Donna Grant: Midnight's Temptation

But Aisley wasn’t sure if Jason was really dead. She hoped he was, she prayed he was, but she never had much luck in those sorts of things.

The sound of a motorbike had her sitting up straight. Was it Phelan? She jumped up and rushed to the edge of the building to peer over the side.

Her heart hammered wildly in her chest as she searched. As soon as she found the motorbike she knew it wasn’t Phelan’s. The thread of disappointment didn’t go unnoticed by her, but she refused to acknowledge it.

She knew exactly who Phelan was. He and the other Warriors had hunted her and the other droughs with Jason. Which meant he should know who she was.

Yet he had kissed her. What a kiss it had been, too. Even two months later her lips still tingled when she thought about the masterful way he had seduced with one kiss.

What she didn’t understand is why Phelan kissed her. He’d acted as though he liked it as well. How could that be when he had to have felt her drough magic? She was the enemy.

Was he teasing her before he killed her? Aisley turned around and sat on the edge of the building with a loud exhale.

For just a moment during their kiss, she had forgotten the person she was. For the briefest second in time, she had been just a woman kissing a gorgeous man in a darkened hallway of a nightclub.

Reality had come crashing down on her all too soon. She had been given a reprieve from Jason during the battle with the Warriors, a battle in which she had left Jason to his own defenses. If he was alive, he would never forgive her. Jason’s retribution would be swift and horrible.

But neither was she about to find herself killed because she liked Phelan’s kisses.

Two different men, two different reasons, but both had her on the run.

All she could think about was saving her own hide when she should be delving into what she knew of Jason to make sure he was dead—and remained that way.

Aisley lifted her face as a gust of wind whipped through the buildings. Dark clouds, heavy with moisture had moved over the city a few hours earlier. They hid the moon from view, and it wouldn’t be long before the rain came.

The seasons were shifting, and with it the daylight hours were growing shorter. Soon, there would be just a few hours of daylight.

Everything changed. Perhaps it was time Aisley had a change as well. At dawn she would leave Scotland and travel to England.

London was big enough for her to get lost in for a while. After that, maybe Paris. And then … who knew?

Being away from the place where so much disaster had befallen her could be just what she needed to free her from the past.

Aisley stood and walked to the door she’d left ajar that would take her into the four-story building, down back stairs, and to the door whose lock she had picked to get inside.

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms when she was on the streets once again. Her head was down, but she kept her eyes open as she hurried to her car, which she parked six blocks away.

No one bothered her, thankfully. After she was in her car, she leaned her head back against the seat and let her eyes drift shut. There was time for a few hours of sleep before dawn.

She should drive now, but she was too exhausted. All she needed was a little rest. That didn’t involve dreams about Phelan kissing her, caressing her … making slow, sweet love to her.

Aisley could feel herself falling fast as sleep claimed her. She welcomed it, only to find herself jerked awake when the rain began to pelt her window with fat drops loud enough to wake the dead.

“Damn,” she murmured and blew out a frustrated breath.

Without sleep, she was cranky and her temper had a short fuse. Even when she found sleep, she woke with her body on fire, needy and aching for release from the desire that was drowning her thanks to that one damn kiss from Phelan.

She peered through the window as the rain poured in sheets too thick to see anything more than a few feet in front of her. Aisley reached for her iPod. With the earbuds secure in her ears, she selected a playlist, and then reached for the map.

Her route into England was set. She would take the M74 south out of Scotland. It was a pretty easy road, but there were others she could detour to if she needed it.

But just in case—and she learned how important a backup plan was thanks to Jason—Aisley had a second strategy. She touched her finger to the dot where Glasgow was marked on the map.

Her next option would be to take the A82 north until she reached Crianlarich where she would head west on A85 toward the coast. From there, she would get on a ferry to Ireland.

It wasn’t the best backup stratagem she had, but Jason would never expect her to go to Ireland. In order to get as far from Jason as she could, she would have to outwit him.

What if he really is dead? I could be doing this for nothing.

“But what if he’s not?” she answered her own question. “Besides, Jason won’t stay dead. He’s too evil for that.”

Jason had already begun to doubt her loyalty before the battle. As he had told her, she was expendable. If she was going to make a new life for herself, she was going to have to guarantee that Jason would never return to the land of the living.

Aisley looked at the map again. She should have already been out of Scotland, but it had taken her this long to get to all the places she’d stashed the money she’d stolen from Jason and scout to make sure the asshole wasn’t waiting for her.

Jason provided her with everything after he had welcomed her into his home. She might have been out of her mind with grief and self-loathing, but at least she had been smart enough to take what little savings she’d stolen and scatter it around Scotland.

She had called it her “Just in Case” scenario. But Aisley knew that even then she had realized going with Jason had been the wrong thing to do.

There hadn’t been much of a choice, however. Her days had been numbered, and then Jason found her and gave her a new home. Sleeping in a bed with clean linens and eating freshly cooked meals had been heavenly.

No matter how she might say he forced her to come live in his home, she had been the one to undergo the drough ceremony and give her soul to Satan.

There was nothing she could do to reverse the ceremony. Her soul was no longer her own.

A tear slipped out of her eye. Aisley held her hand out, palm up, and let her magic consume her until a ball of bright light filled her hand.

Magic swirled in a beautiful dance of light. As stunning as it was, it was black magic—evil—that allowed her to do that, not the pure magic she once had.

Aisley dropped her hand, and the magic instantly vanished.

“Aissssssley.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as the voice sounded in her head. It wasn’t the first time she had heard it. It began after she left Jason at the battle.

The voice frightened her. She could feel the malevolence of it, but what terrified her more than anything was that she didn’t know if that evil was inside her.

She briefly remembered thinking to betray Jason by contacting Satan herself and gaining more power that way. It had been a hasty thought, yet every time she heard that voice she thought of her intended duplicity to Jason.

“No,” she whispered. Then she slammed her hands on the steering wheel. “No!”

The voice retreated once more. But she knew it would return.

It always did.

Phelan stood on the street outside the hotel in the pouring rain and looked first one way, then the other. Just ten minutes before he had doubled over in the shower by the force of Aisley’s magic slamming into him.