by M. L. Briers
Nancy released her grip and wiggled and twisted to be free of his hands on her girls. The man was an octopus and a chancer!
This day was the worst day of her life to date – even beating the day she’d tried to dye her dark hair blonde, and it had turned green – she’d been holding his … yuck!
Some days you just shouldn’t get out of bed, and she knew in her heart of hearts that this day was one of them.
CHAPTER SIX
~
Jorge couldn’t help but chuckle. He might have inadvertently copped a feel, but then, so had she. In his mind, they were even. He made sure that she was stable on her feet before reluctantly letting go.
Nancy’s could feel her blood practically boiling within her veins. Shocked, horrified, mortified and disgusted beyond words, she was huffing and muttering curses as she held her cootie-ridden hand out in front of her with a matching look of disgust on her face.
She went to wipe her hand down the thigh of her jeans and thought better of it. Then she reached out and ran it down his chest a couple of times. “That’s so gross!” she said, turning her nose up at him.
Jorge looked down at his naked chest with amusement. First, she’d grabbed his length, now she was playing with his chest – hell yeah, he kind of liked that his mate couldn’t seem to stay on her own two feet. “You just can’t stop touching me, can you?” he said, teasing with eyes that had darkened from the desire that had rolled through his body, but still they seemed to shine with amusement.
Nancy’s top lip twitched with annoyance. Never had she felt so humiliated in her life before, and she was female! It was like a right of passage growing up to be humiliated on a regular basis, especially during puberty. “Oh!” she bit out with a strange sort of angry sneer on her face that he half expected to turn into a snarl. “You are just so out of your bloody depth.”
“Now, tell me again, who the pervert is here?” Jorge said, his eyes sparkling with the laughter he was trying to keep inside.
“I’m the pervert?” she hissed back in surprise.
Jorge gave one large emphatic nod. “Glad you agree,” he said, starting off around her so that he could grin like a lunatic and not have her see it on his face. He might have found himself with the upper hand, but he didn’t need to rub in it too badly and get his zap-happy mate all up in arms again.
Too late – he felt the hard sting of her magic like a wet towel being whipped against his naked backside, and he hopped in step but kept going. “Is that your answer to everything – zap it?” he tossed back over his shoulder.
Nancy pressed her lips together for a long moment, narrowing her eyes on the back of his head, and looking through her finger and thumb, she feigned squeezing his noggin until it popped. Oh, how she’d love to have put some magic behind that thought.
Then she took a deep breath in and started after him. “As opposed to your answer – hunt it – kill it – eat it,” she bit out.
Jorge tossed a quick look back over his shoulder at his mate stomping up the hill behind him once more. “I don’t always kill,” he said with a little chuckle and heard her muttering more curse words.
“Betcha feel really good about yourself when you’re eating Bugs bloody Bunny, don’t ya?” she said, sneering at him behind his back, and snapping it off when he flicked another glance her way.
“What can I tell you – when Bugs’ time is up, it’s up,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “T’is the nature of the beast and the circle of life.”
“Yeah, okay Rafiki,” she bit back.
“Rafiki didn’t tell Simba of the circle of life, it was Mufasa…”
“Oh, shocker! You know the Lion King word for bloody word,” she said, snorting her contempt for him.
“What can I say? It’s a male thing…”
“Watching cartoons? Sure.”
“Says the girl that’s seen the Lion King.”
“When I was little,” she bit back. “I’ll bet you watched it last night,” she said, sneering at him.
“Last week,” he corrected her.
Nancy grunted. “Someone needs to grow up!” she snapped.
“And face the fact that they are a mate …? Yes, you do,” Jorge tossed back and heard her muttering once more.
“Butthead,” she bit out, unhappy that the man seemed to keep getting the upper hand when she wanted it.
Jorge’s chuckling jumped up and down on her last nerve. She was close to zapping him once more. “I can feel your eyes on my backside,” he said, and she almost wrong-footed herself once more as he busted her, and that one wouldn’t have been the fault of her two left feet.
Damn it! She had been looking at his butt – and it was a nice muscled backside … but that wasn’t the point – the point was, she was never in a gazillion years going to admit that to him. “Dream on, ego-boy.”
Jorge tossed a wolfish grin back over his shoulder, and those stupidly sexy eyes of his were laughing at her again – but worse still, he’d developed the kind of smirk on his face that didn’t just jump up and down on her last nerve – it ground it into the dirt. “Sure, sweetheart, you keep telling yourself that.”
Nancy stopped walking and started snarling – not the wolfish kind, but the feminine kind – the kind that said – now is not the time to mess with me. Her top lip twitched and curled like she’d found a bad cat smell and couldn’t find out where Tiddles had dropped the evidence. “You really think that much of yourself, don’t you?” she demanded, and Jorge stopped walking and started to turn towards her.
Bad move – the man should have put his proverbial tail between his legs and started running in any direction as long as it was away from her.
“I think we both know you fancy the hell out of me,” he said, about to back that up with a one-liner designed to make her smile – if only on the inside. But he caught sight of the look on her face and stopped talking. She had that look – the look the females in his pack got at least once a month.
Jorge practically swallowed his tongue as she levelled a death glare right between his eyes. Damn, all she needed was a little magic behind that look, and his backside was toast. He needed to backpedal, cut his losses and run, bend over and kiss his backside goodbye – instead, he doubled down. “How could you not?” he motioned down his naked body and smirked like all his evil plans had come to fruition at once.
Nancy tried to force a word out, but all she got was a grunt of disbelief. Then she tossed her head back, closed her eyes to the grey sky, and groaned. “Why did I have to get the village idiot?” she whined.
Then she snapped to attention and cursed like a sailor on shore leave. “No!” she said pointing her witching finger at his muscle-packed chest. “This is not happening – I’m not getting stuck with a delusional reject from the insane asylum!”
Jorge had opened his mouth to speak, but she wasn’t about to let him get a word in edgewise, and boy, did she look sincere in her angst.
“You!” she snapped and growled like a she-wolf on the warpath. “Fate sent me you – you!” she snorted her contempt for him. “That’s fate’s idea of a bloody joke, right?” she said, leaning in towards him slightly.
Jorge didn’t want to stop her on a roll, so he did what he always did in the face of an irrational, and very miffed female – he shrugged.
“Well, don’t just stand there looking pretty but dumb, don’t you have a tongue? Did the wolf steal it?” Jorge opened his mouth to speak at her invitation, but he need not have bothered. “Can’t talk now, huh? But – ooooo- you were so chatty moments ago when you thought you were the bee's knees – Pah!” she snapped.
And with that, she turned on her heels, put one foot in front of the other and promptly tripped over. Thud! She hit the big old tree trunk head on and stumbled backwards – slightly dazed. “Bum it!” she snapped and kicked the hardwood of the trunk. “Yeowwwwlll!” she snapped, grabbing her foot and hopping in place, madder than Hades.
“Are you finished beating up the tr
ee?” he asked, slightly amused, slightly worried that his mate was crazier than a squirrel’s breakfast, and growling at the tree trunk for hurting his mate even when it had been her stupidity and not nature’s fault. “Cos, my clothes are just over there, and I know you have a problem with the human form.”
Nancy stomped down on the pain in her foot, breathed heavy out of her nose, and bit down on a million curse words that came to mind. She looked as if she was chewing on a wasp and the mini-beast was stinging her like crazy. “There are no words,” she finally bit out.
“Oh, you’re female, I’m sure there are always words…”
“That’s it,” she said and used her magic to drop the man on his backside. Then she slowly breathed out every bit of her pent-up aggression, humiliation, and angst in one long breath, sighing at the end of it, and dragged her body upright with her chin tilted upwards. “Let’s go, Shrek.”
“Now you’re talking to yourself?” he grumbled, pulling himself to his feet and dusting down his backside for the want of not being able to wring her neck.
“I’m going to ignore that,” she said, being the bigger person, and stalking up the hill with an added determination to get where they were going without falling over her own feet – again.
“Truth hurts, babe,” he said, strolling on by her, and magically tripped over nothing at all. It didn’t take him much to right himself, but the snickers that came from his mate said what he already knew – that magical trip really was magic – hers. “Behave,” he said, grumbling a low growl.
“I am behaving,” she sniped back. “I’m behaving like a witch.”
“Well, tell yourself you’re a human female and act accordingly,” he grumbled, leading the way and not looking back at her.
“Like that’s ever going to happen,” she muttered on a snort of a wicked little chuckle that made Jorge grimace.
Maybe wooing his witch mate wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped.
CHAPTER SEVEN
~
Father wolf strolled around the side of the rectory and hesitated in step at the sight of the new alpha, Grant, standing in the car park in front of his truck. His large arms were folded, but the muscles were evident under the fit of his jacket, and he eyed the priest as the man walked towards him.
The look on the Alpha’s face said it wasn’t a social call, but then the priest already guessed that. “Good morning, Grant,” Father Wolf said, not bothering to raise his voice because he knew he had no need to do it.
“Not yet, but we can hope,” Grant said, dropping his arms to his sides and not moving another muscle as he regarded the priest with scepticism.
He might not have had much of a choice about accepting the Father’s offer of land at the time of offering, but there was definitely something fishy going on in the town of Knowing, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it before it affected his pack.
As the alpha, he never would have moved his people to a town that held danger for them, but if he had, then he wanted to find out what kind of danger they were in and maybe do something to head it off before anyone got hurt. On either side.
Father Wolf stopped short of meeting the man toe-to-toe. He knew a lot about shifters, especially alphas, and he wasn’t prepared to make that kind of a challenge – not yet anyway. “How can I brighten your day?” he asked, keeping his voice void of any emotion, something he’d learned from the vampire.
“You can start by telling me what exactly I’ve walked my people into here,” Grant said, and the priest noted the twitch of a nerve that had triggered beneath the alpha’s left eye. That wasn’t a good sign.
“You were informed that the area was – different in some ways from what you’d been used to…”
“The church, sure, but what happened to Drew…”
“Was unfortunate, and I wasn’t here to put a stop to it,” he explained, hoping, but not expecting that the alpha would accept that.
Grant pushed his backside away from the truck and turned his full attention on the priest. “Vampire, witches and wolf shifters, sure, I get that…”
“But me,” Father Wolf said, nodding. “The church has a vested interest in Knowing and there’s hope that this town symbolises what can be achieved by the whole of the supernatural realm…”
“Everyone working together for the good of the community,” Grant said, nodding. “I get that too – if anyone gets that, Father, it’s the pack – a community of shifters working for the common good, but…”
“It’s worked so far, alpha,” Father Wolf informed him. “This town has been here a very long time.”
Grant took a moment to think on that. “How long?”
“Let’s see,” Father Wolf thought about it, not that he needed to. Knowing had been his first assignment for the Church, and he’d been there ever since. “Fifty-two years and counting, and we’ve never…”
“Had mates before,” Grant said, cutting him off.
“True,” Father Wolf said, shrugging. “But Knowing is nothing if not a first for things. This is just another first.”
“And as the rules are no fraternising with the enemy, where does that leave the mates?”
“Safe,” Father Wolf said and hoped that he’d kept his voice even and believable.
Grant chewed the priest’s words over. He still didn’t like it, but he wasn’t getting any vibes from the man that told him the man was being deceitful. He grunted, nodded, and turned back to the truck, yanking the door open. “I take it I’ll be the first to know if anything changes?” the alpha said over his shoulder.
“Of course,” Father Wolf said, catching sight of Sister Mary’s head poking around one of the large tree trunks at the path that lead down to the woods. “But I’m not envisioning a change in the situation.”
Grant nodded once more, dropped his backside into the driver’s seat, and reached for the door. “Have a good day, Father.”
“And you,” Father Wolf said and strolled off towards his car as the alpha started the engine and tooled the truck out of the church’s car park.
Father Wolf snuck another look over at Sister Mary, and the woman yanked her head back behind the tree trunk. He smiled to himself as he opened the car door and lowered his body down to the seat.
He was just thankful that he’d had someone on his side when he’d lied to the alpha and managed to pull it off without the man sensing any deception. He was sure that if he had told the church about the mates, then he could sway the decision in his favour, and that of the town, but he wasn’t ready yet to take that risk.
~
“Feel better?” Jorge asked, motioning down his clothed body as his mate pouted and regarded the scenery around them rather than look at him.
Nancy knew what he meant even without looking. She’d been sneaking little glances at him as he’d pulled on a pair of nicely fitted jeans and a shirt that hugged in all the right muscled places. Not that she was going to admit that, and as she hadn’t been caught doing it – she didn’t have to.
She feigned taking him in from head to toe and snorted a chuckle. “No, not really. It’s still you, right? You put on clothes; you didn’t find a decent personality lying around the woods,” she sniped, dragging her gaze away from him. Her brain was telling her eyeballs to keep staring, but she refused to go down that route.
Jorge sighed and rolled his eyes skywards. His mate certainly knew how to test his patience, and he’d lay good odds that she could test the patience of a Saint as well, or at least Father Wolf and the nuns. “Nice,” he bit out. “You really are a charmer and so much fun to spend time with.”
“You know where the exit is, so bail,” Nancy said, motioning off into the woods like there was a door there. She wished – a door to anywhere but Knowing, and an escape route from her mate.
Life was just too short to be mated. She still wasn’t sure how Vivelle had succumbed to her mate’s lack-of-charms so easily.
Well, that wasn’t happening to her, because her mate didn
’t have any charms. The man was an ogre, a troll that should have been living under the bridge, and she was a witch. She was sure she could put that mating pull that fate had put between them like a binding glue right in her rearview mirror along with Mr No Pants, who was, unfortunately, wearing some now.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said, snorting his contempt.
“Well, d-er!” she snapped and was tossed a hard glare.
“Not happening Pixie chick,” Jorge informed her with what sounded like a foregone conclusion, but she knew better.
There was no way that she was falling for fate’s sneaky little tricks – fate could kiss her backside. “Don’t insult me; Pixies are so … ugh!” She turned her nose up at him.
“I think I just found you a nickname,” Jorge said, grinning. “Pixie.”
“And I think you’ll be finding your fangs the next time you poop in the woods,” she said and watched as he frowned. “When I knock them down the back of your throat?” she said, twisting her head and raising her eyebrows in exasperation.
Did she really need to draw the man a picture every time she said something? That would get old fast.
When he pulled his head back and scowled at her, she guessed she’d managed to draw him the right kind of picture. Men!
“You have to be the most unfriendly witch I have ever met,” Jorge said in disbelief.
“Perhaps I’m just bouncing off your abrasive personality,” she said, brightening slightly at getting a dig in at him.
Jorge pulled a sour face. “No, that’s not it,” he said, shaking his head. “You really are a mean one.”
Nancy opened her mouth to protest but caught herself. What did she care what he thought of her? Maybe if she was just too much trouble for him to deal with, then he might just decide that a life alone, or even the risk of going rogue was better than a life shackled to her. “Well, enjoy,” she said, shrugging. “Because if you have your way and we’re mated, then you’ll have the pleasure of my company for the next fifty, sixty years.”