The Spell by Heather Killough-Walden Page B

stage – instead of staring at the bonfire like everyone else had been?
    What was going on?
    Lucas was moving on autopilot now and when he raised his hand and gently cupped the side of her face, he did so without thinking. His thumb slowly caressed the line of her cheek bone and she blinked. He could feel her shiver beneath his touch, a lithe column of trepidation and anticipation, and his own body responded in kind.
    She’s mine , he thought. It was an unbidden declaration, uncalled for and nonsensical. He’d barely met her. He knew nothing about her. Yet, logical or not, there it was – along with the crazy powerful wizard who hated him and the crowd permeated with the stench of magic and the uber-rich driver of foreign sports cars who had tried to kill him by running him off of the road last night. The world had gone to pot and made no sense any longer.
    And he wanted Danny like he’d never wanted another woman in all his life.
    Here, in this place of fire and night, she was a beacon of goodness, a port in a storm, and he was quivering beneath the weight of the gale all around him. The feel of her skin beneath his touch was doing things to him. He wanted to feel more. He needed to feel more – like a dying man crawling to an altar.
    Lucas couldn’t have stopped what happened next if he’d tried. He took her face in both of his hands and drew her closer, his hold on her inexorable, his thirst unbearable. He could smell magic everywhere – but Danny’s sweet scent licked at him, smoothed over him, and made him forget. He could hear her breathing go ragged, hear the quickening beat of her heart, and all other sound faded away.
    Danny raised her arms and pressed her hands against his chest, as if she could stay him where he was and prevent him from doing what he was going to do. But she couldn’t. Nothing could have.
    So as he leaned in and whispered her name across her lips, she closed her eyes, at once as lost in him as he was in her. Lucas moved in for the kill. He could not suppress the growl that escaped him as he claimed her lips with his own, at last tasting the sweet salvation her pouting mouth had been promising him all night.
    She was delicious. He was delirious. The essence he had scented on her from the very beginning was concentrated here, vanilla and sugar and sweet, supple satisfaction. He took all he could get, wanting more with each passing second. The fires that burned in the torches around him were spreading – he could feel them engulfing him in their heat. His cock hardened and throbbed; his grip on her tightened, and he pressed deeper, his tongue delving and licking and drinking her in.
    He forgot about the wizard and where he might have gone to. In that magical moment he couldn’t have cared, he was so spellbound.
    Danny moaned against him and his hands slipped around her neck, gripping, loosening, and moving further down. He wanted to strip her right then and there and take her in the sand. He was losing control.
    I have to get her out of here.
    With that thought, he pulled his lips from hers but retained his grip on her body, holding her fast against him. “Let me take you out of here,” he whispered, hoping she would understand what he meant – hoping as he’d never hoped for anything that she would agree.
    Danny gazed up at him, her pink, swollen lips parted, her gorgeous, strange eyes heavily lidded, her breathing quick and ragged, and Caige went a little crazy inside.
    Please, he thought, pleaded – begged.
    Danny nodded just once, and that was enough. Lucas fought the urge to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder. Instead, he grabbed her wrist in one swift, sure grip and spun her around to begin pulling her across the Festival grounds toward the parking lot and the motorcycle that waited there.
    He never noticed the other men watching them. He couldn’t sense them, couldn’t see them, couldn’t smell them. His entire world had become Danny, and he had no idea they were