Chapter 9
***Penny***
It was after lunch before they finally got on the trail and she knew that Quinten was annoyed with her, but she wasn’t about to set off for the high country in November unprepared. So far, the valley and surrounding mountains hadn’t received much snow, but they’d be dealing with at least a couple of feet by the time they reached the cabin in the upper pasture.
After she’d taught him to saddle his horse, they’d had a long discussion about the importance of proper grooming, which had bored Quinten. Things had only gotten worse when she’d seen the gear he’d brought, although calling it gear was a stretch.
“You’re going to freeze if that’s all you bring. Where are your boots? Is that your only coat?” she said, digging through his bag.
“I’ll be fine; I can keep myself warm,” Quinten said, stubbornly. “I’ll just do a warmth spell.”
Penny stopped what she was doing. “How exactly does that work? Is it like a bubble around you?” she asked, truly curious.
“I can’t explain it; it just works,” he said defensively.
Penny took a deep breath, something she’d been doing a lot that morning, wishing that she could tell him to go away. “Well, magic or not, I’d feel better if you had better gear. Go find my mother, and she’ll help you get what you need.”
Quinten opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. “This is non-negotiable; if you’re going up there, you’re going prepared.”
He stared at her for a minute, then stomped off like a little boy, but when he came back, he was loaded down with everything he’d need not to freeze on the way to the cabin. If they’d only been going to the cabin, she wouldn’t have been so worried, but Quinten insisted on seeing not only where they’d faced the wolf-shifters and Deacon, but the spot where Justin had originally been attacked.
That meant that they’d be spending several nights out in the open, sleeping in tents and relying primarily on a fire for warmth. Magic or not, she knew that Quinten had no experience to back him up, that he had no idea what was ahead of them. As beautiful as these mountains were, they could be harsh and unrelenting in the winter, and she wasn’t sure Quinten was ready to handle that with just his magic.
But as they finally made their way up the trail away from the ranch, two pack horses trailing them, she felt as ready as she ever would. Quinten was silent for most of the afternoon, trying to get his bearings on the horse she’d chosen for him. Thorn was an old horse, but he was still strong and capable, and he’d listen to Quinten.
It was only a little while later when she stopped her horse in a little clearing and jumped down. “We’ll make camp here tonight,” she said, knowing that it might take a while to set up camp the first time.
Quinten stopped his horse and looked around the clearing, then up at the sky. “It’s early, shouldn’t we keep going?”
“The sun sets early here, and when it does, the temperature is going to plummet. If we’re not ready when that happens, it could be a long night,” Penny explained, feeling pleased when Quinten didn’t protest further.
Once they’d unloaded the horses and tethered them for the night, she turned to camp. “The first thing we need to do is get a fire started and enough firewood to get us through the night,” she said, heading for the woods.
“Wait, that’s something I can handle,” Quinten said, pleased to be able to show off a little.
He walked around the fire pit several times, dug a circle in the snow around it with his heel, then stood very still. He began to repeat a spell over and over, his eyes closed, his lips barely moving when suddenly a fire leaped to life in the fire pit and a stack of wood appeared next to it.
Quinten opened his eyes and smiled, then held his hands out to the fire. When he looked back over at her and said, “Not too bad,” she couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, so that might have been one of the best ideas you’ve ever had,” she said, then walked over and joined him in the fire’s heat.
“See, magic can come in handy,” he said, gloating.
“Will it help us set up the tent?” she asked but smiled to let him know she was joking.
“It would if I knew how to do it,” he admitted.
“Well, then I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way this time; next time you can use your magic. You grab the tent and meet me over there; I’ll make sure that there aren’t any rocks under that snow,” she said, surprised when he did as she asked, without a bunch of questions.
***Quinten***
He would have never admitted it, but by the time they had camp set up, he was glad that they’d stopped early. Just that little bit of time on the horse had left him sore and setting up camp hadn’t helped any. It was embarrassing to admit it, but he was in terrible shape. When Penny had suggested they set up the tent, it had sounded like the best idea in the world, and he’d had every intention of getting in that tent and going right to sleep.
But Penny had other ideas. “No way, you have to eat something before you go to bed,” she said when he told her his plan.
“But I’m not hungry. I just want to sleep,” he said.
Penny let out one of those sighs he was becoming so used to. “We have to eat so that we have extra calories to burn so we keep warm overnight,” she explained, pulling a little camp stove out of the packs. “It won’t take long to whip something up; I came prepared.”
A few minutes later, he had a bowl of chili in his hands and a cup of steaming coffee sitting on the ground next to him. As he took the first bite, his stomach made a rumbling noise loud enough to be heard over the crackling of the fire. “Okay, so maybe I was a little hungry,” he admitted after taking a second bite.
Penny smiled at him and nodded. “And there’s nothing better than a big bowl of chili to take care of that hunger.”
Quinten had never eaten chili before but found that he liked the way it burned his mouth and warmed him from inside. “This is good; I’ve never had chili.”
“My mother’s is the best. She sent this with us, so we’d have dinner already made the first night,” Penny said, her mouth full. After she swallowed, “Tomorrow night, we’ll have to cook for ourselves.”
“That’s fine with me. I like to cook,” he said, not realizing that he was revealing something personal about himself: something he never did on a case.
Penny looked at him, surprise on her face. “I would have never guessed. Okay, then you’re cooking tomorrow night, let’s see how you do over an open campfire,” she challenged.
“You’re on,” he said, smiling at her.
After they’d cleaned up the dishes and stowed the food away for the night, they sat by the fire in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Quinten would have loved to know what Penny was thinking, but he didn’t dare ask; he was afraid he wouldn’t like the answer, good or bad. The warmth of the fire was making him a little sleepy, but he was too comfortable to move, the thought of going out into the cold rooting him right where he was when Penny broke the silence.
“What’s it like to be a witch?”
Quinten stared at her in astonishment; no one had ever asked him that question before. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve only known a few witches, and I’ve seen what Annabelle and Joslin can do when they use their powers. But what I don’t know is what everyday life is like for a witch. I mean, do you even have to do chores or can you just blink, and everything is done?”
For a second, Quinten thought that she was mocking him, but then he really looked at her face and only saw curiosity. “No, it’s not like that; it couldn’t be, or the natural order would be disrupted.”
When he saw that she didn’t understand, he said, “Magic takes energy, sometimes a lot of energy. When I summoned that fire and the wood, it took energy.”
“Then why use it?” Penny asked, trying to imagine being able to summon a fire from nothing, or using magic to get a stuck cow unstuck during the spring.
“Because sometimes it is quicker and easier to use it. But if I did spells like that all day, not only would it exhaust me physically, but mentally. It’s like those batteries that you only want to use until they’re at half power; it takes a lot less to charge that little bit than the entire battery.”
Penny thought about his words. “That’s why it took so long for Annabelle and Joslin to recover after they fought that water demon. They exhausted themselves with the fireballs and lightning,” she said, beginning to understand.
“Exactly, it takes a lot of energy to do something like that, so we have to pick and choose when we use our magic and for what,” Quinten said, then he mumbled a few words and a perfect red rose appeared in his hand.
Penny gasped. “Oh, it’s beautiful.”
He handed the rose to her, not sure why he’d summoned it but glad he had when he saw the pleasure on her face. “Does that give you a better idea of what it’s like to be a witch?”
Penny took a deep breath of the fragrant rose, then said, “It definitely has its advantages.”
When she smiled at him, Quinten felt a rush of desire and pleasure, and without thinking, he leaned over and kissed her. It was only a quick peck on the lips, but it was like a dam had burst inside them both, the passion between them suddenly alive and very present. Only seconds later, her arms were around him, and his mouth was on hers, this time the kiss far more than a quick peck on the lips.
She tasted like chili and coffee, and something slightly sweet, he thought as his body began to hum and desire to rush through him. When he slipped his tongue into her mouth and she groaned, his blood began to pound in his head, and he pulled her closer until she was practically sitting in his lap. When she began to kiss him back, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth, he was sure that he’d never felt this kind of pleasure before, that no woman had ever made him feel what Penny was at that moment.
But suddenly she pushed him away and stared at him, a look on her face he couldn’t read. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, but she held up her hand, then put her fingers over his lips.
“I thought I heard something,” she said, then jumped to her feet and headed around the tent, her footsteps crunching on the snow.
It took him a second to realize what she’d said, but by the time he made it to his feet, the woods had gone silent, the sound of her boots crunching on the snow gone. When he came around the side of the tent, all he got was a glimpse of a tawny, sleek body disappearing into the trees.
Chapter 10
***Penny***
Penny wasn’t sure what she was doing out wandering around in her mountain lion form; between the kiss and the noise she’d heard, her head was a mess. Following the sound through the trees, she realized that she’d acted on impulse when she’d changed. Instead of isolating the sound, she’d gone after it, and now felt a bit silly.
But she couldn’t turn back now; that would mean admitting to Quinten that he’d gotten to her and she wasn’t about to do that. Deep down she knew that she’d wanted him to kiss her, that no matter how much she didn’t like the man, there was chemistry between them that couldn’t be ignored. She knew he felt it too, that had been clear enough in the kiss, but the question was what she was going to do about it.
If he’d been anyone else, she might have considered letting her body have its way. But it wasn’t that easy; she knew that Quinten hated shifters, that he was sure that her family had done something wrong. He was not the kind of man you had a fling with, nor was he the kind of man she could fall in love with, so that left her nowhere but frustrated and confused.
Knowing she needed a little more time before they had to crawl into the small tent together, she padded through the forest on silent feet. It felt good to be in her other form, to become a part of the forest and its creatures, to shed the worries of being human, if only for a few minutes. Hopefully, when she got back to camp, she’d have her errant body under control and be able to look at the situation logically again.
But until then, she’d tack the sound she’d heard and deal with whatever was hanging around their camp. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was looking for, especially when she found the tracks, but what bothered her was that the bears should all be hibernating by now. When she finally found the bear, she discovered that he was practically starving, a wound on his foot making it impossible for him to hunt.
There wasn’t much she could do to help him except get him a meal, but she sensed that it would make a difference, so she quickly took down a deer and left it where he could find it. As she loped off through the trees, she hoped that he’d survive the winter, that the little she’d done to help would help him through. Mother nature could be a harsh mistress, a lesson she’d learned young, but it was still hard sometimes to watch such a noble creature in pain.
***Quinten***
He stood staring at the spot where Penny had disappeared into the trees for several seconds, trying to decide what to do. His first instinct was to go after her, but he stopped himself before he’d only gone a couple of steps. Witch or not, he wasn’t sure what might be waiting for him out there in the dark of the forest and knew that he wasn’t prepared to deal with what might be out there.
He felt helpless standing there but forced himself to stay right where he was. If she didn’t come back soon, then he’d go looking, but for right now he’d stay put. The forest was silent, and as that silence lengthened, his body began to cry out for action, for some way to dissipate the rush that was thundering through his body.
He paced back and forth a couple of times, but the sound of his boots crunching in the snow seemed loud to his ears, so he stopped and stared at the forest. After a few minutes, his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and he was able to make out shapes in the forest. The more he concentrated on seeing in the dark, the easier it became until in his mind, he’d created a spotlight that lit up the forest.
Shocked at what he’d done, he stepped back a few paces, and everything went dark again. Taking a few deep breaths to still his heart, he stepped forward, planning to try his trick with the light again, but then he saw a flash of white in the trees and only a few seconds later, Penny emerged from between the trees.
Back in her human form, she walked past him to the fire and held her hands out to the warmth. It took him only two strides to reach her side, “What were you doing? Don’t ever go running off like that,” he said, wanting to shake her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, then looked over at him and away again, clearly embarrassed. “I acted on instinct; I didn’t think.”
Quinten’s anger evaporated at the look on her face, and something strange happened to his heart. “I was worried about you, but I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted.
Penny felt something in her heart give a little, and an intense feeling of pleasure that he was worried about her. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have just run off into the forest, but…”
Quinten waited for her to finish, and when she didn’t, he prompted, “But?”
Penny didn’t know what to say, hated to admit out loud that his kiss had flustered her, made her mind stop working but blurted out, “You have to stop kissing me.”
A big grin spread over Quinten’s face; he just couldn’t help himself; she was practically admitting that she liked it when he kissed her. “Oh, and why is that?” he couldn’t help asking, knowing perfectly well what the answer was.
Penny was clearly stuck, and began to stammer. “It’s, ummm, well, it’s not professional,” she finally managed to get out.
“That’s true,” he said, the big grin still on his face, “but it sure is fun.” Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her again. When he finally released her, she glared at him, her chest rising and falling, then stomped off to the tent.
***Penny***
Penny wanted to scream at Quinten when he finally came into the tent, but instead, she pretended to be asleep. Things would look better in the morning,
she kept repeating to herself over and over as she listened to him getting into his sleeping bag. When he was finally quiet, she burrowed down deeper to get away from the cold, but then she heard Quinten mumbling and suddenly the tent became warm.
“Good night, Penny,” he whispered. “Stay warm.”
She was sure that she’d never be able to sleep, but soon the warmth of the tent and Quinten’s quiet snoring lulled her to sleep and the next thing she knew, the first rays of the morning sun were hitting the tent. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Quinten smiling at her, and her heart began to race in her chest.
“Good morning,” he said, much too chipper for such an early hour. “I could use some coffee; how about you?”
Penny had never been much of a morning person and seeing Quinten grinning at her first thing in the morning set her teeth on edge. “It’s going to be freezing out there; we should just go back to sleep for another hour,” she said, grumpily.
“Who said anything about going out there?” Quinten asked, still grinning, then added. “You’re grumpy in the morning.”
“Only when I get woken up too early,” she said, then pulled the sleeping bag up over her head.
“Maybe this will help,” Quinten said, then she heard his sleeping bag rustling and the faint smell of coffee filled the tent. “But you can’t have it if you don’t come out.”
Penny pulled the sleeping bag down and opened her eyes to the sight of a steaming cup of coffee. She sat up and grabbed it, took a big sip and sighed. Quinten laughed and said, “That’s the first time I’ve heard you sigh in pleasure instead of annoyance, and I have to admit I kind of like it.”
Penny took a few more sips of the coffee, feeling it begin to work. “I’m not much of a morning person.”
Fairplay Shifters Boxset Page 30
