Visions of Chains Read online

  Finn carried her to the bed and dropped her onto the mattress. He paused only long enough to wave one hand across the doorway, putting up a magical shield that ensured their privacy before turning back to look at Deidre. Her blond hair spilled out around her on the midnight blue duvet and looked like spun gold dust. She licked her lips in anticipation and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Lifting her hips, she rocked with an internal need only he could fulfill and Finn didn’t want to waste another moment.

  He snapped his fingers and his clothes were gone in a wink. She frowned up at him. “When do I learn how to do that?”

  “You already know how.”

  “If I did, I’d be naked,” she pointed out.

  “Draw on your magic,” he ordered and heard the tautness in his own voice.

  She licked her lips. “How?”

  “Think yourself naked.”

  Deidre laughed and the sound filled the crystal-studded room, rippling off the walls to slap back at him with a brush of something almost tender. But he didn’t want tender. He just wanted.

  Steeling himself, he fisted his hands at his sides and silently told his dick to hold on a damn minute. He watched her as she closed her eyes, concentrated, and a moment later, he smiled at her glorious nudity.

  “Hah! I did it!” Immensely pleased with herself, Deidre slid her hands up and down her naked body, as if assuring herself that it had actually worked.

  Watching her touch herself was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. Her palms scooped up over her abdomen and to her breasts and everything in Finn stilled. She must have sensed what he was feeling because she immediately shifted the movement of her hands into something slow and seductive. Smiling up at him, she wriggled farther back on the huge bed and cupped her own breasts, thumbs and forefingers tweaking at her nipples.

  Finn swallowed hard, but couldn’t look away. Those luscious breasts with their rigid pink tips were calling to him—but watching her caress them was mesmerizing. She arched her back and sighed and he gritted his teeth in response.

  Over the last few days, Deidre had surprised him with her blatant sexuality. Now that they had made their deal, to avoid Mating but open her memories with sex magic, she had thrown herself into it with staggering enthusiasm.

  She was open and eager to try anything and when they came together, every time it rocked his world. She was tormenting him and loving it. And she was damn good at it, too.

  “Pleasure yourself,” he said, those two words grinding out of his throat roughly as if they’d scraped across broken glass. “I want to watch you.”

  The scent of cinnamon thickened in the air as her witch power gathered inside her and spilled from her every pore. Every time they came together her power grew. It was a heady aroma, enough to make Finn nearly groan with need.

  “Then watch me,” she whispered with a smile. Parting her legs, she braced her feet on the bed. Lazily, she slid her right hand down the length of her body until she reached the thatch of blond curls at the juncture of her thighs. Finn hissed in a breath and held it as she dipped her fingers lower, lower. She dropped her left hand down to her center as well, holding herself open for her own touch.

  Then finally, she stroked her core and her hips lifted off the bed in response. She tipped her head back into the mattress and sighed as she smoothed the tip of one finger across the swollen bud at her center. He swayed in place and his dick turned to concrete.

  “It feels good,” she whispered, opening her eyes to meet his gaze, “but it’s much better with you.”

  Finn willed himself to stay in place. As if there was a chain around him, holding him to that one spot. His dick ached like nothing he’d ever felt before and everything in him demanded that he take her. Take her now. But damned if he wanted this to end just yet.

  “More,” he ground out, silently congratulating himself on getting his voice to work at all.

  “No,” she said, “now I want you.” She rolled over onto her stomach and nearly purred as the cool slide of the silk hit her heated skin.

  Damn. He muffled the groan building in his throat as he watched her go up on her knees and wiggle that beautiful behind at him. Deidre looked back at him through a fall of golden hair and whispered, “I want you, Finn. I want you so badly . . .”

  “Enough.” He practically jumped onto the bed, kneeled behind her and shoved his body deep into hers.

  That first, incredible stroke fired them both. She moaned and the soft sounds spilling from her enflamed him. He took her hard and fast, his hips pistoning against hers. She moved into him, arching her back, working her hips, all to take him deeper, higher. There were no soft, languorous touches. No gentle words or slow, mesmerizing foreplay. There was only hunger and the urge to feed it. It was frantic, frenzied and powerful.

  They moved in tandem, each of them knowing what the other needed, wanted.

  Magic pulsed in the air around them, a froth of power that spilled over their bodies and slipped into their souls. The crystals on the walls hummed louder in reaction. Power sang through Finn’s veins and he knew Deidre was feeling it as well. Sex magic was practically devouring them and he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to Mate with her. To feel the burn of the tattoo at the moment of release.

  Then Deidre groaned again, grabbed hold of the duvet and held on and Finn stopped thinking. Their combined gasps and sighs filled the quiet air of the chamber as they propelled each other to the staggering climax they knew was waiting for them.

  Deidre crested first. She shouted his name and Finn felt her muscles contract around him and that was enough to push him over the edge. He emptied himself into her with a taut groan, and when it was at last finished, Finn lay down on the bed and pulled her in beside him.

  Tucking her close, he wrapped his arms around her and listened to her soft, easy breaths as she dropped into sleep, her head on his chest. He snapped his fingers again and the torchlight winked out.

  Then Finn lay quietly in the darkness, feeling the beat of her heart echo within his empty chest.

  Chapter 24

  “Is it day or night?” Deidre asked several days later, sliding the steel of a sharpening rod along the edge of a dagger. The ring of metal whispered rhythmically as she worked. Funny, she thought, how accustomed to this life she already was. Two weeks ago, she wouldn’t have had a clue how to freshen the edge on a dagger. Now . . .

  “Day,” Shauna told her with a half grin. “You should know since you spent all of last night lighting up Finn’s world.”

  Deidre stopped what she was doing and the sudden silence in the room was startling. Appalled, she just stared at her friend. “Excuse me?”

  “What?” Shauna laughed, then winced as her injured shoulder gave a twinge. “You think just because your chamber is far away from the rest of us we don’t hear anything? Hello? Shrieks of joy carry and tunnels make excellent echo chambers.”

  “Fabulous.” Now that she knew people could hear her having sex, Deidre would be more careful about— Oh, no she wouldn’t, she thought wryly. What she’d have to do is remember to stuff a pillow over her face or something to muffle her shouts. Because there was no way she could control herself when Finn was touching her. He was like a match to her stick of dynamite and when the two of them came together, it was beyond explosive.

  She smiled a little in memory of just how many “explosions” she’d had the night before.

  “Okay, now I’m jealous,” Shauna muttered. “That smile on your face is really making me miss Max.”

  Deidre grinned. “Sorry. Well, sort of,” she added, unrepentant. “How is Max?”

  Shauna’s boyfriend, Max, owned a local gym and looked like an advertisement for clean living and weight lifting. The man’s only indulgence was a once-daily latte, which is how he had met Shauna in the first place. They’
d been together nearly a year and the shine in her friend’s eyes told Deidre that the spark between them was still going strong.

  “Fine, I guess,” Shauna told her with a little sigh. “I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks. He was on a business trip the week before we made that raid on the jail and since then, I’ve been kind of . . .” She shrugged, then winced again. “I can’t go see him until this wound is healed, though, so I’ve been doing healing spells every night trying to speed things along—”

  “I can help if you want.” Not that she knew what to do, but Deidre figured she should learn as much about magic as she possibly could.

  Shauna grinned. “That’d be great, thanks. We can do a spell when we’ve finished cleaning the weapons.”

  Deidre looked around the well-stocked armory. “That could take a while.”

  “We don’t have to do them all. Just the ones most recently used.” She looked down the barrel of the sawed-off shotgun she had been working on and nodded, pleased.

  “Does Max know you’re a witch?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled a little, dipping her head as if suddenly shy, which was so not like Shauna at all. “He saw me using magic once—stupid, really. Lighting candles before our dinner date. He got there early and—” She shrugged. “At first, I was freaked, but Max was great. Said he loved a powerful woman and it gave him a charge, knowing that I was a witch. He’s kept my secret all this time.”

  What would that be like? Deidre wondered. To have someone know you for who and what you really were and love you anyway? She’d never really had that, she realized. Even her mother’s love came with conditions. That Deidre be the “good” daughter. Funny, but since being trapped in the tunnels, Deidre had been more “free” than she ever had been in her life before. No one down here had expectations of her. In fact, most of them still didn’t like or trust her. But she didn’t have to put on a show in the tunnels. She didn’t have to worry about everything she said. Down here, she was just one more refugee from the city above.

  Except to Finn, of course. To Finn, she was still a means to an end. He was using her, yes. But Deidre was fair enough to admit that she was using him, too.

  Shauna sighed again, laid the clean gun across her lap and said, “I really need to see Max soon. I’m starting to crave him, if you know what I mean. And never mind. You do know.” Smiling, she snapped the now clean shotgun closed, laid it down and reached for the next weapon on her to-be-cleaned list. Expertly, she ejected the clip of an automatic pistol, then began breaking it down and laying the pieces out on a clean cloth.

  “Not easy being a prisoner and cut off from everyone, is it?” Deidre asked, only half joking.

  “You’re not a prisoner, Dee.” Shauna stopped what she was doing to look at her. “And neither am I. It’s just . . . safer down here right now. For me, there’s the whole bullet wound in my shoulder thing that I can’t explain. I don’t want Max knowing that I was on that raid. Too much information will just be dangerous for him. For you, the whole damn world is on the lookout for you. Hell, I can’t even go back to my job at Starbucks—everyone knows you and I were together the night you ‘disappeared.’”

  Guilt gnawed at her. For the last few days, all Deidre had been able to think was how much all of this had changed her life. How much was being asked of her. Not once had she thought about the ramifications for everyone else in these tunnels. Not even her best friend. “Oh, Shauna. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. This is more important than stirring up a Frappuccino for morning commuters.” She sighed and looked down, the sharp movement sending the silver hoops at her ears into a wild swing. She dutifully went back to disassembling the pistol and while she worked, she added, “I do miss Max, though. That man can do things with his mouth that should probably be illegal.”

  “Okay, too much information,” Deidre told her.

  Shauna laughed. “I had Marco send him a message today, letting him know that I’m all right and that I’ll meet him at ‘our’ spot this weekend.”

  “Will you be healed enough by then?”

  “If you help I will be,” she said, wiggling both eyebrows.

  “Good.” Deidre tested the edge of the dagger. It was sharp enough, so she picked up another and began running the sharpening steel across it. “So, where’s ‘your’ spot?”

  Shauna started cleaning the barrel of the pistol. “It’s this sweet little Victorian B and B in Foggy Bottom.”

  Deidre frowned. Foggy Bottom was a historical neighborhood west of downtown DC. Close to the river, the area got its nickname from the fog and industrial smoke that gathered there. George Washington University took up most of that quadrant of the city, along with expensive private homes, a few select B and Bs and the Kennedy Center. Not to mention the State Department, and the infamous Watergate complex.

  And then there was the fact that Foggy Bottom was way too close to the rest of the government offices—including the White House itself and the Bureau of Witchcraft.

  “Shauna, are you nuts?” Deidre stared at her, openmouthed. “Half the government is over there.”

  She laughed. “Relax, Dee. This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Foggy Bottom to meet Max.”

  “It’s the first time since you and I have been on the news. You just said that the whole world’s looking for me!”

  “Yeah,” Shauna said. “For you. Dee, honestly. No one’s going to pay attention to me unless I’m with you.”

  Deidre didn’t like it, but didn’t know how she could convince her friend not to go, either. “You’re taking a big risk, Shauna. What if you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not. But I’m not stupid, either, so don’t worry.” Shauna winked at her. “Dee, I’ve been doing this a long time, hiding from cops, feds and anyone else who might want to lock me up or hunt me down. I’m careful, believe me. I’ll wear a wig, change up my look. No one will recognize me.”

  Deidre had a bad feeling about this. But then, she’d had a bad feeling for days. “Finn’s okay with this?”

  Shauna looked at her and the smile was gone. “He’s not my king, Dee. I don’t have to ask permission.”

  Deidre wasn’t fooled. Finn was too powerful a presence to this group. Their loyalties were all so tangled together, not one of them would do anything that might remotely put the others in danger. Especially since they had all been hurt by Tony’s betrayal.

  “But you asked anyway.”

  “Okay yeah. Fine,” Shauna admitted with a short laugh. “I checked it out with him first, since things are so hairy around here right now. But he’s good with it. As long as I’m careful and keep to the tunnels for traveling.”

  Deidre still wasn’t happy about this. Going into the heart of the government for a quickie seemed like a really bad idea. She looked up at the rock ceiling overhead and thought about the world above. “Where are we right now? I mean, what’s topside from here?”

  Shauna looked up too, as if she could see the city beyond the tunnels. “The armory is under Madison and Fourteenth Street. Close to the Natural History Museum and the Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

  “And very close to the White House,” Deidre murmured. Her thoughts were racing. She’d had no idea where in the city she actually was. Finn had told her that these tunnels stretched out for miles, running the length and breadth of the city above. His band of guerrillas knew their way around of course, but as far as Deidre knew, she could have been on Mars. Now that she knew exactly where she was though, she couldn’t help wondering if she could somehow sneak in to see her mother.

  Shauna looked at her. “Don’t get any ideas about running home to Mama. Finn would never go for that and Dee, it would be stupid along monumental proportions.”

  “Probably,” she admitted, though she felt a pang of regret. She knew her mother was in a bad spot. And after all of the years of bei
ng the daughter who never made waves—creating this tsunami was really starting to bother her.

  “Definitely,” Shauna said, her features grim, her eyes narrowed.

  “I know, okay?” Irritation trumped guilt. “I just don’t like putting my mom in this position.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  They worked in tense silence for a couple of minutes; then Deidre did an abrupt subject change and asked, “How do you keep the days and nights separate down here? After all this time in the tunnels, I feel like a vampire—” She stopped and asked, “Do vampires exist? Finn says werewolves do, but—”

  “I’ve never met a vampire,” Shauna told her with a shrug as she ran the cleaning rag through the barrel of another sawed-off shotgun. “But if they are real, I hope they’re not pretty-white-boy-sparkly-Twilight vamps with bad hair. Give me an Angel,” she said dreamily. “Or even better . . . Spike.”

  “Agreed,” Deidre said with a laugh.

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Just how many supernaturals out there are biding their time, waiting to see how it goes for witches before they announce their presence.”

  Deidre thought about that for a second, then shivered. “If that’s what they’re waiting for, I’m guessing they won’t be coming out of hiding anytime soon.”

  “True.” Shauna’s voice dropped several notches. “Ten years in the open and witches are an endangered species.” She took a breath and said, “Speaking of that, let’s see it.”

  The high-pitched ring of steel on steel halted abruptly when Deidre stopped running the sharpening rod over a dagger’s edge. She looked over at Shauna, who was watching her with keen interest. “See what?”

  “The Mating tattoo,” her friend said as if Deidre was crazy. “You’ve been with Finn for days and even though your chamber’s plenty far from the rest of us, I know what’s going on. So let’s see it.”