Page 20 of Possess Me at Midnight

“Don’t think him into the grave,” he continues, his voice rough velvet against my senses.

I send him a shaky nod. I’ll try. Positive thoughts will help my brother more than fear.

Drawing in a trembling breath, I try to shove down another onslaught of tears. “I’m sorry to be a weepy mess.”

He draws in a deep breath, his chest expanding. I wince, waiting for him to scold or bellow at me. Instead, he wraps his brawny arm around my waist and pulls me against his body before he buries his fingers in my hair.

A million starbursts erupt, scatter over my scalp, my very skin. The sensation sinks bone deep, fracturing my thoughts, my composure, my heartbeat. His heat seeps into me, awakening feelings I don’t dare indulge. But he’s unmistakably hard against me. That realization steals my breath. Every point of contact between us burns like a brand, marking me in ways I don’t know how to resist. His scent—sage and cedar mingled with something uniquely, intoxicatingly him—fills my lungs with each breath, making my head swim.

“No apologies for tears. Bonds between siblings can be strong.”

He has a sibling? Apparently, and his statement proves how little I know of him, and for once, I’m frustrated that I can’t read his mind.

“Tears aren’t helpful, I know. I should be focused on ways to help Bram and the cause, how I can get him to safety, where I go from here, what?—”

“We,” Ice murmurs in my ear as gently as his rough voice allows. “My shoulders are strong. Let me take some of the weight of that responsibility. We must rely on each other.”

He’s so solid against me. He doesn’t feel like my brother’s enemy. He doesn’t sound insane but capable and willing.

Who is Ice?

I pull back and stare as if I can reason him out like a puzzle. “You’re awfully kind to me.”

His face closes up. “Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“You and my brother…” Hate each other? Try to kill one another at every possible turn?

“The enmity between Bram and me has nothing to do with you.”

His eyes glow so green in the low light filtering in from the next room and moonlight beaming through the fog-shrouded window. He looks intense in every way: determined thoughts, dominant stare, fierce desire.

The tension between us is more than mere physical attraction—it’s something ancient and primal, a pull that defies the sacred boundaries between our bloodlines. A Rion and a Rykard. The very notion is blasphemous in our world, yet my body doesn’t seem to care about centuries of magical tradition.

It’s been easy to write Ice off as a madman, especially given his mysterious and eternal hatred for Bram. But he’s given me the very jumper off his back—the one that carried his heat and filled my nose with his masculine scent—then soothed my grief about a man he loathes. Why?

I doubt he would answer if I asked. Besides, I have to focus on Bram.

“I don’t know what else to do for him.” My gaze flickers back to my brother. Fear rakes its cold claws through me, and I try to suppress the shiver.

“Right now? Nothing.”

That reality brings a new cascade of tears. God, my eyes are gritty. Fatigue beats at me, and crying doesn’t help. Why can’t I stop?

“Sod it,” Ice mutters.

I cringe. Of course he’s annoyed. Tears accomplish nothing. He doesn’t need to be dancing attendance to me but keeping us safe and getting the Doomsday Diary back into hiding. This foolishness needs to stop.

Before I can apologize again, Ice bends to me, lifting me in his arms against that inferno chest. I choke in surprise, and my stomach flutters. Actually flutters as if I’ve swallowed butterflies, as it never has in my nearly eighty-five years.

Then he marches out of Bram’s bedroom, into the main room. He sets me on the sofa, near the cheery fire he started as soon as we secured the cottage. He sits beside me and reaches for my hand. The contact charges me with electric need. Yet with him, I feel safe. Cared for, even, though I have no doubt that Bram would forbid this or any kind of comfort from Ice.

I stare at his hand over mine, his hair-roughened knuckles swallowing my fingers. “Ice, I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. You’re worried about your brother. I understand.”

How could he possibly? “Do you have a brother?”

“No.” Something in his face warns me to stop asking questions. I take the silent advice. After his kindness, I shouldn’t pry.