Chapter Seven.

NOBODY had spoken Meggie's name in years, because that's what his parents wanted-which his sister didn't deserve. And now, he was trapped with a beguiler claiming Megs was here. He'd managed to bury his emotions over the years, and now this soul-deep grief had risen to the surface.

Destiny's hypothetical child ghost couldn't possibly be his sister.

Morgan banned the thought and followed Destiny up the stairs, a warning playing in his mind, her fine ass at eye level swaying to a different tune.

With each step came a scary-thrilling thought: One bed. One bed. One bed. The slow-climbing cadence made him think of a doomed prisoner on his way to the electric chair. Or, in this case, the electric bed.

Ghosts, he could run from. They didn't exist.

Emotions, he could run from. Better not to let them take over.

Doomed, he could live with; he had for years.

But need, the simple human need to touch someone with love. He wanted-God, he wanted. Not only to take Destiny to bed, he wanted her to teach him to play. If he could sip at the well of her adventurous spirit, he might find a blade sharp enough to sever the unnamed weight threatening to swamp his life.

How could he be so fascinated by one of a three-pack? Identical triplets. Destiny looked exactly like Harmony and Storm, and yet Destiny, the mysterious yet audacious triplet, had perfected the art of grabbing life by the balloon strings and sailing that helium rainbow to the clouds. For Destiny, he yearned. With her, he wanted to take to the clouds and soar as well.

Destiny could be annoyingly feisty and cheerful, though she wasn't quite as self-confident as he'd once suspected. He'd glimpsed vulnerability in her tonight when she'd crossed her arms and backed away from the dock.

He'd recognized her search for a life path in the way that she seemed to uselessly grasp, as if for purpose. He recognized it, because he owned its twin-poor word choice, but apt.

Perhaps, somehow, they could each discover their own purpose, entwine them, and become manna to each other . . . like his mother might accept him and his decision to become an architect, and stop nagging.

And pigs might fly, and not crap all over him.

It irked him to be attuned to Destiny.

Destiny. Fate. Karma. Providence-though certainly not divine. By whatever name, he'd recognized her the first time he saw her as somehow fitting him, like a piece of his life puzzle. Big puzzle. Huge. Useless. Half his pieces tossed in the trash.

Two seconds after meeting Destiny, their first meeting, they'd sized each other up, circled with palpable mistrust, and scoffed when the other spoke, which might have been attraction, or the fear of it. Story of his life.

Had it been attraction, dislike, or jealousy? He'd intercepted Destiny's triplet connection, recognized and envied it with a rage of regret, because he'd lost its like, his twin connection, when Meggie passed.

He'd mocked Aiden and King for correctly picking Harmony and Storm from the triplet lineup, but damned if he didn't think he could spot Destiny as his in the clone line now.

But love connected Aiden and King with Destiny's sisters, married love-not an option for him. Who would have him anyway?

Not Destiny.

He could admit his connection to her. Lust. The kind a man got from being parched in the desert his whole life. Down-and-dirty lust that could only be cured with down-and-dirty sex. Temporary fix. Good enough.

Sex for fun. He wondered if she might be up for it.

Not a good time to ask with a bed staring them both down.

"I can sleep here," she said, indicating the bed in the first bedroom they'd come to. Too much to hope, he supposed, that his prayers had been answered.

She ran a loving hand over the ornate brass headboard. "I love old brass beds."

"You want this bed?"

"Sure. It's gorgeous." She tested the mattress by pushing on it, unknowingly wiggling her ass his way again. "Nice and soft."

"Looks firm to me. Oh, you mean the mattress. Okay by me. Do you sleep on the right or the left? Or we could share the middle."

"Never mind, smut brain, I'll pick another, since I take it this one is yours?"

Morgan left her cart where it stood and followed Destiny in silence from room to room, some rooms with chairs or tables, one that was book-lined, one he'd made into a studio for his drawing table and architectural supplies.

She stopped in the doorway of the last bedroom. "Shriveling scrying balls! Only one bed? Harmony said the place was furnished."

He didn't understand her exclamation, but he didn't think he'd like his balls shriveled, whatever she named them.

"And not a sofa in the place," he added, crossing his arms so he could cross his legs, because he'd already come to the conclusion she was working her way up to: one bed, two people.

She lost the starch in her stance. "Sleeping bag?" she asked with hope, her voice so soft, she was giving him another rare peek at her vulnerable side, which derailed his train of thought and allowed him to stand straighter.

"Sorry." Morgan let her lead the way back to his room.

Since the starch returned to her spine on the way, he wondered what ploy he was in for. She looked at the bed, at him, claimed the bed by planting her fine ass on it, instead of him-he should be so lucky-and folded her arms. "Bummer," she said. "You're not gonna be very comfortable on the floor."

He straightened, caught by surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

"You're a gentleman, so you will, of course, sleep on the parlor rug. That's got to be the softest-"

"It's threadbare. This rug is at least newer and thicker, and you're not as heavy as me, so you won't feel the hard-"

"It's practically beneath the bed," she said, examining it, "except for a body-sized scrap. I most certainly will not like it, because I'm not sleeping on it. I'll take the bed, because I know a gentleman like you would insist, thank you very much. You could sleep on the floor. In one of the other bedrooms, because you're a man and I'm a woman?"

His body sure in blood-pumping Hades knew that; it was trying to sit up and beg. "I'm sleeping in this room," Morgan said. "It's the coolest in the summer and the warmest in winter. In the autumn, like now, it's nothing short of spectacular. For that reason, I took that bed apart and moved it here, from a hot and stale front bedroom, piece by piece, thirteen years ago. The ocean may be cold at night-to which I can personally attest-but we're having a great Indian summer, and with the daytime heat still heavy in the air, the breeze in here is unmatched."

He realized he was rambling, but he was also ticked and getting warm, finally, and she might be growing a conscience, judging by the way she nibbled the side of a polka-dot thumbnail.

He removed a layer of sweats, almost embarrassed to have another layer beneath them.

"Okay, you can stay in this room," she said with less of an edge, "but this rug doesn't look half as comfortable as the one in the parlor."

His frustration had done nothing but rise enough to shoot off the charts since she woke him and beat the crap out of him, so at this point, anger seemed a wasted effort. "If we listen, I think we can hear them snickering," he said.

She leaned forward. "Who?"

"King and Harmony in Scotland. They planned this."

"The rats! It would serve them right if we got along."

His head came up, as did his suspicion.

She shrugged. "Not that it's possible."

"Right." Of course, right. "Did your sister tell you to bring your own bedding, at least? Because that's mine on the bed."

"Yes, she did, but she didn't say to bring a bed, the brat. Fortunately for both of us, my bedding's right here in the cart that didn't drown." Destiny pulled out her blankets and sheets and handed them to him.

"You brought three blankets?" he asked. "Counting the one I soaked when you put it over my shoulders. Did I say thanks?"

She nodded. "I was planning peaceful picnics with my paintings and my thoughts. One blanket for the sand-"

"You planned to be a sand-witch?"

She raised a disgusted brow and unbuttoned her jeans, while the devil in his sweats stood to cheer. "One blanket for grassy picnics, and one to sleep beneath. With no washer, three made sense." She slipped her jeans down her legs to reveal a pair of bikini panties as sea green as her tee. Yawning, she climbed into the center of his double bed.

As she did, he read, When Hell Freezes Over, printed across her green silk ass. And didn't he know it.

"Hell is not a positive word," he said. "Your rules."

"It is when it makes my point."

"How convenient." It sure was making his point, and he meant that in a purely sexual way. His mouth went dry, and his palms began to sweat. For a minute, he couldn't believe he was looking at his fantasy in the flesh. He blinked to erase the hallucination or wake up, but Destiny remained curled up right there in her underwear before his greedy eyes. "Look who's sleeping in my bed."

"Gentlemen prefer witches," she said with an ass wiggle, the stripped tease.

Morgan looked beyond the ceiling toward the celestial abode of his former boss. Good one, taunting me with my own wicked fantasies, but I'm still not going back.

He yearned, he drooled, and he ached to climb in with her, if only she'd let him practice his newfound skills. He supposed he could ask. But how? I have a brass boner that likes your ass? I have a loner boner; won't you play with it? Would you care to taste my T(rex)bone? Want a little steak sauce with that?

I can make you scream with pleasure. Now that's the kind of thing men said-men who lost their virginity in fifth grade and never finished school.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard-on.

She lifted her head. "Aren't you going to get ready for bed?"

"Aren't you going to brush your teeth?"

"Brushed before I left home. Haven't eaten a thing. Not letting you claim the bed while I brush again." She opened an eye and looked over her shoulder at him. "Are you going to stand there watching me all night?"

He'd probably like that. For a man like him, it'd be like foreplay.

Morgan didn't know where else to look, or what else to do-literally-so he turned to action. The brass bed weighed a ton in pieces, so there was no moving it to give him more rug, but enough of it stuck out from beneath the bed to give him a bit of padding. He folded two blankets, one atop the other, to add to his "mattress," then he used one of her sheets as a blanket to keep his loose-cannon dick under wraps.

It didn't take a minute to realize this was like sleeping on a slab of concrete. The floor creaked when he moved.

His bed creaked when she moved, and every time it did, he heard it say, "Dumb ass."

He'd never noticed the squeaky springs, and he'd certainly never seen their underbelly in moonlight. Hadn't wanted to, though he might have agreed to it, if it meant getting Destiny in the sack. But he preferred to be in there with her.

"Dumb ass. Dumb ass. Dumb ass." He was ashamed of himself for being mocked by his own bed and for taking it lying down to boot. How much torture would he put up with?

"Light?" she asked.

Damn-slam! He raised his chin so he could see the switch, far away, three feet above him, and upside down. "You can reach it. It's on your left."

As he watched, she slapped the wall behind her a few times, putting so much energy into it-not!-she didn't so much as jiggle a bedspring, and still he felt like a dumb ass.

"Can't find it," she said, yawning again.

From day one, she had a way of inflicting a unique form of torture on him, like wood slivers beneath his fingernails. Torture Destiny style, times ten. Nobody had ever managed to piss him off quite so thoroughly and seductively. Maybe there was something to her claim to magic.

Morgan got up to turn off the light but made the mistake of looking down at her; silver star earrings, butterfly pendant between her breasts, seahorse cuff bracelet on her right wrist, tiny butterfly tattoo on her left ankle. A goddess. A paradox. A pain in the ass!

He yanked one of his pillows out from beneath her head.

"Hey!" She frowned at him over her shoulder. "You know, you've got kind of a red haze overwhelming your aura. You should calm down."

"That's it! Don't look now, but hell is freezing over." He slapped her on the ass a good one. "Move over, brat."

Chapter Eight.

"YOU'RE a bully," she said.

"I'm a man, and this is my bed. Move that sassy ass, or I'll move it for you." Spanking that ass sounded pretty good, too. Did that make him a sicko?

Obviously, sharing the bed didn't appeal. The pillow that smacked him in the head was his first clue. The goddess of Destiny standing on his bed raising her fist was his second.

She tried for a right hook, but he caught her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. "I've been battered enough for one night, thank you very much." He carried her from room to room, upstairs and down, occasionally finding it necessary to keep her ass in place. He didn't mind a bit. "Stop me when you see a floor that looks comfortable," he said, "because I'm sleeping in my bed. Now, you can sleep there with me, Wonderbrat, but you can't sleep there alone."

She wiggled in his arms. "You son of a sea cock! You just want to have it all your way."

"You bet your flying buttress. My mother would have a heart attack, by the way, if she heard a woman say cock, but mine is quite happy, thank you, because you're getting me hot with all that wiggling."

She stilled.

"Is cock a positive word?" he asked, because she seemed taken by this conversation.

"I like cocks," she said. "Generally speaking, yes. Cocks are positive."