“Mick, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I want it, Janet. I want you.”
When I still hesitated, Mick grabbed me, opened my lips with his, and sucked the power out of me.
I screamed against his mouth. Mick imbibed my lightning as though it were the best wine, his body hard, his whispered groans driving me crazy.
The fire tattoo on his back was hot under my touch, his body sizzling with my lightning. We risked blasting a hole in the floor and tumbling into the basement, and it was the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced. Mick laid me back down on the bed, his eyes devouring me, and he entered me in one swift thrust.
He pinned me down, my Mick who liked to play the master with me, made even more exciting because I knew he’d never, ever hurt me. He’d taught me that first night to trust him with everything I had, and the reward was pleasure I’d never dreamed existed.
Tonight bore the wild edge of danger because of the hex. Mick had been reluctant to try sex-enhanced spells, but now we tossed away caution like a used tissue and gave in to the ecstasy. This was different from spell casting—this was Mick simply driving into me, and me giving him every bit of power I had.
I met his thrusts with my body, my nails raking down his back, my cries ringing to the ceiling. Outside the storm wound up, and inside we did the same.
Mick’s eyes shone with fire. “Love you,” he grated. “Love you so much.”
The snakes and whorls of electricity slowly dimmed, Mick’s dragon magic absorbing them all. But Mick was a long way from being finished. He pinned my wrists over my head and kept going, this lovemaking session growing ever more crazy.
I think we would have gone on until we died, if the magic mirror hadn’t chosen that moment to let out a high-pitched keen. The sound spiraled up until it knifed through my head, and even Mick cursed and jammed a hand over his ear.
“What the fuck?” he snarled.
I rolled out from under Mick, and Mick landed next to me, panting, while I leaned from the bed and scrabbled for the piece of mirror in my pocket. “Hey!” I yelled at it.
The keening wound all the way down and flattened out into a word.
“Hey, you moronic piece of glass. Call Drake. Get him over here.”
The mirror kept on belting out the song from
“I don’t think it can hear you,” Mick said breathlessly.
“Damn it!” I flung the mirror into the wall. The voice dimmed somewhat but didn’t stop. I didn’t know which was worse, having the mirror dark or stuck singing show tunes.
“If he starts singing to the dragons, Drake will be out here fast enough,” Mick said. He ran a firm hand down my body. “Right now I need more.” He kissed my back. “So much more.”
It would be stupid to stay in here and have sex while Cassandra’s enemy waited for us to be at our weakest. But I willingly rolled over and drew him into my arms.
Mick had started kissing me again with hungry strokes when someone beat on the bedroom door.
“Janet,” Maya called through the wood, her agitation strong. “If you’re done screwing in there, Nash is out front. He’s with Pamela, and they’re trying to get in.”
SEVEN
I YANKED ON MY CLOTHES AND WAS ABOUT to hurry out after Maya, but Mick put his arm across the door, blocking my way. He was a big man and made a formidable barrier.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me check it out first.”
Impatiently I buttoned my jeans. “It’s Nash, Maya said. Exactly who we need.”
“
This was getting annoying. “Staying in my room won’t save me from the hex,” I said.
“Even so, wait for me to clear it before you come out.”
I wasn’t about to obey. I knew I couldn’t fight Mick, but I was small enough and swift enough to duck under him before he could grab me. I heard him growling in anger as he came after me, but this was my hotel, and I was more than ready for Mick’s alpha-dragon instincts to recede.
Someone was pounding on the front door. “Janet!” Nash called. “Open up. It’s Jones.”
As though that weren’t obvious. The blue lights of the Hopi County Sheriff’s Department SUV flared behind him, and his sheriff’s badge winked on the uniform coat he wore against the cold. Pamela, a Native American Changer in black leather pants and jacket, stood next to him in tall fury.
“Let me break it down,” we heard her say with impatience.
Cassandra pressed her hands to the window. “No, Pamela, get out of here! I don’t want you here!”
Pamela didn’t hear, and neither did Nash, nor did they see the rest of us at the windows like lizards against glass. Nash kept pounding and then trying the door handle, which wasn’t budging.
“Come on, Nash,” I whispered. “Open it.”
Nash took a step back, drew out his nine-millimeter, and shot the lock. I cringed, thinking of the Native American artisan who’d crafted the door handle and lock for me up in Santa Fe. His exquisite work was now slag with a bullet in it.
Nash and Pamela slammed against the door in unison, and the wood bulged inward. Another blow and the door splintered from the hinges. I felt the wards around the entrance crumble and die, reacting to the magic void that was Nash Jones. The curse magic that had piggybacked on them faded to nothing.
The wards in the walls were still intact, and so was the hex, but Nash was able to burst in and swing his pistol around the lobby.
He took us in: Maya, Fremont, Cassandra, me, Mick. I had no idea where Coyote had got to.
When Nash realized there was no immediate threat, he pointed the pistol at the floor. “Janet, what is this?”
Pamela rushed past him and caught Cassandra in a crushing hug, lifting her off her feet. “Are you all right, baby?”
Nash pinned me with an ice gray stare. “Ms. Grant charged into my office, insisting there was something wrong at your hotel. So what are you up to?”
Nash looked past me to the kitchen door. “You have someone back there?”
“Nash,” I said. “Touch the walls. Hurry. Please.”
Nash completely ignored me to listen, his gun held ready.
“That’s just Ansel,” Maya told him. “He started going crazy, so we locked him in the refrigerator.”
“Nash, the walls. Please!”
Nash started for the kitchen. Mick was on him before he’d gone three strides, but Nash, combat-trained, knew how to fight. He had himself out of Mick’s grip in a flash, the pistol now pointed at Mick’s head.
“I suggest you start explaining, Burns, before you spend the night in my lockup.”
“Fine by me,” I said cheerfully. “Let’s go.” Get out of cursed hotel now, finish breaking the hex later.
Coyote came bounding out of the kitchen. In his coyote form, he was the size of a large wolf, and he sprang full force onto Nash. The momentum, with an assist by Mick, carried Nash the five feet needed to land him against the lobby’s brightly painted wall.
The hotel shuddered. I screamed as I felt my wards, as infected as they were, stream from the brick and plaster into Nash’s body. I was deeply connected to the wards, and through them, to the hotel, and so was Mick.
Mick doubled over in pain, but this purging was necessary. All the wards had to go, no matter how much it hurt us. Then Mick and I would reset them, clean and free of the hex.
