Her tongue darted out as she came to her knees and took control of the kiss. Both of her hands fisted in his hair, holding him where she wanted him, and she was not gentle. She pressed closer, rubbing her chest tantalizingly across his. The scent of her arousal penetrated his senses. The wolf in him went wild.
He had to have her.
His hands explored her body, running up and down her back, reaching lower to squeeze that luscious ass before forcing his way between their bodies and under her shirt to knead her soft breasts.
Her fists squeezed rhythmically in his hair, then moved jerkily to caress his cheeks and jaw. She whimpered, and it was his undoing.
Reaching under her skirt, he ripped away the thin scrap of fabric barring her from his touch. She moaned when he thrust his fingers deep inside her wetness, searching for her core, for that place that would make her scream.
He wanted to hear his name ripped from her depths.
Torrey wrenched her lips from his. Arching back, she ground against the palm of his hand, forcing his fingers even deeper. Her hips moved. Her head fell backward, and the delicate pulse of her artery was so close to his mouth. It wasn’t her blood he wanted to taste. But he did need access to her bloodstream in order to make her truly his mate. As much as that urge pressed against him, Shade wouldn’t give in, not until Torrey consented.
The first stirrings of his change were upon him. If he didn’t have her soon, he would turn completely, and he would have to stay that way until the morning light helped him change back. There wouldn’t be a moon tonight to reflect the sun’s rays to him so that he could use that energy to shift back to human form.
Withdrawing his fingers from Torrey’s warmth, he licked away her cream while she watched. He knew his eyes were silver instead of blue. He knew his pupils were slits and not round. His teeth were changing shape, and his fingers were elongating. He needed to have her now. A flick and a shove, and his jeans were low enough so that Torrey could pull his erection from his shorts.
She moved, repositioning and spreading her legs so they were on the outside of his. She situated him at her entrance and sank down, taking him into her faster than he had penetrated her that morning.
Part of him wondered if she was sore. While he was concerned, he couldn’t stop. Having her was necessary, and she didn’t seem to be in any discomfort.
She rocked on him, thrusting her hips to fuck him fast and hard. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders and arms. Skin ripped, but he didn’t care. She was wild on top of him, her breathing irregular and her moans sounding low in her throat, and it was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen.
With a long, loud cry, she came. Startled birds flew from the treetops. Her entire body went stiff as she convulsed around him, and he came with a loud, howl-like cry of his own.
Chapter 7
Torrey had no idea what came over her. One kiss from Shade and she couldn’t stop passion from taking over and controlling her every move. He hadn’t specified whether his terms meant he wanted her once, or he wanted her continually until he found Riley.
She supposed she should have found the way his eyes changed color and shape disconcerting, but she did not. His wildness spoke to a need deep inside her that she hadn’t known was there. She had always enjoyed sex and the attention of men, but Shade was different. He seemed to be as consumed by his desire for her as she was enslaved by her desire for him.
Standing on shaky legs, she slipped her feet into her shoes, grateful she had selected flats that morning. Shade rose next to her, his clothes already fixed.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “I need to get started.”
Jerkily, Torrey nodded her head. The tremendous heat that had warmed her entire body when she touched Shade was gone now. The sun was nothing more than a remnant of pink streak in the sky, and the evening air was cold. She headed toward the truck parked at the side of the road. The black vehicle was a dim silhouette, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away. “Drop me at my apartment.”
She meant to say more, but she broke off, staring into the bed of his truck. Familiar suitcases and plastic bins neatly labeled with black marker on white tape filled the space there. She blinked at them in the gloaming light, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her. “Those are mine.”
“Yes,” he said, opening the door to his truck. The dome light cast enough of a glow to make her certain.
“Why are my things in your truck?”
He motioned to the open door, inviting her inside. “I thought you would want them.”
“Of course I want them,” she said. Confusion was written on her face. “It’s my stuff.”
“Get in,” he said. Impatience edged his voice. If she wasn’t mistaken, nervousness, too. “We have another hour and a half of driving, and you need to eat dinner.”
Ignoring the door he held open, she rounded the truck to the passenger side and climbed in. She clicked her seat belt in place and stared through the windshield. Remnants of their conversation in the hospital came back to her, imbued with the fuzziness of the entire surreal ordeal. “You’re not taking me back to my apartment, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.” He turned the key, and the engine purred to life. “I want you close to me.”
Gravel crunched under the tires as the truck transitioned to the blacktop. “You want me to continue sleeping with you.”
He spared her a quick glance. “That isn’t the only reason, Torrey. Your apartment isn’t safe. Besides Soren, you now have to worry about Frank. He tried to hit you. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to hurt you again.”
She wouldn’t put it past him, either. “Soren?”
“Seth,” he amended. “His name is Soren. You’ll be safe at my house. I’ve cast charms around it, so no one will be able to harm you there.”
She stared at him. He cast charms to keep her safe before he ever met her? What was that niggling bit of warning at the back of her head trying to tell her? “That was nice of you.”
That wolf hearing caught her wary undercurrent. He glanced at her again. “I didn’t do it for you. I dislike violence. It’s a general charm. Anyone in my house is protected from harm.”
They rode in silence. Torrey processed that annoying little feeling that told her if she went to Shade’s house, she would never leave it. She argued the pros and cons inside her head. She was definitely going to lose her job and her apartment. Her job was already hanging by a thread. They started out being understanding about her sick mother, but that got old after a while.
Did any of it truly matter? Once Shade found Riley and brokered the trade, she wasn’t going back to her apartment anyway. While she had no intention of giving Soren her powers, she had to make him think she would. Otherwise, he wouldn’t release Riley. In the end, he would steal some of her power, but he wouldn’t get it all.
Even if Shade didn’t want her powers, she would rather give them to him than to Soren. His cold blue-green eyes floated in front of her face, teasing her with their superiority. Some piece of a puzzle floated there, too, just out of reach.
Shade broke the silence, shattering her thoughts. “Soren lives nearer to me than to you. It will be simpler to use my place as a base of operations. If you don’t want to be at my house, I will take you home tomorrow.”
Torrey shook her head. “I don’t mind staying with you until you find Riley. There’s nothing for me to go back to, anyway.” She was surprised when he reached over and wrapped his hand around hers. Enveloped in the darkness, she held onto him.
In the distance, neon lights cast a garish glare on the road. Shade pulled into the parking lot of a greasy spoon. He squeezed her hand. “I’m starving. I can’t imagine how hungry you must be. I remember the first time I cast a charm—that’s all I can do, by the way—I ate an entire deer. This isn’t the best food, but it’s the only thing around here.”
Torrey nodded her head. The part about the deer didn’t gross her out. Venison
wasn’t her favorite meat, but she knew people who liked it a lot. Wolves were serious carnivores. She would rather hear about him eating a deer than a human. The slight flush in her cheeks was embarrassment. She didn’t know what a charm was.
People turned to stare when they entered. Torrey was tall for a woman, but most people didn’t usually stare for too long. These people were different. Glancing to Shade, she caught their reflection in the mirror behind the cash register. Shade followed her stare, meeting her eyes in the mirror.
Even in the convex glass of the primitive security system, they made a striking couple. Both of them were tall and athletic, and each of them exuded danger. Torrey didn’t know when she had picked up that air, but she liked the way she wore it.
Shade smiled into the reflection at her, and she returned his sentiment.
The sign at the door invited patrons to seat themselves. At least three waitresses breathed sighs of relief when they sat down in a booth that wasn’t theirs. Shade’s long legs bumped hers under the table until each marked their territories.
Torrey grabbed a menu from the table. It was stained with the greasy fingerprints of a thousand people before her. The lettering of standard fare littered the paper behind the stains. A burger and fries it was.
A tiny waitress approached warily and set down tall glasses of water. Her face was lined with evidence of a hard life. Torrey couldn’t have guessed the woman’s age if she tried.
“Thanks,” Torrey said with a friendly smile. She gulped down three-quarters of the water.
“I’ll bring more,” the woman assured her, eyeing Shade distrustfully.
They ordered, and the waitress left. The general noise level in the place was unnaturally muted.
“Do you always get this kind of reaction?” Torrey asked. She pitched her voice low, knowing his exceptional hearing could pick up her words.
He shrugged. “Depends. I don’t usually look like I’ve been rolling around on a riverbank with a beautiful woman.”
The heat rising in Torrey’s cheeks reminded her of another question she wanted to ask. “What’s a charm?”
“Charm?” he repeated. The grin on his face was pure wolf. “It’s when people find you irresistible. They like your looks and your personality. Soren has charm.”
She remembered Soren’s charm all too well. “It’s more than that. People liking you isn’t going to keep them from being violent in your house.”
Their burgers didn’t take long. Shade, predictably, had ordered his rare. The waitress set the plates and fresh water glasses on the table, interrupting anything Shade might have said by way of explanation.
He popped a home fry in his mouth and grinned up at the waitress. Then he winked and patted her on the ass. “Why, thanks, darlin’. This hungry man appreciates this fine meal.”
Torrey stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, but the waitress just smiled. “You want anything else, you just give me a holler.”
When she left, Torrey leaned as far forward as the table would allow. “I cannot believe you just did that.”
He stole a fry from her plate. “I was showing you a charm.”
“That wasn’t charm,” Torrey argued. She slapped his hand when he went for another fry. “That was a gross display of chauvinism and completely disrespectful to her and to me.”
His grin didn’t fade. “You charmed her, Torrey. With one smile, you melted her entire attitude toward you. I did the same thing, only I took it one step further to show you exactly what you did.”
She exhaled sharply and took a bite of her burger. She was hungry, and she wasn’t sure she could say anything that would make him see why she wasn’t pleased with his behavior. It wasn’t until she was nearly finished with her meal that she understood what he meant.
The waitress’ attitude toward Torrey hadn’t changed because she smiled and thanked the woman for water. Torrey had unwittingly used magic to put her at ease. Shade had used the same kind of magic to remove the woman’s objection to being pawed and treated like chattel.
It was small magic, something that didn’t take effort on her part, though Shade had put more effort into his magic than she had.
Still, her original objection held. She looked up to find Shade watching her. His plate was empty, and he’d ordered two burgers. “Are you going to apologize?”
“For what?” He looked honestly perplexed.
Torrey pressed her lips together. “You called her ‘sweetheart’ and touched her inappropriately.”
That smile returned. Torrey wondered why she had ever thought he might be brooding or forbidding. “Are you jealous?”
A little, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “You can’t run around treating people like that.”
“She’s human,” he said, as if that explained everything. When Torrey’s disapproving expression didn’t change, he continued. “I can’t eat her, and she’s far too frail to become a wolf.”
Torrey’s brows drew sharply together. “My mother is human. My sister is human. I’m half human. Just because someone is human isn’t a license to treat them badly. Shade, if you and I are going to be spending any amount of time together, you need to get over yourself.”
Pushing his plate out of the way, he leaned so far across the table his face was inches from hers. “If you wanted it badly enough, Torrey, if you used your eyes and your smile, you could make me do all of that. I wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. That’s a charm.”
The thought was disturbing on many levels. The idea of forcing someone to do or think or say what she wanted didn’t sit well with her conscience. Yet, if she could master that skill, maybe she could force Soren to let her sister go and forget about sacrificing her in his upcoming ritual.
She remembered the first time she met Soren. She had thought him charming. Realization dawned. He was charming. He charmed her into taking the medication from him, and he charmed her into agreeing to his terms.
“Soren did that to me.” Her eyes filled with a quiet pain. The charm he put on her had influenced so many of her decisions. Almost nothing she had done since then was inside the realm of her normal behavior.
She had expelled Soren’s potion from her mother’s body, and now she was dead. She had sex with Shade on the bank of a stream where anyone could have driven by and seen that intimate act. She turned anguished eyes on Shade. “Have you done it to me, too?”
He had leaned back against the seat cushion to watch the wheels spinning in her head. He sat up now, startled at the direction her thoughts had taken. “If I was going to charm you, I would have done it when we first met. I would have charmed you into leaving that bar and going home and pretending you never met me.”
It was reassuring to know his attitude toward her hadn’t changed. Despite his help with her mother and the way he held her while she cried, he still would rather not have her in his life. He behaved as if he cared, and she had become too complacent in thinking she meant something to him.
With firm resolve, she peered deep into his dark blue eyes. “You haven’t answered my question. Tell me the truth, Shade. Be honest.”
“Honestly?” He ran a hand through his black hair. “Honestly, you’re not strong enough for your charms to work on me. Humans are weak and open to suggestion. They’re easy. I’m not easy, and neither are you. It would take time and energy to charm you, Torrey. I may have taken advantage of your attraction to me, but that is all I’m guilty of doing, and I don’t see that you have a problem with it. I only meant to kiss you at the stream. You took things further.”
Torrey stared at her plate. Two bites of burger and half her fries remained. Shade snagged a few fries. She didn’t stop him. Her thoughts were elsewhere. If she wasn’t strong enough to charm Shade, how could she hope to best Soren?
Bitterness twisted her words. “So, if I’m a strong witch and I can’t charm you, a werewolf, then why are wolves so afraid of witches? Why do you hunt and kill us if we’re not much of a threat?”
&n
bsp; Shade stood, threw money on the table, and pulled Torrey to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
She followed him, only because she wanted real answers, the kind he didn’t want to give in front of an audience of eavesdroppers.
Once they were safely on the road, she repeated her question.
Shade’s answer was impatient, to say the least. “You can’t charm me today, but who knows what you’ll be able to do tomorrow? Yesterday, you couldn’t force the water in a human’s body to push out poison, and you couldn’t throw your stepfather across the hall with the force of your anger.”
She conceded the point.
“Besides,” he added, “charms are weak spells compared to what you could do with some practice.”
Tearing her eyes from the endless track of dark road, she watched the dark figure driving her into the thick forests of the mountains. “Are you going to teach me how to use my powers, Shade?”
“I already have,” he said quietly. He was hiding something.
“That’s all you know?”
He snapped. “Look, among my people, just being this close to a witch is enough reason to kill you. Witches have done nothing but hunt my kind since the beginning of time. You’ve used us as dogs, and you’ve repeatedly tried to steal the one element that belongs to us. Teaching you as much as I have is considered treason. I’ll protect you, Torrey. You have my word on that.”
Fire belonged to wolves. It was ironic she knew that, but she didn’t know which element belonged to witches. Thinking back, Shade had made her touch the ground. “Earth belongs to witches?”
“And water. Wolves were given fire. It’s all we have, and we will protect it with our dying breaths.”
Torrey pondered the fact witches were given control of two elements while wolves only had one. Reaching out, she rested a tentative hand on his arm. Heat emanated from his skin, burning through his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Shade. I don’t want fire. I only want to bring Riley back home safely.”
Zurlo, Michele - Torment [Daughters of Circe 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 8
