They traveled in almost virtual silence, although she could see him eye her from time to time, his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words.
Sophia felt a stupid desire to come clean and explain everything to him. Hi, I’m a witch, and I’ve cast a spell on you. When it wears off, want to go for coffee then some nookie if in fact your desire for me is real? But, oh, just so you know, it can never go any further than great sex. Even in her head it sounded crazy. No, she needed to stick to her original plan, which in just a little while would have him leave her life forever and, with the spell of forgetfulness, never even remember he’d met her. The prospect did not cheer her.
They pulled into the parking lot for the Covenhouse Inn, and suddenly Sophia, so eager to get here when she’d started her trip what seemed like ages ago, wished they’d never arrived. In a moment she would wipe Aidan’s mind clean and send him on his way. He’d go back to his life and the garage, with no memory of her. And in order to ensure he didn’t remember things she’d accidentally let slip, she couldn’t even visit him and pretend to meet him again for the first time. She lacked the skill to make her spell strong enough to withstand a test like that.
“So, how long is this convention thing going to last? Should I wait up for you?”
Sophia swallowed hard as a vision of him half-naked and lounging on white sheets filled her mind. Heat rushed through her, which made her cheeks blossom with color.
With an almost inaudible growl, he leaned over and kissed her hard.
Sophia allowed it for a moment, and the fire and urgency his lips imparted made her regret even more keenly what she had to do. She pulled back before she could change her mind. She opened the door, then turned sideways and slid out of the truck, stumbling a little as she hit the pavement. He leaned over the seat and stared down at her, questions in his eyes. This close it was an easy matter for her to mutter the words to the spell, sadness tainting the energy she formed and shaped into a pattern of forgetfulness. She flung the result at him.
His eyes widened, and in a rush she spoke. “You will forget ever meeting me. Last night after closing up, you felt an urge to go for a drive. You went farther than expected. But now you need to go home, back to your life, and forget you ever met me.” His eyes clouded with hurt, then confusion. She bit her lip in an attempt to not cry, not understanding why this affected her so. She whirled and walked away, her steps heavy and her heart a dead weight in her chest.
A part of her hoped she’d failed in her spell and that at any moment she would feel his hands on her, spinning her around to tell her magic would never make him forget. Instead, the heavy rumble of his truck engine filled the air, a sound that receded as he drove away from her.
Blinded by tears, she told herself it was for the best. A human and a witch-it would have never worked. But, oh, how I wish things could have been different.
Aidan slammed the steering wheel and cursed as he drove away from his mate. She’d rejected him. Sent him away as if he meant nothing. Could his senses be wrong? Was she not his mate? His wolf growled in his mind. No, I’m not wrong. She is mine. But what had just happened then? Did she not feel the same magnetic draw?
Too upset to pay attention to the road, he pulled over a few miles away and thought. She’d never explained why she’d gotten so upset when he’d pleasured her-a pleasure quickly disrupted. What caused her hysterics? She’d wanted his touch, there was no denying it, yet she’d acted guilty. Could she possibly have a boyfriend already back home? Aidan’s wolf side growled menacingly, angry at the thought, but the idea bothered Aidan’s human side even more. She is mine. I will allow no other to touch her.
As he let his mind work over the few facts he had, it occurred to him that she had to be single. She didn’t have the scent of another man clinging to her, and surely a lover would have kissed her goodbye. He also realized in retrospect, she hadn’t been unaffected by their parting. He’d let his hurt cloud his mind, but when he thought back on their last moment together, he could see her eyes swimming in tears.
And then he cursed himself for an idiot. Even if she didn’t have a boyfriend, it could be that her reluctance lay in another direction. Sophia didn’t know what he was. She thought him a mere human, while she was a witch. If her coven was anything like his pack, humans, especially those privy to their secrets, were more than rare. It was quite possible she’d felt like she had no choice but to send him away.
Fat chance of that. Like it or not, she was his. He’d let her have her little witchy celebration for Halloween. However, he’d be nearby, and once the gathering was done, he’d turn the tables and become the one giving the orders-and pleasure.
And somewhere in there, he’d share the truth of what he was and what she meant to him.
Chapter Five
Sophia paced her room. Her mind still spun as she waited for evening to fully fall before she descended and joined her coven sisters. She tried to regain her excitement over her first Halloween gathering as a witch. The exhilaration she’d basked in just days ago when the invitation arrived in the mail had vanished. Now, instead all she could think of was Aidan, his last look of pain carving a wound into her heart.
I knew him for only a day. Not even. How could I have come to care for him so much in such a short time? She kept wondering what she could have done differently. How she could have kept him with her? However, everything revolved back to one simple fact. He’s human, and I’m not anymore.
Sophia hadn’t even known of her witchy heritage until a few years back. Her parents had adopted her when she was still a baby, found supposedly abandoned. Her parents, her birth ones that is, remained to this day unknown to authorities.
She’d always know she wasn’t the same as others. Even as a young child, Sophia had wondered if something was wrong with her, because she’d always seen the world differently. This was a fact she learned to keep quiet about when her adopted mother dragged her to countless psychiatrists looking for a cure. She stopped telling people about how she could sometimes see colors swirling around her and touch those invisible streamers. She sealed her lips shut, not mentioning the ghosts she saw, along with other odd creatures like the gremlin that lived in her dad’s garage. Silence was preferable to the strange looks and drugs. At the late age of sixteen when she finally began her menses, her otherworldly sense went into overdrive. Sophia feigned ignorance even as her mother called in the priest to rid the house of the poltergeists-the only ghosts, though, were Sophia’s awakening power, which manifested itself in floating objects and odd incidents.
Desperate to understand what was wrong with her and reassure herself she wasn’t crazy, she went online, searching for her symptoms. She never found anything, but someone found her. Apparently, witches had embraced the technological age, because her searches sent a red flag to the mother house, and in the dark of night, Sophia suddenly found herself abducted and given a lengthy interrogation followed by a set of tasks where finally her special abilities came into play.
When they’d told her she was a full-blood witch, one whose special parents had perished, Sophia laughed. Once the shock-and mirth-wore off, she was pleased to know she was normal, for a witch at least.
Thus had begun her lessons. As an older student, she’d struggled and worked hard to catch up to those who’d grown up in the lore-the varied rules and protocols adopted to keep them safe from humans. The Salem trials, which had seen countless innocents killed, served as an example of intolerance, one which even today served as a brutal reminder that safety lay in secrecy, or so the coven thought. Personally, she thought the modern world could handle the idea of witches, but one junior witch wasn’t about to change hundreds of years of doctrine.