Mates & Magic: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Box Set Collection

by Jade Alters

  “Darren!” Brendan says.

  “I’m just asking.”

  “You guys do that a lot,” I say, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

  Soon, Darren is driving us down a lovely tree-lined road near Memorial Park. It’s dark now, but the art deco style street lights keep the streets aglow. Darren pulls into a driveway and my breath catches. I figured their house must be kind of nice if they live in South Pasadena, but this is something else. The driveway is long and curved. We park in front of a sizeable garage sided in the same dark wood as the huge Craftsmen mansion where the fox shifters apparently live. It’s the kind of place I could only ever dream of living. The house itself sits on an incline so the front yard is just a little bit hilly, but what a yard, all springing with tall grass, lavender, a weeping willow tree, and beds of flowers. It’s overgrown in a charming way that gives it a little privacy, as does the low fence around the front yard. I like it. It makes the whole place look just a little bit mysterious. I can see a veranda too that wraps around the whole house which sits over an arroyo. I imagine the view is breath-taking.

  “We have a pool by the way,” Darren says, as he parks the car.

  Fancy that, I just happen to pack my bathing suit…

  “I don’t have a boyfriend, by the way,” I tell him before climbing out of the car.

  Under his breath, I hear him mutter, “Interesting.”

  Now, I’m wondering if the rest of them have partners? They must. They’re hot, apparently rich, and they’re cops, which a lot of people are attracted to. How could they not be taken?

  Brendan comes around the car and swats Darren’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re asking her that stuff now. The woman has stalkers after her.”

  Darren looks a bit sheepish at that. “I’m sorry if-”

  “Oh no, that’s okay.” I find myself blushing. I’d been so dazzled by the four of them that I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility that any of them would have any… romantic interest in me.

  Thinking on it some more, I realize they do all seem as if they’re somewhat attracted to me. But if that’s true, it must be because of the spell. I don’t have a terrible self-image or anything, but it’s a little hard for me to believe that four guys like them would be into little old me, a mousy English major working in a bookstore. The sexiest thing going for me is that I’m a witch. Of course, I could just do a little spell to keep the attraction going…

  Inwardly, I chide myself for entertaining such a stupid idea. Spells like those are notoriously difficult. Sure, it’s apparently easy to get men to chase you, but real interest… that’s another thing entirely. Besides, I know love spells can be a pain in the ass. And though I’ve never even tried one, and I don’t plan on whipping one up any time soon. No, no. The only spell I’m allowing myself is the circle of protection and that’s only because I promised Shea I would. I’ll just have to do it when I know I’m alone. I don’t want them to be offended or anything.

  Darren and Brendan lead me inside and I suppress a gasp as I take in their mansion. I could swear that I’ve actually seen this house on postcards or in magazines about the “classic Craftsmen homes of Pasadena.” The design is so classic and beautiful. It’s all wood, and there are real Tiffany lamps placed with care all over the place. Stained glass grapes and ivy glass shades splash softly colored light all over the living room. A massive fireplace sits framed by dark wood molding and cream walls. There are wooden chairs in the straight lines of Frank Lloyd Wright and a few other interesting touches like the cornflower blue paint that adorns the walls of the foyer and the stained glass window of a fox.

  The house is beautiful, but more than that, it already feels comfortable. It’s as familiar to me as the men are. I feel like I’m returning home somehow instead of walking into a stranger’s house.

  “Our guest room is up here,” I hear one of them say, and I follow them up the stairs. Unsurprisingly, they insist on carrying all of my bags. The guest room is the first door on the landing, right by the stairs next to a huge bathroom with mint green tiles. In a word, the bedroom is lovely. A queen size bed fitted with a plush comforter and pillows in dark blues and grays is the first thing I see when I walk in.

  I discover there are two guest rooms because friends and relatives visit so often. On top of that, they each have their own rooms, as well as a library on the first floor, and a gaming room. This place is nothing short of amazing.

  My bedroom has a window seat and I can’t help but “ooh” and “aah” as Brendan takes care to let Gus out of his carrier. Or rather, Brendan unlatches the little door of the carrier and Gus continues to cower inside. I know no amount of coaxing will get him out, so I set the carrier on the floor leaving the door open to let him come out on his own time.

  For a moment, I’m totally overwhelmed. Everything has happened so fast. I spent most of the day feeling petrified that Hardhum, or some other guy, was going to come pound down my door– or worse. Sometimes it feels like I’m totally losing control of my own life. And now, here come four fox shifter cops to save the day.

  I just wasn’t expecting to be staying at some mansion for a while.

  I text Shea that I’ve arrived at the foxes’ house and that nothing about it feels weird or creepy. I also remind her of my “witchy sense.” Shea expresses doubt in my witchy sense and texts me about five times reminding me to cast the circle of protection. She says she’s also casting something to protect me, which gives me the warm fuzzies. It’s certainly nice when somebody cares.

  “We’ll leave you alone for a bit,” Darren says, hovering in the doorway. “Let you get settled. Ian and Mitch should be home soon though and we’ll have some dinner.”

  “Sounds good,” I say gratefully.

  When he leaves, I heave a sigh and fall back on my big, comfy bed. It takes a few minutes but eventually, Gus wanders out and jumps on the bed too, climbing onto my stomach.

  He looks at me, annoyed.

  I don’t know what he’s complaining about. I’m the one who had to scrub out his litter box and bring it along with all his litter, food, and toys. I scratch him under his chin and raise an eyebrow.

  “They’re nice,” I murmur. “You’ll see. They’re nice fox men.”

  Finally, I sit up. I’m suddenly feeling pretty sleepy, but I drag myself over to my bags and start unpacking my things. I dig out all the stuff for my circle of protection: salt, sage, iron filings, myrrh, and a green candle.

  There’s a whole bunch of stuff, and I have just enough of everything. I grind it all up in my mortar with my pestle and then chant the spell while dabbing spots of my mixture in a circle around the room. I dab one spot every few inches on the floor in an arc, which means I have to move to the wall to make the circle complete behind my bed. Every so often, I have to keep shoving Gus out of the way. He thwacks me in the face with his tail as I chant and dab. I finish up the spell by chanting a few more times with a white candle lit in front of me, before blowing it out.

  That should do it. I look around, inspecting my handiwork with satisfaction. I’ve done circles of protection before. I know I didn’t fuck this one up.

  I text Shea that I did the spell and she sends me a thumbs up but says she’s still worried about me staying in a house with these mystery cops. She doesn’t seem as impressed about them being fox shifters as I am.

  When I’m done, I walk around and clean up all the dabs. They only need to be there during the chant. Once the magic has sunk in, the ingredients aren’t needed.

  I’m just wiping up the last dab of gunk off the wall when Ian appears in the door. I find myself jumping a little, hiding the paper towel with the magic gunk on it behind my back. I know I really shouldn’t be self-conscious about it. I’m certainly entitled to want to protect myself, and I don’t really know them at all. But I can’t help not wanting to broadcast that I was casting a spell to protect myself from them. Not after how nice they’ve been so far and how confident my witchy sense is t
hat they’re truly good guys.

  “You hungry?” Ian asks me. He’s changed out of his uniform. I haven’t seen him in plain clothes before and I feel my gaze wander over him, probably pretty conspicuously. He’s wearing a black t-shirt that hugs his muscles in just the right places. I hadn’t noticed just how built he is until now. He’s still lean though, just more muscular than I’d originally thought. But this guy...oof. His pecs alone…

  “Starved,” I say, answering his question. Except I’m not talking about dinner.

  Control your thirst.

  That’s going to be difficult around here, I can tell. I follow Ian downstairs to the dining room, which is lighter and airier than I would have thought for a house full of dark woods. This room has a white and light blue striped wallpaper. The table is Wright style, featuring a long rectangle in beautiful shiny wood with matching chairs.

  Dinner is a pasta puttanesca that Brendan put together. Apparently, he’s the best cook of the four of them. And he never lets the others forget it. He’s modest now, though, when I light up at the first delicious bite.

  “You made this?” I say. “It’s amazing!”

  “I’m a bit of a culinary novice,” Brendan says, his cheeks turning a little pink. “But I try my best.”

  Dinner is very pleasant, and it puts me at ease a little. Everyone seems so determined to make me feel at home, yet they seem so conscious of not wanting to overwhelm me either. Ian talks about the house and how much they’ve added to it since they’ve moved in. Home improvement seems to be his forte, and he’s done most of the work himself. Mitch keeps encouraging me to use the pool, and apparently, he is as much of a surfer as he looks, which does amuse me. The geeky poster prints on the wall are, of course, courtesy of Darren. I find myself catching his eyes across the table. All of these men make my heart skip a beat or two, but Darren’s the only one who’s been so bold as to ask me if I’m spoken for. Not that I can blame them. I’m here seeking protection from men who keep chasing after me. Only a freak would want to be hit on while that was going on.

  But apparently, I’m a bit of a freak.

  After dinner, I ask Darren for a personal tour of all his geeky shit since he took an interest in my Buffy figurine back in my apartment. He seems positively delighted when I ask. I don’t consider myself very geeky or anything. There are just a few things I’m a fan of that are pretty mainstream. We end up talking about Game of Thrones and Marvel stuff. Darren shows me his model of the Iron Throne that sits on a bookcase in the library. Apparently, every one of the guys rolled their eyes at that one, but I tell him I think it’s cool.

  “I bet you guys haven’t read half of these books,” I say, smirking as I browse their numerous shelves packed with new paperbacks, graphic novels, anthologies, and a lot of very old books that look suspiciously like first editions. I keep forgetting that the four of them are actually super old. They’ve seen the entire twentieth century and some years even before that.

  “We’ve read some of them,” Darren says. He’s smiling though, only pretending to be offended. The library is as beautiful as the rest of the house. It has dark wood French doors that lead out to the backyard. I can’t see much of the yard now in the dark, but there’s a light on over the serene blue of the pool that illuminates the area a bit. I see hydrangea bushes and a lot of pretty overgrowth just like in the front yard. A tire swing hangs from a ficus on the back lawn. “Brendan is a real literary snob. Actually so is Ian, but they argue about books all the time. Mitch is more into non-fiction, but he also reads graphic novels so we share a lot. And then I’m all about the fantasy and sci-fi.”

  My eyes catch sight of a huge Wright desk with a pretty green lamp. It doesn’t look like it’s used much, but it is pretty to look at. The comfy leather chairs in the room look well loved, and I sigh softly, sliding my hand along the supple leather.

  “If I lived here, I’d never want to leave,” I murmur. I get a little dizzy then and blink a few times to clear my head. I have to rub my eyes, so I lean on the arm of the chair, feeling a little unsettled. Suddenly, I see a vision in my head of living here forever with these four men and it’s so visceral that it makes my head spin. I imagine dinners with them and discussing books with them. I mean, I like my genre stuff just like Darren does, but I’m an English major too. I’d love to talk lit fic with Ian and Brendan. I imagine our laughter echoing as we talk about Fitzgerald. I imagine talking about Dune with Darren and reading Sandman and talking about it with Mitch. I imagine lazy days by the pool and long, slow kisses in that swing.

  It’s a completely insane vision, of course. I know that. It’s just been a weird, long day. Besides, I don’t even know which one of them I would pick.

  Though at the moment, I am leaning toward Darren who is standing in front of me.

  “Are you alright?” Darren asks, his brow creased with worry. “I know this must be… a lot.”

  “It is,” I say, and the weight of it hits me all at once. “But I’m glad I’m here. It’s crazy, probably, but it- it feels right?” I search Darren’s dark eyes, looking for some kind of solace and he nods slowly. “Do you have a feeling like that? Like I was meant to meet the four of you? I mean, you guys are shifters and everything, so you believe in magic…”

  “Yeah,” Darren says, smiling softly. “Yeah, we’ve actually talked about that. The truth is, we’ve had these sort of weird feelings where you’re concerned. As if it’s fate that we were supposed to meet you.”

  “Fate.” I whisper the word, and now I realize how close I am to Darren. My heart is racing and I know it’s not just because he has a nice, sharp jawline and glittery dark eyes. It’s that witchy sense again. It’s trying to tell me something.

  I’m not sure if it’s telling me to kiss Darren, but God, that’s what I want to do.

  I know I shouldn’t be asking for this kind of complication right now, but in all honesty, I don’t care about niceties.

  Darren swallows and I see his gaze drop to my mouth. He murmurs, “I should, um…”

  “Kiss me,” I whisper.

  “Huh?” His eyes go wide at that and I lean forward.

  “Kiss me,” I whisper again, but I beat him to the punch and suddenly my lips meet his.

  I have to admit, it was as much plain curiosity driving me as it was the tension of the moment. Now, as Darren’s mouth locks with my mind and our lips slide together I find myself melting into him. There was wine at dinner. I had two glasses. I’m slightly buzzed, if even that. It was just enough to take the edge off. But I think I’ll blame the wine for how my hands slide up Darren’s chest. I find myself just a little bit surprised at the muscles I find hiding under that Captain America t-shirt as his arms wrap around me. Our tongues curl together and we make out lazily as I sit on the arm of the big chair. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. There’s no reason it should. I’m just having a little fun. I keep the mantra going in my head as Darren cups my cheek and gently nudges my jaw open a little further before licking the inside of my mouth. I hum happily as he leans back a little, his eyes heavy-lidded, and kisses his way along my jaw down to my neck.

  There’s something so plainly pleasant about it. Obviously, there should be. If you kiss someone, it should damn well be pleasant. It’s hot too, don’t get me wrong. This man definitely knows how to kiss, but the sense of belonging and connection is making my heart thud loudly in my chest. On top of that, there’s a sense of delight in kissing Darren. I feel safe and as if there are no expectations. That’s a nice thing to enjoy when there are men after you trying to rip your life out of your control.

  Then I wonder if it’s just the screwed up spell making Darren want to kiss me at all, and I feel as if a bucket of cold water has been dumped over my head. I pull away then, suddenly feeling awful about it. I must be an idiot thinking any one of these hotties would be after me. Of course, it’s the spell. And if it is the spell, I really shouldn’t take advantage of them like this, even if I do feel that sense of safet
y and connection. Maybe it’s all a lie. Maybe the spell is affecting me too.

  I step back and try to smile, but I know I look a little freaked out. “That was nice,” I say softly. I’m almost shaking. I don’t know how to handle this now. I should tell them about the spell. I know that. But what if they’re angry with me when they find out?

  A mess of completing emotions flood my brain.

  “What is it?” Darren asks, his brow creasing. He plays with a lock of my hair, twirling it around his finger and I want to fall into his arms again, but I resist the urge. Which is not easy at all by the way.

  “Yeah, I just, um…” I pat his chest. “No, really, it was nice. More than nice, actually. Damn, you can kiss. I just- I don’t know if I should.”

  “Oh shit,” Darren murmurs apologetically. “I shouldn’t have-”

  “No, I wanted to,” I say, sighing. “Trust me. Just, um, let’s say it was nice and leave it at that. For now. Okay?”

  “I don’t have any expectations,” Darren says, softly kissing the tip of my nose. “Just a kiss.”

  Of course, it was just a kiss, I think sadly to myself. It was just the spell working on Darren. And I couldn’t help but go along with it. I’d have to be made of stone to resist these men.

  Staying here with the fox shifters is going to be harder than I thought.

  Ian

  Having Victoria here is like a dream. Almost literally. Sometimes I get this feeling like I’m having a vision. This is how it’s supposed to be. I keep that feeling to myself though. I know Mitchell is entirely on board with the idea of us having a shared fated mate, and I certainly wouldn’t be against it. If anything, it would be ideal for all of us. But I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up. Maybe I’ve just been hanging out with humans too long. The idea that this woman, who we just stumbled into on a police call, could be our shared mate seems almost too crazy.

  But maybe I can enjoy it while it lasts. The first night Victoria stays with us, we stay up late just talking and hanging out on the veranda in the back. We talk about nothing in particular, but there’s a lot of laughter. Victoria sits next to me on a porch swing. She takes her shoes off, and I keep noticing her toes all painted peach. I also notice the way she grabs my arm or Brendan’s next to her when she’s about to make a point. I notice all kinds of things. I want to notice them forever.