Free Blood of the Wicked by Karina Cooper Page B

against him.
    His patience snapped; a thin line between righteous fury and bitter frustration. “It will happen again, don’t you get it?” he snarled, so close to her face he could see the flecks of gold bleeding through her brown eyes.
    They shimmered in shadowed grief and fear. She froze underneath his weight, gasping for breath, face flushed. Rigid with strain.
    She was so warm, so soft in a world where he’d forgotten what soft felt like. And so angry. It wasn’t enough. She needed to understand.
    “Because it will happen again,” he repeated, quieter. Deliberately gentler. “Whoever’s calling the shots, Caleb will know. If it isn’t him, then he can lead me to the leader. Do you understand?”
    Her eyes narrowed, chest heaving with every breath. He could feel every line of her body against his own. Every furious breath pushed her breasts firmly into his chest, small and erotic and so real. Her pulse pounded in the delicate wrists he held pinned above her head, echoed in a flutter at the warm skin at the base of her throat.
    Silas was suddenly, achingly aware that she was helpless beneath him, and his body responded with a tidal wave of sudden arousal. It swamped him. Raw instinct and sexual need.
    The timing sucked. “Christ,” he grated out, and rolled off her. Landed hard on the carpet, on the photos scattered over the floor. Pain jarred through his back, his knee. His head.
    No less than he deserved.
    Throwing an arm over his eyes, he did his best to block out the haunted uncertainty of her so damn fragile face. To block out the angry, determined mask of her faith in what he knew was the only family she had left.
    Goddamned son of a bitch witch and his goddamned son of a bitch coven.
    His mouth twisted. And the goddamned son of a bitch witch’s sister was his responsibility. His civilian to protect, to use and to keep safe and to lie to, and he couldn’t keep his eyes and mind off her goddamned mouth.
    Fuck. This. Job.
    Jessie didn’t move. Didn’t sit up. He imagined her stretched full-length on the couch cushions, her dark golden hair thrown over the edge in a wave of tangled wheat, staring at him.
    She made him think of sunshine and honey, shades of warmed gold and sweetness.
    He didn’t deserve it. Any of it.
    “How do you know he’s a witch?” Her voice shook, every bit as strained as he felt. It bothered him that he wanted to find her hand and hold it.
    He wasn’t fucking built for hand holding.
    “Research shows that every witch shares a common allele in the pattern of their DNA.” Brutally Silas yanked his thoughts back to blood and bone and hollow sockets. “Your brother’s blood showed up at five locations.”
    A beat. She shifted, old springs squeaking. “Bullshit.”
    But it lacked heat. Conviction. He had her. Damn him to hell, he had her. “I can show you the workup,” he said wearily. “Don’t know if there’s a correlation between the DNA and the evil shit they do or if humans just can’t keep their goddamned hands off the magic once it’s theirs.”
    “So, what? All witches are evil?”
    Silas squeezed his eyes shut beneath the hard ridge of his forearm. “Yeah.” Blood painted the back of his eyelids. Blood and a young girl’s terrified smile. “Yeah. They always go that way.”
    She took in another deep, audible breath. Let it go slowly, and even as it trembled, all Silas could think of was honey.
    How the hell could she stay so . . . so untarnished? How could she sit there with the corpses of the dead at her feet and make him want to tell her that everything would be all right? Want to protect her?
    He didn’t know what to do with honey.
    So he poisoned it.
    “Blood tells, sunshine. It always tells. Mine, yours, a goddamned baby’s, it doesn’t matter. The allele is there. Caleb’s was there . We don’t catch him, or the people who are forcing him,” he added, knowing it for the bullshit that was, “then they’ll find and kill more innocent people.