The Reaper's Heart

“I’ve set aside my duties for three days. If there’s a lost soul in the vicinity, another reaper will tend it. That allows me the freedom to stay with you.”

He didn’t say “and wait for your death.” Wisely, he thought.

“You’re not invited.”

“Difficult for you to convince me to hand over my heart if I’m not around to listen to your coaxing, eh?”

She huffed and marched onward toward a pink cottage that stood out on the white-on-white landscape. Her tight little fists beat the air furiously.

Vashon chuckled. Just because he did not know love didn’t mean he wasn’t familiar with a range of emotions. He’d gotten under the witch’s skin with his challenge. The next few days would prove intriguing.

She entered the cottage and slammed the door behind her. Vashon stared at the wooden door and the dried herbs and twined branches she’d hung about a heart-shaped window of red glass. He smirked. “Not going to get rid of me that easily!”

With a nod, his innate magic forced the door inward.

Vashon stepped through in a flurry of snowflakes. He brushed off his armor and bare chest and then stomped over to the hearth fire to take on the heat.

“Make yourself at home,” Ananda said with an edged tone that could have cut his skin. Though he knew white witches utilized the elements, so he figured he was safe from surprise attacks by blades.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He plopped onto the only chair before the hearth, hooking an ankle across his knee. Snow had clumped on his heavy boots, and now the compacted white stuff dropped to the pristine wood floor. “I need food. I’m starving.”

“Are you always so demanding?”

“I’ve a right, when the woman I’m making demands of is herself demanding my very heart.”

She harrumphed and glided over to the stove, banging around with pots and utensils. Vashon settled into the chair and closed his eyes. Then he opened an eyelid and caught the spill of her lush, curly brown hair down her back. He bet it was soft.

When not reaping, he liked to indulge in female flesh. To take a woman in his embrace, kiss her and reduce her to moaning bits of passion and desire. Then he walked away, never to see them again. Because, what else was there?

He shook his head. Love, that was what else. Like his mother had given. And the path to that required he stay close to the witch for the next three days.

Chapter Two (#ubc01251b-f3f7-58f9-b29a-0e7c1938db72)

The uninvited reaper had quickly fallen asleep, snoring through the night. Good thing, because Ananda had had no intention of cooking a meal for him so late. She had meanwhile slept fitfully. And a sexy dream had woken her this morning, leaving her gasping and clutching at her pillow.

Silly heart. Once she took a heart, she continued to feel residual emotions from its previous owner. The current one always jumped straight to lovesick. So she couldn’t trust her heart. Because it wasn’t real. Nor could she afford to fall victim to romantic pining now.

She knew what the reaper was up to. And Ananda was not about to let him win. Because if he won, he would reap her soul, which he could only do if she was dead. Was he so heartless— She smiled. Well, yes, he would be without a heart soon enough.

If she achieved her goal.

Though he was right; she did need to keep him nearby if she intended to finagle his heart from him, so she had not chased him out. If he thought to use his sexy charm to annoy her, then she could fire her own charm right back at him.

It was either that or invoke a binding spell that would lash him to her bed for the remaining two days and keep him in one place. Which she hadn’t entirely dismissed as a plan. Until she imagined that gorgeous hunk of steely muscle and smirk strapped to her bed.

“I’ll kill him with kindness. Much safer,” she decided.

The reaper had awoken in the chair before the fire, and now watched her move about the kitchen. Normally, mornings found her mixing herbs for spells and later going out for firewood. But all that seemed a bother when compared to the man with the bare chest and smoldering gaze. Less red now, his eyes, which made him less unsettling overall, thank the goddess.

She turned away. “Tell me what a reaper of lost souls does, exactly.” She strolled to the front window, reaching for the dried herbs that hung along a board. Nettle for tea.

“I reap lost souls,” he provided from behind her.

Ananda spun to find him right there. Mercy, he smelled delicious.

Ignore your heart, Ananda, or lose this game!

She pressed her fingers to his chest and directed him to back up. “Too close, reaper.”

“You have some sort of personal boundary I cannot cross?”

“Indeed.” She took a step to the side, unsure she wanted to be even an arm’s distance from him. She could still smell his sweet perfume of fire and snow.

“Why is the soul lost? And why the armor?”

He sighed and leaned against the back of a kitchen chair. “The soul isn’t lost. That’s just what we call the non-human souls that I, and many others, reap.”

“So, vampires?” she guessed.

“And werewolves.”

“Shapeshifters?”

He nodded. “And witches.”

She swallowed a breath. “I see.”

“This armor deflects the stray human souls that try to attach themselves to me. They’re everywhere, lingering, waiting for their own reapers to come collect them. This metal is fashioned from a powerful demonic substance. It burns human souls.” He unbuckled one sleeve of armor and set it on the table. “Don’t need it on right now, though.”

He unbuckled the other arm, exposing solidly forged biceps.

Ananda sucked in a breath to keep from sighing out loud over such terrific muscles. “Wh-where do they go once you reap them?”

“They move through me and are diverted to their destination, Heaven or Hell. I’m sort of a processing center, if you will.”

“Interesting. Yet I can’t imagine that you typically follow living lost souls around until they drop dead. So why have you abandoned your duties to sit waiting for my last breath?”

“Because you are rare.”

“Only two white witches, besides myself, living at this moment,” she agreed.

“I’m not going to pass up this opportunity.”

Smart reaper.

“So, while we’re explaining our jobs,” he said, “why are white witches so rare?”

Ananda shrugged and twisted a curl of hair about her fingertip. “White witches are born without a heart. I never knew my father—or what he was, exactly—but I suspect it’s because of my paternal line that I was born…lacking.”