Bewitching The Dragon. Jane Kindred
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Название: Bewitching The Dragon
Автор: Jane Kindred
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные любовные романы
isbn: 9781474063432
isbn:
Dev reached for her damp nipple, but she shoved him back and shimmied downward, swallowing his cock before he could do more than groan in surprise. Surprise was quickly supplanted by even deeper groans of pleasure as he rocked into her mouth, feeling the slippery heat of her lips and tongue sliding over him, and he came swiftly, gripping the seatback beside him with a shout as she swallowed it all.
As he lay back, his entire body going limp with release, Kylie zipped up her jacket, swinging her feet through the door he realized he hadn’t even latched, and climbed out.
Dev struggled to sit up, hampered by his state of undress and the fuzzy post-ejaculatory brain cloud. “Kylie?” The door swung shut. Dev scrambled to put himself together and crawled across the seat to open it just in time to see her fasten her helmet and swing her leg over the Nighthawk, kick-start the engine and drive away.
* * *
Halfway down Highway 89A, Ione realized she hadn’t taken the sobriety elixir. She pulled off to the side of the road and took the little vial out of her pocket, popping the cork and downing it swiftly. As soon as she had, the postmagical hangover kicked in, along with a dose of mortifying reality. Mother of God. Ione groaned into her gloved hands. What had she been thinking? At least he was only passing through and there was no chance she’d run into him again around town. Not that he’d know her if she did, but it would be awkward enough even if she was the only one aware of what they’d done together.
Mortification aside, she was no closer to exposing Carter’s sick friends. If Dev was in town to hook up with a call girl—even one of the nonmetaphysical variety—he hadn’t acted like it. She should have ignored her out-of-control hormones and stuck to the script she’d written for herself, keeping her eye out for one of the club patrons who fit the bill.
She shook off the glamour as soon as she got home, anxious to get out of her sweaty clothes and into a hot bath. Undressing while the tub filled, she paused for a moment at the sight of the ruined bra in the mirror as she drew the top over her head. The memory of how it had gotten that way sent that frisson of vibration through her once more. The touch of his mouth on hers had been like a narcotic rush, but when she’d felt his tongue on her breast, she’d nearly climaxed. And, God, what a climax that would have been. She could feel it just out of reach even now and she moaned involuntarily.
Ione touched her fingertips to her lipstick-smeared lips. She wasn’t used to seeing herself like this. Usually she cleaned up before dismissing the glamour, because it was a bit unsettling to see the remnants of another face on her actual face. It was dishonest and a sort of dissociative game she wasn’t proud of, but it was a defense mechanism she’d learned long before she’d started hunting Carter’s accomplices. Sometimes she needed the freedom to be someone else. Because Ione Carlisle did not behave like this. Couldn’t behave like this. She had to keep things together. So she’d split herself apart.
After washing off the makeup, she tossed the bra in the trash with a little growl of disappointment. It had been her favorite. Do not think about how it got that way again. But she was already thinking it as she wound her hair up into a loose bun and stepped into the fragrant, foaming bath. The water was a bit too hot, but the sting of it felt good. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the built-in headrest, Dev’s charming accent murmuring in her head. Her fingers slipped down between her legs and she indulged in a little mental replay, the stroke of her own hand making up for what he’d neglected, while hot water and patchouli-rose bubbles sloshed against her nipples as a stand-in for Dev’s sensuous mouth.
The climax made her cry out and she nearly swallowed a mouthful of bathwater and bubble bath as she slipped down the edge of the tub with the release of the tension she’d been holding in her legs. Not nearly as satisfying as actually having that sweet cock inside her, but still one heck of an orgasm.
Ione opened her eyes with a sigh and made a mental note to always carry her own condoms when she went out on a glamour bender. Even if she wasn’t planning on having sex, it was only smart.
The bath and the orgasm had made her nicely sleepy, and Ione fell into bed later without bothering to dress, snuggling under the down comforter while the light patter of autumn rain played against the roof. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and, for the first time in weeks, managed not to have a single nightmare about Carter Hamilton.
The chime of her calendar notification in the morning reminding her of the Covent summonses brought her temporarily forgotten troubles crashing back. Time to face the music.
She tried to tell herself she was just being paranoid as she stroked her razor over her legs a bit aggressively as a proxy for the source of her frustration. Though it wasn’t really paranoia when a necromancer had gone to such elaborate lengths to inveigle his way into the Covent’s midst. Carter had spent years on his deception, becoming a respected member of the Phoenix branch of the Covent. He’d come to Sedona as part of a convention of the Regional Conclave to deal with the sudden rash of lingering shades of the recent dead in the area—shades, it turned out, that Carter himself had been trapping here.
Ione let out a sharp exclamation as the razor bit into the tender flesh at her ankle. Blood dripped onto the white marble tile like garnet beads scattering from a broken rosary—blood from the veins of a demon.
That was the crux of it. Carter had targeted her because of something she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had been the last to know and the last to believe that she was a descendant of the most ancient of demons. She was a daughter of Lilith. And the Lilith blood was what Carter had coveted, the magic ingredient that would give him the power to command the dead. Phoebe had been his ultimate target, but he’d used Ione to set her up.
Despite the way they’d found out about it, Phoebe had seemed to take the news of their heritage in stride. Unlike Ione, she hadn’t spent years struggling to reconcile the practice of magic with a belief in God. But everything was easy for Phoebe. She’d walked away from the church and embraced her gift years ago without a backward glance. If you could call being a way station for the recently deceased a gift.
Ione touched her finger to one of the drops of blood on her ankle, holding the tiny red orb on her fingertip under the cool white glow of the LED bulbs around the mirror. She concentrated on the drop until nothing else existed, the convex surface glistening like a miniature crystal ball in crimson in which her reflection was inverted. An angel on the head of a pin. Or a demon.
With a murmured incantation, she set the ruby bead floating above her fingertip. It was a simple trick, one of the first she’d learned. A trick for slumber parties when she was a girl. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. She’d thought then it was her own affinity for magic that had made it come so easily to her. It was because of that affinity that she’d started on the path that had led her to the Covent.
She’d come to believe in magic as a gift, and an art to be learned, not some kind of transgressive aberration. But this tainted blood was where her magical aptitude had come from, not hours of practice and months of apprenticeship; not innate talent. Not a gift from God.
Even so, it had allowed her to do what she loved. And if the Covent was going to take that away from her, she intended to walk into the temple as Ione Carlisle, high priestess of the Sedona Coventry, with her head held high.
She dressed in a crisp, white blouse and slim-cut black pants fresh from the dry cleaner’s, topped with a black, flared, knee-length frock coat with delicate gray pinstripes. Presenting a confident, authoritative air was crucial in maintaining СКАЧАТЬ