Sonja looked past Max, saw the setting sun in the windows. Then something dawned on her. “Wait. What about my band’s performance? We’re supposed to play in—”
Fingers pressed against her lips that made her want him again instantly. She hated how she reacted, but her body didn’t seem to care.
“We’ve taken care of that. Your band mates are safe in hiding and the shows have been rescheduled. The fans will be okay.” Derrick’s gentle voice held all the warmth and consideration she’d look for in her brother, only it lacked the coldness of a tour manager with the desire for more money.
She could only shake her head.
“How did you set that up? What about the other shows on the tour? We’re booked back-to-back for several gigs with only a day in between to—”
Derrick’s fingers pressed into her mouth again, but this time she drew them in and sucked, earning a groan of satisfaction from him and a look of disdain from Max.
Finally, Derrick pulled his fingers out of her mouth and returned his hand to her side. “Let’s just leave it at we have ways and means of accomplishing things. Besides, this will add a little bit of mystery to your performances and make the fans even more excited to see you.”
Dammit, but he had a good idea. She wasn’t about to ask further questions, the details wouldn’t be relevant anyway. Besides, if she went out now, her entire band and possibly members of the audience might be in danger because of the threats on her life. Who knew what level her assailant would stoop to.
Derrick held her closer to him so she could feel his arousal.
Hard as a rock, like always. She rubbed her ass against his erection and vowed to pay him back for the inconvenience he caused her with this abduction. “So,” she huffed. “What’s our next move?”
Derrick rubbed her belly, instilling ease with his actions. “You and I are to follow Max. We’ll set up shop with a sniper to back us up while I act as emissary for your interests. We’ll negotiate terms that state you’ll be brought out. At this point, Max will have a trained gun on the kingpin’s head so that once they lead you away, he can take a clear shot, topple the leader. And in the meantime, the cops will be on their way to take down these ruffians.”
“Dude.” Max took another puff off his cigar. “No one says ruffians.”
Derrick scowled. “Bite me.”
Unable to resist, Sonja crooked her neck and bit Derrick’s jaw.
He growled, a happy sound.
Max grunted. “I think after this is over, I’ll move.”
Derrick rolled his shoulders. “Oh come on, it’s not that bad. She’s—”
Max tossed him a cigar.
Derrick slid out of bed and padded naked to the chair beside the table, grabbed his pants, and pulled them on while the cigar hung from his mouth.
Max waved a hand dismissively. “…to blame also, I know. You two are inseparable.”
That got her ire up. “I have not been the one responsible for this entire mess. You two came after me, remember that.”
“Yeah, and if we hadn’t come after you, what else would have gone on, aside from the massacre?” Max pointed the cigar at her to punctuate his point.
She started to respond but instead looked away. She wanted to run from that memory. “It was an accident,” she barely said in a soft whisper.
Fingers tugged gently at the knot forming at the base of her neck, irritating her. The man was always trying, always prodding her toward balance. Why couldn’t she be angry? She glared at Derrick.
He only shrugged, his expression remaining unchanged. “It doesn’t matter what happened, only that we prevented something worse from potentially happening.”
She wanted to feel that fury but couldn’t find an impetus. They had protected her—which by the way Derrick’s emotions rubbed her, she knew he would do again in a heartbeat and without question.
Why? Who would willingly drag himself into a fight that didn’t involve him?
She shifted to face him, unconcerned with the fact that the sheet fell and exposed her. She scanned the room for her clothes. She saw only the pile of clothes from last night. Sheesh, one would think being a witch, she could conjure up clothes. She had no problem removing them earlier.
She sighed. “You don’t need to protect me, Derrick. I’m not a child.”
“I know.” He slid a shirt over his head and retrieved the cutter from the table. Clipping the end of his cigar, he discarded the cap and strode, lighter and cigar in hand, across the distance to stand before her. “I don’t need to protect you. You’re more than capable of doing that on your own.”
“That’s right.” She placed her hands on her hips.
Derrick blocked Max’s view. “And I don’t need to play bodyguard because you’ve dealt with this before.”
“That’s also right.” She nodded. Then she realized he was prodding her again, looking for a reaction. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“And I don’t need to be there if you should get in over your head. You’re a powerful witch, not a shifter.”
She started to agree, but stopped short. Her mouth did link to a rational, thinking brain. “No.” She balled her fists together. “I am not a shifter.” He was leading her. And dammit, he was right. But she couldn’t let him get involved on her behalf. “You can’t. I…”
She couldn’t think of a reason with him standing so close that she smelled the wilderness on him, even over the cigar he just lit. When did he do that?
She had to be losing her mind. Letting Derrick get further involved would only put him in harm’s way. The only power he possessed belonged to the beast inside him, not anything more than that. No moon controlled his magic. But…
Now he towered over her and bent forward to meet her gaze. “And I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself. You’re too important to your family.”
She read the expression in his face, the way his eyes begged her to consider the fact that she’d become family to him. Bah. She had no family to speak of. Well, aside from Rob, but he only understood most of what she went through up until she hit a certain age.Then she went off and found music.
He’d remained at home after their parents died. He’d raised the funds through hard work to get her singing gigs and ultimately own his own bar.
She understood hard work and knew he had a firm grasp of the concept. “You don’t have to. I can go back to Rob. My brother will—”
“Doesn’t even know where you are. We kept that information from him so we would have bargaining power. If our enemies knew where he was, they’d use him to get to you if he knew anything. Trust me on this one; you don’t want to tell him.” Max’s voice boomed in the space between thought and speech.
Her mouth hung open.
Max lifted a hand defensively. “We were in contact while you were out last night. He knows you’re safe.”
She lifted her head and looked defiantly at Max. The blackness in his eyes didn’t give away any emotion; neither did his aura. It unnerved her. She could still take a defensive position. “My brother isn’t the trusting one. Like me, he’s pretty powerful.” She left out the bit about his control; they didn’t need to know he was much stronger and that his magic differed. Or how his control had been slipping over the years.
Derrick set the cigar down in the ashtray beside him and took both her hands in his. His gentle tone emphasized the tranquility in his energy. “I know. That’s why I talked to him. Why do you think he led me in to meet you a few nights ago?”
Had he read her mind and figured out her lust for Derrick earlier? She didn’t know, didn’t need to ask. “I don’t know. You’ve both told me because he was hiding new threats from me.”
“That, too. But Rob knew what I used to do before I retired. If we go in together, then we can get you out together. Trust me?” An eyebrow rose and he cocked his head.
Of course, he let the words hang between them on purpose. Sonja watched his eyes move from side to side, the wheels
in his mind spinning fast. How could anyone not know what he was going to say next? He broadcasted without talking about his feelings for her and their nonexistent relationship.
“We can’t have a relationship outside of sex, Derrick.”
He stiffened, his grip on her hands loosened. “I wasn’t going to suggest that.”
She smirked. “I saw it on your face.”
“Look.” Max coughed. “You two can figure that out after we get a handle on who exactly is trying to kidnap you and what they’re attempting to gain, preferably away from me where I don’t have to deal with the obvious aftermath.”
Sonja scoffed. She ran a hand through her hair and started to face Max but Derrick’s large body blocked him from view. She didn’t want to deal with any of this now. Not two overbearing children, not puma aggression. None of it.
“I’m going into the bathroom. I need to get dressed and get away from the male dominance bullshit here. I don’t tolerate it with my band and I won’t take it from either of you.” She pointed a finger at Max. She shoved her way past Derrick, aware that his heated gaze remained glued to her. She couldn’t help the swish of her hair over the top of her hips as she walked, either. “Dammit.”
She reached the bathroom and slammed the door. She’d sort out her feelings and this situation better while alone. Then she’d make a decision.
Sonja set her hands on the counter and looked down into the black sink. She lifted her head to the mirror, saw her image, and huffed. What was she supposed to do with two alpha male pumas giving her shit and trying to run her life for her?
It didn’t matter that Max was Intel, or a spy. Or whatever he was. He wasn’t a witch. He didn’t know the dangers she faced in using her power nor the responsibilities that came with it. For that matter, neither did Derrick. Neither of them could understand, not truly.
And she didn’t even know the whole story about Derrick, so why should he help her?
Oh right, the poor boy wore his heart on his sleeve.
Her head fell down, hair over her face in one long wet blanket. It hadn’t dried yet from the shower she’d taken earlier. Well, shower was a funny word since Derrick’s meddling interrupted her earlier.
Sadly, she couldn’t stop him from doing so. After her last mistake with magic and her voice, she needed that balance he provided. Granted, she’d only killed no more than maybe six men, but it didn’t matter. She had more blood on her hands.
Sonja looked at her hands, knew they were clean, pale like the rest of her skin.
Figures, even the imagery of blood-soaked digits, wouldn’t appear in her head. That had to be Derrick’s doing. He’d cleansed her too well. Dammit.
She sighed and stared at herself again. In her late twenties, she stood around five foot four but still felt tall. Well, until she met Derrick anyway. He had a way of making her feel girly.
But the look on his face when he hovered above her and drilled himself into her, the puma. Had she imagined it? The shape of his eyes changed, becoming more catlike. But he didn’t actually change above her.
Did it mean anything? Did it matter?
She couldn’t have a mate. Not if she couldn’t get her shit together and protect him from her. And what about her responsibilities to her band? Would Derrick understand those? How would the band react to him being a part of her life? He said he’d never take her from her music but the way he and Max were trying to run her life earlier made her think otherwise. Men like him had a bad habit of saying one thing while doing another, and the controlling nature of shifters was something she could certainly do without.
Her band’s reaction to him would matter. That was the family she worked with and played with, the family she could count on. They already had enough weird shit to deal with considering how they opened shows with glass breaking, then repairing itself. The trick she started as part of their opening did a few things, mainly it pulled the audience’s attention to one central focal point and made them easier to control. Her band grew accustomed to the trick but she still felt their trepidation whenever she used light magic to make the bottle repair itself.
Then there were the tabloids. She hadn’t even considered that before now. Of course, she usually ignored those rags, they always printed exaggerations and outrageous lies anyway.
As for her audience? Sometimes she had to do the things to them that she did. They were dangerous otherwise. The human mind was a conundrum that modern medicine attempted to fix with drugs. Mostly, the kids coming to her shows needed an emotional outlet, not drugs.
The shifters that attended felt the same way, only with more amplified feelings. So it drained her more to deal with them, but it didn’t matter. She did right in this world.
Except she hadn’t felt drained in dealing with Derrick, other than that one time.
Why?
She needed to talk to Rob. He might know what to do at this point. No one had come after him so far.
Sonja clenched her fists and wanted to scream at the mirror. It’d do no good and Derrick would probably come rushing in anyway.
In the few days she’d been around him, she felt a strange feeling. In the darkness of her soul, she enjoyed the tranquility he inspired. It kept her stable and made her wonder if she could believe in miracles and hope.
She sighed again.
Rob had said fate would put them together. Had he actually known about her desire to be with Derrick, at least sexually? Or was she simply overreacting due to all the stress?
She had no idea. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach when she thought back about her brother’s mysterious behavior. He never brought groupies or fan boys back to her when she played at his bar. He’d given her private quarters and because of her status and his paranoia, her dressing space had been even more remote than the rest of the band’s. She sighed, hating how segregated she felt sometimes from the special treatment, but her band claimed to understand. She hoped so.
Rob couldn’t read minds. It just wasn’t possible. But then, staring into the mirror and realizing that she felt emotions and could do what she could do, she knew the truth about her brother. His power may be slipping, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t a force in his own right.
When she saw Derrick after the show, it only confirmed what she knew.
They were going to be mated.
She stared hard into the mirror. “Fuck!”
Chapter Eight
“Goddammit, man!” Derrick paced back and forth along the concrete floor. The woman he believed his heart wanted had just stormed off into the bathroom in a typical female gesture. And because of his and Max’s behavior, she had every right.
“You’re not going to order her back, are you?” Max crossed one leg over the other. He resigned to the makeshift living room area against one wall where a soft brown leather recliner sat.
“No, she has a right. We’re running her life. I never signed up for that.”
“No.” Max leaned forward. “You didn’t. Control was a strong suit of yours but never one you wanted was it?”
Derrick stiffened but said nothing. How could Max even ask that?
“That’s why you left. They wanted to make you alpha and—”
Derrick glared at the other puma. He clenched his teeth and went into the kitchen. “Shut up, Max.”
“You could have been good for our pack and for the organization.”
Max’s monotonous voice irritated Derrick further. He ignored it and searched for an old-fashioned glass. Finding one, he picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink.
“Face it. Not only do you want her, but you want to alienate the rest of your family.”
“Fuck off, Max.” Derrick took a sip of whiskey, letting the caramel and oak burn his throat. Then he took another. The booze would loosen up his nerves just a touch and give him a little distance. Max didn’t need to bother with Derrick’s demons, they were his to deal with on his own time. He couldn’t put that weight on Max, not the regret, t
he sorrow, the desire to beg forgiveness from any of the survivors or the relatives of those he’d been ordered to mow down and eliminate. He couldn’t face them.
Didn’t want Max to deal with it, either.
If he had to guess, Sonja probably picked up all of the shit he felt now. Confusion at his and her behavior mounted with the fact that Max wasn’t letting go of the family issue.
“We would have helped you.”
“Goddammit, Max.” Derrick slammed the glass down against the counter. “Pumas are lone creatures by nature. We don’t help others, we don’t even bother with other species except to hunt, fuck, and kill. That’s all we do.”
“But we don’t have to resign ourselves to our animal nature. We’re above that. Don’t you get it? Even in your behavior, you’ve mimicked humans. Just like I have.” He waved his cigar around for emphasis. “We’re not solitary in this world. There are too many people, too many things, man. We have no choice but to get along with them. Yes, we can blend in and hide. That only gets us so far until someone figures out what we are, then they hunt or kill us out of fear. We’re still required to play our part in all of this and that means accepting life as ours.”
Max should talk. He ran from the one woman in his life that could stand up to him and be his equal in every aspect, even though she was a mere human. He started to respond, but stopped himself. Instead, he looked at Max, saw the dead set expression on his face.
“We have choices we can make, Derrick. We always have. I chose to let go of the shit you’re holding on to from our last op together. People died, it was our fault.”
“No! You just told me we had choices and we could have chosen to walk away—”
“And what, let the dictator abuse those people more? Let her use the children for the slave trade? Do you really feel good about that? Would you have felt good knowing drugs were smuggled into this country in the stiffs of the bodies sent back since that warlord had at least the appearance of decency?” He pointed at Derrick. “Would you have relished that, instead of the decision we made?”
“There had to be another fucking way.”
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