Jessie sprang from her chair, unable to sit and listen any longer. Everything had changed in the blink of an eye and the surprises kept on coming. What would be next? Her big revelation? No. She couldn’t tell him, wouldn’t do that to him. Not yet. Her mind swirled with all the possibilities and implications of everything around them.
“Jessie, I know this is hard to hear. Hell, I haven’t been handling it very well myself. But something is happening here. I feel better this morning than I have since you left. Less consumed with dark thoughts and compulsive needs, at least when it comes to my magick.”
He hadn’t moved from the table, yet she felt the caress of his words sliding against her skin, like threads of silk trailing across her body. Did he understand the effect he had on her?
“We can’t do this, Noah, it’s a really bad idea.”
“What is?”
“You. Me. Us together. It will never work.”
“Why? What are you afraid of?”
She looked out over the water of the bayou, longing for the sensation of peace that she saw every time she looked out over the marsh. Even here in the quiet solitude she couldn’t escape who or what she was. A demon. Born of evil. A vessel of destruction.
As if on cue, the coil in her chest unfurled a fraction or two more.
“I’m broken, Noah.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, comforting herself. “I’m not sure if I can be fixed.”
Noah’s chair scraped against the wood of the deck as he rose, his boots pounding with each step he took towards her. He rested his hands on her shoulder and her body shuddered underneath him. “What did he do to you, Jessie? Tell me about it.”
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs, holding the air until her chest ached before exhaling with a slow hiss. “There was a ritual he performed.” She hesitated, unsure where to start or how much to tell. She didn’t want to relive the painful process again. “The night I was brought to him, a coven of witches joined him there. In order for him to steal and use my magick against my will I had to be branded.” She recalled the men who stripped her clothing and held her down as the witches chanted around her and Scott pressed the branding rod to her shoulder. The searing pain and burning flesh had made her violently ill through the entire process.
“Do you mean that figuratively?”
“No, he physically branded me. It made it easier for him to transfer my power to him for every raping after the first.”
Fury beat at Noah as he pictured her body being burned. If he’d entertained thoughts of killing his uncle before it was nothing compared to what he felt now. Darkness erupted inside him, the heat building under his skin until tiny flames licked at his veins. He lifted his hands from Jessie, not wanting to burn her.
“Where? I didn’t notice a brand.”
“My shoulder.”
“Show me.” When she didn’t move he insisted. “Please.”
Her hands moved in front of her body where he couldn’t see them to unbutton his shirt he presumed. Her shoulders lifted slightly as she allowed the left sleeve to slide partially off her shoulder. The bandage. Of course. He’d noticed it the other day and had forgotten about it in their rush to get here and then well, he just forgot.
He lifted his hands to the gauze and gently lifted the tape to reveal a section of branded skin in the process of healing. Pulling the bandage completely to the side, he made out exactly what the symbol was. A Pentacle, burned deep into her shoulder. With fire as the element he could wield, he fully understood the intense agony that kind of heat and pressure in a branding had to have cost her. But a pentacle? The irony of the whole thing was beyond twisted.
A well of protectiveness overwhelmed his thoughts as he gathered her in his arms. Before he even realized what he was doing, he bent his head and pressed his lips to the tender flesh of her injury. He had to soothe and heal them both before she got carried away with her fear and shut him out. He couldn’t let her go again.
When his lips traveled her neck and back a deep sigh vibrated under her skin, a sound that went straight to his groin. As sexy as she looked dressed in his shirt, he wanted her naked and bare to him, so he peeled the rest of the shirt from her shoulders and arms and let it fall to the ground to pool at their feet. He continued his sensual assault on her body by kissing and touching every inch of honeyed skin he could reach.
“I won’t let him hurt you again, Jessie, I promise.”
She turned in his arms and he was met with a gaze shadowed with pain. A look that would haunt him for a very long time. “Oh, Noah.” She flung her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his chest. His heart lurched at the way she clung to him as he struggled to restrain himself, but when she tilted her head to look at him once again the sheen of tears at the corners of her eyes did him in.
“Don’t cry, baby, it’s over now.” His kissed the corner of her eyes, tasting the salty wetness there, taking the tears away.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
His hands roamed down her back until his fingers massaged the soft skin of her ass. His cock beat against his zipper, needing to be buried deep inside her. Possessing her. Loving her. He pushed her back against the railing, his hard body pressed against the length of her soft, sweet skin. Heat ignited between them as his lips crushed hers, his tongue thrusting deep inside her mouth to tangle and taste every inch of her.
Jessie’s fingers dug into his shoulders and back with an almost desperate intensity, surprising him with her own need. She
