by Jory Strong
He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. This was what Maksim had been counting on by forcing him to remain in Analia’s company.
Resistance is futile. Though he’d never seen the human TV show that had minted the phrase, he could well imagine Maksim intoning it, and Taine happily appending it to: Resistance is futile when it comes to taking a mate.
Kellen shook his head, trying to dislodge all thoughts of mating. He needed to find whatever artifact someone was after and get it safely ensconced in the vault at headquarters. When that was done, then he couldn’t be compelled to remain with Analia.
His heart twinged at the prospect of separating from her. He rubbed his chest, telling himself that separating would actually make going out—and ending up in bed together—safer. It’d be easier to maintain his control, to have a relationship without inadvertently ending up mated.
He sat, not needing the sunlight streaming through the window or the handmade wall clock to tell him it was solidly morning. His heart beat a little faster at being confronted by truth; so deep was his contentment, he wouldn’t have awakened except for the magical resonance.
Rather than fight the reality of that contentment, he focused on the magic vibrating against his senses. Not spells, at least not obviously spells. He didn’t smell magic.
Frowning, he slid from the bed. He wished he could shift to fey hound. His nose was far keener in that form.
She’d told Maksim that she’d purchased a tiger fetish at the supernatural fair. In their fever to shed clothing and extinguish the fiery need the night before, he hadn’t once thought about locating the artifact in her possession.
He prowled forward, skirting the row of potted plants delineating her bedroom. He found the fetish on a small table near the front door. There were a couple of other figurines there, along with a picture taken at the beach of Analia, Saffron and Sabra as teenagers.
The fetish was carved from wood that was bleached gray but retained natural black streaks. A true artist, or perhaps a shaman, had seen the image already existing in the dead branch, and brought it into life-like existence.
Kellen lifted the tiger, though he didn’t need to bring it to his lips and nose to know it hadn’t been the source of the resonance or the cause of someone’s interest in Analia.
The fetish was a human creation and not a magical artifact. He turned it over in his hand, rubbed his thumb across the textured wood. There was magic attached to the tiger, or rather, the potential for magic, but it would require a working.
A tightness settled in his chest. Neither the fetish nor the tarot cards he’d examined at Stones explained the assault.
Setting the fetish down, he thought back to the supernatural fair and the first time he’d encountered Analia’s scent—a lush combination of woman and magic. But not a powerful magic. Whatever someone was after, she hadn’t been in possession of it at that point in time. Maybe she hadn’t purchased it at the supernatural fair at all.
He prowled the rest of Analia’s studio apartment. The human who’d mugged her had been telling the truth. His scent wasn’t present.
Kellen returned to the bedroom area. With the sight of Analia, heat rolled through him, in his chest first, easing the tightness, and then into his cock, filling him with the need to stroke her, scent her, fuck her.
She was beautiful, soft and vulnerable in a way that fed protective instincts as well as carnal ones. She lay curled on her side, an adorable frown indicating she’d noticed his abandoning the bed.
He’d return momentarily, might even wake her for another round of lovemak—
Sex. It was just sex. Though even the humans used the term lovemaking as a euphemism for sex.
The resonance was gone. But he hadn’t imagined it.
There were only two places in the room emitting enough magic for him to be aware of it, her charm bracelet and the dresser.
He should probably wake her, but impatience got the better of him—and, if he were being totally honest, his nose was the part of him most adept at ferreting out magic and he didn’t want Analia seeing him sniff whatever item caught his attention.
He reached the dresser, opened the top drawer and nearly groaned at the extent of her collection of charms. Ideal would be to handle each one separately, and it might come to that, but for expediency, he leaned down so his face, and by extension, his nose, hovered above the contents of the drawer.
There was magic radiating from some of the charms. Most were meant to keep her safe and healthy, though there were some crafted to help her see with clarity, and he could easily imagine her buying them in the hopes they’d help her to better serve her clients.
His sense of her as someone who was honest and trustworthy grew stronger. There were no charms to bring her wealth or power.
She stirred, mumbled, “What are you doing?”
“I picked up a hint of magic,” he said, straightening, switching from using his nose to using his eyes.
There was the sound of rustling fabric and he easily imagined the sheet falling away, revealing her breasts. A look and he’d abandon his search.
“Just a hint? Nothing stronger?”
“Not strong enough to explain the attack or a search of your apartment.”
“The search might have been my overactive imagination,” she said, though they both knew it was unlikely.
His gaze sharpened on the charms, his focus narrowing to those that had sigils or other symbols carved into their surfaces. There were no more than a dozen bearing supposedly magical markings. Starting from the back, he began picking them up one by one, lifting them close to his face—ostensibly to examine them more closely.
He didn’t expect to find any truly powerful sigils. He didn’t expect the scent of magic to intensify. He didn’t truly expect to locate the source of the resonance that had penetrated his sleep. It was as if his very awareness of that resonance had caused it to cease.
Reaching the front of the drawer, he lifted the last charm bearing symbols. He rubbed his thumb over the tiny sigils covering a piece of dark crystal that had been carved into the shape of a tree.
There was almost no scent or sense of magic. Like the crystal apple he’d located on the beach, it had only barely enough magic that should Analia misplace it, he could find the charm.
It bore symbols he didn’t recognize, made up perhaps. Or possibly they were ancient sigils copied from a book by someone who didn’t have the magical ability to funnel power into the design and activate the charm.
Kellen could feel Analia’s tension mounting. Could hear it in her dry-mouthed, “Anything?”
“No.”
“What will happen when you find whatever someone is after?”
“It’ll be confiscated.”
“Is anything ever returned?”
He placed the tree-shaped charm in the spot where he’d found it and closed the drawer. “No.”
At least not in this realm, though he couldn’t share that distinction. Nor could he tell her that supernatural courts could take centuries to determine the fate of a magical artifact.
He turned and found Analia sitting, knees hugged to her chest. The sight of her in distress had him automatically stepping toward the bed.
Her visible relief had a satisfied heat swelling his chest while a carnal heat filled his cock.
Her gaze dipped and her tongue darted out, further swelling his shaft. Another long stride took him closer, his thoughts sliding into fantasy that would soon be reality: The spread of her knees. The swoop of his mouth onto her pussy.
His cock bobbed, trying to hurry him along. His balls grew heavy and full in anticipation of filling her with semen.
Just the mere thought of it was enough to have a throbbing heartbeat migrate to his shaft and the place that would thicken and lock him into a mate’s body—her body—if he ever lost all control.
The idea didn’t terrify his as it would have days ago, and that increased the pounding in his chest and the answering beat in his cock. Her arms
loosened from around her knees and slid downward to her ankles, as if reading his intentions.
He might have missed the quick, there-and-gone magical resonance altogether as he reached her except that the light caught on her bracelet. It gave him pause though it didn’t stop him from grasping the sheet and giving it a sharp tug.
The sight of her bared nearly obliterated the need to investigate the charms she wore. It’d seemed unnecessary before. In hound form, when she’d stroked him while at the beach, the bracelet had been inches away from his nose and hadn’t warranted a first look. But the resonance suggested it needed a second, harder look.
He snagged her hand, pulling it away from its light clasp around her ankles. “Anything special about one of these charms?”
She trembled slightly, the reaction so minute he was only aware of it because his fingers curled around hers. “They’re all special to me,” she said, leaning forward, pressing her lips to his, her tongue a sweet lick across the seam of his mouth.
He speared the fingers of his free hand through her hair, closed the silky strands in his fist and held her in place, his lips parting, his tongue answering the invitation issued by hers. Greeting. Rubbing. Twining.
Need built with each stroke of tongue against tongue. Deepened as her scent—already heady and lush further invaded with each inhalation, each swallow of shared breath.
She pulled her hand from his, taking the charm bracelet with it as she placed her palm against his chest and slid it downward, eliciting a moan. Fuck, he could barely think with her hand so close to his dick.
He was as bad as Taine when it came to Saffron.
Kellen’s pride demanded that he pull back, prove he wasn’t completely ensnared.
Forcing his mouth from Analia’s, he said, “I should examine the charms on your bracelet.”
Her hand reached his cock, encircled it, making his hips buck. “Right now?” she murmured against his mouth.
She stroked down, then up, creating a fiery surge of want that burned away thought and pride. He released her hair in favor of cupping her knees and pushing them outward, exposing her wet pussy.
There was no resisting its lure.
He pitched forward. Buried his face between her thighs.
He rubbed lips and nose against her mound, inhaled their mingled scents and savored the sound of her moans and the feel of her hands fisted in his hair. Already wanted to wallow forever in the paradise between her legs.
He swirled his tongue over and around her clit. Used his hands and weight to keep her lower body pinned to the bed as her hips surged upward with each rasp of his tongue. “Please, Kellen,” she said, and he discovered he liked the sound of her asking him for pleasure. That he liked delivering that pleasure. Too much.
Too much. But the thought didn’t stop him. Didn’t lessen his efforts or cool the fiery want pounding in his cock.
With his tongue and mouth he brought her to orgasm, her cry of ecstasy further swelling his cock with satisfaction.
He rubbed his beard against satiny inner thighs, sucked, leaving her silky skin marked. Only barely had the control required to crawl up her body rather than flip her onto elbows and knees. Do that and they’d become mated.
His buttocks clenched as the imagery of mounting her filled his head. Then clenched again when he slid into her wet opening.
She guided his mouth to hers and he was lost to sensation.
Mine! His hound nature growled with each thrust, and the only way to avoid being tied to her for a lifetime was to surrender, thrusting urgently, racing the rapid swelling of his cock.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, driving him deeper, deeper, closer to her womb and he didn’t fight the urge to come.
Scorching heat streaked up his spine. Fiery ecstasy streaked up his shaft, exploding from his cock in surge after surge of hot semen.
He had the presence of mind to jerk his hips upward at the very end, pulling from her channel with a silent snarl then covering her again, trapping his cock between their bodies.
She hugged him to her, her soft sigh of pleasure a warm caress against his ear. “That was a very nice way to start the day,” she murmured.
“True.” He rubbed his cheek against hers, waves of satisfied lethargy pulsing through him.
He wanted to roll off her, then pull her against his chest and snooze like a hound luxuriating in a sated nap on a summer day. But he wouldn’t put it past Gaige or Crew to find some excuse to stop by Analia’s apartment in order to see if he’d succumbed and was now mated.
Kellen slid to his side, but didn’t lose contact with her. He grasped Analia’s hand, felt the tiniest resistance as he guided it toward him for a better look at the charm bracelet.
The hint of resistance chased some of the lassitude away, leaving room for suspicion to creep in. Earlier she’d trembled when he’d turned his attention to the bracelet. And then his attention had been diverted by the exquisite feel of her hand around his cock.
Neither the tiger fetish nor the tarot cards she’d given to Sabra—the only two things she’d claimed to have purchased at the supernatural fair—were cause for someone’s interest in Analia.
Are you sure you didn’t purchase anything else? he wanted to ask, but said, “Do you remember exactly where and when you got each charm?”
Analia grasped her bottom lip between her teeth, released it, caught it again. “It might take some effort.”
Her answer only strengthened the suspicion, though he acknowledged that he could be looking for a reason to distrust her. He stroked his thumb over a small wooden carving of a cat.
She said, “The mugger told you he was after my purse.”
“True.”
“If the man who paid him to attack me was after a charm, wouldn’t he have assumed it was on my bracelet, and not in my purse? My bracelet was visible.”
Her logic made sense. The ache muted in Kellen’s chest but the suspicion wasn’t completely eradicated.
He concentrated on the charm bracelet, searching by sight and scent and touch for magic that might justify the assault, that might explain the resonance that had caused him to awaken, that had disappeared then flashed when he approached the bed, only to once again cease.
She held steady, but there was an underlying tension in her body, a holding of breath that had him glancing at her face.
Her gaze was focused on her wrist, locked there as if she was worried she’d had contact with dangerous magic. Or was she afraid of something else?
He turned her wrist, more closely scrutinized any of the charms engraved with sigils or symbols. Nothing registered as either powerful or potentially powerful.
Watching her carefully, he said, “We need to go see the astrologist.”
She tensed further though her eyes widened with curiosity. “The astrologist? So readings involving the position of the planets and astrological signs can actually reveal truths?”
He studied her silently for another few seconds, finally concluding the subtle tension in her body was the result of natural worry, given everything that had happened to her recently.
“It’s a little more complex than that,” he said in answer to her question, and to head off further probing, added, “Don’t ask me to explain how he does what he does. It’s not my area of magic.”
He released her hand, nearly purred like a cat when she immediately rolled onto her side, placing her free hand on his chest and her lips on his.
Her kiss tasted of relief and desire, and very nearly derailed his intention to get out of bed and visit the astrologist.
Would it be so terrible to take her again, and again, and again? Hadn’t he promised himself that if he ever found the woman whose intoxicating scent had taken up far too much of his attention since the supernatural fair, he’d fuck her until she no longer had the power to entrance him?
Cupping Analia’s breast and swallowing her moan of pleasure, he acknowledged that it might no longer be possible to fuck her out of his system
. And if he attempted it?
He wouldn’t leave the bed unmated.
He forced his lips off hers. And then forced himself to roll away and stand. “We better get going.”
“I need a shower first,” Analia said, torn by desire and guilt.
She hated not being able to tell him the truth about the charms.
Hated that she’d used sex to divert his focus on her bracelet. It hadn’t been intentional, or feigned—hadn’t been a conscious thought, until after her hand had encircled his shaft—and then she’d stroked, knowing what it would lead to, and what it would lead away from…
She didn’t like how it made her feel, or that he might question whether her desire was real.
It was real. Absolutely real.
He was carving his name across her heart.
She left the bed and got into the shower, curious about the visit to the astrologist, but also worried. Very worried.
She couldn’t take the charm off. But she couldn’t allow it to come to Kellen’s attention either.
Do it and her chance at happiness with him would disappear.
She just needed more time, she told herself. Maybe at some point in the future she could tell him, except…
That would mean he’d have to choose between her and IRE. The old man had been very clear, the charms would end up in an IRE vault if they came to the attention of a Supernatural Ops agent, and Kellen had confirmed it, admitting that he’d confiscate whatever he found and it wouldn’t be returned.
Kellen joined her beneath the spray, sending a flutter through her chest. Her nipples tightened and her channel clenched. He was turning her into a sex addict.
He pooled body wash in his hands then used those same hands on her breasts. She arched her back and ground her pussy against his rapidly filling cock.
“We’re not going to get out of here very quickly like this,” she said, unable to keep her hands off him, her palms gliding over his chest then stroking along the muscles in his arms.
“One of the hazards of being around you.”
His thumbs brushed over her nipples and sent spikes of pleasure straight to her toes, weakening her knees in the process and introducing temptation.
