by Trisha Telep
Her lips brushed his cheek in a whisper-soft caress, and then she was gone in a swirl of near-silent footsteps across the untamed grass.
One shot fired into the night, but a second later he heard the Scion shifter’s grunt of pain as Zola pounced on her, tangling them up so the wizard wouldn’t get a clear shot at her.
As Zola grappled with the shifter, Walker eased around to the edge of the porch. A shot whistled past, and he cursed. Without rounding the house, there was no way to sneak past the spell caster under the porch.
Screw this. He scrambled up the collapsed side of the porch, the wood creaking under his weight. Another loud report, this one accompanied by a blaze of pain in Walker’s arm.
He’d been shot, and he didn’t give a damn. He roared his anger and punched down through the boards to close his hand in the man’s hair. He managed to slam his adversary up against the wood three times before the listing porch collapsed.
“Walker?” Zola’s voice, edged with worry. “Are you all right?”
He closed his fingers around the gun and groaned as he rolled on to his back. “Peachy. You?”
An uncertain pause, and she echoed the word back to him in her accented English. “I am hoping that means good.”
“It means I’ll make it.”
The sound of flesh on flesh followed, a muffled grunt and then silence. “She is alive. Unconscious, but alive. I will call the Conclave. The Scions. Offer her for your pardon. A life for a life, yes?”
A life for a life. How could the Scions refuse, when the woman’s defeat rendered her life forfeit? “I think that’ll work out just fine.” Underneath him, the shattered boards shifted, and the spell caster groaned. “Maybe even twice over.”
Zola rose and crossed the yard, the moonlight glinting off her features. “Are you injured?”
“Just a scratch.” Walker rolled off the flattened porch and landed on his knees. “My jacket’s ruined, though.”
“Fool.” Her fingers slid into his hair and down, cupping his neck. Her words drifted to French, low and intimate. “I love you too much to lose you to stubborn pride. But if you walk into another trap without me at your side, I will kill you myself.”
“I screwed up, but never again.” Leaving her was, without a doubt, the most idiotic thing he’d ever done. Zola didn’t need his protection. She just needed him, and he knew the feeling. “We fight together?”
“As one. Always.” Her lips seized his in a breathless, desperate kiss, over almost before it began. “And now we call Alec Jacobson. He has a cage in his basement for situations like this. I’m afraid you will find they happen more often than not, if you stay here.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “I grew up around here. I know the lie of the land.”
“Then you know it will never be boring.”
Living in a plastic bubble wouldn’t be boring as long as Zola was with him. “Are you sure you can forgive me for sneaking out on you?”
A hint of laughter bubbled up as she reached into her pocket for a phone. “This time. But only if you take over my class full of adolescent male shifters. Perhaps a weekly reminder of the crippling effects of male ego will teach you a valuable lesson.”
It was far more than he deserved, but there was no way he’d squander a chance to make up for the hurts he’d visited on her in the past – the distant and the not so distant. “Make your call, Zola. The faster we get these two out of here, the faster we can be alone.”
The faster he could convince her she’d made the right choice.
Epilogue
“. . . so after the Scion representatives struck their deal with you, the Alpha escorted the whole mess of them back to New York on his jet. Got a call from him last night to let me know they’d left the country.”
Zola made a non-committal noise, only half of her attention on Alec’s voice as it spilled out of her phone. There were only six students in her adolescent shifter group – only males, because she refused to teach them in a mixed class when their hormones would be driving them to posture and preen for their classmates’ feminine attention. Any urge they might have had to fight for her attention had been knocked out of them within their first week, leaving a moderately serious group of youths on the cusp of manhood.
Manageable enough, until confronted with a shapeshifter male in his prime. Zola hid a smile behind her hand as Walker deftly handled another borderline challenge, patiently but firmly, setting the boy in his place without damaging more than his ego.
Alec was still talking, and Zola made a conscious effort to drag her attention back to the conversation in time to hear, “. . . all taken care of, then. Paperwork for the pride should be ready in a few days. If you need help getting them across the border—”
“We will be fine.” Considering all the trouble Alec Jacobson got himself into, owing him too many favours could prove to be an uncomfortable situation. “Thank you.”
She ended the conversation just as Walker ended the class, sending the boys out into the cool New Orleans evening. When the door swung shut behind the last one, she lifted an eyebrow. “Well?”
He flashed her a hint of a smile as he cracked open a bottle of water. “Well what?”
“Nothing.” Impossible not to admire the beauty of him, sweat-sheened golden skin and hard muscles and those eyes she’d now seen glazed with passion. Making love to him was new, but loving him was like remembering a move so ingrained it was instinct. Muscle memory, an amused part of her noted as she crossed the room to slip her arms around him. The heart is just another muscle.
Walker wove his fingers through her ponytail and pulled her closer, tilting her head up for a slow kiss, his open mouth teasing over hers. Hot, perfect, even before she parted her lips on a moan and realized he was determined to kiss her within an inch of her life.
Which made it even easier to catch his leg with her foot and spill them both to the ground. A breathless moment later she was straddling his waist with her hands on either side of his head. And because English was his native language, she ignored her self-consciousness and her odd accent and spoke from her heart. The words, in any case, were simple enough. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” He slid one hand to her hip, the other around to her back, cradling her close. “That’s why we’re stronger together.”
“And you should never forget it,” she whispered, before leaning in to kiss him again. Soft and slow, like she had all the time in the world.
Because she did.
In Dreams
Elissa Wilds
Time didn’t exist here. Not in this place. Not in these moments. Here, the air held an electric charge that swept through Anna when her feet touched the soft-as-silk sand and made her limbs shiver with excitement. Here, she breathed in the salty ocean air instead of city smog and the exhaust fumes of rush-hour traffic. No worries touched her mind. Nothing of the two-dimensional world she called reality could penetrate to this realm.
Which was a good thing.
The whole reason she’d decided to attempt astral travel was to escape from an unbearable reality. From a world where her husband was dead and she was alone. Two years had passed since Richard’s death, but it seemed to her a lifetime.
In the astral realm, a quiet peace filled her being and made the world she called home seem but a dream. A sad, unnecessary dream.
Anna glanced around with a quiet calm she had only recently developed. The first few times she’d attempted to astral travel, she’d been nervous and uncertain. She’d read books on the subject, but as much as the authors of those books reassured that nothing could hurt her here, it had taken a few successful trips for her to believe them. She’d learned quickly. With the slightest focus Anna could create what she wanted to see and experience. So of course, she came back here. To her dreamtime beach.
She loved the beach, but hadn’t seen much of it since she’d accepted the job in D.C. She’d been anxious to get out of Santa Barbara. To go anywhere as long as it was far
away from her life in California and the life she’d shared with Richard.
But running had proved pointless. Wherever you go, there you are.
Anna dug her feet farther into the sand and stared at the water rippling along the shore. Light flickered off the tourmaline blue waves. She wandered closer to the shore and knelt, catching her reflection in the water. Her dirty blond hair sparkled gold and her face was worry-crease free. She smiled with the realization once again that in the astral realm she was her brightest, most radiant self. The few extra pounds she’d gained over the holidays were irrelevant. Here, her slightly rounded hips and shorter than average frame was exotic, beautiful.
A slight breeze brushed over her skin, not too cool, not too hot.
“Perfect,” she murmured.
“Of course,” a deep voice spoke at her side. “All is perfect in the astral realm.”
Anna started, but before the sensation of fear could creep into her gut and send her hurtling back to her body – a lesson she’d learned the hard way the first few times she’d encountered another being during one of her astral trips – she forced herself to calmly turn and face the individual who’d spoken.
Her breath caught. He was tall and lean. Dark hair curled over the nape of his neck. He wore white pants and nothing else. The material hugged him in all the right places and shimmered as though the cloth were threaded with tiny diamonds.
The man stared, his emerald gaze studying her, his lips curved into a half smile.
“I know you,” he said.
She shook her head. This was not a man she’d soon forget. “No, I don’t think so.”
He circled her, his limbs moving in that soft, unfocused way in which everything moved in the astral realm. Images, places, things, seemed to shift on a sigh. Anna still found the process disorienting. He was disorienting.
He was behind her. She shivered as his hand touched her hair and he fingered the strands lightly. “Your hair shines like gold.”
He trailed his fingers over her shoulder and arm, then her back. His touch was soft, fleeting, yet it seemed to Anna that there was fire beneath his fingertips. A heat that made her insides quiver and dance in a way they hadn’t in a long time. Another time, another place, she would have yanked herself away from this man, this stranger who approached her with such strange familiarity. But she didn’t have to follow normal convention here. She didn’t have to behave with propriety. In this hazy place of no time, she could do exactly as she wished . . . without concern for consequence.
And it had been so very long since she’d been touched by a man.
He stood in front of her again, hands at his sides. Anna frowned, wanting those large, elegant hands on her body again, caressing her. The stranger tilted his head to the side and studied her, his expression curious and confused. Then he leaned in close. His face nuzzled her neck as he breathed in deeply.
“Ah,” he murmured. “You smell so good. Like fresh honeysuckle. So sweet . . .”
His breath danced over her skin, tickling her flesh. “I – I love the smell of honeysuckle,” she managed to gasp out, struck by the inanity of her words. How she smelled of this, she didn’t know, but anything was possible in this place. It delighted her to know that her scent pleased him.
Hot lips touched her neck with the slightest of caresses. Desire arched through her body and dipped between her thighs. “Oh!” Her breath hitched. She certainly hadn’t experienced a reaction like this to anyone in a long time.
His face hovered in front of hers, his eyes filled with a certain knowing, a confirmation of sorts. Of what? She wished she knew.
“You enchant me. You must be a witch. Or an angel? Who are you?”
She opened her mouth to tell him her name, but he halted her words with one finger to her lips. “No, don’t tell me. I will call you Angel. Your beauty rivals a being from the heavenly realms, and I’m told that any number of various and sundry creatures travel through these planes.” He smiled, his full lips pulling across straight, white teeth. His finger traced her mouth. It took all of her self-control not to let her tongue snake out, not to nip at his finger playfully.
Odd, she thought. I don’t even know this man, yet I want to do something so intimate with him? The internal thought was both question and statement. An image flashed through Anna’s mind. The stranger’s finger in her mouth. His other hand between her thighs. Her lips clutching his finger, mouth suckling the digit in rhythm with the hand that touched her sex.
Oh! Intimate, indeed!
“Yes,” the man continued as though oblivious to her sensual thoughts, “I’ll call you Angel. My Angel. And although I’ve never before seen your lovely face, my body knows yours. I think, perhaps, we have kissed before.” He removed his finger, and leaned in, his lips hovering over hers. “And I ache to do so again.”
He was so close she could taste his breath, could inhale his scent. He smelled like chocolate and burgundy wine and everything decadent.
Her flesh hummed from his nearness. Her stomach muscles quivered, taut with anticipation, waiting. He cupped her arms, his hands hot, searing her skin through the thin cotton shift she wore. Anna’s lips parted in invitation, and her eyelids fluttered shut.
And yet, the stranger hesitated. “The anticipation is so very sweet . . . isn’t it?” he murmured. He tilted his head to the side, allowed his cheek to brush hers ever so slightly, then dipped to her neck, nuzzling, inhaling sharply, breathing her in. Then, before she could fully register the gamut of emotions trilling through her, his gaze met hers once again, and his lips parted into a half smile.
She couldn’t take this. She had to touch him. She had to kiss him. Taste him. She had to—
His mouth pressed hers, stealing her thoughts. His lips teased her with slow, sensual movements that whispered of a deeper, more intimate joining. His fingers left her arms and caressed her neck, twined through her hair, and left her own hands free to roam.
And roam they did. To his lean waist, over his bare, flat stomach and his hard chest. He touched his tongue to her lips with a quick, tentative exploration. Just enough to stoke the fire burning in her belly and send licks of flame between her thighs. Anna gulped air, her head swirling. The kiss deepened and became more aggressive. She suddenly couldn’t feel the sand beneath her toes, couldn’t hear the water lapping at the shoreline. The stranger’s heartbeat beneath her fingertips accelerated. She could feel his heart beating, frantic and erratic. So was her own. The two beats grew louder, filling her head, making her dizzy with want and need.
Anna’s body seemed to melt into the stranger’s. They were as one being. The sensation was erotic and exciting.
And then suddenly, the man was gone. Cool air brushed her lips and wove around her empty arms. Anna’s heart plummeted as disappointment washed through her. No! A white void surrounded her. And she was falling, falling . . .
Anna gasped as she slammed into her body. The return was so fast and unexpected this time that she couldn’t move for several long moments. She struggled to reorient herself. Then she felt it. The hot tongue licking her face. The loud, persistent purring in her ear. The ten pounds of fur perched on her chest.
She groaned and rolled over in her bed, sending the cat tumbling to the pillow next to her. She blinked one eye open to stare at the orange tabby and the bedroom door he’d obviously found his way through.
“Emerson, how do you do it? You don’t even have opposable thumbs.”
The cat scooted closer to her and licked her cheek. “Meow,” came his reply.
She scratched him behind his ears, eliciting more purrs, and sighed. She’d started locking Emerson out of the bedroom at night because he had a habit of affectionately attacking her in her sleep and disrupting her nocturnal travels. Tonight was one night Anna really wished Emerson wasn’t such a clever little feline.
Anna immediately fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, she awoke for no reason and could not fall back asleep.
After glaring at Emerson who was snoring beside her, oblivious to her insomnia, she rose and went to the bathroom to dig out some melatonin from the medicine cabinet.
A half-hour later, still wide awake, she decided a hot shower might help her plight. She took her time with her shower, enjoying the sting of the hot water and the delicious aroma of her goji berry and chocolate scented body wash.
Anna stepped from the shower into a thoroughly steamed up bathroom and wrapped herself in a fluffy towel. After opening the door to let out some of the steam, she turned to the sink to find her comb.
Her eyes went wide and her breath caught. The comb hit the tile floor with a clickety-clack. Tears spiked and trickled over her cheeks. There, on the mirror, written as though a ghostly finger had reached out from beyond the grave to scribble the words on the steamed-up glass, was a message.
I am sending you love. Love is in the air. R
The next day was Saturday. Anna had not slept more than an hour after finding Richard’s message. They’d joked once that whoever of them died first would find a way to get a message to the other and let them know they were okay. But it had been two years since Richard’s death, and as much as she’d wanted to feel him near, to know he was alive and well somewhere beyond the veil, she hadn’t had the slightest paranormal experience to breathe life into that hope.
Why? Why now? Was he concerned that it had been so long since his death and she’d yet to start dating again? Possibly. Maybe he wanted her to know he was all right so that she’d have an easier time letting him go.
Was it a coincidence that his message came the very same night she’d met the handsome stranger in the astral realm? Anna frowned. What if Richard’s motivation was just the opposite? What if he was angry she was moving on, even in this small way? She immediately pushed that thought away. No, that didn’t sound like Richard. Richard had always been more concerned about Anna’s well-being than his own.
And what exactly had happened tonight? Who was the stranger? Why was she so drawn to him? She couldn’t stop thinking about him, about his mesmerizing eyes, his titillating touch.
