Black Mountain Magic (Kentucky Haints #1)

by Megan Morgan

  “You feel like heaven.” He smoothed his hand over her stomach. “Go on, get what you need.”

  Lust took over and she did, took what she’d wanted since the moment they met. He held her hips tight and panted as she bounced on him.

  He looked otherworldly, his eyes gleaming and gaze intense. His mouth hung slack, his face a mask of pleasure, but something inhuman stirred behind that visage, something animal and other, the Lycan in him. The sight of it made her feel emotional, vulnerable, and desperate to give herself to him, to give him pleasure and take it in return.

  This desire overwhelmed all other thoughts, pure carnal single-mindedness that turned her blood to a molten river of need. She rode the thick heat of his cock, opening to him. He urged her on, thumbs dug into her hipbones.

  She felt his orgasm building as if it were her own, as if they were one person.

  “Fuck, Lorena.” His voice dissolved into a snarl and he pushed his head back into the pillow. He arched his hips, lifting her.

  She braced her hands on his chest and squeezed his throbbing length deep inside her. He clawed at her hips and shuddered violently as he released. She’d never seen a man come so beautifully, or so intensely.

  She watched his face as his pleasure receded. His forehead glistened, his eyes closed and eyelids twitching. He was the loveliest man she’d ever laid eyes on. Her heart pounded with profound joy, as if she’d found a long-missed connection.

  He fell slack against the bed, breathing hard. She eased off him and stretched out at his side. He slipped an arm around her and she pressed against him, so their slick skin slid together.

  “That was amazing,” she murmured, still enraptured.

  He nuzzled her and rubbed his cheek across hers, breathing in. Smelling her.

  “Damn, it was.” He let out a hot, heavy breath across her ear.

  She closed her eyes. What had just happened? Did she care? Did it bother her?

  No. She didn’t care about anything right now, not Wolvites or the agency or his grandmother. She would lie here as long as she could in post-coital bliss, alive with the feeling of him inside her, in the warm morning sun.

  Chapter 8

  They had poker faces on when they walked downstairs. Trying to look innocent proved hard when Lorena still floated on a blissful, buzzy cloud of sex.

  Melanie barely glanced up from the stove as they walked into the kitchen.

  “Smells good,” Deacon said. He hadn’t put his flannel back on, which Lorena feared made him look obvious.

  “I still ain’t got the hang of making flannel cakes.” Melanie slumped her shoulders. “Never was much of a cook.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Deacon said. “Here, I’ll help you.”

  Lorena sat on a stool while Deacon helped with breakfast. She hadn’t eaten anything before leaving the house and after a romp between the sheets—or above them, as it were—her hunger had doubled.

  The kitchen was nice like the rest of the house. Clem loped into the room. He walked over to Lorena and she bent down to pet him.

  “Hey there, buddy.”

  Deacon chuckled. “Surprised it took him this long to follow the scent of food.” He brought Lorena another cup of coffee, chewing on a piece of bacon. He winked and she grinned. He tossed the remainder of the bacon to Clem and he gobbled it up.

  Melanie set breakfast out on the kitchen table. The spread didn’t look as good as what Deacon served up the night before, but Lorena didn’t care. She couldn’t have done better.

  Deacon’s grandmother arrived shortly. A gray slip of a woman in a flower-patterned dress, she wasn’t imposing physically, but she had an air of superiority about her that immediately filled the room.

  “Hi, Grammy.” Deacon hugged her. Clem nuzzled in her dress. “This is Lorena. She’s with the science team out there at the Thomas place.”

  Lorena almost got to her feet, but she would tower over the woman, and that might be disrespectful. What should she do? What would be polite? Suddenly, she appreciated Melanie’s panic.

  She decided to get up after all. “Lorena Mills.” She held out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Deacon has talked a lot about you, um, Mrs. Kelley…” Was that her last name?

  She shook Lorena’s hand. Her skin was soft and smooth like old paper, her nails clipped short. “Hazel.” Her voice was thin and ephemeral like the rest of her, but still carried power. “You can call me Hazel.”

  Her gaze seemed to cut through Lorena’s skull—or maybe not through it so much as right into it, cracking her open to inspect the contents. “Deacon tells me you’re a witch.”

  “Yes, I wanted to say thank you, for the book you gave me. That was very generous of you.”

  “Just a bit of herbalism and potion making.” She waved a dismissive hand. “A witch has to start somewhere and it’s all easy stuff. Deacon tells me you’re not learned.”

  Deacon chuckled. “Don’t start harping on her, Grammy. Why don’t we have breakfast? I’m hungry as a half-starved horse in winter.”

  Lorena forced a smile. “Yes, I’m afraid I’m not well-versed. So, thank you for the beginner’s guide.”

  Hazel swept past her. “Neither is this one.” She swooped toward Melanie, who shrunk at her approach.

  “You gonna eat with us?” Deacon asked Lorena. “You don’t gotta go back yet, do you?”

  “No, not yet.”

  They sat around the table, Hazel perched at one end, as though it were her kitchen, next to Melanie, who sat tense and silent. The food wasn’t bad, not at all, and Lorena would have complimented Melanie but didn’t want to come across as snarky toward Hazel.

  “So, there was more trouble last night?” Hazel said, once they’d gotten a few bites in them. “Zeke’s already told me about it.”

  Deacon paused eating to pour syrup over everything on his plate. “They came right up to the house. To my back door, in fact. If Lorena hadn’t warned me, I might have stepped outside and been attacked. She felt them.”

  Hazel snapped her gaze to Lorena. Lorena had a mouthful of bacon and hurriedly chewed so she could speak.

  “Deacon made me dinner,” she said. “He’s quite the cook.”

  “Of course he is,” Hazel said. “The women in his life taught him well. Never hurts to teach a man his way around the kitchen.”

  Deacon smirked. “Like us men teach you women to handle a shotgun?”

  Hazel flashed him a tight-lipped glare. “You felt the danger?” she asked Lorena. “You can at least do that?”

  “I didn’t do it intentionally.” She set her fork down out of politeness. “It just sort of happened. That’s how a lot of things work for me.”

  “Why on earth would they come right up to the house?”

  “It seemed calculated.” Lorena picked up her coffee cup. “There was a bang outside, that’s why Deacon went to the door. He thought the wind blew a trashcan over. It’s like they were trying to lure him out.”

  “Maybe it was just the wind.” Hazel narrowed her eyes. “I’ve never heard of them staging an ambush. They’re not that smart.”

  Melanie glanced up.

  “It coulda been just the wind, yeah,” Deacon said. “But there was five of ‘em out there. One tried to claw through the screen door. I picked off two before the rest ran off.”

  “They specifically attacked you boys on the road the other night, too,” Hazel said. “When you were bitten. You said that seemed like an ambush as well.”

  Lorena arched an eyebrow. He hadn’t told her they thought it was an ambush.

  “They’re getting bold.” Deacon shrugged. “Maybe they’re a darn sight craftier than we give them credit for.”

  Despite the danger, Lorena hoped for this. If they were rabid, they’d be wild and disordered. Deliberate actions and remedial intelligence were not signs of disease. Maybe they were dealing not with a virus, but an emerging awareness.

  Melanie sat back and gazed at Hazel. The old woman poked at a panc
ake with her fork like it might bite her.

  “Lorena shot the one that come up on us at the party,” Deacon said. “She’s got good aim.”

  Lorena returned to her food.

  “They teach scientists how to shoot?” Hazel asked.

  “Yes. You can’t do field work until you pass a marksmanship class.”

  Hazel flashed her a tiny, affected smile. “I’m sure if you’d hone your inner abilities as well, you’d be a dangerous woman to cross.”

  “I’m already dangerous. At least to Wolvites.”

  Deacon pointed his fork at his grandmother. “Grammy, don’t be getting up her back. Not everyone can be as good a witch as you.”

  Hazel sniffed and continued poking things around on her plate. “That’s why I had to come over here so we can get that ward up. I want my family to be safe. It’s always left to me, protecting you bunch.”

  “And you do a good job.” Deacon went back to his food. “Eat up. You’re gonna need energy to make that ward.”

  The rest of the meal was quiet, if awkward. Hazel ate little. She asked Melanie about her recipes several times, with the unspoken implication they were not up to her standards.

  After breakfast, Hazel needed to get her supplies out of her car and asked Deacon to help her. He pulled on his boots and followed her out. Lorena helped Melanie clear the table.

  “She’s quite the disapproving matriarch, isn’t she?” Lorena said. “I thought breakfast was nice. You did a good job.”

  “Thanks.” Melanie carried a stack of plates to the sink and Lorena followed her.

  “I’m sorry she’s so mean to you. It must be hard, coming into a family as fast as you did. Takes some adjusting, I bet.”

  Melanie scraped leftovers into the trashcan next to the sink.

  Lorena stepped up beside her. “Do you know much about Wolvites?”

  Melanie shrugged. “As much as anyone around here, I reckon.”

  “Did you ever have to deal with them in Tennessee?”

  “I’m not from Tennessee. I just lived there for a while.”

  “Oh?”

  “But no, they’re not as bad there.”

  Lorena leaned against the sink counter. “It just seemed like you wanted to say something when we were talking about them. Have you ever heard of them doing the kind of stuff they’re doing now?”

  Melanie turned from the sink, toward Lorena, consternation in her pale eyes. “No.”

  “Oh.” Lorena considered her. “I’ve studied them a long time. I’ve never heard of them doing something like this, either.”

  “Maybe they’re just tired of the way people treat them, the way they hunt them down and kill them in their own habitat.” She hadn’t strung so many words together since Lorena met her. “How would you feel if people came to where you live and shot you? For no reason?”

  “They’re dangerous predators. They can be very aggressive.”

  “So are black bears. And wolves. We don’t hunt them down.”

  “Some people do.”

  “For sport, not to keep them from encroaching.” She plunked dishes into the sink. “I’m just saying, maybe they’re doing this because of how people treat them.”

  “They’re different than most animals, though. They’re supernatural creatures. They don’t quite fit into the environment the way bears and wolves do. They’re mutations, and they have an unnatural bloodlust that most animals don’t have.”

  “Maybe humans are just mad they actually have a predator. They’re not used to it.”

  Lorena narrowed her eyes. “You seem really sympathetic toward them.” Some animal rights activists included Wolvites in their sympathies.

  “They’ve never done anything to me or mine. Have they done anything to you?”

  “Yes.” Lorena pushed away from the counter and walked to the table to get her coffee cup.

  Deacon and Hazel walked back in. Lorena finished off her coffee and set the cup on the sink counter. Melanie stayed over the sink, filling it with water.

  Lorena went to Deacon. “I should probably get back to the house, just in case I’m needed.”

  This might be the last time they spent any time together. Her stomach sank.

  “If I do end up being dismissed,” she said, “I won’t leave without saying goodbye, I promise.”

  “I still owe you dessert.”

  She wanted to hug him, but Melanie and Hazel were right there, and Hazel’s gaze was like a hawk’s.

  “You sure you gotta leave already?” he asked.

  “I should, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll walk you to your truck, then.”

  Lorena spoke to Melanie. “Goodbye. Thank you for breakfast, it was very good.”

  Hazel stood at the table, a basket in front of her, full of flowers and plants.

  “Thank you again,” Lorena said to her, “for the book. I promise I’ll try to learn a few things.”

  “Yes, there’s much to learn.” Hazel picked up a tiny purple flower and examined it. “Herbalism is not just a place to start, it’s a foundation. Plants have a secret magic. They pull wisdom from the earth. Plants can heal. They can harm. They can summon, direct, and change other parts of nature.”

  “My own grandmother was a witch, a good one. She told me the same thing.”

  “You should have listened to her more closely, child.” She placed the flower back in the basket. “Learn to speak to Nature, and she will give you the foundation of your power. She will teach you how to get the truth from a man, how to heal his wounds both body and mind, how to harm him if he wrongs you, and how to make him love you, if it be your wish.”

  Lorena glanced sideways at Deacon. He grinned, hands tucked in his pockets.

  “Yes,” Lorena said. “I do want to learn, and I will.”

  “You saying there’s a love spell, Grammy?” Deacon sounded amused. “Your plants and flowers can do that?”

  “Yes. You can ensnare a man and make him enthralled. Nature is wild and powerful, boy.”

  That gave Lorena the creeps, but she continued to smile. She’d read about love potions, but their effectiveness seemed dubious at best, more like making someone drunk than casting a spell.

  “Nature is a woman’s domain,” Hazel said. “And a woman will do what a woman will.”

  “Thank you again for the book.” Lorena tugged at Deacon’s sleeve. “It was nice to meet you.”

  They left the house, Deacon at her side as they crossed the yard to the driveway. The sun had climbed high in the sky, the air warmer now.

  “She’s a pistol,” Deacon said as they walked around to the driver’s side of her truck. “Reckon if she was able to whip up a potion to send them Wolvites running, we’d been rid of them a long time ago.”

  “She’s kind of mean to Melanie, don’t you think?”

  “Ain’t no doubt, she’s a rough one.” They stood next to the truck and he stepped in close. “That’s just how she is though, she don’t mean no harm. She’d do anything for anyone. She’s tough as nails, but she’s got a squishy center.”

  “I don’t think you should bring that up to her.”

  “I think she likes you.”

  “I haven’t cooked for her, maybe that’s why.”

  He grinned and pulled her to him. She closed her eyes and savored his mouth as he kissed her. She burned for more. One luscious taste just made her hungrier.

  As he drew back his eyes shone clear, but distress flickered in them, telling her he felt the same way as she did, reluctant to let this go.

  “If I have to leave,” she said, “I’ll come by your house tonight.”

  His hands rested on her upper arms. She fought the desire to pull him into the truck. She’d show Hazel not all women needed a love potion.

  “You reckon you’ll have to leave for the airport right away, if they dismiss you?”

  “I can surely get a flight out tomorrow. I don’t see why I’d have to rush off. They won’t even be able to assign me
to something new until all the reports are made.”

  “All right, then. I got a bed for you to sleep in, if that’s the case.”

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep much.”

  He kissed her again, harder. She fantasized about him going with her and pulling off on some remote tree-shrouded road for a couple of hours.

  When they broke apart, she had to catch her breath. “I better go. As much as I’d like to stand here and make out with you, I’m worried your grandmother is spying on us.”

  He slid a hand off her arm and down her side. “She can’t see us.” His voice rumbled in his chest. “We’re outta sight.” He caressed up and down her back.

  “I had a good time this morning.” She rubbed his chest. “A very good time.”

  “So did I.” He tucked his fingers under the edge of her jacket and stroked them down her lower back. “Been a while since I snuck a girl up to my room.”

  She slowly, regretfully drew back. If she didn’t pull away she would offer him that ride. “I’ll call you this afternoon, let you know what’s going on.”

  “If they decide to keep you here a while longer, will you still come spend the night with me?”

  “If I can, yes.”

  “I gotta make you dessert.” He reached for the door handle and opened the door for her. “Something sweet and sticky.”

  She bit her lip and slithered between him and the door. He pressed his face into her hair in passing and whispered, “Like you.”

  She clambered into the truck before the desire to jump him became impossible to resist.

  After closing the door, she rolled down the window.

  “I’ll see you tonight.” Her nipples ached against her sweater and she was wet again. “Be careful today. If they’re ambushing people, they might pull a switcheroo and come out in the daytime, too.”

  “I’ll be ready for ‘em.” He gazed in at her. “You be careful, too.”

  She started the truck and he stepped back. He stood in the driveway and watched her as she backed up and drove off.

  She gripped the wheel tight. “Goddamn. Maybe you’re the one who put a spell on me.”

  Chapter 9