by M. L. Briers
“Running into my arms like this holds such symbolism,” Neal said with a big dollop of relish, much like the one she’d just delivered to Claudia.
Fate was cruel. “I’d say bite me, but you know?” Marilyn tossed back.
“Go ahead and tease me, but one day I might just snap and where would you be then?”
“I’d be fine, you’d be pushing up daisies,” Marilyn said, stepping back, and offering him a warning glare from beneath her long lashes.
“Why fight it?”
“Neal,” Marilyn said and sighed.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” he grumbled and folded his arms.
Marilyn lifted her chin and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I beg to differ, I just dropped Claudia in the poop with Cain, and have left them alone for fate to work her magic.”
“That’s not fun, that’s devious, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” he scolded her.
Marilyn frowned. “Really?” She hadn’t thought about it from the other side, and guilt tapped her on the shoulder.
“No!” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s good to be bad, trust me, I’ve had a few lifetimes of experience…”
“I’m not bad; I’m just…” She frowned. “Well, I don’t know what I am, fate’s little helper?” It felt better when she thought about it like that.
“Well, now what?” Neal asked.
“What – what?” Marilyn said, confused.
“You’ve done your matching thing, and now it would appear you have done your disappearing act thing, and have a plan as to where you will go?”
“No,” she said, still frowning. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead – I’m – winging it.”
“Well then, let me invite you to dinner…”
“No, thank you…”
“Movie…?”
“Nope…”
“Your mother’s?” he said with a steely tone that made it sound like a fate worse than death.
Marilyn grimaced. “Ugh!”
“Scott’s at my house and it wouldn’t look odd if you went there with me,” he announced and noted the twinkle in her eye.
“A chaperone, how cute. I knew my kids were good for something in later life,” she said, starting for her car.
Neal groaned inwardly, that hadn’t been his plan, but in for a penny. “My house, my car,” he said, and held out his hand for her to take.
“House, fine, car, fine, your hand – not in a million,” she said and strolled by him toward his car.
“You wound me,” he said, following on behind her.
“Now there’s a cheery thought I could get behind,” she said back over her shoulder and reached for the handle, but he’d got there first, and for one long moment they were caught in a standoff.
Neal didn’t move; he didn’t even blink, she did, several times in quick succession. Then she took in a deep breath and shrugged. “Fine.”
Neal opened the door for her and waited until she was seated before he leant in, making her turn and lean back away from him slightly so she could look up at him. “That’s a lot of times you’ve said fine…”
“Then take the hint that it’s the way your night is about to go,” Marilyn said and offered him a wicked look of mischief.
“Fine,” he said, stood up straight and closed the door. “Forewarned is forearmed,” he muttered to himself as he strolled around the car to the driver’s door.
~
“Aren’t you going to get me that drink?” Cain asked with a level of amusement that Claudia didn’t appreciate.
“What do I look like, the little woman from a fifties movie?” The moment he went to open his mouth, she cut him off. “Booze is over there, kitchen’s a little further.” She said, waving an absent hand in the air.
Cain couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t sure if it was just him seeing things that weren’t there, but she looked a little nervous, she was definitely on the back foot, and he reminded himself that where witches were concerned, that wasn’t always a good thing. “Can I get you something?”
“Sure, there’s a little coffee shop in town, I’ll take a smooth roast latte with a dash of nutmeg,” she replied before she offered him the kind of smile that said she was far from being reasonable and was still digging her heels in.
“Only if you come with me,” Cain said, resisting the urge to fold his arms, but he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands.
“Now, what would be the point in that?”
“You know, I have all the time in the world to woo you, I’m in no hurry – I can wait just as long as it takes,” he informed her, and sat on the arm of the chair opposite her to prove his point.
As strange as it seemed to her, his words sparked something akin to excitement within her. Of course, she was his fated mate, so he wasn’t about to go anywhere, but it still melted a little part of her frozen heart to have him say it. “Until hell freezes over?” That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him a hard time about it.
“Longer, if necessary,” Cain replied. Then a small smile tugged at his lips, and she could feel the wind of change coming for her. “Not that the mating pull wouldn’t have kicked in before then and made me irresistible to you – to the point where your every waking and sleeping moment would be dominated by the need to…”
“I get your point,” Claudia said.
It wasn’t as if that wasn’t already happening. For the little she had slept last night, her dreams were full of him, and it was the kind of dream that you wished you had a man in bed beside you when you woke up so you could make that frustration go away.
That thought hit her hard. Of course, that was what was wrong with her, sexual frustration. She had an itch to scratch and nothing to scratch it with, except herself, and she hadn’t given that a thought either. But then there had been a crazy ghost running around the house and appearing at the oddest times.
Cain gave a small shrug, and she could just imagine the muscles in his broad shoulders and his wide chest moving beneath his skin – and that was the problem, she’d kept imagining those muscles on display, along with other noteworthy parts of his body. “The longer it takes, the wilder it will be when we do finally…” The snap of magic against his skin silenced him with both surprise and the sting of pain, and he rumbled a low growl in his chest. But he took comfort in knowing that if he wasn’t getting under her skin, then she wouldn’t be acting up.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
~
Claudia pushed up from the chair. “I’ll get my own drink,” she announced, and it wasn’t as if her mouth hadn’t gone dry and her tongue wasn’t in danger of sticking to the roof on her mouth, boy, wasn’t it ever.
It was bad enough when she imagined him naked, and her body was wrapped around his like a vine, she didn’t need any help from him doing an impression of Chatty Cathy to give her imagination new ideas. She headed for the kitchen and felt no need to turn to see him following on her heels, she felt him there. It was as if there was an imaginary tether between them, a connection from her psyche to his, and she wondered how far apart they needed to be before that tether broke, and she didn’t feel it anymore.
Not that her mate was going to let her out of his sight. He’d camped outside the damn house for the night like he was hunting his prey and biding his time waiting for her to stick her head out so he could pounce – and even that was somehow endearing to her.
Damn fate and his charms, or what she now saw as his charms, and only because she was being swayed by the stupidity of the mating pull. Unrelenting images of him bombarded her at her weakest times; times when she really couldn’t concentrate on anything else for long enough to block him out – what hope did she have of fighting the pull, standing up to fate’s decree?
Claudia was proud to be a wicked witch of the wickedest variety – and now she had become nothing more than a giddy teenager with her first real crush. It was pitiful. The irony wasn’t lost on her; for all the years of keeping her heart locked away and men at bay,
none of those poor suckers was actually her soulmate.
Cain was the man who was meant for her, and she’d been blindsided by him. She could feel the frost thawing within her and those bricks that she’d so carefully constructed around her deepest inner feelings were crumbling one by one, and she was powerless to do anything about it.
If that wasn’t a giant kick in the panties, she didn’t know what was.
When it came to mates, Amber had jumped in with both feet, but then Amber was young and still in love with the thought of love, and not the reality of it. Claudia knew only too well that love never came with a guarantee – except now it did – and that was messing with her head in ways that she couldn’t quite fathom.
“We’re going to need to talk about your magic,” Cain said, and it sounded as if he was leaning right over her shoulder.
Claudia snapped a look back at him and found him a few feet away, duly following her as she made her way to the kitchen. She turned back to find that she was headed for the wall and quickly swerved left to avoid it. “I much prefer show not tell,” she rushed out, mentally kicking herself for not paying attention to where she was going.
“Oh, me too,” Cain said with the kind of sexy drawl to his voice that captured her imagination once more with thoughts of him naked.
Claudia managed to sideswipe the stool with her little toe and cursed the pain that shot through her foot and into her ankle. Men! It was all their fault. Without men in the world, things would run a lot more smoothly, and she wouldn’t have kicked that damn stool.
She managed a hop, a skip, and a stumble towards the kettle, and she placed her palms down on the side and her foot flat on the floor with her injured toe throbbing like a second heartbeat. She bit down on a curse or three.
“Am I that distracting that you walk into walls and stools?” He sounded as pleased as punch.
“Only to the point where I can’t decide if I want to kill you fast or slowly,” she muttered back, rubbing her injured toe with the sole of her other foot. She had murder in mind, but she’d much rather start with the stool and work her way up to him.
Claudia felt him at her back, the heat from his body was just too much for him have kept his distance, and then she felt his breath against her cheek as he leant in. “Would you like me to rub that better?”
Because those deep seductive tones didn’t kick off the thought of him naked in her mind, add that to the thought of him rubbing anything of hers with anything of his, and she was in ga-ga land. It was unrelenting, and if she didn’t mate with him soon, then she just might lose her damn mind.
But then, that was what fate had planned, and she was never one to give in, back down, or go with what was expected of her.
~
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Marilyn said, placing her hands on her hips and lifting her chin a little as she stared the vampire down in the front garden of his home.
Neal wasn’t budging. “Take a look around you; you’ve got witches, wizards…”
“Warlocks, not wizards…”
“Witches, warlocks and wolves crawling all over this place…”
“Hardly crawling…”
“Where’s the harm in throwing a vampire into the mix…?”
“Because you suck,” Marilyn said, stalling until she could come up with a good answer for his question. The conversation had gone from the surreal to the ridiculous, and she was losing ground.
“I do, I’ll admit it,” Neal said, holding his hands up in front of his chest in mock surrender. “And I’m damn good at it, but do me the courtesy of looking in the mirror, lady…”
“I don’t suck…”
“Well, that would depend on the context of that word, now wouldn’t it?” Neal thought he might have gone too far when she froze in place and just glared up at him. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be fried on the spot by her magic, or kicked in the balls – either way, he steeled himself and waited for it to come.
Marilyn chewed that one over for a long moment. If she’d been ten years younger, she probably would have let him feel the power of her knee where it hurt the most, but she’d learned over the years that there were better ways to deal with argumentative men. Her arm snapped out, her finger pointed to the woods, and she did a fair impression of her mother, which annoyed her somewhere deep inside. “Leave!”
The fact that they were standing outside his house wasn’t lost on her, but her son was inside, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Neal thrust his hands in the pockets of his slacks, took on a relaxed stance, and gave her that dazzling smile that must have won him a fair few free meals from women whose panties hit their ankles. “I’m not going anywhere, Marilyn, and you can’t make me.”
Marilyn pulled her shoulders back so far that she was sure her shoulder blades slapped together. “I can borrow my mother’s spell and keep you out of your house for another decade,” she announced with a little bit of glee.
“Fine,” he said with a thoughtful frown and a shrug. “Then I’ll just camp out in one of your bedrooms…”
“You’re not staying in my house…”
“Follow you around like…”
“You have been…”
“Meddle in your life like a witch.” Neal noted that she didn’t immediately have a comeback for that one.
Marilyn leant in just a little. “I don’t meddle,” she finally said.
“Much,” he said.
“At all…”
“What about the stunt of getting between the golfing guy and me?” he tossed back and slowly folded his arms while Marilyn mulled that over. “My-my-my, no reply?”
Marilyn stumbled around in the dark for some great line, but she knew well enough to admit defeat as the clock ticked down, and she tossed out the only thing she had. “You suck…”
“We established that,” Neal replied with an air of victory about him. Was he really going to go in for the kill? She was floundering now, and so unprepared to hit back below the belt. “And please don’t deny that you liked it.”
Marilyn snapped to attention like he’d reached out and hit her with a wet kipper right across the face. “I don’t want to talk about it!” She announced and stalked toward the front door.
“Too bad,” Neal said, following on her heels. He had her off guard now, and he wasn’t about to give up that hard fought for ground.
Marilyn whirled back to face him, her eyes ablaze with accusation and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a gleam of something that said she remembered that night. “You said we wouldn’t discuss it…”
“Because you were married…”
“I’m still a mother!” she shrieked, and that sound hurt his sensitive hearing. He was glad they hadn’t made it inside so her shrill tones could echo through the hallway.
“That has nothing to do with…”
“Sure, it does…”
“Not where I come from…”
“The middle ages?” she snapped back.
Neal cocked an eyebrow at her, and she narrowed her eyes on him. She wasn’t backing down, and that was troubling – he thought he’d won that round. “Not quite that old…”
“Ah, did I offend your delicate ego?” She eyed him with disdain, and still, he could see amusement in her eyes.
“Let’s get back to that night…”
“It’s time for you to leave…”
“But it’s my house, or did you forget?” Neal asked, with a teasing smile. Everything about him screamed that he had the upper hand, was in the catbird seat, and she had the urge to knock him out of that seat and right onto his backside on the ground.
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
“That’s Claudia’s thing; you’re more subtle than that, you use your words as a weapon…”
“Let’s not forget my magic…”
“That you only wield when necessary…”
“Or provoked…”
“But neither of those things apply here. We are just two adults…”
“Ouch,” he said and cast his gaze to the ground.
Marilyn frowned. Had it really been that easy to shut him up? Why hadn’t she discovered that one years ago?
Neal snapped his gaze back to hers, and a devilish grin spread his lips. “I guess we can’t all be our mothers, can we?”
Marilyn choked on that. “My mother?” It sounded as if she’d just discovered the taste of the sourest lemon and she didn’t much care for it, that disgust was mirrored in the look she gave him.
There was going the distance and then there was going too far, and he thought he might just have crossed that invisible line with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
~
“Well,” Neal said and rolled his eyes to the night sky. He needed to think fast and dig himself out of the hole before she threw the earth in on top of him. He’d been there and done that and didn’t relish the thought of going through it again. “On the one hand, we have Amber…”
“Leave my daughter out of this…”
“And on the other, your mother,” he continued as he held out his hands and mimed weighting those up against each other. “Who would you say you’re closest to emulating?” He snapped on a mocking smile, and she grunted in annoyance.
“If I was my mother, you’d already be ashes, and as tempting as that sounds right now, I came here for a reason that didn’t involve being insulted by you,” she informed him.
“Ducking the question, I can see why.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he motioned for her to go in front of him. “Let’s go and find that which you seek.”
Marilyn was going to object to her son being described that way, but when Neal scanned the area looking for anyone or thing that seemed out of place, she bit her tongue. Sure, she was mad at him for saying she was like her mother, but he was the one giving safety to Scott.