by Anne Malcom
Humans in a pinch, though then she’d have to expend energy erasing their memories because she had no control of her powers during sex—and humans couldn’t really miss the rush of magic expelling from every part of her body and shocking them with a low burst of power that more often than not rendered them unconscious.
They just weren’t strong enough.
She didn’t go near vampires. Eww. Despite how drop-dead hot they were, they were also drop-dead evil.
Isla and Scott were exceptions. Well, Isla was the exception because Sophie didn’t swing that way, and Scott was more like a goofy brother with fangs than anything else.
Though she’d toyed with tangling with evil when she’d laid eyes on the vampire king, even if he’d only had eyes for Isla.
But no wolves.
Ever.
She found their lack of control distasteful, plus they were animalistic, alpha, and only one step above Neanderthal.
She’d imagined their version of sex as rutting a female, grunting brutally before reaching release and prowling off.
No thank you.
But this wolf was changing something. Taking away the thoughts of dirty, animalistic sex.
No, he wasn’t taking that away. He was making her want it.
Not her, Sophie, but this new urge inside her that she didn’t recognize.
This was becoming a frightful norm, meeting new and dangerous parts of herself that had been lingering in the depths of her mind. smattering
And this new being liked the wolf.
He was wild. From his shoulder-length midnight hair to the rough smattering of stubble—bordering on a beard—covering his strong jaw. His brows were strong yet somehow groomed, framing creamy caramel eyes that glowed gold in the dim light of 3:00 a.m. His clothes were worn but clean and good quality. His tan leather jacket could barely encase his huge muscled form.
He must’ve had to scour Men’s Big and Tall for that.
He had on a black henley underneath that clung to his concrete abs, the outline visible thanks to her improved eyesight. That spell had been worth the days of recovery afterward for this moment alone.
His jeans were black too, faded at the thigh and molded over his legs that could have doubled as tree trucks.
She swallowed roughly as she moved back to his eyes. He’d clearly been doing the same thing with her. And in the short time it had taken her to rake her gaze back up, his eyes glowed brighter, like dim torches sprouting out from his brain.
Creepy.
Though she guessed she couldn’t really talk about creepy considering she barely recognized herself in the mirror these days.
He was six feet from her, and that seemed too far and yet too close. Her instincts screamed at her to run and also stay at the same time.
She never ran.
Not even when it got her killed.
He hadn’t seemed content in their unhurried perusal of each other, nor in the silence, despite the fact he had yet to speak. He radiated a wild, almost feral desperation; it seeped from his pores, saturating the aura that pulsated black and golds.
All witches had the ability to read auras, to a point. The more connection they had to their psychic skill, the more apt they were at reading energy. An aura was just that, a field of energy wrapped tight around a person, spilling out into the air around them. The stronger the being was, the further the aura stretched.
The wolf’s aura licked at the tops of her boots.
There was danger to it. But somehow not directed at her.
Bodily, at least.
What she sensed in him made her wish he meant her bodily harm. That she could deal with.
The second he lost control with the beast clawing at his irises and stepped his booted foot forward, Sophie called forth the magic that had been lingering beneath her skin. It crept into the air, surrounded her, pulsed within her spirit, and her hands crackled with blue light.
She didn’t unleash it on him, not yet.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she warned, her voice thick.
She struggled to keep it familiar, to hold on to herself. Lately every time she used magic, even for the simplest of things—like killing a demon, or cursing people who cut in front of her at Starbucks—she lacked the purchase on it she had before. The ancient power that had slowly been clawing its way up her soul gained purchase with every spell she cast.
It seduced her with the sheer amount of power she’d command if only she just welcomed it in. Her bones seemed cold, empty, and if she let it, she could fill them, warm them with a power no witch had known. It was intoxicating, the knowledge that she had access to such power.
But there was no control in it. Sophie knew that the second she started spouting prophecies and journeying back to nineteenth-century England.
Control was one of the most important things in witchcraft. Without it, the ancient art, the magic coming from the earth itself, would consume the witch. Clutch her and then yank her back into the core, claiming her vessel for its own until there was nothing left of her but an empty shell.
Sophie was so not hot on being an empty shell, not with her kickass personality. Hence her fighting against the power.
The wolf stopped, thankfully, which meant she didn’t have to zap him with the power leaking from her palms. Though she had to actively stop herself.
It yearned to be used. To destroy him, even though part of her was sickened at the thought of it.
His glowing eyes fixated on her palms, on the very air around her, as if he could see the way the particles bent to her will. If she so wished, she could suck all the oxygen out of this alley so he could no longer breathe. She could drop the temperature so his blood froze in his veins, or make it boil at the same heat as the surface of the sun.
She didn’t do that, of course. And she’d been very careful to hide that nifty little power. Control over the elements was awesome when she’d forgotten to wear a jacket and it was chilly. Not so awesome if her coven found out and had her sequestered.
She eyed the wolf, the power rolling through her sharpening her vision. “What do you want?” she demanded.
He wanted something, that was for sure. A werewolf didn’t follow a witch into a dark alley for no reason—no matter how hot her outfit was.
His mouth remained closed.
His eyes did not, swirling through the magic, battling at it to entice her with something more dangerous than the complete destruction that power promised.
Something much worse than that.
Something that would leave her as an empty shell, if she let it.
Sophie wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—take away who she was.
She hit him with a warning shot, nothing more than a slap in the face really. He flinched only slightly and his jaw hardened, anger seeping from every part of him. His fists clenched at his sides, claws pushing from his fingertips.
But he did not move.
Did not attack.
“I know wolves aren’t known for their intelligence, but they do have control over their vocal chords,” Sophie gritted out against the magic that was urging her forward.
More, it demanded.
She ignored it.
“So I repeat my question—what do you want?” she bit out, trying for the casual tone that was her norm, despite the overarching need to release every inch of power stretching at her skin.
End him. End this entire city. Bend it to your will.
His jaw flexed, eyes somehow both swirling yet unmoving.
The low growl of his beast echoed in the alley.
And somehow that growl worked as an anchor to keep Sophie in the moment, to stop her from succumbing to the power that had never felt so intoxicating and toxic at the same time.
In the midst of this, she’d lost purchase on the situation that she’d been so sure she’d held ironclad control over, because he was right there, right up in her grill.
His eyes radiated warmth, like she was in front of an open fir
e, every part of his body thrumming with dark energy even the being inside her couldn’t compete with. Her power was wild, but one day it might be tamed. His power was different. His was a beast, and it could never be tamed.
He wasn’t touching her, but every inch of her skin was tattooed with his presence in a way she despised and loved simultaneously.
“Everything,” he growled, voice guttural and rough, as if he wasn’t used to form words. “I want everything from you.”
In the one long blink that it took her to process those words, the alley was empty. Only the heat in the air and the rapid beat of her heart signified the wolf had been there.
She glared at the mouth of the alley, then upward, seeing the dark shadow of his form against the crescent moon before he disappeared onto a rooftop.
She scowled, forcing the power from her hands to retreat back inside her. “Fucking wolves,” she muttered, striding out toward the sidewalk, intent on pretending that had never happened.
She’d known it had been too easy in the alley.
Much too easy.
But she hoped, with all the things going on lately, that maybe she deserved a little easy and had deluded herself into thinking the wolf would be nothing but a memory by the time she returned home.
Not only had she not been able to stop thinking about those golden eyes on the forty-block walk she’d made herself take—in six-inch heels, no less—but she’d found herself having to actively stop herself from doing a scrying spell for him. She didn’t just have snatches of his aura now; it stuck to every part of her skin, burrowing under it.
It was crazy. She was desperate to be in his presence though she’d only spent a handful of minutes in it that very night.
Yeah, he was hot as all sin, but he was a werewolf.
And he had that intense look like Thorne and Rick. The one that spelled destruction for a once independent and kickass female. Not that Isla wasn’t kickass still, but she had a weakness now—love.
And Sophie knew this wasn’t love because she wasn’t an idiot and she hadn’t even given him a BJ—that was the true sign of love. She decided it was infatuation coupled with sexual frustration.
That’s at least what she’d told herself until she stepped over the magical threshold to her apartment building and sensed the tears in her magical locks.
No one should’ve gotten through them.
Even the strongest of witches.
But there he was, standing in the middle of her foyer, dripping his sexiness and intensity all over the place.
His eyes burned into her.
She froze.
Even her magic froze.
Ordinarily on encountering an intruder in her sacred space—her awesome loft in Soho—she would kill them immediately with a burst of power that would chop their heads off.
The werewolf’s scruffy and sexy head stayed attached to his wide and muscled shoulders.
“You need to leave,” she gritted through her teeth. “If you want to live to see another full moon, with all of your paws intact, you will leave the way you came and make sure our paths never cross again.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch, as if the room didn’t pulsate with magic that she knew he would sense. All immortals sensed magic. It was what fueled them, after all. A healthy dose of biology, of course, but you couldn’t believe that vampires lived on blood, almost invincible, that demons clawed themselves up from the bowels of the earth, that men could turn into wolves, without a little magic.
Or a lot of it.
Witches themselves were made of a fuck of a lot more of it than most immortals. And unlike other immortals, it didn’t come from gods, their power. It came from the earth, the natural world that always had magic since the dawn of time, but only the descendants of The Four could wield it. It was passed down through the maternal line, mother to daughter.
“Wolf,” she hissed, her palms itching. “You’re playing with fire.”
She wasn’t lying. Her power was quickly recovering from whatever about the wolf’s appearance had stuttered it.
She didn’t have the time to inspect the thought that nothing had paused her power in the century and a half she’d had it.
She didn’t have time because the wolf was across the room and in front of her before any more rational thought could run through her head. Not that much rational thought ran through Sophie’s head on any given day.
He wasn’t just in front of her—the wolf was kissing her.
She didn’t even fight it.
At first because she was shocked.
Sophie didn’t do shocked. She was unflappable. And she read people’s auras well, so she usually knew what was coming in any given interaction.
But she hadn’t seen this coming.
Which was why the wolf still had his legs to stand on and lips to kiss her with.
He growled at the back of his throat when she melted against him, automatically kissing him back, fighting at the tongue that was plundering her mouth.
Damn you, autokiss!
His hand was running through her hair, yanking at the strands while his other pulled at her hip, bringing her body into his rock-hard torso.
Their contact, even over top of clothes—his, because she wasn’t wearing that many—worked like an electric shock to her system.
She didn’t think of anything other than more.
Apparently he was thinking the same thing, because she was in his arms with her legs around his hips and her panties pressing into his length encased in denim before she could say friction.
She moaned in his mouth as his rapid movements toward her bed pushed his cock harder against the lace that covered her core. The sensitivity of that area was somehow barely bearable, with that contact alone almost bringing her to climax.
The air roared around them like she’d left all the windows open in the middle of a hurricane.
All the windows were closed, and there weren’t any hurricanes in New York.
It was her. She was the hurricane. It was them, more precisely what they were doing, that was causing the change in atmosphere in her apartment.
Another growl as he threw her against the bed so hard the legs collapsed and her body jolted as the frame hit wooden floors.
She barely noticed.
Nor did she feel the glass that landed on her body as the windows shattered with the force of her power.
All she felt was the heat radiating from the wolf in front of her, leaking from the eyes that had changed shape, slanted, widened, like those of an animal. His form shimmered for just a moment as the wolf inside him battled for power.
Sophie watched it, a thin sheen of sweat settling over her body with anticipation. It didn’t scare her, that battle between wolf and man in front of her—the battle to claim her body. No, it excited her, sending sparks of pleasure through her entire body. Her nipples strained against the thin fabric encasing them, almost painful with her need for him. Her panties dampened as she ached to have him in her most sacred spot.
He growled again, his nostrils flaring as if he scented the way her arousal penetrated the magic-filled air. His hands became claws and he used them to rip at his clothes, tearing at them until he stood in front of her, gloriously naked, chest heaving.
She didn’t even have time to appreciate the sheer male glory of his physique, marble marred with vicious scars that made him more dangerous and delicious simultaneously.
She didn’t have time to think about what an utter idiot she was for marveling at a male wolf.
No, because the male wolf in question moved in a blur and his claws cut through all the fabric of her clubbing clothes until they were even smaller pieces of fabric than they originally were.
Her underwear fared the same.
His golden gaze went to her boots, and even in her near madness, she hoped he wouldn’t put his claws to those too. They were worth two thousand dollars and her favorite pair. Even her best enchantments likely wouldn’t save them if a werewolf�
�s claws took to them.
But he left them, surely not for the same reasons as her, but she was relieved nonetheless.
Then she wasn’t relieved because she was damn near insane with ecstasy. His mouth settled between her legs in yet another blur, no warming up, no teasing, nothing. He was just there.
Her nails tore into her comforter, and blue shafts of light erupted from the skin of her forearms, singeing the curtains.
She didn’t even notice, nor think about the potential fire hazard.
No, her mind was on the werewolf’s mouth, lapping at her, devouring her in a way that was both brutally wild and somehow infuriatingly gentle.
“Wolf,” she screamed. “I’m gonna—”
She was cut off by his guttural growl. The vibrations against her sensitive skin tipped her over the edge, and the room spun and exploded at the same time as a tidal wave of pleasure ruined her.
Her bones were dust.
Skin scorched.
Heartbeat cracking at her ribs.
And he wasn’t done.
His mouth was at her nipples, suckling on the aching nubs. Shoots of pleasure made her body twitch, and then pain mingled with it as he sank his now elongated teeth into her skin. It melted for him like butter.
She didn’t even care. She liked that he was drawing her blood, tearing at her flesh. Some wild part of her craved it.
Her lead arms managed to lift themselves, her palms crackling with magic as she tore her hands through his hair, yanking at his strands in much the same way he had with her a lifetime ago. Though she didn’t have his strength, she had the command of her powers to seep her own release into his skin, share her pleasure.
She’d never done such a thing before, never wanted to do such a thing—her pleasure was hers alone. If dudes got their end away, then that was all gravy; otherwise, she didn’t care. But now it was little more than second nature.
His entire form froze, something she would’ve sworn wouldn’t have been possible before, when his body was in the grips of the beast.
But everything she’d believed about… well, everything was being pushed away like dust in the breeze. Or more accurately like a barn in a tornado.