after both had been caught with their proverbial fingers in the cookie jar. Working a V-hub and selling vampire blood to their fellow demons. They were two stupid lunks who had needed direction and a purpose. Which he was trying to give them.
And the best way to lead was by example.
Ed thrust out some minor magic in a black curl of smoke that melted the ropes bound about the witch’s hands. “My men should not have been so cruel. I apologize.”
“Yeah? Too little, too late, buster. This is nuts!” She turned and marched out of his office, the tight skirt she wore luring his gaze to the sensual wiggle beneath the pale green fabric. Yeah, so gazing was good. Real good.
Inego and Glitch cast him wondering stares, which blew his gaze off course.
“Idiots,” Ed hissed. He strode after the pissed-off witch. What was her name? “Tamatha!”
Instead of turning right to go down the hallway to the elevator, she’d unknowingly taken a left and now stood like a captive doe before the wall where his secretary normally sat. At least the secretary was spared this scene, though. She was out having a baby demon that could very likely be born with scales, thanks to her affair with a dragon shifter.
“I’m so sorry.” Ed walked up to her and tried to put his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but she slapped at his wrists and hands. “Tamatha, please, I want to talk to you.”
“They put a freakin’ plastic bag over my head!”
He managed to pin one of her shoulders against the wall and worked to wrangle her opposite wrist, to calm her, to make her listen to him. And to be prepared should she try to fling more magic his way.
“I could have suffocated!”
Indeed, he had best give more detailed instructions next time he sent his men after such a pretty, delicate creature who— “Ouch!”
Pressing his forehead to the wall beside her head, he rode out the pain of a direct hit from her pointy-toed shoe to his shin. Damn, those things were sharp! He was probably bleeding. He didn’t want to risk looking because he still had her in a loose but compliant hold.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m not cruel. But you bring up my defensive instincts.”
When her hand stroked over his cheek and temple, a wave of strange desire shivered through his system.
“Tamatha,” he gasped. A lush tide of delicious warmth overtook his muscles and his body melted against hers. He could not...resist. “Oh, goodness and light.”
Bracketing her face with his hands, he kissed her like he’d never kissed a woman before. Sweetly. Reverently. With such a longing that it must have shown all over his skin in the shivers he felt riding the tattooed surface. Her breath spilled over his lips and entered his pores. Her aura of lemon perfume surrounded him with a sticky sweet allure.
He was falling, succumbing, slipping into a strange kind of submission...
Realizing he was once again kissing the witch, Ed abruptly broke the connection. “Ah hell.” He looked at his hands, still gently bracketing her face. And there, on her face, the glint in her eye as the curve of a smile tickled onto her perfect lips. “What did you do to me?”
“Me? You’re the one who keeps kissing me. I didn’t do a thing but get kidnapped and roughed up by your henchmen. And then you pressed me up against the wall and had your way with me.” She cast her glance aside. “Not that there was anything wrong with your way. Which is why I haven’t wielded magic against you. Yet.”
“I believe I should be thankful for that. Why is it every time I see you I want to...to...?”
“Hurt me?”
“I don’t hurt women. I just want to—” he made a motion to shove but curved his fingers away from touching her “—push you away. Witches are vile.”
“So you’ve said. Repeatedly. Great way to kill the mood, buddy.” She shoved his chest, but he didn’t step away from her.
“Yes, but if you are so repulsive, then why do I end up kissing you every time we meet?”
She tilted her head and tapped a finger on her lips. Those luscious, sweet, soft lips demanded more thorough attention. And so he would see to it they had it.
Ed again kissed her, this time pushing his hands through her hair and caressing the softness that spilled over her shoulders in waves of unnatural silver. Goddess hair, he thought. Not of this realm. He pressed his body along hers. To feel her, to take her all in...
“Ahem,” she muttered against his mouth, and he sensed her need to push him away, when all he wanted to do was get closer than close. Inside her. Intimately. Her gaze veered over his shoulder and to the door of his office.
Ed glanced around behind him. Glitch stood in the doorway, observing with a smirk and dancing gaze. The idiot didn’t need to say a thing.
What luck that the most powerful witch in Paris was also one who attracted him like no other and promised to give him dreams that would keep any sane man begging for more. She was a witch, but she wasn’t one of those nasty witches his mother had warned him about. She couldn’t be.
But then, that was the same thing he’d thought about Witch Number Two before she’d tried to enslave him.
Ed gripped Tamatha by the wrist and pulled her toward the office, but she planted her feet and tugged.
“We need to talk,” he said hastily.
“I’m not going in there with those creeps leering at me. A plastic bag,” she reiterated. “Seriously!”
Releasing his hold on the stubborn witch, Ed gestured toward the idiots. “Leave. Go do...that thing I needed you to do.”
“What thing, boss—?”
Inego shoved his partner out of the doorway. “You know, that thing. Sure, boss. We’re out of here.”
“There is no thing,” Glitch argued as they strolled down the hallway.
Exasperated by his employees’ incompetence, Ed pushed his hands over his hair, and then remembering his guest, he took a moment to vacillate on what he was about to do. Make nice. With a witch. Because he needed one.
First, he had to determine if he could trust her.
He gestured to Tamatha that she enter his office. “Please?”
With an impertinent lift of her chin, she strode through the doors, quickening her pace as she passed him and walking to the center of the black marble floor that stretched far too long to his desk. This office was too large and ostentatious, but he’d got the rental for a steal because a mass murder had taken place in it a few years ago. He had sensed the malefic vibrations in the air—and still did on occasion—and he’d had it smudged more than a few times, but that never seemed to clear the negative energies.
“I don’t know your name,” she said. “You know mine. Tamatha Bellerose.”
“Bellerose,”
