Lions' Pride

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Even if hormones and human—or whatever the hell he should call it—nature conspired make him forgot.

  Elissa woke around noon.

  One second she was scarily lost to the waking world. The next she was awake, alert and asking him, not angrily, but with objective curiosity, how he’d gotten into her circle.

  So those crazy colors were a magic circle, as he’d suspected. He’d never been able to see one before, although in his work he’d literally run into a couple. From Elissa’s reaction, this one should have been the same. It shouldn’t have let him in without her doing something, let alone dragged him inside and tossed him onto the bed.

  “Bizarre,” she said. Then she blinked and went on to tell him about the Seneca army base and security passwords and a plan so crazy it just might work.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Rafe said. His prickling nerves told him it was time to go, go, go.

  “Food, for one,” she said firmly. “You promised me breakfast, and it’s past lunchtime. I want to get going as much as…more than…you do, but if I don’t eat I’ll put myself at risk by doing magic. Only first, put these on.” She plucked a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt from a basket of clean laundry and threw them at him.

  Rafe scrambled eggs, made coffee and cooked bacon for himself. As they ate, they reviewed what passed for a plan.

  “So it’s basically waltz in using stolen passcodes, grab Jude, kick some sorcerer’s ass and leave?”

  “The passcodes aren’t exactly stolen. Maggie gave them to me. And I’d love it if you can make specific suggestions because this kind of thing isn’t exactly in a green witch’s job description.”

  “Or a cop’s. But criminals get away with a lot through sheer ballsiness and either pretending they’re not doing anything unusual or doing something so bizarre no one knows how to react. We’ve got both angles covered here.” He sounded amused, but not mocking. “So, question for you: how do you kick sorcerous ass?”

  “Realistically, it’s best to grab Jude and leave without attracting the sorcerer’s attention, if we can.” She clenched her hands while she said it, imagining them around Shaw’s throat, but there were better ways. “That’s one thing I need you for. Maggie gave me network passwords, too. She has files that could probably take care of the whole operation if we got them to the press, but I’m lousy with computers.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Maggie. Who’s she?”

  Elissa tried to keep her voice steady. “My ghost. A scientist they murdered because she knew too much. She wants to make sure what they’re doing gets exposed. How do you think I got all those security codes?”

  Rafe set down his fork. “I was trying not to think about it, I guess.” He stared at her. His eyes had too much white to them.

  Then they had no white at all, just the gold of a cougar.

  “Whoa. Did you know you’re starting to shift?” She put her hand over his, a gentle reminder of, for want of a more accurate word, humanity.

  His hand under hers remained human, but his eyes flickered back and forth several times before they settled back to the familiar brown. “Sorry about that. I…I don’t like ghosts.”

  “I gathered.” She squeezed his fingers, thinking she should move. She didn’t. “But Maggie’s the key to us getting in there, not to mention exposing the project. She’s funny, too, in her non-corporeal way. I like her.”

  “Ever since I was small, I’ve always been sure I was surrounded by ghosts. It was worse on Drozz because a room could be full of ghosts and I’d never sense them.” He looked away then back, sporting an obviously forced smile. “I must sound like a nutcase. Yeah, sure, ghosts are watching me.” He waved his hand by his head in the universal “cuckoo” gesture.

  Elissa could have dismissed his fear, but she didn’t. Instead, she twirled the coffee in her cup as she thought the matter through. She’d had a reason for her fear of ghosts—who was to say he didn’t? “Maybe you do have a personal ghost or two,” she finally said. “You were adopted, and it’s pretty unusual for a dual mother to turn her baby over to humans voluntarily. Maybe your parents died, but they checked in from time to time to make sure you were all right.”

  She wasn’t sure what to expect once she said that. Denial. Anger. More fear.

  Instead, what she saw in Rafe’s expression was a profound relief. “So I’m not nuts? Someone really has been watching me all these years?”

  “I think so. And your birth parents, I’d guess, loved you very much.”

  He smiled wearily, but this time honestly. “I know a lot of adopted kids worry about that, but I never did. Mom and Dad were Mom and Dad, even when I realized I wasn’t human. I just hope they can accept I’ve decided to become who I really am.” Rafe’s expression was bittersweet. “Especially once I make headlines for going rogue. Speaking of which, isn’t about time to start that?”

  She’d put it off long enough. Eating, strategizing, talking about Rafe’s personal ghosts—all had been necessary, but at the same time, they’d been putting off the inevitable.

  The inevitable moment where, to save her husband, Elissa Donovan became an adulteress.

  She took a deep breath. “There’s something we need to do first.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “I couldn’t even kiss you before and now you want to have sex?” Rafe’s cock leapt, ready to play, but his brain wasn’t entirely with the program. Not that he didn’t want what she offered—God help him, he wanted it so much he hurt—but a man liked to think he was more to his partner than a self-propelled vibrator.

  “Please. It’s the only way I can raise the power we’ll need. What we tried before helped, but to get into the base—and more to the point, get out again—I need a lot more.” She wasn’t meeting his eyes. How the hell was he supposed to have sex with a woman who wouldn’t look at him, and who sounded desperate, but not for him?

  But how the hell could he say no? She was desperate. And he wanted Jude safe too, and if they could expose the Agency’s latest scheme, all the better.

  She looked so miserable, her arms crossed over her chest, her shoulders hunched, her eyes studying her empty plate as if it might hold a better answer. Her cheeks blazed.

  Even miserable she was beautiful, her red hair wild, the flush accenting her cheekbones. The way she sat concealed her curves, but they were burned into Rafe’s brain, into his skin from the times he’d held her. Her magic teased his senses as much as her beauty did. He still didn’t understand how he could feel her magic, but it pulsed under his skin, a shadow presence like the fur he wasn’t wearing.

  Rafe stood, circled the table and put his arms around her from behind. If she pulled away, he told himself, he’d say no and they’d find another way, although he had no clue what.

  Instead, she leaned her head back against his belly and said, “Thanks. You feel good.”

  “I try.”

  “No, you feel really good and that’s part of what makes this so hard.” She shifted in the chair so she could look up at him. Rafe hadn’t thought her face could go any redder, but it did. “I like you, Rafe. As in if I-weren’t-married-I’d-ask-you-out like you. It’s not just finding you attractive, although, yeah, I do. I’m really comfortable with you, considering how little we know each other. That’s the only reason the red magic has a prayer of working—that and your cougar said it would—but it’s hard to separate…”

  “What you need from what you just want? Yeah. I understand. Way too well. I want to help you. But I also want you, period—I don’t think that’s a shocker—and I feel like an asshole. What if my cougar has no clue what he’s talking about and just wants to get into your pants?”

  “I don’t know how your cougar knows so much about red magic, but my instincts agree with him. Besides, everything’s been so crazy I haven’t even had a chance to put on pants. That isn’t even funny …” She started laughing, but it was hysterical laughter that might end in tears. A cop heard laughter like
that sometimes, usually when something so nasty was going down that someone’s brain decided the proper response was to shut off.

  He pulled her close, let her bury her face against his chest. When the tears came, he stroked her hair and let her cry herself out.

  She composed herself faster than he expected, pulling away and drying her eyes on a napkin. “Well, let’s do this.”

  “One last time: are you sure you want to?”

  “Yes,” she said. She drew herself up straighter, squared her shoulders resolutely. “And no. For all sorts of reasons. But the only part of the no that has anything to do with you is that I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Funny, that’s what’s running through my head. But we’ve got to get Jude out of there, and this part will be a lot more fun than the part where people shoot at us.”

  Elissa stood, stretched. “Before we begin the magic, there’s one thing I want to do. Just for you and me.” She kissed him, sweet and deep, and Rafe knew he was doomed.

  If he lived through this craziness, he was going to be obsessed with this woman for a long, long time—maybe forever.

  —

  If she’d trusted her own powers more, she’d have taken Rafe to the spare bedroom, where she didn’t feel Jude in every atom. Sure, she and Jude had made love in there a few times—they had in every room of the house—but it was basically a neutral space, unweighted by memory. Uncharged.

  Which was why it wouldn’t work. Her power centered on the bedroom. The kitchen was the only place close to its equal, the only other room where her powers were supplemented by the magic of heart, hearth and home. The kitchen was less comfortable for sex, though, and with the level of mental discomfort they’d be facing, physical comfort seemed especially important.

  She changed the sheets before they got started. She told Rafe it was part of the ritual, but she lied.

  It was something she needed to do so she could perform the ritual.

  Soft flannel sheets fresh from the linen closet smelled of laundry detergent and lavender, not of Jude. Not of her and Jude together. Not of memories. She tossed the pillows and duvet into the corner—same problem.

  The room itself smelled of him, or maybe smelled wasn’t the right word. He’d left something of himself here, and she’d never been more aware of it than she was now. She couldn’t avoid all the echoes. She’d have to use them to her advantage, then, to remind her why she was in another man’s arms.

  In the enclosure of the protective circle, she reached out along the silver cord, followed that road to Jude.

  Pain. Pain and resistance, anger and determination. Jude’s fierceness and strength and the overwhelming power of his love for her fought back against evil magic and physical torture and the drug that was trying to alter him.

  For all Jude’s strength, for all his pride, for all his great heart and his love, he was barely holding his own.

  She’d wanted to beg his forgiveness in advance for what she was about to do.

  She couldn’t. The last thing he needed was doubt. He needed her strength, needed to know she was there for him in every possible way—including ways he probably wouldn’t understand.

  Instead, opening the link as wide as she could, she sent him her love, her belief, what strength she could spare. “We’re coming for you,” she told him. “We’ll be there in a few hours tops.”

  A tiny surge of hope zinged back from him, but no other response. He was far gone, lost in pain, verging on despair.

  Just before she was about to break off to conserve her powers, something came through the wall of pain surrounding him. It seemed like a message from the lion: no words, no coherent images, just love and faith and still more love.

  Jude trusted she’d get him out of this.

  That meant she had to.

  By any means necessary.

  She broke off the contact, deliberately shielded Jude out as best she could. She wasn’t sure what pain and the mutagenic drugs might do to his linking abilities, and she didn’t want him to pick up just enough of what was going on to leap to conclusions that would make him lose hope. Conclusions that were accurate in the broad facts, but weren’t the truth.

  At least she told herself they weren’t the truth. Red magic wasn’t the same as ordinary sex, and she was driven by necessity, to save Jude’s life and possibly others.

  Right?

  Right…

  She centered herself, trying to banish such negative thoughts before she called Rafe into the circle.

  The circle already acknowledged him without her doing a damn thing; otherwise she wouldn’t have woken up with him next to her. But she wanted to do this formally, appropriately, as generations of Donovans had laid down.

  Maybe that would mitigate the fact she was going to gather power through red magic with someone other than the partner of her heart.

  It wouldn’t help her feel less guilty.

  Once Rafe was inside the circle, she reinforced and altered it, turning it into a solid dome that would reflect power back at her a hundredfold so she could bask in it, collect it for later use.

  She called Rafe to her.

  Her heart raced, and not with desire. Bare and dark and beautiful, more graceful than ever now that he and his cougar were becoming friends, Rafe naked should have provoked lust in any vaguely heterosexual female. He’d provoked her lust, damn him, since they’d met, and it had been more than obvious she’d had the same effect on him.

  But now Elissa fought panic-stricken nausea, and her sex was Sahara dry. His cock, which stood tall and proud at the most inappropriate times, shriveled against him, trying to retreat somewhere safe.

  Just nerves, she told herself. Sex with a new person was always tense—even if you weren’t committing sort-of adultery so you could take on the Agency armed with magic that wasn’t supposed to work offensively, a cougar still figuring out how to work his claws and a ghostly geek.

  She had to trust that if they said the right words, did the right things, their bodies and hearts would follow.

  With a deep, shuddering breath, she pictured Jude’s love surrounding her like a shield, pictured green energy and earth energy surging through her. She was safe. She was stronger than she knew—she’d dealt just fine with the ghosts, after all. She could do this.

  Centered again, Elissa stepped forward so she could touch Rafe. “I honor your body as I honor the Lord,” she said, her voice shaking, “the male principle in all life.”

  His skin goose bumped as she touched him, but not because he was cold. His skin was fire, hot and living, dangerous and seductive. His breath sucked in with a gasping, desperate note. She didn’t touch any obvious erogenous zones, stroking his arms and shoulders and upper chest, but not his nipples. This was a warm-up, a way to make themselves comfortable touching each other in this ritual space.

  Power already pulsed between them.

  Crazy. Being with Rafe was like being with another witch, as if he had red magic of his own deliberately working with hers, instead of boosting her magic with pure, raw sexuality.

  “I honor your body as I honor the Lady, the female principle in all life.”

  Rafe’s hands touched hers then slid down her arms. Crackling power followed.

  When he, less patient than she, caressed her nipples for the first time, power surged like an erotic electrical storm, filling the air around them, throbbing to the dome above them and to her suddenly drenched sex.

  What was going on? This was as strong as when she worked with Jude, though different, and she didn’t like it. This instant response, witch to witch, even though Rafe wasn’t one—if she felt that with anyone, shouldn’t it be with Jude?

  The power flickered and fizzled.

  “Don’t doubt,” Rafe said. How did he know when he couldn’t feel the power himself?

  She looked into his wide, awed eyes and realized he did feel the power. He was something different, a dual but not what she’d come to think of as a dual.

  A dual
whose aura pulsed blue and metallic gold with newly awakened psychic power, and green and copper with his own not-quite-witchlike magic, a rich, nature-rooted force that all but roared with its eagerness to come out and play.

  “Who are you?” she breathed. “What are you?”

  “I don’t know. What you’re making me, I think. What you and Jude need me to be.” His voice was faraway, puzzled, but powerful, as if someone or something was speaking through him. He seemed ancient, some nature spirit or a face of Trickster or the Lord himself.

  Then he kissed her and he was Rafe again, but that puzzling witch-powered Rafe with a cougar poised under his skin. “God,” he whispered when they paused for air, “you are so beautiful. Is it wrong that I want you so much?”

  “No,” she said. “You are…” She couldn’t find the right words, so she shook her head until the curls bounced, then put a finger to his lips. “Try not to talk. Focus on the energy.”

  He nodded.

  Goddess forgive her, she wanted him, not just for the magic, but because he smelled like sex and looked like a bronze god and she needed him inside her.

  How they made it to the bed would forever be a mystery.

  Slowly, ritualistically, they explored every inch of each other’s skin except the genitals, kissing and licking and nipping.

  Even Rafe’s armpits and the slightly sweaty crack of his ass tasted good. Her nipples swelled, and her pussy swam in rich juices. She ached for this man she hadn’t even known existed until a few days ago.

  It wasn’t just her body aching. That she’d understand. That was nature in action, and nature didn’t have ethics or morals or even common sense—it just wanted its creatures to fuck and make more creatures. The tenderness was unexpected. Much as she wanted to convince herself her response was purely red magic greedy for richer fuel, playing upon her emotions to make her sexual responses stronger, she knew it was more complex and dangerous.

  She couldn’t afford to consider all the ramifications now. Saving Jude had to be the priority, and if she pondered the irony she had to cheat on Jude to save him—and enjoy it, because red magic only worked if you were having fun, and the more marriage-endangering fun she had, the more power she’d have to subdue her husband’s enemies—it would screw up the magic as well as her head.