by Jory Strong
She turned onto a street perpendicular to the one that passed by Kellen’s townhouse—the one Kellen would soon be on—and halted fifty yards from the stop sign, leaving the engine on. They would have one chance, and only one chance.
“Take out your weapon,” she said, focusing on the smell of the cold iron beneath his stink.
Tobik pulled a knife from a sheath sewn into a shirt pocket across his stomach. The blade wouldn’t kill Kellen, but it might help hold him at bay long enough for her to wrap the baoban’s hair around his neck.
A delivery truck stopped behind the rental. Its driver laid on the horn before swinging around them, sending an angry look and raising his hand, exposing his middle finger as he passed.
Deidra imagined herself shifting, ripping out his throat. It was said that when they could get away with it, demons carried humans to their realm for the hellhounds to hunt.
Maybe when she ruled the fey hounds…
The truck reached the stop sign and turned, leaving the path clear. Tobik jerked forward in his seat. “I can feel the artifact!”
“How close?” But even as she was asking he was shaking his head, admitting to his failure and lack of ability.
She drummed hard hound nails against the steering wheel, then dropped them to the silken hair on her lap. She slipped it through a belt loop and stroked the long braid as Tobik got more and more animated.
“It’s closer. I can feel it getting closer!”
She wondered what had happened inside The Magic Shop. The grig had had no sense of the artifact when Kellen and the human tramp went inside.
Why had Kellen raced out alone seconds after Tobik had yelled that he felt the artifact?
Maybe the magic had been cloaked, and they’d encountered something in the shop that unmasked it. That would explain the arrival of other IRE agents, but not the human female’s absence—or Kellen’s going back to the astrologist, his desperation leading him to shift into hound form and hurl himself through a window.
Deidra gnashed her teeth. There was no avoiding the obvious explanation any longer.
Her hand fisted on the braid. Something had happened to the female, and Kellen was willing to risk himself on her behalf.
“Almost here,” Tobik gasped.
Deidra’s hands returned to the steering wheel. She held the brake while pushing the gas pedal down. The car rocked in reaction to the opposing forces.
Tobik’s free hand covered his seatbelt clasp, wrenching unwilling admiration from her at his being prepared to attack now that he understood her plan.
“Almost,” he said. “Almost. Almost—”
She released the brake.
The car catapulted forward, burning rubber and gaining speed with each yard they traveled.
Hound reflexes had Kellen trying to get out of their path but the human’s car was no match for the heavier rental.
Deidra barked out a laugh as they whipped past the stop sign. She bared her teeth in satisfaction as she slammed into the smaller vehicle.
She struck behind the driver’s seat with enough force to throw Kellen sideways toward the driver-side window. Airbags exploded in both vehicles as metal crunched and crumpled.
Deidra fought free of the collapsed airbags. She escaped the car with only one goal: enslave Kellen.
She slammed her fist into the shattered passenger window, knocking the glass out while leaning against the car door in an effort to keep Kellen from using his larger mass to his advantage. The glass fell away and she reached in, trying to grasp him with one hand while the other tore the silken braid from her belt loop.
His expression was dazed, as if he’d received a blow to the head, but enough instinct remained that he felt the magic and understood the threat.
Kellen jerked back and no doubt would have attempted escape through the passenger door, but he found his way blocked. Tobik stood in the doorway, cold iron knife slashing the air.
Deidra surged through the broken window, uncaring of the tiny particles embedding themselves in her skin. Kellen turned toward her, blocked a punch meant to daze and sent pain pounding up her arm.
He hissed as Tobik sliced across his back and she knew from experience the kiss of cold iron produced a cauterized wound that sent fiery agony radiating outward.
Another of Tobik’s slashing cuts provided enough distraction for her to get the baoban’s silver braid around Kellen’s neck.
“Stop fighting me,” she growled and he slowed, his gaze fogging though he wasn’t yet fully in the grip of magic.
He pulled back, keeping the strands taunt so she couldn’t create a collar fully encircling his neck. In slow motion his hands came up.
“Do something!” she hissed at Tobik, but the command freed Kellen enough that his hands moved quickly and were only slowed when she immediately shouted, “Stop.”
He froze.
“Lean forward,” she ordered. “You care only about pleasing me.”
Kellen tried to resist, but time slowed and his will ebbed.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
The words reverberated through him, tried to etch themselves onto his soul, tried to command his heartbeat.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
He conjured Analia’s image and the enslaving fog clouding his thoughts and taking over his will receded.
Gritting his teeth, he fought to reach the length of hair around his neck. If only he could reach it, jerk free of the fey magic.
He could defeat the bitch then use the collar on the grig wielding the cold iron blade. It had to be a grig—a grig after the charm—that was the only thing that made sense. He would force his attacker to take him to Analia.
“Stop moving your arms,” Deidra growled, crossing the braided hair so that more of it touched his throat, catching him in a wave of compulsion.
“You care only about pleasing me,” she repeated.
Inches from grasping the cursed weave his hands stopped, his arms trembling with the will he exerted to break free. If not for the strength forged by surviving his childhood, if not for having met and made love to Analia, he would already have been enslaved.
But even as he thought it, the fog in his head was growing stronger. The words Deidra had spoken were pounding against his will, rewriting it.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
You care only about pleasing me.
Deidra’s eyes blazed with triumph. “If you weren’t your father’s heir, I wouldn’t bother with you. I’d leave you in this world to fuck your little human. I wouldn’t risk the chance of whelping deformed pups. But because allowing you to touch me is a necessary sacrifice, we’ll soon mate and return to our realm.”
“Lean forward,” Deidra commanded, licking her lips in anticipation of victory. “Maybe I’ll allow you to see your pathetic little human one last time. And her last memory will be of you shifting form and ripping out her throat.”
Fury burned away some of the compulsion fogging his brain, and once again Analia filled his thoughts. He needed to get to her, he needed…
“Stop resisting.” The weave around his neck tightened, filling his head with nothing but the command—
A command that became his heartbeat, though everything inside him fought to still that heartbeat even if it meant his death. He had to fight, had to fight.
He clung to Analia’s image but it wavered, faded—only to return with the pounding race of his heart as the hair collar was jerked away.
Behind him the grig scrambled out of Analia’s car.
In front of him was Crew.
Kellen glimpsed Deidra rising from where Crew had tossed her. And then Crew was wrenching the door open and pulling Kellen out onto the roadway.
“Stop them,” he said.
But it was too late. A lemon-yell
ow convertible had slammed to a halt to avoid hitting Deidra and she’d used it to her advantage, wrapping the collar around the driver’s neck.
As Kellen stood, swaying for an instant in the aftermath of the magic that’d fogged his mind so completely, Deidra forced the driver to do a U-turn and speed away, with both her and the grig as passengers.
“Fuck!” Kellen said, forcing himself to take several steps from Analia’s crumpled Prius as a test of stability.
“Fuck? That’s all you have to say? What about: Nice save, Crew. I owe you big time. And speaking of fuck, what the fuck did she have around your neck? It smelled like fey magic, but it looked like braided hair.”
“It stole my will,” Kellen growled, sharp fear streaking through him with the memory. “It fucking stole my will.”
It was similar in ways to the woven magic they’d used to turn the unicorns into docile beasts. But those weaves of magic wicked away energy and calmed, they didn’t enslave.
Kellen shuddered. He would have mated her. Would have returned to the hound realm with her. Would have been her puppet.
Fuck! He shivered, a hard, whole body shiver that in hound form would have left his fur standing and doubled his size.
“Thanks for the save.”
“Yeah, return the favor sometime. If you can tear yourself away from the little mate.”
“I’m not mated,” Kellen said, recognizing just how much effort it took to force a growl into his voice.
“Yet.” Crew smirked. “Why do you think I got here in time to save your ass? I’ll tell you since I can read your expression and see you’re dying to know.”
“Someone’s going to be dying,” Kellen muttered.
Crew’s smirk widened. “There I was, heading toward HQ, thinking you were behind me because, hey, you said that’s where you were going and our boss ordered you to take the artifact to the vaults. But then this thought crept up on me, that a man will take crazy chances when he’s found his mate, and I couldn’t shake it, so I circled back, figuring it’d be best for all concerned if I kept an eye on you.” He glanced at Analia’s wrecked Prius and shook his head. “This mating business is hard on cars. Taine torched three of them and now you’ve put a big dent in the little mate’s vehicle.”
“I did not put a dent in it,” Kellen growled.
The sudden scent of apples hit him, hit both of them, and they spun so they were back to back to face their attackers—only to find themselves surrounded by little people, five men of varying ages and a woman.
Grigs.
Kellen had only enough time to make the connection between scent and supernatural being, then release his human form before the grigs clasped hands and he was sucked into a vortex of power.
A heartbeat later, a new reality snapped into place, a nighttime clearing and air laden with the scent of apples and burning wood.
Kellen growled and lunged at the closest grig, taking the man down to the ground, deadly canines only inches away from his throat.
“No!” came a scream that reverberated through Kellen’s body and had his heart pounding wildly.
Analia!
“Crew, don’t let him attack! They’re friends!”
Kellen turned his head. He saw her rushing toward them and his heart swelled at seeing her unharmed. He leapt off the grig and with a thought, reclaimed his human form.
Chapter 10
Analia stumbled to a halt. Her hand went to her chest, though she couldn’t have said whether it was to sooth the ache there or slow the shocked, racing beat.
What a fool she’d been. Her face flamed as she remembered confiding in the hound after Kellen had left her standing alone on the dance floor.
She felt the sting of unshed tears, and echoed the accusation he’d made in those moments before the grigs had emerged through the mirror. “Was it all a lie? Was the sex just a means to an end for you?”
His eyes flared with furious heat, sending her heart skittering. “It was fucking real,” he growled. “It was all fucking real.”
He closed the distance between them, his hand locking on her arm and jerking her forward, then over his shoulder.
Crew’s laugh chased them into the dark orchard, then all sound ceased to exist when Kellen unloaded her from his shoulder and pinned her against the wide, smooth trunk of a dead tree.
“It. Was. Fucking. Real,” he repeated before slamming his mouth down onto hers.
Part of her argued for resistance, but resistance seemed impossible when it came to him, had been from the first time their eyes met at Stones.
Her tongue met his hungrily, glided over his as if it could erase all misunderstandings and any hurtful words. His hand cupped her breast, pressed and rubbed against a nipple hardened by want.
His other hand cupped her hip, holding her to him as his cock ground against her mound in a rigid testament to desire. A desire that had heat pooling between her legs and arousal wetting her panties.
He lifted his mouth from hers, his breathing as ragged as hers. “You should have trusted me. You should have told me about the charm.”
“How could I? As soon as I did, you’d have taken it to IRE headquarters, and you’d have moved on to another task.”
Another woman.
He didn’t refute that truth.
His mouth returned to hers. And if she was the only one reading more into the kiss than relief over discovering her safe—then so be it. She couldn’t worry about future heartbreak.
He freed the buttons at the front of her shirt, then opened the front of her jeans. Kissed downward, pulling a moan from her with the touch of his mouth to her nipples and the suction that followed.
She buried her hands in his hair, the pleasure shooting upward from her nipple with each tug and lick and hint of teeth.
Ecstasy drove her eyes closed and her head back. He gripped the waistband of jeans and panties, jerked them downward, leaving the cool air to caress her feverish skin.
We can’t. We shouldn’t, she thought, but her channel clenched and her mouth remained closed rather than protest when he kissed downward.
He paused to dart his tongue into her navel. Lifted first one of her feet and then the other to free her completely from shoes and jeans and panties.
He draped her thigh over his shoulder. Growled, “Look at me, Lia.”
She forced her eyes open and felt the rush of heat into her cheeks at seeing him between her legs. His gaze scorching hot, his lips swollen from kissing hers, from sucking her nipples.
He rubbed his short beard against her inner thigh, leaned forward and lapped at her flushed and swollen folds, pressed a kiss to her lower lips then thrust his tongue into her slit.
Pleasure might have driven her head backward and her eyes closed for a second time but he pulled away, his mouth glistening with her arousal. There was a rough edge in his voice when he asked, “Still wondering if this is just a means to an end?”
“No,” she said, shivering, wanting.
He leaned in, rewarding her answer with another carnal kiss, and then another. Her hands tightened on his hair as she fought to keep breathy moans from escalating to sounds that would carry to the campfire.
Pleasure curled her toes and made her cant her hips so he could thrust his tongue deeper into her channel, so he’d be tempted into taking her clit between his lips.
There was no denying him, no denying herself. Her heart wanted more, declarations of love, the promise of a future together, but sex could be enough, for now.
That’s what she told herself, the need for him growing as he kissed his way upward, his hands going to the front of his jeans and unzipping.
His cock rushed from the opening and rubbed against her belly, greeting her with its own version of a hot, wet kiss.
His hands cupped her thighs, lifting her. And then he impaled her, vibrating with the same desperate urgency that she felt.
She moaned as he filled her, completed her. She locked her legs around his waist, greedily took hi
s kisses and his cock. Let him chase all thoughts away with rhythmic thrusting and mind-stealing sensation.
His mouth muted the sound of her cresting. And she hoped hers did the same, muffling his shout so it didn’t reach those gathered at the campfire as he filled her channel with semen.
Only after her breathing had eased and her hands were stroking downward did she encounter the rips in his shirt and the scar tissue that hadn’t been there this morning.
“What happened?” she asked, caressing the raised places on his back with her fingertips.
“A brush with a cold iron blade.”
“But you’re okay?”
“Thanks to Crew.”
She met Kellen’s lips with hers, tried to convey with the slide of her tongue how glad she was he’d survived and his injuries had healed. He extended the kiss she’d begun, and seemed as reluctant as she felt to end it.
“What is Crew?” she asked.
“A dragon.”
“Like Taine?”
“So you guessed, not that it isn’t pretty obvious when he’s around Saffron.”
“How come Crew didn’t shift form when the grigs grabbed him and brought him to this realm?”
“There’s not enough magic, at least not the kind he needs. It was easier for me. The grig are a type of fey, though the magic in this place is not nearly as strong as it is in the realm where I was born.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Here you can safely eat and drink. But in other fey realms, doing so would trap you forever in those worlds.”
She shivered. As much as she’d enjoyed visiting with the grigs, she wanted to return to her own world, to her own life.
As much as she wanted to shed all the secrets she’d kept from Kellen, to linger in what felt like a perfect coming together, she suspected she’d only end up sharing those secrets again around the fire circle.
She rubbed her mouth against his, and said, “We should join the others at the campfire.”
* * *
“Mistress, it is I, Tobik,” the grig said at the cave’s entrance, his tone subservient, though the look he sent Deidra was baleful. “The hound bitch is with me.”
“Come,” a female voice said and Tobik entered the cave, feet shuffling, his head bowed.
