I blinked at her reaction but murmured a word, waved a hand, and snuffed out the candles, and the circle’s continuity with them. Only the candles on my worktable still lit the lab with a low glow.
Lara stepped carefully out of the circle, murmured, “We’ll talk soon,” without meeting my eyes, and turned to climb up the stepladder, openthe trapdoor, and leave the lab. Her footsteps hurried down the hallway above as she…
She fled.
I stared after her for a long while.
What the hell?
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
I went to bed and crashed, exhausted from the energy work, but my mind refused to settle, and I lay there in one of those dozes that drifts freely from thought to dream and back.
Lara’s departure had been, frankly, entirely uncharacteristic of her. You could call Lara Raith a lot of names, butcowardwasn’t one of them. Yet at the end of the spell, she’d skedaddled like a cat at a dog show. The look on her face had been as closed as she could manage, but there’d been complicated expressions on it, going by quickly. When she had realized that she was trapped in the circle, it had been something very close to controlled panic.
My mind treated me to the image of her writhing and arching in pleasure as long as we were reviewing Lara. And Hell’s bells. Even though my mind had been shielded from influence and even though the greater circle had contained her Hunger’s power, just looking at her could have gotten to me in dangerous ways that had little to do with the supernatural and everything to do with primal, fundamental nature.
And, my body reminded me, there’d been very little in the way of fundamental nature in my life lately.
It was far, far too easy to picture things going a different way. Like, maybe if I’d been in the circle with Lara. Sexuality could readily become a source of power and a theater of magical focus, all at once. I mean, sure, standing a safe distance away and projecting energy worked, but if it had been closer…more intimate…
I tossed and turned. I tried thinking about baseball, but that just meant that imagined-Lara was wearing a Cubs hat and nothing else. I could all but feel her slim, strong, deliciously feminine weight settling over my hips. Her cold, pale hands on my chest. Her hair brushing my face as she leaned down, a shivering exhalation tickling my neck.
“Finally,” Mab breathed into my ear. “Well done, my Knight.”
Panic shot through me like a bolt of frozen lightning.
I opened my eyes and found the Queen of Air and Darkness straddling my hips. She was wearing a glacial-green gown, off the shoulder, its skirts hiked up around pale, lovely thighs. Her snow-colored hair was down in waves, her eyes bright and electric green, and the look on her face was one of pure, sensual satisfaction.
The Winter mantle howled for release.
“Um,” I said.
It was an awkward sort of conversation to be having with your boss. In my present circumstances, extremely so.
Mab smiled down at me benignly.
It was terrifying.
“What did I do?” I asked carefully.
“You have delivered unto me the White Court, of course,” Mab murmured. “I cannot think of a Winter Knight who has brought me a finer conquest.” She gave me a thoughtful look, and suddenly my body was aflame. I had gone to sleep naked. And she wasn’t wearing anything under the gown. I could feel. “Such service demands a reward. What do you desire, my Knight?”
I blinked several times, juggling confusion with…some kind of incipient sexual berserker state.
When Mab had taken me as Winter Knight, in a ritual where she’d infused me with the power of the Winter mantle, we’d had sex. I mean, technically, Tab A, Slot B, it had been the act. But with Mab, sex wasn’t a storm of passion. It was more like a nation-wrecking, topography-altering hurricane that changes names on maps. Honestly, I couldn’t remember much, and I think my sanity was probably safer that way. The idea of more of the same didn’t make me excited—it made me flinch from the thought.
(I mean, sure, my body had other ideas, but bodies aren’t to be trusted with such choices.)
I swallowed until I got some spit back in my mouth, fighting to think clearly. “Before I answer,” I said. “I want to ask questions.”
Mab’s smirk was slow and wicked. “Wizards.” She settled back slightly. I might have jumped a little. “Ask.”
“What do you mean I’ve given you the White Court?” I said carefully.
She tilted her head. “Had you not considered the outcome of your”—her mouth quirked at the corners—“activities with Ms. Raith?”
