Read My Forbidden Desire for Free Online

“I can’t really see.” He looked up and winked at her right before he addressed her chest. “I think she needs to take off her top.”
    “Perv.” She jerked down her shirt, but Xia’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She yelped, and Harsh lunged.
    “Chill,” he said, leaning in. “I’m just going to take a closer look. That’s all.”
    “Xia. It’s the condition of the talisman that matters, not the shape and depth of my sister’s navel.”
    “I don’t think it’s cracked.” Not yet.
    “Don’t think ?” Harsh said, and he didn’t sound too happy. The freak knew firsthand what could happen when a talisman cracked. If you weren’t prepared or didn’t have the magic to control the process, people died, and it usually wasn’t a pretty thing to see. An unstable talisman was dangerous. Flat-out dangerous.
    Xia reached for the carved panther. If he hadn’t been holding her wrist, she would have jumped back. His fingers tightened on her. She didn’t want him touching it. The reaction, her need to get away, burned through her to him as clear as the freaking rain in Spain. Shit, that was unexpected. He blocked the mental contact with her.
    “No!” The protest burst from her. Xia couldn’t help it. He enjoyed the fear coming from her. Nothing wrong with making a witch afraid.
    “What?” Harsh asked.
    “Something’s wrong,” she said. “It’s nothing but a bit of carved stone. It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.” Her voice was tight and breathy. “If it worked, if there was anything to it, I’d be able to do something with my magic, and I can’t. So why can’t I take it off?”
    Xia ignored her panic, because why the hell did he care what happened to a witch? He sure as hell didn’t want another slipup that would connect him to her, though. He used the hilt of his knife to move the carving to one side.
    Harsh said, “What’s that?”
    “What?” She looked down. “Oh, that.” Where the amulet rubbed against her skin, there was a blue-gray impression of the carved surface. Not a bruise, more like a shadow. A perfect impression of the panther. “Right. I know. Bizarre, isn’t it? My skin reacts to something in the stone. You know, the way skin reacts to cheap metal jewelry. No big deal. It’ll fade when I take it off.” They looked at her, and it was obvious she totally didn’t get the absurdity of what she was saying. “What? I assume there’s a lot of iron oxide in the stone.”
    “Mark of the beast, baby,” Xia said.
    He kept the amulet to one side by letting it rest against the hilt of his knife. He moved the blade to one side and touched the discolored skin on her stomach. She happened to be looking down when he did. He got another jolt, and for a minute he didn’t see anything but white. When his vision cleared, he was looking directly into Alexandrine Marit’s eyes. In the expanse of time between their gazes locking and her blinking, he saw into her, a moment of flawless, infinite clarity. He could have touched her magic if he’d wanted to. She blinked, and everything went back to normal. Or almost normal. He rocked back on his heels with the snap of coming back to his own mind.
    “Fuck,” Xia said. He shook his hand like it hurt. It didn’t. What he was feeling was an echo of the pain she’d felt the first time she’d put the amulet on.
    “You okay?” Harsh asked his sister. Not him, and he was the one reeling.
    “Sure,” Alexandrine answered. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    Xia turned his head, and their gazes collided. She didn’t look away. She knew what had happened between them. She knew it, and she wasn’t going to say a thing. “Fuck off and die, witch.”
    “You first.”
    “When was the last time you took it off?” Xia asked. He deliberately made the question sound dirty, and that got a reaction from her.
    “For you, never.”
    He smiled at her. “Wanna bet?”
    “Could you be any more of an asshole?” She yanked on her hand. He