Wicked Enchantment by Anya Bast

scarred back. Blood flowed ichorlike and hot down his skin, trickled down his back, trailed over his buttocks and in between his thighs. The scent of coppery heat filled the small space.
    His eyeballs rolled back into his head as the pain entered the place between discomfort and pleasure, a sweet hot edge he walked every day. His voice droned out of him with the sure rhythm of words written into his soul and uttered five hundred times a day.
    My burning desire is relentless.
It cannot be controlled.
Use me, Labrai. Control me.
Break me down and re-create me in Your reflection.
Make me worthy to be Your vessel.
Make my hands to do Your work.
Help me cleanse the world of evil.
Help me cleanse the world of the fae.
    GABRIEL was standing too close to Aislinn in the crush. So close she could smell his skin. So close the heat of him radiated from his body and warmed her. Gods, so close it was making her lightheaded.
    No . She couldn’t do this, couldn’t think these things.
    She closed her eyes for a moment and searched for a handle on her reactions. She was not going to do this. She was not . Not with this man. Because whether or not he believed his natural form of magick was a burden, he was still sex on legs and a natural womanizer. He was the last man on earth she needed to feel even a flicker of an attraction for right now. No matter whether it was artificial or not.
    Carina had cornered her as soon as she’d walked into the banquet with Gabriel at her side. As he’d located their seats in the massive Seelie Court dining room, Carina had pulled Aislinn aside and placed a very bad little bug in her ear.
    “Don’t feel bad if you end up sleeping with him,” she’d whispered. “Think of him as your rebound man. I’m sure Gabriel wouldn’t mind being used. That’s sort of his job, isn’t it? At the very least, he’s hardly looking for a commitment, right?”
    It was the same thing a tiny—very tiny—dark voice in the back of her brain had been whispering to her since last night. Although not quite in those terms. It was a little brutal to assume that Gabriel was some sort of natural whore that any woman could use and then toss away like a Kleenex. She didn’t think of anyone in such cavalier terms.
    Yet there was a part of her, a portion of her mind she tried to keep under lock and key, that wondered how Gabriel might be in bed—a man that old, that experienced, and with the magick inherent to his kind. It was the completely sexual part of her, the totally female part who noticed a man like Gabriel.
    After all, she was a healthy woman. Any healthy woman would notice him.
    Not even the weight of the prophetic dream she’d had seemed to be putting a damper on her attraction to him. She’d tried to talk sense into her libido several times. Gabriel was the man who would be the catalyst of her death. According to her dream, he wouldn’t directly be the cause of it, but he would inadvertently have a major hand in bringing it about.
    There was no denying fate. Aislinn believed that. Even if she cut and ran now, tried as hard as she could to distance herself from the catalyst, fate would have its way with her.
    Aislinn hoped that she’d misinterpreted the dream somehow. Death was a symbol for change. Danu , even Gabriel had said as much at dinner. So perhaps Gabriel would be the catalyst for change in her life and not death in the literal sense. Dreams did use symbols, after all.
    And the hands? Those grasping, pulling hands, drowning her in the lake of death? Well, okay, she hadn’t found a palatable explanation for that yet.
    After Carina had voiced Aislinn’s own thoughts—in a harsher way—back at her, her friend had ensured Aislinn was seated next to Gabriel. They’d eaten dinner. Aislinn had done her duty, introducing him to all her friends, her mother, and her mother’s friends. Her mother had regarded Gabriel like he was a bug, but Gabriel hadn’t seemed to care.
    Now dinner was over and the music had