by Anya Breton
Sam continued the Air magic trick Kari had always referred to as “eyes in the back of your head” as she worked her fingers over the rope. The strain on her shoulder wasn’t comfortable in the slightest.
Her discomfort was worth the effort when she worked the knot free. Sam wiggled her hands until the rope fell away.
She gave in to the brief luxury of stretching her pained limbs and then gently tested the raw skin of her wrists. Sam focused the magic on her feet next. With her hands free, it was far easier to release her ankles than it had been to unfasten her wrists. The darkness meant she still needed magic to help out.
Once free, Sam began the task of mapping out her prison. She called on Air magic to report about the structure, staying within the walls and doors. Barriers soon appeared as scribbles behind her eyelids. The shape of furniture was visible here and there.
Motion caught Sam’s attention. The figure of a woman displaced air as she paced back and forth across a sparsely decorated space.
Only when Air magic sketched the final wall did Sam dare get to her feet. She pushed her magical ability to the limit by calling on a second thread. Sam would use this one to dampen the sounds as she stood.
Sam stopped at the foot of the bed. She inhaled a stealthy breath, observing the shifting contours that represented the woman. There was no change to the woman’s steady track back and forth over the floor.
Sam’s movement had gone unnoticed.
Like a character in a top-down game, Sam used the image in her mind as a guide for where to go rather than relying on what her eyes told her. She paused against the right wall across from her original room. Slowly she allowed her eyelids to open. As her vision adjusted to the light, she willed Air to superimpose the image in her mind’s eye over her vision.
Ghostly lines formed along the walls ahead where windows would appear if she could see through the sheetrock. The hazy form of a person pacing moved to her right.
Her heart lodged in her throat when the front door burst open. Bright yellow contours formed where Air reported the influx of more of her element. A second hazy form, far larger than the first, charged inside.
“Where is she?”
Sam’s heart did a mad skip. She recognized the gruff voice. Dion.
She pushed off her back leg, intending to go to him. A rapid draw on the aether sent Sam rushing across the building to stop whatever the woman had been about to do.
Only she was too late.
A young woman in a patchwork dress stood with her palms pressed flat in the air as if she was shoving something forward, mime-like. Dion lay slumped within what remained of the structure’s front wall.
Sam dropped every thread of magic she’d spun and formed a cable of magic. Using everything in her, she created a gale meant to put down her foe. Her palm directed the attack, and then without thinking the consequences through, she shoved it at the bitch’s torso.
The stranger shot into the outside wall. She immediately slumped to the floor. But her pained groan meant she was alive.
Dion had made no sound. Sam’s insides wrung fearfully. She stormed across the room and crouched by him. She hovered trembling fingers over his neck, searching for a pulse she couldn’t find.
Had his neck been snapped? Had death come instantly without pain?
Dear Aer. If she had to lose him, let it have been painless.
Even if it had, the same would not be said for his attacker.
Sam shrieked in fury when the woman’s hips lifted from the ground. She was attempting to get up? After she’d killed Dion?
Sam surged to her feet, calling on the one thing she’d vowed never to toy with—a twister.
It was a metaphor for her twisted emotions. She’d been seconds too late to save Dion. Now he’d never know she was sorry and that she…
The twister emerged from the ceiling as though it were completely natural for it to float from plaster and wood. And then it menaced its way toward the scrambling woman.
“Ouch.”
Sam barely registered the low groan behind her.
“Sam?”
But she registered that. She whirled around and found Dion groggily staring up at her. Sam stumbled to her knees beside him.
“What’s that noise?”
The sound of the house being eaten by a twister? Was that what he meant? Or did he mean the relieved pounding of her heart against her ribs? Perhaps the frightened keening as the woman slammed wind at the walls in an effort to break free?
“Sam.” He grabbed her with surprisingly strong arms given he’d seemed dead seconds earlier. “Don’t do it, sweetheart. I’ll make sure she and her brother get what’s coming to them.” He gripped her chin. “Look at me. Sweetheart, please, call off your tornado.”
“Okay,” she whispered. Just then she would have done anything he asked, because she was thrilled he was alive.
Sam closed her eyes in concentration. She struggled to disperse the awesome storm. It took more effort to stop the thing than it had to form it.
Her head pounded twice as hard once the house fell into a silence cut only by the frantic scratching of the foolish witch. But it wasn’t bad once Dion wrapped his arms around Sam and made her sit in his lap. They remained clinging to each other for several moments.
She left Dion only long enough to knock the other witch unconscious with a right hook to the temple. And then she was back, slipping into his arms for a warm hug.
“She’d be dead if she’d hurt you,” Dion told Sam as his big hand stroked over her head.
“That’s exactly how I felt,” Sam heard herself grumpily replying. “And she did hurt you.”
There was no response at first from the weretiger. “I promise she’ll get what’s coming to her.” And then he teased, “Want to punch her again?”
“No,” she grumbled. “I want to stay right here.”
He gave a soft laugh. “Good.”
Sam nuzzled her head into the crook of his shoulder.
Dion cleared his throat, a strange, uncertain sound that caught her attention. “You wouldn’t by any chance want to get dinner sometime with an odious man, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Sam continued as Dion’s muscles stiffened beneath her. “Because I only want to get dinner with you. And you’re most definitely not an odious man.”
The weretiger let out a sexy growl. And then he kissed her—a breath-stealing, heart-bursting affair of searing lips claiming hers. It was their first kiss without obligations hanging over them. It wouldn’t be their last if Sam had anything to say about it.
Chapter Seventeen
Dion knew he must have been a very good boy when he spotted Sam making her way through the club in her lacy black dress. Months together and she’d never once shown him the garment, which displayed hints of skin with every shift of her hips. She’d been holding out on him.
Or more than likely he’d warped her every bit as much as she’d warped him. Perhaps she’d bought the garment specifically for him, much as he’d taken to enjoying sex behind closed doors.
Whatever the case, Dion was glad he’d hired helpers for her rather than entering the catering field. And that Kevin kept Kari busy cramming for her first college exam. Otherwise, Sam wouldn’t have been free on a Saturday night to meet him at the Underground club down the block from the restaurant.
Dion stretched his arms along the back of the booth he’d claimed, exactly as he had the first time she walked into his restaurant. His dick lengthened in anticipation of her arrival. But this time when his lips curved, the pleasure wasn’t from the thought of humiliating her, it was from the knowledge she’d be going home with him tonight.
She sashayed between the tables edging the dance floor with a nearly predatory gleam in her moss-green eyes. He let his gaze trail down her bare legs. She wore those half boots—the black ones with the heels—he’d fucked her in that night in his office. Sam knew he loved those shoes. Almost as much as the gold ones he’d fucked her in sever
al times since.
The Air witch stopped at a table on the way. He twitched when she set her shoe atop one of the seats. Sam sent him a mischievous look as she bent over her knee, teasing him with her delay. Her fingers worked on the boot as if something was unfastened. Dion watched her hand’s path to the black leather and then up the line of her leg to the hem of her dress. His breath froze.
She wasn’t wearing any panties.
Beneath the dress that could barely be called a dress, his little witch was nude. Dion’s dick surged against his leather pants as he took in the sight of her shaved pussy taunting him from afar.
He could taste her on his tongue. The spicy scent of her arousal floated into his nose across the space. Dion couldn’t recall being this aroused in his entire life.
Sam set her foot down, smirking because she knew exactly what she’d done to him. He struggled to rein in his desire. As much as he needed her in this exact instant, it was too much to ask. They were in a heavily crowded club. Everyone knew him and most knew her.
His restaurant wasn’t far. If it came down to it, he’d drag her there and fuck her on the sofa.
“Mind if I join you?” the imp asked once she reached his booth.
“I’ll mind if you don’t,” he growled.
She sent him a breezy smile and then pushed one of his metaphorical buttons with her next question. “What will you do if I walk away?”
“You’re not walking away. Not without me dragging you out of here.”
He saw the flash in her eyes and knew months ago she’d have snarled right back at him for saying something so imperious. Now they were comfortable with each other.
Dion might be an Alpha but Sam was no Beta. He’d known that way back when she bravely voiced her poor opinion of him in front of the Underground. But she’d broken through the last barrier in his heart when she protected him from Dale’s sister.
This independent, fiercely protective woman was the only creature he’d ever truly love. He would mark Sam as his. Soon. And she would ask him to.
Sam set her knee on the vinyl seat and then slid a few inches toward him. He watched her every motion, unwilling to miss so much as a sashay.
She set a single black-painted nail against one perfect tit. “How do you like my dress?”
“It’s obscene,” he told her in all honesty. “I fucking love it.”
Her lips had threatened to purse in irritation before he finished his answer. But then she smiled.
“But I don’t want you wearing that anywhere I’m not,” he added, noting the attention she’d drawn simply walking across the club.
Sam lifted her head of dark hair for him almost gravely. “You’re the only one I want to wear it for. I bought it for you.”
“I like the thought of you buying things for me.”
“You’re going to like this next part so much better.”
She dropped her weight to one palm and then lowered her head into his lap. Dion’s mouth stalled in the middle of a question he’d already forgotten. The Air witch gazed up at him with a wicked look curving her red-painted lips as she reached for the fasteners on the front of his leather pants.
“Are you sure?” he croaked when he realized what she planned. Dion took hold of her chin before she could close her mouth over his newly freed dick. “I’m not going to be able to stop once you start.”
She nodded her chin as much as she could while he gripped it. “I’m sure. I want it, Dion. I want you to fuck me. Here. In front of all these people.”
People was a loose term. He scanned over the crowd on the dance floor and those at the nearby tables. There wasn’t a vanilla human among them. More than one faction member was fixated on them. And one checked out his girl’s ass where it hovered in the air beside the table. He struggled with the competing emotions of sharp lust and furious jealousy.
But that individual could only look. He couldn’t touch Dion’s Sam. No one in this town would dare think otherwise.
He forgot all about their onlookers when Sam’s naughty red lips closed over his dick. She’d been good at oral before, but after months of practice she was exceptional. Dion wasn’t going to last long. And he had ideas for what was to come.
“As much as I love your mouth on my dick, I don’t want to come in your mouth tonight,” he told her at a low volume. Dion patted his lap. “Come over here, sweetheart.”
She eagerly slid the remainder of the way. Dion twisted on the seat until there was enough room for his sweet little witch to fit on his lap. Sam carefully hiked her dress until her bare skin warmed his. She positioned herself just so, and then dropped low.
Dion came out of his skin as his swollen tip spread her pussy lips wide and her muscles eagerly formed around him. She felt like paradise every bit as much now as she had the first time. Pleasurable waves rolled over him, drowning out the sound of everything in the club but her.
He could do nothing but press his lips to her ear and murmur, “I love you, Sam.”
“You’d better,” she chuckled, even as she lifted herself with a shuddered sigh and then brought herself back down. “I don’t fuck just anyone in public.”
Dion let out a low groan. He definitely wouldn’t last long if she kept this up. “If I have my way, you’ll never fuck anyone but me anywhere.”
“Does the big bad tiger promise?”
“Just ask, sweetheart,” he responded in all seriousness. “And I’ll seal the deal.”
Sam hiccupped on her next breath. It clenched her glorious muscles around him. His eyes rolled up into his head as his brain dissolved.
She coiled her arms around his neck, pressing her lace-covered tits against his chest. Sam gasped into his ear on his next thrust. “I’m close, Dion. You’d better be too.”
He was holding back by a thread. But it was too soon. He fully intended to take advantage of the gift she’d given him. He’d start by bringing her at least once with his tongue.
On top of the table.
Dion brushed his whisky aside with a rough motion of his arm to make way for something far better. He hauled his panting witch onto the smooth surface he’d cleared. She tightened her grip on his neck, glancing behind as if he were angling her toward some precarious edge.
Sam didn’t voice the question filling her features; she didn’t need to. They’d been together long enough that she’d understand exactly what he planned. The soft whimper she released proved it.
But she was wrong. So wrong.
Rather than lifting her gauzy dress and lowering his head to her folds as she would expect, Dion flipped her onto her stomach, her thighs pressing to the edge of the table and her legs extending around him. Gently he pressed at her spine until she flattened against the surface.
Over her back, Dion took in the club before him. They had the attention of more than one faction member now. Crisp bills extended from multiple hands. Bets were being made.
Would the weretiger Alpha really fuck his girlfriend in public? The witch who had called him odious?
A smug smile curve his lips. The Underground had no idea.
Sam’s muscles went initially rigid before relaxing as he grazed his fingers along her hips. She knew he’d never hurt her. How things had changed since they first met.
Dion carefully spread her ass cheeks, gazing at the waxed hole she’d unknowingly prepared for him. He lulled her into a false sense of security by slipping his hand beneath her, through her slick folds. She was more than ready for him. The venue played a role, he was sure. Sam had admitted as much. And though they’d experimented with hasty sex in hidden places, she hadn’t been brave enough to take the next step.
Until now.
She would be rewarded. He’d see to it.
Dion circled her clit with the slow, steady motion she enjoyed most. Sam’s breath hitched twice before settling into a long, pleased sigh. The noise increased when he curled a second hand beneath her, coating it in her cream. She popped up onto her forearms, glancing back over her s
houlder before her body settled into motion.
Sam’s hips worked rhythmically against his palm, imitating the sex act he was withholding. He brought his hand back past her pussy to pause at her forbidden hole. The slow pace didn’t alert her to what he intended. That changed when he carefully eased his index finger into the tight, hot little space.
Her sharp hiss brought a smile to his lips. As did the squeeze she gave her breasts. Sam enjoyed ass play but had yet to admit it. He’d make her proclaim it when they were finished tonight.
A deep groan escaped him when she tugged the bodice down to get at her nipples without the gauzy fabric in the way. Time to take this to the next level. Dion dropped his face against her ass. Each of her muscles froze. Now she knew what was next.
He spread her cheeks deftly and then dove forward, driving his tongue into her ass. She writhed and gasped beneath him with adorable mewls that drew his balls impossibly tight. Only his firm grip kept her exactly where he needed her. He loved when she lost control with him nearly as much as he loved bringing her pleasure. The dick straining his pants proved he definitely got off on it too.
“Dion,” she cried out at full volume. “Oh Dion!”
He smiled because she no longer called on her patron god during sex. No, now she called only on him as if he were her patron.
“Oh shit! That’s so fucking good!” Sam howled with feeling everyone in the club would note.
Vaguely, he was aware of commentary all around. He considered stopping for all of half a second. It would be a crying shame to end this before she came. Instead, he went to town.
Dion worked his fingers over her clit until she fairly hummed beneath him. The soft keening coming from her throat was a good sign. Her orgasm was on deck, and not a moment too soon since his dick was on the brink of spurting.
Together they’d built up his endurance these past months. But tonight at the club, in front of his peers, the situation was simply too fucking hot to hold back.
