"No, no stop."
He didn’t, he continued sending those butterfly fingers over my skin, caressing my shoulder, which pushed the pain away with every wave of Fae magic he pushed into my system. The rush of heat made my eyes become heavy and I wasn't able to keep them open any longer.
I listened to his breathing as he pushed healing powers through me, calm and unlabored. Unlike Larissa when she healed me. Her powers came from spells and used energy to heal as where his came from dark magic bred from his race.
I fought to keep my eyes open and watched as his face as it took on a dark hue, his eyes turning into twin embers as they met and held mine. "If you make me, I will induce sleep so you can heal. I don’t need some half-brained female mucking shit up because she's too weak to admit when she needs to rest."
I growled, or more to the point I tried to. It came out sounding more like a moan than anything else. "I can't go to sleep with you in my room."
"You won't, it's not that you can't. Sleep, we need to catch a killer tomorrow, if the pattern keeps it will be a Witch that dies next."
I stared at him for a few moments hating how much sense he had just made. There was a killer loose and he was right. If the pattern was spot on, then we would be finding a dead Witch within the next few days. I exhaled and closed my eyes feeling the heat of his on me as I succumbed to sleep.
Fourteen
I awoke to the deep, rich scent of coffee. My eyes popped open to find Larissa staring down at me with a positively magical Starbucks venti-cup. "I love you," I mumbled before coming up to rest on my elbows.
"You better, this place had no coffee. Can you believe that? Not a single freaking bean in this entire place. Who lives like that?" She droned on as she extended her hand when I had finally made it into a sitting position and handed me the hot latté.
"The Fae don't drink coffee Lari, they drink us."
"That’s so wrong," she chirped moving from where she had been sitting in the small chair beside the bed to finish opening the drapes, allowing more sun to blind me. She was dressed in yoga pants and a black tank top, as if we were at home gearing up for our daily workout.
"Going running?"
"No there's an actual gym they said we could use. I wanted to keep on schedule since afterwards we need to meet up with Alden and the team from the Guild to go over the game plan for tonight," she stopped talking and looked back over her shoulder tilting her head as if considering saying something before she continued, "You should get up, it's almost noon now."
I blinked at her and then over her head to check the position of the sun for confirmation of the time. "I never sleep in," I mumbled off handedly.
She snorted, "Remember the time we got tanked and Adrian—"
She spun around with wide eyes. We didn’t speak of him, hadn't since he'd died a few years ago on a job gone wrong. "And couldn’t even remember the way home? Yeah, I remember—well I remember the morning after," I finished for her so she wouldn’t feel like an ass for bringing up his name, even though I felt the strings of my heart tug with the memory of my first love. My heart clenched as an image of him arose in my mind.
Adrian had been our fourth, but he'd been killed on a job a couple years ago. One that should have been routine, but it had all gone wrong from the start. One thing after another and before we knew it, before we could pull him out, he'd been killed. The pile of clothes I still kept in my closet at home was the only sign of him we could find except for the puddle of blood, too high in volume for a human to live through the loss.
It had been tested and the DNA test had proven that it had belonged to Adrian. Alden had been referring to Adrian when he had said I got people around me killed, the job had been routine and should have been simple to complete. Instead I'd gotten him killed and all because I wanted to prove we were the best in the Guild.
I shook my head and exhaled before taking a deep drink of the latté. Larissa smiled sadly, as if she'd been thinking along the same lines I had been. "He'd be pissed if he could see us now," she said as her lips turned into a small smile.
"He'd be blowing a few gaskets."
"Who wants to blow me—what?" Adam said coming in to the conversation with a brilliant smile.
"Adrian would be," Larissa said as she moved back to sit in the small leather chair.
"Let's not go there, not today," Adam replied sitting on the bed oblivious to the fact that I had a cup of coffee in my hand. His plopping caused it to spill on my shirt. I looked down as I held the coffee out to prevent any more from escaping the cup.
I was wearing a silk nightgown that I hadn't put on myself. I'd passed out in my clothes. I swallowed the urge to growl and met Larissa's stare as she took in the bright red nightgown. "Did you by chance dress me while I was comatose?"