The Vampire's Spell_The Black Wolf

by Lucy Lyons

  “I have a family too, Mr. King,” he began as we walked, and I flinched at his use of my last name. “Oh, don’t be too worried. I know you didn’t want my people to give away your location to your pack, but as we both know now, they already knew. Even so, aside from looking at your identification to verify your home, none of your things were disturbed.” I clenched my jaw and clasped my hands in front of me as I fought to stay calm and push back the wolf. “As I said, I have a family too,” he continued when I didn’t answer. “You’ve met my wife, and Clay, my daughter’s godfather and my partner in leading the clan.” He paused and turned to face me. “I know leaving your brother was probably the most difficult choice you’ve ever had to make. You must remember that Goldie is our family, Mr. King.”

  “Please, just Orson. Mr. King makes me think of my dad, it doesn’t feel like me.” I didn’t respond to his remark about Goldie, because I was afraid he was about to deny me the one thing that could get me home and back in my rightful place in the pack.

  I knew he had to protect Goldie, because that’s what I would’ve done in his place. As much as I hated the thought of a vampire protecting any wolf, it was hard to reconcile the stories I’d been told as a pup with the noble man standing before me, willing to kill to protect my mate and more accepting of me than my own pack had been.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We had stopped in front of a cheap, flimsy door that was painted bubblegum pink and had a padlock on the handle. Nicholas laughed at my face and shrugged. “Our daughter, it turns out, is more powerful than she is capable of control at such a young age. This is the third door in as many months, and she still escapes on us when she should be napping. He waved the door open, the lock disengaging with a soft “snick” and I followed him through.

  Inside, Goldie sat with a cherub in her lap, giggling and playing peek-a-boo with the tiny girl, apparently oblivious to us. The vampire sighed and swept the child off her lap and into his arms, scowling ferociously at her.

  “Did you mind-trap your aunt Goldie, Ro?” he asked before turning his attention to the redhead sitting with a black, pleasant expression, like a doll waiting to be played with. He snapped his fingers and when she didn’t respond, he cursed and pressed his fingers against her forehead, muttering in a language I’d never heard before. Goldie came to with a gasp, starting in her seat.

  “Oh, damn it, Rowena, you little turkey,” she hissed before she caught sight of me and it of the rest of her complaint.

  “Goldie, Mister . . . er, Orson needs to speak with you alone before he leaves.” He said to her as I waited, my hands gripped so tightly my knuckles were white when I glanced down. “And he is leaving, so let’s keep this brief, right?”

  She nodded and gave me a wide berth as she circled me to head toward the door. I looked at the toddler with the curly mop of honey-colored hair and the round emerald eyes and I smiled, wiggling my fingers at her.

  “Cute kid, luckily for you she takes after her mom,” I teased, suddenly apprehensive to be alone with Goldie. I could feel the pull of her body without looking at her, which would only make her rejection that much more painful when I’d be forced to see it in her eyes.

  Little Rowena flashed me a gap-toothed grin and drool slid over her bottom lip to dangle over her father’s suit coat. Without thinking, I reached out and wiped her face, and she caught my finger in her pudgy hand. Instantly, I held out my other hand and tried to take her from her father’s arms, the need to hold her more powerful than anything I’d encountered, including the drive of my beast.

  I stared at Nicholas and his face mirrored the shock I felt, but he chuckled and handed her to me without hesitation.

  “Oh, no, really I can’t. I don’t know anything about babies,” I pled, despite my traitorous arms holding her close and my head dipping down until my forehead pressed against hers. “Oh my God. Is she doing this?” I asked in a rough whisper as Nicholas looked on.

  “She likes you, Orson. She doesn’t like everyone, and lets even less hold her,” he tried to reassure me.

  I scoffed and tried to force my arms straight out to hand her back. Instead, my grip on her tightened until her face was buried in my neck and I was embracing her small body like a fragile gift.

  “Nick,” hissed Goldie’s panicked voice, and with a jolt that should’ve scorched the earth at my feet, her arms went around me, her red hair pressed against my chest under my chin. “God damn it, Nick, make her stop, right . . .” Her voice broke off as her hand smoothed over my back and she pressed her body against me. For a moment, my heart stopped, and the air around us shifted. For better or worse, Rowena had forced the bond on us both, and I couldn’t move to break the spell even if I’d wanted to.

  Hands lifted the baby from my arms and Goldie moved to fill the space, curling her hands up under my arms and over my shoulders as she pressed her curves into the hard line of my body with a sigh.

  I could almost see the pale gold of her metaphysical beast rubbing along the length of mine, the charcoal black mixing with the gold until it seemed like one animal and a blur of black and gold floating and dancing behind my eyelids. My physical need to feel her skin was a fever burning me up everywhere our bodies touched, and I slid my hands under her shirt to run my fingers over the silken skin of her back, reveling as she shuddered and whimpered from the contact.

  “Not here,” she finally gasped, and I knew she’d given in to the need.

  “I don’t know that I can take a step away from you, Golden wolf,” I murmured into her hair. I need you so badly.”

  Her face tipped back and my mouth found hers, lips parted and ready for me. I delved deeply, tasting her and drawing her into my mouth until she whimpered again and pushed her hips against me until the zipper of my pants bit into the skin beneath.

  I picked her up and her legs wound around me as I cupped her ass in my hands and fled the room, fleeing the nursery before we could traumatize the kid. Nicholas’s laughter floated after us and it brought me back to myself enough to pull away from Goldie and whisper, “Where?”

  She glanced both ways down the hallway and pointed at a nearby door. “That’ll be empty. I shoved the door open with my shoulder and kicked it shut behind me as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Ahead of me was a wide conference table and chairs, and I moved the chairs out of the way to lay Goldie down in the dim light that seeped around the edges of the door.

  “Don’t stop or I might rethink it,” she gasped, tugging at my shirt and sliding her hands over my stomach. “Oh God, your body is just like in my dreams, hard and so hot under my fingers.”

  I knelt on the table over her, placing my palms on either side of her shoulders. In a pushup motion I bent down and kissed her, my body hovering over her so only our mouths touched. She arched her back, pressing the warmest part of her against me and I groaned with the effort of not pinning her to the table and finishing it. The trouble was, I was so far gone just from touching her, I was afraid that was all it would take.

  I pressed her hips back to the table with one hand and slid down and back so my mouth was over her stomach and flicked my tongue out over her skin, her power and scent sparking on my tongue. I licked again, slower and longer, and she cried out as her beast tried to tear its way out of her body. My own hands had already changed into claws and I tore her shirt away from her breasts to press my lips to them, and she gripped my shoulders, claws sinking into me until I growled a warning and she laughed, a triumphant sound that made it impossible for me to breathe.

  “Now, wolf, or leave and never know what you’re missing,” she laughed in that same low, sultry way that made my pants strain tighter across my hips. I bit down on her breast and poured my power into her, forcing her to finish changing under me as I felt fur flow over my back. We were jet and gold our bodies twisted together, only my khakis keeping me from entering her.

  I’d never changed with a lover before, and the power that we created glowed between us as she tore my pants with deceptively delicate
looking claws, freeing me to take her and make her mine in truth. Part of me knew she didn’t understand what the joining would mean but our beasts were in control and I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to.

  If my heat was a fever, hers was the sun, and as she rocked under me, her ankles locked behind my back her glow intensified until I had to close my eyes against the glare. The power built with the pleasure, and as she crested, she brought me with her with the force of a tidal wave crashing on a beach. It dragged a roar from my throat and I collapsed on top of her. Shuddering with the aftershocks of our mating.

  Trembling, she curled up in my arms as I slid us both onto one of the wide leather chairs, one leg hanging over an arm, the other foot up on the table. My heart pounded against her bare shoulder and she tugged my arms tighter around her.

  “I don’t love you,” she whispered. I realized she wasn’t clinging to me because of her feelings for me, but because I was now her alpha and she needed my protection, from me.

  “I don’t love you either,” I lied, ignoring the vise-grip around my heart. “We’ve only just met, and this is hard, so much harder than it was for my parents, who grew up in the same pack.” I brushed her hair back and settled my chin on the top of her head briefly. “I do like you, though. You smell like fall on the bayou, after the rains come and everything is clean and ripe.”

  “I like your accent. You sound like the charming card shark in the movies, who cons women, but they still love him even after he takes all their savings.” She ran her fingers over the bite mark on her breast, the only mark on her after sex that stayed trough the change. It was my mark on her, and would scar, unlike other injuries that would heal away with a simple shape shift, leaving her whole and unblemished. The mating scar was part of our metaphysical bond and could never be erased.

  “I don’t even know how to respond to that, Cher.” She laughed at my dismay and I tried to ignore her breasts bouncing against my arm. Shifters are comfortable with casual nudity, and my physical reaction to just having her naked body next to mine made me feel like when I was fourteen and woke up in my first naked “dog-pile” after a hunt. Only that time, the women who were draped all over me had handled my traitorous body with all the delicacy southern belles are famous for. Goldie was another story.

  “You ready for round two, champ?” she asked, wriggling her bottom in my lap and tearing a moan of helplessness from my throat.

  “How can I say no to you? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” I asked. The man was now more in control than the beast, and as much as I wanted her, I only wanted it if I got all of her.

  “I thought I was your one and only and you could never turn me down,” she teased, and uncurled her body, twisting so she was facing me, the warmest part of her in perfect position to feel how much I wanted her.

  “God knows I want you, I won’t lie, but I’m your soulmate, not some random wolf you get to screw to remember what a warm, living body feels like, Golden wolf.” I pushed her back enough that she wasn’t in direct contact with my wrong-headed brain and continued. “We’re a bonded pair, mate of mine. I can see in your eyes you have every intention of going back to lover-boy Joe. But you’d better not pretend to be surprised when you can’t make your life fit into that tidy little box again. You’re a wolf, destined to be next to a powerful royal alpha. Neither your beast, or your heart, are going to let you choose a lesser life and be satisfied.”

  With a curse, she kicked off me and grabbed the shreds of her clothing, dumping them in a trash can then opening the door before shifting into the golden wolf in a shimmer of fur and flouncing out, her feathery tail raised high. I looked at my clothes, shredded by my shape shifting and Goldie’s claws, and tossed them in the waste on top of the shirt and jeans she’d thrown away. I glanced at my naked body and sighed, self-pity coursing through me as I shifted into the wolf and went to find Fin and hopefully my clothes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Wow, went that well, huh?” Fin asked when I caught up to him. The upsides to being in wolf form were that no one tried to talk to me, and my sense of smell was at its most heightened, so finding him was as simple as trotting through halls and staring at door handles until someone opened them for me. Even though most of the people I passed were vampires, not one of them even looked twice at me. It bothered me that the wolves here didn’t know their vampire history, and it bugged me almost as much that the vampires didn’t seem to either.

  So my soulmate hated me, which I had never considered was possible, let alone plan a solution for, and I was winding my way through a labyrinth of vampires searching for the wererat who was holding my clothes and phone hostage. As far as I could tell, I’d plummeted straight toward rock bottom and face planted on it.

  Then there was the matter of Woody. I’d assumed that Thaddeus would want to keep tabs on me, maybe even find a way to ensure I wouldn’t make it back to the pack. But Skoll’s gang were barely contained monsters, guys whose violent streaks were only kept away from humans by setting them up in the cypress forest and letting them hunt and kill animals to their hearts’ content.

  I had to tell Thad that Woody was dead, but before I did that, I was going to move Porter somewhere safe, preferably outside the state of Louisiana. My beast agreed, and turned my thoughts back to Goldie. There wasn’t much I could do to convince her that she needed to be with me, not for my sake or at least, not only for my sake. Maybe it was because she wasn’t born to the life of a shifter, or the strange magic that surrounded the club and the warehouse they spent their time in that kept the sickness at bay. But if she’d been dreaming of me longer than I had been dreaming of her, it wouldn’t be long before it started getting to her, the paranoia and fear crawling around inside her head like earwigs.

  Paranoia, like Thad had been showing, made us dangerous not only to our packs, but to the humans we worked so hard to hide our preternatural powers from. Humans who, if they knew what we really were, had the numbers to hunt us down and wipe us off the planet.

  I bumped into Fin when I followed my nose back toward the cage I’d been kept in. He had my duffle bag over one shoulder, and when he saw me, he stared, confused for a moment before he cleared his throat to hide a chuckle and pointed me toward a set of double doors behind me.

  “In here’s our training room, there’s a changing room and showers through that doorway,” he said, gesturing with a jerk of his head. The tile in the room he indicated looked like the tile I’d seen when I’d last invaded Goldie’s thoughts, and I sniffed the air for her. Her smell was there, but only the faint trace that indicated she’d been there, but was no longer.

  Fin set my bag on a wooden bench against the washroom wall and nodded, leaving me to change in peace. I went ahead and used the shower, figuring it might be a day or two before I got another chance, and took out the only remaining clean clothes I had in my bag, which meant I was finally dressed for an evening at a club. Too bad that I’d spent so much time sedated in a cage, that it was half a day later and the club wasn’t open for hours.

  I belted my pants and had just pulled the silk-screened polo over my head when I heard Fin return and called out to him. “Still in here, mon ami, I’ll be right out.” I heard the staccato tap of shoes on tile and caught the smell of death. My head cleared the shirt just in time to see the first aimed at it and pain exploded in my nose and spread across my face. “Jesus, Joe, back off,” I snarled, shoving him off me.

  Still wearing the shirt like a scarf, I blocked a second punch and delivered one to his midsection, doubling him over so his face could meet my knee. He dropped to the floor and shook his head as I used the now useless, bloody shirt to wipe the remaining blood from my face.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded, throwing the shirt in the sink to rinse it. I turned my back to him on purpose to let him know I wasn’t threatened by him, but kept an eye on his reflection in the mirror. “I thought you guys were invisible to mirrors,” I said casually. I could feel energy
and rage emanating off him in waves like a winter wind, and I understood why he’d be pissed, so I didn’t want to escalate it further.

  “Wives tale,” he replied tersely. “I eat garlic too, though I’ve heard some are allergic to it.” I glanced at him as he stood and brushed off his knees. “You’re not off the hook, so turn around.”

  “Why? You had no problem sucker punching me the first time,” I snorted. It was the wrong thing to say.

  He grabbed my shoulders and dug his talons in, tossing me back like I weighed nothing, and I was sharply reminded that the vampire was just as strong as I was, just as capable of throwing a small car, or a large werewolf, through a house as tile from the wall behind me came down on my head.

  “You think you can just come into my home and do what you did to Goldie without consequence?” He snarled, and attacked again. I did my best to deflect only, not really hurting him the way I wanted to, but I wasn’t about to lie down and let him kick my ass for finding my mate.

  “You think you can just tell a wolf that he can’t be with his soulmate, because she’s your girlfriend, and I’m the wrong-headed one?” I slapped him with my open hand, a palm across his face that turned his head. And he swung at me again and missed. Then kicked out and caught me in the ribs, sending me flying back into the debris of the now crumbling wall behind me.

  I jumped to my feet and blocked a flurry of punches and roared, my beast clawing its way from behind my shields. I strained for control, but the sickness was still there, held back only because I’d bonded with Goldie, but without her nearby to strengthen the mark between us, my threadbare shields gave out and I shifted, my face elongating into a muzzle as I snapped my jaws in his face.