by Hazel Hunter
He was here.
That bastard who’d murdered Adam was living next door to his…no, not his, not judging by the death glares she’d sent him.
The only thing Logan could hope was that Darren Castle wasn’t dumb enough to strike her when neighbors had seen her enter into his apartment. As for her own place, Logan would hope until then that her familiar, that cunning weasel, would be able to help her as well. He’d return at night with spells and incantations of his own to help fortify a barrier so secure that no cleric the Knight could bargain with would be able to bring down the walls. Still, it tore at him to leave her, to have to keep up what respectability he had left.
Caitlin was his in a way that even he couldn’t quite understand. The thought of that monster slitting her throat or decapitating her as he had Logan’s best friend and lieutenant made him boil with anger. Darren would pay—pay for his myriad of crimes against the Corps, other witches, and now for stalking Caitlin and playing to her sympathies. He just had to make her see that she was mistaken and that things didn’t look like how she assumed. No, losing his temper wasn’t the smartest thing, but nothing had been more visceral for him than seeing that murdering bastard smiling back at him on the porch.
Sitting down on the bed of his hotel room, trying to get Jonathan on the phone, Logan was afraid he’d blown his chance to save her, driven her directly into that man’s arms. No, not a man, a monster.
Finally, after six rings, Jonathan answered his cell phone:
“Logan, you’re supposed to be working closely to bring Ms. Monroe in. Where are we on this plan?”
He gritted his teeth and refrained from shouting at his leader. While they were friends, even he understood the necessity of keeping up the lines of command. He resented it as well as Jonathan’s focus on the war and what they needed to win it. Of course, as commandant, the lives of every witch and warlock were on his head, even the ones who had not yet been located for protection. The novices and uninitiated, especially, needed his calm head leading the Corps to survive, even if they didn’t know that yet.
“He’s here. I need reinforcements and I need them now, Jonathan.”
“Who?”
“Darren Castle. He’s the Knight casing everything. I don’t know if it’s fate or if their clerics somehow foresaw I’d be assigned, but he’s been on surveillance longer than I. He’s her goddamn neighbor!”
“Castle’s here?”
“He’s next door to her, probably plotting the easiest way to slit her throat after torturing her.”
“You left her?”
“I lost control of my emotions. There was a scene in front of the neighbors, and she was going to call the cops. I know he won’t strike before night fall because of witnesses. The Templars want to stay secretive even more than we do. But one of their most proficient assassins is on this case. I don’t know how they know about her.”
A long measured sigh was his only answer on the other end for a while. Then Jonathan spoke.
“I can send you Charles and Montgomery, but they’re in D.C. currently with that coven. There’s been trouble there too so it might be a day or two. You get to Caitlin and you protect her. She could be our lynchpin.”
Logan swallowed and reminded himself to be contrite with his leader. “You’d have to use force to keep me away. I just needed to avoid arrest. I’ll be on this. Darren won’t win again.”
“Good. If I had to have someone up against him, even after Adam… Look, this isn’t about vengeance. This is about saving the newest potential initiate. You don’t go for blood, you save her. Is that understood, General?”
Logan nodded and squeezed the phone tighter to his ear. “Trust me. No matter what, I want Caitlin safe.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THERE WAS A frantic knock on Logan’s hotel door only about thirty minutes after his new orders from Jonathan. Leaping up quickly, he rushed over and flung the door open. Caitlin was staring back at him. Her eyes wide, hair tangled from lack of washing, and a few large photos clutched in her left hand. Logan didn’t think, just swept her up in a hug, holding her small, soft body to his chest. He was going to protect her now, no matter what qualms she had. Logan had been rash before, scared her with his protective instincts. He could do better, would for her sake.
“I made a mistake,” she whispered, her voice so muffled.
He reached down and stroked back her hair, soft red curls that even unwashed felt so good in his hands.
“I was wrong,” he said. “You don’t understand everything that’s happened between Darren and the Corps and you certainly don’t know everything that happened between him and me. I do best never thinking about it, but I could have explained it so much better than by assaulting him and scaring you. He deserves justice but I need your trust more first.”
She nodded and handed him the photos. Logan took note of her sweats and baggy, stained flannel shirt and wanted to ask why she hadn’t showered by two in the afternoon.
“I haven’t been honest with you. I don’t know if Darren is it–”
“I know it.”
“Fine,” she said, sniffling and rubbing at her reddened nose. “Well the Knights have been casing me in other ways. I guess Darren leading it or maybe it’s all him. Two nights ago, my spell book was taken.”
“And your altar messed with.”
She frowned. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t know about your Book of Shadows, but I did know about the altar. The herb mix was wrong, would only dampen a signal and not amplify it. You’re a novice but you would surely know better than that even with your minimal research.”
She tried to laugh but it was a broken, brittle sound. “It was the only thing they took. It’s stupid. Most of the spells don’t even work for me, but it’s been mine for years.”
“They wanted to take your security first,” he said, leading her to his bed. She blushed up at him but he shook his head, trying to put her at ease. “Sit and I’ll get you something to drink.” As she settled on the bed, he rustled through the mini-fridge and handed her a bottle of water. “See, nothing a cool sip can’t fix.”
“Really?” she demanded, still taking time out to guzzle. “Then I found salt poured on every doorway.”
He narrowed his eyes at that. “That’s a second stage. Salt interferes with our abilities. It’s the beginning of working to bind you. Something like Holy Water or blessed objects would do the same. A combination of the two would make it very hard for you to get your visions even with your crystal ball.”
She shook and the water dropped from her hand, filling the carpet like a leaking sink. He rushed over and sat beside her, letting her curl up again in his grasp.
“They hid some water vial too. But this is why I had to see you. I can’t believe you’re capable of strangling a man to death in front of me—or maybe I just don’t want to believe it—but you’re the only person I knew to turn to. Lt. O'Healy? Well, she’s sick of all the trouble I have caused the Baltimore P.D. She implied that if I didn’t stick my nose so often in other people’s business that I wouldn’t have stalkers.”
He kissed her temple and felt his cock harden. Goddess he wanted her, wanted to initiate her fully right then, bless her with all the power she needed. Also, he needed the reassurance of their connection, but her fear was so heavy, it was like comforting a frightened doe who’d just survived being shot at.
“No,” he said. “This is the work of the Knights and their clerics. They’re depowering and scaring you before they strike. Too bad on that. I have reinforcements coming tomorrow and I’ll be caring for you until then.”
“I have a gig at nine. I have to do a reading for a party. I have to go. It’s how I make rent.”
“The Corps can pay for anything you need.”
Angry green eyes burned up at him. “I need this for me then. I have to keep helping people. I see things when I read. Most of the time it’s soap opera crap or nothing at all, but sometimes I keep people saf
e. You have to understand that.”
“Then we’ll do it together.”
“I hope so,” she said, handing him the photos.
He gripped the photos more tightly and wanted to scream. How dare the Knights do this to her. How dare they! He’d enjoy killing Darren more than ever before, Jonathan’s orders be damned. He might have howled for his enemy’s blood after Adam’s loss, but now he was itching for that bastard’s head.
“Do you know what it says?” she asked, her voice hollow.
He nodded and kissed her lips, promising protection with every embrace. It was the best he could do, but he intended to carry through with it, to save her from those abominations. He looked at the photos, which were just black and white sheets of paper from a printer.
“Death to all witches. It’s the last ‘gift’ of the Knights. They’re coming soon, but we’re all going to be ready.”
She took the photos back from them and balled them up in her hands. Tossing them into the trash, Caitlin began to pace. “I hate this! I’m supposed to be some powerful witch, but all I can do is see the future.”
“You have no idea how rare and impressive a gift that is.”
“So everyone tells me, but I can’t summon lightning or turn into a bear or control the waves of the ocean or even luck.”
“Thanks,” he drawled, grinning a bit at her as she paced. A firebrand, that’s what his Caitlin was.
“No, it sucks. You can wield a sword, I’m sure, or have a fight turn your way at least for a while. I might have my five senses opened up and be better at divination, maybe, but I can’t just take a Knight on. I don’t want to be a sitting duck!”
“You’re not just a sitting duck. I’ve got you,” he said, standing and kissing her.
She shook her head and spoke in a breathy whisper. He could see the dilation of her pupils and noticed the way a flush had colored her pale cheeks. Logan wasn’t the only one reeling from the lust pounding between them, “I need to have myself.”
“Team, then, lass. I can promise you that.”
He reached down and cupped her breast. “I was scared you’d never want me like this again.”
Her green eyes searched his, boring into him. “What? Not want you?”
She shook her head and, reaching down, unzipped his fly. Lithe nimble fingers were playing over his head and he shuddered, pushing her back against the wall.
“I don’t know what I want sometimes,” she said lowly. “But this connection is everything to me. Whatever spell we’re weaving, I think we both need more of it.”
Nodding, Logan slipped off his shirt, and hissed as her other hand trailed over his pecs and her left hand started playing with his nipples.
That was it then and for a while it was all sensation, her hands on his cock and on his chest, his hands gripping her tight little ass and his lips playing with a soon exposed breast. It was the heady mix of her scent egging him on, her pussy clearly already wet and aching for him even as she stroked him toward climax, just in time to back off again and leave him willing and aching. It was everything that Logan could do to pull out the shiny foil packet and sheath his member. It wasn’t time yet for a full initiation. They didn’t share that emotional intimacy yet and she hadn’t even expressed a desire to become a fully ascended and immortal witch.
Still, it was with incredible self-restraint that he slid the condom over himself and then started tackling the serious problem of her wearing too much clothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
CAITLIN WASN’T SURE how her boring life had become this.
A week ago, she was always home after work for late night TV, a frozen dinner and quality time with Schnapps. Now she was on round two with a man whose very presence drove her wild, made the blood boil in her veins and sent every nerve ending thrumming with life and power. Currently, she was throwing her head back and moaning loudly as he unbuttoned her shirt. He was going perilously slow, and she hated herself for setting the teasing tone to start. Her chest was arched forward and her one breast was exposed from the loose fabric of the shirt, but she wanted to be truly free, to feel his electric touch on all of her.
As Logan teased, she reached forward and kept stroking his rock hard length. It felt so rigid and yet yielding beneath her grip. Long and thick, it twitched beneath her ministrations, and she realized she’d never had anyone nearly as large inside her before. It was one thing to take him in her mouth, but now she was wet and aching with need, just anticipating what it would feel like for him to enter her channel and fuck her against the hotel wall.
And still, she was left somewhat confused. She knew she’d felt and seen them in a bed with red silk sheets of an impossible to afford thread count, felt the power of a truly intimate connection of flesh on flesh. The bed here had white Egyptian cotton. She’d been gifted with a vision of something even further down the line. Caitlin was going to be initiated and bound to this man. Her own powers had told her this much, and she wasn’t sure if it was destiny or desire pulling her toward the inevitable.
She wasn’t sure it mattered, not when he’d wrested the shirt from her body and was tickling her nipples with his tongue. The tiny flicks were causing her aureolas to pebble, and she shivered with the sensation. Strong hands made their way to her slit and felt her, teasing the nub of her clit, and slipping a few fingers inside.
“Mine, so wet, so ready.”
“Yes, and I can’t…just need you. Now.”
The plaintive tone of her voice even shocked her. She’d never needed anyone the way she needed Logan. It was a matter of pride for her that she always stay independent and safe. People died and left, and then you had to put the pieces of a shattered heart back together. It had to be even worse loving a warrior, someone destined to risk his neck in battle. Still, the need was flowing through her now like a tidal wave, rendering her knees weak. They almost gave out from under her, and she stumbled with the onslaught of the pleasure Logan’s fingers and tongue were giving her.
In a fluid motion, Logan grabbed her waist and jutted out his hips. She understood everything and wrapped her legs around him, hissing as she was eased onto his cock. It was hot and, as she suspected, filled her in a way nothing ever had before. After a few minutes, once she’d adjusted, he started to move, just teasing flexes of his hips at first. Then she leaned down, staring into beautiful blue eyes, ones that seemed to tease her with the secrets of forever.
“Fuck me hard,” she breathed, amazed at her own words.
He nodded and started to pound hard into her ,and she moved her own hips in a frenetic rhythm matching his. They stayed like that for what felt like forever. Logan thrust into her and let his tongue play on her breasts and she kissed him everywhere, her teeth grazing against the stubble on his chin. The pressure between them built, spiraling higher, as he filled her faster, pounded her harder. It was all she could do to hold on, when suddenly her climax claimed her without warning.
Logan grunted harshly, and the steel of his rod jerked inside. Impossibly, it thickened, spreading her, stretching her deepest places.
She leaned back and screamed, ecstasy spiraling out from her clit in a heated flood that melted her body, until she could only lie slack against him, gasping.
Logan cradled her in his arms.
“You’re amazing, Caitlin.”
“I wish that were true,” she said, feeling his warm chest against the side of her face as she closed her eyes. “You have no idea how much.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IF HER POWERS were heightened after she awoke from the first time they’d fooled around, it was nothing compared to what she was experiencing now. Her extrasensory perception and sixth sense were coming fully into their own. Usually, her divination gifts were things that Caitlin could only access when she was using her crystal ball or card deck. Now, it wasn’t as much that she was seeing the future, more that she could feel it.
Once, she’d read in her ill-fated spell book about witches whose specialty revolv
ed around reading auras. This was like that. She couldn’t read auras, just sensed by looking at Logan as he stepped out of the bed and toward the shower, whether he was swirled in green or gold light. However, she saw something different. Leading out from his chest was a glimmering cord, woven tightly like rope. It stretched through him and out through the wall even as he stepped through the hotel bathroom’s threshold. Currently, as she looked at the glowing cord, she could gage a few things about him: his approximate age of three hundred and twenty-seven years and a flashing glimpse of his most probable future. It was just a short movie, maybe no more than five seconds long of how he’d die. Well, how most likely he would die. The path he was on now currently would have him around for at least several more centuries to come. Caitlin figured that, as the crystal ball fortunes changed depending on outside actions that this thread could alter too.
Still, it was overwhelming to see the life line extend from him, and know where her lover had started, and where he might yet go.
Frowning, she looked down at her own body and felt that same frustration she’d always felt trying to read her own or her sister’s fortune.
Nothing.
There was never anything when she tried to peek into her own destiny, and she couldn’t understand why that would be.
Sighing, Caitlin stood up. She needed to put her best face forward for the party, and the readings she needed to do. As she waited for Logan to shower, she idly strolled through the hotel room. To her surprise, in the closet, she found dresses. She randomly took one down and held it in front of her. It would fit. She glanced at the bathroom door.
He’d had clothes that fit her brought here, or maybe he’d bought them himself. Picking up a cocktail dress in green silk, Caitlin smiled.
Maybe there were some advantages to dating a Corps member after all.