by Shai August
He only let go once they were both inside, but she could still feel the heat and outline of each finger deep into the tissue of her bottom. She moved quickly to put the ward back in place.
“What did you learn?” she asked once the wards were complete and in place.
“All the staff look alike, not just the three we saw at check-in. It’s like they’re clones.”
She fumbled for the sunglasses on her head. “In the ether, they look like giant rats.”
“Cool,” he mused with a wolfish grin. “I like my snacks large. All the guests who were at the pool think they’ve only been here a couple of days. One lady had on a bathing suit from the nineteen forties. I only know the decade because of my grandparent’s honeymoon picture. My gram had the same suit. I’m unsure if it was so worn because it was vintage, and she was being retro or that’s how long she has been here.”
“I noticed the same. Some of the clothing of the opera group are threadbare, like they’ve been wearing them every day for decades.”
“We’re in the Twilight Zone,” he breathed, finally sitting down.
“For real, most of the singers think they’ve been here a short time too, but they are super focused on the performance. They practice hard, super hard like opening curtain is tomorrow and lifetime roles are waiting at the end. I’ve never been to a practice that was that intense.”
“Is this a good time to ask about your opera background?” he smirked, the tiniest corner of his upper lip curling up like a hook.
She wanted to trace that little hook with her fingertip. His whole body was a latticework of deep carved muscles that begged to be touched. The way he was sprawled deep into the cushions with his legs open and his hips pointed at her was an engraved invitation to sit in his lap and take possession of him. All of him and however she wanted him which was just the way he was right at this moment, relaxed and inquisitive and staring at her like he’d eat her panties off.
“What do you know about witches?” she unzipped the Louis Vuitton Keepall Bandouliere that Ned had unceremoniously dumped on the coffee table earlier and searched for her flask and the two rock glasses engraved with large ‘W’s. The Wilmingtons traveled in style and poured them each a finger of the amber aged liquor. Infusing it with enough nutrients that they could go the rest of the day and tomorrow without needing to eat, before sitting on the sofa adjacent.
“You’re not all powerful like a god, but the more powerful of you can have god like powers; there is a line that most of you don’t cross. I think they’re called The Witch Rules.”
She nodded. “I meant the early years of us. Witches don’t get their powers until adulthood. Most in their late twenties, some early thirties and a few in their forties. I was in the later, powers came at thirty-seven.”
“But Trouble McNamara…”
She shook her head in the negative, Trouble was becoming a bigger legend every week. “My cousin Trouble is the one in a billion exception, not the rule. The rest of us wait and wait and wait; some die waiting on their powers to come. We study the fundamentals of magic in school, but once school is over there is nothing for us to occupy ourselves with but mundane work. I studied opera and spent a decade and a half singing all over the world and like all the other witches waited. I had given up on my powers ever coming and I was readying myself to be a graceful aging soprano.”
“Then bam?” He made exploding gestures with his hands, her precognition and the ghost handprint on her ass reminded her of what he could do with those long, elegant hands and she shivered.
“No, this is where the movies sometimes get witches right. I woke up face to the ceiling of a hotel in Dubai where I had just been picked for my first lead role as the dramatic mezzo soprano for Don Carlos. The minute my opera career was starting to take off, my magic flared up with a vengeance.”
The loss of her operatic career after almost two decades of hard training, disappointing auditions, actual spilled blood, gallons of sweat, and just miles of sheer grit was still a tender wound and today had poked her wound with a sharp stick. She’d be emotionally bruised down to the bone before the week was over and probably need to spend lots of time on The Seer’s couch talking through the whole assignment until she was dehydrated. Her lonely girl Thursday nights with Chastain would be even more wine soaked too.
Knocking back the rest of her drink, she went to shower and change for the evening leaving Troy/Colt with an empty lap. The scotch burned going down, leaving her and her damn precognition with the taste of Colt on her tongue.
Colt
Forty minutes later, they walked arm and arm into the art deco dining room. If the place was younger, he’d say it was art deco inspired, but the whole inside of the hotel looked like it was copied directly from the architects and designer’s plans for the Chrysler Building. Dinner smelled delightful, permeating the air with a jumble of roasted meats and root vegetables and spun sugar. His stomach growled almost on cue, the moment they crossed the threshold. No matter how many nutrients they slipped into a drink for the Midas; those nutrients didn’t replace biting into a rare piece of steak.
Steward Agent pairs had been successfully implementing the Midas Protocol for centuries and had hundreds of ways of getting out of eating and drinking. Everything from the Santa Fe Slammer to the Memphis Match to the Ginger Spice to the GI Joe, Reese wanted to do a Rocky. The Rocky was formerly called the Glove to the Face after the ancient tradition of slapping your opponent in the face. He wanted her to do the tried and true, Bun In The Oven. Morning sickness worked everywhere and on everyone, plus she was a witch, she could projectile vomit.
She’d completely ruled out the When Harry Met Sally also known as Too Much PDA or Get a Damn Room, but he only needed one kiss and she’d melt for him like chocolate in a hot car and he wanted her glistening all over his hands. He was just waiting on his opportunity to pull her into his arms and nuzzle her in all her heated places.
“Is that her?” she breathed, the smell of scotch and peppermint on her breath wafted toward him and his shaft hardened. She had come out of the shower smelling like a fresh cup of hot tea with her apricots, honey, and brandy scent billowing in a steam cloud that could lead him around the room by the nose. Her body was now clad in a figure hugging, buttery yellow silk dress that made her chocolate skin radiant.
He followed the direction of her perky little nose to see a dirty blonde at their two o’clock. “Too tall. File said she’s five-four.”
“Heels?” she asked, like he hadn’t checked the woman’s feet first before making his determination.
“Nope.”
Two of the uniformed staff standing in the doorway had passed them their table assignment, neither staff member asked their names, but the card read “Carmen Principal”. The dining room was the size of his high school gymnasium, but tables were smashed together so closely they had to turn sideways to make it through the chaos of hundreds of people arriving at the same time.
He knew they had arrived at the correct table when the two humans in Reese’s opera rose to their feet beaming at her; they’d switched out of their casual clothing into worn tuxedos. “Troy!” he heard screeched at him.
Camille the bathing beauty from the pool earlier was making a hard line for him, slicing through the crowd. Her eyes took him in with the designer tux with a heat and intensity that he wished Reese had shown even one degree of.
“Camille, nice to see you again. Let me introduce you to my wife. This is my Felice, FeFe. This is Camille, she entertained me while you were off practicing.” Just because he knew it would drive her crazy, he ran a hand over Reese’s shoulders and down her poised back.
Reese’s broad smile was inviting as she offered her hand.
Camille reared back as if struck at Reese’s offered hand. “Troy, you’re married to a darkie?” she yelled accusingly. Heads turned their way by the dozens as Camille had wanted, trying to embarrass them.
Blood vessels exploded in his eyes, that had to be why
suddenly, he was seeing red. Only years of training kept him from shifting and biting the woman’s head clean off her shoulder and spitting it across the opulent dining room to bounce dully on the marble floors.
Reese transformed from friendly, undercover agent to the blue-blooded opera diva Felice Wilmington straightening up to her full height to tower over the smaller Camille before replying haughtily. “Not only is he married to me, but he’s happily married to me.” She rubbed her hand lightly over her belly, flashing the large diamond and matching diamond tennis bracelet.
“Darling,” he muttered. Pulling her chair out, he waited for Felice to lower herself dramatically to the chair before pushing her up to the table. He turned back to Camille, lowering his voice he stepped so close that fear swelled her eyes. “If you ever refer to my wife or any brown or black person as a ‘darkie’, I’ll come in the middle of the night and carve hunks of skin off your face until you look like a patchwork quilt.” He let his eyes switch from his human brownish-green to the silver of the beast for a second.
Camille turned and ran from the dining room screaming. He turned to sit next to his wife only to discover that the two humans had taken advantage of his turned back to claim the chairs on either side of Felice. A dark chuckle escaped him; he couldn’t help sounding like a movie villain. They played a dangerous game and they probably had no idea, he watched them try to charm Felice as she sat twirling the stem of her wine glass and watching, him waiting for the Rocky to begin. Judging by the cut of those tuxedos those two humans had been trapped here since before shifters came out in nineteen sixty-eight. It only took a decade of shifters killing humans over their mates for human men to relearn manners and civility toward women; reeducating themselves out of cavemen ways of treating women else there was a crazed shifter nearby.
Seraphine Wilson and the elder shifters had a law written into the Shifter Civil Rights Act that killing for a mate was not a punishable offense, making killing for one’s mate justifiable homicide. He walked around the table, moving chairs over slightly making room, he didn’t have time to school these humans nor commit justifiable homicide over his mate.
Mate.
The word sounded right to his mind’s ear.
If he said it aloud, it’d taste right on his tongue, probably like her apricots, honey and brandy.
His nose wanted to bury itself inside her to inhale the sweetness and the darkness.
When he’d eavesdropped on her singing earlier, his heart had almost burst out of his chest with pride.
Could Reese? Could Theresa Freeman be his mate? He almost tripped over the chair he was moving. His whole life he’d waited for another shifter to touch him and the sparks to fly signaling his fated mate.
Maybe he wouldn’t get that type of fanfare with Reese, but he couldn’t imagine a life without her. The scent of her made him drunk and high. Was that enough? One day as his pretend wife and he wanted to make her his real-life mate?
Yes.
He’d moved all the unoccupied chairs over two inches before returning to where Felice sat. “Excuse us,” he announced to them as they poured their life stories into her non-listening ears. In one swift motion, he bent and lifted Reese and her chair off the floor and carried both around to the opposite side of the table, as far from the two men as possible.
Eyes all over the dining room were bursting out of their sockets, but he couldn’t explain the feelings that drove him without a full set of encyclopedias and intensive psychiatric therapy.
“Was that truly necessary?” she whispered at him with her eyes shining like new pennies that he could dive in and drown. The beast felt her amusement and even suppressed as he was, the beast still liked her laughter and wanted nothing more than to make that smile a permanent thing on her face.
“Felice belongs to Troy and Troy only,” he warned her, he would say more but there were too many people, but he hoped she understood the sentiment. Other performers in Carmen were filling in the other chairs congratulating each other on today’s practice, while making plans to cover the third and fourth act the next day. “They want to play with you for right now, I want to play with you for life.”
“That was a decisive move, Troy. You informed the whole room.”
Pulling her chair so close he could feel the warmth of her body. “There are only two moves that count in a game of chess, Felice. Check and…” he left the rest unspoken so she could fill in the blank herself.
It didn’t take her long as her almond eyes widened immediately. “No,” she whispered back.
“Yes,” he hissed, drawing the ‘s’ out for a full ten seconds. This wasn’t the way he wanted to declare his love for his mate, deep into hostile territory while undercover in unknown circumstances, but he’d fight every person in this room for her.
“Are you sure?” she asked leaning in so close that her scent overwhelmed him again, too close.
His animal was ready to rise and take her right here on the dining room table in full view of all five hundred diners. He wouldn’t even fight the beast’s instincts. This could go from opera camp to sex camp as he plundered Reese’s body and left a piece of his soul inside of her as he made her scream his name over and over while they climaxed together.
“I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work between your kind and mine, but I’ve wanted to feast upon you all day long,” he confessed. “In my mind, I’ve kissed you a thousand times today, and I know your body like I know my own. I never want to live another day without you.” He was petrified to move, the rest of his life hinged on this one moment.
The amusement, the bright shininess of her eyes shuttered, and her face was impassive, but he could feel the wheels of her mind turning. This was a moment to be still and patient and wait for his prey to come to him. He couldn’t hunt a woman who was unwilling to be caught. Watching her face, he wished he could read her thoughts so he could at the very least argue his case for them. In his head, he promised all the old vows of loving, honoring and cherishing, and made up some of his own full of screaming orgasms, giggling fits of laughter, whatever pleased her. He would make it so, he vowed silently.
She said nothing, just a brief flick of her eyes over his face before she leaned in close, softly planting her full lips on his. Just the touch of her lips on his felt like someone had picked him up and dropped him off the side of mountain into a winter fjord. He froze from shock and a hypothermic cold he’d never felt before. She pulled back, eyes wide cutting off the sensation.
“That’s never happened before.” A whisper of uncertainty was in her eyes, she didn’t trust whatever had just happened.
This time he leaned into her, running a hand around the back of her neck. She wouldn’t interrupt the sensation this time. Pushing his tongue inside her mouth, he slanted his mouth over hers, enjoying the taste of their peppermint and scotch dinner secondhand. She mewled a little kitten noise of contentment and wonder and the beast in him broke free. There was only one place for them to be and that was deep inside her walls as she made that noise.
He dragged her out of her chair and into his lap, the way he had pictured her all day as her scent had rewired his brain. Rivers of ice and lust ran through him as he felt the heat of her thighs on his lap. She pulled back. “Upstairs. Please.”
“Your wish is my command,” he answered, standing with her in his arms, he carried them out of the art deco dining room across the lobby foyer. She pushed the button for the elevator.
“I could walk myself.”
“You weigh nothing, and I need you to understand this is one of the only acceptable positions.”
Reese blushed, making her even more radiant.
“We have things to do,” she whispered.
“For the next hour, they’ll be in the dining room feasting. We can be in our room with me feasting on you.”
Those brandy-soaked apricots had a dose of fire added to them as she moistened in his arms. He’d thought her natural scent was too much. The smell of fire roast
ed apricots filling his nose was the death knell to his single life.
She magically flipped the lock on the room as he stepped off the elevator. He kicked the door shut behind them. Lowering her to the mattress, he reached for the yellow heels she wore and peeled them off. Then running his hands up her legs, pulling the magically concealed utility belts off her calves and thighs. He knew what some of the bottles of potions were from his own partner, but right now they were obstacles on his quest to get to Reese.
Partially shifting one finger, he hooked a claw under the waistband of her panties slicing it off. She mewled for him again, eyes widening at being exposed so quickly and efficiently. Burying his face in the sweet heat of her junction, he tongued her pearl until she sang up and down two scales for him. Her hands bracketed his head, digging her fingers into his scalp trying to push him away and keep him in place at the same time. Palms covering his ears like she was drowning out the very cries he wanted to hear. He laughed as she squirmed underneath his ever-moving tongue, her body sinuous like a snake as she tried to escape. He wouldn’t stop until she bathed his face in her essence, he gripped her luscious hips that would have to wait their turn for his attentions. Everything on her body would have to wait it’s turn; he would work her body from the checklist in his head; clit, nipples, lips all the way down the line then start over again. The beast demanded they drink the juices of her body before it would be satisfied. She gave them sips and they wanted a fire hydrant of her. He grabbed behind her knees and forced them upwards to her chest, he pulled his mouth away and she relaxed. “Why won’t you come for me, Theresa?”
“It’s too fast,” she breathed.
“You and me? That’s how mating is…”
“No! Your tongue. Slower and more suction,” she instructed, eyes flashing.
“Oh.” He tried to be offended, but she knew her body better than he did. Well for now any way. “I’ll start slow and gradually speed up. Let me know when I hit the right timing.”