Alterant (Belador #2)(7)

She knew he wouldn’t harm her just like he knew that if he did, she’d make him pay dearly. Standing inside Storm’s personal space didn’t bother her, not really.

Not if she didn’t look at his mouth and think about how she could still feel his lips from when he’d kissed her yesterday.

“You’re running out of time, Evalle.”

Handing over control of her body—an Alterant body—to anyone with powers or majik had to be a bad idea on so many levels. She’d been forced to do this recently with a Sterling witch named Adrianna and hadn’t like that one bit.

But Storm wasn’t Adrianna.

She stepped up to him. “Let’s do it.”

His hands settled on her shoulders with a firm but gentle grip. “Shut your eyes.”

“Why can’t I watch?” Her pulse strummed wildly enough without the thought of doing this completely blind.

What if she had a reaction? What if . . .

“You’ve got twenty minutes before you have to leave for Woodruff Park if you don’t want to run, and I need eight of those to work my majik. The faster we get this done, the sooner you get moving. What’s it going to be?”

“Sure you can do this without turning me into a toad?” she grumbled.

His eyes twinkled with a smile. “If I do, I’ll kiss you and turn you into a princess.”

She had no clever comeback. The only time she’d spent with men had been fighting alongside them or battling an evil one.

Until Storm.

All her worst fears surfaced. She might snap and turn into a monster if she allowed him to do this. If that happened, she could kill him in seconds. He knew that, but he just watched her patiently with no more concern than if he faced a meter maid.

She gave up and closed her eyes.

His fingers started massaging her neck and shoulders. “This will go quicker and be easier on both of us if you don’t fight me.”

She let out a long breath and nodded her agreement.

When Storm spoke again his voice came out low and husky with words she didn’t recognize. The cadence rose and fell gently. His fingers moved in rhythm with his voice, weaving touch and sound. Her muscles surrendered every knot. His voice filled her mind and curled around her until her skin tingled as if tiny stars danced along her exposed arms. Needle-sharp points of pain and pleasure pricked her spine too quickly to be defined separately.

Vibrations from his voice smoothed out and spun into a web of sound that wrapped around and around her until she floated within a cloud of his presence . . . of him. Above the world, surrounded in a warm cocoon of his voice and scent.

Protected.

The rhythm of his words began to fade. She felt his knuckles skim her collarbone when he lifted the amulet.

Was he taking it with him after all?

“Evalle?”

She mumbled, “Huh?”

“I’m done. Open your eyes. You have to leave. The Tribunal meeting.”

Tribunal . . . gods and goddesses . . . midnight. That’s what she had to do.

She opened her eyes and realized she no longer stood an arm’s length away in front of him. He held her against his chest, rubbing her back lightly.

Heat spread from every place he touched her, warming her skin from the inside out. She shivered at the intimate feel, surprised at how much she wanted to stay here in his arms when she’d barely tolerated any touch in the past.

Was that a side effect of his majik?

What else had happened?

She pushed up from his chest and shook her head. That cleared some of the haze in her mind. When she stepped out of his arms, Evalle blinked until she could see clearly again.

Good news? She hadn’t killed Storm.

Hallelujah for that, but he studied her with worried eyes.

Not the expression she wanted to see after playing voodoo doll for him. “What’s wrong?”

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he mumbled to himself. His cell phone dinged with a text message.

She asked, “What shouldn’t have happened?”

His face closed down as tight as a bank on a holiday. “Hold on.” He looked at his cell phone. “They need me at Brookwood Station to track something.”

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what happened.”

“We’re all set. I’ll be able to find you.”

She’d held a tight leash on her anxiety for hours now and had no patience left for vague answers. “You know what? I don’t feel any different, so I doubt your witch-doctor majik took anyhow.”

That got his attention. “Oh, it took, Eve.”

“My name’s Evalle. Not Eve.” Eve meant “life” in Hebrew. What a crock, since everybody who mattered thought Alterant meant “death” in any language. Crossing her arms, she told him, “Fine. If you’re not going to tell me what’s not right, then don’t expect my help later on.”

She turned to leave.

“Wait.” He hooked his fingers around her arm, turning her back to him, then pulled her hands up to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Nothing went wrong with the majik. You have to know by now that I would never harm you.”

She wanted to think her heart beat like a jungle drum because he’d annoyed her with being evasive and not from a crazy vibration of current that jolted her when his lips touched her skin. He still had explaining to do. “So why did you say, ‘That shouldn’t have happened’?”