by Lauren Dane
How could he resist that?
“And she’s teaching you? How to deal with whatever is trying to get to Renee?” He paused. “And you. Damn it.” Of course. Of course she was a target too, and of course she hadn’t said anything. Though it was so obvious he wanted to kick himself. She wasn’t only a target due to her proximity to Renee, they’d want her for her, taking the threat against her to a completely different level.
“What’s the harm in being prepared? Even for a highly unlikely situation? Anyway, the kind of practitioners we’re dealing with, the ones attacking Renee, aren’t super powerful. Most of us aren’t. So I figure it’s a good thing to know how to deal with them. They use magickal properties and energy differently. Hard to fight it if you don’t know how. Some of them don’t use magick at all, at least not the kind Renee and I have.”
Fascinating. Though he was pissed off at himself for missing the clues, he loved how she thought about things. Strategic. Orderly. A lot like he did.
“How so? I mean, how do they use magick differently?”
“In the most harmless of cases, they learn to manipulate other forms of energy to use them in their own spellcraft to supplement what they’ve already got. Not all of those things are bad. Tonight, for instance, I was able to grab the magickal energy in the house to supplement my own. Shifters have theirs, Renee lent hers to me, and there’s power in the wards too. They just go a step more and use negative, but hugely powerful forms of borrowing or theft. Blood. Pain. Fear. Death. All expel a great deal of energy. What I have is natural. I was born to it, it comes to me when I call. That’s magick. What they have, when they steal energy to enhance spells is not the same. They call it magic, without the K. It’s harmful to the wielder and it’s gained without permission. You can’t control that sort of energy, not all the time. It’s not natural.”
“They kill for power?” His cat didn’t like that one bit.
“Yes. Or, they hunt around to find people like Renee, who have unique magickal signatures or properties. She, Galen and Jack have this loop, they didn’t set out to create it, it just is. But she has this huge draw, which makes her a target. Not that she knew how to use her magick before she mated with Galen and Jack, but her reserves, her infinite possibility has always been there. I believe this is why Susan kept her around.
“Of course, you add in the way Susan tormented her as a child and you get a pretty heady brew of power to leach off. Negative emotions have power too, power enough to have been attractive for these witches. Mages. Whatever they want to call themselves.”
“Essentially, they’re thugs. Renee’s energy is special so she’s like extra HP or whatever.”
“HP as in video-game power?”
“Haters to the left, Kendra. I like a little video-game action to get rid of a hectic day. Who doesn’t?”
“People who have sex instead.” She blinked up at him, not even pretending innocence.
“You have a one-track mind.” Not that he was complaining about that. Not at all.
“I never claimed otherwise. I like sex, Max. I’d like to have it with you.”
He held back a grin, instead sending her a mock frown. “Stay on topic, you’re distracting me.”
“That’s the point.” She paused. “Fine. Yes. The last mage who attacked her tried to drain her. I could touch you right now and take your magick. Probably without you knowing it. Hell, I used some of your energy earlier. It’s a physical law, right? Energy doesn’t dissipate, it merely becomes something else. So all paranormal beings I’ve ever come across, witches and shifters, though I hear it’s the same with Fae and vampires, have magick. You slough it off.” She shivered. “He would have drained her and then done a rite to use her all up. Her connection to Jack and Galen included. I don’t know how it would affect them, but I doubt it would be good.”
He whipped into his driveway, the garage door sliding up as his guard gave him the all-clear sign from his perch on a nearby rooftop. He’d slid into a higher state of alertness as she spoke, adrenaline driving him on. He had to calm himself down or he’d bring the cats around him into that state of agitation as well.
The situation had been calm for a few months. The mage who’d attacked his sister-in-law had been dealt with and they’d been keeping an eye on some men who’d been connected to the attacker.
But the newly recovered memories Renee had resurrected, implicating her father in her mother’s death and the abuse that followed, complicated things. He had no idea how to combat this foe. Until Renee, he might have ignored that such things happened. But she was his, part of his family and his jamboree. And now Kendra, who, his cat reminded him, was also his.
“How do we stop this? And keep you safe?” He hustled her from the car until she pulled her arm free and took a look at the place.
“I told you, I’m working with Mary on it. Our lessons start again and she’s teaching me how to draw better on the energies floating around so that I can bolster my own. If I don’t, I get sick, depleted. It leaves me vulnerable. Once Renee gets a better grip on her magick, she’ll start with Mary too.”
“Vulnerable how?”
“Using magick means I spend it, use my reserves. If I get attacked and I’m depleted, I have less to defend myself.”
And that was unimaginable to him. “What can I do?”
She paused and looked up, into his face. “You’re doing it. You can’t fight this with claw and tooth. Or, you can, but only after the magical stuff has been neutralized. The witches have to do that part. I’m encouraging Mary and some of the others I’ve met here in Boston to get together to try to form a loose organization. Massachusetts doesn’t have the best history with witches. You might imagine it’s not as easy as one would assume. Many witches pretend not to be, or pretend to be dabblers. New-agers.” She shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that of course, but that’s not what I am.”
“You should come out. Like we did.”
He led her into the main part of the house. The heart, as he liked to think of the living area where the kitchen, dining and family rooms all flowed together.
“Yeah, that’s what we need. A panicked human population drowning us or firing us from our jobs because they worry we’ll harm them with our warts and evil ways.”
“Come on now, don’t exaggerate. We’ve had our troubles here and there, but it’s not all been bad. It’s not the same as it was during the witch trials.”
He nearly stepped back at the sight of so much anger on her face. Instantly he hated that he’d pushed whatever that button was in her.
“I’m not talking about the trials. Prejudice dies hard. And slow.” Her voice was agitated, strained.
“Don’t do that.” He turned her, tipped her face to his, her expression awash with pain, anger, hurt. Not knowing how to help her, he kissed her forehead. “Don’t close up and go away.”
She shook her head once, struggling with whatever it was she needed to say. So complicated, his little witch. “What do you want from me?”
He could have softened it. Could have pulled the punch. But it wouldn’t have been right. He needed to lay it all out for her because he had no intention of anything but being with her.
“Everything.”
Eyes widened, she took a breath and stepped back. “I just got everything back for myself. I’m not ready to give it to anyone else. I don’t know if I ever will, Max.”
“Remember the discussion we had earlier? About cats being patient hunters?”
“You don’t scare me.”
She meant it like a tease, but he took it deadly seriously. “Oh yes I do. Not in the physical sense. We both know you could have blasted my ass away from the door tonight if you were truly scared. But in here.” He tapped a fingertip over her heart.
“I’d have had a hell of a headache, if I could have made it to the f
ront walk without passing out. Yeah I could have blasted you.” She neatly sidestepped the part about being scared emotionally. Still, she’d told him about the physical toll of using her magick. Just a small bit of herself, another piece of the puzzle she gave him.
“So you get sick or feel weak after you use your magick? Mary’s teaching you how to feed more power into yourself then. To meet these mages with as much power as they have?”
“I rarely use my magick. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. I maintain it and practice. I learn new spellcraft and better control. My reserves are good because of that. But when I use a lot of it at once, it can deplete me physically. Bloody noses, headaches, I need to eat or I feel sick. Sometimes a witch can lose consciousness.
“If I don’t know how to pull this other, ambient magickal energy from around me, I would lose a direct confrontation if it came to that. They’re playing with a totally different set of rules and I have no plans to play nice when it comes to my life or the lives of the people I care about. Rosemary and I fought him off that first time because we were together. But I don’t know if I could have stopped him on my own.”
He expelled air, wanting to hit something.
“So what can we do? The cats are behind you, the wolves as well. That’s a lot of muscle. Tell me and we’ll fix it.”
She paused, her expression one of surprise. With a soft look, she reached up to cup his cheek. “You can’t. I mean, in a normal situation you could. You’re strong and fierce. But this isn’t normal. If they try to physically harm me, or her or any other witch, and you were there, you could stop it. But this won’t play out that way. If we, witches I mean, can’t defend ourselves, we’re meat. I don’t want that. So I’m learning as fast as I can.”
His cat was of two minds on this. The man however, was far more concerned about the risk this situation posed her.
“Damn it, Kendra. Essentially you’re telling me that you’re the one who’ll have to fight these mages one-on-one? You’re saying it’s down to magick. That tooth and claw can’t do anything? Because that means you’re defenseless and I have a serious fucking problem with that.”
She didn’t say anything. What could she say? It wasn’t that she liked it either. It would be very nice to have a normal life with no one trying to harm her or those she loved. But that wasn’t what she’d been confronted with.
“You have to teach Renee this too, so she can help. You can’t do this on your own. Teach me. You said we have our own kind of magickal energy.”
“You do. I’m of the opinion that it’s to do with your change. The power to achieve a totally different form, to change the mass of something, it’s indefinably complicated. But you don’t use it like I do. You work your magick with that, with your shift. It’s not something you can use in any way than how you already do.
“I’m already teaching Renee. Rosemary as well when she’s in town. The exercises I have Renee doing now are the bridge to the sort of skills she’ll need to even try a magickal draw without hurting herself or someone else. Today though, she instinctively came to me, offered her magick. I think she’ll be able to begin some rudimentary stuff with Mary within the next few weeks if she can continue at this level.”
“All this time you’ve been training her. Not telling her about this other depletion-of-magick thing. But readying her.”
He tried to lead her to the couch, but she balked. “Hold your horses. This is some place, Max.”
“Don’t think you can change the subject.” He led her into the main level of the house and she blinked, looking around.
“You live here alone? Tour me.”
“I’ll tour, you’ll talk.”
She rolled her eyes. “Giddyup.”
“The family room, dining room and kitchen.”
She walked around the room, looking out windows, touching the spines of the books on the shelves, peering at the framed pictures that sat on every surface he could fit them on. Scenting his things in a way she couldn’t have begun to understand the importance of, but doing it nonetheless.
He watched her from a nearby chair but stayed in place, content to drink her in. “Tell me why you didn’t let anyone know what you were doing.”
She turned to look at him, tucking her hair back behind her left ear. Clearly there was an internal struggle, but at last she sighed. “I didn’t tell you because, well, I want Renee to be able to use her gifts with pride. She hasn’t had that. It’s not right. I wanted these first months to be a time when she could get rid of that shame. Why scare her any more than she is already? My sister deserves a break. Even if all I can give her is a short one.”
He closed his eyes briefly. She hadn’t known where her sister was just four months before. But in that time she and Renee had grown close, had clicked in the way he did with Gibson and, most of the time, Galen. Kendra Kellogg had moved across the country for her sister. Had undertaken her own training to possibly save her damned life and the life of her sister, and on her own.
Of all the things women had done to gain his attention, the dresses, lingerie, makeup, whatever it had been, this was the most powerfully attractive thing he’d ever witnessed. Family was as important to her as it was to him. These weren’t words used to manipulate. No, they were deeds.
He pushed from his seat, never taking his gaze from her, loving the way she didn’t flinch at all. She waited, breathing a bit fast, for him to reach her.
Rather than continue the tour, he backed her against the wall and leaned in, meaning only to kiss her briefly. Instead she made a sound threaded with raw desire, with need and, as he drew his teeth over her neck, pleasure.
And then he was lost to her. Lost to the call of her scent, of the feel of her, solid, curvy, warm and pliant.
The need for her built, filling him up so it was all he felt. Her taste was right as it settled into his system. “I should stop,” he murmured as he slid his palms down her sides, dropping to cup her ass, hauling her closer.
She rocked against him, arching to touch him more. “Mmm. Go on ahead.”
He laughed, licking up her neck, finding her mouth and taking. Taking all she offered, needing all she was. Her tongue slid along his, her fingers tangled in his hair to hold him close.
With an iron will, he broke the kiss. “A tour. You wanted a tour.”
“No. I wanted sex. You’re being coy for some reason though we both know we’re going to end up in bed.” She swallowed, hard. She stood there, infuriatingly exposed to him.
Comforted by the way he listened, the way he hadn’t argued or tried to take over, but still wanted to. She saw the war of it on his face. He’d given her that space, the respect that she had to do it.
At the same time, oh my God, did he have the domination in a hot romantic way down. The way he’d crowded her against the wall hadn’t alarmed her at all. She was wet and achy and she wanted more.
In that dark place, deep inside, she wondered just how dominant he truly was. For a year, starting the day she drove away from the house she’d been a virtual prisoner in while married to Martin, she’d shut herself down. It had been the only way she could find the space to get over it, to process and be done with it.
And then it had burst open. Her desire, her sexuality and her need to be touched and loved came back with a sudden, shaking fury and she’d decided then to never turn it off again. Sex made her feel alive. She loved it and there was no way she’d feel shame about it again.
Max was someone she wanted on a whole lot of levels. There was no need to pretend with him. To be anything but who she was. It was comforting and jarring all at once. He challenged her. Seemed to respect her ability and independence, while being bossy and nosy and suddenly just in her business.
She should have felt nervous about it. But she liked it. She was way more perverted than she’d thought.
“What on earth is going on in that brain of yours?” he murmured, drawing her into a nearby room, a great room with high ceilings and a lovely view. He settled on a couch and she allowed him to pull her to him, nestling her against his body.
“I don’t know how to say any of this. It all seems nonsensical and farcical and yet, here I am, snuggled up against a man who can transform into a jaguar. You’re infuriatingly bossy and totally sexy and it feels like you’re stalking me, not in a creepy way, but like, gah! Never mind. I want to have sex with you. A lot.”
He snorted. “Working on that. Don’t be so impatient. Do you have somewhere to be? I like to take my time. You’re worth the effort and I want to hold you right now. I want you snuggled against me. I’ve longed for this and I aim to enjoy every minute I can.”
Snuggling was a very good description of what it felt like to be with him on the couch. He’d enfolded her in his arms, and she fit against him just right. He was warm, hard where he was supposed to be, all big strong man. He made her feel safe. Safe without being crowded, held without being imprisoned.
“If they could bottle up whatever it is you’re doing right now, you’d be the richest man on earth,” she said without meaning to.
The sound he made was caught between a growl and a laugh. “Don’t panic, but I’m imprinting on you like crazy.”
“I don’t know if I should panic or not. I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, Kendra Kellogg, that I want you and that means I really want you. All of you and from now on. I should warn you I’m not a man who loses very often. I like to get what I want.”
He nibbled on her ear and she moaned. “I’d panic, but that feels, oh man.... Let’s let this thing play out slowly. You don’t need to declare your love for me right now. We’ve only known each other a few months. But I do want you. And I’m quite amenable to being exclusive, as I’d need to harm anyone who tried to pry me from your arms right about now.”