Smiling, he traced his fingertip across her brow. “You mean with me punishing you for being naughty?”
Her eyes widened, but not in fear. If he read his little witch correctly, she looked as eager as he felt. “Oh, yes, Jadon. Punish me. Maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll return the favor at some point tonight.”
Tilting his head back, he laughed, only too happy to take her home so she could see if she could turn her carnal promise into a reality.
Snowbound by Tara Quan
Karli’s jaw dropped as her human-sized snowball crashed into Flint, launching him off the paved walkway. His denim-clad butt skidded over the powdery bank. He landed ass-first on the stream’s frozen surface, sliding several feet before arriving at a shaky stop. Her ability to command frost unpredictable, the projectile’s velocity had exceeded her wildest imaginings.
Not that she’d admit it to her adversary.
Turning her palms up, she stared at her hands and grimaced. An eerie glow covered her pasty skin, a visual manifestation of her haywire emotions. The pale aura reflected off her steel bracelets and array of rings, dotting her knee-high boots and pleated skirt with specks of white. Unless she could get her temper under control, she’d no hope of dimming the fluorescence. The stronger her magic, the more random its side effects. Her raw power had increased by leaps and bounds this year, beginning on her nineteenth birthday. Over the past months, she’d gone from conjuring snowflakes and chilling soft drinks, to summoning miniature storms and freezing fountains.
A gruff string of curses reverted her attention to the more pressing problem—the warlock who’d spied on her all semester. The man she’d once considered a friend sprung to his feet, wobbling when cracks snaked from under his military-style boots. He stretched his arms out on either side as if for balance. Despite the cold, he wore a thin cotton T-shirt. With moonlight contouring his bulging biceps and toned forearms, he appeared a sculpture carved in slate.
After a series of unsettling pops, the fissure widened. Refusing to wilt under his enraged glare, she stuck out her lower lip. Apologizing crossed her mind for a split second before indignation overcame guilt. Proportional reaction or not, he’d betrayed her. Besides, the snowball’s impact hadn’t fazed him in the slightest. He stood with his broad shoulders straight and back. Though he’d widened his stance, his long legs neither shook nor faltered.
As she stepped off the wooded path toward the narrow shore, a gust of wind whipped her silvery tresses over her cheek and chin. Waist-deep snow hardened ahead of her, forming solid stepping-stones before each foot landed. When she neared, the ice beneath her target separated by an additional inch.
Swaying, the traitorous mage fisted his hands. “Don’t even think about it. If you get me wet, the gloves come off.”
“Is that a threat? Pretty dumb move for someone standing on thin ice.” Intuition warned of dire repercussions, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Going into attack-mode helped ease the pressure threatening to constrict her throat. Realizing the past months had been a lie brought a heated sting to her eyes. Anger, she understood. Anger, she could deal with. She refused to acknowledge the emotion crushing her chest and churning her gut. For his duplicity to hurt, he needed to matter. “You want to stay dry? Start groveling now, and I’ll think about it.”
“Witch, I’ve had it up to here.” He leveled a hand with his neck. “Pause your tantrum for ten seconds and get a grip. Enforcement knew about you before they sent me. They’re giving you a pass because of me. If you don’t start acting like an adult, I swear you won’t be sitting pretty for weeks.”
“That’s a lot of orders, considering you’re about to become a popsicle.”
A vein protruded from his dark forehead. “When I get my hands on your skinny little butt….”
“They must not teach you negotiation tactics in spy school.” She made a show of examining her fingernails. “I don’t respond well to intimidation.” With a wiggle of her fingers, a large glob of ice broke off and sloshed water over his thick rubber soles.
“I already told you I’m not a spy.” Panic laced his voice. “Shit fucking hell, I can’t swim.”
If only she’d discovered before now she could bring him to heel with the simple threat of drowning—much more efficient than blasting him with flurries. “What’s the magic word?”
A tense silence followed his low growl. After what seemed like an eternity, he gritted out, “Please help me back to shore.”
Goosebumps prickled her nape. Every survival instinct foreboded imminent danger, but she’d never had it in her to cause actual harm. Less than an hour ago, he’d numbered among the handful of people she trusted. Despite the suffocating rage, she didn’t and could never put his life in peril. She’d let him into her small circle of friends, allowed their complicated relationship a permanent spot on her shortlist of life-changing encounters, and no amount of anger could sever the bond between them.
But she had no plans to let him off the hook just yet. Closing her eyes, she visualized the frozen stream as a giant wave catapulting him back to shore. She lifted her lids in time to catch his butt hitting the water. He sank an inch before the slush crested, propelling him through the air.
Toppling face-forward, he landed a foot from her toes. Over two hundred pounds of solid muscle combined with momentum to create a man-shaped dent in the thick snow. The full moon’s light and her own luminescence bounced off surrounding expanses of silver, giving her a clear view of the large wet blotch over his very attractive behind.
She giggled.
He lifted his head. Downy puffs decorated his short-cropped ebony hair and dappled his five o’ clock shadow. Two white clumps capped the tips of his ears. Shaking his head and shoulders, he launched icy debris in all directions.
A suppressed guffaw erupted through her nose.
“That,” he hissed, “wasn’t funny.” Vise-like fingers closed over her ankle and sent a shiver down her spine. He yanked her leg, toppling her off-balance. The impact as she hit the ground knocked air from her lungs. Before she could react, he’d climbed on top. His hands pinned her wrists; his knees imprisoned her thighs. His heaving chest filled her vision, blocking out the night sky.
“Nope.” A stray tear of mirth trickled down her temple. “Not at all.”
His cheeks darkened from its usual café au lait to a bitter espresso. He tightened his grip. “You’ll pay for that.”
“Oh yeah?” A small boulder of snow crashed into his side, liberating her from the human cage. As they both rose to their haunches, her gaze drifted to the lines of tensed muscle defining his neck and arms, the erratic rise and fall of his pecs under the stretched cotton. Her cheeks heated, her abs tensing as yearning morphed into anticipation.
Pure night bled from his pupils, filling irises already streaked by lines of amber. She took a halting step back, followed by another. Leaking power, he glowered at her, silent and unmoving. Arousal coiled in the pit of her stomach. He stood poised to hunt, and part of her wanted to get caught.
With an uneasy glance, she surveyed the tree-lined path behind her. A popular spot for college students to stroll, study, and make out, this patch of wilderness on the campus’ edge was almost never empty. But the Thanksgiving holidays had sent most of her classmates home, and the remaining few seemed content to hibernate in their radiator-heated rooms. Flint’s remarkable resistance to temperature shifts, a trait she shared, had been one of the first reasons she’d wondered about his true nature.
“Umm…. Look…. I….” The closest human a ten-minute jog away, escalating their fight might not have been one of her wisest decisions.
“Run.” A guttural warning, from a warlock she was beginning to suspect outmagicked her by several orders of magnitude. The air sizzled. Anger might have dulled her wits until now, but her flight or fight response kicked in. Spinning on her heel, she vaulted onto the pavement.
She sprinted through the deserted woods, toppling flanking snowbanks in he
r wake. The dormitories’ faraway lights glittered like a beacon. Failing to hear crunching footsteps, she peeked over her shoulder.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Her pursuer glided over the glittering white slopes on what looked like an upended stone bench, his looming frame slicing through the air at preternatural speed. Even as a brief mental calculation revealed her efforts’ futility, she quickened her stride. In the distance, glinting windows beckoned, taunting her with the possibility of escape.
In a dark blur, a branch whipped into her path, heading straight for her stomach. She yelped as it wrapped around her waist and dragged her toward the thicket. Flicked from one tree to the other, she hurtled deep into the woods.
Dumped in the middle of a small clearing, she scrambled to her feet. Raising her palms, she called to the snow around her. Gathering the powdery flakes into several dozen fist-sized balls, she pelted her magical ammunition at the warlock floating above.
Knocked off the bench by a well-aimed frozen missile, he executed an acrobatic flip before tackling her to the ground. Grunting as she pounded her fists against his rock-hard chest, he manacled her forearms.
“That’s enough.” His roar rang in her ears. The hairs on the back of her neck and arms rose. Until now, she’d never seen him lose his temper.
If she had any sense of self-preservation, she’d cry uncle. Instead, she jerked up one knee, targeting his groin. At the same moment, she directed a gust of snow at his eyes.
“Fuck this.” Clamping his thighs together in swift defense, he ducked to avoid the chilled flurry. Swinging her over his shoulder, he jumped onto the levitated bench. In stunned silence, she stared over the stony edge as they launched up. A room-sized sheet of bedrock erupted through the ground, nearby soil piling under it until a low plateau formed. As they lowered to the now snow-free surface, a circle of trees closed in, creating a cylindrical wall. When he dumped her on her ass, she craned her head back and watched the barren branches weave into a thatched roof.
Anger replaced by wonder, she murmured, “Wow. Can you tell me how to do that?”
***
“I thought you weren’t interested in anything I had to say.” Leaning against the wall of trees with his arms crossed, Flint followed her less-than-elegant journey to the opposite end of the enclosure with a predatory glare. Two conjured globes of golden light hovered above them in the copse’s center, casting shadows over the angled lines of his face.
Scrambling to her feet, Karli swallowed the lump in her throat. Cut off from the snow outside, she had no means of protection, let alone attack. Her captor stood a head taller, the breadth of his shoulders and chest visual reminders of their difference in strength. She didn’t have a prayer at fighting him off, even without magic thrown in the mix.
Wetting her parched lips, she plastered her back against the rough bark in an instinctive attempt to put as much distance between them as possible. “No need to get physical. We can talk this out”
He canted his head. “Funny. That’s what I said half an hour ago.”
After lobbing snow at every inch of his delicious body, and threatening submersion in an icy stream, she couldn’t fault him for creeping her out in a spectacularly magical fashion. Besides, moving the earth in the most literal sense wasn’t a bad way to impress a witch.
Giving herself a mental slap, she refocused on the reason behind this fight. “Everything I know about you is a big fat lie. How old are you, anyway? You’re obviously not a third-year transfer student.”
“For the love of all that’s holy, stop being so melodramatic. I graduated last summer. Enforcement wouldn’t have given this cover to an older agent. And most of what I’ve told you is true, aside from a few minor omissions.” Gold flames flickered in the depths of his dark eyes. A bronze aura surrounded his looming frame. Add an evil laugh, and the demonic stereotype would be complete. Too bad dangerous and sexy warlocks happened to be her Achilles heel.
“I have every right to be upset. You pretended to be my friend.” She lifted her chin. “Then you spied on me and sent nasty little reports back to your hocus-pocus Council.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. Foreboding retribution, the sardonic half-smile ratcheted up her pulse. “I am your friend, and it’s our Council, you stubborn little witch. Besides, part of this is your damn fault. They sent me here because this campus was blanketed by a blizzard the day before student orientation for the Fall semester. I’ve since attributed the phenomenon to an unregistered, untrained elemental who was a little nervous on her first day at a new school.”
He unfolded his arms and prowled toward her. Trepidation tied her belly into knots. Cold sweat dampened the back of her neck.
“Are you going to put me in some sort of secret dungeon now?” Rumors of Enforcement’s nefarious practices filled the Internet. According to conspiracy theorists, the magical world’s policing arm embraced renditions, unwarranted detainments, and incarceration without trial. Electronic research into her opaque heritage had led to an early decision to keep the whole magic thing on the down-low.
“Why do you always jump to conclusions before I can finish a sentence?” They stood toe-to-toe, so close his body heat warmed her clammy skin. “And what did I tell you about trusting random bloggers? Most of them are kooks.”
An odd combination of oak and maple, his scent muddled her brain. “You’ve gotten out a ton of complete sentences, and I still don’t know what the heck you want.”
“Don’t you? I’ve made my intentions pretty clear.” He brushed the pad of his thumb down the center of her throat.
Her vision fogged. She couldn’t focus, not with him touching her this way. It reminded her of all the nights he’d pinned her to his narrow bed, his tongue plundering her mouth as he ground his erection over her panties. They had yet to cross the line, but he’d come just shy of it too many times to count, largely because she’d done everything in her power to drive him over the edge.
“Let me set the record straight.” Her toes curled as he pulled down her jacket’s zipper. When the lower stop came apart, he circled her waist and spun her around. “You’re not in trouble, not as far as the Council is concerned. I told you about my assignment because things between us were escalating. I didn’t want it to get out of hand before we sorted out the details.”
“The details…?” Repetition took less brainpower, the only way she could manage speech at all. She dropped her hands to her sides, allowing him to peel off the worn leather. Always overheating, she’d worn a thin tank top. She’d never had much in the way of boobs, so she went braless most of the time. The decision proved a mistake tonight. Her nipples had tightened into visible peaks under the red cotton.
“We need to add your name to the Registry of Witches and Warlocks, which lets Enforcement keep tabs on your general location. Most parents do this for their children at birth. Since humans adopted you, the ritual never happened. A few signatures and incantations, and you can carry on as you were.”
His chest heating her back, he slipped one hand between her legs, trailing upward until he reached the edge of her underwear. “As for my investigation—the blizzard was an accident, and you’re not some rogue mage intent on exposing us. I’m off the case.”
Her head falling forward, she trembled as his fingers closed over her breasts. “You’re off….” Her spine snapped straight. “Wait, does that mean you’re leaving?” If he thought he could bang her before skipping town, the man was in for—
“Nope. You’re stuck with me.”
The burst of happiness following his words should have given her cause for concern, but he distracted her by pinching her nipples. Power pulsed over the tip of her breasts, the controlled flow vibrating her nerves. Her spine arching, she tried to squirm away, but he held her in an unrelenting grip, stimulating her as wave after wave of pleasure crested. Her panties grew damp, her inner muscles clenching in rhythm with his torture. Arousal and pain twined, stealing he
r breath and obliterating all thought.
His murmured explanation barely registered, dissolving into background noise. “I’ve been granted a permanent transfer. Something about this campus attracts strays, not to mention shape-shifters.”
“Uh huh…. Shape-shifters….” Her shaking knees gave way. She slumped back and would have landed on her ass if he weren’t holding her upright. She ground her bottom against his crotch in an attempt to move the program along. The man talked too much.
His zipper dug into her butt, his pronounced erection belying the rigid control in his voice. “Lions, tigers, and bears. Trust me, I’m much scarier.”
He shoved her forward. Her eyelids drifted shut as she reached out and pressed her palms over the tree in front of her. Resting her forehead against cold bark, she struggled to remain upright.
He yanked her underwear down. The flimsy scrap of cotton caught at the top of her boots. She shimmied her hips, expecting him to take her panties off. Instead, he left them circling her knees, holding her legs together as he hiked up her skirt. “Someone has to stay and keep you out of trouble.”
“I can take care of myse— Hey!” Eyes snapping open as the swat registered, she tried to turn. “What the—?”
He pressed his other hand between her shoulder blades, keeping her in place. Another blow landed, and she found herself curving her back and lifting her ass in invitation. Embarrassment scorched her cheeks at his smug chuckle. Light slaps focused her awareness on her increasingly tender behind, and before she knew it branches had grown out of the magical enclosure, circling her wrists, ankles, and waist.
With her immobile, he removed the hand at her back and reached around her hips. Evidence of her response coated his fingers as he cupped her, betraying her body’s reaction to the unexpected bondage. Grinding the heel of his palm over her clit, he resumed his punishment.
As the dual assault sent her muscles into delicious spasms, shyness prompted her to rasp a weak protest, “Shouldn’t you have asked my permission first?”
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