Lions' Pride

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  But it was time for more. His whole body was on fire, his cock whimpered for release and his anal passage demanded further attention.

  “Please.” Jude’s voice came out small and pleading and he didn’t much care for that.

  Rafe apparently did, because he chuckled and said, “Beg for it.”

  Not happening.

  Instead of begging, Jude moved in a way designed to remind Rafe that Jude chose to be where he was and could equally well choose not to be. “Fuck that noise. And fuck my ass. I want your cock, and I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  It seemed Rafe liked Jude rough and tough and wanting to be fucked into next week better than Jude small and pleading, because there was a bit more rustling with Vaseline, then Jude was stretched like he’d never been stretched before.

  It didn’t exactly hurt, but it burned ominously, as if it would hurt if he gave it a chance. He knew from his experience as the driving end that once Rafe settled inside him, the discomfort would ease into pleasure. “Do it,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just do it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Gods yes…”

  With a flash of pain that, as predicted, faded, Rafe pushed his cock head inside. Jude swore he heard a pop.

  Then he just swore, in pleasure and confusion.

  So full. So intimate. So amazingly good, especially when Rafe’s hand closed around his cock.

  He’d imagined taking it up the ass would make him feel small or submissive or something else uncomfortable. Instead, he felt powerful. Bigger. As if with Rafe inside him, he became Jude-plus-Rafe, a whole stronger than the sum of its parts—like he felt with Elissa, yet different.

  Waves of pleasure rolled through him. They weren’t just focused on his dick, but maybe more like what a woman felt during sex. His whole body throbbed, inside and out.

  The few words he’d been able to muster evaporated and he was lost. Lost in Rafe, lost in feeling, lost in the hinterlands of orgasm. Rafe’s body felt different over his, still humanlike but furred, as if Rafe’s edges were blurring. One or two brain cells tried to point out this wasn’t safe, especially not with Rafe still new to his dual nature.

  Jude was blurring, too, not so much his wordside and his lionside as him and the whole damn universe, and his cock was going to explode and he really didn’t care what was safe and sane.

  Teeth sank into his shoulder again. If it hurt more this time, if it was a real, fanged bite and not a human-style love nip, well, big cats did that and he was a big cat, too.

  He cried out as orgasm claimed him. His ass clamped down on Rafe’s cock, and Rafe roared, not a human noise, but a mountain lion’s, as that pushed him over.

  Seconds later, Jude reeled as a fireball brushed him. It mostly missed Rafe, too, but he smelled singed fur.

  “What in hell are you doing to my husband?”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Rafe tumbled back into wordy form blindingly fast. Part of Jude wanted to take a few seconds and tell him to never shift that abruptly if he could help it. It must have hurt like a bitch, although maybe getting fireballs flung at him distracted from the pain because he didn’t even grimace, just reached for a gun that wasn’t there.

  The rest of Jude was too busy trying to move from under Rafe and cover him with his own body. Even if Elissa thought Rafe was attacking him or something, she wouldn’t hurt him.

  Jude hoped.

  “Easy, my heart,” he said, holding up his hands. “Guess we should have waited for you.” He was pretty sure that wasn’t the problem, or at least not enough of a problem to cause fireball-flinging, but maybe if he said something, anything, she’d start to think instead of react.

  It didn’t work. “Get out of my way, Jude,” Elissa said, her voice hot and tight with rage. “Don’t shield him.” Drawn up to her full tiny height, quivering with fury, still bundled like the Michelin man, her long hair tucked inside a purple fleece hat topped with a multicolor pom-pom, she appeared more ludicrous than threatening if you didn’t know what she was. But an angry witch was a dangerous witch, and he’d never seen her mouth set in such a tight line or her eyes so cold and hard.

  “He wasn’t hurting me!” Jude stood and stepped forward, planting himself squarely between his two lovers. As he moved, he felt sticky heat where Rafe’s teeth had torn him. It didn’t hurt—too many endorphins galloped through his system right now, between wild sex and fireballs—but it would. “Okay, he hurt me a little. But it was an accident. Nothing…” He ducked abruptly as a bright streak whizzed over his head. “Nothing to worry about. Right, Rafe?”

  He didn’t expect Rafe to answer. Every lion bit of him screamed to shift against the threat presented by the crazy witch. Rafe, still not in full control of his cat, would almost certainly be a cougar by now.

  Rafe answered, though, the strain of holding himself wordside making his voice tremble. “I’m sorry, Elissa. I thought I could…”

  “Thought you could”—another spell zoomed past, this one cold instead of hot—“fuck us both into trusting you”—more fire—“so you could bring the Agency right to us.”

  Jude stood strong, not even trying to dodge the spells. What she was throwing wasn’t lethal. If she hadn’t killed anyone at the Agency compound, she wasn’t going to start on him or Rafe.

  But why was she so damn mad? Her anger stank of pine tar and burning turpentine, and Rafe’s pain was cold as iron and bitter as three-day-perked coffee, and between the two of them, Jude could hardly breathe.

  Strangling on the cords that bound them together—now that was irony!

  —

  Elissa cast another volley of spells, biting down panic. They were coming. Agents were coming. Just miles away now.

  One of them was already here. But why wasn’t he doing anything but standing there with her husband’s blood staining his lips, letting her fling spells at him?

  “What are you doing, Elissa?” Jude stepped closer, tried to grab her hands.

  She almost weakened. If Jude was being calm and reasonable and trying to talk her down, if he looked so shocked at her behavior, maybe she was mistaken.

  No. His brain was sex-fogged and she couldn’t trust him to think clearly.

  Elissa made a small gesture, a little circle on the air.

  He was tossed to the side gently but firmly, like a cub whose mother has had enough of its antics. “Don’t stop me, Jude. Help me. He’s got a tracking device. And once I dropped my guard and the illusions, they’ve been able to use it. They’ll be here any time. But I’ve got to get him to tell us how many are coming. Give us an idea of what we’re up against.”

  Rafe spread his arms into a cross, the perfect target. The perfect sacrifice.

  She choked on his beauty. How could it still move her when she knew he was setting her husband up for slaughter? He was a murderer who’d killed her friend, and yet…

  “I love you both,” he said. Something tugged inside her—on her heart, on her womb—as if he was stroking the copper cord she’d seen linking the three of them, trying to prove his feelings.

  It only proved Rafe knew more about the metaphysical than he’d pretended. That he’d been lying about everything.

  “You know it’s true, Elissa. I’ve been bound to you since your magic sucked me into your kitchen. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’d never hurt either of you.”

  She closed her eyes and felt Jude die again.

  She tried not to feel, or smell, or remember in any way, Rafe helping her bring him back.

  It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  Especially not the part where she still felt for him.

  She tugged on the copper cord, tried to rip it away from her spirit. It felt like tearing out her aorta, and she fought not to crumple from the pain. “Rafe Benedict, what have you done to us?”

  “Me? You’re the one who’s going crazy. If the Agency’s coming, why are you wasting your time throwing fireballs at me? Is this bec
ause I fucked your husband?”

  “Only as a symbol.” If he hadn’t shifted yet, maybe he wasn’t going to right away. Maybe this was all part of his plan, to distract her with reason and the beauty of his body long enough for the Agency to get here.

  She drew closer and began to circle him counterclockwise. The most basic of binding magics, but with luck he wouldn’t realize it until it was too late. “I wouldn’t care that you fucked Jude except it was part of fucking him over. Gaining our trust. Planting tracking devices. Leading the Agency to us. Killing and half-eating my friend Anthony so the Agency could blame Jude.”

  “The fuck!” Jude found his voice again. He ran to her, tugged on her arm. Charged with sex, even that touch set her magic dancing, but she shook him off. “Elissa, you can’t believe that. Shaw killed Anthony. I saw it, I think. I didn’t put it together until now because they’d already drugged me, but I remember.”

  The second circling. “But who ate him? And who else could have betrayed us? They’re coming. It’s all over the news. They’re on their way here, and it’s probably too late to run, thanks to the assistance of a ‘cooperative insider in the Geneva police department’.” She made air quotes, imagining the little brackets binding Rafe in place to strengthen her spell.

  One more circle and he would be trapped. She could question him, probe him…

  Rafe moved, a blur—but not at her or Jude.

  He snatched up his laptop and flung it through the window with a roared “Jeannie!” Antique glass shattered on a surprisingly musical, decorous note. “Damn the bitch!”

  Some detached part of Elissa took the time to be impressed at how aerodynamic a laptop could be.

  “Your IT buddy? Convenient to blame her. She’s not here. Her girlfriend’s a dual. Why would she—”

  “Think about it. The Agency probably threatened her girlfriend. She always said Marisol pushed her luck.”

  Elissa lowered her hands. “It’s believable,” she said. She tasted rotten eggs and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, making it hard to speak.

  “More so than me helping get Jude out so they had to capture him again.”

  “It could be a test. Maybe they wanted to see what he’d do in the field. Then you set him up so you don’t just hurt him, he lets you hurt him, to make it easy for them to take him.” It didn’t make sense, even as she said it.

  The sulfur taste dissipated, and it was easier to speak. Something pricked inside her brain, but she couldn’t make sense of it through the dark swirls of fury and worry.

  Rafe stood naked in front of the open window, a cold breeze ruffling his hair. A bit of flying glass must have caught him, because a thin line of blood marked the cougar tattoo over his heart. “If you believe that, why don’t you just kill me? You could. I’d let you, Elissa. If you trust me so little, why don’t you just do it?”

  Jude spoke for her. “Because trying to kill you would destroy what she is and make her Agency fodder. If Elissa’s right, and I don’t want to believe it, that’s why you’re trying to provoke her. You know you’re caught, and you have to offer them something to keep them from killing you for your fuck-up. A tamed Donovan witch as well as me might keep you safe.”

  His voice lowered to a growl. Elissa instinctively drew back, keeping close enough to continue the spell if necessary, but not getting between the lion and his prey.

  Jude stepped closer to Rafe, let his claws come out through his human form. Rafe wasn’t a small man, but Jude loomed over him. Elissa held her breath. An enraged Jude could be a lethal weapon. “You know what? Our kind can kill. Doesn’t bother us one bit. We’re fucking predators. You and me both. But a lion’s bigger than a cougar, and I will kill to protect my pride.” He rested the claws of one hand on Rafe’s throat, the other on his chest.

  Rafe’s eyes widened and flickered to catlike amber, but he didn’t move.

  “What’s it going to be, Rafe? Do you stand with me as my friend and my lover to protect her, or do I kill you where you stand? Because right now, I can go either way.”

  There was something alien in Jude’s voice. Something frozen.

  Oh, Elissa knew he would kill for her if he had to, but he’d do it with passion, the way he did everything. There was something wrong with his voice, with his body language, with his hulking form, made graceless with over-large, bulging muscles. With the cold, flat gray of his eyes—Agent Shaw’s eyes.

  The air smelled of sulfur and ice.

  Suddenly her own volatile mood, the bad taste in her mouth, made far too much sense.

  Mind control was sorcerers’ magic. Usually they had to be near you to make it work, but Shaw already had a conduit to Jude—and indirectly to her. With the sorcerer working through Jude, her defenses didn’t block the mind control properly.

  Shit.

  The good news was that now that she recognized it, she could fight it. Strengthening her shields was elementary magic. She’d made what her teachers would call a typical white-witch mistake: worrying so much about everyone else she forgot to protect herself. Someday she might take the time to beat herself up about it. Not now, though.

  She envisioned a castle rising around her and Jude, keeping intruders at bay. Immediately she felt better.

  Jude was starting to shift, only piecemeal. His mane and muzzle took the place of his human hair and mouth, and half his back sprouted tawny fur. One leg shifted to lion, but not the other. He staggered, started to fall before he changed it back. He wheeled around, raised his hands to Elissa imploringly. His leonine mouth opened, but no sound came out—he could neither roar nor form human words.

  No way. No fucking way.

  The room roared and tinged red. “No!” She turned toward her husband, raised her hands in a gesture of warding.

  Called upon the powers of love and lust, of green things waiting beneath the snow, of all the families that had ever laughed in this old house, and pushed, using the energies she’d called up to defend their castle. “You will not have him!”

  There was a half-second where she felt ridiculous, like Gandalf on the bridge shouting, “You shall not pass!” to a demon. That hadn’t worked out so well for Gandalf, and she was no fictional mighty wizard.

  Then something changed. The drawbridge went up, the gates clanged into place and for good measure archers shot darts of prickly magic after the retreating foe.

  Jude half-sat, half-fell with all the grace of a rag doll dropped by a toddler.

  But his eyes were the right color again, and she no longer tasted sulfur.

  Rafe’s form shimmered as he shifted to cougar. Shimmered? Weird, although not weird enough to make it onto the long list of things she had to worry about right now.

  He sprang toward the broken window.

  Fleeing to the enemy?

  As if he knew what Elissa was thinking, he paused and turned his great feline head toward them. To her, his cougar eyes were unreadable. Predator’s eyes, but who was the prey?

  He sprang through the window, taking out what was left of the glass. “Do something!” Elissa exclaimed, even though she knew she was better equipped for ranged attacks. She raised her hands and started the paralysis spell, hoping to hit him before he got out of its limited range.

  Jude clutched her ankle. “I hear him,” he said. “You can’t lie in silentspeech. He’s on our side and he says he can smell the bastards and is going out to meet them. To give us time to run.”

  He added in a voice that had been left to rust in the rain, “He loves us.”

  That and Jude’s touch got through the dark fog still clouding her brain.

  She sank to the floor next to him, curled herself against his broad chest. His arms closed around her. He trembled, the shakiness of illness or extreme fatigue—or magical rebound—but he held her tight and she could feel his great strength underneath it, held in reserve.

  Only then did she realize how much she was shaking herself from the spell’s toxic residue.

  Tears fough
t to get out, but she wouldn’t let them. Crying wouldn’t solve anything.

  For a few seconds she let herself rest in the illusory shelter of Jude’s arms and gave him the illusory shelter of her touch, until they both calmed enough to function.

  She forced herself to pull away and stand. “Come on,” she said, offering Jude a hand she knew he wouldn’t take even if he needed it.

  “Are we running or fighting?”

  Her instincts told her to run. Drive like mad, stick to minor roads and head north by indirection. Even without her full strength, she was good enough to keep an illusion up for some time. The back roads in this part of the state were winding and convoluted and in some cases imperfectly mapped. There was no way the Agency could have them all under surveillance, even using magic. And northern Vermont had townships that had numbers instead of names. They couldn’t be that far from the border.

  She didn’t have time to raise power properly for a fight. Red magic was her strongest—red and green, but with the land locked in unseasonable snow, she could only call on so much green power. And she couldn’t very well stop to have sex while every passing minute put them into more danger.

  She imagined voices in the rushed beat of her heart: every member of her family who’d ever pointed out that she was weak for a Donovan, that she took after Grandma Josie as a jack of all magical trades and mistress of none, that “it’s a good thing plants like you, dear”, a good thing she had a head for skills normies valued and a personality that let her fit into the normy world.

  Not good enough for a battle like this. Not without preparation she didn’t have time for.

  Or spirit for. She ached where she’d tried to rip out the link with Rafe. She was stupid, too, on top of everything else, not to trust her own heart.