Tricky witch, Ripley thought with reluctant admiration. She’d always been tricky. “I wasn’t that mad.”
“Yes, you were,” Zack commented, and settled down again. “You really hate being called a coward or stupid. She did both. And all you did was pull her hair.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Close enough.” Zack took his wife’s hand, studied his sister. “There are two things you’re not, Rip. You’re not a coward and you’re not stupid. Everyone in this room can handle themselves. I don’t know as much about all this as the rest of you, but I know you. And it’s time you stopped thinking everything hinges on you. Nobody’s alone here.”
“I couldn’t stand to hurt you, to be responsible for it. I couldn’t live with it. Mom and Dad, Nell. Answer me this,” she demanded, turning back to Mia. “And no bullshit. What if I leave the island, if I pack up, get on the ferry, and just don’t come back? Could it break the chain?”
“You already know the answer. But why don’t we ask Mac to give it? This is his field, as an academic, an observer, and someone who has done considerable research into such matters. Your objective opinion, Dr. Booke?”
“The island itself has power. In sort of a holding pattern until it’s stirred up or applied.”
“Then if I leave it, I take away my, what, conduit to it? Can I do that?”
“On some level, yes, but that would only decrease, potentially decrease, your personal focus of energy. It wouldn’t change a thing. I’m sorry. Where you go isn’t the point. What you do is.”
He could see she wasn’t satisfied, so he spread his hands and tried to explain his theory. “Okay. If, for the purposes of this discussion, we take legend as fact, you’ll have a choice to make. Something to do or not to do. You’re here.”
He used a napkin as the island, placed three olives on it. Then he plucked one olive up and set it on a tray. “You leave. All you do is change the location of the choice, the act, the restraint. Wherever you go, the four elements exist. You can’t defy basic natural law. What you are doesn’t change, and what you do carries back—by earth, air, fire, water.”
He jabbed a fingertip onto the napkin. “Right back to the source. Inevitably. Staying is your only logical choice. You’re stronger here, and the three of you together make the difference.”
“He’s right.” Nell spoke and brought Ripley’s attention around. “We’ve already changed the pattern once. We’re three, when before there were only two left. Without you and Mia, without you,” she said to Zack, “there would only be two now. Their circle was broken by this point. Ours isn’t.”
“But it is rusty,” Mia said and chose another cube of cheese. “You’ll need to get back in shape, Deputy.”
Ripley snagged an olive, popped it into her mouth. “The hell I will.”
Fourteen
“How about, fortonight, you turn those things off?”
Ripley stood on the threshold of the yellow cottage. She wasn’t willing to go in and have a bunch of damn machines start scanning her, not after the evening she’d had.
“Sure.” Mac slipped by her, set down his equipment bag, then began shutting down.
He hadn’t expected her to come back with him. Though she didn’t look it, he imagined she was tired. Or at the least had had enough of people in general. Perhaps him in particular.
She’d bounced back, that was certain. Back to trading sharp little barbs with Mia, to behaving as if what had happened in the clearing had been nothing major.
It was an unbelievable shield that she hefted, he thought. Nearly as impressive as the one that had kept him out of the circle in the clearing. He wondered just how vulnerable she felt when her grip on that shield slipped.
“You want to sit?” he asked when she stepped inside and shut the door. “Or just go to bed?”
“Well, that’s cutting to the chase.”
His color rose. “I didn’t mean sex. I thought you might want some sleep.”
She saw now that was exactly what he’d meant. Yeah, he was a damn sweetie all right, she decided, and prowled what she could of the room. “It’s a little early to bunk down. I thought you had stuff you wanted to talk to me about.”
“I do. I didn’t figure you’d be up for it tonight.”
“I’m not tired. It doesn’t work that way.”
“How . . . Here, let me take your jacket.”
She stepped back before he could, and shrugged out of it herself. “If I know you’re thinking the question, you might as well ask it. How does it work? I feel like I’ve got a tanker load of caffeine in my system. Energized,” she continued, crossing to him to give him a quick, firm shove. “Edgy.” And another. “So yeah, I want to go to bed.” The last shove pushed him through th
e bedroom doorway. “And nobody’s going to sleep.”
“Okay, then. Why don’t we just—”
She shoved him again, then slapped on the lights. “I don’t want conversation, and I don’t want the dark.”
“Right.” For some reason he felt as if he’d just opened the door to a very hungry she-wolf. Her eyes were different. Greener, sharper. Predatory. His blood began to pump, quickly, helplessly. “I’ll just . . . close these curtains.”
“Leave them.”
“Ripley.” His laugh was a little strangled. “We’re pretty isolated, but nonetheless, with the lights on—”
“Leave them.” She yanked her sweater off in one quick move. “If you like that shirt, you’d better strip it off, and now. Otherwise, it’s toast.”
“You know”—he let out a breath, tried to work up an easy smile—“you’re scaring me.”
“Good. Be afraid.”
She leaped at him, knocking him back on the bed. Hunching over him like a sleek cat. She made some primitive sound in her throat as she bared her teeth. Then set them on his neck.
“Christ!” He went hard as rock.
“I want it fast,” she panted, tearing open his shirt. “And rough. And now.”
He reached for her, but she fisted her hands in his hair, yanked, then ravished his mouth. The sheer heat of her seared through him, scorching the nerves, stealing the breath, boiling the blood.
He spiraled down into the dark where pain and pleasure were twins, equally vital, equally irresistible. In response, the animal inside him lunged, straining at the end of its tether. Snapping it.
His body reared up beneath hers, and his hands were hard and bruising as they tore, and took. He yanked her hair, dragging her head back to expose her throat for his teeth.
It wasn’t desperation that filled him. But appetite.
They rolled over the bed, fighting for more flesh, more heat.
She was alive with need, and all of it feral. Energy pumped through her, and all of it savage. Her nails raked at him, her teeth nipped. And when his fingers drove into her, her cry was one of fierce and greedy triumph.
Higher, was all she could think. Faster. She wanted peak after violent peak. Lights danced in her mind, a blinding silver shower. And the storm that fueled them, fueled her.
She slithered over him like a snake, straddled him. And filled herself.
It was like being consumed. Devoured whole. She closed over him like a fist, trapping him in hot, wet heat, holding him there by the power of her own climax. Staggered, he watched it rip through her, watched her body, pearled with sweat, bow back. And shudder, shudder.
And she began to move. Lightning fast. Her hair fell forward, a tangle of dense brown, as she leaned down, chewed restlessly on his bottom lip.
He pistoned himself into her, hard, fast strokes while his hands gripped her hips like a vise.
Then she leaned back, rode him ruthlessly to the barbed edge of peak.
“Not yet. Not yet,” she panted.
Even as his vision blurred, as his system strained toward that blessed release, she lifted her arms above her head, as she had done when she’d called her power. He felt the shock of it, like a red-tipped arrow through the haze of mad pleasure. Clean, sharp, and stunning as it pierced through her, and into him.