“Is this just a way to get me alone with you?” she asked. “Because I’d do that willingly.”
“I love your righteous fury. It’s a hot look on you,” he replied, kissing her forehead. “I don’t want to take you out of your life either, believe me, but we can’t let you get hurt or the Knights have you either. They’ll torture you for information, and then they’ll kill you.”
“And anyone else who gets in their way?” she added, her chest feeling like it was caught in a vice.
“It’s all they do,” he said, jaw clenching. “I won’t leave you unprotected ever.”
“And once we’re at the coven there will be tons of people to protect me. Will you even stay?”
But she’d never forgive herself if her friends and her parents ended up like Rainstone. Poor Rainstone. With his death, it felt like a piece of her soul had died as well. Shivering overwhelmed her, and Trent wrapped his arms around her as if that could keep her from breaking apart.
“I’m serious,” she said quietly. “Will you stay?”
“I’m supposed to get you relocated. I… Command and I talked. I can go back to being on the frontline after this, to working toward–”
“You’re new rank? A promotion at Magus Corps?”
He fingered his bracelet and she wondered then if the silver pentacle meant rank and not just that he was Magus Corps.
“It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“So when we make love,” she whispered, “it’s just ‘fucking’ to you?”
He held her tightly again but didn’t look into her eyes. His voice came in a hushed torrent.
“I’m helping you harness your gifts, connect with nature and yourself. I care for you, but I can’t lose my position. I can’t.”
“Then this is all we have?”
He kissed her temple. “It’s what I can give.”
She swiped at the tears on her face.
“If that’s all we have, if I have to leave tomorrow after protecting Dad at the Native Festival, then…then that’s what I’ll take.”
Trent frowned back at her, tawny eyes stormy with sadness. “I don’t understand.”
“If this is the last chance I’ll ever have to really touch you, to feel our souls connect, then I want it. I want it here and now.”
• • • • •
Although she stood, drawing him upward, she quickly knelt. Long black hair poured over her shoulders, tangled slightly from the shift, adding to the wildness of her look. Huge doe eyes looked up at him, and he wanted to fall into them forever. So why had he said what he said? Why was he so scared to initiate her and bond?
Centuries without this woman would be unthinkable.
But he was a warrior, and being bonded wasn’t what he’d wanted.
Trent almost believed that until she wrapped her warm lips around his already erect cock.
“Goddess, Elaine, yes.”
She didn’t say anything––couldn’t––but began to suck, her throat taking him deeply. He moaned at the heat of her, the softness of her mouth, and the sweet embrace of her tongue. Then she cupped his balls, and it became difficult to stay standing. There was the reach of a fierce rhythm as she kept moving back and forth, her tongue hot and unstoppable. He started to move his hips forward, slowly at first, afraid he might hurt her.
Skillful fingers trailed over his balls, teasing every inch of the skin there, and he could feel the liquid pearls of precum started to pool on his tip. He grasped her shoulder.
“Elaine, love, not yet.”
She pulled her head back to speak, and he instantly yearned to be in her again.
“No,” she said. “I make the rules today, and I want to give you pleasure. Let me have that before we never see each other again.”
The cut of a Knight’s blade would have hurt less.
• • • • •
Maybe the words were unfair, but he was going to know everything he’d be giving up if he went back to D.C. She wouldn’t let Trent Williamson walk out of her life without trying everything to make him stay. She wrapped the fingers of her hand over the head of his hard cock. The skin there was soft like velvet and sensitive under her touch. She loved the way just tapping it lightly made his eyes squeeze shut and his back arch.
Maybe it was the wolf in her, the predator that loved bringing her prey to its knees.
She flicked her tongue delicately at the underside of his penis, rapping out a slow rhythm and reveling in the salty tang of the welling cum. He almost buckled and gripped her shoulder hard. She swirled her tongue around his head, slow and delicate strokes that made his dick quiver in her grasp. At the same time, her fingers played with his balls, rolling them delicately between forefinger and thumb.
“More,” he gasped above her.
She ignored him. She needed to make him squirm.
Her lips and tongue trailed long, unending licks down the entire length of him. She cupped his balls, her fingers rippling a steady rhythm there. She nibbled at him, sucked the underside of his shaft, and played with him until he moaned.
“Oh Goddess, please,” he whispered harshly.
Finally, she couldn’t resist the taste of him and took him again in her mouth. She plunged forward as fast as she could, a frantic rhythm that his hips soon joined. She gripped his firm ass with both hands as his balls slapped to and fro. His moan turned into a strangled groan as she took him in her throat.
“Elaine!”
She slipped away from him as his hot seed spattered the fresh grass. With her hand on his spasming cock, she milked him. Over and over, he spewed forth, convulsing in place. His magnificent torso bent to the task, his hips flexing and then grinding, until she finally eased her grip. With one last tug, she brought him to his knees.
He clung to her, kissing her face and then her mouth.
“You’re amazing.”
She laughed and kissed him back, wishing they could stay like this forever.
“Then maybe I can say the right incantation and make you stay.”
“Elaine…”
“No,” she continued, putting a finger to his lips. “Don’t make excuses tonight. Don’t make anything. Let’s fly back home and figure out where we go from there. It’d hurt worse than shapeshifting to hear you lie just to spare my feelings.”
“I want to stay, but I can’t.”
“Because you won’t become a general whatever with me.” She sighed and kissed his cheek. “We have tonight and tomorrow before we drive to Atlanta, just don’t waste what we have.”
“You’re trying to guilt me,” he said, standing again.
The feathers started to ripple over his body.
“Is it working?”
“Elaine…”
She sighed and grimaced as her own changes started. She was just an average witch, even if they shared the same gifts. And he was a born warrior who needed more than she could give him.
As she took to the sky, she gave out a loud screech, letting her hawk’s call express the grief that her human voice never fully could.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“YOU SEEM DISTRACTED,” her father said as she started setting out the batter at the funnel cake stand.
She pulled the latex gloves she wore further up her wrist.
“I’m just worried I’ll burn myself. I don’t think that the kitchen and I are exactly mixy things.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Her father smiled, and the lines of his crow’s feet creased with the gesture. “While the funnel cake is a proud tradition of our people, going back to last year when Mrs. Remington suggested it, I think you can survive the pressure, sweetheart.”
“Well at least I won’t do as badly as Shane with the cotton candy two years ago.”
Her dad chuckled and she liked that sound. It wasn’t something she always heard with how strained their relationship could be.
“He only lost the one finger and then the hospital was able to sew it back on.”
“Like that d
idn’t traumatize about six kids. Still, the funnel cake is a solemn duty and I will make the best ones available, with ample sugar.”
“That’s the secret.” Her father pinched her cheek and she felt about four years old. “Just keep the glucose levels high and people will love you. I have to get over to the vendor stalls, make sure everyone has the right place. They fight over the part closest to the bathroom, guaranteed audience exposure.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “I…Dad?”
“Elaine?”
She started setting out the spatulas, keeping her eyes away from his. She couldn’t get through this next part if she did.
“What if I took a sabbatical?”
Her father clicked his tongue behind her as he considered this. Elaine kept her focus on the counter.
“You only have seven months to go. Is this about your thesis?”
“No.”
“Is it about Rainstone then, honey?”
She gasped and turned to see him. “I didn’t know you knew?”
“Yeah, I got a call from Carrie. She was worried about you. I know how hard you worked to get Rainstone, how special that horse was. Watching you two was almost like watching one being split in two. I’ve never seen riders even on the rez with as much skill.”
Yeah because I’m a Medicine Woman and shifting Wiccan, and I lost my familiar.
She shuddered and fell into her father’s hug. It was impossible to keep the tears from littering her cheeks when she thought of her fallen steed.
“It’s more than that. I just think I need some space. I’ve never even left Tuscaloosa, not really. I was thinking of seeing more of the country. I can come back. My advisor would let me.”
He frowned at her. “Sounds like you’ve been doing some research on it. Have you already asked?”
She swallowed and it felt like glass shards in her throat.
“She said it’d be okay.”
Her father pushed his long greying braids behind his shoulders, and she noticed he was the one no longer making eye contact with her.
“Is this because of the reservation? Honey if it’s too hard, if everything with the Chief and his son still wears on you even now, then you don’t have to leave. I can visit you more on campus or we can go to Birmingham.”
“I wish that was it. I just feel like I need to explore who I am more. Maybe everything with Rainstone gave me the idea, but I just need time to be me.”
“And that’s far from the rez and school?”
“It’s far from a lot of things.” She sighed. “It’ll only be a year and I’m not that adventurous. I was going to start with Atlanta first. Then maybe up to D.C., see all the sights.”
He frowned and looked across the festival to where Trent was leaning against the glass front of the Moundville Cultural center, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, making his muscles bulge.
“Does that new man in your life have anything to do with it?”
Everything.
“Dad, it’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it? I know that look. I used to have it for your mother. He’s in love with you.”
“I don’t think he is,” she said honestly. “We just…want to have some fun. I’ll be back soon, but I hate leaving at all because I know you and Mom will be disappointed. I should just finish things up. But after everything with Rainstone, maybe I just need to live more.”
Her father rocked back on his heels. “And life in Tuscaloosa and visiting the rez doesn’t do that?”
“I’d like to see another time zone,” she replied.
Her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to Trent’s. Those tawny orbs reminded her of the feral beast he could easily become. Even from where she stood, her keen senses could pick out his scent, that musk that was uniquely his and not quite human.
Mate.
Elaine shoved that thought away. She might feel that, and the wild side of herself might feel it, but that wasn’t enough for him. Loving her, fully making love to her, wouldn’t help him advance to captain. Still, if he hadn’t come into her life, she wouldn’t understand her gifts, wouldn’t be starting on this journey. Maybe it wasn’t all about him, but he was the biggest player in it.
“Where he goes for a while, I’m going to follow.”
“Putting your life on hiatus for a man isn’t your style,” her father said.
“Would you feel better if I were doing it for a man on the res? If I were embracing my heritage that way?”
“Maybe,” he replied, wringing his hands. “Still, this seems so sudden.”
“He came into my life suddenly, and a wolf tore out Rainstone’s throat even faster. I…he knows about Medicine Men and Women. It’s a different tradition he comes from, but I need more than our oral histories and Grandmother’s notes can tell me. I want to know who I am and what I’m truly capable of.”
The tension her father carried seemed to lift as he stood taller. The smile returned to his face.
“So the pale face knows magic?”
“He knows a lot of things. I think I’m a lot more like your mother than I ever could have imagined and, yes, seeing the world will help me be the kind of Medicine Woman our tribe needs when it’s time.”
Her father hugged her again. It was an embrace so tight that breathing was difficult.
“I’ve waited so long to hear you say words like this, to really want to honor our tribe. Sweetheart, whatever you need, I’ll support. Maybe I need to meet that man of yours.”
She pulled away and felt her cheeks flush scarlet.
“Dad!”
“Oh that settles it. I need to give him a bit of Dad heart-to-heart before you go to Georgia and who knows where with him. You man those funnel cakes, I’ll be back!”
He rushed over to Trent who’s eyes were as wide as if a bunch of Knights were rushing him.
Elaine hid the giggling beneath her hand. Served him right. Maybe her father could talk some serious sense into him. Or, at least, the awkward scenario would be fitting punishment. Unless you counted the slow evil of her tongue last night. Thoughts of their subsequent love making––protected, of course, as he hadn’t offered to initiate her––made her core flare with warmth.
Goddess why do you tease me so?
“Hey Elaine, is this a bad time?” a familiar voice asked.
Elaine turned to find Norine, and quickly gave her a hug.
“Norine! You came!”
It was so odd seeing her here and “off duty.” She looked so tiny in just jeans and a t-shirt, and also younger with her auburn hair flowing freely. Wild almost.
“Of course! I’ve heard from other parishioners what a great time this is. Although the funnel cake display looks like it’s not warmed up yet.”
Elaine offered a sly smile.
“You have a voucher. As soon as the batter’s up and frying, I’ll be able to get you any treat you want.”
“Great, but what I wanted to do was talk to you about the farm attack.”
Elaine frowned at the suddenly serious tone.
Norine looked left and right.
“Look, I’m not supposed to do this but someone came into confession and talked about the crime.”
Elaine’s eyes went wide. “What? You know who did it?”
“I’m torn, but you’re a friend, and I’ll ask for forgiveness later. But we need to discuss this in private.” She nodded her head toward the parking lot. “Maybe my car?”
Elaine nodded, took off her apron, and grabbed her jacket. She kept up with her friend’s quick strides. Norine’s quiet was disconcerting, but she was breaking the sanctity of priest and church member privacy. It was humbling. Norine stopped at her sedan.
“You have to tell me everything,” Elaine said.
“Like you’ve told me everything, witch?” Norine asked, blue eyes cold as ice.
“What?”
Norine threw something in her face––something acerbic that reeked of almonds. Elaine fell heavily to her knees even as No
rine’s chant rose above her. She was muttering something in Latin that Elaine couldn’t follow. Elaine’s muscles went slack, and she flopped to the ground at Norine’s feet.
“Uhhh” was the only sound that escaped her throat.
“We’ve have been looking for you,” Norine said, as the world faded to black.
• • • • •
“She’s special, you see,” Efrim Blackhawk said.
Trent was torn between being impressed with Elaine’s father’s boldness or annoyed. While he admired Efrim for trying to lay the law down, despite the fact that Trent had fifty pounds of muscle and five inches on him, Trent opted to roll with the annoyance. After all, Elaine was chortling up a storm across the way.
“Sir, believe me, I know,” he added, keeping his eye on Elaine. “She’s one of a kind.”
“You’re really smitten with her, aren’t you?”
“That’s an old-fashioned way to put it.”
The older man sighed and stopped posturing.
“Just because her mom and I didn’t work out, doesn’t mean I don’t love her. It doesn’t mean I can’t recognize it when someone else loves her either.”
“Wait, weren’t you over here to give me the ‘If you touch my baby girl, I’ll bury you where no one can find you’ speech?”
“Son–”
He had to swallow his amusement at that moniker from Efrim. At best, there was probably ten years difference between their true ages. Maybe he was finally beginning to get some of the perspective MacCulloch or Worthen. Maybe one day, centuries down the line, everything would seem quaint.
“Sir.”
“Son, I’m not naïve and she’s twenty-three and not impressionable anymore. Naturally, I also have my own shotgun. That disclaimer goes without saying.”
Trent chuckled at that. “Then I’ll take it under advisement.”
Trent: Her Warlock Protector Book 7 Page 8