by Avery Flynn
Her stomach did a loop-de-loop. Just a spell. Just. A. Spell. “I only have a few of those and patience sure as hell isn’t one of them.”
“The witch had done her best,” he went on, “but she wasn’t powerful enough to turn the entire family of werewolves completely human. It wasn’t until everyone in the family began turning from werewolves into actual wolves—permanently—that they realized what had happened. Instead of breaking the curse, she put their beasts into hibernation mode. Their wolf sides grew stronger with every full moon that passed because they weren’t able to roam free. Then, at midnight on the person’s twenty-fifth birthday, the beast would break free and the person couldn’t change back into human. And so it’s been for centuries. The beast’s emergence can be delayed for seven years with the aid of a powerful shaman, but only once.” He paused and his jaw hardened, the blue of his eyes sparking with unspoken fury. “After that, nothing can stop them from becoming forever hairy.”
A heaviness thickened the air around them, weighing against her shoulders and pressing them down until her bones winced. “Damn, you read a lot of dark shit.”
His gaze locked just above her head, he continued, all the brass gone from his low voice. “In an effort to keep the family line from dying out before a reversal ritual could be found, the clan decided to marry off their sons and daughters at early ages so there would be enough time to produce the next generation.”
Man, it just got worse. There were curses and then there were curses. “Child werewolf brides and grooms that turn into real wolves, isn’t that just what every in-law wants.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “The witch couldn’t reverse her so-called cure, but she tried to fix the damage by enchanting the Caladbolg sword with a love spell. Whenever a non-family member touched the sword, he or she fell in love with their intended werewolf spouse immediately. As everyone knows, true love conquers all—even the most impassioned parental objections.
“Everything worked fine until someone stole the sword. Without the help of the love spell, the family members found it harder to find love and produce offspring before their perma-wolf side emerged. The family was devastated and without hope until, one day, they discovered a reversal ritual, which has been handed down from generation to generation. Once the ritual is performed, everything will return to normal. However, without the sword to use for the reversal ritual, or to set off the love spell, the family tree dwindled down to a single small branch with only one non-wolf family member.”
Her gut tightened. She knew the answer, but she still had to ask. “And you work for him?”
“I am him.”
Unless her brain had frizzled out, there was a time bomb ticking over his head. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty-two at the end of the month,” Liam said.
“And what happened to the ones hit by the love spell after their spouse goes all wolfy?” Red asked, ugly possibilities swarming around her like biting flies.
“I don’t know.” But the grim lines etched into his forehead told a different tale, one that didn’t have a happy ending.
Holding tight to the only thing that felt more real than the spell pushing her toward Liam, Red let herself get angry. Really mad. The kind of deep-seated fury that loosened all the emotional release valves, until anger poured out in heated blasts and decimated anyone standing in the way.
“This is a bunch of shit,” she yelled as she stomped over to him and jabbed one finger into his unrelenting chest. “There is no forever true love spell. They don’t exist. I’m not in love, I’m just woozy.”
“Really?” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and yanked her close, so her body lined up with his from thighs to lips. “So this shouldn’t do anything for you.”
Anticipation sizzled against Red’s skin as Liam stilled, his mouth nearly touching hers. Heartbeat thundering in her ears, she gave in to the heat seeping through her in waves too potent to ignore and melted against him—as soft and pliant as he was hard and unyielding. She should run, kick him in the nads and escape, but it was too late. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Stretching her body as much as she could, she brushed her lips across his and the rest of the world disappeared as the spell’s magic whipped around them.
###
The kiss turned Liam dumb. Stone-cold, the-world-could-blow-up-around-him-and-he-wouldn’t-care stupid. It was probably the magic. No one could taste so sweet and promise so many sinful things with one kiss without the aid of something a little extra. It was the only way to explain why her every curve fit so perfectly with his hard planes, why the need to hurry up while slowing down was knocking him sideways, and why, when he swept his tongue across her plump bottom lip, electricity shot straight down his spine. Red moaned, giving him the perfect opportunity to deepen the kiss, press her closer and pray his zipper would hold fast.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder with the force of a giant oak tree hitting the forest floor and yanked. The movement spun him away from Red and face-to-face with the gaping maw of a really pissed-off giant of a man. Liam was big. This dude was bigger. That didn’t happen often.
“Get off of her, asshole,” the big man yelled before turning to Red. “Are you okay, boss?”
Both men turned to face her. Her eyelids had the slight droop of a well-satisfied woman as she flicked her tongue across her kiss-swollen lips.
“A-okay.” Red’s voice had a fuzzy quality to it to match the excited pink highlighting her brown cheeks.
He’d put them there—that look and that dreamy, just-kissed huskiness in her voice—and he wanted to do it again. Now. Later. Forever. Or at least until she found out the truth—if she found out.
Bittersweet agony twisted his spleen and it took every bit of his control not to blurt out the truth. He had three days before the spell wore off. If he could make her fall in love with him before that happened, then everything would be okay. What difference did one lie of omission matter when it came to saving his family line and his own life? And if he couldn’t make her truly fall in love, then Red would leave and the MacTíres would end with Liam. Werewolves mated for life and the sword hadn’t just wrapped its magic around her. He was in it as deep as she was.
The big guy zeroed in on Liam and puffed up his chest. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Liam MacTíre.” The wolf inside him yanked against the leash holding it at bay. Jealousy as green as the Emerald Isle itself clouded his mind. “Who’s she to you?” If he said girlfriend it didn’t matter how much bigger he was, Liam was going to end him here and now.
“My boss.” No floundering and no hesitation, but the sappy look on the giant’s face said something else.
“Well, she’s my fiancée.” Liam wasn’t exactly peeing a circle around Red, but he wasn’t about to let someone go after his woman.
“Did you get down on one knee and I missed it?” Red asked, the vinegar in her tone minimized by the lusty hunger darkening her eyes.
“I thought it was understood.” His heart rammed against his ribs, powered by chaos’s twins: panic and fear. But he fought to keep his voice low and calm. “I told you about the spell. It’s the only outcome.”
Her lips, so red they reminded him of fresh strawberries still warm from the sun, curled upward, but the snap-crackle-pop dancing around in the air surrounding her left no doubt that the words she was about to deliver wouldn’t be nearly as sweet.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She strutted over to him, her full hips decimating the modesty of that little gingham skirt. She traced one bright red fingernail across his chest, right over the spot where his heart beat an insane rhythm. “I’m breaking this spell.”
Chapter Four
Red shooed the last drinker out the front door of Granny’s Pub, turned the deadbolt and flipped the open-for-business sign to closed as the streetlights outside blinked on. She’d already sent the staff home early and told them not to come back until tomorrow morning. Right now she had
more important things to worry about than filling pints and cleaning up after drunken hipsters who’d tossed their organic hemp cookies in the bathroom.
Liam sat in a corner booth, crunching his was through his second bowl of peanuts, watching her every move. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to confirm his presence. One of the spell’s side effects was a psychic string tethering them together, giving her a pinpoint of the tattooed werewolf’s location, like a beacon blinking in the darkness.
Lucky me, I’m the proud owner of an internal lust radar.
She refused to say the other L word, even in her own head.
Turning, Red felt the invisible string tugging her left, toward Liam and his drool-worthy bod. Really, it wasn’t fair. He had a model’s face, a bad boy’s body and enough swagger to melt her panties. The combination was frying her brain like an egg.
Focus!
She locked her feet in place, refusing to go one more step toward her magically intended. If she was going to reverse this spell, she couldn’t give an inch—not a single one.
Looking around the dim interior, she spotted Derry sitting at the bar, his oversized shoulders hunched and a pint of stout sitting untouched near his left hand. He’d been gone for hours looking for a way to break the spell, since Red couldn’t go anywhere without Liam unless she wanted her head to feel as though it was going to explode. With any luck, Derry had found out something. Forcing herself to take the direction her body did not want her to go, she made walked away from the wolf she wanted and over to the bar, where she sat down on the stool next to her number two.
“Back from your fact-finding mission?” she asked.
Nervous energy poured off Derry in tidal waves. The thunk-thunk-thunk of his oversized thumb drumming against the oak bar was nearly enough to crack the wood. “I’m sorry, boss. I know I shouldn’t have gone into the treasure room. I was just worried when no one could find you. If you want to fire me, I totally understand.”
Guilt pinged the spot where he heart was supposed to be and she threw him a verbal bone. “Your heart was in the right place.” He’d been loyal to a fault and she’d taken him for granted. Maybe she really should think about making him a partner.
His shoulders straightened and he perked up. “Thanks, boss!”
“Don’t look too happy, you’ll ruin my reputation as a ball-breaker.” She nudged him with her elbow. “So what did you find out?”
“The good news is, there is a reversal spell.”
Sending up a silent hallelujah to anyone listening, Red closed her eyes and experienced the first bit of relief since Liam had walked into her pub and wound her up tighter than a propeller on a kid’s balsa wood airplane. “Score one for us. Who gave you the intel?”
Derry kept his gaze averted, grabbed his pint and took a deep drink. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, clearing away the beer’s tan foam. “The Fairy Godmother.”
Beautiful, powerful and greedy, the Fairy Godmother wasn’t to be messed with. Being indebted to her ranked about as high on Red’s to-do list as putting on the red ballet shoes and dancing until her feet fell off—literally. “She can’t be trusted.”
“Not normally, but she’s my cousin’s stepbrother’s wife’s aunt, so we’re like this.” He held up two sausage-thick fingers wrapped around each other. “She knew all about the sword. Do you know how much it’s worth?”
As if. “Why do you think I got it off the muffin man when the divorce went down? The man needed a lot of cash to keep his ass out of the fire with his wife’s attorney, but not as much as I knew I could get for the Caladbolg on the black market.”
Derry grinned and shook his head. “You never miss a trick, do you?”
That nameless sixth sense tingled across her skin on the back of her neck, corkscrewing her already tightly curled hair. She slid her gaze across the pub to the bad boy in leather in the corner booth waiting for her. He flashed her a grin that straddled the fine line between predatory and playful. Desire, hot and needy, settled low in her stomach and her nipples peaked, pushing against her lace bra. Red gripped the bar tight enough that the woodgrain was going to leave an imprint on her palms. It was the only way to stop herself from sashaying her sweet ass over to Liam and dragging him to her office before she fucked him right there in the booth.
If there was any other way, she’d tell the Fairy Godmother thanks but no thanks. “What do we have to do to break it?”
“She needs the sword and a lock of each of your hair.”
Glancing back over in Liam’s direction, it took everything she had to keep her attention focused on the sword’s velvet carrying case on the table in front of him. The hair was no problem, but the idea of letting the sword out of her sight made her twitchy. “Why the sword?”
Derry looked up at the pub’s tin ceiling as if remembering facts for a test. “She said she needs it because it’s what started the whole thing.”
“Can she do it here?” She lost the battle and her focus flicked up to Liam. It was just for a second, but it was enough to get her heart to shutter to a stop before revving back up to warp speed.
“Nope.” Derry shook his shaggy head of hair. “She said she needs her potions and she won’t know exactly what else she’ll need to reverse the spell until she’s in the middle of everything. No one has tried to reverse a Caladbolg sword love spell in centuries and she doesn’t want to mess it up.”
Forget twitchy, this whole situation checked off every do-not-do item in the how-to-survive-on-the-magical-mean-streets-of-Dublin manual. “I don’t like this.”
Derry shrugged and jerked his dimpled chin toward Liam. “I suppose he wouldn’t be that bad of a husband. He’s rich. You’d probably have to give up the business, but you’d be a billionaire’s wife and could spend your days going out to lunch, playing tennis and shopping.”
That sounded about as fun as sticking a fork in her eye. Granny’s Pub was her place. She was a scrapper off the streets. Becoming a lady who lunches was the last thing she wanted to do with her life.
Ignoring any misgivings, she made her decision. “Okay, so let’s do this.”
“He’s not going to like it,” Derry grumbled.
“Not our problem.” Now it was her turn to shrug. “Anyway, we’re not going to tell him.”
“You don’t trust him?”
Not even when the sight of Liam’s hard body and panty-melting smirk made her want to tie him up to her bed and have her wicked way with him for the next twenty years. The truth was, she trusted only one person in the world and Granny wasn’t in a position to help right now. With the love spell tying her to Liam under the pain of a thousand nails jabbing into her brain, she couldn’t leave him to take the sword to the Fairy Godmother. Judging by Liam’s speech that they had to get married, there was no way he’d come along and sit quietly while the spell disintigrated. There really wasn’t a choice to make. She could either trust Derry to get the spell reversed or stay shackled to Liam. Reaching up, she plucked several strands of course hair from her head and handed them to Derry.
“Come on.” She slid off the bar stool and started across the pub, ready to do whatever it took to break this spell before there was no turning back.
###
Every nerve in Liam’s body was tuned in to Red’s frequency as she strutted across the pub’s dimly lit interior with the hulking, flannel-wearing errand boy hot on her heels. Their gazes locked and heat blazed between them, as palpable as the electricity in the air before a summer thunderstorm. Her step faltered—not enough that she stumbled, but enough that it knocked of the timing of her mesmerizing, hip-swaying stride, and she scowled at him all the more. She was fighting the spell, but it was getting to her. He was getting to her.
He stood up beside the booth. “Missed me?”
Her gray eyes flashed fire. He just loved seeing her spark.
“You’ve got something in your hair.” Red pulled herself up to her tiptoes and ran her hands through his hair. One of
her rings snagged a few stands and pulled them out. “There, got it.”
“Ow!” He rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head. “What was that for?”
“Toughen up, you’ll live.” She took Derry’s hand as he helped her sit down and she slid across the booth until she was next to the window. Patting the open space next to her, she winked at him. “Why don’t you sit down? We need to talk.”
Liam motioned to Derry as he joined her in the booth. “You need muscle for us to chat?”
“Don’t worry.” Her fingers curled around his chin, turning him so he faced her. “He’ll be gone in a second.”
Something was off. It was in the tightness around Red’s luscious mouth and the quick nod she gave Derry. The wolf inside him perked up and started to prowl. Danger scented the air. Then Red slid her long, red-tipped fingers up the inseam of his leather pants and desire overpowered all of Liam’s better judgment. He shifted in his seat, trying to unobtrusively adjust his leather pants while wishing the material had more give.
Her breath hitched and her luscious lips parted. She was up to something, he didn’t doubt it, but she was just as affected by their proximity as he was.
A flurry of movement in his peripheral vision yanked his attention away from her.
Derry grabbed the Caladbolg sword and then pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket before mumbling a singsong phrase under his breath.
A gust of wind swept through the pub, setting Liam’s hair on end. Muscles primed for action, he leapt from his seat—only to run smack into a clear force field as solid as bullet-proof glass, surrounding the large circular booth like a bubble. Red scrambled across the table but ran into the same barrier on the other side. They were trapped like bugs in a glass jar.
“What the hell?” He smacked his palm against the invisible wall, to no avail.
The lumbering asshole pulled the sword case tighter to his chest and stepped away from them, gulping as if he was worried they’d break out.
“The Fairy Godmother helped me to see that this sword is my way into the King’s organization—a tribute. I’ll give it to him to get in on the ground floor of his organization.” His cheeks flamed. “Sorry, Red, it’s not personal, it’s just business. If anyone would understand, I figured it was you.”