by Kari Cole
Her uncontrollable giggles gave her away.
Eyes narrowed, he backed her up until she was trapped between him and the wall next to the fireplace. “Naughty little wolf. Do you like being punished?”
Breath coming in quick pants, she shook her head no. He caught her jaw with his teeth. Dragging his beard scruff along the sensitive skin there, he hummed a thoughtful noise. When he reached her ear, he whispered, “I think you want me to spank you.”
She shook her head again, heart thumping to beat the band.
“No?” He nipped the spot just below her ear and she gasped, tilting her head to give him more access. “This?” He bit her earlobe and she plastered herself to him. His low chuckle tightened all her goodies. “Ah, so you do want to be punished, just with”—he dragged his teeth along the column of her throat—“bites instead of spanks.”
She nodded like a bobblehead.
“You could have just said so, baby. I can’t think of anything better than”—a nip to the inside of her elbow—“spending the night”—a rasp of teeth over her chin—“eating you up.”
Sweet baby Jesus. Her legs gave out and he held her up with an arm around her waist.
“Just one thing, sweetheart,” he said, sliding his palm down her arm to clasp her hand.
Anything. Whatever he wanted. Wash his floors? Where’s the mop? Read his library of boring nonfiction so they could talk about it? Done. Be his dedicated, enthusiastic sex slave for the rest of her life? Sign her up.
“Hmm?” she managed through the panting.
He squeezed her hand. “Take off the gloves.”
* * *
Vaughn hadn’t known you could actually hear a situation come to a screeching halt. Yet, the second he’d asked Cassandra to take off those damn leather gloves, it was like an eighteen-wheeler going sixty down a steep incline had hit the brakes. His ears were still ringing from the shock.
Cassandra was as rigid as the wall she leaned against, her eyes wide. The drugging scent of her lust was a memory now, replaced by a complicated mix that spoke of frustration, a little anger, and whole lot of nerves.
Slowly, he let go of her and took half a step back. “Cassandra?”
Jaw clenched, she drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself. She pushed him back another step and his beasts screamed at him for being a moron.
“I need my backpack,” she said, voice flat.
Fuck. “No, wait. Don’t go. I—”
“I need my backpack,” she repeated, brushing by him to head to the kitchen. He followed her in there cursing himself the whole way.
She’d left her bag on a bench in the mudroom. She grabbed it. Instead of stomping out the back door and out of his life, she spun and came back into the kitchen, laying it down on the table. She unzipped one of the front pockets and stuck her hand inside.
Did she have a gun in there? Maybe she was going to shoot him and put him out of his misery?
“Cassandra—”
“Frost!” she shouted, startling the crap out of Vaughn.
A handful of seconds later, the front door opened and closed, and the wolf padded into the room. She held up a plastic baggie with something white inside. “I have to show him,” she said.
“What—” She cut him off with a hand held out like a stop sign. Apparently, she had been talking to the wolf. Oh-kay. Could his life get any more surreal?
Frost grumbled.
“He won’t stop asking and he’s not stupid—”
“Gee, thanks—”
“Vaughn, please. A minute?”
He gestured for her to go ahead.
“What would you have me do, Frost?” she asked. “I’m not done. It’s not like I can just leave town.”
Leave town? No, screeched the eagle. Stop her, his wolf said.
Frost looked at Vaughn with total annoyance. Then he grumbled some more and plopped his ass down on the floor.
“Sorry to put you out,” Vaughn said to him. “Cassandra, what’s going on?”
She rounded on him. As quickly as her anger had flared, it passed and salty scent of sadness grew. “You want to know why I wear the gloves, why I can’t just touch you how I’m dying to, right?”
He stepped closer and ran his knuckles down her cheek. “Tell me.”
“You won’t understand. No one does.”
“Try me.”
“I’m psychometric.”
She was right. “I don’t know what that is.”
She blew out a breath like a horse’s snort. “It’s a psychic ability.”
“Oh-kay.”
“Psychometry is the ability to sense an object’s past through touch. Sometimes it’s called token-object reading. It means that when I touch things, I can see their history: who owned it, how it was used, the owners emotions when they used it. Stuff like that.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That’s...” He cupped her hands in his. “So, you wear the gloves so you don’t accidentally sense an object’s past?”
“Accidentally implies that I have a choice.” She pulled out a chair and sat down, her shoulders slumping.
The image of her lying on the floor of Jessie’s living room, blood dripping from her nose flashed in his mind. “The tissues. Jessie gave you tissues. You got even paler and dropped them on the floor.”
“Yes.”
A horrible thought wormed its way into his brain and he sank onto a chair, too. “Your nose was bleeding. Did you hit your head?”
“No. I picked up Jessie’s hairbrush.”
Vaughn stared at her. “A hairbrush.” She nodded. “A plain old brush Jessie uses to do her hair knocked you on your ass and gave you a bloody nose?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “At the run, you weren’t wearing gloves when we shifted in the woods and...”
She gave him a wan smile. “Almost had sex? It was a risk, but it’s not like I can run as a wolf with a pair of gloves on my forepaws. When we shifted to human, I was very careful not to touch anything but you or me. Since you weren’t wearing your cuff, it was a little easier.”
He looked at his wrist as if he’d never seen the piece of copper before.
“Something like that would hold a lot of memories,” she said.
“You can’t turn it off?”
“No. I used to be able to. I don’t know why it changed all of a sudden, but it did. And it’s orders of magnitude stronger than before. I see things like I’m standing right there living them. In real time.”
He couldn’t stand not touching her anymore and pulled her chair toward him until their knees met. Picking up her hands in his again, he asked, “How bad?”
A grimace twisted her features and he pulled her onto his lap. She came willingly, cuddling into him and laying her head on his shoulder.
“Bad,” she whispered. “You’ve seen the nosebleeds. I’ve had it come from my eyes and ears. I throw up. If I’m not careful, I black out. I know from what witnesses have said I have seizures. I’m afraid that...that one day it might...”
“It might kill you.”
The fresh scent of her tears broke his heart. His beasts howled and screamed at even the thought of losing her that way.
“Cassandra, when I came over yesterday, you had a headache. You said you’d overdone it.”
She raised her head. “I was practicing for most of the day.”
“You were what?” he asked, the wolf adding to his growl.
The sad smile was back and she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him softly on the mouth. “It’s why I’m here in Black Robe. Jessie’s helping me learn to control it, or maybe at least cope with it better.”
“Jessie?”
“She’s psychometric, too. It’
s not something a lot of people know, so please don’t tell. She’s really private about it.”
“I won’t.”
“There’s a reason I don’t tell people about it either. Psychometry, like most of the psychic abilities, is a witch power.”
He stared at her and remembered her easy acceptance of his heritage.
She said, “You’re not the only one with mixed blood, Vaughn.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Late morning sun filtered in through the gauzy curtains in Jessie’s dining room. Hannah rubbed the grit from her eyes and tried to focus. Even a third cup of coffee wasn’t cutting through her brain fog.
She hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night. After dropping her bombshell on Vaughn, he’d refused to let her demonstrate her ability. He’d actually seemed terrified at the mere idea of her touching something of his and having a bad reaction. Instead, he’d held her on his lap, squeezing her tight until she’d started to fall asleep. Then he’d driven her home, as promised.
His fear for her tugged at Hannah’s heart. He was such a good person: protective, kind, honorable. Plus, the way he could turn her on with a look? She sighed. He was everything she had ever hoped to find in a male, and yet he was everything she couldn’t have. Apparently the goddess thought so, too, because despite their out-of-control chemistry, there was no mating dance between them.
Hannah had seen a few of her friends go through it, and there was no mistaking it when the dance hit. She knew that some people had known their mates for a long time before the urge to become life mates kicked in, but usually it was like a bolt of lightning from the sky. Boom! No escape.
“Argh. I need to forget it,” she said, earning a sigh from Frost. He’d heard it all before.
Fine, time for work. Setting the coffee aside on the table, she swapped out her regular leather gloves for Gran’s silk pair. The images and emotions appeared at once, but unlike before, she wasn’t swept up into them. They flowed through her mind like a television program playing in the background. Something she could ignore if she chose to. She wasn’t sure if that was true progress, or if she was using up her great-grandmother’s memories. In honor of the woman she’d loved, she paid attention, memorizing the impressions her power granted.
Once the visions faded to shadows, Hannah turned to her morning’s target. Jessie’s computer.
Frost grumbled, restating his objections to her plan.
“I heard you before. You know why I have to try.” When she sat down in front of the desk, he came and stood next to her, ready to pull her behind out of the fire like always. “I love you, you grumpy thing. You know that, right?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes like the young male he was, but he stayed right by her side.
Closing her eyes, she practiced some deep-breathing exercises and tried to shore up her shields. It was more difficult than it’d had been the last few days, mainly because with the Thunder Moon tomorrow night, her wolf was as agitated as a territorial blue jay. She paced and prowled, growling and grumbling even more than Frost.
Nervous, Hannah reached out and touched the side of the computer. Images swamped her and she slumped in the chair. “I’m all right,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t stop me. I just need to...yes!”
The picture of Jessie, tired and bored, typing numbers into a spreadsheet zipped into her head. She grabbed it and held on while her cousin did something out of view, and more numbers appeared in the rows and columns. Hannah gasped and broke contact, letting the memory float away. She pumped her fist in the air. “Woo! I did it.”
She repeated the process. Four more times. Getting a little more out with each pass. If she wanted, she could write down those squirrelly little digits. She’d have to check to make sure she wasn’t just making up a load of nonsense. Maybe Jessie printed out the reports and kept them in the file cabinet? If not, she’d have to ask her cousin to open her digital files.
Hannah’s head throbbed, but she wanted to dance. Progress. Hallelujah.
“What are you doing?” Jessie asked, coming in the front door. She brought the smell of freshly turned earth and grass with her.
“Breaking into your computer.”
“Okay. Why?”
“To see if I could,” Hannah said proudly.
“Can you?”
“Not yet.” But she would.
“Oh-kay,” Jessie said. “That’s not weird at all. Speaking of... I want to talk about something.”
Hannah leaned back and stretched her spine. “Sure. What about?”
“Um...could Frost go out for a while?”
Something in Jessie’s tone shook Hannah out of her happy glow. She looked at Frost. “Do you mind, darlin’?”
The wolf twitched an ear, but then he padded over to the screen door and let himself out. He hopped off the porch and trotted around the side of the house.
Jessie didn’t speak until he was gone. “How did you know how to make a familiar?”
If her cousin had thrown a pot of scalding water in her face, Hannah wouldn’t have been any less shocked. She rose on shaky legs, shoving the chair out of the way. It knocked into the desk and caused a pen to clatter to the floor. It still took several seconds to find her voice. “What the hell are you talking about? They don’t actually exist.”
A witch’s familiar was a servant. An animal usually, but it could be any living, sentient creature, really. In the stories, the witch found a strong being and bound it to herself with magic. Then she could call upon it to act as a spy or perform any number of tasks. The creature also provided extra strength and resilience to their master. They weren’t pleasant stories. The endings usually involved a gruesome death for the familiar or the witch’s enemies.
“Are you sure about that?” Jessie asked. “Just because something is rare and hard to do doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
Hannah laughed. “Give me a break. Familiars are nothing more than fairy tales to scare the crap out of naughty little witches.”
Jessie pointed at the door. “That wolf opened the freaking door.”
“It has a lever. It’s not rocket science.”
“He understood our conversation. You didn’t command him to go outside. I asked you if he could go out, and you asked him if he minded.”
“He’s smart. That’s all,” Hannah said. Brilliant, actually, but extolling his exceptional virtues wasn’t going to help prove her innocence. “A regular domestic canine can understand a variety of words and be taught tricks. Natural wolves are a lot smarter than dogs.”
“Hannah—”
“No. That’s evil, binding a creature against its will. I wouldn’t do that. Not ever. I wouldn’t even know how.”
A bird sang somewhere outside. Insects hummed, and a light breeze whispered through the trees. At the nursery, a car door slammed shut, and still Jessie stared at Hannah. Finally, she said, “All right. I believe you. You didn’t intentionally cast a spell to make Frost your familiar.”
“Damn straight I didn’t.”
“Maybe you did it unintentionally.”
“What? No! That’s ridiculous. How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Jessie said. “How did your ability go from charming little quirk to life-altering death sentence?”
Knees weak, Hannah stumbled back, catching herself on the dining table. “I—I don’t know? I—I couldn’t...”
Jessie nodded, her face full of pity. “Frost loves you. Legitimately loves you. I don’t think you could have forced that. But normal timber wolves don’t behave like he does. Socialized or not.”
“You’re wrong,” Hannah said. “You’re so wrong.”
“Maybe.” Without another word, Jessie left, the screen door banging in its frame like the dark thoughts she’d implanted in Hannah’s mind.
* * *
“I’m sorry. I know you were hoping for more, but this is not my area of expertise,” Sarah said.
Vaughn nodded. She sat across the desk from him, her mate by her side. “It was a long shot anyway. Thanks for trying.”
They still didn’t know what had caused the bear shifter to behave the way he had.
“Since we shifters don’t really get sick, my healing abilities are best at identifying and treating acute injuries like a broken bone or ruptured organ. Once the body is dead, there’s not much for me to sense.”
Dean reached for her hand. “I’m just glad it wasn’t something contagious. It got way too close to you guys.”
“If it was,” Sarah said, “then it was something beyond my senses.”
“Not helping my peace of mind, babe.”
“Viruses are living organisms, Dean. Even though you and Vaughn killed that male, any viruses or bacteria on or in the body would still live for a while. I didn’t sense anything but the normal culprits. Though there were a lot of those.” She grimaced. “That guy was nasty.”
Vaughn couldn’t disagree. He’d met shifters who weren’t overly fussy about their hygiene, but they were few and far between. As a whole, their noses were just too good to tolerate it.
Sarah stood and slung her bag’s strap over her shoulder. “I’ve got to pick the boys up at the pack house. Goddess knows what Izzy will teach them if I leave them with her for too long. The last time she babysat, she and Freddie helped them build a water balloon slingshot.”
Dean barked a laugh. “That was awesome. What? Don’t look at me that way, Sarah. It’s Freddie’s own fault that they turned it on him.”
Her lips twitched. “I hardly think soaking the Luna’s human mate is a laughing matter. Besides, Freddie wasn’t their only target. Marianne’s shriek when they doused her haunts my dreams.”
Dean was going to fall out of his chair if he wasn’t careful, he was laughing so hard. “Like I said, awesome.”
Nate and Justin had soaked fussy, fastidious Marianne with water balloons? Vaughn rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide his grin. For once, Dean was right. That was awesome. He wished he’d seen it.
