by Lauren Dane
“Max! It’s good to see you.” An elderly woman toddled over and Max grinned at her before hugging her and kissing both cheeks.
Rapid-fire conversation in Spanish followed. They talked about her. The woman thought she was pretty, told him it was about time he saw women who had curves, flesh, hips made for babies. Max said he liked that too, grinning as he requested a bottle of the house red and the house special for both of them.
After the brief introduction, they’d settled into a booth she felt swallowed up by.
“I don’t drink,” she murmured.
He looked at her, surprised. A stab of satisfaction lanced through her. He’d had her so off balance she was glad to turn the tables on him.
“What? You think a white girl like me can’t speak Spanish? Or are you offended I don’t drink?” she teased.
He laughed. “Kendra, I’m pretty sure a girl like you, white, brown or pink, can do lots of things. You’re just that able I suppose. As for you not drinking.” He shrugged. “What’s it to me? What would you like instead of wine?”
“Coffee would be good and then water. What’s the House Special?”
“Steak and lobster. Meat is aged, lobster is the size of a compact car. Stuffed mushrooms and a salad to start. Creamed spinach, a baked potato to go with the entrée and crème brûlée to finish. Or you can have the chocolate decadence cake, if you prefer. It’s an excellent meal.”
“Yeah if you’re four people.” She laughed.
“I’ll eat your leftovers.” He looked up as a server brought the wine and some glasses. “Thank you. Can you bring coffee please? And water.”
She liked this man. Liked the straightforward way he dealt with everything. He wore his confidence like a second skin. He radiated everything she’d ever thought was good in a man. Everything she’d not chosen before.
A basket of bread called her name though she knew she’d get filled up, she couldn’t resist. “Want a slice? This is so good and warm that I’m feeling generous and I’ll even butter it for you.”
“Who am I to refuse such an offer? Yes, thank you.”
Their fingers brushed as he took the bread from her and heat radiated through her. And then he brought it to his lips and she had to clamp down on her nerves to keep from shivering. Cripes she’d never found herself so ridiculously hot for a man that merely watching him take a bite of bread would make her wet.
The food began to arrive at a leisurely clip and Kendra relaxed as her blood sugar balanced. She’d overdone it and depleted her body as well as her magick. If she hadn’t had Renee and the shifters in that room to tap into, she’d be in bed with a blinding headache. Before Mary had left, she’d given Kendra some exercises, ways of gathering the ambient magickal energy all around to enhance her own power. Without that, dealing with whatever had attempted to attack them earlier would have been far more difficult.
“So, tonight?” Max started as he speared a mushroom and ate it whole.
“What about it?” She busied herself with the food in front of her.
“Why didn’t I notice your snarky streak before today, I wonder? I mean, I noticed your bitchy streak. And I mean that as a compliment. But the snarky thing…” he paused as his gaze roamed over her face, lingering on her mouth before he spoke again, “…well that’s new.”
“I just grow on people that way I suppose. Or maybe you never looked closely enough.” Most people didn’t. Most people looked at the surface and never went any further.
He leaned toward her, giving her that focus she knew shifters were known for. Renee had told her once that when she first met Galen, when he’d given her his total attention she’d been totally swept off her feet.
“Oh I’ve looked. Kendra, I’ve looked and looked and looked some more.”
She swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry.
“Tonight when Galen touched your arm. You reacted. I scented panic when I blocked the door, but you’re not afraid of me. What was it?”
She turned her face away, not comfortable with the topic. “I wanted to follow up and go outside. The fresher the trail of whatever magic is used, the easier it is to identify and possibly trace back. In fact, because they possess artificial energy, magic they’ve stolen rather than magick they’ve earned, it’s easier to use to track them. I was eager and you all treated me like the stupid, fragile woman who didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground. Of course I reacted.”
He sat back as they brought her coffee. She stirred and he watched.
“Did you know that jaguars are keen hunters? We’ll just wait and wait until the perfect time to pounce.” He poured a glass of wine. “This doesn’t bother you?”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t drink, but I don’t care if you do.”
“Okay then. So, here’s the deal, I’m going to let you go for now. But you need to know that I know your answer is bullshit. My nose doesn’t lie and as it happens I’m damned good at reading people.”
While she loved and didn’t fight her physical attraction to him, he seemed to have this power to look right through her. It left her exposed and uncomfortable.
He leaned back in his seat again. “Tell me about yourself. You pick the topic.”
“Why?”
“Why are you so defensive? I like you. I want to know you better. You can’t know people unless they tell you things about themselves. Help me here. Unless you don’t want to get to know me.” She might have felt bad, but the look on his face as he said the last bit was so arrogantly confident she couldn’t. She was, despite herself, charmed.
“I’m a teacher. I love junk food with an unholy level of devotion.” She paused when a plate was slid in front of her, heaped with a lobster the size of a terrier and a steak so beautiful she nearly wept. “Wow. This is…wow.”
The server beamed. “I’ll pass that on to the kitchen.”
Max nodded his thanks, turning his attention back to Kendra. “Why did you become a teacher?”
She ate a few bites, feeling a lot better when she had. “My aunt is a teacher. I grew up around teachers. It just seemed like it was what I wanted to do and be for as long as I can remember. I like my job a lot. This school I just started with has a curriculum I really believe in. My kids are all smart and reasonably well behaved.” She smiled, eating more. “Oh my God, I’m so glad we came here. This is the best restaurant dinner I’ve had in a very long time. This place is special.”
He grinned, obviously pleased. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. The owners are my godparents so I grew up coming to eat here. All our family birthday dinners were here. Still are.”
That was nice. And it made him even more attractive.
“Why are you a lawyer?”
“My dad is. My mom was, now she’s a judge.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug, and she tried not to goggle her eyes when they brought him a second steak. She wanted his metabolism. But no. Her ass got fat when she ate too much and her car got stolen while he could eat eighty-five pounds of food and be all hot and hard. The man left his car running at the curb for heaven’s sake! Hers got stolen in less than two months since she’d moved to town. He was gorgeous, intelligent, well spoken, sexy, arrogant, well educated, powerful, and he had a lot of money. Jeez.
“What on earth are you thinking?” His voice broke into her thoughts.
“Just that I wished I had your metabolism.”
“Mmm hmm. Anyway, like you, when I was a kid I knew it was what I wanted to be. In high school I was on the debate team and we had a mock trial. I was hooked on trial work from then on. I love my work. I’m good at it and I get to do it with my family. It’s a nice continuity in my life. I like it when things work that way for me.”
“Somehow I don’t think they’d dare to be otherwise. I’d love to see you in action someday.” She picked up her coffee and drank, mentally kicking herself for saying that out loud.
He smiled in that way of his and it made her tingly.
“Any time. You’re in the building
to see Renee just about every day, you should stop by my office.” He leaned in. “Have I ever shared this recurring fantasy I’ve had about you, me and my desk?”
She nearly choked on her potato as heat flushed through her. She wasn’t going to let this slip through her fingers not when she wanted him so much. “You haven’t. What’s stopping you now?”
The smile turned seductive and then secretive. “You haven’t told me about these magick lessons you’re getting from Mary.”
“Are you a tease, Max de La Vega? Hmm? Get me all worked up only to fall back?” She crossed her legs, squeezing her thighs tight.
He raised his brows for a moment as a smirk played around that mouth of his. Mischief lit his eyes and damn it, she fell a few more feet for the man.
“I like you, Kendra Kellogg. You keep surprising me in all the best ways.” He took her hand a moment, kissing her fingertips. “Here’s the thing, I want to know you. We’ll have sex. Lots and lots of it. I plan on taking my time exploring every lush inch of your body. For now? The lead-up will be foreplay.”
“Are you always this pushy?” Reluctantly, she pulled her hand back because, well, how could she get to her lobster without it? And if she wasn’t going to get laid, she might as well eat some lobster.
“I am. My mother says if she’d have let me, I’d have run the entire household by the time I was six or so. But she’s a bigger alpha than the rest of us so I learned from the best. I’m bossy, but not controlling. Yes?”
She held his gaze for long moments as he saw right to the bone. She wanted to run and hide, but at the same time, just having someone know her felt good.
Taking a deep breath she said, “It’s not what you think.”
“What is it then?” He took her other, non-lobster-eating hand, concern on his face.
Could she tell him that story here? She didn’t think so. “No. Not here. Not right now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even said that. You unlock stuff inside me and I find myself blurting things out.”
“Why don’t you drink?”
Gah! “So what did your mother do when you got all nosy and pushy? You know, to get you to back off and let a girl eat her eight thousand calories in peace?”
He laughed. “You and she like each other. She told me the other day that she thought you’d be perfect for one of us. She thought maybe Gibson. I disagreed quite firmly with that.”
She’d met his mother twice now and the woman was scary, but also vibrant and absolutely gorgeous. She had this energy, the sort of personal gravity that pulled people’s attention to her.
Most shifters felt different to her than humans. Their energy, that personal electricity that was the spark for her own magick, seemed to be set at a lower frequency. A hum she felt in her belly. But most of them, while extraordinary, were of a normal kind of extraordinary. Which, she knew seemed odd, even to her brain, but it was the only way it made any sense at all.
But some of them, the ones who tended to be more alpha in their group structures, possessed the sort of magick laden with something else, unique and delicious. It made them charismatic, some more polarizing than others. Compelling.
Max was this way. His mother more than his father, though his father had something else, a paternal energy that was strong but nurturing and protective. It was rare for her to feel so comfortable around a man his age. His jamboree respected him and feared him because he was the kind of man who took care of things when they needed doing. No matter how they needed doing.
Kendra had to admit she was wildly curious about shifters, most especially the cats. There had been some literature she’d come across online, but not a lot and some of it was mythology. They’d kept to themselves and attempted to keep details of their lives, vulnerabilities and strengths out of the public eye. Too much attention left them dangerously exposed.
As a result, most of what she knew had come from Renee and what she’d seen herself in the time since she’d come to Boston. They didn’t mate the way wolves did. There wasn’t a mystical bonding that occurred after sex. Instead, cats had this intensity of connection with their imprinted partners. It looked very much similar to the wolves’ bond from the outside. The details of the imprint seemed to hinge a lot on the individual cat and his or her partner, but there was some sort of chemical attraction and scenting along with biting. Not like a vampire or anything. A mark of sorts. Kendra couldn’t help the warmth in her belly at the thought of Max biting her like that.
Max waited, she knew, understanding she was running through all sorts of stuff in her head. The smile he wore told her he knew she had sexytime thoughts in there too.
“I can’t wait until you know me well enough to share whatever it is you’re thinking right now. When Galen first brought Renee around, I thought she wasn’t good enough for him. She was human, and despite where we are now, there’s still prejudice. And she was, she is, hard to get to know. So they met and Galen left on a trip with Armando. Armando is the baby of the family, he and Galen are tight. Anyway, Galen starts telling me about this woman he’s in love with.” He worked his way through the rest of his food and she pushed her still-heaping plate toward him before she exploded. And she had to leave room for cake.
“So he brings her to Sunday dinner at the house. Now, as you know by this point, Sundays with us are way more than just a meal. Any given Sunday there will be thirty people there, kids all over the place, lots of playing and physical stuff. So he brings this woman and she’s tiny and sort of scared and I took one look and judged. Which is stupid of course. In the first place, Galen is not an idiot about people the way he is about football. And because after about three hours with her, I knew she was so much more than what she appeared to be.”
She frowned because he was sweet and a big part of her, though not the part where her clit resided, hated that he was because she wanted to keep him away and he just kept sliding under her defenses.
“I’m telling you this, because I want you to know me too. Because that’s how you build something. Story by story, experience by experience. I ask because, yes, I’m nosy, but mainly because I want to figure you out. I want you to let me in.”
She didn’t want to talk about other stuff, but she could share her plans and the things she was learning. “Mary is teaching me how to channel other energies. She’s been teaching for thirty years. Rosemary and she were friends back in the day. She knew my mother too.”
She paused when a platter filled with desserts appeared with a flourish.
“I hate to say this, but I am so full. I don’t think there’s any way I could eat another bite.”
“You can have a bite of mine.” Max ordered the crème brûlée. “Just one and then I won’t pester you again.”
“I suppose I can do that. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you or anything.” She took a spoonful and moaned at how outrageously delicious it was. “You so weren’t kidding.”
When she opened her eyes, it was to find him staring at her in that way of his, and it sent a shiver through her.
“I love to watch you eat. You know that? You’re a sensual woman, graceful and carnal even. It’s”—he took a deep breath—“tantalizing.”
She fanned herself with her hand. “You’re such a tease.”
He tossed money down on the table and stood. “Will you invite me to your apartment? Or come to mine? I want to talk with you more and we should probably be in private when we do.”
She nodded, pretty much unable to speak because he looked so good and she wanted him so much.
Chapter Four
On the way out, she’d stopped to talk with Lettie, thanking her for the lovely meal. Max liked that she’d shown respect for a woman who was a great deal like family to him. Kendra had ended up at his side, close enough for him to shelter with his body as he walked her to the car.
She’d simply been where she was meant to be. A silly thing maybe, but it spoke to him and his sense of fate.
“I can buckle my own seat belt thanks,”
she said dryly, slapping his hands back.
“I know you can.” He would take her to his house. Let her scent live and breathe in his space. Show her what he could build for her, make for her, keep her safe and happy in. It would be more than a house, it would be a home. For both of them.
“So Mary is your aunt’s friend and she’s a witch like you?”
“Yes. Sort of. Mary, when she was young and left California, ended up with some not-so-nice people. It’s where she learned the darker kinds of power and magic. Then she met Craig, that’s her husband. He’s not a witch at all. A scholar actually. She was a student in his class, using him to get at his access to the museum’s antiquities collection. It was all very cloak and dagger. Instead, she fell in love with him and gave up dark magic. But she understands it, understands how energy works, and unlike a lot of other witches, she’s not afraid of other traditions.”
She said it while looking out the window. His brain was still crowded with all the details from dinner. From her deliberately sexually provocative behavior. Under the surface, Kendra Kellogg was even more interesting than on the outside. She’d rolled with his demeanor, had batted away his overly pushy behavior, but had opened up as he had. Had let him in a little. On her terms. In short, she was proving to be his match on every level.
How could he resist that?
“And she’s teaching you? How to deal with whatever is trying to get to Renee?” He paused. “And you. Damn it.” Of course. Of course she was a target too, and of course she hadn’t said anything. Though it was so obvious he wanted to kick himself. She wasn’t only a target due to her proximity to Renee, they’d want her for her, taking the threat against her to a completely different level.
“What’s the harm in being prepared? Even for a highly unlikely situation? Anyway, the kind of practitioners we’re dealing with, the ones attacking Renee, aren’t super powerful. Most of us aren’t. So I figure it’s a good thing to know how to deal with them. They use magickal properties and energy differently. Hard to fight it if you don’t know how. Some of them don’t use magick at all, at least not the kind Renee and I have.”
