Eye of the Tempest by Nicole Peeler Page A

at it. “I know it’s what you want, what you crave…”
    Again, images assaulted my mind: bodies bent, chained, whipped, bruised, cut… blood and semen dripping across lacerated flesh and I moaned.
    “That’s it, Jane… open your mind… drop the inhibitions that fetter you… let… me… in.”
    And with those words, Graeme’s magic rolled across me so powerfully that I fell to my knees, my head feeling as if someone were forcing a chisel into my skull.
    I groaned, putting my hands up to my ears to block out his voice… but the voice was inside my head … It was Graeme… but he was inside … and I had to block him out, but the more I tried the more I realized… the voice is yours, Jane .
    The voice was mine. And I did want it… I was his slut, his fuck toy, to be used and discarded, and only his pleasure mattered because his pleasure was my pleasure was his pleasure …
    Graeme’s searingly cold blue eyes were right in front of me, so I crawled forward, toward him… your lover …
    … my lover …
    And then his hands were in my hair as he jerked my head up so that I knelt in front of him. Gus’s small fists pummeled at my lover’s torso, but they were ignored until, with a negligible flick of his wrist, Graeme flung the stone spirit away with his power.
    In that second, his power divided by Gus’s assault, Graeme’s hold on me broke just enough that I struggled, hard, suddenly remembering who and where I was. And that Graeme was anything but my lover.
    In that split second, two things happened.
    The first was that Graeme grinned evilly as he hauled me up to my feet and toward him. But instead of biting me, as I’d expected, he only whispered in my ear.
    The second was that Nell’s power blossomed through the glade like a mushroom cloud. The force of her mojo shook all of us to our bones as she stood atop Gus’s boulder, peering around to get a bead on the situation.
    Then, with another huge outpouring of power, she apparated all of the bad guys out of her territory and, hopefully, straight to the moon.
    Once I knew Gus and I were safe, I used all my remaining energy to stay upright.
    “What happened?” Nell demanded, levitating over to check on me and the stone spirit.
    Raising my head wearily, I looked the gnome in the eyes.
    “Something tells me we just found the first lock,” I said, feeling my knees buckle.
    Without Graeme’s hand in my hair, I was in no shape to keep myself upright. So I tumbled to the side, where I was caught at the last second by large, strong hands.
    Anyan’s face was more than a little worried when he turned me over, asking how I was. “He was in my mind ,” I babbled. “In my head, like he was me. Telling me what I wanted, who I was—”
    “Shhh, Jane. I know. He can do that,” Anyan said, stroking his hand across my cheek. I had to remind myself that it was Anyan’s hands, not Graeme’s. Then I remembered what Graeme had said, and I shuddered, pulling away from the barghest.
    Sitting up, I drew my jean jacket tighter around me. “Why didn’t you tell me he could do that? Why didn’t I know?”
    “I’m sorry,” Anyan replied, letting me move away from him. “There was so much to teach you, and so little time.”
    “Why did he never do that before?” I asked.
    “Um…” Anyan said, clearly trying to figure out what to say. “He didn’t really have to before,” the big man finally said, sounding embarrassed. It took me a second, and then I cottoned to what he was saying.
    I’d been so weak before that Graeme didn’t need to pull out his big guns .
    I bit my tongue on the nasty retort I had waiting. I was letting Graeme get to me, and taking it out on the barghest.
    But what Graeme said … came an insidious thought that, try as I might, kept worming deeper into my consciousness.
    Shivering, I looked toward where Nell knelt over Gus. What I really wanted to do was take a scrub brush and Lysol my brain. But if I couldn’t do that, I wanted a