My Forbidden Desire

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Carolyn Jewel

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

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  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: June 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55192-2

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” HE ASKED.

  She brought his wrist to her lips and gently, slowly touched her tongue to it. The taste exploded in her mouth. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this shivering of connection through her, pulling her deeper into Xia’s mind, into the center of his magic. When she lifted her head, she had trouble getting her bearings. She sat on her haunches, trying to make the room stop spinning. Xia steadied her.

  “I hate witches,” he said. His hand, big and warm and more than capable of killing, followed the upward indentation of her spine. He brought her head to his and kissed her, hard, and Alexandrine returned his kiss with unrestrained passion. With one quick motion, he grabbed the top of her shirt and pulled at the buttons until they came free…

  “Dark and sexy, MY FORBIDDEN DESIRE is a must-read for anyone who loves their romance honed to a dangerous edge. Carolyn Jewel’s heroes are walking towers of sin—hot enough to make you shiver, so wicked you’ll be screaming for more.”

  —Meljean Brook author of Demon Bound

  Also by Carolyn Jewel

  My Wicked Enemy

  Acknowledgments

  Calling out to the usual crew: Megan Frampton for reading my stuff before it’s fully cooked. Thank you very much for that. My son comes in for his share of appreciation, too. You’re a good kid, Nathaniel. Just remember, being taller than your mom means you are now the chief lightbulb changer. Consider this the official passing on of the stepladder. I love you. To my sister Marguerite for being everyone’s Rite (she knows what that means) and to my parents for everything. Thanks are due to my wise editor, Michele Bidelspach. A saint, I tell you, with great insights. And to my wonderful agent, Kristin Nelson, for all her support and assistance. A very big thank-you indeed.

  Glossary

  blood-twin: A bonded pair of fiends who share a permanent magical connection. They may be biologically related and same sex. Antisocial and prone to psychosis.

  copa: A plant derivative of a yellow-ochre color when processed. Has a mild psychotropic effect on the kin who use it for relaxation. On mages, the drug increases magical abilities and is highly addictive.

  cracking (a talisman): A mage or witch may crack open a talisman in order to absorb the life force within and magically prolong his or her life. Requires a sacrificial murder.

  demon: Any of a number of shape-shifting magical beings whose chief characteristic is, as far as the magekind are concerned, the ability to possess and control a human.

  fiend: A subspecies of demon. Before relations with the magekind exploded into war, they frequently bonded with the magekind.

  kin: What fiends collectively call each other. Socially divided into various factions seeking power over other Warlord-led factions. The kin connect with other kin via psychic links, often collectively. They typically possess multiple physical forms, at least one of which is recognizably human.

  mage: A male who possesses magic. A sorcerer. See also magekind.

  mageheld: A fiend or other demon who is under the complete control of a magekind.

  magekind: Humans who possess magic. The magekind arose to protect vanilla humans from the depredations of demons, a very real threat.

  sever: The act of removing a mageheld from the control of a mage or witch, through the use of magic.

  talisman: A usually small object into which a mage has enclosed the life force of a fiend, typically against the fiend’s will. A talisman confers additional magical power to the mage who has it. Sometimes requires an additional sacrifice. See also cracking (a talisman).

  vanilla: A human with no magic or, pejoratively, one of the magekind with little power.

  warlord: A fiend who leads some number of other fiends who have sworn fealty. Usually a natural leader possessing far more magic than others of the kin.

  witch: A human female who possesses magic. A sorceress. See also magekind.

  Chapter 1

  An icy sensation prickled across the back of Alexandrine Marit’s neck and raised gooseflesh on her arms. The significance of that ripple of cold should have penetrated, but she was distracted and not thinking clearly. Instead of doing something, she just stayed on her couch and looked around for an open window while absently rubbing her prickling skin. Her crappy apartment wasn’t big, so that took all of two seconds. No open windows.

  The reason she was distracted was right smack in front of her. Harsh Marit. Dr. Harsh Marit, actually. She’d spent the last ten years of her life believing her brother was dead. Only guess what? He wasn’t. He’d just taken a call on his cell and was now standing with his back three-quarters toward her. Like that was going to make it harder for her to overhear.

  She totally wasn’t over the shock of him being here. Alive. She still had the shakes. Her emotions continued to seesaw between elation and disbelief, interspersed with a humiliating urge to cry. While he was on the phone, an iPhone for crying out loud, she was trying to calm herself down and not succeeding.

  “Yes,” he said into his phone.

  The chill hit again, rolling along the surface of her skin. She resettled herself on the couch and put on one of those I-am-politely-not-listening faces. Of course, she heard every word her brother said. But Harsh wasn’t doing much talking. He was listening mostly.

  He kept talking and listening on his iPhone. The talking part he carried out in a low voice: very cryptic because, doh, she was sitting right there with functioning ears. He did the listening intently. She got another prickly roll along the back of her neck and up and down her arms. This time—third time being the charm?—she realized her goose-pimply skin had nothing to do with an open window somewhere in her apartment or with being stunned to have her brother here.

  Her reaction was something else entirely.

  Alexandrine’s stomach fell to her toes. Why now? Like she didn’t have enough on her mind already.

  Harsh glanced at her once while
he talked into his phone, and the odd prickling along her arms stopped, as did her feeling of uneasiness. That was strange. Her premonitions didn’t usually come and go. They were unpredictable as hell, but when she had one, her physical reactions remained until the situation resolved itself. One way or another. So the fact that she now felt perfectly normal made her wonder if she’d gotten it wrong.

  Her brother went back to listening, and her goose bumps returned, crawling along her arms to the nape of her neck and down her spine. The back of her head felt cold. From the inside. Which pretty much cinched things. No mistake. Something bad was coming her way.

  “Fine,” Harsh said into the phone. He disconnected his call and for about ten long seconds stared at the icons on the phone’s screen. God, that phone was gorgeous. The chill in her head didn’t go away. In fact, it got worse.

  Oh, shit, she thought.

  One time, several years ago, when she was a teenager and still living at home, she’d spent several minutes talking with an older guy who had seemed perfectly normal. But as they talked—and admittedly, she’d been using half her brain to decide whether she wanted to flirt with him, which was probably why she’d missed the signs at the outset—she’d met his gaze, and whoa. One look into the guy’s eyes and she’d just known. Rock solid: He wants to kill me.

  That time she’d had all the symptoms at once. He was trolling for a kill, and if she didn’t leave—now—she’d be next. So she’d left. Pronto. Two days later, a girl’s body turned up about a block from where she’d met the guy, with all the usual media hoo-ha over women killed in brutal fashion. Nothing happened, though, because the murdered girl was a runaway and poor and turning tricks to support a habit. For three weeks afterward, she’d had nightmares about would have happened to her if she hadn’t lit out.

  Premonitions were her thing. If there was anything reliable about her limited ability to use magic, that was it. Some things she just knew. It wasn’t any big deal to look into someone’s eyes and realize sanity was lacking. Any loser with half the empathy doled out to regular folks could do that. Her premonitions started out with prickling skin and an uneasiness that curled into her gut. And then sooner or later, she’d know she had to do something. Like don’t go to the store after all. Or don’t take the shortcut.

  Now, just like that day with the killer and a dozen times since, Alexandrine knew something bad was going to happen and that the bad thing involved her. Always did with her premonitions. Harsh Marit was back from the dead, and her life was facing a bifurcation. Go one way and she was dead. Go the other way, she stayed alive. A binary set of possibilities. Zero or one. How she would get to the point where she knew which way was dead and which way wasn’t was anybody’s guess. This wasn’t one of the more useful that-guy’s-looking-to-kill-me kind of premonitions where her course of action was perfectly clear.

  Something bad was going to happen. But she didn’t know what. Not yet. She didn’t even know if Harsh, specifically, was involved or if it would happen today or a week from today.

  “Alexandrine,” Harsh said. Like her, he was adopted, so they weren’t genetically related and didn’t look anything alike. He was tall, dark, and exotically handsome, and she was tall, platinum-blond, and probably a little above average in the looks department. She and Harsh might not have a blood relation, but everything else that mattered said they were brother and sister. They’d lived enough years in the same household that she loved him like the big brother he was. That hadn’t changed even if he had let her think he was dead all this time. Harsh tucked his phone into his front pocket. “I’m sorry about that.”

  She tried not to let her awareness show, but it wasn’t easy, and from the look in his eyes, she wondered if he sensed on some level how she’d gone cold inside. She was practically shivering from it. She didn’t think he was the reason she was freaking out like this. But she’d bet real money he was the catalyst for whatever was coming at her. The question right now was whether her brother had any idea what she was. If he didn’t, she’d really prefer to reveal that later. Much, much later. If ever. Preferably never.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Harsh said.

  “Like what?” The icy chill in her head went off again, but it wasn’t bad. Just enough to know the choice was still out there.

  “Does it matter?” he asked. His shoulders tensed up.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it does.”

  “Don’t be difficult about this, Alexandrine. I don’t have time to explain.” His eyes went hard. “Just do it, all right?”

  “Just do it?” she said. “Who the hell you think you are? ‘Just do it.’ ” Actually, that was a pretty good question. Who the hell was he? Didn’t every adopted person eventually ask that question? She had.

  Harsh folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t look like he’d been dead at any point during the last ten years. Ergo, he must have been alive the entire time, including all those times she was crying about losing him. Which, come to think of it, kind of pissed her off.

  “I’m your brother,” he said. The set of his mouth softened, but his eyes stayed hard, and that was downright creepy. “What else could I be, Alexandrine?”

  The question was softly put, even fondly. But she didn’t doubt there was more to his question. She wished Maddy were here. Maddy would know what to do. More importantly, Maddy would probably know what not to do. Her best friend knew a hell of a lot more about this stuff than Alexandrine did.

  The security doorbell buzzed and shocked the hell out of her, because she thought it didn’t work. They both looked in the direction of her door. Then his phone went off. Again. This ringtone was a series of sonar pings.

  “Don’t answer, Harsh.” She knew him. He was her big brother, and she just couldn’t believe he’d hurt her. If he was here to kill her, her premonition would almost certainly have been more specific. Wouldn’t it? It was also possible, she had to concede, that her premonition had nothing to do with Harsh. This could be one big coincidence. Only, she didn’t think so. “Please, don’t. Just this once.”

  “I have to.” He slid the phone out of his pocket, touched the screen, and said, “Five minutes.” Then he touched the screen again, looked straight at her, and said, “I am your brother, Alexandrine. Nothing has changed that.” He met her gaze straight on. “Nothing.”

  “My brother,” she said as he touched the iPhone again. Another series of icons appeared on the screen. “Right. My brother.” All of a sudden, she felt like she was six instead of twenty-six with all the emotional maturity that implied. She tried to get a handle on herself, but so far her evening had been a bit too stressful for that.

  “Alexandrine…” He gripped his phone. Hard. “I’m not here to hurt you. You have to believe that.”

  She did believe that. She really did. “Where have you been all this time?” she asked. He didn’t answer. “Mom and Dad had a service for you. It was nice. Very refined. You would have liked it. Lots of crying. Tears. Emotion.” At the time, Alexandrine had been, what, barely sixteen? The age of attitude. With a capital A. But she sure as heck remembered missing her only brother. After the police decided he must be dead, even without a body, their lives just… stopped. Losing Harsh like that broke the family into little tiny pieces. None of them had ever really recovered.

  “I’m sure it was very nice,” Harsh said in a voice that was just a little too flat.

  Alexandrine jabbed a hand in his direction. Since she’d know if she was in immediate danger from him, she decided they ought to get on with the surface business of him reappearing in her life. “You can’t just drop back in without a word of explanation.”

  He sighed, but when he spoke, his eyes were just as hard as before. “I’m trying to save your life, Alexandrine.”

  “You’re about ten years too late to be saving me, Harsh.” Wow. That came out a lot more accusatory than she’d intended. But, then, she was upset. And unnerved.

  “Full credit for surviving,” he said.<
br />
  “No thanks to you.”

  His eyes went far away. About a million miles. He hadn’t told her yet where he’d been all these years. Why not?

  The last time she’d seen her brother, he’d been wearing a suit and tie, and his hair had been short and neat. Ten years ago, he’d had a beeper surgically attached to his waist, and the damn thing used to go off all the time. Now? The professional look of the newly minted doctor of medicine was gone in favor of some kind of uncool grunge look. He wore faded jeans, a ripped T-shirt, and battered leather work boots. They didn’t fit like they were his. His hair was down to his shoulders, and judging from the size of his arms, he’d been spending quality time in the weight room. Harsh had never been a gym rat. What new doctor had time for that? He’d barely had time for a kid sister once he went off to California.

  Someone knocked on her door. Loudly. She lived in a crappy apartment building with broken security, so it wasn’t any surprise that someone could get upstairs without getting buzzed in. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, though, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was startled or if it had something to do with her premonition. For the count of three, she and Harsh stared at each other. Interesting. He didn’t ask if she was expecting anyone. And he didn’t look surprised.

  His iPhone did its sonar ping again. Harsh looked to see who was calling, and, boy, did she get a flashback. Thirteenth birthday. Beeper going off. Beloved older brother visiting from Harvard Med—it wasn’t far, the Marit family lived in Brookline—leaving the party before the cake was out. Again.

  “Just like old times, isn’t it?” she said under her breath. Except not, because in the intervening years, Harsh had apparently turned into something scary. Different from what she’d become. Louder, she said, “Save me from what?”

  He touched the phone’s screen and told the caller, “Not now.” Then he hung up. She got the feeling he wanted to shake the gadget. He didn’t. Harsh had always been in control of himself. He looked at her and said, “From yourself.”