The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(37)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I … I don’t know. When I fell asleep the glass was on the nightstand next to me. I’m sure of it.”

A quick glance at her pale face, her trembling lips, showed she was telling the truth. “And the envelope?”

“It was on the bed. I got a box of chocolates in the mail and I had pulled it out of the envelope on the bed to eat them while I was watching TV. Felix, how … how can they be over here? Did I do this in my sleep?”

“Apparently.” He plucked the torn envelope out of the glass and uncurled it. There was writing on it. Smeared from the wine, but still legible. Courage.

What the hell …

“Was the glass empty?” he asked.

“No. I barely took two sips before I fell asleep.”

But she clearly had drunk it after she’d fallen asleep. After she had done a courage spell. Put your fears in blood, add your courage, and drink it.

“This is a voodoo spell,” he told her.

“What?” She got that look again, the one she’d been wearing when she had almost fainted on him before, and Felix grabbed her with both hands to steady her.

Swallowing repeatedly, she whispered, “What do you mean?”

“It’s a spell to rid yourself of fears.” And all it had done was increase his.

“How … how could I do that asleep? I don’t even know any spells.”

“Was it in the journal?” Camille’s little legacy. And possibly Camille’s trapdoor into the land of the living once again.

“No. I haven’t read very much of it. And I don’t remember there being anything like that” Her arms furled tighter around her br**sts. “I don’t understand what is happening.”

Neither did he. Not exactly. If the journal was Camille’s access to Regan, and mortality, then why did the room stink like demon?

“You said you were eating chocolates? Where did they come from?”

“My ex-husband sent them to me.”

Bingo. Felix went over to her nightstand and eyed the box of chocolates. Grabbing a piece, he broke it open and almost gagged. The scent was even stronger, a bitter salty venom. The f**king bastard had sent her a very lovely box of chocolates with his se**n inside each little piece of candy. The ultimate binding tool—sexual fluid, inserted right into her food so she would consume it.

Disgusting. Absolutely the lowest form of manipulation in Felix’s opinion.

Knocking the box to the ground, he stepped on the chocolates and crushed as many as he could with his heel.

“What are you doing?”

“I dropped them.”

“No you didn’t. I saw you throw them down,” she said.

He ignored that. “Did you eat any?”

“I don’t think so. I was going to, but I fell asleep. Why? Is something wrong with them? You can’t possibly think Beau is trying to poison me.”

“Of course not.” She’d be of no use to him dead. But why did Alcroft want Regan? Just to win?

“So why did you crush them? Felix, I’m totally freaked out.” She pulled her hair back and wound it into the shape of a bun, then stared at him with huge, frightened eyes. “How could I not remember shoving paper into my wineglass?”

He realized he was just scaring her more than she already was. Walking toward her, he schooled his features into what he hoped was reassurance. It wouldn’t help if she was afraid of him, too. “It’s okay, Regan, it’s okay. Lots of people sleepwalk. You hear stories all the time of people leaving their house, or thinking an easy chair in the living room is the toilet. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She managed a shaky laugh. “Well, at least I’ve never thought my chair was a toilet. Just that my balcony railing is a park bench.”

“Hey, you’re safe.” He rubbed her arms, wanting to take away that look on her face. She had goose bumps, and she shivered when he caressed her. “You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

Not that he thought for one minute stress had caused her to dangle off that damn balcony, the same one Camille had fallen from and died. He suppressed a shudder. If he had been a minute or two later, he might have found Regan broken on the cobblestones in the exact same way.

She seemed to have the identical thought at the same time. “What if you hadn’t shown up right then?”

“But I did. And we had our Titanic moment there. I felt like Jack hauling you over the side of the ship.” He tried to inject lightness into his voice. “Though you’re much prettier than Kate Winslet.”

“Hah, right. She’s gorgeous.” Regan stared at his chest, biting her lip.

“And so are you.” Felix ran his finger up her arms, under the sleeves of her nightgown. “You’re more than gorgeous. You’re beautiful.”

“Aren’t those the same thing? And you don’t have to flatter me to distract me.”

Felix almost laughed at the irony. “Oh, trust me, I gave up false flattery a long, long time ago. And while gorgeous implies a sort of overblown beauty, being beautiful is more delicate, more poetic, less overtly sexual.”

“You don’t think I’m sexual?”

He should have known that would be what she extracted from what he had just said, had tried to explain. It seemed that the honesty of his compassion and concern, the truth of his attraction, was more difficult to convey than all the fake sentiments he had whispered to women over the years.

Felix shifted his hands to cup her face. “Regan. I think you are very sexual. But it’s not an in-your-face stripper kind of sexual. It’s coiled like a snake under your elegant exterior, and I have no doubt that you’re the woman every man craves—the lady in public, the tiger in private.”

“I’m really not,” she said, her tongue flicking out to nervously lick her bottom lip in a way that made his muscles tighten. “My ex-husband always said—”

Like he gave a shit what Alcroft thought. He cut her off by shifting his fingers over her mouth. “Shh. Why do either of us care what your ex-husband thinks? I only care what we think. And I think that I can’t leave here tonight until I’ve at least tasted you.”

Maybe it wasn’t the way to deal with the fears of either one of them, but Felix didn’t know how to offer comfort. It wasn’t something he had ever really learned to give. His mother had cosseted him, taught him to take, encouraged his spoiled greed. But he wanted to give … wanted to make Regan understand she was an amazing woman.