The Reaper’s Heart

Michele Hauf

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Copyright

Chapter One

Snow fell on the man’s obsidian wings, bent out behind him in wicked darkness. The wings appeared fashioned from metal, yet resembled feathers as they tested the air with a shudder, unfurling outward in an impressive span.

He rose from the squatted position in which he had landed within Ananda’s consecrated circle of ash. His broad, bare chest glistened with snowflakes as the chill hit his skin and steam rose in the wake of the melting flakes. He wore articulated silver armor, pauldrons and bracers, but only along his arms. Curious. Had he no need to protect that handsome chest?

Ananda did not step back from the imposing sight, nor did she cry out when his red eyes arrowed on her. When he spoke, a shiver trickled down her neck and coiled in her belly—in a good way.

“Why have you summoned me, witch?”

Gripping her hematite wand at her side, she stepped forward, proudly lifting her head, and declared, “I want your heart, reaper. Give it to me, and I will release you from the circle.”

The reaper’s smile touched evil even as it curved into charm.

Ananda’s heart raced—curse the thing. She’d always been prone to romanticizing every little moment, person or object. Even the curve of a man’s smile. And oh, but he was a beautiful specimen any woman would love to—

“I have reason to keep my heart,” the reaper stated with a touch of mirth.

Churlish man. Whenever she had needed a heart in the past, she had only to ask; the man would relent, and that was all the permission she required.

“You don’t need it,” she argued, because she knew he was demon. “It is adamant and unfeeling. Incapable of experiencing love. Whether or not it resides within your body, you will continue to live.”

“You’ve done your research.” He tapped the air before him, testing the circle’s magical boundaries. His fist hit upon the barrier Ananda had conjured with a sweep of her wand. “But I must keep my heart if I’m ever to know love.”

“Love? No, that’s—” The last thing Ananda wanted to hear about was love. Something she’d wanted desperately but had given up on. Thus, her need for this specific heart. “You can’t know love.”

“I could if I reaped the soul of one who has taken hundreds of hearts—a white witch’s soul.”

“But I’m…” She gasped to avoid finishing with a white witch.

“Yes, and rare. I know. I’ve done my research on you, too, Ananda.” He winked at her. Actually winked! “Because of the hearts you have taken over the years, your own has accumulated untold quantities of love. That’s why I have come to you.”

“No, you didn’t. I summoned you!”

“Right. Do you think your magical chanting got me here all on its own?” His bold laughter rippled through her chest and tickled at her foolishly tender heart. “White witches require a new heart once a year to stay alive. You’ve three days left, Ananda. The full moon is your deadline.” Moonlight glittering in his red eyes, he looked down his nose at her. “You think you can convince me to hand over my heart before I reap your soul?”

Ananda swallowed. Her fingers tightened about the wand. She hadn’t expected the reaper to be so rude and downright challenging. Though neither had she expected this would be easy. If he reaped her soul she would die. She didn’t want death; she wanted to stop feeling. Because with every heart she took upon each winter solstice, she only pined more desperately for a love of her own.

She’d tried to fall in love. It never seemed to stick when she dated men. Fickle? She was not, just…lacking somehow. Her last affair had damaged her to the very marrow.

Three days to get the man to hand over his soul? She could do that. She’d tamed rabid werewolves and brought vampires to their knees, begging for mercy. She could summon demons to her bidding and make faeries flee in fear.

This arrogant reaper was no match to her cunning magic.

The only obstacle she feared encountering was interference from her wanting heart.

“I can,” she replied boldly. “Your heart will be mine before the solstice passes, reaper.”

He cocked a grin and winked as he drew a toe across the ash circle, opening it with ease. “We’ll see about that.”

* * *

Vashon, the Reaper of Lost Souls, followed the white witch down a snowy path through a forest of white-papered birch trees. Leagues away from the nearest city, here in the peaceful woods, it felt as if he’d entered a time long forgotten. Ananda’s long red skirts billowed over the snow, and her unbound hair fluttered and danced with snowflakes.

A pretty woman. With dark intentions.

She wanted his heart? He preferred to keep hold of that hard, non-beating organ. It was necessary to his goal. If he could reap the white witch’s soul, then his heart would turn soft and begin to beat, and he could then finally know love.

Love was the ultimate emotion. It must be, for humans lived and died in the name of it. They bonded for life because of it. Some committed grave crimes for it. And it had coaxed a human woman to have a demon’s child.

His mother had loved the demon Pernicore, and Vashon would never forget her tales of true love. Or her love for him—she’d often sweep his bangs aside, kiss him on the forehead and say, “I am part of you.”

He’d never been able to understand what she meant. He had the stone heart of a demon, yet he pined for the elusive emotion. Reaping day in and day out—while that was his job—left him with an ache in his core. For his mother’s sake, and for himself, Vashon wanted love.

“Why are you following me?” the witch called. The skitter of ice crystals across the snowy ground tinkled in harmony to her dulcet voice.

“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

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.”

“I don’t think you’re lacking in any way, Ananda.” The way he said her name on a hushed breath stirred the passion in Ananda’s breast. Oh, to be wrapped in his arms…

She shook away the image. Naughty, pining heart!

“As for magic,” she continued, “we’re like any other witch. I practice earth magic and rely on ley lines to forge my power.”

“I sense ley lines are near.”

“Two cross beneath my house. It is here where I am most powerful. If I must restore my magic or recover from injury, I simply bunker down in my home.”

“Your magic is not so powerful as mine,” he said, and Ananda did not miss the challenge in his voice.

Instead of arguing with him, she summoned a hefty load of energy in her fist and swung around, releasing it toward him. The blast of air magic slammed his shoulders and body against the door, and chuffed out his breath.

* * *

Vashon gathered up a hefty wallop in his hand and swung his arm back to deliver the payload toward the white witch. But before he could follow through and release the zap that would surely blow the witch off her feet, he paused.

Had he noticed before how blue Ananda’s eyes were? And that pretty little dip at the center of her top lip. Too exquisite for a creature such as he to even ponder. And yet, he couldn’t stop wondering if that dip had been placed there by something divine. It was so sensual. He wanted to taste it, and maybe—

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