by Ann Macela
“Look, Irenee, the whole concept is crazy, right out of a fairy tale. I’m not Prince Charming, Cinderella. How can you believe in it so strongly?”
“I’ve never known anything else, it’s part of my world, and I’ve seen it in action. My best friend from college found her mate our senior year. My parents are soul mates, like every other practitioner couple I’ve ever met. It’s not supposition or make-believe to me. It’s reality, and since you’re a practitioner, it’s reality for you, too.”
“In another universe, maybe.”
Obstinate man. Okay, what evidence could she use to persuade him? What argument to convince him of practitioner reality and her as his mate? She almost despaired when no ideas came to mind. Then she took a good look at him. A light blue tinge of an aura surrounded him.
Of course, the absolutely only voice she knew he’d listen to. She looked him straight in the eye. “For you to accept it honestly and not because of coercion, let’s ask the question another way. What does your hunch tell you about it and me? Are we soul mates?”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the blue went from light and faint to dark and bright and surrounded his entire body. He froze and stared at her with big golden-green eyes. This time he did look exactly like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
“Holy shit!” Jim couldn’t decide whether to clutch his head or his stomach. His hunch antennae started whipping back and forth like they were in a hurricane. His center burned like the entire country’s Fourth-of July displays were going off right under his breastbone. Through it all, the mother of all hunches was working toward a conclusion he knew would be the absolutely right, totally correct, take-to-the-bank, impossible answer.
He tried to stand, maybe with some goofy idea to get away, but his knees buckled. He slid to the floor and curled up on his side in a ball around the pain.
The hunch mechanism in his head churned on. Yes, he was attracted to her. Extremely. Yes, he wanted her. Yes, he wanted a family. Yes, having a soul mate—her, all his—would put an end to his loneliness, his rootless-ness, his bone-deep need for someone in his life who gave a damn whether he was alive or dead. Yes, he wanted somebody to help him in his cause.
Yes, yes, yes!
But first, he had to recognize what he’d been keeping behind the wall in his head, what he’d been longing for, what was now almost in his grasp.
Out of the torment came a crystal-clear vision of his parents, standing in the kitchen, looking into each other’s eyes and saying, “I love you, my soul mate.”
Oh, my God.
Yes, deep down, that’s what he wanted—her, a family of his own, her, companionship, her, togetherness, love, her, her, her. Was all of it really his, simply for the asking? How could he be truly happy after what he’d let happen to his sister?
“Jim? Jim! Can you hear me? What’s going on?” Dimly Irenee’s voice made its way through the waves of pain and revelation.
He opened his eyes. She was kneeling by his side, one soothing hand on his forehead, the other gripping his top arm.
“Y-y-yes,” he forced the word out, grabbed her hand on his forehead, and pulled it closer to his center. The pain in his middle eased.
“Jim. How do you feel? Can you straighten out? Where does it hurt?”
“Irenee.” Her name came out more as a prayer than a call for help—or maybe they were both the same. Saying it brought her gaze to his, and the warmth and caring in her eyes almost made him want to cry. Nobody had looked at him like that in a very long time. It gave him the strength to press her hand against his center.
The pain stopped.
It was gone, just like that.
He blinked up at her, even managed a smile of sorts.
She smiled and sat up.
Her movement took her hand away from contact with his chest.
Wham! And, just like that, the pain returned—doubled.
He pulled her hand to its previous position, reached his bottom arm around her back, and jerked the rest of her down beside him so they were on their sides, facing each other.
The pain vanished.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes big, brown, and puzzled.
It took him a second to get his breath back before he could croak, “When your hand touched my chest, the pain went away. When you sat up and your hand wasn’t touching, it came back worse. Nothing hurts now.”
She raised her head and glanced at their parallel bodies, then back at him. A little smirk played around her mouth, and her eyes twinkled when she said, “We can’t stay like this forever, though, can we? I’m fine, to use your words. I don’t hurt. The imperative knows I believe in it, and I’m willing to give our relationship a try. What about you? What does your hunch say?”
“Thank you, Ms. Voice of Reason, for your analysis.” He closed his eyes. Crunch time. After this episode with such awful agony, he couldn’t pretend he was okay or nothing special was going on. His hunch was beating on the back of his forehead with its answers. He took a deep breath—inhale, exhale—and opened his eyes. “Okay. It got me. The damn imperative and whole soulmate thing are real.”
“You’re sure.”
“Absolutely, positively,” he said and realized he meant it, unequivocally.
She smiled, and it turned into a great big grin.
His center cooled to a comforting, contented warmth and vibrated.
A happy notion entered his head—or somewhere—and he acted on it. He gave her a quick kiss and asked, “If we’re soul mates, do we get to fool around right away? Don’t we have to bond or something? What about our first mating?”
She stared at him with those big chocolate eyes, but said nothing.
So, he kissed her again. This one was not quick.
The idea of their actually mating blew most other thoughts totally out of Irenee’s head. His kiss obliterated any left over. Somewhere in the middle of it, she realized there was no possibility in the world she could have anticipated the impact he had on her with a simple touch of his lips.
Simple? No way!
His scent enveloped her, his tongue and lips were fire and satin on her mouth, and he tasted like tiramisu, only better. Her center heated, a warmth that simultaneously comforted and excited. Magic energy skittered along her nerve endings exactly like she was about to cast a big spell, and her blood began to race through her veins.
He deepened the kiss, and she did some deepening of her own, tangling her tongue with his, running hers along his bottom lip. He seemed to like it because he groaned and pulled her closer.
Not close enough. She wanted, needed more, and she managed to get her lower arm around his neck and her top arm around his back so they were chest to chest.
Better.
Worse.
When he pressed his top leg between hers and lifted hers over his hip, the ache started, first in her breasts and then lower. Her cotton shirt and jeans seemed too tight, too constricting, too rough. She could feel how much he wanted her, and she pressed herself to the bulge in his pants.
He grunted, rubbed his hand up and down her back, cupped her backside, and kneaded. Even through the thick denim, he seemed to be touching her bare skin, and she wished she could purr.
Maybe she didn’t have to. She could feel his center vibrating, and hers began to oscillate in unison, in harmony. Blissful, absolutely blissful.
He moved his hand from her back to her side, up her rib cage, and to her front, where he halted, just under the curve of her breast. She could feel her breasts swell, her nipples tighten.
Why did he stop? She needed his touch higher, right where she was aching.
He lifted his head, broke the kiss. “Irenee.”
She opened her eyes to look into those golden-green eyes, so hot with desire they almost melted her heart.
“Say the word, and we’ll take this to its logical conclusion,” he said in a low, gruff, slightly breathless tone.
The question wrenched her mind out of t
he glorious lethargy into which it had sunk.
She wanted to say yes. Oh, how she wanted to say yes.
Except ... a feeling, a notion, a voice, a premonition, maybe even a hunch in her was saying it was sooooo soon. Tooooo soon.
She took a deep breath to tell him no.
At the top of her breath before she could say the word, he loosened his arms, separated them a few inches. “Yeah, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’m somehow not ready either.”
She exhaled, let go of him, and flopped back on the carpet. He did the same. Her body was tingling and not happy to stop. She managed, however, to exert some control over her mind. He was right. It was a gigantic step, and she wasn’t ready. Not really, not truly.
He still had his bottom arm under her head, and he pulled her to him until she was curled in his arm with her head on his shoulder.
“This is all going so fast,” he said. “I’m used to drug deals going wrong in a flash. I know where I stand then—and I can shoot back. There’s so much to come to grips with here. My body’s saying, ‘Go,’ but my mind, and maybe my hunch, is saying, ‘Slow down.’”
“Yes. It’s too fast—even for me, and I have an idea what’s coming. We’re out of control. And it’s like we haven’t done something yet that needs doing first.”
“Exactly. I hate that feeling. Hunch or no hunch, I won’t be bullied by a phenomenon or an imperative, no matter what other practitioners have put up with. We’ll decide when we do whatever we do.”
“I agree.” She sighed. Why did everything have to be so hard and complicated? “You haven’t heard all of it either. There are a couple more things I need to tell you—if I can just remember what they are after your kiss.”
He chuckled, a low rumble she felt rather than heard. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
She sat up, smoothed her hair back, and rubbed her face with both hands. He reached up to massage her back, and it felt so good, she could have let him do it for hours. Be strong, Irenee.
Propping herself up on one hand, she turned to him. She was about to put her other hand on his chest, before she caught herself. Who knew what reaction touching him anywhere near his center would cause?
He didn’t seem to care, because he captured the hand and held it to his chest right over the spot.
“Are you still hurting?” she asked.
He gave her a crooked smile. “Yes, but not where you mean. My center? No, your kiss seems to have made it all better.” He wiggled their joined hands. “So does this.”
He sat up also, pushed himself back so he could lean against the easy chair. He kept her hand in his. “Okay, what else? Does it have anything to do with what Whipple was saying—something about my understanding and full power?”
He was certainly a quick study and remembered details despite the confusion going on around him, and she supposed it’s what cops needed to do. Or ... “Another hunch?”
“Not really. I noticed how Whipple emphasized the words and you didn’t seem to like them.”
She scooted around more to face him. “It’s part of the pressure to settle the soul-mate issue quickly, and it doesn’t come from the imperative. Fergus wasn’t talking only about your training in the basics or my trying spells at my new, higher level. Besides bonding mates for life, the first mating carries the probability of enhancing magic abilities, increasing energy, potential, and level. With some matings, only one mate may have an enhancement, or nothing may happen with either. There’s no recorded instance of a mate losing power in the process, thank goodness.”
“So, with more power, we’d be better equipped to fight the Stone?” He looked both intrigued and skeptical at the same time.
“Yes, theoretically” She shrugged and rubbed her forehead. “The problem under these time constraints is—and I know from my own experience—it still takes a while to get used to your higher level, to learn what it can do, to practice the spells you know. Nothing is easy here, especially the more complicated spells and the precise modulation of energy. When you train with Johanna tomorrow, you’ll see that even more than you did today”
“Whipple wants us to mate so we’ll have greater power for fighting. He doesn’t give a flip about you and me and what our mating might mean to us, does he? He wants us to jump into bed tonight, doesn’t he?”
“No, that’s not quite right,” she answered. “He does care. He also knows what being soul mates means, how it feels, and how wonderful it is. He’s trying to speed up the process, that’s all. So we’re ready for whatever gets thrown at us.”
“I’m not trying to reject you, but personally, I’d like a little more time to get used to the idea—to all of the ideas. Where do you think our not taking the big step immediately would leave us?”
“Somewhere in the middle. Not totally prepared, but not helpless, either. We’re thinking alike—like soul mates—in wanting more time.” She had to smile at that thought. What a similarity to have.
He seemed to process the information for a moment before saying, “Okay, then let’s proceed at our pace, not someone else’s. What’s next?”
She felt her face grow warm simply at the thought of the last requirement for mating, and she bent her head in the hopes he hadn’t noticed.
Fat chance. Mr. Never-Miss-a-Trick used a forefinger to tilt her head back up and grinned at her. “Oh, man, I bet this is a good one.”
She made a face at him and launched into the explanation. Best to get it out of the way. “According to the rules for a first mating, to be sure the bond takes, we can’t use artificial barriers. No condoms. No pills.”
“Nothing? What about birth control?”
“We witches have our own, in the form of spells. We learn them and start casting in our teens. My personal spell is current.”
“I’ve never had sex without a condom,” he said. “You don’t have to worry, I’m healthy”
“I’m healthy, too.” She wouldn’t mention why.
He grinned again. “Honey, if you’re going to try to avoid subjects with me, you really need to learn a spell that stops you from blushing. Come on, what else?”
She sighed, looked down, and mumbled, “I’m a virgin.”
When he didn’t say a word, she glanced up. He was staring at her, an utterly blank look on his face like he’d been hit with a stun spell.
Finally he said, “A virgin? You’re what, twenty-five? How can you still be a virgin in this day and age?”
“Well, it’s not my fault!” She snatched her hand from his and crossed her arms, tucking her hands under them. “Remember what I said about the test for a soul mate being to try to make love, and if you couldn’t do it, you weren’t soul mates? The phenomenon or the imperative or a combination won’t let female practitioners make love until it’s with their soul mates. We feel no attraction or arousal whatsoever. Men can do it all and have sex, too. It’s very unfair.”
“In that case, why the birth control spells?”
“Because in this day and age, there’s a chance of being raped. Besides, the spells help keep a woman regular, if it’s any of your business.”
As she watched, his expression went from incredulous to blank to possessive. He put his hands on her shoulders and, leaning close, kissed her. She tried to resist him and not move, but he was so persuasive. Her semicooled blood reheated, and she melted again. By the time the kiss ended, she was in his lap and they were both breathless.
“Good,” he whispered in her ear, “then you’re all mine.”
“Remember, the bond works both ways.”
“Damn right.” He made it a flat declaration, and she knew in her bones he was as much hers as she was his.
They sat there for a few minutes, simply holding each other.
Finally he stirred and looked at his watch. “It’s getting late, and we have a big day ahead. You’re so damn tempting, if I don’t leave now, I never will. What do we do about breakfast tomorrow?”
“Why don’t we eat here? One
thing I’ve learned ever since my levels started rising—eat for fuel early. Training usually starts at eight. Come at seven?”
“Fine.”
They got up from the carpet. He gave her another searing kiss that left her knees weak, grabbed his bag, and left for his room on the other side of the center.
When she shut the door behind him, a small wave of loneliness swept over her. “Stop it!” she said to the imperative. “We’re doing the best we can.”
Her center warmed, gave what seemed to her a happy flutter, and subsided.
“Thank you.” She wobbled off to bed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You let them get away? You stupid bastard! I give you a simple assignment—bring me Irenee Sabel, and you botch it!” Bruce Ubell struggled to get control of himself before he tried out one of the gifts from his Stone and melted the idiot on the spot.
No, that was not a good idea. The imbecile would be impossible to get out of the carpet. It was bad enough he was still soggy from his trip into the swamp.
“I’m telling you, Mr. Ubell,” his highly recommended enforcer whined, “they had some sort of secret weapon. The woman stuck her hand out of the car, and she must have had something in it—a ray gun maybe—and the car just blew up! We couldn’t do nothing except get outta there. Good thing we did, because some white Hummers—the big, original kind—came after us.”
“You didn’t lead them back here, did you?” The last thing he needed—the Swords on his doorstep in the next minute.
“Nah,” the man answered. “We lost them, and we’ll ditch the SUV we came back in. We stole both of them, so nobody will be able to trace them to us.”
“She had a man with her, you said? Who?”
“Never saw him before. He was a big guy, handled himself well.” The thug rubbed his jaw as if in memory. “Probably six-feet-plus, brown hair. I did get his license plate when we followed them to the restaurant”
“Give it to me.”
The man dug a limp, still wet piece of paper from a pocket. He unfolded it and handed it over.
