Page 68 of The Witch They Crave

He breathes—that deliberate, unhurried in-and-out he doesn't need and does anyway, for me—and without deciding to, my breath starts reaching for the shape of his.

In on his in. Out on his out.

"Now look at it," he says. "Not away from it. At the magic. It's just light, Calypso. It's not doing anything but pouring off your skin. Look at how much of it is just sitting there, waiting for you to tell it where to go."

I look. It's the hardest thing—every instinct says shut your eyes, curl around it, contain it—but I make myself look at the heat shimmering off my own arms, and he's right, it isn't doing anything, it's just there, and slowly, breath by breath, matched to his, the room stops leaning. The boiling water on the nightstand goes still. The heat draws back down into me where it belongs. The plants stay turned toward me, every one, but they stop straining.

I let out a breath that comes apart in the middle.

"There," Aamon says, very softly. "There you are."

And the terror goes out of me all at once, the way water leaves a tub—one second I'm rigid with it and the next there's nothing holding me up. I sway. Aamon catches me before I tip, gathering me in against his chest, and I let him, because I don't have anything left to hold myself with. I curl into him there on the bed, my face pressed to his shoulder, my knees drawn up against his. He's cool and solid and still, and he just holds on.

"I've got you," he says, into my hair. "I have you. You're awake. It's over."

I'm shaking. I hate that I'm shaking. I stay in his arms until it slows, until the room is just a room again, and I can breathe without it hitching.

"It was him," I say, finally, into his collarbone. "The dream. It's because of him."

He goes still under me. "Who?"

"Leopold." Saying it out loud makes it real, makes the whole night real, and it comes up out of me in a rush. "Tonight wasn't a date. He took me to some old property. There was a vault under it, sealed with witchwork so old his telekinesis couldn’t touch it. He needed a witch. He needed… me." My hands ball into fists against his muscled chest. "I told him no. And he—Aamon, he threatened everyone. My friends. He threatened Kage. And he threatened you. He listed everyone I have, one at a time.”

Aamon holds me tighter.

“I didn’t have a choice…” I trail off, the shaking coming back. “I opened the door for him. And on the way back, when I pushed him—when I asked what I'd helped him do—he put his hand around my throat."

He goes rigid against me.

I keep going, because if I stop I won't get through it. "He didn't hurt me. He just—held me. Dropped his fangs an inch from my face and basically told me I didn’t have a choice in the matter."

For a long moment Aamon says nothing at all. When he does, his voice has dropped somewhere low and even and terrible.

"He put his fangs to your throat." Not a question. His hand has come up to that exact place on my neck, careful, like he's checking for a mark that isn't there. "To frighten you. After he used everyone you love to make you bleed your magic dry for him."

"Aamon—"

"Where is he?" He's already shifting, already moving to set me aside, to rise off the bed. "He's in the house. He's one wing over. I'll—"

"No!" I grab a fistful of his shirt with everything I have and don't let go. "No! You can't. If you go in there furious in the middle of the night, you give him a reason to get rid of you. You hand him exactly what he wants. Don't you dare give him a reason."

He stops. I can feel the war in him, the want to go put his hands on Leopold Vassard straining against the sense of what I'm saying.

"Stay," I say, quieter. My hand flattens over his unbeating heart. "Please. Don't go. Just—stay with me. Don't leave me alone in this room tonight."

That's what does it. Not the logic. The last part.

I know he’ll stay.

He lets his weight back down. Gathers me in again, slower this time, deliberate, and I feel the fury bank itself down into something contained—not gone, just controlled, for me.

"I'm not going anywhere, Cal," he says. "I'm here."

He shifts us both back against the headboard and I go with him, tucked into his side, my legs folded under me, and his arm stays around me like it belongs there. I'm aware, distantly, of what I'm wearing—a thin cami, sleep shorts, not much between his cool hand and my skin where it rests at my waist. He's aware of it too. I can tell by how tense his shoulder is.

His thumb moves. Just once. A slow pass along my hipbone through the cotton, like he didn't decide to do it. The gentle touch warms me up inside and softens everything a little.

"Something happened tonight," I say, because I need to say something that isn't the thing rising in the quiet between us. I tip my head back to look at him. "At the vault. Something I still can't—" I stop, start over. "The ward on that door. When I pushed my magic into it, it pushed back. And it didn't push like a wall, Aamon. It pushed like the chemical dampener I got at the facility.”