My Forbidden Desire by Carolyn Jewel Page A

witch, and he felt the power in her whether she could use it or not. The Marit woman wasn’t stable. Not anymore. The talisman was fucking her up but good. She deserved what she was getting.
    For a while, he listened to Alexandrine breathe. She was a good-looking woman, and it wasn’t long before his thoughts wandered off in inappropriate directions. His body reacted predictably to the stimulus of thinking about her without her clothes. Man, he could smell her blood from here. Pulsing. Sweet with magic. She backed away from the couch and went back to her bedroom. Yeah. Run, baby, run, because he was feeling a bit frisky. Totally not down from his high. A little oneon-one with the delectable Alexandrine Marit would be a nice topper for the best evening he’d had since Carson cut him free.
    He rubbed his rib cage, but his bruises were already fading. The magehelds hadn’t put up much of a fight. Pity. Harsh’s sister was coming back. He smiled to himself. Nikodemus did the nasty with a witch. Why not him? Physically, Alexandrine Marit was his type. At this point, he thought he could put aside his feelings about witches long enough to get laid. Hell, it’d been weeks since the last time he’d done it. Didn’t want to get out of practice, did he?
    Yeah. Right. He laughed to himself. Like that would ever happen. His hatred of witches was the stuff of legend. Hell, it predated his association with Rasmus. Which was why Nikodemus let Harsh pick him for this job over Kynan or Iskander. None of them figured he’d so much as breathe near a witch unless he was planning to kill her.
    Now Alexandrine was heading this way. Given what she was, she probably knew she was safe for the present, but he flipped on the kitchen light just in case. The switch by the sink turned on a shitty fluorescent above the stove. The rest of the room stayed nice and dim. “S’okay,” he called out.
    He listened to her walk—now, why she did go back to her room, he wondered?—but stayed facing the sink in order to keep his back to the door, both hands gripping the counter because he was hyped up from the change and the fight, and he wasn’t sure what that might be doing to his eyes, let alone the rest of him. Freaking out the witch was against his instructions. He stood there at the sink while two competing instincts went to war. Kill the witch or get laid. Harsh would eviscerate him if he put so much as a pinky on her with sexual intent. Same if he killed her. Only slower and more painfully. He could handle the first. Not so much the other.
    He could smell her. Woman. Witch. Warm-blooded. And totally his type.
    This was going to be interesting.
    “Are you all right?” Alexandrine Marit asked from the doorway.
    Only the one mageheld had made it into the kitchen. And he’d cleaned up the mess downstairs. He hadn’t left any bloody footprints or anything disturbing on her clean kitchen floor. “Yeah. I’m all right.”
    She crossed to him and set his knife on the counter. “Here.”
    “Thanks.” He picked up his glass of water and turned on the tap so he’d have an excuse not to look at her.
    “Ahem.”
    “What?” Did he dare look at her? Slowly, he turned his head. He braced himself for a reaction. But she didn’t freak. Nah. She wasn’t the type, anyway. Must be his eyes were okay. She was holding out a bath towel. A fluffy pink one.
    “I don’t have a robe that will fit you.”
    “So?”
    To his surprise, she reached out and brushed his hair over his ear. He gripped the counter hard, because, man, having her touch him was giving him urges he shouldn’t be having. Her hair glinted silver in the light, and she smiled at him like she cared about his condition. “Beautiful as you are, Xia of the fantastic”—her gaze swept down and then back to his face—“eyes, we just don’t know each other well enough for you to be naked in my kitchen.”
    Just like a human to be hung up over nudity. He took the towel from her. He wasn’t