Rhyannon Byrd - Rush of Pleasure

“I got bit,” he finally forced out in response to her question, the memory of the event clearly not a good one. Not that she had expected it to be.

“By what?”

“A bastard.”

“You kill him?” she asked, lifting her brows.

“No.” For such a simple reply, it held a wealth of emotion. Fury. Regret. Maybe even a touch of desperation.

“Weren’t fast enough?” she murmured, clucking her tongue. She was being a total bitch, but she couldn’t help it. It was as if the sight of him had cracked the cool, calm, nothing-can-hurt-me attitude she’d been hiding behind for years. With every second that went by, a little more of that fragile veneer was crumbling, leaving her feeling small and tense. She hated it. Hated that he could reduce her to this, when she was normally so good at shielding herself and keeping men in their place.

Shaking his head, he said, “Someone decided to save him before I got the chance.”

Dread spilled through her system. “Your bad guy had a guardian angel?”

“It seems that way.” Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes as he held her stare. “Wanna know her name?”

“It was a she?” The words were so soft the wind nearly carried them away, the panic in her veins burning like acid.

He nodded, and Willow could tell from the look in his ice-blue eyes that he didn’t like what he was about to do. “It was a she,” he said quietly. “A woman that I know.”

She crossed her arms tighter and ground her jaw. “I have a feeling you know a lot of women, Noah. So why should I care?”

“Because this one,” he told her, his deep voice rough with regret, “just so happened to be your sister.”

“YOU’RE WRONG! There’s not a chance in hell that Sienna would help those monsters! Not. A. Chance.”

The angry words Willow had blasted at him were still ringing in Noah’s ears as the two of them neared Jessie’s cabin. Not that he blamed her. He could understand how difficult it was for her to hear that kind of news, much less believe it. Noah had seen Sienna collaborating with the Casus on two different occasions, with his own eyes, and it was still hard to accept. It was likely impossible for Willow to reconcile the image of her lovely older sister with a woman who would align herself with someone like Anthony Calder.

What could have prompted Sienna to make such a dangerous alliance? He remembered her as a sweet, beautiful young woman who had always been kind to him. His friends, however, knew her only as the witch fouling up their plans—which was why he hadn’t risked giving this job to one of them instead.

He and Willow had wasted a good ten minutes arguing before she finally demanded that he give his bullshit version of events to Jessie herself. He’d seen the surprise in her big eyes when he hadn’t balked at the idea of facing her aunt with his claim, but had simply agreed. Surprise, and a shadow of fear at the realization that he just might be telling the truth.

As they climbed the wooden steps to Jessie’s cabin, she said, “I guess you’ve got more balls than I thought you did, to come back here this way. Jessie despises you.”

“It’s either balls … or stupidity.”

She was carefully avoiding his gaze, but he could see the corner of her mouth twitch with a tight smile. “In your case, probably both.”

Though he’d expected to be sweating bullets by the time he got to this point, standing at Jessie Broussard’s door, Noah was surprised to find that he was more concerned about the woman standing beside him than the one he would soon be facing. All he had to do was look at her, and he felt that same uncomfortable, edgy sense of need that had always spiked through him whenever she was around. A bad place to find himself in, seeing as how nothing could come of it. For one, she probably hated him as much as her aunt did. And it wasn’t like he could stick around to change her mind. Once he had the information he wanted from Jessie, he’d be gone. And the odds of him coming back were … Well, they definitely weren’t good.

The maudlin thought made him frown, and he searched his mind for a diversion. “I thought you would have moved away by now. Didn’t expect you to still be around.”

She snickered. “You mean you were hoping not to run into me.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you were thinking,” she offered in a slow drawl, finally lifting her hand to knock on the door that was painted a bright, sunny yellow. “And I’m not still around.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Only for a visit between cases.” She turned her head a little and shot him a look from beneath her thick, golden lashes. “Guess you’re just unlucky. I’m only in town to spend a few days with Jessie. The ‘no technology’ lifestyle she’s so desperately clinging to makes it difficult to stay in touch.”

“Where do you live?” he asked, surprised that she apparently no longer adhered to Jessie’s “no technology” lifestyle. He would have thought she’d be too stubborn to change. “Are you still in Louisiana?”

She rolled her eyes. “Like I’d tell you.”

Before he could respond to her smart-ass answer, the door opened and Noah found himself caught in Jessie Broussard’s dark, “witchy” stare. That was how all the local kids had described Jessie when he was growing up. Witchy eyes, witchy hair, witchy attitude. She was considered the scariest female in the state, and while Noah figured she could help him, he couldn’t help thinking the woman was probably going to make him pay for that help in blood.

Her face was remarkably unlined for her age, her nose still covered with a sprinkling of freckles. She wore a flowing green sundress, and what looked like … well, she was wearing what looked like a rabbit. On her head. A dead one, but a rabbit all the same. Or at least the animal’s skin, complete with head and eyes made of dark glass, the rabbit’s long ears hanging down the sides of her temples like some kind of macabre hair accessory. Any hopes that this particular Chastain witch would have mellowed with age had obviously been futile. She was clearly as crazy now as she always had been.

With an odd light burning in her midnight eyes, she took her time looking between him and Willow. “Noah David Winston,” she finally murmured, settling that disturbing gaze directly on his face. “To what do I owe this surprising … pleasure?”

Willow spoke in a rush, her voice strained. “Play nice, Jessie. He has information about Sienna.”

One slim white brow arched with surprise, the pale color in sharp contrast to the darkness of her eyes and the rabbit’s fur. “Does he now?”

Noah nodded his head respectfully. “It’s true, ma’am.”

“Hmm. Then I guess you should come in out of the heat,” she said, turning and heading into the shadowy recesses of the cabin.

Noah allowed Willow to go first, then followed her inside.

“Have a seat,” Jessie told him while she settled her slim frame into a wicker-back rocking chair. With a push of her bare foot, she set the rocker in motion, the steady creak of the wood seeming strangely ominous in the sunlit sitting room, where soft beams of gold poured in through the numerous windows.

Despite the unhampered wash of sunlight, the house was wonderfully cool, thanks to what must have been a kick-ass air conditioner. Noah took a seat on the edge of a small sofa, his elbows braced on his spread knees as he leaned forward and laced his fingers together. Jessie just kept staring at him, waiting for him to begin, so he finally cleared his throat and got on with it. “For about a year now, I’ve been working with the Watchmen.”