Page 45 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)

Holly

Winter! Pick up!

Connor

Erikson, answer your phone.

Missy

Win? Winter!

C hickadees chattered outside the shattered windows while their phones rang continuously inside the cab. Winter was sweaty and limp on top of him, her red curls spread across his chest, and he could have stayed in that exact position and been content for the rest of his life.

What they’d just done together had been .

. . well, explosive . Never before had Erikson become so lost in his partner that it felt like their bodies had become one.

Never had he felt some long-lost echo of savagery riding him as hard as the woman on top of him.

It had been a mind-bending experience, and as he stroked his hand down her soft back, his forefinger sliding along the dent of her spine, a gossamer thread of worry wrapped around his heart.

He’d told her they had to choose each other—and he believed that—but what he'd felt with her wasn’t anything he could replicate with another person.

That sort of chemistry, that feeling of coming home—it belonged to her only.

That scared the hell out of him. Not only because the Shadow Council was coming for her, but because even if everything were perfect and the Shadow Council never existed, he wasn’t convinced she felt the same eagerness to give this a try as he did.

As it turned out, he really wanted to see where this could go.

He wanted to sleep beside her every night, kiss away her frown lines, and play with her by the ocean.

He wanted to pleasure her, and to be the only man who knew each day what color panties she was wearing.

He was confident Winter liked him, and she’d certainly seemed to enjoy the sex, but was that enough for her to break her emotion-free policy with men and let him in?

“Just answer,” she mumbled.

He slipped out of her and tugged off the condom.

Rolling it in a tissue, he tossed it in the plastic bag he kept in the truck for garbage, and when she would have climbed off him, tugged her hips back in place so that he rested snug between her legs, her center still hot and wet and slick.

He groaned into her neck even as he fumbled in his jeans pocket for his incessantly ringing phone.

“WHAT?” he roared.

“Do you know where Winter is?” His brother’s panicked voice snapped him out of the post-coital haze and he tensed as he sat up a little, still keeping her pressed against him because he wasn’t quite willing to let her go yet.

“Winter is with me.”

“Oh.” There was a lengthy pause. “Is she all right?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. What’s wrong?”

Connor blew out a breath, and Erikson heard Holly saying something in the background, although he couldn’t make out her words.

“Um, if you’ve been doing what I think you’ve been doing, it explains everything.

Just get back here.” Connor hung up and Erikson lowered the phone to meet a pair of curious hazel eyes.

“What happened?” Winter whispered, like she was too terrified to speak louder.

“Everyone is all right,” he said. “They were worried about you.” He glanced at his blown-out windows. He didn’t think it was possible they’d heard the glass exploding, but maybe they’d glimpsed the black smoke as it dissipated over the treeline?

Winter relaxed and returned her cheek to his chest. “I owe you new windows.”

Erikson barked a laugh and tugged on one of her curls. “No way. That was a lesson for the both of us. The next time we do this, we do it in a stone fortress.”

She lifted her head again and arched a brow. “The next time?”

“Yeah, the next time. If you want.”

She nibbled on her lower lip and then said with characteristic Winter bluntness, “Yes, I want a next time. That was . . .”

Incredible? Soul-shattering? Intensely intimate?

“ . . . nice,” she finished.

Erikson gawked at her. “Nice? NICE? Winter, you blew out my windows and made me come so hard I couldn’t see, but it was only nice to you?” She flashed him a wicked little grin, and he squeezed her waist. “Oh, you’re trouble, Elf.”

“Guess you have an ego after all.”

“Never said I didn’t. But in this particular case, you definitely wounded me, because that was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I—” He stopped himself before he said more and sent her running for the hills.

She cupped his cheek and kissed him gently on the lips. “Me too.”

He kissed her back, and the soft meeting of their lips gradually turned hot and powerful, until she was shifting her hips on him and he was getting hard again. Did he have another condom? Maybe in his?—

Winter’s phone rang again and she pulled away. With a glare at the screen, she answered. “Erikson already told Connor I’m fine, Missy.”

Missy was loud enough that Erikson could hear her through the phone. “Stop fooling around with that gorgeous Viking and get your ass back here.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Ha! I notice you didn’t deny the fooling around part.”

Winter sighed. “Why do I need to come back? What’s got everyone up in arms?”

“About that. Connor and Holly are too nice to say anything, but I’m your twin so I can say whatever I want.”

Erikson’s skin prickled with apprehension a moment before he smelled the smoke. He glanced at the treeline, and his stomach sank when he spotted a dark column rising from the direction of the house.

“Winter.” He gently gripped her jaw and turned her head so that she could see what he was seeing. Her eyes widened with horror.

“Oh, do you smell the smoke?” Missy asked sarcastically. “That’s because the barn is on fire.”

Winter and Erikson dressed in record time, and his truck was barreling up the driveway just as a deep-blue storm cloud swept over the barn and began dumping water.

Winter jumped out of the truck before it had fully stopped and raced toward Holly, who stood on the lawn with the wind whipping her hair and her eyes black as she conjured and directed the storm.

Flames licked from the barn loft, where the windows had already blown out from the heat. Thick columns of black smoke piled into the air, the fire raging even as the clouds overhead spilled rain with hurricane ferocity.

Rain soaked her shirt as she jogged to Aunt Daisy and Aunt Rose, who were standing underneath a massive red umbrella.

Missy was beside them, and Connor stood off to the side, water plastering his clothes to his body as he watched Holly with a mixture of awe, lust, and wariness.

The last time Holly had let loose and channeled a large amount of power, she’d needed to draw from the rest of the Celestes.

But it seemed her reservoir of power had grown, because she was stronger than ever, channeling more power than she had when she’d banished the ghost last spring.

Erikson appeared at Winter’s side, opening an umbrella and holding it over her head.

Winter knew her expression was the same as her aunts’ and Missy’s: devastated.

The barn was as old as the house—over two hundred years—and was a symbol of Celeste persistence.

It had once housed cattle, and over time had become the center of their apple orchard operation.

And now it was burning to the ground. Because of her.

Instantly everything turned clear. The three times she’d manifested her excess power without her knowledge were the three times she’d been intimate with Erikson.

The first time Erikson had kissed her, she’d started a small fire in a general store.

When he’d spread her legs, she’d beached a dolphin.

This time, she’d set ablaze an important piece of her family’s history.

How could she have failed to make the connection until now?

What if Holly had been painting in the loft? What if Missy had been packing an order? What if she’d set it on fire during apple season, when there were customers and children inside?

Winter thought she was going to be sick.

The revelation grasped her heart with cruel talons.

Being intimate with Erikson loosened all of her restraints, dissolved all of her barriers, and people got hurt because of it.

It was why she hadn’t foreseen any of the three disasters.

It wasn’t because they weren’t supposed to happen, it was because she never saw anything that involved Erikson.

When he touched her, she lost control, and bad things happened.

She met his eyes, but he didn’t look surprised.

“Winter—” he began, as if he could read her mind.

Had he suspected? Was this yet another secret he’d kept from her?

“Did you know?” she rasped.

He gave a brief, reluctant nod, and her heart plummeted.

“I suspected you were accidentally manifesting your excess power when we were intimate. It’s what I was trying to tell you .

. .” He trailed off, but she didn’t need him to finish.

It was what he’d been trying to tell her in the truck, before she’d told him to shut up and fuck her.

If she’d only listened, her family’s barn would be intact this moment.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t do that, Winter.” He reached for her, his hand wrapping around her wrist, and she plunged back in time.

Irish Winter was shoving Viking Erik away from her after discovering she’d sunk one of his boats. “You need to leave. I cannot control myself.”

“I will work with you,” Viking Erikson argued. “I will not go.”

“You will if you have any care for the lives of the people around us.”

Immediately following that flashback was another: Erikson was a knight, and she a medieval lady.

“I cannot marry you,” she cried, pushing past him, his dented armor cool on her palms. “I just killed your brother!” Then another scene followed, and another.

She was a housemaid in Victorian times, sobbing by the window not because he’d left her, but because she’d pushed him away after she’d caused a maid’s death.

She was a Gibson girl, running from home after she flooded their town.

Their previous lives flashed before her in rapid succession: different times, different circumstances, different countries, and yet they always found each other, and she always lost control of her power.

People were always hurt. People died.

Winter’s heart beat once, twice, and then shattered into infinite pieces.

“My God,” she whispered, returning to the present and yanking her arm away. “It’s never been you.”

“What do you mean?” Even though he was under the umbrella with her, he’d gotten wet before he’d opened it, and water dripped down his temple and rolled along his strong jaw. He reached for her again but she dodged his touch.

“In all our lifetimes before, you didn’t leave me. You never left me.”

“It doesn’t sound like something I would do,” he admitted. “If I love someone, I tend to stick around. But you saw it?—”

She pressed her palm over her heart, as if she could keep all the shards in one place.

“When I had the visions before, I saw and felt my sadness, and I made assumptions. Cruel assumptions. I told you that you couldn’t blame yourself for what you might or might not have done in past lives, and yet I think a part of me was blaming you for abandoning me all those times.

” She shook her head. “I’ve been a jerk, Erikson, and I’m sorry. ”

His blue gaze searched hers. “What are you saying? What did you just see?”

“ I’ve pushed you away every time, Erikson.

Me. I’m the reason we’ve been repeating our lives over and over.

It’s because I can’t control my curse when I’m with you.

I’ve sunk boats. I’ve killed your brother and innocent bystanders.

” She tore her gaze from his to stare unseeingly at the smoking the barn, the flames beginning to sputter as Holly gripped Missy’s wrist, drawing on her sister’s power.

“I started this fire. I’m dangerous when I’m with you. ”

“No,” he snarled. “Not this time, Winter. I don’t give a fuck what you’ve done in the past. I won’t let you push me away in this life.”

“Look at what I’ve done already, who I’ve already hurt. What if Holly or someone else had been inside the barn? What if I’d killed one of my sisters, or Connor?”

His jaw tightened. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We haven’t yet. Not over a thousand years.”

He reached for her, and again she avoided his touch.

His eyes blazed with as much heat as the fire silhouetting his back.

“I can’t speak for past versions of myself, but he sounds like an idiot, because I’m not letting you go.

Not when I’ve just—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew what he’d been about to say. Not when I’ve just found you.

Her half of their soul was in as many pieces as the glass of his truck windows. “I don’t think we have a choice.”