Josh laid her across the bed then knelt on the floor beside her. He tucked the towel more securely into the hollow between her breasts, but didn’t linger. “When you stomped off and left me sitting by the fire all by myself, I got really pissed and decided to take a walk to cool off.”
“I did not stomp off.”
Josh raised his eyebrows and smirked at her.
“I might have walked away a little briskly. But I did not stomp.”
“Whatever.”
Channie considered telling him why she’d gotten mad, but she didn’t want to risk him changing his mind about not fighting Dominance. And that’s exactly what would happen if he thought she was the least bit unhappy about the situation. The decision was made, and it was the decision she wanted so she needed to let it go. Besides, she couldn’t stay mad at Josh when he was so obviously excited about something and grinning at her like a possum in a henhouse.
He sat back on his heels and stretched an arm across the bed, reaching for her hand. His long, slender fingers fit perfectly in the spaces between her own. He rested the side of his head on his bicep and licked his lips. “I really wanted to mess around tonight, even if we couldn’t have real sex, so when you shut me down and said we couldn’t bathe together … it hurt my feelings.”
“I’m sorry.” Channie squeezed his hand.
The corners of his mouth curved up into a soft smile. “I know.” He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “So anyway, I was wandering around in the woods, feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could take a shower and shave with a new razor and something besides lye soap.” He lifted his chin, tilting his head to the side then guided her hand to his cheek.
Channie slid the back of her fingers up and down his jawline then cupped his face in her palms and smiled. “Your skin’s softer than a baby’s butt.”
Josh chuckled. “I haven’t felt this smooth since sixth grade.”
She lifted her head and glanced across the room. Moonlight glinted off his razor, sitting in a tin can on the windowsill. “How?”
“I was just walking around and thinking about the last time I’d felt really clean and all of a sudden this electric buzz ran over my skin. It originated in my power-well so I knew it was my own magic, but I had no idea what triggered it. I still don’t.”
Channie rolled onto her stomach and said, “Go on.”
“All the hair on my body stood on end, like I was about to be struck by lightening. Did you ever feel anything like that?”
Channie nodded. It sounded like a cleansing spell, but Josh didn’t have the skill to cast one yet and even if he did, he would have been exhausted afterwards. He obviously had plenty of energy.
“I felt itchy all over and sort shook myself.” He shimmied his shoulders, demonstrating the technique. “A cloud of grime formed around my body and then … pow!” He flung his arms out to the side. “It exploded and disappeared.”
“Wow.” No doubt about it, that was definitely a cleansing spell. “I’m impressed.”
Josh lifted his left elbow and sniffed his arm pit. “Even my clothes are clean.”
Channie sat up. “Your clothes?”
“Yeah. If I can figure out how to do it again, we’ll never have to do laundry.”
“You can’t use a cleansing spell on non-living matter.”
“My jeans are cotton and my sweater’s a hundred percent wool.”
“Yes, but after the fibers go through the manufacturing process, the high heat and chemical dyes destroy any residual life along with any potential to hold or respond to magic.”
“You sound like your Aunt.”
“I was quoting her.” Channie stroked his cheeks with her thumbs. “And I’ve never heard of a mage that could shave with magic.”
“I didn’t exactly shave. It was more like the stubble just dissolved.”
“You’re lucky you aren’t bald. Did you lose hair anywhere besides your face?”
Josh grinned, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Wanna check?”
“I meant your arms and legs.”
“Nope, still manly.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, all I can say is, I’m completely clean and so are my clothes. Even my shoes.” He yanked one off without untying it and held it out to her. “Take a sniff. It smells good as new.”
Channie shook her head. She’d smelled Josh’s shoes before, from a distance. There was no way she wanted to inhale with it anywhere near her face. “No thanks. I believe you.”
His eyes sparkled with mischief. He thrust the shoe under her nose. “Go on. Smell it.”
Channie laughed and batted his hand away. “No.”
“Okay. If you don’t like my left shoe.” He tossed it over his shoulder and jerked off his other shoe. “How bout this one?”
“Josh. I don’t want to smell your shoes.”
He stood up and peeled off his sweater. “You should at least smell my sweater.” He wadded it up and held it over his nose then inhaled deeply. “It smells really good.”
Channie took his sweater in her hands then leaned over it and sniffed cautiously. It didn’t just smell good. It smelled like lemons and sandalwood and Josh.
She closed her eyes, pressed the cloud of wooly fabric against her face and drank in his scent. When she opened her eyes, Josh was staring at her. He looked like something out of a dream, bathed in moonlight, bare chest heaving with every breath. A stretching sensation deep inside her own chest ached. This hunger was more than lust. It was a physical need as real as the urge to breathe.
Josh pressed a hand against his chest, over his heart. He felt it too. Channie wanted to give in, but she refused to disobey Aunt Wisdom.
They could abstain for as long as a year without breaking their bond. But how long before it broke them?
She slipped Josh’s sweater on over her head then wiggled out of the towel. “A cleansing spell is advanced magic. Especially a cleansing spell that works on non-living matter.” She fisted the front of Josh’s sweater and lifted it to her nose for another hit of his delicious scent. “If you can clean your clothes with magic, there’s no reason you can’t curse Hunter.”
“Channie, I tried. I gave it all I had. But it just didn’t work.”
Channie crawled across the bed on her hands and knees then stood on the splintered floor in her bare feet. She took Josh’s face in her hands and tilted his head down to gaze into his eyes. “Tomorrow you are going to knock Hunter Feenie on his ass and then we’re going to make love all night long.”
Josh shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so.”
“I do. Now come to bed. You need a good night’s rest because tomorrow night, you aren’t going to get any sleep at all.”
“God, I hope you’re right.”
~***~
The next morning, Hunter announced his arrival by banging on the door and yelling, “Wake up sleepyheads. I brought breakfast.”
The aroma of bacon and eggs sent Channie’s salivary glands into overdrive. She jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans under Josh’s sweater then darted to the door, but before she could open it, Josh grabbed her wrist and said, “Put on a bra.”
Channie blushed and nodded then dug a clean bra out of the paper bag at the foot of their bed. Josh chewed on his lower lip as he watched her put it on. When she grabbed one of her own shirts, he shook his head and handed her the sweater she’d slept in. He smoothed it down over her hips and said, “I like seeing you in my clothes,” then opened the door.
Channie suspected what Josh really liked was Hunter seeing her in his clothes. She was getting a little tired of his alpha-dog attitude.
Josh glared at Hunter for thirty seconds, then turned his back and dug a sweatshirt out of the bag.
Channie said, “Come on in.”
Hunter shook his head as his gaze travelled over her body. He folded his arms across his chest then leaned against the doorframe, and stared at their unmade bed.
&
nbsp; Channie blushed, and pretended not to notice. “Where did you get the bacon?” They all knew where he got the eggs.
“It ain’t bacon. It’s tenderloin. I brought my own kit, so just grab a couple of plates and meet me out by the fire.”
Hunter had a dutch oven buried in the coals, a skillet full of scrambled eggs on the grate and two pork loins on a make-shift spit. Channie turned the meat and licked her lips as a ribbon of grease dribbled onto the coals, hissing and popping and making her stomach growl. A rush of saliva forced her to swallow before she could speak. “Whose pig?”
Everyone that raised pigs notched the animals’ ears to help sort things out and minimize feuds when the pigs escaped their pens. Something that happened on a regular basis.
“Old man McCray’s.”
“He’ll skin you alive if he comes home and finds out.”
“You gonna tell on me?”
“‘Course not.”
“Okay then, let’s eat.” Hunter divided the eggs onto everyone’s plates then moved one of the tenderloins onto the empty skillet and cut it into inch-thick slices with his hunting knife. Channie removed the lid from the dutch oven with a stick and gave them each a ladleful of hot, buttered mush sweetened with maple syrup.
Josh said, “Please tell me that’s coffee I smell,” and nodded at the blue enameled pot on the far side of the fire pit.
Hunter nodded. “It’s a blend. Coffee and roasted chicory. Help yourself.”
The morning air was cold and still. What little smoke the coals produced rose straight into the sky. Channie sat next to Josh on the warm rock ledge circling the pit and watched him put away half a dozen eggs, a quarter-pound of pork and three helpings of mush. Channie could tell from the size of the tenderloin, it had been a very young pig. Information she had no intention of sharing with Josh.
“Hunter, thank you so much for breakfast. I don’t know what we’d have eaten if you hadn’t been so thoughtful.”
Hunter said, “My pleasure,” then leaned back, loosened his belt and belched out loud.
Channie wrinkled her nose and fanned the air in front of her face.
“What? It was a burp not a fart.”
Josh stood up and took Channie’s hand like a true gentleman and helped her to her feet. “It was also crude, rude and socially unacceptable.”
Hunter stood up and wiped his hands on the front of his pants, adding to the dark stains already there. “You ready to get to work city-boy?”
Josh’s jeans, the one’s he’d worn yesterday, looked brand new. Channie said, “This ‘city-boy’ cast a cleansing spell on himself last night and just so happened to clean his clothes with the same magic.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes. “That ain’t possible.”
Channie pointed at Josh’s jeans. “That’s the same pants he had on yesterday when he cursed the mice. There’s not a spec of dirt on ‘em.”
Hunter put his hands on his knees and leaned over to get a closer look at Josh’s jeans.
Josh put both hands on Hunter’s head and shoved him backwards. “Get away from me you perv.”
A flash of blinding green light was all the warning Channie got before her left shoulder exploded in agony.
This wasn’t just the sensation of pain, like when she and Josh were cursed by the Book of the Dead, but an actual injury that filled her nose with the acrid odor of burning flesh — just like when she’d killed Harvey.
Josh caught her as she collapsed then lowered her onto the ground, cradling her head in his lap. He brushed the hair off her face and said, “You’re okay, baby. You’re okay. Please be okay.” He wasn’t very convincing.
Hunter sounded as if he were choking. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry. Channie? Are you all right?”
Josh kept his gaze locked on Channie’s as he ordered Hunter to go find Aunt Wisdom. “Use my car. The keys are hanging on that nail by the door.”
Pain stole the air from Channie’s lungs. She wanted to scream, but all she could do was gasp. Her vision turned grey around the edges, then black.
~***~
When Channie woke up, she was lying in bed. A thick white bandage covered her left shoulder and upper arm. She gritted her teeth to keep from moaning and focused on the angry voices in the corner of the room.
“We weren’t even sparring.” Josh sounded defensive as well as angry. “And even if we were, he shouldn’t have used full power.”
Aunt Wisdom said, “He didn’t. If he had, she’d be dead.”
Channie opened her eyes a fraction of an inch and peered between her lashes. Aunt Wisdom and Hunter had Josh backed into a corner, literally. But he stood against the splintered wooden walls with his back straight, his chin up and his arms folded across his chest.
Hunter’s face was scrunched into a mask of contempt. “You didn’t even try to retaliate.”
“I was freaked out about Channie!”
“Oh yeah? Hit me with your best shot.”
Channie hoped Aunt Wisdom would intervene. But she just stood there with her arms crossed, watching.
Hunter said, “What kind of mage are you anyway? I thought your power-name was Valor. You aren’t even valiant enough to protect your own wife.”
“It was your freakin’ curse that burned her.”
“It was your shield that deflected the curse.”
Josh didn’t say anything to that. Great. Channie hoped she’d be able to convince him it wasn’t his fault.
Hunter said, “I can tell you right now, that if Channie were my wife and you’d hurt her, I would have blasted you into next week.”
“Channie will never by yours.”
“At the rate you’re going, you ain’t gonna survive the first battle. Your body won’t be cold in the ground before I have Channie in my bed.”
Josh lunged at Hunter and drove his fist into his face. Hunter twisted halfway around before he landed on his butt, facing Channie.
Her eyes felt as if they would pop out of her head.
Hunter cupped his hand under his bleeding mouth and blinked three times. “He … hit me.”
Josh shook his right hand, pain twisting his features then gritted his teeth and pulled it back into a fist. “And I’ll do it again if you so much as look at my wife.”
“Why didn’t you just curse me?”
“Hitting you was a lot more satisfying.”
Hunter stood up, putting a good four feet between his face and Josh’s fists. “I’ll bet you cain’t even curse a rabbit. I know for a fact, you cain’t gut one without puking.”
Josh took a step towards Hunter, but Aunt Wisdom put a hand on his chest and said, “Wait.”
About time she intervened.
“Tap into your power-well, use that anger to curse him.”
Hunter’s shield went up in a green blur.
Josh’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t.”
“Try.”
“I am trying! I’ve been trying ever since he got here this morning with his stolen pig.” Josh turned towards Hunter. “You think I don’t know what that was all about? You’re just trying to prove that you can take better care of Channie than I can.”
Hunter smiled, exposing bloody teeth, “You put any food on the table yet?”
Josh said, “We aren’t going to live here in this backwater dump forever! I have a trust fund waiting for me — for us — when we get home. Not only will I buy Channie her own vee-hick-ul, I’m buying her a three bedroom house with two bathrooms and walk-in closets bigger than this stupid shack. You can’t compete with me so don’t even try.”
Hunter said, “All that stuff won’t do her no good if she’s dead. You cain’t protect her the way I can.”
Channie fisted her hands and gasped when the bandage tugged against her blistered shoulder. “I’m not some prize to be won by the peacock with the biggest spread of tail feathers!” She lifted her right hand and reached for Josh.
He turned his back on Hunter, grabbed her hand then knelt beside the bed and kissed
the top of her head.
Channie tugged him down to eye-level and said, “I love you, Joshua Vincent Abrim. I married you, not Hunter. We are heart-bound and nothing’s going to change that. Not even death. Your jealousy is insulting.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” Josh dropped his chin to his chest. “But he’s right. I can’t protect you the way he can.”
“I killed that nasty little tracker that tried to rape me without any help from either of you.”
“But that was before you lost your powers.”
“There’s more than one way to kill a skunk.” Channie pictured the gun in her backpack under the bed and resolved to begin target practice as soon as her shoulder healed.
~***~
Aunt Wisdom drove into Whistler’s Gulch for supplies and returned with Christmas gifts for everyone, even Hunter. She gave the boys wicked-looking automatic knives. When she mentioned that it was illegal for anyone other than law-enforcement or military personnel to own or carry the “Benchmade Infidels” … Hunter and Josh’s matching grins widened so far it looked painful.
She gave Channie three boxes of ammunition for the Glock 26 she’d taken from Harvey and a set of holsters that could be worn under a jacket, around her ankle under boot-cut jeans (which she also gave her) and a thigh band for the rare occasions Channie actually wore a skirt.
Channie was embarrassed that no one had a gift for Aunt Wisdom, but when she apologized, Aunt Wisdom said, “The best gift you could give me is to keep each other safe. So keep your weapons within arms reach at all times.”
She stayed until the fourth of January, keeping an eye on Channie’s burns, teaching her how to clean and handle her gun and of course, working with Josh. After two weeks of grueling, and unsuccessful training, she announced her diagnosis of the problem. They were all sitting around the fire pit, eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs, fresh bacon and cornbread.
“I believe that Josh’s power-name, Valor, is interfering with his desire to curse Hunter.” She smiled at Josh, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You can’t help feeling indebted to him for his devotion to Channie. It wouldn’t be valiant to curse a man that wants to protect the woman you love, no matter what his motivation might be.”
“So how am I supposed to practice?” Josh dropped a morsel of cornbread by his feet and made a kissing sound with his mouth. A chipmunk darted past a squirrel and snatched the treat. The squirrel chittered and twitched its tail then gave chase, but the chipmunk was faster. Josh chuckled and said, “You snooze you lose.”
TAKEN: Book Two Page 5
