Roshan took Loken's hand, felt the unspoken challenge in the other man's grip. "Loken." Roshan had never met a warlock before but he could sense the other man's power. It crawled over his skin like dead leaves over a freshly turned grave.
Releasing Loken's hand, Roshan took a step back. "Come, Brenna."
She smiled fleetingly at Loken. "It was nice to see you again."
"And you."
Roshan guided Brenna back to their table, acutely aware of the other man's gaze on his back. Was it mere coincidence that Anthony Loken was here tonight, Roshan wondered. And yet, what else could it be? Bringing Brenna here had been his own decision, reached only a few hours ago. There was no way Loken could have known Brenna would be here, and yet…
He didn't know who or what Anthony Loken was, but he was more than a mere witch. Much more.
Their drinks were waiting when they returned to their table. When they were seated again, Brenna looked at Roshan, her expression troubled. "You are angry with me."
"No. But I want you to stay away from him."
"Why?"
"There's something not right about him."
"Not right?" A strange accusation, she thought, coming as it was from a vampire! "What do you mean?"
"I'm not sure. Just stay away from him."
Her chin went up defiantly. "You are not my father, Roshan DeLongpre. You cannot tell me what to do or who to see, or expect me to spend my days waiting for you to rise. Mr. Loken offered to be my friend, nothing more."
It didn't matter that she had already told Anthony that she couldn't see him again. She would not let Roshan tell her who she could and couldn't see. In the last few weeks, she had read a number of women's magazines, watched Oprah and The View. While the well-dressed women on television discussed much that Brenna didn't fully understand, one thing she had learned was that the women in this century demanded equality in every facet of their lives. Brenna smiled inwardly. Granny O'Connell would have been proud of her for speaking her mind, for demanding that she be treated as an equal.
A muscle twitched in Roshan's jaw. It hadn't taken Brenna long to assert her independence, he thought irritably. A few weeks of living in the twenty-first century and she was ready to take on the world. Life had been easier when women did as they were told.
Drawing on his preternatural powers, he leaned forward, his gaze capturing hers. "You will not see him again." He kept his voice low and hypnotic as he endeavored to bend her will to his.
Brenna stared back at him, her eyes narrowing as she drew on her own power to resist the enthralling sound of his voice, the mesmerizing look in his dark eyes. Focusing her energy, she threw it out toward him, parrying his hypnotic thrust as a swordsman might ward off the blow of a rival. "I will see whoever I wish, whenever I wish."
Roshan swore under his breath. Even as a young vampire, he had been able to compel others to do his will when it suited him. Why was it that this slip of a girl had the power to thwart him when no one else did? Were her own powers that strong, or was it just that she was the most hard-headed, stubborn woman he had ever met?
"The man is evil," Roshan said. "Can't you feel it? See it?"
She glanced in Anthony Loken's direction and then back at Roshan. The warlock looked like an angel of light with his close-cropped blond hair and sky blue eyes, while Roshan looked like the Dark Prince of legend with his long black hair and midnight blue eyes.
"I see only a handsome man who treated me with kindness and respect," she said coolly.
Thoroughly frustrated, Roshan sat back in his chair. For a time, he considered locking the gates against her again, but the thought of facing her wrath was less than appealing and would gain him nothing. He wanted her trust and her respect, not her anger. Still, short of locking Brenna in her room, and that option was sounding better all the time, there was no way to keep her from seeing the warlock if she chose to do so.
Nor, apparently, was there any way to keep her from dancing with him. Roshan couldn't believe the gall of the man, but there he was, standing by their table, asking Brenna to dance. Roshan was not at all surprised when Brenna said yes, even though he knew she had agreed just to prove he couldn't tell her who she could and could not see.
It was his first hard lesson in the contrary ways of modern women.
CHAPTER 13
The atmosphere in the car on the ride home was so cold Roshan wouldn't have been surprised to see frost forming on the inside of the windshield. He and Brenna had left the club shortly after Brenna's dance with Anthony Loken. She had not spoken a word to him since then.
Now she sat beside him, her back rigid as she stared out the side window, apparently watching the rain.
Women! Was there ever a man on the planet, mortal or otherwise, who understood them? He had warned her against the warlock for her own good. Dark power and negative energy radiated from the man. He was surprised that Brenna hadn't sensed it. Either Loken practiced black magick or he possessed some other dark power. Was it possible that the warlock was a vampire as well as a witch? It seemed unlikely, since Brenna had seen the man in the bookstore in the middle of the day. If Anthony Loken was indeed a vampire, then he was one of the Ancients. Only the oldest of the undead were able to hide their true nature from others of their kind, or walk in the sun's light without fear.
Anger and a growing sense of frustration roared through Roshan. His foot grew heavy on the gas pedal. The car increased speed. Forty miles an hour. Fifty. Sixty.
He glanced at Brenna out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting very straight, her eyes wide, her feet braced against the floorboard. One slender hand clutched the edge of her seat, the other was fisted around the door handle.
He nudged the Ferrari to sixty-five and then goosed it up to seventy. Flashing lights appeared in the rearview mirror, accompanied by the wail of a siren.
Muttering an oath, Roshan slowed the car, pulled off the road, and rolled down the window. Moments later, a police officer shrouded in a yellow slicker stood beside the window, flashlight in hand.
"May I see your driver's license, sir?" the officer asked, shining the light in Roshan's face, and then Brenna's.
With a nod, Roshan reached for his wallet Withdrawing his license, he handed it to the officer, then captured the man's gaze with his. "I wasn't speeding, was I?"
The officer, a clean-shaven man in his late twenties, shook his head. "No, sir, of course not."
"So I can go?"
"Of course." The officer returned his license. "Have a pleasant evening, Mr. DeLongpre."
"Thank you, Officer Miller. Good evening."
With a friendly wave of his hand, the officer returned to his patrol car. Tossing his license and his wallet on the dashboard, Roshan put the car in gear, checked the rearview mirror, and pulled onto the road.
"I guess you do not get many tickets," Brenna said, disapproval heavy in her voice.
He glanced at her, one brow arched. "Are you speaking to me now?"
"Are you trying to get us killed?" she demanded. "Or should I say trying to get me killed?"
She was right. He was behaving like an empty-headed lout. While he would likely survive any accident save for one that drained him of so much blood he could not recover, Brenna could easily be killed. He forgot, sometimes, how fragile mortals were, how little it took to deprive them of life.
"I'm sorry," he said gruffly.
Her demeanor relaxed ever so slightly at his apology. Afraid to say anything that might set her off again, he remained silent for the remainder of the ride.
At home, he pulled into the garage, switched off the engine, then ran up to the house and opened the door for her. Turning, he saw that she wasn't behind him. Instead, she was standing in the yard in her stocking feet, her arms flung out at her sides, her face lifted toward the heavens as she twirled round and round, like a child at play. Clad all in white, her skirt swirling around her ankles, she looked almost ethereal.
He watched her, enchanted by the sound of her merry laughter and the joy that made her eyes sparkle like emeralds. What a rare and wonderful creature she was! She danced in the rain with the innocence and exuberance that came with youth and a clear conscience.
A hiss told him that Morgana was standing beside him. He glanced down at the cat, who was staring up at him, her back arched.
"There's no love lost between the two of us, is there?" he said to the cat. But they both loved the woman.
His gaze was drawn toward Brenna again. She was standing with her arms lifted toward the heavens, her head thrown back, her lips moving. Was she singing, he wondered, or praying?
Oblivious to the rain that quickly drenched him from head to foot, he descended the porch steps and crossed the yard toward her. Lightning forked through the clouds. Seconds later, thunder rolled across the lowering skies.
Another clap of thunder rocked the earth as Roshan drew Brenna into his arms. Her gaze met his, her eyes widening, then closing as he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.
It was strangely erotic, kissing her in the midst of a storm. Overhead, thunder rolled and lightning sizzled across the skies, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the woman in his arms. She tasted of the meal she had eaten earlier, of sweet red wine and raindrops. And woman. It was a potent combination.
"You've bewitched me, Brenna Flanagan," he murmured, and kissed her again.
And yet again.
She was like a flame in his arms, her lips like the sweetest nectar, her skin like wet silk. He showered her with kisses as he slowly lowered her to the ground. The grass beneath her was cold; he warmed it with a look.
He kissed her until kissing wasn't enough, until she was mindless, breathless with the same urgent need that drove him. Their clothing disappeared as if by magick, his or hers, it didn't matter.
She looked up at him, a low moan of pleasure rising from deep in her throat as he worshiped her beauty with his eyes and his hands, large hands that caressed her ever so gently, demanding nothing, asking for everything.