Free Wicked Enchantment by Anya Bast Page A

“I’ll let you get some sleep, Aislinn, and see you tomorrow. You’ve had a long day and you’re grieving. I don’t want to impose any longer.” He rose from the table.
    “Wait.”
    He paused.
    She smiled and pushed her index finger along the top of the smooth table. “Stay a little longer, just for a drink. I feel like I’ve treated you so badly.”
    Gabriel gazed down at the top of her head, trying to get a handle on another rush of impulse. He wanted to stay. Suddenly, he needed to stay. Stay and have that drink, lean in at some point, ease the glass from her hand, and lick the leftover droplets from her lips.
    That dark voice inside him, the incubus, whispered, You can make her want you. You can make her beg.
    He knew he could seduce her this very night if he wanted to. All he had to do was get close to her, get her to allow him to kiss her, touch her. He could make her sigh in need for his body, whimper in desire. If only he could get his lips and hands on her. His cock stiffened at the thought and he had to grip the edge of the table to keep from trying it all on her right this very moment.
    Gods, he was beginning to want this woman so very badly. He was starting to lose control and he never did that. This woman was dangerous to him, dangerous ambrosia. At some point the lure would become too strong and he would sample her.
    But it was too early.
    It wasn’t just her body he was trying to seduce, although that would definitely be part of it. He had to seduce her heart and mind, too. That was the tricky part and the thing he had so little practice in—no practice, to be truthful.
    Even though he fumbled in the face of developing this deeper relationship with her, he knew he had to take this slowly. He had to wait. He had to allow her to come to him. She needed to warm to him a bit more, open to him more.
    He simply needed more from her.
    Once she took the bait, then he could set the hook.
    Even though it killed him to do it, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “No, you need to go to bed, Aislinn. I don’t want to keep you up any longer. Tomorrow night we can have a drink.”
    She smiled. “All right.”
    Tomorrow night they would have that drink, and hopefully a little more.

FIVE
     
     
     
     
    GIDEON watched at least twenty black vultures circle the spires of the church near the spindly and reaching white branches of the tree the birds roosted in. This place was a famous roost for vultures, and watchers came from all over to see them. The place where the birds rested their heads at night was above the Church of Labrai’s cemetery, very fitting . . . for a nightmare.
    His gaze listed to the left, the way it always did, toward the massive wall that separated Piefferburg from humanity. Spanning hundreds of miles in diameter, to the Atlantic on both ends, and sunken twenty feet into the earth, those massive walls weren’t what kept the fae in. That work was done by the invisible warding that the Phaendir reinforced day and night, keeping the evil contained and away from the rest of the populace of the earth. He and his people made such huge sacrifices for humans, but did they appreciate it? No. They only took their efforts for granted.
    Labrai, the one and true God, would smite them all when he came down to punish the sinners, the magicked, and the nonbelievers. Then the Phaendir would be raised up to the heavens and rewarded for their toil and hardships.
    He moved his hand, allowing the light yellow curtain of his office in the Phaendir’s headquarters to fall back in place, showing black shapes circling lazily in a piss-colored sky.
    “Brother Gideon.”
    He turned to find the tall, black-haired figure of Brother Maddoc, his boss, standing in the doorway. “Yes, Brother Maddoc?”
    “I had a report that you’d made some cell phone calls into Piefferburg. They were magick-laced?” Brother Maddoc’s eyes were narrowed.
    They were always at odds, he and Maddoc. They wanted different