Beauty and the Beastmaster (Mystic Springs Book 3)

by Linda Winstead Jones, Lisa Childs

  Anything that happened between them tonight would be on her terms. Even if that anything turned out to be nothing.

  There were a hundred ways for him to chase Gabi out of town. Some would be easy; others pretty damn tough. None of them would be pleasant. Catching that word — mine — from Mia had made him question everything for a while. Tonight Mia had just been a baby, with no hint that she might have Springer blood. Then again, tonight she’d been happy and well-fed, with Judge at her side. When she and the bloodhound had first claimed one another and she’d believed her new friend was going to be taken away, the child had been in deep distress. That emotion might’ve triggered the aberration.

  Even if Mia did have Springer blood, she might not display any indication again until she reached puberty. There were thousands of people out in the world who had descended from one Springer family or another and were ignorant of that fact. He didn’t worry about them, why should he get obsessed with one kid?

  Silas dismissed all thoughts of babies and Brigadoon. Whatever had brought him to this moment, he liked it. He liked being here, in this place and time, more than he should.

  Sitting naked on the floor at the side of her bed, Gabi leaned in and up to kiss him. Gently at first, then with a building passion. A lingering hint of tension slowly left her body, until there was just this. Just the two of them.

  Gabi was the one who pulled away but she did so reluctantly, not in a panic. She stood and offered her hand. He took it, admired the way this marvelously naked woman looked by the soft light that filled her bedroom, then rose to his feet and waited for her to tell him what to do.

  For a moment she seemed uncertain, but that didn’t last long. She used her hands on him, exploring, arousing. She kissed his chest as her hands raked down his side, to his backside, and up again. It was as if she was attempting to learn every crevice, every inch of his skin. He was tempted to pick her up and throw her on the bed, but he didn’t. This was her show, and he would do nothing that might alarm or frighten her.

  She guided him back into her bed, placing him on his back. She lay atop him for a moment, kissing, touching, and then, finally, she reached for the bedside table and grabbed the condom. She opened the packet with just a little bit of trouble, he didn’t offer to help and she didn’t ask, and sheathed him so slowly she almost pushed him too far. Almost.

  This beautiful woman who had stirred him up inside and made him question everything looked him in the eye while she straddled him and took him in. She wasn’t afraid; her mind wasn’t elsewhere. There was no one in the bed, or in her mind, but the two of them. She was fully and completely in this moment. There was nothing else in her world, or his, but the way they came together.

  She rode him slowly at first, then hard, and climaxed with a low moan that was all he needed to push him over the edge.

  Afterward they were both motionless for a long moment, breathlessly depleted. Eventually reality returned. Gabi rolled off him, but she didn’t bother to slip under the covers. Her eyes were closed, her body relaxed. She was wonderfully on display.

  Silas didn’t leap from the bed. He wanted to lie here a while longer, wanted to look at Gabi, to touch her.

  Finally she opened her eyes and looked at him. “I don’t love you,” she whispered.

  He understood. Love had burned him, once, had made it hard for him to trust. It had burned Gabi badly, judging by her reactions tonight. “I don’t love you, either.”

  She seemed relieved. “I do like you, though, and tonight was lovely.”

  “Lovely?” He smiled at her.

  She laughed. Gabi had a great laugh; he’d never heard it before, not like this. It was real and free. The laughter didn’t last long, not nearly long enough. “Go. You can have the bathroom first. And I guess you have to get back to your place soon. Because of the dogs.”

  “I have a helper on duty. I can stay as long as you want me to.” He left the bed, headed for the single, small bathroom. Gabi said nothing, not a single word. He added, “You could at least pretend to want me to stay.”

  “Oh, Silas,” she said seductively as he reached the doorway. “Don’t go.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

  Her lips pursed as her head returned to the pillow.

  He didn’t want to have anything to do with Jenna’s plan. That was already decided. The question now was whether or not it was best for Gabi to stay or to go, knowing what was coming. Would she want to be trapped here forever? Would she want all her options for the future taken away? He didn’t have to worry about her heart being broken, which seemed to worry Marnie. Gabi had made it clear her heart wasn’t up for grabs.

  He ignored the fleeting thought that his own heart might be on the line.

  Gabi slept better than she had in more than a year. It was amazing what a good orgasm could do for a woman.

  She’d almost blown it, with that unexpected panic attack. It had been a long time since Blake had felt so near to her, since any memory of him had been so fresh. It had also been a very long time since any man had touched her. And boy, had Silas touched her.

  He’d known exactly what to say, exactly how to touch her to chase the bad memories away. After they’d returned to the bed no other man, no bad memory, had entered her thoughts.

  Would she ever have a full day where Blake didn’t intrude at least half a dozen times? Would she ever not be afraid? For a while last night she’d been free and fearless.

  Silas had left without asking for another date, but he’d be back. He’d be back in her bed a time or two, or twenty. At least, she hoped so. Had last night been as special for him as it was for her? Or had he taken her momentary freak-out more to heart than he’d let on?

  No matter what happened, she didn’t regret anything that had happened.

  She could feel. She could connect with another human being. Her life had not ended the night she’d run from Blake, that last time.

  Friday was usually a busy day for Gabi. She had three appointments on the books for the morning, and in the afternoon she’d visit The Egg and make herself available to the elderly men and women there. There was a small room set up for her in the retirement home, and for the manicurist who worked there weekly, usually on Tuesday.

  During the past year she’d wondered more than once why everyone called the retirement home The Egg. The building wasn’t egg-shaped. She’d asked, once, while she was styling Helen Benedict’s hair, and had gotten several nonsensical explanations from the ladies present. They seemed to make a game of it, trying to outdo one another.

  It had once been painted an awful yellow. They had eggs for breakfast every day. The building had been laid by a giant chicken. It was short for The Alabama Home for the Exceptionally Gifted, and since no one knew how to pronounce AHFEG they’d simplified. Whatever the reason, it was now and always The Egg.

  Saturday was Gabi’s busiest day, most weeks. Sundays were an off day. Normally she didn’t do anything on her days off, but if the coming weekend was as mild and pleasant as today, maybe she’d brave a walk in the woods. Maybe she’d pack a picnic and walk all the way to the river.

  Who was she kidding? She’d walk all the way to Silas’s place to check out where he lived. She’d use the excuse that Judge might be missing his old doggie friends, but the truth was she wanted more of Silas.

  Did he want more of her?

  Gabi unlocked the door of her salon and walked inside. An unexpected squeaking sound caught her ear, along with a rustling. She glanced to the back of the room, where the light from the front window barely reached. Afternoon sunlight reached the back wall, but in the morning, with the sun behind the building, it was a different story. In the dim light the walls seemed to move in a weird way that made her blink to clear her vision. Everything back there shimmered, somehow. She reached for the light switch, flipped it…

  And screamed as at least a hundred mice scurried for the dark corners or climbed the walls.


  Chapter 10

  After getting a call from the ice cream shop Silas drove to town instead of taking the time to walk. Jordan Carter, ice cream maker, had been calm. The frantic woman he heard in the background had not.

  He wouldn’t have taken Gabi for a woman to lose it over seeing a mouse or two, but she’d sounded as panicked as she had last night, when a bad memory had jerked her out of the moment and into the past. Maybe she was more delicate than she let on. Then again every woman, every person, had a right to their own fears. Apparently mice were one of hers. He’d take care of the rodent problem. As Mystic Springs’ critter guy, he’d done it before. Many times.

  He parked directly in front of the beauty shop. Gabi stood by the window; Jordan was nearby.

  In a matter of weeks Jordan Carter would become Jordan Benedict. She and Luke had been dating for a couple of months, and things were happening quickly with those two. He hadn’t heard many details about their wedding plans, but then again he was entirely out of the loop when it came to town gossip. He did know Jordan had been married before so she wanted to keep it simple, but the Benedicts had a tendency to do things in a big way. Maybe because there were so damn many of them. Silas could not relate. He’d been on his own for so long that the idea of a big family was alien. And terrifying.

  He left his truck and walked to Gabi, who clutched her purse close to her chest as if it were a shield.

  “Where are your tools?” she asked, her words too quick and breathless.

  “I don’t need…”

  “You’re going to need tools.” She glanced toward the door. “When I turned on the light they just went crazy. As I left I turned the light off again, I’m not sure why it was just habit, I guess. Sorry. I should’ve left the light on so maybe they’d hide. It would be better if they hid. What kinds of tools do you need for that many mice?” she muttered, the question not necessarily directed at him.

  Silas glanced at Jordan, who just shrugged and said, “I don’t know what’s going on. She won’t let me open the door.”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to see what’s going on in there,” Gabi said, her fretful gaze flitting to Jordan.

  They’d begun to draw a crowd, if you could call four more people a crowd. In downtown Mystic Springs, seven people definitely qualified. Silas smiled at Gabi and said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  He opened the door and walked into the shop. Gabi was there to keep anyone else from entering. She guarded the door, protecting the others from a few rodents.

  The first hint that something was very wrong was the sound. There was a rustle in the walls, on the floor, from the back where there was a small office and a restroom. He turned on the light and the mice, not one or two but at least a hundred, swarmed. Some tried to hide in crevices and dark corners, but others ran straight for him. No wonder Gabi had panicked!

  Silas held out his hand, and they all stopped. Even the sound, that rustling of an unnatural gathering of rodents, ceased. With a flick of his fingers he guided them away, herding them toward the back door. They went, scrambling over one another, obeying his silent command. Even those he could not see, those who’d hidden from him, listened and joined the exit. He unbolted and opened the back door and herded them out. They swarmed around his feet but didn’t touch him, didn’t run over his boots.

  Once they were all outside he guided the mice along the backside of the downtown businesses, through tall weeds and past trash cans that would normally prove tempting. They scurried this way and that, sometimes scrambling over one another, but they obeyed. They stayed together and moved as he commanded. Behind and beyond the library, across Magnolia Street, to the vacant lot where Marnie’s house had once stood. From there it was easy enough to guide the rodents to the edge of the woods, where he silently instructed them to scatter. And they did.

  Silas stood in what had once been Marnie Maxwell’s back yard, before a fire had destroyed the house and left a blight on the neighborhood. He watched the woods for a moment, no longer seeing the rodents but feeling them go, sensing their energy as the unnatural magic that had guided them into Gabi’s shop faded away.

  Jenna no longer trusted him to get the job done, so she’d either cursed the shop herself or she’d had someone else do it. Not one of the Milhouses, but another witch. Someone who wanted isolation, as she did.

  As he had, when he’d first learned of the plan.

  Was he going to let one night in a woman’s bed change his mind?

  He was such a sap, where women were concerned. The entire animal kingdom would answer his call. They obeyed his commands, they would come to his aid if ever he needed them, he knew what they needed and what they wanted, at all times.

  Women, all humans, were a different story.

  Silas retraced his steps, back to the beauty shop back door, which still stood open. He walked through the shop and out the front door. When he stepped back onto the sidewalk Gabi was there, waiting anxiously for his report.

  “You need tools, right? How the hell did they get in? How do you get rid of that many mice? What am I going to do?”

  He’d never heard her sound so frantic, so out of control, not even last night when she’d freaked out on him. Then again, he didn’t know her all that well. Maybe she was an overly dramatic woman, one for whom everything was a crisis. She hadn’t struck him that way, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly where she was concerned.

  And he had to admit, that had been a shit-load of mice. No one but him would’ve been unaffected by the sight.

  “The mice are gone,” he said.

  She slipped past him, opened the door a couple of inches, and looked inside. “There were hundreds of them, maybe a thousand. Did you look upstairs? They can’t all be gone. They’re hiding, and as soon as I go back in…”

  There were half a dozen people on the sidewalk. This was a small town filled with too damn many psychics, and they’d been out to dinner at the town’s only restaurant, so his relationship with Gabi, new as it was, wasn’t a secret. He stopped her rambling with a brief, public kiss that shocked her into silence.

  “Trust me,” he said as he reluctantly released her. “They’re gone.” When she reached for the door again, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “But the place needs a good cleaning before you get back to work.”

  “Droppings,” she said with a touch of horror in her voice.

  “Oh, yeah.” He looked to Jordan. “Would you call Trudy and ask her if she has time today to give the salon a good scrubbing?” Damian’s mother was a whiz at that kind of thing. A wave of her hand, a few properly spoken words, and in a matter of minutes the place would be as good as new.

  “Sure,” Jordan said, heading back to her own business to make the call.

  “I can clean it myself,” Gabi said. “I really should…”

  “You should take the day off. Spend it with me.”

  Gabi opened her mouth to argue with him, but she didn’t get far. “I have clients on the books. I need to call and reschedule.”

  One of the women in the crowd waved a hand. “I had the ten o’clock appointment. Next week is fine. How about ten on Tuesday?”

  Gabi nodded. “Yes, thank you. See you then.” She took a pen and a small notebook out of her purse and made a note.

  Most people had that kind of information on a smart phone or maybe a tablet, but Gabi used paper and pen. As far as he knew, the only phone she had was the one in the shop. She wouldn’t want to use that one, since the last time she’d seen it the receiver had been swarming with mice.

  “Come to my place, make your phone calls from there, and then we’ll take the rest of the day off.”

  Again she hesitated, but then she said, “That might be nice.”

  “Might be?” he asked, teasing.

  Again, she looked like she wanted to argue but thought better of it. “Okay. But I have to be at The Egg by two.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Gabi laughed a little, but it wasn’t as
bright as last night’s laughter. The rodent invasion had dimmed her light. “There are some lovely people in Mystic Springs’ retirement home.”

  “A few, I suppose.”

  He wanted to show her his home, where he worked, where he slept. For a moment, at least, he wanted to show her who he truly was, what he could do. He wanted to be himself in front of her and allow her to do the same.

  It had been a long time since he’d had such a thought. He couldn’t possibly be himself in front of a Non-Springer.

  As he helped Gabi step into his truck, holding her hand and offering support as she launched herself up and into the passenger seat, Silas wondered what the hell he was supposed to do next. He’d been in favor isolation since it had first been proposed, years ago, but for the first time he realized that the town would be lessened by the absence of people like Gabi. And Marnie, and Cindy, and the others who came and went. It was an easy concept to get behind, a clinging to those who shared so much history and magic, to isolate the magical town from outsiders who didn’t, could never, understand.

  Suddenly the idea of separating Mystic Springs and the people in it from the rest of the world seemed more like self-imprisonment than peaceful isolation.

  In the past year, her world had been small. She worked, she took care of Mia, she’d made a couple of necessary trips to the clinic in Eufaula. That was it.

  Gabi had never ventured into the woods that lay between Mystic Springs proper and the river. The trees were old, the new green of spring coming to life all around was inviting. The road Silas drove upon was almost wide enough for two cars of a normal width. His big pickup was high and wide, and well used. It suited him.

  When she’d accepted his invitation to have dinner, the last thing she’d intended was to ignite a romantic relationship. Sex? Yes. Companionship? Maybe. Romance had not been in her plans.