“What are you doing?” she managed to ask the body on the ground.
“I’m recuperating.”
“From what? Are you drunk? Hurt?”
“I’m recuperating from being swarmed by several judgmental cowboys.”
Oh my God. It was the terrific-looking guy from the bar, the one the cowboys took outside. Jolene carefully opened the car’s front door, trying not to bash Mr. Handsome with the edge. The dome light spilled out onto the pavement and illuminated his blond hair, but the rest of him was in shadow, and his clothing merged with the black of the pavement.
“Should I call an ambulance? Or someone to help you?”
“I’ve been awake for a few minutes now,” Mr. Handsome said, his voice becoming clearer. “And I don’t think anything is broken. I believe I’ve been on the receiving end of an old-fashioned ass whupping, and when they threw me here, I must have hit my head on your car. It is your car?”
Jolene shook her head then remembered that he probably couldn’t see her. “No, it’s my friend’s car, but she went home with…” She nearly said Becky had gone home with a goat guy. What was going on with her?
“Never mind. Oh God, there’ll be a dent from your head, and Becky is going to think I ran into something, especially after the argument we just had.”
“Uh, hey! Becky’s friend?”
Jolene came back abruptly to the immediate concern when she heard his pained voice. “What?”
“Maybe you could give me a hand.”
She wanted to bash her own head on Becky’s car door. He was hurt, and she was worried about a vehicle. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She impulsively knelt beside him, careful not to touch him in case he had a bad injury or blood on him. A wonderful scent wafted up to her, and she sniffed appreciatively. He smelled like leather and soap, and it reminded her of earlier times. A sense of comfort and calm crept back over her, mingled with little spikes of something else she immediately dismissed as nonsensical. She’d only just laid eyes on him, and he was hurt. It seemed a night for misplaced arousal.
“Can I give you a ride home?” Her voice thankfully didn’t reflect her inner turmoil.
“My car is here, but I don’t think I should drive. A ride would be great, thanks. My name is Xander Ahearn. Yours?”
“Jolene Phillips. Here, I’ll help you up.”
“Maybe just open the back door and I’ll crawl in. I’m one big bruise from the feel of things and probably filthy, too. No sense in getting you and your friend’s car dirty. Uh, you say your name is Phillips?”
“That’s right. Two l’s.”
Jolene opened the back door and watched as Xander Ahearn kind of coiled himself up from his sprawl on the asphalt, slowly inching into the car to collapse on the back seat. The overhead light now shone mercilessly on his bloody face and torn shirt. Jolene involuntarily bit her lip and reached out to him. He was a mess, and he’d been lying out here the whole time she argued with Becky over a pseudorancher. She’d been maybe fifty feet from his unconscious form when she exited the bar earlier. Her timing was terrible.
Right before she put her hand on him, Xander pried open one eye and smiled at her. Jolene watched in horror as his split lip oozed blood from the effort, even as she again registered his incredible appeal. She scrabbled in her purse and found a box of wipes. She shoved the box and a wad of tissues at him, allowing them to drop on his chest. She gestured at his face.
“Here, hold these to your mouth and clean up. I’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”
Xander gave her an address, then had to repeat it so she could understand him from behind the tissues. She shut the door and jumped into the driver’s seat, flinging her bag onto the passenger side. Her hands were shaking with reaction, but she succeeded in shoving the key into the ignition, and Becky’s car roared to life. The familiar action of driving calmed her, and she made her way to the address Xander provided, relieved it proved to be a fairly short drive. It was a four-story apartment building on the outskirts of town, and Jolene might have appreciated the architecture and nicely landscaped grounds displayed by clever placement of lighting if she hadn’t been worried by Xander’s silence. She should have taken him to hospital except she intuitively knew hospitals meant insurance, questions, and probable police involvement, all of which Xander appeared to want to avoid. He seemed lucid enough, in any event.
* * * *
Xander lay scrunched up on the short back seat of the vehicle, thinking about the young woman who stopped to help him. He should be cataloguing his injuries and determining how long it would be before he’d be healed and ready to infiltrate the herd again, instead of examining his reaction to her. She said her name was Phillips, fitting for someone who came to his rescue. He dragged his thoughts back to the herd. Caprines in this world were usually loners, carefully masked from humans, moving amongst them out of curiosity and extreme sexual interest, and for short periods of time only. But for some reason a few of the goatheads had banded together and attracted others, and were now spending longer and longer periods of time here. It appeared they were descending upon various venues as a group and absorbing the characteristics of those who frequented such places to hide in plain sight, masking their true identities with spells. Many inhabitants of his realm used the same spells to make forays here, primarily to experience this world, although few chose to return again, aside from the Caprines. He and his brother transformed to cross over for sexual adventures when they were younger, but Sulieman preferred to be close to home, and Xander found himself despising what humans wrought here. Their females’ appeal aside, he didn’t particularly care for humans, period.
So far, all Xander’s team determined was the Caprines were simply out for a group party or ten, but any change in the behavior of his world’s inhabitants had to be investigated. If nongifted humans learned of Xander’s realm, they could learn to breach the fragile barrier between the two worlds and cross over. Xander and the other Council members policing the barrier wanted to prevent that at all costs. Their realm was unspoiled and protected. Humans would change that. One only had to look around here to see what their greed and disrespect for the environment and each another would do to Xander’s home. It wasn’t that humans didn’t live amongst his peoples. Sometimes a special one would find their way through the barrier or be brought back by one of the hoofed inhabitants seeking a mate. Xander knew several such humans, and they were equally determined not to allow mass crossovers, but he didn’t trust them, nor was he inclined to get to know them. His antipathy for all things human remained strong, even if the little one in the driver’s seat had shown him compassion.
Xander bit back a groan as the vehicle bumped over the speed bumps signifying their arrival at his rented home. He hated having to stay in this realm for any length of time, but it was too hard on his system to keep switching between his human and Ipotane form. He would live here as long as it took to ferret out the Caprines’ secret. His legs were cramped from the dearth of space, and his body ached everywhere. The Caprines wouldn’t kill him, but they were obviously determined to keep him at bay. He was equally resolute to keep them from blowing the closely kept secret of his home wide open. Someone with a gift was going to recognize them if they kept massing because eventually they would draw the attention of those who could see them for what they were. It was one thing for a loner to be spotted and be able to escape further notice, or be dismissed as a hallucination of some kind, but large groups wouldn’t be so easy to hide. The Council couldn’t trust they could convince those gifted humans to stay silent. No, it was best if he and his team shut this nonsense down as soon as possible.
“Xander?”
The musical voice of the lovely little human named Jolene pulled him from his thoughts. There was something about her that drew and distracted him, and the sooner he made his way into his apartment and she left, the better. He had a job to do, and his time of dallying with human females was in the past.
“I am fine, Jolene Phillips,” he assured her. “Thank you for the ride.”
He watched as she jumped out of the vehicle with grace and an economy of movement he admired, for surely he wasn’t admiring how her large, round breasts bounced on her narrow torso. When she pulled open the back door and leaned in to offer her hand, Xander closed his eyes against the sight of the creamy tops of those breasts spilling over into the vee of her shirt. His mouth watered to graze on their tender tips. He willed his cock into submission and took as deep a breath as his sore ribs would allow. His recent beating must have undermined his good sense, although he actually wasn’t feeling all that poorly now.
“I think it would be better if I got out myself,” he suggested, and was relieved when she stepped back to give him room. He really didn’t want to learn what her probably soft hand would feel like, fearing it would further undermine him. It was an altogether strange and unfamiliar pull, and his anxiety was mounting with every moment around her, not to mention the state of his cock.
Xander managed to slide out onto the pavement without showing too many signs of discomfort, he hoped, although Jolene was holding her lush bottom lip between her little white teeth in apparent anxiety as she watched his movements. Chiron! Xander hoped that mentally evoking the name of the Pride of the Centaurs would give him control. He was a physical disaster, yet his libido was taking over, and this was simply not the time. There could never be a time. Xander Ahearn of Ipotane, horse lord of the Satyrs, would never willingly fuck a human female again. Not even one with the face of an angel and the body of a temptress.
He felt his strength returning and the pain of his injuries subsiding, all the while managing not to look at Jolene. It had to be the reassuring memories of his history giving him the ability to rebound so quickly. He ignored the impression Jolene was lending him her own strength in some way, that she’d been doing so since she stepped upon him in the parking lot in those high-heeled boots. Her silvery eyes were trained on him. He could virtually feel the intensity of her stare on his skin, and his cock filled and stood at rapt attention despite his efforts to fight it. Xander blessed the darkness, now the light from the vehicle was behind them, because his choice of clothing wouldn’t have hidden the evidence of his arousal.
Damn those goatheads for changing out their apparel each and every time he got close. They might not have recognized him as Ipotane, given his human form, but his attire gave him away. He hadn’t fit in, and their sentries sussed him out. He opened his mouth to thank the human female and urge her to go, when she reached out and gently laid her hand on his forearm. Xander felt his teeth snap together with a resounding clap, and his entire body sparked from head to toe, his very skin rippling. Jolene gasped and snatched her hand away as though she’d been burned.
Xander tossed his head back in a wild gesture of arousal even as he pulled her to him. He dropped his mouth over hers, ignoring the sting of his split lip, all the while trying to resist the pull of her magyk. He had been rescued by a witch. A witch in a bar full of Caprines, and Chiron knew what that inferred. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything more at that moment. All he could do was fill the bone-crushing need swamping him, leaving him adrift on the meadow of passion and desire. The witch’s lips flowered open under his demand, and he thrust his tongue inside to touch hers and explore the moist cavern of her mouth. He wound his fingers through the mass of her thick, chestnut hair to hold her lips steady for the invasion while turning to pin her against the car with the weight of his body. Her ample breasts crushed against his abdomen, and he impatiently released her mane to reach down to grasp her waist. He lifted her until her rump rested against the window ledge, never breaking the kiss. The new position gave him the opportunity to shove his hardness against her mound and rub her breasts with his chest. Chiron, but she felt and tasted luscious.
The twist and pinch of his sensitive ears intruded rudely and abruptly. Xander tore his mouth away from hers and stared into the molten steel of perdition. Jolene’s silver-gray eyes resembled nothing less than those pools of hellfire. Witch’s eyes.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was dark with anger, incredulity, and arousal.
Xander registered the warning and immediately set her on the ground, as far away from him as his arms would reach. His need was no less, but while he always took control in any foray into sexual activity, this wasn’t his world, and the witch hadn’t given him permission. He took refuge in an apology.
“I am sorry. Your magyk was unexpected, and I simply reacted. I do not know why you helped me, but I thank you. Good-bye.” He turned and began to walk away, the unrelieved painful thrust of his cock adding to the now-only-mild discomfort of his injuries. He needed to put some distance between them before he ignored her warning. No wonder he was healing so quickly. Her magyk was incredibly strong. The skeins of it tugged him back to her.
“Magic?” Jolene’s surprised reaction had Xander turning to look at her while keeping his distance.
“I didn’t know you were a witch,” he explained, working hard at not reaching for her again, as she stood there with that mass of hair spilling down over her shoulders, her lips swollen from his kiss and her eyes now wide with apparent confusion.
“Oh God. Another nut bar.”
Xander frowned. She wasn’t making sense, but then his experience with witches, and humans for that matter, wasn’t extensive. The stories about witches made any sane Ipotane cautious, if interested and titillated. He heard her muttering, and his acute hearing had him reaching for her, only this time not out of lust.
“I swear I had like three swigs of beer,” she grumbled. “So how in hell did I see men who looked like sexy goats and then actually stop to help a freak who thinks I’m a witch?
“What are you doing now?” She shrieked and struggled against his hold.
“We’re going inside my place so we can have some privacy to discuss what you saw tonight,” Xander advised her, as he tightened his grip to move her toward the front door of the building.
“No! Let go of me!”
Her screams would wake the dead, never mind his neighbors. He made a decision that might not work out so well for him later unless he could convince her of the necessity of it. Ipotanes were no match for witches unless they were mated. He pressed a spot on the side of her neck, and she gave a gentle sigh, sinking into him. He swung her up and carried her inside, glad that she was so slight, as his ribs reminded him of the earlier fight. It was interesting such a tiny human was also such a plush armful. Xander winced as his cock strained against the fabric of his clothing yet again. He had to keep his mind on what was actually important and not on getting this witch woman naked and into position, mounting her, and fucking them both senseless.
Chapter Three
Jolene drifted awake and yawned, trying to turn her face into the pillow in an effort to fall back into sleep. She’d dreamed once again of some strange things involving mysterious forests and wide, grassy places populated with all manner of creatures moving gracefully on long, slender legs, the smooth muscles of their bodies bunching and flexing beneath their skin. Skin like seal fur, in shades of gray and silver, or shimmering, burnished gold, contrasting with long flowing tails of silvery white or black silk. There were other shapes, too, larger, stockier creatures with varying lengths of furry pelts, the slitted pupils of their golden eyes and the ridged curling horns springing from their temples bringing illicit and demonically sexual fantasies to mind. Some had larger ears, and their liquid eyes reminded her of the small red deer on Uncle Marshall’s property. It was equally fantastical that instead of the head of an animal, all the creatures, regardless of size, sported handsome human faces above firm, muscled chests and rippling biceps and forearms. One of them was so familiar, and Jolene tried desperately to place him, to reach out to him. Her erotic dreams were back, and with a vengeance. She’d had them since her teenage years, and even then had the sense not to share
with anyone, especially not her girlfriends. Jolene felt her thighs soften and part, her center swell with moist heat, and her breasts tighten with need. She longed to be one with these creatures. She felt at home somehow, as if she belonged.
Both the pillow and a return to the dream eluded her, and she opened her eyes. All hints of arousal fled as Xander’s visage loomed over her, and she tried to lunge away, only to find she was restrained, her hands tied above her to the headboard of the bed she lay on. Panic and fear soured her mouth, and Jolene blinked to ensure she was indeed awake.
“Lie still, witch. I just want to talk with you, and I can’t risk your touch.”
Xander’s low tone was meant to be soothing, she was sure, but the whole evening had been an assault on her senses, and Jolene couldn’t even begin to settle. She was further confused by her body’s earlier response to this man. Jolene had been overwhelmed with the need to surrender to him and let him do whatever he wanted with her, to her, just because of a kiss. Only the taste of his blood pulled her from the delirium resulting from that press of hot lips, invading tongue, and the hard feel of his body against hers. And even then the desire pooling between her legs and swelling her breasts nearly drowned that faint whisper of sanity. It had taken everything she had to grasp his ears, make him pay attention, and release her. Jolene didn’t know why she took that approach instead of punching or kicking at him, but it worked a treat. Except now she was tied to his bed, and the idea of kinky sex with Xander, the kind of sex she’d only read about, kept intruding, pushing away her fear, now she was over the shock. Jolene blurted out a response in a desperate attempt to distract herself from her insane thoughts.
“Untie me and let me go and I won’t tell anyone what happened.”
Riding Magyk Page 2
