Morana. F**king Morana, here, with his family, in his sister?s house. Eva had been talking about her new friend for months. His head hurt from the jump in his blood pressure. His jaw hurt from the effort it was taking not to let the wolf go. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him John spoke in a tone pitched to stay in the room, low and ugly. "What the f**k are you doing here?"
She looked young, heartbroken, pitiful. When the door closed and he popped the question, she busted out a wide-eyed surprise at him. Lies. It was all f**king lies. "Why, darling?I'm getting to know your family. Eva's a lovely woman, and Antonia is just precious." Emmy?s voice was soft, innocent, not like Morana?s husky knowing purr. It didn?t matter. He could feel her stinging along his skin. He knew the truth.
His hands were shaking again. He fisted them on his thighs and stared at her, brown eyes burning behind the lenses of his glasses. He couldn?t kill her. Not here. Not now. "You've been here all fall."
"And most of the summer as well, yes." Her smile turned up at the corners, winsome. Mocking him. "I was lonely. I wanted to share your family, just a little bit."
He scrutinized her face, then settled slowly back into the chair. "I think you're telling the truth." Less than ten feet separated them. He didn't dare get any closer?he wanted to f**k her, he wanted to kill her. Terror and fury sang in his veins. "But there are different kinds of lies. And even I'm not stupid enough to think that that's it. The f**k did you do to the food?" The pie that she?d made, the one that he?d knocked off the counter a breath after his fingers had touched it. It had oozed wrongness, too. Just like she did.
"I seasoned it a little bit." She sat up straight and pulled the Santa hat back on over her ruddy light-brown curls, posed adorably for him. Lust roiled in his gut. "Just the brandy-apple pie, after all, and it wouldn't work if the seeds weren't already there. They should get a rug in here. The floor is freezing."
She wiggled her bare toes idly. Her toenails were painted with mistletoe: green leaves, white berries on a red background. He watched her feet for a few seconds, then snapped out of it?come on, John. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, her feet??and refocused on her face. "What seeds?"
Emmy?Morana?looked back at him with a warm smile. "Jealousy, of course." The tail of the Santa hat stroked along her cheek as she tilted her head. She said it so casually. "After all, don't apples belong to temptation?"
Adam and Eve. The serpent in the garden. She was trying to co-opt his religion. He said the first thing that popped into his head, to try to give himself a second to think. "Pomegranate." He licked his lips, dug the heels of his hands into the precise spot where the feeling in his legs died. It ached, there, with how badly he wanted to get up and do?what? He tried not to think about it, and failed.
She pouted a little bit, with a thrust of her lower lip, and it was just as sexy on Emmy?s sweet face as it would have been on Morana?s. Something about the same intellect driving the actions, maybe. He was sure in that instant that he?d recognize her no matter what face she wore, even without the aura. "Really? I suppose I'm not as well educated on the mythology as I thought. I'll have to do more research. But it's much harder to make a pomegranate pie in any case."
"Or you could just leave." That lip was murder. It was easier just to stare at the bench and take deep, slow breaths. How was it so goddamned easy for her? All she had to do was look at him, and he forgot that she?d wormed her way into his life, that she?d been stalking Harper and his sister. His fingers dug into his dead legs. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to spread her thighs and taste her.
"But, darling,? she was saying. "How would I explain that to Eva, or Antonia? Emmy just picking up and moving away when she's finally got a real chance here? And I do love your niece?she's charming."
She?d had unrestricted access to his niece. What had she done to Antonia, in that time? But ?Toni wouldn?t have been allowed to eat a brandy-spiked pie. Had she done that deliberately? He didn?t know what to think. He couldn?t think, past the tension pounding in his temples and the lust tightening his body. His gaze wandered up her arm to her shoulder, skipped to her face to see whether the pout had gone down. He could up the ante. The pout was gone. He could be honest. She tilted back her chin to move the bobble of the hat back over her shoulder. He could lie. What would she do, if he did? Would she know?
His move. Emmy was looking a little hurt that he would want her to go. Her fingers were wrapped around the edge of the bench. He imagined them wrapped around him. For what was possibly the first time in his life, he thanked God fervently for the fact that he couldn't walk. "I love my niece, too, and that's why I want you to leave."
Her eyes went wide, surprised and definitely hurt. "But, darling, I haven't done a thing to hurt Antonia, at all. I even help her with her homework sometimes."
Like that excused anything. He clenched his teeth around the disbelieving bark of a laugh so he couldn't be heard in the other room. "I can feel you," more than I ever wanted to, "and you expect me to be okay with you being around her? Around any of my family? Around Harper?"
"Yes." While he?d been demanding answers, she?d been on the move, sliding down the bench toward him. Within arm?s reach of his wheelchair, she reached out, put her hand on it. "I do."
And he had nowhere to go. The trinity of emotions warring inside him?lust, fury, panic?amped up. "And how the hell do you intend to make me okay with that?" He said it through still-clenched teeth. He slit his eyes. This close, her aura was so strong it felt like staring into the sun.
"I don't." She smiled, then, slow and easy. Gloating, behind the sweetness. Like she?d already beaten him. "You'll do it yourself, John, because you're a good man." And she stood up, showing off those mile-long legs of hers. She flipped back the bobble on the Santa hat again, leaving the mistletoe on the seam between red and white in full view. Like a threat. "You believe in redemption, and miracles." She paused, looked at him with hazel eyes sparking with faint flecks of sky-blue. "I just want a Christmas kiss."
"If you touch me, I will tear your throat out," he growled at those gorgeous eyes. Here, Morana, have a freebie. "Not walking as a man doesn't mean I can't walk as a wolf." And rip you to f**king pieces. Muscles moved all along his jaw as he worked it back and forth to try to unclench it.
She smiled. "I know, darling. The Benandanti are notorious in some circles. Are you quite sure?" She sounded a little wistful as she hugged herself, arms folding across her chest underneath the curve of her breasts.
That was all he?d had in that instant, that vicious threat. Teeth. Murder. But when she asked him that single little question, are you quite sure, the split second of reconsideration was his undoing. He?d been an addict, and quitting smoking had been one of the hardest things he?d ever had to do. He?d felt that clawing hunger in his chest, and every f**king time he?d thought I won?t. Then he?d thought I shouldn?t. Then he was lost. It was the same thing. Snarling internally at himself, he clamped a hand over one of those breast-hugging forearms and hauled her down.
The muscles that attach to the hair follicles in mammals are called, plural, the arrectores pilorum. Their contraction causes what is colloquially known as ?goosebumps? in humans. They rippled to life in waves over his skin as soon as he touched her. She gasped as she fell into his lap and hit his chest. They were so close that they shared the same air. She was breathing as hard as he was, and there was something?her eyes. Sparks flickered through her irises, tiny flashes of blue. Summer skies against thunderclouds and lightning. He fisted a hand in her pretty auburn hair and jerked her head back, baring her equally pretty neck.
Ducking his own head, his lips brushed her skin. He wanted to kiss and lick. He wanted to bite and tear. His head pounded as he whispered there, "It would be so easy. Disable you." His teeth scraped delicately over her tender throat. "Throw your body into the Hypokeimenon. Tell them I said all the wrong things and you decided to walk home." He shuddered with the conflicting absolutes of need and rage.
As soon as his bare skin touched hers, he could feel it again: that maddening, teasing, beautiful thread of goodness in her. It was a tiny breath of cool air in the center of the bonfire of her presence. She shivered atop him and under him, her eyes wide, her irises lightning-flashes of red drowning in the clear blue of autumn skies. Her voice was breathy against his ear, lips just touching him. Christ, it burned. "Why don't you, John Benandanti?" One arm had found its way around his shoulders and neck for support, the other rested against his chest, fingers spread. "Why not now?"
His heart pounded under her hand. Anger. Fear. One little twist of her fingers, one single word in that wicked language, and a shift to wolf wouldn't possibly be fast enough to save him. If she wanted him dead it would have been simple. Her skin, he discovered with a slow and lingering stroke of his tongue, tasted just as good as her mouth had. "Because I pity you," he said, and lifted his head.
He hadn?t known it was true until he said the words. But it was. It was. He didn?t tell her it was for the same things he hated about his own life. Those words hit her harder than he expected, and he didn?t think it was the consummate actress in her that stiffened up. She yanked her hand back, fighting for it against his grip on her arm, curling her fingers into a fist. "There's nothing of me to pity." That was raw. She pulled back, tried to stand.
Something broke in him, the need and rage giving way. She was going to have to pull the sweater down afterward to hide the bruises his grip was putting on her arm. He let that arm slide out of his grip to the wrist, then clamped down again and brought that fist toward his lips. She was going to have to fight it if she wanted him to let go. She didn?t fight it, as he nuzzled at her hand until she opened it.
It was Emmy?s face at the edge of his vision?but when he closed his eyes it was Morana?s voice, low and barely audible, richer, thicker. "I don?t understand."
Her fingers uncurled. Small fingers. Delicate. So livid with evil that he felt like he?d laid his face against a red-hot iron. They were soft, cradled in his. Not like his, callused from working the wheels all the time. I pity you. She was just like him. And she had no clue. John didn?t even know how to explain it to her. How was he supposed to say to the evil in the heart of a whirlwind, we are the same? But the certainty of it rang in his head like a bell, like God?s call to service. She was wrong. It wasn?t redemption. It wasn?t a miracle. It was just understanding.
And it wasn?t lust but compassion that made him nose her fingers out of the way. A warm kiss was deposited into the center of her palm. There was no backing out of it. Not now. Not now that he knew her. It felt like giving in to addiction, like giving up the fight. It felt like relief and despair. He sighed, turned his head to slide her hand over the rasp of a day's worth of growth, cradling it against his cheek and jaw. It seared his skin, and it felt like belonging. He still had not opened his eyes. He was afraid of what he was going to see, when he did. She was the whirlwind, and he knew instinctively that his intuitive leap was beyond her. Morana wouldn?t understand. She?d said so herself.
The fingers knotted in her hair relaxed, trickled down her neck to support her back. As he sat there, held her, and hid behind glasses and closed lids, he thought about his earlier prayer to his namesake, Michael the Archangel. It had been futile to pray, he?d thought at the time. And maybe he?d gone crazy. But maybe this fiercer pain inside him was the unfolding of wisdom. Goodness danced along the contact between his cheek and her hand, between her hand and his hand, like a will o? wisp. Ephemeral, a mirage. But it was real. It had to be.
Her other hand, the one she?d put around his shoulders for support, flattened on the blade of bone and muscle. The fingertips of the hand on his face rasped lightly on stubble as her fingers moved. She leaned forward finally, brushed a kiss against his mouth. Gentle, just a touch of lip against lip. It stung.
"Merry Christmas," he muttered, and caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of one eye. Her brows were pulled together, her gaze lost and confused, the skin around her eyes tight. "You go back in first. I'm gonna be a couple of minutes." He needed to think. Alone. The next kiss was careless, laid over the inside of her wrist before he let her go. A thumb rubbed ruefully over the marks he'd set into her arm. Then he leaned back in his chair with a slower, deeper sigh.
Emmy nodded as she stood, pulled down the arm of her sweater over the tell-tale bruising. She rolled her lips together, curled her palm back into a fist and released it. With every step back from him, the hazel in her irises gained ground, drowning blue and black and red. When she left?he twisted around to watch?she wore a subdued but much more cheerful expression. Good. She could go out and lie for them. He had no doubt she?d be believed.
(Adapted from live play with Morana, with thanks.)
