4 - We Are Gathered Read Free

placed on her hand when he placed it on his arm, nor how he then folded it against his chest, capturing her like a trailing scarf on his arm. Nor was there anything hesitant about his steps. Pools of light gathered her into their embrace before releasing her as they went, coming from real lit torches along real stone walls. They passed beneath an arch, then another, and if she wasn’t mistaken, they looked to be as old as the castle he claimed this to be.
    “Where are we going again?”
    “To meet my coven.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Right. Why, again?”
    “I didn’t say why.”
    He was tight-lipped and still not looking her way. For some reason, that made him even more attractive. In a dangerous kind of way. Rori sighed dramatically and her feet slid several steps before he slowed and finally stopped. It took another few seconds before he looked back down at her.
    “Say why.”
    She prompted it after more moments went by than she cared to count. They matched her increased heart-rate, and that just seemed to make him loom even larger with each one.
    “I was told to find you and bring you.”
    “Told? You mean there’s a bigger, badder vampire somewhere in this castle-thing that gives orders – and you just obey?”
    That combination of words, combined with her sarcasm seemed to trigger something more vast than she could absorb. He snarled at her, changing everything from the debonair, slightly flirtatious man into a creature of menace and superior strength. And he had really elongated, sharp-looking canines. Rori told her mind to ignore them and worked at making her body obey. It shouldn’t matter. The last three vampire-claiming guys had the same affectation.
    “You will enter the Great Hall with me. You will be standing or you will be hauled over my shoulder. Which is it to be?”
    She tilted her head, considering it, and watched a sparkle hit deep in the one eye that wasn’t shadowed.
    “Shoulder,” she dared, and then got a full view of how well they’d crafted the stone floor.

 
     
    CHAPTER TWO
    One thing she’d learned was to roll with whatever life threw at you. No matter how strange, heinous, or just plain mean. That made it simple to hang there and watch the floor blur into a mesh of gray stone and darker colored pigment where they’d mortared them together. It wasn’t due to anything obscuring her vision, or the amount of blood filling her head. It was the speed at which he moved. She couldn’t even see legs moving, or if they were. He took a large stone staircase like it was just a step or two, and then stopped so abruptly that it rocked her into his back. Thank goodness. He’d read her mind. She didn’t want to enter any room hanging like a sack of grain from his shoulder. Especially in a dress. She didn’t wear dresses as a rule, and while being upside down in one hadn’t been in her reasons, it made an excellent one now.
    But then he reached into a pocket and pulled out what looked to be a cell phone. Rori arched up from him and watched. It wasn’t like any cell phone she’d ever seen. For starters, it was a lot smaller – and clicked right on his ear. She couldn’t tell where the mouthpiece was.
    “Yes?”
    There wasn’t a hint of sound from the other end, but he must’ve gotten an answer, since he spoke again. Nothing fancy. No words of greeting. Just numbers.
    “Sixteen. Non-negotiable. Wire. One-six-eight-four-one-one…” And he finished with the word yes again.
    That was it. He pulled the ear-plug thing out and slid her off his opposite shoulder as he placed it back into a pocket somewhere on his tight pants. No wonder his cell phone was so small. There couldn’t possibly be room in his pants for anything larger, especially as he had them practically painted on pretty impressive thighs. And she wasn’t looking! Rori ground her teeth together as the effort didn’t work, and he probably knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
    One peek at his face and she knew it for certain. He