The sun had slipped behind the Louvre, and the sky was yet pale, but darkness clung to the recesses between buildings as if plaque in a demon’s teeth.
As he crossed the street below the building, she grabbed the remote and clicked the saving chandelier light back on, granting necessary solace.
“Two left,” she muttered as if the light fixtures cared. “And then my dark one needs to do some remodeling. Much as each of them are all gorgeous, this mass gathering of prismatic light is hideous.”
She did like the one with the black crystals and silver arabesques that soared six feet high. That one would look lovely over the gray couch.
What was she doing? If and when CJ no longer had need for the prismatic light, he may well want to keep the chandeliers.
Libby had foreseen she was hooking up with CJ to clean him. Her greatest cleaning project ever. But something had changed. While she still wanted his soul clean of demons, she didn’t need for him to change, to become less messy or to stop practicing dark magic. She liked him exactly as he was.
“Seems I don’t have a type after all,” she said with a smile. “Or maybe I’ve changed that type.”
Either way, she was satisfied with letting go the urge to change him. It slipped from her without so much as a goodbye, and she turned to greet her lover as he walked through the door and landed in her arms.
“Everything go as you had hoped?” she asked, nuzzling into his cedar and chartreuse embrace.
“I won’t know until tomorrow night. I needed to know where Grim was while I had the Nacht März uncloaked. What better way than to invite him to the party?”
“You’re not serious? You told the warlock where we’ll be?”
He nodded then kissed her before she could object to his foolish actions. Falling into the depths of his claiming kiss, Vika abandoned protest. Seemed to be the way to manage this beautiful dark man.
“You straightened up around here,” he said.
“Made the bed and did a few dishes. It’s a compulsion, CJ. You have to accept that about me.”
“Okay, but I’ll have you know my compulsion is to mess up the bed again.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, tossing her to land on the clutter of pillows. Shirt stripped off before she could speak, he crawled across the bed toward her. “Let’s make sexmagic tonight.”
“To increase your magic for tomorrow?”
“No. Just for us.” He waggled the fingers of his tattooed hand. “Don’t you want me to master this magic?”
Vika settled against the pillows and tugged up her skirt, revealing her bare feet. “Let the mastery begin.”
* * *
Vika drew her fingers over her lover’s bared chest, tracing a few of the tattoos and marveling at their intricacy. The werewolf scythe gleamed silver with each flex of his muscles. “Didn’t that hurt to get the silver embedded in there?”
He slipped the dress from her shoulder and kissed her there. “Tattoos always hurt. But whiskey helps numb the pain.”
“I see.” She tapped a tiny design slightly left-center of his chest. “This looks like...is this a tiny battery?”
“It’s my kick-starter,” he said proudly.
“What?”
“Command central, if you will. You know how our bodies are ruled by the earth and electricity?”
“Of course. I sing the body electric,” she quoted Walt Whitman.
“Since I dabble in so many dangerous magics, Sayne suggested I have a kick-start in case, well, my heart ever needs it.”
“A little tattooed battery is going to give your unbeating heart enough juice to revive you?”
“With the correct connecting tat.” He displayed his left hand, and his pinkie fingertip was tattooed with what looked like electrical coding one might see on a building schematic. “I touch this to the battery, and bam!”
“That is...” Vika cringed. “It creeps me out, actually. To even think your heart would stop beating makes me sad.”
He spread his hand through her hair and drew her in for a kiss. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t like it when you frown. Let’s try some electrical magic of our own, eh?”
“You mean like work it into sex?”
He nodded and tugged down her dress to puddle about her feet. In turn, he dropped his jeans, and just when she reached for his semihard erection, he grabbed her fingers and pulled her hand up between them. “Let’s form the connection first, then the sex will be electric.”
“All right. You show me the way.” She had heard of witches sharing their