straddling her thighs to keep her from turning him into a eunuch. “You have been found guilty of—”
He closed his eyes instinctively as her hand flashed toward him, catching him on the cheek in an openhanded, stinging slap. By the time he focused again, she held a short but wickedly sharp blade in each hand, one pointed at his groin, the other against his throat.
He froze, and his eyebrows rose. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” That was an understatement. The woman had deflected his power with a skill he hadn’t seen before, and now had him at a slight disadvantage. Only slight, though. He outweighed, outmuscled and outpowered her. If outpowered was a thing.
“This is a little extreme for some coins, don’t you think?” she panted up at him.
He frowned. “What?” Coins? What? The memory of her victim, the man in the alley with the X carved in his flesh...the draining of his blood. The blade in his chest...he didn’t recall seeing any money. What the hell did all that have to do with coins?
“What the hell do the Ancestors have against the nulls?” she demanded.
His frown deepened. What the—? He was having trouble keeping up with the conversation. And why were they even having this conversation? Was she completely mad? Did she seriously not comprehend the damage she’d done—to an innocent, to the balance of nature itself? He’d never really had a witch withstand justice before, at least, not long enough to challenge the Ancestors. The blade at his neck pressed against his skin just a little harder.
“Get off me. Now.” Her blue eyes glared at him, and her slightly lopsided mouth formed a tight pout. Her hair hung in a tangled curtain behind her, dark and wet and...okay, maybe a little bit more than mildly sexy. She was attractive, slim yet curvy beneath him. Her cotton top clung to the wet triangles of her red bikini, and despite the toned strength of her arms and the thighs he straddled, she still had a softness about her that would have had him buying her a drink in a bar under different circumstances. Very different. Like, without the execution directive.
Maybe that was one of the reasons this woman was so damn dangerous. She looked like some sexy beach goddess, but he’d seen the blade in the man’s heart, the carving on his wrist, and...ugh. His eyes flicked to those pouty little lips. She’d drunk his blood. She’d killed a human. And it hadn’t been in self-defense. It hadn’t been to protect others. It had been calculated and cruel. It was intentional harm to an innocent, to the personal benefit of the witch. He had no idea why she’d killed the man, or why she’d murdered in the manner she had, but he was the enforcer, his authority was recognized by Reform society and by the witch population. No matter how damn smoking hot sexy the witch was, she’d committed a crime against nature, against all of witchery, and she had to be punished.
He held up his hands, palms out, in a nonthreatening manner as he rose. She shuffled out from beneath him, her daggers still held in a guarded, defensive position. He eyed her outfit. Loose sleeves, loose skirt—where the hell had she hidden those blades?
He let her back up a little. She thought she now had the upper hand. She was so wrong, but for now he’d let her go with it.
“This is not fair,” she hissed at him as she took another step backward.
His eyebrows rose. “Not fair? Do you think I haven’t heard that before?”
She shook her head, frowning at him. “What I did—sure, some might consider it a crime, but I was doing it for the greater good.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before, too.”
“Damn it, I mean it. There was no harm done!”
“No harm?” he repeated, incredulous. His brows dipped. “Are you kidding me? You think that what you did was harmless?”
“I was doing a service for the community,” she snapped back at him.
“A service.” His lips tightened, and he had to look away for a brief moment. Her words sparked a flare of anger in him that he didn’t normally let himself feel. “You want to talk service? I live my life in service, and what you did—” he wagged a finger at her. “You should be ashamed. You’ve brought darkness to all of witchery for your actions.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Darkness? To all of witchery? Wow. They’ve really set the bar low, then, haven’t they? What I did, and how it affects others, should have no bearing whatsoever on all of witchery. For the Ancestors to call upon the Witch Hunter over such a trifling matter—that’s extreme.”
He gaped at her. She talked about murder so callously, as though it was of such little consequence. He couldn’t begin to imagine the damage this woman could do if she wasn’t stopped.
He took a step forward, and she shifted, angling the blades toward him. “I can defend every damn thing I’ve done,” she said in a low voice.
Disappointment, hot and sickening, roiled through him. “You defend the indefensible,” he said. “And for that, the Ancestors call you to—”
He dived for her, thigh muscles bunching as he launched himself at her. He caught her hands and raised them above her head as he tackled her to the ground. Her breath left her in a grunt as she hit the sand. He spread his body over hers, using his weight to anchor her beneath him.
That’s when it hit him. It was as though their powers met and coalesced in a sensory explosion. Her scent, salty and sweet, clouded his mind, as though blanketing him in an awareness of the woman beneath him. Her hair, wet and dark, still showed the odd strand of burnished gold. Her skin, smooth and warm, her eyes so blue and stormy, and her mouth—a delicate, lopsided pout that drew his attention.
For a moment, they both halted, staring at each other. Her mouth opened, and her expression showed her confusion, her surprise. His gaze dropped down to her lips, and he could hear his heartbeat throbbing in his ears—or was it her heartbeat? He couldn’t tell. He lifted his stare to hers, dazed. He blinked—and time snapped its fingers, speeding up through the last few moments, folding itself over so that he felt a little unbalanced, a little bereft and a whole lot shaken.
She was supposed to be a hit, damn it. As though she was also catching up to speed—or perhaps she hadn’t felt whatever the hell that was—the woman beneath him frowned up at him and started to struggle again.
She was surprisingly strong, and tried to free her arms, those blades glinting in the light from the setting sun. His grasp tightened on her wrists until she whimpered slightly and released her hold on the short daggers.
He stared down at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes bright with outrage and perhaps a tiny bit of fear. Her chest was heaving beneath his, her breasts brushing against his pecs. His legs were tangled with hers, and as his gaze drifted down her body, he saw the fabric of her skirt had hiked up in the struggle, revealing a shapely calf and toned thigh. He’d have to be a dead man not to find the woman attractive, and it was with a heavy heart that he returned his gaze to hers.
She was young. Passionate. Highly skilled. What a waste of a witch. She could have done so much good, and yet she’d acted against nature, against humanity—the vulnerable people they were charged to protect from the shadow breeds.
“Please, don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“I have to,” he told her quietly. “This brings me no joy.”
Her
