Ascension Read online

  Her corset skimmed her stomach just above her navel, leaving it on display. The memories became clearer, until he could almost taste her. She had sweet skin, warm and like honey. He loved the smell of her and the way she would react when he ran his tongue around her navel, occasionally dipping the tip of it in to tease her. He loved the way she would arch into him when he travelled lower and the way her hands would come down to guide him, to push him onwards and tangle in his hair, as though he needed any encouragement. He never did.

  Taig tried to move into a more comfortable position without her noticing as his body reacted but she turned and looked at him, her grey gaze penetrating his.

  He raised his eyebrows and slumped into the seat, bringing his leg up with some effort and resting a heavy boot against her newly dented dashboard.

  “Are we there yet?” He smirked, gunning for his usual self and all the while struggling to hold back the grimace as his black jeans bit into his groin.

  Lealandra rolled her eyes and then pointed a little off to the right. A tall glass and metal building stood there. Not quite a skyscraper but it dwarfed the surrounding older buildings. He had never been to this city’s coven but he knew it had a vast number of members. There were at least twenty storeys on the building and it was wide. He figured it housed around seven hundred witches.

  That was six hundred and ninety nine more than he was comfortable with.

  The human in him didn’t give a damn about witches. The demon in him said to get out of the car now, while it was still in motion, and get the hell away from such a place. He was tempted to do just that but Lealandra’s hand softly came to rest on his knee. The warmth of her seeped through his jeans. His gaze tracked up her pale arm to her face.

  “I won’t let them near you,” she said in a mocking tone, as though he was a small child frightened of a fairytale big bad wolf.

  Taig pushed her hand away and pressed the sole of his boot against her dashboard, glaring at the building. He cursed her for being able to catch enough of his emotions to know that he didn’t want to go into the coven and damned her for daring to make him sound as though he needed her protection. She knew him better than that.

  He wasn’t the child.

  He was the wolf.

  Dropping his foot to the floor of the car, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. His lips lingered against her warm skin, barely touching her, and he breathed her in as he spoke.

  “Don’t fret, sweet cheeks, I can handle myself.” He grinned and swept a lone finger across her lower lip. They parted for him, a sigh escaping her as her eyelids dropped. “Just like I can handle you… I knew you’d come back to me.”

  She slapped his hand away and her eyes snapped open.

  “I’m not back, Taig.” Her tone was blacker than his heart. “Remember that.”

  Taig grinned at her and pressed one more kiss to her shoulder before leaning back in the seat and resting his hands behind his head.

  “I’ll remember it… and I’ll remind you of it when you’re crying out my name and begging me to never let you go.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Lealandra yanked the steering wheel hard to the right and slammed her foot down on the brake pedal. The car jerked to a halt. She shot Taig a glare that she hoped contained every ounce of irritation and anger that was pounding through her just in case he couldn’t already sense it. She really needed to find a way to get him to take the money because he seemed dead set on getting his price for his services rather than hers, and, now that she had a little more control over herself, she didn’t want to go there.

  Taig raked his fingers through his hair, tousling the messy black threads, and smirked.

  Not that he wasn’t attractive or she didn’t want him.

  But she wasn’t about to pay for his help with her body. If he wanted her back, then he could work for it. It wasn’t as though he had put up much of a fight when she had left him. He had to prove that he still wanted her. Not just this casual flirting. Really prove it.

  The corners of his lips lifted, narrowing his fathomless black eyes and turning his expression warm. She cursed him. He knew what he was up to, knew the right faces to pull to make him look his best, knew the right smile to use on her—the one that made her weak at the knees and made her want to kiss him.

  Damn him back to Hell.

  He really was the Devil.

  “Lead me not into temptation,” Lealandra muttered beneath her breath and put the car into park. She gave him a hard look. He wasn’t going to affect her with just a smile. Not this time. She had grown up in their time apart and wasn’t about to fall at his feet as she had then. There were more important things than sex right now.

  Although sex did sound good.

  Taig’s smile widened a little more, heading for full meltdown mode. She yanked the keys out of the ignition and shoved the door open. The bastard was trying to get her flustered. It was bad enough that she had to come back to this place and back to that apartment. She couldn’t walk in there reeking of desire, not bare weeks after Charlie’s death. Isabelle would never forgive her.

  “We can walk from here.” Lealandra needed the time to get herself together again. Just one smile from Taig had undone all the hard work she had put in during the drive. She’d had her desire back under control. Now her heart was fluttering and her body was calling out for his touch. Damn him. She slid out of the car and slammed the door.

  Her fingers shook as she smoothed her skirt down, cursing Taig all the while. Perhaps she had made a mistake in asking him for help. She had laid low for as long as she could but the ascension was getting closer and she needed to end this before it hit her. She needed someone to help her through it. Taig was the only person who could do both of those things and she knew he wouldn’t let her down. For all his bravado, he had a good heart and he cared about her.

  And regardless of what he thought, she cared about him.

  She only wished that he had been willing to see that all those years ago.

  Stubborn bastard.

  The sound of the car door shutting jerked her out of her thoughts and she found that she was smiling. It seemed like forever since she had smiled. She looked across the roof of the car at Taig, knowing he was the reason behind it. He always had been stubborn. It was one of the things that she loved about him.

  His black eyes held hers, sparkling in the strange mixture of streetlight and moonlight. The intensity of his gaze sent a shiver of awareness through her followed by a glimmer of his feelings, only she couldn’t read them and she wished she could. It had never bothered her before that he was difficult to read. But then, she had never felt unsure of his feelings, or his motivations, not as she did now.

  “I’ll lead.” Taig stomped off ahead and stopped a few metres along the pavement. The white streetlights barely lit the dank world but she could see him well enough. The look in his eyes had changed to one she could recognise and read. His patience was wearing thin and he wanted this over with.

  Lealandra locked the car and followed him. She wanted it over with too.

  The moment she reached him, he walked on, jamming his hands into his jeans pockets. He was an imposing figure at the best of times. At the worst of them, like right now, he screamed danger. He hunched up his broad shoulders and glared at the coven building ahead of them. Her magic responded to his surge in anger and tension, feeding off the increase in power it triggered within him. She took a small step closer to him, wanting her magic to absorb his power. It had always calmed hers. A Counter-Balance took a fraction of the stronger witch’s power, lowering it and giving them more control. Taig’s power did the opposite. It fed hers and soothed it. It was as though her magic knew he was stronger and obeyed his power because of it. Charlie’s effect on her had never been as potent as Taig’s was. Taig could make her feel human.

  She only wished she could do the same for him.

  Sometimes, when they had been together, she’d had the impression that being human was w
hat he wanted most. She didn’t understand why. He was powerful, handsome and intelligent—three things that meant he could do anything he wanted and be anything he wanted. Yet, he didn’t seem to want anything other than being normal.

  She had been normal once, before her magic had found her and she had become a witch like her parents. It wasn’t anything to write home about. She was happier now than she ever had been then.

  Taig glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, removed his hands from his pockets and rolled his shoulders. His aura spoke of irritation laced with anger and his gaze fixed on the coven building. Hers traced his profile, following the defined line of his square jaw over his kissable lips, up his straight nose to the black eyes that made her tremble whenever she looked into them. He was one hundred percent gorgeous.

  She just wished he was one hundred percent hers.

  In all their time together, she had been aware of his distance, of the fact that he was holding back for some reason. He had never given all of himself to her. It was only towards the end of their relationship that she had realised that underneath the layers of confidence and strength beat the heart of a human.

  A human who had fears just like any other.

  She should have told him everything that she had planned to that night. Maybe then they would have remained together and she wouldn’t have drifted through the past six years of her life thinking about him but denying her feelings for him.

  The coven building loomed ahead and the focus of her magic shifted to it. The gathering of witches in this city was strong. Their leader saw to that. Gregori was a force to be reckoned with and had been in charge of the coven for almost twenty years. For a witch his age, that was incredible. He had taken control of the coven at the tender age of twenty six, the same age she had been when she had left Taig to join the coven. She couldn’t imagine being responsible for so many witches at that age. But then, Gregori had powerful allies in his supreme mages. Both men were older than he was and bore magic almost as strong as his. There wasn’t another coven on the planet that commanded the power that hers did.

  And that frightened her for some reason.

  Lealandra had thought it would be a good place, one where she could learn and feed her magic, satisfying its needs and becoming one with it. Instead, she had found an archaic society in which they gave every member a position and made them work to achieve a better one. Many saw it as pitting one witch against the other, promoting the strongest and those most willing to do whatever it took to reach a higher rank.

  Did that include killing other witches?

  She didn’t know the answer to that question and, deep in her heart, she didn’t want to. She just wanted to get her things and get away. Her original vision of a harmonious society, a place much like her old coven out in the New York state countryside, had shattered barely weeks after accepting Charlie as her Counter-Balance. Charlie and Isabelle had made her stay. They, like many others, had been too afraid to leave. They followed Gregori without question and bought into everything he told them about how their coven was leading the world of witches into a new glorious age. Magic had been around for millennia, passing from one witch to another, evolving and growing, lending them strength. It wasn’t their power to abuse and use for their own good. It was a symbiotic being that they should work in harmony with and not use to rule others. Her world and the demon one could co-exist.

  Lealandra glanced at Taig. Most witches would have her head for thinking such a thing, but she believed in her heart that the long feud between their kind, the deep hatred and distrust, was responsible for poisoning their minds and that they could get along if they tried to see past the bloody history between them and look to the future instead.

  “Where’s your apartment?” Taig said, his gaze sliding to briefly touch hers.

  Lealandra pointed. “Twelfth floor on the east side.”

  “Can we get there without causing trouble?”

  Lealandra stopped and stared at her apartment window, aware of what he was really asking. Trouble for Taig was all out war. Taking a demon into a building full of witches was a risky move. She didn’t want to see her friends at the coven hurt but she wouldn’t go in without Taig. If anyone tried to intervene, she would handle it. If she couldn’t, she would let Taig do things his way.

  Not that she would be able to stop him anyway.

  She started when his hand slipped into hers, their fingers interlocking briefly before his shifted again to a less intimate hold. His skin was cool against hers, barely warm. That had never frightened her, not even the first time they had kissed. Before then, she hadn’t realised that demons didn’t have body heat in the way a human did. She smiled. Taig had told her that night that his father had been a cold bastard. She didn’t believe that for a second. Not the way that Taig had meant it. His skin might have been cold, but she was sure that he had loved his wife and his son.

  Taig’s black eyes met hers and he paused, his widening slightly as he studied hers.

  Lealandra hesitated a moment and then stepped closer. She didn’t know what to say to him. How could she make him understand everything she felt right now and back then? He needed to know, to hear it, but her tongue became tangled on the words and she couldn’t get them out.

  Before she could speak, Taig’s hand snaked around the back of her neck, sending sparks of electricity leaping across her skin. He drew her closer. She could only stare into his eyes as he slanted his head and brought his mouth down to meet hers. His cool lips captured hers in a kiss that was nothing like she had expected. It was slow and soft, an almost tender exploration that warmed her from the depths of her heart out to the tips of her fingers. She leaned in for more, eager to take all she could of this elusive side of him. Taig didn’t do gentle. He had never kissed her like this before.

  As though he loved her.

  Her eyes slipped shut and she pressed her hands against his broad chest, steadying herself as she tiptoed towards him and feeling his firm muscles beneath his black shirt. He slid his other arm around her waist and splayed his hand against her lower back. His lips caressed hers in mesmerising waves that washed away all reasonable thought. She pushed her hands upwards to his shoulders and tilted her head, beginning to kiss him with more heart, and more heat. The moment she did, he stepped back, breaking away from her.

  She found him smiling at her when she opened her eyes.

  She smiled back.

  “One heck of a good luck kiss you have there,” he said and her cheeks coloured. His smile became a smirk and his tone darkened. “Did you kiss Loverboy like that?”

  Lealandra slapped his left cheek, hard enough that his head snapped to one side and his eyes closed. His jaw tensed, the muscle pronouncing itself as his nostrils flared, and he rolled his neck.

  “You dare!” She shoved his shoulder and he placed one foot back, bracing himself, and glared at her. “You don’t know anything, Taig. Don’t act like you do.”

  With a huff, she stormed towards the coven building, leaving him behind. He would follow. He wouldn’t let her walk away, not as he had done all those years ago. Her heart thumped in her throat. Damn him. Why did he have to spoil a perfectly nice kiss, one she had actually been enjoying?

  He wasn’t going to let things go and she wished that he would. Contrary to Taig’s belief, Charlie had only been her Counter-Balance. She had never kissed him or intimately touched him the whole time that they had been partners. Her heart and body had pined for Taig all the time they had been apart. She had denied it, had blocked it out, but looking back now she could see it was the truth. She hadn’t stopped thinking about him or wanting him.

  Tonight had been divine. It had been wrong of her to kiss him but she wouldn’t change what had happened for anything. The smooth but dominant glide of his lips over hers, the aggressive thrust of his tongue into her mouth, and the rough grip of his hands had been heaven, but it had come with a price. It had awoken her hunger for him and every minute she passed in his pres
ence, it became harder to ignore her desires. Now he had upped the game. A single soft kiss had been enough to melt her reserve towards him, stripping away one of the barriers around her heart and leaving her open to him.

  Vulnerable.

  His words had hurt but not as much as the belief that she had felt in them. He really did think that she had been intimate with Charlie. She didn’t know whether to laugh at him for that or slap him again. Her heart had been too full of him for her to care about anyone else. Her feelings for Taig hadn’t changed in the slightest.

  Taig fell into step beside her and she resisted the temptation to look at him. She didn’t want to play his game. The rules were in his favour and his victory assured. That victory would only hurt her more than leaving him had and that pain had lingered the whole time she was away from him.

  A ripple of awareness ran through her when she pushed open the glass double doors and walked into the brightly lit foyer of the coven building. It was Taig’s power spiking, not hers. She could feel him more clearly when he was like this—alert, on edge, ready for a fight. Something about it had always triggered a reaction in her and made her conscious of his strength and his hidden power, of his demonic side.

  That awareness stole her breath and brought her body alive with desire.

  She had been with him when he was like this, had made out with him in not too savoury places because of the way it made her feel, and it had been nothing short of Heaven. The dominance and possession that laced his actions, the way that he held her as though he would never let her go, heightened everything and stripped her of her inhibitions.

  But not tonight.