by Bianca D’Arc
His kiss coaxed her to give in to whatever he might ask for—physically, mentally, and emotionally. She knew that path was dangerous. She didn’t want him to leave her with a broken heart. She barely knew the man, and her standards were high. That didn’t prevent her from enjoying the first kiss she’d shared with a man in way too long.
She leaned into him and loved the way his strength enveloped her. He was a big man. A strongly muscled man, as she came to feel firsthand. He might eat like a bear, but there wasn’t an ounce of flab on him. His muscles rippled under her stroking fingers as she reached up to his shoulders. Good heavens. He was built like an athlete.
She hadn’t expected that. While farm work had made the men she’d known in her youth strong and muscular, Jack was ripped in a way that spoke of discipline and rigorous exercise. She hadn’t been able to discern it under his clothing in the office, but touching him was like touching a marble statue of one of the Greek gods. The only difference being that he was warm and vibrant, and his muscles moved, flexing and releasing, under her questing touch.
Heat filled her body at the realization, just as he broke the kiss. She realized, to her embarrassment, that her lips followed his until he moved out of reach. She’d wanted more. She hadn’t wanted the moment to end.
“I should let you go,” he said, her heart dropping into her shoes at his retreat. Had she done something wrong? Had he realized she wasn’t very experienced with men? She felt her cheeks flush with heat and dropped her gaze.
When she didn’t say anything, he placed one finger under her chin and tilted her head up. She complied, reluctantly. What she found, when she met his gaze, was a banked fire in the depths of his eyes that matched the fire coursing through her own blood. Seeing that set her more at ease. He wasn’t leaving because she’d done something wrong or turned him off. He was leaving because… Because he was a gentleman, she supposed. Hm. That was surprising, as well.
She’d long been told that most men pushed as far as a woman would go and then some, not handling rejection well. But Jack was ending this even before it really got going, of his own volition. What did that mean? She could see the desire in his eyes. She was confident enough to believe he wanted more but was deliberately backing off. So, why?
“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” he said, a faint smile playing about his lips. Lips that she’d discovered the feel and taste of now, she thought dreamily.
But his words gave her a clue. Work. He had to work tomorrow and so did she. At the same company, though not, technically, in the same chain of command. Maybe that’s why he was controlling himself and not asking for more. That had to be it.
Jack sighed at her continued silence. “I really enjoyed our time together. Dinner would have been very lonely without your company,” he said.
She nodded, still unable to speak, really. He’d scrambled her senses with that amazing kiss.
“Um. Me, too.” Hm. That didn’t make much sense. She tried again. “I mean, I would’ve just taken my order to go and come back here if I hadn’t met up with you in the restaurant. Thank you again, for picking up the tab.”
“Thank SeaLife. They’re paying for it,” he quipped, smiling down at her. “Think of it as a perk of the job.”
She frowned, remembering what she’d told him about looking for a new job. “I’m sorry if I said anything I shouldn’t have,” she said. “I did like the factory until I saw… Whatever it was that I saw.”
“Try not to think about it,” he counselled, “but keep your eyes open. I was sent here because the management at SeaLife knew something was wrong here. Corporate sent in another troubleshooter a few months ago, but he couldn’t penetrate what was going on. I think you might have given me a new avenue to investigate.” He touched the frown line between her eyes with his thumb as his hand went to her temple. “Just don’t draw attention, and if you do find another job, you should probably take it, if it gets you out of here. I do plan to clean this place up. It may not be pretty, though. It might even be a bit dangerous.” He lowered his hand, and she missed the gentle stroking of his thumb on her forehead.
“I’m just glad somebody is going to do something. It’s creepy working there now, after…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. It seemed so weird to talk about what she’d seen. It was even weirder that Jack wasn’t running the other way, calling the men in the white coats to come get her. The fact that he hadn’t even blinked when she’d described what she’d seen alarmed her a bit. Then, a thought occurred to her. “Have you run across that sort of thing before?”
Jack backed up a step, breaking all contact between them. She immediately missed his closeness. His warmth. He was looking at her oddly when she met his gaze.
“Tell me, what do you see when you look at this garden?” He gestured toward the haphazard collection of plants in the front yard. “What do you feel?”
“It’s messy,” she said. “But I like it. It feels peaceful. Natural.”
“Anything else?” he prompted gently.
“It feels good. Pure,” she went on. “Like nothing bad could ever happen here.”
He just looked at her for a moment before he spoke again. “Did you put the salt line across the garden gate?”
Chapter Six
This time, she backed up, her breath catching ever so slightly in her throat. How did he know about that? It was barely visible in full sun!
She thought quickly. Everything she had been taught said nothing evil could pass over that line. She’d never really tested it before, but her elders had said they’d used the same charm in bad times, and it had protected them and their house. If Jack had been able to pass over it with impunity, did that mean he was good? She had no idea the power of the ancient charm. More importantly, she had no idea of this man’s true power.
He felt big, though. Something about him felt…more. As if there was something simmering just below his surface. She didn’t claim to be as sensitive to things as the others in her family, but she had gotten distinct impressions of Other-ness ever since she’d first seen Jack at the office. She didn’t know what it meant. She could only hope he was on the right side of things.
Especially since she’d been so indiscreet. She wasn’t a drinker. She should have known not to drink that wine he’d ordered. It had led her to say things she wouldn’t normally have revealed to anyone she’d known such a short time.
“Did you deliberately ply me with wine to get me to reveal things I wouldn’t have told you otherwise?” she countered, turning the tables on him.
He didn’t react the way she’d expected. In fact, he smiled. She’d thought he might back off, but he didn’t. He just leaned against the porch post and watched her, that irritating grin on his face that she couldn’t interpret.
“Actually,” he said after a pause, “I didn’t invite you to dine with me with that in mind, but when it happened, I realized I might be able to learn a few things while your guard was down, so I didn’t stop it. Maybe I should have.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “But ultimately, I did learn some things that could be very helpful to my work here.”
“Are you one of the good guys?” she asked, hoping against hope that he was and that he’d say so. Of course, what good was his word? He could easily lie to her. Then again, she could usually tell when people were lying.
“I like to think so,” he replied easily, that faint grin still playing around his lips. She heard truth in his words, though he hadn’t phrased his answer as absolutely as she would have wished.
“How did you know about the salt?” She wasn’t letting him off the hook completely. Not yet.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen something like it before,” he told her offhandedly.
“Where?” she challenged.
“Oh, here and there,” he replied, saying nothing of importance. “Most recently, I heard about it from one of my new sisters-in-law. She told me someone in town was casting wards with salt circles.”
His words set her ba
ck on her heels. He’d used the same terminology she’d been taught at her grandmother’s knee. Wards and casting. Those were the words used by practitioners of the old ways.
“Are you joking?” she asked, just to be sure.
His expression cleared at once. “I wouldn’t joke about such things,” he told her. “I know, for a fact, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. So to speak.” He misquoted Shakespeare, but she got the idea he was being absolutely serious.
“What are you?” she breathed, wondering again, why he felt so…big. She didn’t have a better word for the invisible presence that surrounded him.
His grin returned. “Now, that would be telling.” He straightened from his leaning position against the porch post. “Let me leave you with this,” he said, slowly backing down the steps. “I came here to put things right. What you told me at dinner is important and will help me figure things out. I’m one of the good guys, and though I suspect your background may be different, you’ll probably understand when I say, I am a servant of the Light.”
She saw a faint glimmer surround him as he stepped deeper in to the garden, still facing her. She blinked. Was she seeing things? Her sister had claimed to see a glow about certain people, but Kiki never had before. She’d seen it around plants a time or two—and especially since moving into this cottage—but never people. Was that gift manifesting now? Or was it something about Jack, in particular? Was he magic?
And, if he was…he had just claimed to be on the side of the Light. He was good, and the garden was confirming it? She shook her head at her fancifulness. She knew stranger things had happened—especially in her own family—but she’d always been more down to earth than the rest of her clan. Stuff like this usually didn’t happen to Kiki. Not plain, simple, non-magical Kiki.
He walked to the garden gate, which wasn’t all that far away and opened it, passing over the salt line with impunity. She’d been taught that evil could not pass over a ward like that, but she’d never really tested it herself. Was he really one of the good guys? She desperately wanted to believe he was. So she wouldn’t be so alone here, surrounded by people she could no longer trust.
But she still had to be cautious. She was a babe in the woods compared to some of the people in her family. She knew about some magical things, but she’d never really experienced them for herself.
“Keep your doors locked and your wards up,” he said softly as he closed the gate behind himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She hugged his words to her as she went into the cottage and did as he’d suggested, locking the door behind herself. She felt sort of dreamy as she went around, checking that her rudimentary wards had not been disturbed while she’d been out. All the salt lines were intact, and she added another incantation to each, for good measure. Just in case.
She was in for the night, but the shared meal with her mysterious dinner companion was all she could think about. For those hours out of time, she’d felt…special. Like she was safe and protected.
It was silly to think it. She barely knew him, after all, but there was something about Jack that made her feel like nothing bad would ever happen with him around. Or, if it did, he’d take care of it in his quiet, competent, powerful way.
Few, if any, men of her previous acquaintance had inspired such feelings of both trust and attraction in her in so short a time. Yes, there was one thing she knew for certain after her surprise dinner date. Jack Bishop was definitely something special.
Jack was sort of mentally scratching his head the whole walk back to his hotel. Kiki was something else, and he meant that in the best possible way. She was like no other woman he’d ever met, and he was very much afraid he might be falling, fast and hard, for her. A human. Huh.
Both of his brothers had mated with other magical folk, albeit not bear women. Ace’s mate, Sabrina, was a powerful weather witch. King’s lady was a werewolf with snow white fur and an extra zap of magic. Special women who had already earned Jack’s respect and affection, just for how happy they had made his brothers.
What would they think if Jack brought home a human? Sure, Kiki seemed to have some knowledge of very rudimentary wards, but she hadn’t given him any indication—any feeling—of magic. Even suppressed magic. And he had a special talent for sniffing such things out. That was why he’d been sent here, to do this job, when others had failed.
The cottage had a feel about it. Especially the garden. If he wasn’t much mistaken, a fey of some kind had helped in its creation, at some point. He’d be intrigued to discover who the owner of that little home was and what their connection was to fey magic. That was something he hoped to discover, possibly with his brothers’ help, since they were sitting on their duffs in Grizzly Cove and had more time to poke around in databases and track down documents than he did.
When he got back to his hotel and secured the room, he fired up his laptop and put in a call to Washington State. First, he called Ezra to update him on progress, so far. Jack also wanted to get Ezra’s agreement to get one or both of his brothers in on this, at least from the research standpoint. His brothers were newly mated and probably wouldn’t be taking field assignments for the foreseeable future, but they both had skills that could be useful from behind the scenes.
Ezra agreed readily, happy to have a reason to rope all the brothers Bishop into the SeaLife fold, or so he claimed. Ezra didn’t wait but added both Ace and King to the call so they could all discuss Jack’s intel together and divvy up the workload.
Jack felt much better after talking to all three of them. Ezra was an old friend from their days in the military, but Jack’s brothers helped ground him. They’d always traveled as a group, except for the rare instances—more, in recent years—where they took a break from each other and all went off in different directions, in search of adventure.
Well, they’d called it adventure, but what they really were doing was looking for mates. They hadn’t really said it in so many words, but all three of them had felt the urges of their bear halves to find a special woman and settle down. Ace and King had it worse, being older than Jack, but he’d felt it strongly in the past few years, and their latest solo adventures—embarked on after helping Ezra with a tricky mission in South Dakota—had netted two of the three brothers lifelong companions.
Jack was happy for them, but he was left as the odd man out. He was younger than Ace and King by a good number of years. Shifters had longer lifespans than humans, so while they might appear close in age, there was actually a decade or so between each of them. Jack was a bit jealous of the happiness his two older brothers had found. He wanted some of that for himself, but he knew it wasn’t really up to him.
The Goddess they all served played a big part in finding the perfect mate. If it wasn’t time, Jack wouldn’t find the woman meant for him. Then again, if it was time… Well, Kiki was an attractive candidate, even if she was just a human. Jack didn’t care, and he wouldn’t let anybody else give her a hard time, if she proved to be his mate.
No, he’d love her and protect her and spend years making her happy. He wanted that so bad, but he knew fate and the Goddess had a lot to say in the matter. If it was right, he’d discover it soon enough. If not, no amount of hoping would make it so. That was just the way it was, and fretting over it was getting him nowhere.
Jack set to work, going through the paperwork he’d been studying about the factory and looking for data he might have missed, now that he knew some of the players. He paid special attention to Boehm’s reports and that of the lab manager. He had all their personnel files, but he couldn’t help but feel that the files were missing vital data… Such as which of the people in the factory were serving darkness.
Around midnight, Jack left the hotel and rolled his Harley down the road a piece before starting the engine. He didn’t really want everyone in town to know what he was up to. Luckily, there were enough wide open spaces between the small town and the factory that he
felt confident nobody had particularly noted his passage.
He also took the precaution of shutting down the motor and coming at the plant from the woodland side. He stashed his bike under a welcoming tree and quickly disrobed. He left his clothes in his saddle bags and shifted to his bear form. The bear would have better luck blending into the woodland night, and his senses were even sharper when he wore his fur.
First, he did a sweep of the surrounding area to learn the lay of the land. He’d seen topographical maps and other maps that denoted the ownership of the land around the plant. He skirted the perimeter and put his nose to the earth, looking for any sign of magic.
He didn’t sense anything far out from the plant, but as he drew nearer, he definitely felt something rubbing his fur the wrong way. He eyed the warehouse area that Kiki had talked about, but the area was too open to chance going much closer. Not unless he had a real reason to do so, and at the moment, he couldn’t sense anything going on there worth investigating. The place was empty. The lights out. Everything was as it should be for a plant that was closed for the night.
He did a little more nosing around, but aside from a feeling of something not being altogether right, he didn’t sense anything else on his circuit of the property. He’d do more tomorrow night, but all in all, he wasn’t displeased with the night’s reconnaissance. Jack padded carefully back to his bike and made sure everything was as he’d left it before he shifted. He got dressed and retraced his steps back to his hotel.
The recon had left him with an uneasy feeling, as if something was going on beneath the surface that he just couldn’t sense. He’d encountered that kind of feeling only once before in his life, when he’d gone up against someone using black magic. Most others wouldn’t notice a difference, but the various flavors and feels of different kinds of magic were kind of a specialty of Jack’s.
Evil was one thing, but black magic was the magic of the unseen. It was a stealthy magic. A trickster. Few practitioners of the dark arts took the time to hide their evil in a blanket of black magic. It was a particular skill, and many of the evil mages he and his brothers had come up against in the past didn’t care to hide their motives or leanings.