Women were a pleasant pastime, a necessary recreation meant to be enjoyed and then set aside for the next in line. They were not—not—meant to be hungered for. They were not things that he needed. And they sure as hell weren’t the objects of his obsession.
Except for this one.
Her figure was firm, yet seductively lithe. Not particularly tall, but then neither was she short. She was, in the most mundane of phrases, the perfect height, and with all the right curves in between. Then there was the blushing golden skin—which he knew would go raging red when she creamed for him—hair the color gold of a good whiskey, and those damn eyes. Ice gray, ringed with a deeper charcoal, framed by fine arched brows and thick lashes. And when they looked directly at you, it felt like a fucking lick of fire down your spine.
It was a burn he couldn’t get out from under his skin.
She held his stare in the window, waiting it seemed, as if expecting—or maybe hoping for something from him, but finally relented with another lift of her lips and walked back to her station behind the counter, resuming her work as if they hadn’t just filled the steamy interior of the café with enough physical heat to warm the whole blasted city. The answering twist of his gut drew the lines of his scowl deeper, so that he looked on the verge of a thunderous rage when Kieran found him but a moment later.
His cousin stood beside the small table, his own irritated expression revealing his personal frustrations. “If you’re not going to answer your fucking phone, Cousin, then why in Saephus’ name did you give me the blasted number in the first place?”
Lach took a slow sip of coffee, watching beneath his brows as Kieran angrily crammed his big body into the seat across from him. “Maybe because I havenna felt like talking?”
Kieran’s look was deep and direct. “And if I’d had something important to say?”
He snorted. “Then you’d have known how to find me, which is exactly what you’ve done. Now, isn’t it?”
Black hair flowed over broad shoulders as Kieran shook his head. “Och, but you havenna made it easy, Lach. It’s times like this I wonder why I even bother with you.” But they knew it was a lie. They’d been the best of friends their entire lives; either would have gladly given their blood for the other. Though these days, Lach wasn’t sure just how much his blood was worth anymore. Taking another needed shot of caffeine, he decided to get the bad news over and done with.
“Your meeting with the almighty Council last night?” he drawled, his deep voice thick with sarcasm. “Were you able to discover anything new from our esteemed elders?”
This time it was Kieran’s turn to give a snort of disgust as he slouched back against the gleaming wood of the chair, his big hands slapping against the surface of the table. “Those miserable old fools won’t relent, Lach. Not even my father would budge on the issue. I talked myself blue and they still won’t give a fucking inch. The curse stays until we find a way around it.”
A growl of frustration rumbled from Lach’s throat, the infuriating news combined with the mortal’s intoxicating nearness pushing him to the limits of his fraying control.
“Fuck! Do they think I’m going to just keel over to their harebrained schemes and let them dictate my life? Do those stubborn idiots even understand what they’re dealing with here?”
The grooves around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes grew deeper, the exhausting effort it took to control himself clearly taking its toll. He looked bleak, angry and dangerous, like a man who’d reached his limit and would soon have nothing left to lose.
He stared into the steaming darkness of his coffee, his big fingers tight around the thick white mug in his hand. “I don’t know how much more of this I can tolerate, Kieran. This miserable fucking mess is going to push me too far, and then we’re all going to pay for their meddling.”
And it wasn’t just the not screwing part that was driving him crazy. No, it was the fact that he wasn’t screwing the little mortal working behind him. Her image remained powerfully clear in his mind even when he wasn’t looking at her, as if it’d been burned into his subconscious for an eternity of torture.
“They’re nearing the end,” Kieran murmured, studying him out of eyes that were far too dark and wise for his slightly younger years. “I know you’re pissed, and you have a good right to be, but what they’ve done, they’ve done outta love. They want to see the family secured, the McKendrick line assured for the future, and you’re the oldest power.”
Lach was too furious to listen to excuses and diplomacy, his emotions strung too tight. “And will you be so gracious when your own turn comes?” he snarled, his eyes glowing red, raging and ready for a fight.
Kieran’s mouth twisted with dark humor. “So long as they dinna try to mate me with something that has more legs than I do—and more hair, I’ll try.”
The glow softened, but a slow burn still smoldered in the light green depths of his Warlock eyes. “So you say now, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when it’s your own life they’re pulling the strings on.”
“And you’ll be there to enjoy my misery, won’t you?”
The corner of Lach’s mouth kicked up in a reluctant, answering grin. “Smiling like a jackass,” he muttered beneath his breath.
Kieran’s rough laugh burst out over the gentle noise of the café, and Lach watched in the window’s reflection as the mortal looked over to their table, her gaze curious—and as always, as hungry as his own. She walked to him, one hand holding a carafe to refill his cup, but he knew it was only a ruse. He could smell her need for him in the coffee-scented air, strong and pure, and knew he was scenting just as heavily. They were like two beasts in heat, just waiting to tear into one another.
“You know, you should try that more often,” she murmured, bending close to fill his cup. Bloody hell, it was all he could do not to lean forward and take a big ol’ meaty taste of the luscious, cotton covered breast swaying just inches from his mouth, swallowing her down in one ravenous bite. He knew she’d taste like sin, and be just as deadly to his senses.
His lips curled in a snarl, his only defense against her. “Do what?”
She licked her bottom lip, watching his smoldering eyes follow the teasing movement, and the corner of her own beautiful mouth kicked up. “Smile. It almost makes you look half-human.”
He tried not to watch her as she walked away, her gait as smoothly seductive and natural as the woman herself. For both his sanity and her safety, he needed to look away, but it was an impossible desire. Fuck, he couldn’t keep his goddamn eyes off her. And he wasn’t the only one aware of his preoccupation with the honey-blonde, gray-eyed mortal.
Across from him, Kieran made a humming noise of interest. “What’s bothering you, cousin?”
Lach growled, raising one dark auburn brow. “You have to ask?”
“I mean—the little American beauty, Lach. The one you can’t drag your blasted eyes off.”
He downed the fresh coffee like it was a much needed shot of tequila. “Keep out of it, Kieran. Trust me; I’m not in the mood.”
His cousin’s black brow mirrored his own. Kieran looked over at the woman, giving her a long, hot look that traveled all the way from her toes to the side part in her silky tresses. He whistled beneath his breath, the low sound filled with appreciative suggestion. “Now don’t be gettin’ all testy on me, Lach. She is a fine one, I’ll give you that. Beautiful breasts. Nice ass. I like her coloring too.” He looked back to his scowling cousin, smiling like the devil he was. “If you’re not interested in her, man, I’d be happy to—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
Kieran slouched further into his chair, crossing his brawny arms across the wide width of his chest while he studied his cousin with curious fascination.
“You never minded sharing before.”
“I do now,” Lach growled, his tone betraying his unusual possessiveness.
“So it seems, cousin. And does the mystery lady have a name?”
His en
tire body vibrated with tension. “Evan,” he finally grunted, his reluctance to share even this much of her obvious in the biting enunciation of each syllable as it passed his lips. And he didn’t like thinking of her by name, finding it necessary to keep that impersonal distance, needing the constant reminder that she was not Magick, but mortal, and thereby out of his reach. “Evan Hayes.”
The woman in question reached up to pull down a mug from one of the top shelves, her sensuous figure stretching in a seductive arc that Kieran, as a lusty man, couldn’t help but notice. He studied her closely, and all too easily came to an understanding of Lach’s preoccupation with the little mortal. And was maybe even just that tad bit resentful that he hadn’t seen her first. “So the lovely Evan’s all your own, eh?”
The grooves went deeper, mouth compressed to an impossibly hard line. “No, she’s not.” But despite his words, his look clearly said otherwise.
“Hmm?”
Saephus, he couldn’t take much more of this. Kieran was driving him outta his blasted mind, while little Evan Hayes made his goddamn gut ache with hunger, not to mention his friggin’ cock. One look at her and he was loaded and ready to blow. It was fucking insanity what this mere mortal could do to him. But then, there wasn’t a damn “mere” thing about her either.
“Hmm, what, damn it?”
“Has it not occurred to you that she might be the one?”
Just then Evan laughed with a man at the counter, giving him one of her warm, killer smiles, and Lach clenched his hands into fists, struggling to hold in his possessive need to blast the bastard into another dimension. He could read him as clear as day, his lust as evident as the smarmy smile spreading across his boyish face. Any second now and the weakling would get a load of magic right up his bloody ass.
With obvious distraction, he mumbled, “The one what?”
Kieran laughed beneath his breath. “For such a fucking genius, cousin, you can be damn blind when you choose to be. The one, Lach. As in the answer to your wee problem with the Council.”
Lach looked back at him, his shock easy to read for one who knew him as well as Kieran. “Did it escape your notice that she’s a blasted mortal?”
“So? Who said your bith-bhuan gra had to be a witch?”
“Excuse me?”
Kieran shrugged, ignoring the deadly tone of his cousin’s voice. “I’m just saying they dinna say Cailleach. She doesn’t have to be a witch.”
Lach’s big, muscle-packed body shuddered with tension, and the lights of the café flickered above them.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means, you stubborn ass, that your bith-bhuan gra could be just a woman.”
Lach stared, his expression held tight, as if unwilling to let himself understand, and Kieran sighed with frustration. “A mortal woman, cousin. Och, havenna you questioned why you keep coming back to this place day after day? And I canna say I’ve ever seen you stare at a woman, Magick or mortal, the way you’ve been eyeing that wee lass. I’m thinking the answer might be right before your eyes, and you’re just being too fucking stubborn to see it.”
A fine anticipation rippled beneath his skin, radiating power like the lethal grace of a panther as it paced its cage, awaiting fresh meat. Any second now and he was going to pounce.
“No.” Just one word, rough with force, thick with fear. “No fucking way.”
Evan looked toward them at the sudden outburst, and Kieran couldn’t resist the temptation to wink at her, finding it too much fun to push Lach’s buttons when it’d always been impossible to get a rise out of him before. Maybe this pretty little mortal was just what his too serious cousin needed. She blushed a pretty shade of pink at his obvious interest, but had enough spunk to return his smile instead of slinking away, and Kieran decided he liked her. Yeah, he was starting to get a real clear picture of why Lach had been skulking back to this place day after day, suffering the constant mortal contact.
“Get your fucking eyes off her or I canna be responsible for what I do to you, Kieran.” The words were so guttural they were barely intelligible.
Kieran seemed to consider the threat—then gave another devilish grin. “You’d fight me for her, would you, even while saying she canna be your own?” His grin widened, black eyes bright with power. “Stop being a blind fool, cousin. The lass is already yours.”
Lach rose to his feet in a blur of movement—his chair tumbling back against the floor in a loud, scraping crash of wood against stone—and stared down at his friend and family, knowing that what he was about to say was nothing but the absolute truth.
“Lay a hand on her, Kieran, and I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking rip you limb from limb.”
With that powerful threat, he tossed a ten note down on the table and stalked out through the door of the café, back into the bitter cold and the newly fallen snow. And despite the ache in his gut to take one last glance at her to hold him over till tomorrow, he never once looked back.
Chapter Three
Evan stood at the counter, nibbling her lower lip, two tickets to the Edinburgh Theater for the night’s performance clutched in her hand. One of the café’s regulars had something come up and so she’d offered the tickets to Evan if she wanted them.
She’d taken them eagerly. And though she loved the theater, Evan couldn’t have cared less what the tickets were for, so long as they gave her the opening she’d been looking for.
She had to find a way to reach her Magic Man, because of all the men she’d ever known, he was the only who made her burn.
The only one who called to her heart and made her physically ache with hunger—like an empty, needy void within her that only he could fill. No matter that the gorgeous creature tormented her daily with his cold detachment and deliberate avoidance.
It wasn’t that he didn’t notice her. That was what drove her most crazy. So crazy that there were times it would’ve been pretty satisfying to tell the gorgeous jerk just to fuck off and kiss her little American ass, then go and find another sexy Scot to slake her lust. Maybe even the black-haired beauty still sitting at the table, studying her with those mesmerizing midnight eyes. He had a look about him that said he knew how to fuck a woman into oblivion, steeping her in pounding pleasure, but her goddamn body just wasn’t biting at the bait.
It wanted Lachlan McKendrick. Case closed. No second choices, no matter how good they looked. It didn’t care that he was the most infuriating man she’d ever known; it only cared that she get him between her legs, buried deep inside, and keep him there for as long as humanly possible.
A slow smile spread across her face at the thought.
Oh yeah, her body couldn’t care less that he was a total shit. Three weeks of flirting with the tall Scottish stud and zilch. Not a goddamn thing. Nothing—except for that occasional look, the one she’d catch him giving her when he thought she wasn’t paying him any attention. God, it was incredible. Dark and hungry and dangerous, like he’d do anything to have her naked and in his arms, his to do with as he pleased. Her cunt would go warm and creamy, drenching her panties, aching to be fucked, and all because the bastard had looked at her with those magical green eyes.
He tried to play it so cool, but it was those looks that always gave him away.
She saw those same looks in her sleep, when her sex-starved body would dream of him in vivid, heart-pounding detail and her throat would go dry from her cries of passion.
And to make it worse, she could see glimpses of the man he really was buried beneath the seething mask of discontent he wore like a shield, hiding from the world.
Hiding from her.
She wanted to know that man buried within the distant stranger. She needed to know him. For some bizarre reason, he felt like a part of her. Her body didn’t care that they were strangers, didn’t care their relationship consisted of little more than casual exchanges and carnal looks.
Hell, it wasn’t all that concerned with the fact she had some serious doubts as to whether he
was even human in the first place. She’d always been fascinated by the mystical, but she’d never known just how far into lust she could fall for someone who she was certain wasn’t altogether human.
Not that she’d seen him sprout wings or perform magical acts of wonder, but there was an air of magic about him all the same. Something he wore like a second skin and it touched her every time he was near, like a whisper of sound, stroking her senses. It warned of formidable power and strength, but it didn’t scare her. If anything, it drew her to him in a way she’d never been drawn to any man before. She’d called him Magic Man from the first day they’d met, and the name definitely fit. And after seeing how uncomfortable it made him, the teasing nickname had quickly become too much fun to resist.
But it didn’t really matter what he was; she wanted him. He could’ve been the Jolly Green Giant for all her sex glands cared, and they still would’ve gone into cream melting overdrive every time she laid eyes on him.
He was hers.
Hers.
And now she was just letting him walk away again without doing a goddamn thing to move this thing forward. The beautiful black-haired one sat at the table, his glittering black eyes watching her like prey, anticipating her next move, curious to see what she’d do.
It was her move, and there really wasn’t any question about what it was going to be.
You know what you want, honey, her hungry libido groaned. Now go and get it!
Damn straight, she thought, and it felt good to finally be taking some action.
By the time she hit the cobblestone sidewalk, he was already turning right at the corner. “Hey, wait!” she called out.
In her rush to reach him in time, she’d run out without her coat and the crushing cold ripped right through her, freezing her to the bone. But he’d stopped at the sound of her voice, standing at the corner, watching out of hooded eyes as she ran after him, and the look burning in those smoldering green depths almost made her forget the miserable Scottish winter raging around her.
When she reached him, her lungs were aching from the cold and she could barely feel her fingers. Of course, being a man, he didn’t seem to notice. No, his green eyes had shot straight to the hard tips of her nipples, staring hungrily at the way they pressed against the thin gray cotton of her shirt. The greedy way he looked at her only made them pull tighter, until her breasts felt heavy and aching for the touch of his lips and tongue and teeth.
Magick Men: A Shot of Magick Page 2