  I closed my eyes. And then I felt myself flying backwards. I blinked my eyes open wide and it took me a second to realize he’d pushed me away. I sat there, shocked, as I watched him battle with himself. His eyes were clenched tight and he was panting. His fangs were fully extended and his hands were closed into fists.

  “Lorcan,” I started.

  He shook his head and opened his hands, pulling them along the floor. His fingernails left long claw marks in the wood below. I swallowed hard.

  It was another few seconds before he opened his eyes and then he stood up and immediately started for the door. I stood up and took a few steps towards him.

  “Lorcan?” I said again.

  “I almost lost control,” he barked out. Then he turned to face me and in his expression, I read the fact that he was afraid. “I could have killed you, Wanda.”

  “But you didn’t,” I started.

  He shook his head. “It was… too close.” He paused at the threshold of the doorway. “I need… I need a few minutes.”

  And then he was gone, his footsteps echoing down the hall, leaving me to realize how close we’d just come to the point of no return. And I’d done nothing to stop it.

  ***

  “Get… off… me, you great brutes!” Hellcat squirmed underneath me. He made a heroic effort to squeeze out from under my hip, but his tail got stuck. “NEVER… in all my years… have I been subjected to such a defilement!” The cat continued screeching. “Such an indignity will not go unpunished!”

  I heaved Lorcan’s weight just enough to the left so Hellcat could yank his tail out from under me. He darted three feet away and then stopped, turning back around to glare at us. It was the second time in the course of the last hour that we’d attempted Betanya’s spell. The first time had culminated in Lorcan and me almost having sex. This time, we’d thought it would be better to have a chaperone, hence Hellcat’s involvement.

  The offended cat arched his back, fluffed up his velvet black fur, and shook himself. Then he licked his lips with an exaggerated shake of his furry head. “That was, without exception, the single greatest disaster I have ever had the misfortune to witness.”

  He sniffed in my general direction and then sprang onto the arm of a nearby chair. He perched there and pretended to groom himself as though none of this had ever happened. I was already wishing none of it had happened. Why? Because it was another failure.

  “What will you and this reprobate companion of yours come up with next?” Hellcat continued. “Yet another fiasco of sham necromancy?”

  “You know, I could really do without your commentary,” I snapped. It was bad enough that another attempt at Betanya’s spell had just failed. The last thing I needed was Hellcat’s incessant diatribes.

  “Is this your tragic attempt to masquerade at magic whilst stealing into the bloodsucker’s trousers?”

  Lorcan exploded in laughter and got to his feet. Sweat plastered his blonde hair to his forehead and rivulets streaked his chiseled torso. He was… sexy. Really sexy. And, it seemed he was now unaffected by our earlier close-call. When he’d left my room, he’d looked like death itself. Now, he was back to his normal, amused personality. As to me, I was sexually frustrated and then some. In fact, all I could think about was Lorcan’s near-naked body and the thoughts were enough to drive me mad.

  “I don’t have to steal into Lorcan’s trousers by stealth,” I snarled at my familiar.

  Lorcan chuckled again. “That is quite putting it mildly, my dear. You have an open invitation to my trousers whenever you so desire.” We both knew that wasn’t true after what had just happened, but I held my tongue. I was just glad to see Lorcan back to himself. He’d given me a scare when he’d left my room.

  He looked at Hellcat. “Though your pet is quite vexing.”

  Hellcat curled his lip and hissed. “Pet! You would profit by recalling, vulgar toad, that Wandellmelia requires my assistance in all her magical endeavors.”

  “That’s not true,” I started but Hellcat interrupted me as he continued to lambaste the vampire.

  “Unless you prefer to avoid further delays and package her up for direct conveyance to your murderous compatriots, you would be wise to apply a certain degree of deference to your communications when directed toward me.”

  Lorcan smirked at the cat, but he managed to stop himself from laughing outright—for once. “If you try a bit harder, Hellcat, I think you just might be able to fit a few even longer words into that sentence.”

  “He won’t have to,” I cut in. “If we don’t succeed in dissolving the blood bond and Rupert follows through on his threat to turn me into a vampire, Hellcat will be out of a job.” I turned to face the cat. “And I’m still trying to understand how that would be a bad thing. For either of us.”

  It was no great secret that Hellcat and I couldn’t stand one another and never had.

  “You dare entertain the possibility that your becoming a vampire would be beneficial? To either of us?” The little cretin yowled in rage, straightened up, and arched his spine as high as it would go. His hair stood on end and his screech set my teeth on edge. “What would your poor mother have to say about your ungrateful and careless attitude?”

  “Ugh, here we go.”

  “You are the most rotten, stinking, putrid imposter among witches! Squalid scoundrel Pomeranian! Villainous….”

  “Pomeranian!” Lorcan exclaimed with another huge grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”

  “And as to my being out of a job, were you to become an undead,” Hellcat continued, now in a full on tiff. “You were indeed fortunate to have a familiar as skilled as myself attached to you and yet you never show me any gratitude.”

  “Gratitude is pretty much the last thing I’d think to show you.” The front door was the first.

  Hellcat turned his head the other way and mumbled something unintelligible toward the wall.

  “I wonder what would happen to you if I really did become a vampire,” I continued, thinking this was probably a conversation we should have because the odds of my becoming a vamp were increasing with each passing day. “The connection between us would be severed and that would leave you… hmm. What’s the right word? Um…”

  “Snaked?” Lorcan supplied. “Scuppered? Cuped?”

  “Excellent!” I clapped my hands and pointed at Hellcat. “I was thinking more along the lines of SOL…. but yes. I like ‘scuppered’. Though I’ve never heard it before, it’s a good one.”

  “If you have both QUITE finished!” Hellcat thundered as loud as a cat can thunder.

  “Not quite,” Lorcan added. “Don’t forget….”

  Hellcat cut him off with an ear-splitting screech. Then the furry little rodent rocketed across the living room to the front door, dove through the cat door, and vanished into the night.

  Lorcan chuckled to himself again as he turned to face me. “Well done, my dear. That has cleared him out for the duration of the evening, I’ll wager.”

  “Now he can slope off to his bachelor pad to nurse his bruised ego with one of his many female admirers.”

  Lorcan raised an eyebrow. He still hadn’t put his shirt back on and I couldn’t stop staring at his muscled chest and equally impressive arms. “Does he have female admirers?”

  “He does. Every time I go by there, a female cat is coming or going.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  I slid onto the couch and ran my fingers through my hair. I didn’t feel like joking about Hellcat’s exploits—real or fictional. Not when my own life was coming apart at the seams.

  “What is it, my dear?” Lorcan murmured in a softer tone. “Pay no attention to Hellcat. You made a valiant attempt to complete the spell.”

  “A valiant and futile attempt. Again.” I sighed out all my frustration. “I’m worried we’ll never get Betanya’s spell right in time and you know what that means.” I buried my face in my hands and massaged my temples. “That spell failing was like punching myself in the face with my own power. Now I have a splitting headache and I’m sore all over.”

  Lorcan strode over and sat down on the arm of the couch. He started kneading my shoulders and neck. “We can only keep trying, dearest. It could have been worse, you know?”

  I looked up at him. “Worse how?”

  He shrugged. “Instead of being merely flattened, Hellcat could have been killed at the bottom of our magical doggy pile—or kitty pile as the case might be.”

  “Very funny,” I growled back. “We only have a little over a week left to break the blood bond before Rupert comes after us—after me. I just… don’t want that.”

  “Neither of us does, but a lot can happen in that time, my dear. Perhaps there’s something we aren’t considering, some hidden factor the spell needs to make it work? We could try a different tactic.”

  “What different tactic?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps the way in which we are enacting the ritual is incorrect? After all, this is our fifteenth attempt or so and we’re no closer to success.”

  “We have no other leads on any other tactic,” I nearly snapped, not entirely sure what he was getting at. The spell had come from Betanya Tayir’s journals and I really didn’t see how there was any other way to do it. Besides, Betanya was the only known Blood Witch who had come anywhere near breaking the bond between herself and the vampire who had turned her.

  “There must be something else we can try,” Lorcan continued.

  I shook my head. “We’ve tried to use Hellcat’s power as well as Poppy’s and neither worked. It just seems like… maybe the spell isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “I fail to see why we keep trying to replicate a spell that obviously doesn’t work.”

  “Because Betanya was the only other Blood Witch to survive for as long as she did. Not only that, but she did a lot of experimenting to reverse the curse and recorded all her methods in her notebook. And that’s more than I have right now.” I took a deep breath. “I can’t give up as long as there’s any hope of breaking the bond and… I think there’s still hope.”

  “I’m not suggesting you give up. I’m only saying there may be a better way to go about it… one that doesn’t end with you crooked and in pain.”

  I snorted, but his words really were making me feel better. “I’m sure Hellcat will tell Mother everything about this latest failed attempt… not to mention me canoodling with the enemy.”

  He burst out laughing. “Canoodling! Is that what we’re doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I suppose I’m the enemy?”

  I nodded. “You are.”

  He started working my shoulders between his large and strong hands. His powerful fingers crawled higher to the base of my skull. Delicious heat spread through my body and ignited my desire all over again. I fought down a rising urge to just throw caution to the wind… for a second time.

  Chapter Five

  I pictured myself standing up. I could so easily take Lorcan’s hand and lead him into my room. There, I would push him down on the bed, climb on top of him the way I’d fantasized a thousand times, and…

  He stopped massaging to brush my hair aside. His fingertips grazed my skin and I shuddered, fully aware that only a thin strapless bra separated me from him. And a pair of satin panties. That was all.

  Maybe I should have been scared—I figured if I were smart, I would have been scared. After all, I knew what could happen if we had sex—what had very nearly happened earlier in the evening. But, somehow I didn’t care. Somehow that part of me that was responsible for worrying about becoming a vampire or becoming dead had been turned off. I was more than sure the blood bond was to blame but I couldn’t say I cared about that either.

  All I did care about, the only thing I could think about, was Lorcan and I becoming one.

  He dug his thumbs into my shoulder blades. “We came too close earlier, my dear,” he whispered and I figured he was talking about how close we’d come to having sex.

  “I know.”

  “I want you… you know I do.” He paused for a moment. “I want you more than you know, but not like that… not when I know I could lose control and harm you.”

  I smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

  “I mean it. Your safety is of paramount importance to me. And that’s why I want to make certain… we don’t… ever put ourselves in such a predicament again.” That was when he handed my shirt to me. I dutifully put it on and followed with my yoga pants. He was quick to dress, as well. All the while, a surge of disappointment crested within me.

  Once we were both dressed, he went back to rubbing my shoulders. Only, his touch wasn’t quite as good with a layer of fabric in the way. “What’s it like?” I asked, needing to break the silence that was stretching between us uncomfortably. “What’s it like on the other side?”

  He sighed and the sound was drawn out and heavy. I dreaded to hear the answer even though I’d been thinking of little else for months.

  As a witch, I’d grown up hating vampires and thinking of them as the scum of the earth. The coven viewed the undead as the worst dregs of the supernatural world. According to the coven, no one could suffer a worse fate than to become a vampire, an undead,—unless, of course, that fate was to become a Blood Witch.

  Even so, some forgotten part of me burned with curiosity to understand what being a vampire was like. Lorcan had already shown me a different side than I’d ever imagined existed in a vampire. He definitely wasn’t the scum of the earth. Rupert and the other vampires in the Seattle family weren’t, either. Some of them might have been less than exemplary representatives of the undead population, but no one could call them the ‘dregs’.

  I could think of a lot worse fates than to become like Lorcan. Even though he was an undead and a creature of the night, he’d never lost his ability to care about people. He still loved. He still protected. He still felt.

  If becoming a vampire wasn’t as bad as Mother and the coven made it out to be, why did I keep fighting it? I could think of numerous reasons to go ahead and just do it. For one thing, I wouldn’t have to deal with Hellcat anymore. As to what would happen to him? I figured he’d pack up his bags and return to Mother and wait until he was assigned to another witch. It seemed strange that he hadn’t considered the same and, in considering it, opted for it. Why wasn’t he trying to convince me to go fangy so he could return to Mother? All he did was bemoan our lives here in Haven Hollow… And yet, he’d never tried to push me in that direction. Instead, it seemed he wanted me to break the blood bond. I wasn’t sure why.

  Another positive of going vampy? I wouldn’t have to worry about Mother and the other coven witches interfering in my life any longer. I wouldn’t have to worry about Rupert coming after me, either.