by Lauren Dane
The building had good security but she still worked a protection spell around the car. Nell would also kill her if that car got scratched. They’d been friends since both could walk so it would be bad to kill each other over a car scratch.
Meriel wished she could call Nell right then, to ask for some advice about this whole situation. Meriel could probably track her friend down. Nell would take the call and not ever complain. She was sure no one would give her better advice, but Meriel wanted her friend to have a honeymoon free from work or drama. She’d tell Nell about it when she returned. It was just a few days. Until then she was on her own. She handled lawyers and psychos all day long; it wasn’t like she was ill equipped to deal with this guy.
He held a hand out.
She took it, swallowing back a gasp as their contact reawakened the spark between them and their power surged again.
Chapter 6
IT wasn’t until she stood in his living room that she made a decision and one she knew was right, even as she hated to say it out loud. “We can’t have sex tonight.”
He froze, blinking at her, disbelief on his features.
“What? Why? Did you hit your head on the way up from the garage?”
She allowed herself a long look at him. Holy crap was she in over her head here. He was so freaking hot. Long and tall, stylish. All the expensive clothes in the world couldn’t hide the very real fact that he was a predator though. He’d look delicious in a tux, but the brawler within would always be there, hinting at the edges.
So much more than he appeared on the surface. Which made her hungrier for him. She wanted to know his story. That longing to know was as powerful as her desire to be naked and sweaty with him.
That visual was so not helpful in her resolve. She twisted her fingers and ordered her hormones to knock it off. For all the good that did. They were doing a conga line and had two kegs tapped.
“I don’t know if I can explain this right.”
“Give it a try. Because I know you want me. I can feel it. I can taste your desire in the air.” He waved around agitatedly.
“Once we give in and have sex, this need between us will only get stronger.”
He interrupted with a sharp movement of his hand. “And this is bad why?”
It helped that he was being a cock. “Interrupt much? Seriously, do boys just say anything they have to to have sex? It’s like you’re all frozen at age fifteen.” She began to pace and he tossed himself on a nearby couch, arms crossed, glowering in her direction like she’d told him he couldn’t have a cookie until after dinner.
He made a sort of snorting sound that still managed to be smooth. “Please do enlighten me on why it’s bad to want each other more. And I’m going to have sex with you so I don’t need to say things designed to compel you.”
Smug bastard. He couldn’t know it, but she found boys to be utterly charming. Not because they tried to be. But because they were just totally from another universe. All that focus on sex, when they weren’t dickheaded manwhores like some men could be, was cute. She wisely withheld that commentary though. Stern. Yes, she needed to be stern.
“It’s become quite clear to me that you don’t know much about my world. You may or may not believe the whole bond-mate thing. I want you to want me for me. I want you to want what’s between us tomorrow and the day after. I don’t want to go forward and have sex and then next month or next year have you wonder, even just in the back of your mind if you would have made a different choice had we not rushed into sex.”
“Meriel, come here.” He held a hand out and she looked at him carefully. He was the human equivalent of sour cream and onion Pringles and egg rolls. So very good, but man, oh, man, could she be in trouble if she allowed herself to gorge on him.
Dominic started to laugh at how she looked at him. A few memories of what it was like to be a fifteen-year-old boy came back. “I promise we won’t do anything you don’t want to. I’ll stop when you say to.”
She snorted a laugh and moved to him, keeping some distance. “Next you’ll tell me you’ll only put the tip in. I’m onto you.”
Not liking the space between them, he grabbed her, pulling her boots off and freezing at the sight of her socks.
“You’re all business and then you reveal some small thing, like these socks.” He looked back to the Hello Kitty socks. He’d noted that she had socks on back at the club, but he was too busy looking at the legs and being bowled over by her presence to see the detail. The cat had on a ninja outfit and was wielding a sword looking silly and fierce. Just like she was.
“I like socks.” She blinked at him, he could tell, not sure whether to take him seriously or not. And he couldn’t really blame her. He wasn’t used to this whatever it was between them. He wasn’t an overly serious man any more than he was a silly one. He’d dated and he’d fucked a lot of women. He had women friends. But this was different and totally new territory for him. She made him feel things, want things he’d never imagined before.
“I like socks when they’re on you.” He slid his hand higher, over the curve of her calf, up her thigh, all while she watched him, clearly torn between interest and suspicion. “You’re taking me right back to high school, Meriel. What’s your middle name?”
Her brows knitted as she tried to figure out his game. She was out of her league, he was a con man, a master player and she didn’t have a chance against him.
Thank the heavens for it.
“Patrice. Why does this take you back to high school? Did you trick girls into sitting next to you and while complimenting their socks all innocent-like, you slid your hand up their thigh until your fingertips were just a whisper away from their panties? We’re all trained to foil your gender’s tricks, you know. I was a whiz at deflecting wandering hands.”
He sent her what was supposed to be a reassuring smile but she snorted so he knew she was on to him.
“I’m sure I said something like, I know you’re nervous, but I promise you’ll like it. Let me make you feel good, Meriel. I’m not teasing you now. I want that. How can it be wrong for me to want to give you pleasure?”
Her breath hitched when he pressed ever so lightly, the heat and wet of her a siren song. The simplicity of that moment felt so very right. Goddess he wanted her, wanted to possess her in every way imaginable.
Just a bit more and the heated crotch of her panties rested against his outstretched fingertips. Her lips parted on a soft sound of pleasure, a murmur, a groan, a wordless gust of expression that needed no interpretation.
Keeping his eyes on hers, he slowly pulled the silky material back until she was bared to his touch. He had to swallow and count to ten and then twenty-five when all that glorious sweet slickness met his fingers. He’d made her that way.
Her eyes found focus again and she started to speak.
“Ssshhh. Let me. I want to give this to you. We can talk more about your no-sex thing when I’ve made you come.” To underline his point, he stroked from side to side until her gaze went glossy again and she relaxed.
“This is a very bad idea. With your hands on me, it’s hard to think. All I want is more.”
“Then let me give it to you,” he nearly purred it as he touched her. Covetous. She brought out an intense greed in him. It filled him from head to toe.
“Are you listening to me? Sex is a deeply intimate act. Once we bare ourselves to each other like that it’s going to bind us on a basic level. Once it happens, our connection will only get stronger.”
He backed off slightly, not removing his hand entirely, but ceasing to stroke her.
“This is big. I know it and you feel it, but you don’t know enough about it to truly accept it. The way we feel together is intoxicating. Truly. Our chemicals and our magicks are meant to mix and work best as a unit. You don’t have to believe me, but I need to tell you.” She moved his hand back, out of her panties and he acquiesced, but stayed close.
“In a very real way, we’re drunk on each other.
I’m certain about this bonding between you and me. I was raised in a world surrounded by people with bond-mates. I know it exists because I see it every day.
“But you didn’t grow up in a clan and you don’t seem to know a lot about us. So while I’m sure of the bond, I want you to be too. If we do this tonight, you’ll wonder one day and that would break my heart.”
At those last words her bottom lip trembled just a bit and he ached to make it better.
That and he had to admit he understood her point.
“You’re going to kill me.” He moved her so that she fit against his side, not willing to not be touching her. “It’s going to be midnight shortly. Does that count as not rushing?”
She frowned at him, but then shook her head with a slow smile. “You’re going to be trouble.”
He laughed, surprised by her.
“I want to fuck you.” He sighed and then that intensity of his focus was back and she shivered. “And just so we’re clear, I will fuck you. But I understand your perspective and it can wait. Not a long time or I’ll explode.”
She snickered and he didn’t resist the urge to play his fingers through her hair. He liked being around her. She was the kind of woman who had her shit together. The calm and hyperefficient type he rarely ended up with and now he wondered why. He dug the self-sufficiency and the desire to ruffle her feathers and see just how wild she could be once he got down a few layers was nearly overwhelming.
“Why don’t you tell me about the bonding?”
“All right, I will.” She sniffed, slightly snotty and he dug it. “I’m going to give you the basics. You may know some of this so cut me some slack.”
He didn’t know much, he admitted inwardly.
“In every clan you’ve got two types of witches. Commonwealth witches, essentially ninety percent of the clan. And council witches.”
“Why the disparity? Why so many of them and so few of you?”
“Us. We’re freaks of nature.”
He narrowed his gaze. “What?”
“Most science points to a genetic anomaly. And a percentage of that percentage is compatible with each other. And when they connect their magick with the ascension — a spell that’ll unite our magick — they rise to an even greater level of power by several orders of magnitude. It’s our function, and our honor to use that extra power to run and protect the clan for the benefit of its members.”
He tended to see that point and yet it bugged him that the few ran the clan for the many. And he said so.
“The wards at Heart of Darkness? I’ve seen only a handful of witches who can work spells like that. You’re already powerful and unique. Now, me? I could have done it and not tapped into the font. Because I’ve been trained. If you choose to ascend, you’d be able to do it ten times over without much of an effort. So it’s not much of a surprise is it? That witches with that sort of power end up running things?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I get it. But it seems undemocratic.”
She shrugged. “It is undemocratic. We’re not a country, we’re a voluntary membership organization whose sole mission is to protect and enrich member witches.”
“Did you get training to rule then?”
“It’s easy to be flip when you don’t know anything. Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve been in training since before I took my first step. I work, on average, nearly eighty hours a week.”
“So do I.”
She raised one brow, very slowly. “And yet, I’m not attacking your life. It’s the other way around.”
“I’m not attacking anything.” Well, he supposed, it might appear that way. “Did you know your whole life you were meant to be full-council? I mean, because your mom is, you are too?”
She let him get away with his statement, but they both knew she did. “Your mother must have been as well as your father. Children born of unions between two full-council witches will be full-council. Mixed couples it’s about a quarter of the time.”
“It’s a wonder you’re not all inbred freaks.” As soon as it came from his mouth he wished he hadn’t said it.
“Such a way with words.”
“I don’t like my life and future dictated by a bunch of shit I had nothing to do with deciding.”
“So don’t.” She shrugged and tugged free and he felt her absence acutely. “I’m not interested in forcing you to do anything, much less be with me. I want you to make that choice of your own free will. You still have it.” She pushed to stand.
“I do? How’s that? You walk into my club, we have this, this thing between us and now I can’t get enough of you.”
She sighed. “It’s our chemistry. I explained that. Genetics, magick, all that is our personal stew. Yours and mine like each other.” She stepped into her boots and he sat straighter, alarmed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going home.” She held a hand out. “This is why I’m glad we didn’t have sex. Stay. Think.” She bent to her bag and pulled a card out. “Here. My numbers are on that. If we decide to go forward, you can try to get into my panties like everyone else. Work for it. I like opera and Thai food and steaks. You can call me for a date and we can get to know each other.”
He could see the hurt on her face. “Don’t go.”
“No. I need to. Because you and I are at totally different places. I grew up knowing this was my path. I greet this bond between us as a wondrous thing. You view it with suspicion. And I get it. You haven’t been educated about what we are and what we do.”
“This doesn’t mean you have to leave. Stay. Educate me.”
“You don’t want that right now and I can’t be here this way.” She picked her coat up and he moved to her.
“I want you. I like you, Meriel. But you can’t expect me to just jump on the bond-mate bandwagon when I didn’t even know I was a council witch until a few hours ago.”
“I know and I don’t. I’m happy to teach you about yourself and your history. If you want that, you know where to get hold of me.”
He stood there, confused and frustrated. “Let me walk you to your car at least.”
She shook her head. “No. I need to be alone right now.”
She walked out and emptiness washed through him at her absence.
Chapter 7
“I can’t believe you went without me last night,” Gage said when she answered her phone. She’d been wallowing a little, letting herself get sucked into a thousand boring little tasks to stop wondering if Dominic was going to call. Not that it had worked.
“First things first, how are you feeling?” Food poisoning sucked. No two ways about it.
“I’m good. My mother came over and did something, heaven knows what, but I’ll take it. I may even be ready to go back to work tomorrow. Are you all right? What happened?”
“He’s keyed in to the font now. Took care of it myself. Still, there’s a risk of exposure. I’m going to have to think on it and how I’ll approach it with the council next week. For now, I think the wards will hold and do the job.”
“I might pop over there just to check it out myself. Nell and I went to a club for paranormals in Las Vegas. I don’t actually think it’s the worst idea ever. It’s nice to have a place we can all go.”
“It is. Yes. But not at risk of exposure.”
“Goes without saying. Okay, so, Meriel, you know I’m your friend too, right? Is there something wrong? You sound … off.”
“I appreciate that very much. I do. I can’t really talk about it right now. I’m trying to get it all straight in my head and I have a hearing in an hour so I need to focus on that.”
He sighed. “Do you need me to hurt someone for you?”
She laughed. “Thank you for the offer. But no. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Offers of shoulders and ass kicking are open-ended. You know where I am if and when you want to talk.”
She hung up and stared at her screen for a few minutes. She’d been off her stride since s
he first looked Dominic in the eyes the night before. She hadn’t slept much, but she had to keep faith and believe he would call. The dating plan was solid, she felt. Real. And it would enable him to retain a measure of control.
A smile crept onto her face as she thought about that last bit. Dominic Bright was most definitely the kind of man who liked to be in charge. She hummed her appreciation at the naughty thoughts that had inspired.
Tossing and turning all night long hadn’t helped. She was utterly sure, but he wasn’t and she wasn’t sure she could change that if he wouldn’t listen. Who was she to mess with free will? He had to come to her of his own accord.
However, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t use every single tool at her disposal. Hello, this was a sort of contest. His wary resistance to clans against her appeal. She sat up with a smile. She had no doubt he wanted her as a woman, but he couldn’t trust that and he had good reason. So the dating thing would allow regular contact and a way for them to move in a positive direction she sincerely hoped included his bed and his naked body very soon.
He was a highly sexual man. Sensual in his choice of decoration in his home and even his office. The kind of man who knew exactly what he wanted and would pursue it relentlessly. Being the thing he pursued had to be pretty awesome.
She laughed, getting up and grabbing her files. This would be all right. They could do this, and she had no doubt they’d both enjoy it even more when they finally did end up sleeping together.
“SO repeat that.” Simon sipped a cup of coffee and grabbed another biscuit.
“Told you last night, dumbass. She’s my bond-mate.”
“So you met this person who’s like your magickal other half. She’s one hot-looking woman of immense power and training and she’s not here why?”
Dominic sighed. “I don’t even believe in this shit, Simon. I can’t just meet a woman and fall down in love with her ten minutes later. I don’t care what some mystical bond thing says. It’s not real. I don’t like not having a choice in how I feel.”
