by Mary Hughes
“That we know of,” Goodwin put in.
“Other factions drove the Shootingstars out. But the Light brothers took their place, and the Shootingstars considered it an affront.”
“That they were replaced?” Gabriel asked.
“That such an upstart clan could be called royalty. Also, well, bullies pick on those who can’t or won’t fight back. The Lights were easy targets because they wanted only to govern, not to protect their position. As I said, they weren’t political animals.”
“I actually think the Shootingstars would have understood political backstabbers better,” Goodwin mused. “Respected them, even.”
“So you see, dear, poor Ryder not only grew up with the message that he was entitled to money and power, but that the reason he lived without the prestige that was his right by birth, was the Lights.”
“Even though it wasn’t.” Goodwin lapped at his cup. “None of this was even a little bit your fault.”
“But I marginalized him,” Gabriel protested. “Beat him at every turn.”
“Your success probably didn’t help,” Linda said. “It made liars out of his parents.
“We have to pity him a little,” the auburn-haired familiar said.
“No we don’t,” Linda retorted. “He could have bettered himself with a little hard work. Representative, or even Speaker of the House. But as you see, Gabriel, not your fault. You can, with a clear conscience, renew Emma’s mating bond with you.”
“What?” Emma said. Oh, hell, now she was doing it.
“Illegal as hell,” Pan pointed out.
“Illegal doesn’t mean impossible.” Gabriel grinned. “As long as you have a wolf with girl parts and a witch with boy parts.” His gaze switched to Emma and his grin faded. “But whether my hubris caused this whole fiasco or not, I am obnoxiously flamboyant and have the car to prove it. You might not want to marry that.”
“M-marry?”
“Say yes.” His aunt clapped her hands, apple cheeks glowing. “I love big weddings. I have a perfect dress for you—”
“Wedding?” Emma stared into Gabriel’s face as if she’d find sanity there. “But we’re not even mated.”
“We don’t need to be mated to marry.” He smiled gently. “We only need to be in love.”
* * *
On the ferry back to Michigan, Emma shared a stateroom with Gabriel, intentionally this time. Discovery by the Witches’ Council was still a worry, but she remembered her mother, who hadn’t known to put aside her fears and worries while she could, and simply be happy.
For now, she and Gabriel were together, and Emma let herself be happy.
Sometimes consequences could wait.
The instant the door shut, his dark brows waggled suggestively as he reached for her. He’d put aside his glasses permanently. Bare, his face should have looked odd to her. But it didn’t, probably because in her heart, she’d seen him this way all along.
He cinched her into a dipped kiss. “I’m glad your mother and brother decided to stay in Matinsfield. Now we’ll have time alone together.”
She laughed. “Won’t we be detected?”
“Maybe. But the water and distance will make it harder. Besides, I can’t keep my hands off you.” He tore off her top and feasted on her breasts.
Just as hungry for him, she grabbed vest and shirt together and yanked up.
Their clothes came off, not with magic this time, but with sheer need.
When her pants hit the floor, the amethyst necklace and bracelet fell out with a whump. She caught sight of them and stilled.
He paused, following her gaze. “Is that how your brother controlled your mother?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Purple is the color of the mind. The amethyst is the gem to ensorcel if you want to influence thoughts. I think they also interfered with my locate spell until the power on them wore off.”
“They’re Ryder’s. Edge made a deal with him to get released from the Council jail. Ryder gave him the amulets in return for giving up Sophia and Noah. My mom swore loyalty to Noah when he became alpha, but Edge was jailed before the challenge.”
“You’re so clever.” He admired her breasts. “I love you, Emma Singer.”
The words thrilled her, but she couldn’t quite believe them. She pointed at her eyes. “I’m up here.”
“I know that. I’m talking to these beauties…” he kissed each, “…because I know what language to use.” He glanced up at her. “I’m not always sure with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
He laughed. “I can always count on that.” Then he grew serious. “But how do you truly feel…about me?”
She tried to understand what he was really asking. “I was mated to you. I’m about to be mated to you again.” She paused. “Which you’d know if you looked at my eyes instead of my headlights.”
He laughed again, but immediately sobered. “We’re on the same page this way. Sexually. And I know I can make you happy in bed. But everywhere else—”
“I love you,” she blurted.
It was impulsive and a little berserk but totally worth it when his wide eyes snapped to hers.
So she took him by the face and said it slower, more deliberately. “I love you, Gabriel Light.”
“Even after hearing what I did to Ryder?”
“Even after. Especially after. Because you found out something about yourself you didn’t like, and you changed it. Do you think Bruiser ever did that, or my brother? Or even me?” Her spirits plummeted. “I should be asking you that question. How can you love me, knowing what I’m capable of? What I reveled in?”
“Like this.” He laid her down on the bunk and positioned himself between her raised knees.
Disappointment stabbed her. He was avoiding the topic. Which meant she wouldn’t like his real answer.
Then she sighed mentally. I am putting aside my fears and worries and, while I can, I’m simply being happy. “You know, last time we were on board, I wondered what you’d look like here.” She drank deep of the sight of him between her legs. For the record, his skin was darker, and he definitely not only filled the gap between her thighs, he spread them until her knees nearly touched the bed.
“Last time we were on board, I wanted so badly to be here I shook with it.” His fingers slid onto her sex, each digit like two of hers, hot, thick, driving along the nose of her swelling clit with singing power.
She was right, Gabriel was one of a kind. His size, his strength, his tangy smell…her pussy plumped, clit shaft rising, yearning up into his fingers for more.
As he stroked her below, he kissed her above, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. His lips teased like soft feathers, until her skin prickled with perspiration and turned rosy.
“More,” she whispered.
He fastened onto a nipple and suckled, driving shafts of pleasure through her. Then he used teeth.
Her sex clenched under his strokes. She lifted her hips into his driving thrusts, his fingers skidding along her sex, already gushing its pleasure. Soon her thighs were glistening with need.
When she was bucking against his hand like a box of premature fireworks, he shifted. Just as she was about to protest, he fit himself to her.
“Last time we were on board, I wondered who you were thinking of as you climaxed.” He drove inside her slick pussy, his thick erection filling her, stretching her.
“You,” she gasped as the first ripples of orgasm hinted at what was coming. Huge, dark, shockingly strong. Much like Gabriel himself. “You…little…eavesdropper…” Her words were punctuated by his heavy thrusts, each stoking a furnace of lust and love.
“Didn’t mean to.” His muscles sheened as he pumped into her. His tang intensified, driving her own arousal higher.
She’d waited months for this scent, him excited by her, and now it was perfect. She could even sense the
receptive softening of that spot where her mating bond to him once had pulsed. Where their magic joined. She wrapped hands around his ribs, feeling the muscles tighten and ripple under her palms.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. “I got stuck in here, invisible. But once I was…” His chest bloomed with arousal. “I wouldn’t have traded it for heaven itself.”
“Sweet talker.” She grabbed his head and kissed him, thrusting her tongue into his mouth as he thrust into her. “I can talk sweet too. Come.”
She goosed the word with a flex of her internal muscles—and a mental kiss to their bond-place.
Roaring her name, he came. His tugging balls pulled against her, urging her…no demanding that she join him.
And she was falling, falling in a star-studded sky, the beauty of the heavens filling her sight.
“Looks like you didn’t have to trade anything for heaven,” she whispered. “And neither did I.”
* * *
When she woke, Gabriel was lying beside her, head propped up on one arm, staring down at her, love warming his eyes and a besotted smile on his lips…lips which slowly straightened, serious. “Emma. Your eyes…they’re gold. You’re mated again.”
She gaped at him, staring into his warm blue-green eyes.
“But gold?” She blinked. “They can’t be. That’s a royal color.”
“Royal, like alpha?” He tugged bed sheets until he had a tail enough to cover her and wrapped her tight. “I guess Advanced Magical Creatures doesn’t know everything. Explains Noah’s eyes.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She lay in her cocoon as he extricated himself from the covers and stalked off to the bathroom. His naked form in all its glory made her forget words.
The flush a moment later recalled her. “I’m not royalty. My mother is in the line of betas. My father was an iota.”
“Your ancestor was alpha iota.” He returned, carrying a fluffy white towel, and tossed it to her before sliding under the covers. “Sunmane the Wise and Simon the Powerful were both royalty. It makes sense that Fezz Singer was too.”
Fezz, a prince of iotas… Who knew who was in the Singer woodpile?
“Then why didn’t it show until now? Why weren’t my eyes silver or some other color of a royal bloodline?”
“The writing in his journal was locked away from prying eyes. Maybe there was a hide spell on his line that hid your royal blood. Jayden said something about all the modifications connected with the key resetting if we used it.”
“So two good things were freed, your sister and my heritage?” Emma smiled.
He smiled back. “Though I wish we hadn’t had to destroy the journal in the process.”
Her smile faded. Her father’s beautiful art. She’d just have to try to keep it fresh in her memory, but mourned that her children—that their children wouldn’t see it.
And that thought brought wonder back into her heart. Their children, hers and Gabriel’s. Swallowing against a whole tide of feelings, she gazed into his love-warmed eyes…and blinked in surprise.
They looked warm because his star-spangled irises were spiked, not with silver, but with gold.
“Y-your eyes…”
“I know. Saw it in the bathroom mirror just now.” His smile was ear to ear. “I’m mated too.”
But Emma couldn’t return his smile. “I’m so sorry. Now you can’t get rid of me…or my berserker.”
“Sweetheart.” He took her hands. “The berserker saved you. It has never bothered me.”
“Never?”
“Except that it bothers you. I love you with or without it. But frankly, I’m glad you have it.”
“You’re glad for my berserker?” She stared at him, wondering if aliens had eaten his brains.
“Emma, I’m a battle mage. I have the training and power to wipe out whole villages. Now, I’d never hurt anyone and especially would never hurt you, but it’s a relief to know if I went out of my mind and tried, you’d wipe the ground with me.”
“I-I never thought of it that way.”
“So what do you say? Marry me, Emma. Make an honest witch out of me.”
Heart too full for words, she simply reached out and hugged him to her breast. Which led to another long round of mating.
No. Lovemaking.
They managed to dress by the time the ferry docked. Gabriel drove them to Scottville, to the pack compound.
Sitting in the passenger seat of the same car she’d left in, Emma watched the condo come into sight. She’d so nearly lost her freedom here, her will, her very self.
Gabriel parked the car, then, as she continued only to stare, laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’m with you.”
Time to deal with the consequences. She got out of the car and marched into the alpha’s building—hell, she was alpha now—straight to 1B, the harem condo, and threw open the door.
“You’re free.”
Women, eyes dark and bruised, slinked toward the lighted lobby. No sounds came from them.
Finally one less hollow-eyed and beaten-looking than the rest said hesitantly, “You’re the new alpha?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kicking us out?”
“No!” Emma choked back a sob. “You’re welcome to stay. But you’ll have a new apartment. Clean. No locks to keep you prisoners. Food. I’ll set up a stipend so you’ll never have to rely on the alpha’s goodwill again.”
When the women only continued to stand there, Emma phoned her neighbor, the pack cousin who’d been kind, made her an interim beta to be ratified in Manistee Forest, and deputized her to watch over the freed harem. She snared a male to find a vacant condo, and another to prepare a meal for the starved females.
During the whole time, Gabriel stood with her, a silent but potent buttress.
After she’d made the initial arrangements, she couldn’t put it off any longer.
She went to 1A.
Opening Bruiser’s apartment, she stood outside and mulled on consequences. She was alpha now. Good, in that she could free the harem. Bad, in that she was back to the good-girl shtick, supersized. “I don’t know if I want to do this. I don’t know if I can.”
“The treasury is here,” Gabriel pointed out. “There will be bills to pay. It’s only practical.”
“I suppose.”
“Tell you what. After you take the cash and valuables out?”
“Yes?”
He snarled, “We’ll burn the place down.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
His palm on her back in warm support helped her inside. She opened a bedroom door to a huge rumpled bed, the tang of unwashed he-wolf, and the stink of fear. She slammed it shut. “Napalm might not even do it.”
“I’ll open the next one.”
“Thanks.”
He opened the second bedroom door and gasped. She peeked around his bulk.
The whole room was stuffed to the rafters with treasure. Graceful furniture, coin displays, shining gold and silver jewelry, even antique dolls. She wandered into the room, opening chests to heaps of rich silk and sliding open drawers to the glitter of gemstones and precious metals.
“This is worth a small fortune.”
Gabriel, in another corner, lifted a cloth cover. “This is worth a large fortune, I think.”
She turned with a frown. “What is it?”
“A painting. A famous painting. I recognize it from a museum I toured once. It was on loan.” He lifted the cover to show her. “But I didn’t recognize the signature then.”
She came to him, immediately drawn by the painting, a fawn that looked so alive it would jump off the canvas, velvety browns and vivid greens. She peered closer. In the corner, in yellow and red oil that scrolled like a living flame, was the name of the artist.
Ezra Singer.
“Oh my God.” She covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes filling with happy tears. “The journal…it wasn’t the last of my father’s art. I have one last thing to remember him by.”<
br />
“Um, hate to disillusion you.” Gabriel lifted cover after cover. “But you have more than one last thing. These are all your father’s.”
Her gaze jumped from canvas to canvas, each more beautiful than the last.
Joy surged in her heart. “I’d heard Bruiser’s treasury was rich because of some famous paintings. But the fact that they’re Dad’s…these are the true riches.”
“Yes.” But his eyes weren’t on her father’s paintings. Those gold-shot eyes were warm on her.
“I love you, Gabriel Light.” She took his hands. “Life may not be easy, but what can’t we do together?”
“I love you too, Emma Singer.” He bent and kissed her. “We may make mistakes—”
“Because life is messy.”
“Life is messy,” he agreed. “But we’ll deal with the consequences—together.”
She laughed. The worries would return, but for now she was truly happy. “As long as I get to make life messy with you.”
Thanks for reading Mind Mates. I hope you enjoyed it! Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release email list at http://eepurl.com/orpxf Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews whether positive or negative.
Continue reading for excerpts from Masked Attraction (Pull of the Moon Prequel) and Cin Wikkid: April Fools For Love by Mary Hughes, Chasing Dreams: Leap Year by S.L. Carpenter and Surprise for Three: Leap Year by Remi Bond.
Masked Attraction
Pull of the Moon Prequel
© 2014 Mary Hughes
The masks are coming off.
Daniel Light loved Zoe Blackwood when he was a gangly dork. Now a powerful wizard prince, a masked ball gives him a new chance to woo her.
Wolf shifter Zoe, desperate to recreate the feelings of romantic love she had in high school, throws the ball as her last chance at romance before her wolf forces her to mate. The romantic memory was courtesy of rich, classy, dorky Daniel, the only boy she could always count on yet never really noticed. When he shows up at the ball, he's still rich and classy, but not dorky at all, and she notices his lion's prowl and deadly grace plenty. The question is—can she still count on him?
