by M. L. Briers
That rumble of annoyance within her voice certainly sounded like a growl to his beast, and Jamie’s wolf raised its head, and the man’s whole body tensed with desire for her…
“Willingly,” Jamie growled back.
He hoisted her up and off of his shoulder, as if she weighed nothing at all, tossing her through the air and catching sight of the look of shock on her face as she fell backwards towards the soft mattress of the big four poster bed…
Boy did that bed look inviting. Especially when his mate’s back hit the mattress and she bounced, just once, but with a squeal that made his beast want to crawl up her body and protect her…
“You … absolute and total …” Fallon bit out through clenched teeth, forcing her body to stop bouncing as her head snapped upwards on her neck and she glared at him with a Medusa stare that could have dropped him dead where he stood had she put just an ounce of magic behind it…
“Yes, yes I am…” Jamie grinned wide. And it was a wolfish grin that forced her eyes to take him in, not to look away.
Her brain to stop working with anything even resembling rational thought, as she laid there and stared back at him…
He’s smiling!
Now!
I should…
Oh, look at that damn smile … he should be in a toothpaste advert!
Or a condom advert…
That smile would make people want to have sex…
I … I … hate him?
I loathe him!
Maybe not loathe … maybe that’s too strong of a word…
I hate him with a vengeance…
Maybe not with a vengeance, and maybe not hate, so much as…
I don’t know what I feel…
How can I not know what I feel?
I want to zap him just for being him…
And for carting me up the stairs like a sack of spuds…
And for throwing me through the damn air…
And for… well, I don’t know what else, but there had to be something, because he’s just so … annoying!
I can zap him for being annoying, right?
Maybe a small zap, not like a whole – here’s fifty thousand volts up your backside – kind of a zap, but more, happy zap…
What the heck is a happy zap?
Well, it would make me happy…
Fallon pushed up to her elbows and had as much need to zap him as she did to stare back at him…
He’s like a bloody magnet … a black hole … a death star…
Wait?
What?
No – no… a death star is good a good analogy – he’s both deadly by nature and magnetising – you have to stare…
If I only had a brain… she sung to herself…
It’s his fault – all him – and me … a little, because I find him as sexy as hell, but mostly him, because he’s a …
Oh, brain don’t fail me now…
Pig!
Oink…
Male chauvinist … pig, and a dog … with fleas … and…
And I still don’t have a damn brain!
I need to take a step back, which would be good if I wasn’t bloody well lying on a bed…
Oh, bed … bad – get up – you’re giving that man entirely the wrong idea…
Oh, but look at him …
He certainly has an idea … more than one, and they are wicked, and bad…ly good, because I know that I’d enjoy each and every single minute of them …
Goddess, help me now!
Fallon made a rush to one side of the bed, half rolling, and pushing upwards, but there he was, all manly man – all muscles and sex appeal, and she wanted to scream in frustration…
I don’t want a mate!
I do want a good time with him… well … no, that would be bad … so, so bad…
Damn it!
Why couldn’t he be repulsive of nature and body, and those damn muscles and good looks, and sex …
Sex? Where the heck did that come from?
Well, der … Sex appeal oozing out of him like he owned the damn rights to it…
God, I’m confused…
I need a life.
If I’d had a life then I’d be a little more immune to the man…
Wouldn’t I?
No! Because fate is evil, and bad, and sneaky, and cruel, and … she knows a piece of prime beef when she sees it!
But, why’d she have to go and throw Mr Prime Beefcake on my damn plate?
Oh God, I’m doomed!
“Go pick on someone else,” Fallon bit out, skirting backwards on the bed to get away from him, put a little distance between them in the hopes that he wouldn’t seem so appealing.
Fat chance.
Jamie raised just the one dark eyebrows back at her – that wolfish grin was still on his lips…
“Pick on?”
“Tease, tempt with your muscles, and that smile, and those blue-black puppy dog eyes.” She sneered and watched his smile grow, and she cursed herself for her stupidity. “Not that I’m tempted, because I’m not.” She informed him with a tilt of her head and the glare of her eyes, but it didn’t seem to worry him any.
“Not even a little?” Jamie wiggled those eyebrows and she groaned inside…
Even his damn eyebrows were as sexy as hell…
“Not even a smidge,” she assured him.
It was just a shame that she didn’t feel that self-assured. Still, she knew that she didn’t need to believe her words. Only he needed to believe them, and she’d lie through her teeth until he did.
“You look a little tempted,” he offered back, oozing with self-confidence, something approaching a Neanderthal charm, and offering her a cheeky rise of both of his expressive eyebrows that time.
“Looks can be deceptive,” she sneered back. She’d been well and truly bitten by self-doubt, and she saw his sexy eyebrows and offered him a death glare back in return. “You look smart.”
“That’s mean,” he berated her, but he did it with so much charm that her womb kicked her stomach up to her throat and she almost choked on the damn thing.
Boy, did she hate charm!
“Truth hurts.”
“So, you offer me pain when I stand here offering you so much pleasure that you’ll melt over and over again…” he said, and she was sure that the bass in his voice dropped like a stone.
It was movie star base. Sexy bass. Bass that rolled through her body and made her nipples so hard that she could have skewered right through the lace cups of her bra with them…
Fallon’s chin went downwards towards her breasts and her eyebrows rose towards her hairline…
Would her suffering never end?
Was fate just that cruel?
Bloody hell does that voice sound tempting!
So – damn – tempting that I think I might have just had a mini orgasm!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
~
“I don’t know what I said, but whatever it was; I apologise,” Hank grumbled along with an underlying growl that rumbled through his chest and made his beast groan, as he followed Dorothy into the sun room that looked out onto the gardens.
His wolf had berated him in no uncertain terms for upsetting their mate. The beast had one thing in mind and that was to woo her – miffing her off wasn’t going to get the job done…
“You’re falling on your sword?” Dorothy mumbled.
She didn’t want an apology that was given begrudgingly. Especially, when the man had little to no clue as to how he had managed to upset her in the first place.
“No,” Hank grumbled. “I’m trying to say that I didn’t – don’t want to hurt your feelings, and I obviously did that, so that’s what I’m sorry for.”
Hank waited while she sat down, and then he shoved his big hands in the pockets of his jeans, hunched his shoulders like he was about to weather a storm, and stared down at her like a scolded child.
“Well,” Dorothy took in a long, deep breath in as she considered his words.
“Alright then.”
“Good.”
Hank had expected more push back from her. Most women, when they had you by the crown jewels, tended to use it to their advantage, stick the knife in, and he was somewhat shocked to not find himself in that unenviable position of being skewered by her wrath for her own ends…
She’d let him off lightly, and he couldn’t quite understand it, but there it was. Perhaps she was biding her time, or perhaps she just wasn’t that sort of woman…
“Well, sit then,” Dorothy said, motioning towards the chair that was usually occupied by Angela at that time of the day, and he gave a small nod as he wrenched his hands from his jeans and did just that.
He couldn’t understand why she’d got so miffed at him for wanting to protect her and then thinking that he didn’t.
In his book it was a misunderstanding. He had to wonder if his mate was a little senile.
He wasn’t a young pup anymore either. There were bits on him that were starting to wear out – if he was a car then he would have given himself a good going over and oiled all of his working parts that needed it, replacing the ones that were on the way out – but, he wasn’t, and he couldn’t, and even his shifter blood didn’t seem to work as quickly to heal him anymore…
But, that was life, and it was the one thing that came to everyone if they lived long enough to enjoy old age – or not enjoy it as the case maybe. Unless you were, or knew a vampire that would help you out – then you were sure to get old and die somewhere along the line.
Now, at least, he had something – someone – to live for, and protecting his mate and keeping her happy was his only mission in life. That and stopping Chloe from feeding on someone…
He guess he would never understand women. It didn’t matter how old and wise he got that one had always eluded him.
~
~
~
“You stop right there, take a breath, and make damn sure you understand that I’m going to bitch slap you as only a witch can.”
It had sounded good in Fallon’s head before it had come out of her mouth, and it would have given most men pause for thought. But from the look in his eyes, and in reality, she guessed that she had just offered another challenge to her shifter mate.
Fallon groaned inside.
“Sounds … interesting,” Jamie said.
His eyes said hungry.
His lips said teasing…
And his rock hard length that was pulsing and twitching against his jeans said that he was as horny as hell.
She’d noted the bulge when she’d dropped her eyes down and back up his body, and her gaze had hesitated for a long moment in that area.
Her eyes were working of their own accord, and her brain had ceased to play any part in that particular decision making process.
But that throbbing twitch against his jeans told her that something other than his brain was also driving him forwards…
The mating pull was in full force, and she welcomed it and cursed it with equal measure.
Jamie took one giant step towards the bed…
Fallon’s heart lurched into her throat and panic rushed through her at the thought that they were both just playing into fate’s cruel hands. She didn’t even have a clue if she wanted a mate or not…
“No!” She snapped, scolding him like a puppy that had just peed in her favourite shoe…
That tone that rang through her voice made him cock his head to one side and question her sanity with just a look.
His beast grumbled.
“I will lock you the cellar and not let you out until the danger is gone; if I have to do it to keep you safe…” he said, then he leaned his upper body down towards her on the bed, and it was her turn to cock her head as she eyed him back. “Don’t make me do it.”
Now Fallon got the game that he was playing. Big, muscle bound, mucho shifter guy, proving to her who was boss … well, that wasn’t the way that she saw it.
“Lock me up?” Fallon shot back with a smug smile and small chuckle. “I’m a witch – there isn’t a lock that I can’t…”
He was above her in a heartbeat. His body ran down then length of hers and made her inside quiver at the touch.
She could feel every hard inch, including the one that pressed against her thigh, and that made her womb protest the lack of action in her life…
Stupid damn mating pull… she cursed…
“Some locks can’t be broken,” Jamie assured her.
“Oh, I can break you quite nicely,” she bit back.
She guessed that she should have felt threatened by him, and if he’d been anyone else but her mate then she might have.
What she actually did feel went far beyond desire, far beyond need, and right to the heart of what he was – her mate.
“To keep you safe, I’ll keep coming back for more,” Jamie informed her. His dark eyes held her spellbound. “Are you prepared to cause me that much pain, Fallon?”
“Y…” she bit down on the irrational need to stand up to him. Instead, she decided to hit him where it hurt the most – right in his pride. “Bully.” She muttered.
Fallon knew deep down that he wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her from accusing him in the desperate need to find something to throw him off the scent of what she was feeling when she looked at him, when he looked back at her, and when those damn eyes of his looked into her very soul.
She needed to run away and hide, from him, from herself, but she didn’t think that he’d give her that chance.
Fallon dragged her eyes away from his and starred at his shoulder, because there was no way in hell that she could see around him. The man was that big and his shoulders that wide, that when he was up close and personal; he blotted everything else out.
“Never a bully,” Jamie assured her. “Everything that I will ever do will always have your best interests at heart…”
“Even if I don’t agree?” she muttered back.
“Yes.” Jamie didn’t think twice before he answered. She needed to know the truth of it, and the truth was that he’d die to protect her, even from herself…
“Because you know what’s best for me,” she snorted her contempt for that answer.
“Because I’d rather die myself than let you come to harm,” Jamie did growl that time. A long and hard rumble that rolled through his chest and vibrated against her body.
How could you possibly argue with a man that would die for you?
No, please, let me die first…?
I’m a feminist – I want to throw myself on the grenade first…?
I’m not a feminist – not to the extent where I’d burn my damn bra – I like my bra’s and they really don’t oppress me; they make my breasts fabulous and not floppy…
I like a man to open the door for me…
I like feeling special…
I kick butt with the best of them using magic, but bring me breakfast in bed and I’m happy to be taken care of…
I know, I know, not really feminism, but still…
He’d die for me … it’s in his DNA.
I can’t argue the toss with that one as much as I’d like to.
And trying to talk a shifter out of his protective gene would be like trying to learn to fly after you’ve jumped off of a really big cliff.
Damn it…
“I get that you don’t want me to leave, I do, but you have to understand that I know that vampire and he has a button that – when pushed – doesn’t react well to being told no. I’m that button, and I owe him because of my father…”
“That’s his problem.”
“My problem.”
“My problem now.” Jamie said simply.
What did she think he would say?
Fine – leave?
He was her mate, and it just didn’t work that way for them.
As much as it goaded her into defiance – she had to admit, even if she never said it out loud – it felt good to know that there was someone who had
her back.
She’d never really had that before.
Fallon had sometimes gotten the impression that the only reason her father kept her around for all those years was for her magic and what it could do for him. And that was screwed up, and she didn’t want to think that was the case, but Dorothy had only confirmed that gut feeling with what she’d told her about her father.
She’d found her family.
She’d found a mate…
But she had one big ass problem that would dog her until he either got his way or she was dead … unless she took care of the problem right at the source.
Why the hell am I spending my time berating the man who wants to save me – when I should just be spending it killing the vampire that wants to harm me?
I don’t have to dance to Jaxon’s tune if I don’t want to.
That was my father’s deal…
He’s dead and I’m alive, and his sins should have died with him.
I shouldn’t have to spend my life paying for his mistakes.
If I ever want to have a life – a love – and a family in the future then I need to stop being this weak.
I need to stand up for myself.
No more running.
No more working for damn vampire’s.
I need to kill that bloodsucker and get my life back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
~
“I take it that you have a plan,” Monty said as he caught up to Nathan.
The alpha was following the scant scent of the unwelcome vampire within their midst.
“I don’t not have a plan,” Nathan admitted.
“So, no plan then?”
Monty cocked an eyebrow at the alpha and the man sighed as he rolled his eyes within his head. He didn’t need to be called out by the vampire of all people…
“No,” Nathan growled. “Yes,” he snapped out, changing his mind. “Kill the vampire – save the pack and the witches.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Monty shrugged.
He didn’t feel like pointing out the gaping holes within the alpha’s plan-not-plan, because after the way that Jaxon had looked at Chloe – it had kind of been his plan as well.