The Problem With Witches: An Arcane Shot Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  She kissed him back. With desperation, with anger. She was holding him at the same time she was clawing at his shoulders, whimpering in his mouth, a soft, angry, needy protest.

  When he lifted his head an eternity later, she was sagging in his arms, held up by his strength and the power in that firm mouth, brilliant green eyes.

  “Don’t you ever run from me again,” he said. “Your only option is to run to me.”

  She swallowed. “I’m so scared.”

  The tightness of his jaw eased a fraction. He stroked her face, traced the outline of it, touched her nose, her mouth, as if learning her face anew. And the whole time, he kept looking at her with that penetrating look. It seemed the universe went on a long time. She almost wished it could pause right here, not go forward or backward.

  “Me, too,” he said at last. “But it’s okay. You’re going to be the best mother that’s ever been, so if I fuck up, the kid’s not going to be ruined.”

  At first, she thought she’d misheard him. The time it took for the words to register told her just how hard she’d been bracing for a fight, for things to go the wrong way.

  Watching her expressions, his eyes morphed from fire and concern to a touch of poignant amusement. Then regret.

  She wasn’t entirely sure she was steady enough for him to let her go, but he did. But only so he could drop to one knee, hands slipping to her hips as he leaned in, and pressed his mouth reverently to her flat stomach.

  He held there as her nerveless hands came up, cupped his head, fingers twining in his thick hair. She was oblivious to any curious glances. There could be a million people on the streets of the Business District, or it could be as empty as it was at midnight. She wouldn’t have noticed.

  He spoke against her skin, since he’d pushed up her knit shirt to kiss her. Her Master would never tolerate a barrier of cloth between him and her flesh. When he spoke, his words were not for her, though they still spoke directly to her heart, hit her so hard it was painful. In the best way.

  “When I married your mother,” he said to that sleeping soul cradled inside her, “I promised to protect her with everything I am, and be the best Master and husband I could be. Now I’ll make the same kind of promise to you, as your father.”

  Her eyes filled, the tears spilling out. Ben’s gaze slid up to her face, and so did one of his hands, catching those tears on his fingertips as he rose. “And when he grows up, we’ll both protect you.”

  He reached in his back pocket and came out with a folded handkerchief. “Matt,” he explained. “He was wearing a suit, because he had a meeting this afternoon. He said he was pretty sure I’d need it more than he would. Most of his competitors cry in private, after he’s left the room. Unless he wants them to cry in front of him.”

  She wanted to smile, but she couldn’t. The past couple days had been too hard, too much of an emotional roller coaster. She felt like she was overflowing with feeling.

  Ben wasn’t smiling either, but his expression still had that tender look as he held her chin, carefully dabbed at her eyes. She expected there were women swooning around them, watching him do that, because it was mesmerizing her. The handkerchief had Matt’s scent, which helped steady her as it perversely inspired more tears.

  “How do you know he’ll be a boy?” she sniffled.

  “There is no other option. Girls are so much work,” Ben said seriously. “Look how much trouble you are. And girls can grow up to be giant dragons who try to drown the city.”

  “Like boys aren’t just as much trouble,” she managed. “Look at you.” But then she put her arms under his so she could burrow, hold tight. “I thought…I thought you wouldn’t want it. That you’d make me choose.”

  “Ah, brat.” He put his head down over hers. “Since when do I ever give you choices? I won’t even let you have a safe word.”

  He said it in teasing voice, her Master who knew how to comfort her, reassure her, build her back up. But he held her tighter. “Come here.”

  He drew her off the main sidewalk, over toward the lee of a building, where there was a small courtyard with a couple of stone benches, some artful landscaping. It was Richard Lewis’s building, an affable competitor of K&A who was as much friend as rival. And who had been the owner of her McLaren before her.

  Since the office was still closed in the wake of the storm surge, the courtyard was empty, so Ben was able to sit her down on a bench. He straddled it, facing her, but instead of drawing her closer as she’d expected, he held both of her hands, his expression becoming more serious. And that genuine regret was back.

  “I’m sorry I put you through that. I could tell something was off with you these past couple days. Raina told me the magic had some side effects, and to just give you a little time.” He grimaced, his eyes getting that glint she knew well. “She bullshitted me. I’ll have to talk to her about that.”

  A lively conversation Marcie suspected would be entertaining to watch, but she regretted the deception, and told him so. “I’m sorry, too. I just…”

  He shook his head. “I get it. It wasn’t you. It was Matt.”

  Yes. It was. She understood better now what Matt had meant, about giving her time to be sure of what she wanted. Those days had given her a firmer foundation to stand up to Ben if they weren’t in agreement on this. If he’d told Ben the same day she’d learned the truth herself, she’d have been too raw and vulnerable.

  “He surprises you like that,” Ben said, reading her face. His lips tugged in a grim smile. “He’s so quiet sometimes, always watching, listening. We tease him about making us do all the really hard work, but no one is better at looking at everything involved and judging the best timing on a decision. Asshole.”

  She smiled, tentative, and he brushed her hair from her face, wrapping a curl around his fingertip. His thumb slid along the side of her throat, touched her collar, slipped under it. The provocative tug instantly focused her every nerve ending on that contact. He saw the reaction, an answering spark in his eyes, but he dropped his hand to lay it on her knee. He gazed around them, at the dark shiny leaves of the gardenias, the bright yellow frowsy sungold cypress.

  “When I was a kid, I wondered why I was born, Marcie. Lots of times. Almost as many times as I thought about whether I should just give it up, let it go. It pissed me off big time, though, how shitty my life was. It made me mad enough that I was determined to live, just to spite Fate. It might have given me a crappy life, but I was going to survive, just to be a thorn in its ass. But even so…there were really low moments.”

  She saw it in the shadows in his eyes, those hints of the boy he’d been that she recognized in a way no one else did. She put her hand over his, fingers in between his spread ones. He brought his attention to the contact, then slowly turned his hand over, so their fingers linked, palm to palm.

  “And then Jonas Kensington crossed my path,” he said. “The guys, my brothers. You.” He brought his green eyes back to her face as he repeated it. “You. Which made every bit of it worth it. No, don’t start crying again.”

  It was one command she couldn’t obey, particularly when he slid off the bench and knelt again, close enough he could wrap his hands over her hips, his thumbs slowly running over her abdomen. He adjusted his grip enough that he could tease the navel jewelry she was wearing. Today it was a tiny black cat, edged in silver, with green glittering eyes.

  Ben spoke while looking at it, but she felt every word as if he’d delivered them straight to her heart. “If I reached that epiphany with the path I’ve walked, well hell, this kid’s got it made. Because he’ll have everything. You and me, that whole family we’ve built.”

  “Don’t forget, his daddy is a really rich lawyer,” Marcie sniffled. “He can have anything he wants.”

  Ben snorted. “Yeah, I also know about the dangers of being given too much, unearned. That kid is totally mowing the lawn for his hundred bucks a week allowance.”

  “We don’t have a lawn,” she said, thinking
of their Garden District home with its tiny yard in the front. The back was shrubs, trees and pine straw. Plus a hammock, where they sometimes whiled away a Sunday afternoon, napping or reading together. Which gave her a wonderful image of the three of them there, the babe cradled in her arms as Ben held them both.

  “We’ll send him down to Texas on the private jet on weekends,” Ben said. “To mow that ten acres of lawn around Matt’s house. With a push mower.”

  She chuckled, shook her head at him. When he stood again, he drew her to her feet. Tipped up her chin, and then gave her a more even look. “I mean it, brat. Never run from me.”

  “But you like the chase,” she said, despite the shiver his look gave her. “It’s what predators do.”

  Instead of chastising her further, the heat in his eyes became something else. “I love you,” he said roughly. “With everything I am, always.”

  She swallowed, put both hands on his face. “Same goes.” She thought then of what Mikhael had said. The two of you are proof that the universe sometimes knows what it is doing.

  "Or proof that even the blind squirrel sometimes finds the nut," Ben said dryly, when she shared it with him.

  She sobered. “I’m sorry they weren’t able to restore that piece of your soul, make you whole.”

  “Marcie, you made my soul whole a long time ago. And even if you hadn’t needed it to survive, I wouldn’t have wanted it back. Anything that might change the man I need to be for you, I’m not taking that chance.”

  “You will always be the man I need,” she said. “Always.”

  Ben lifted her up on the brick wall surrounding the courtyard. It was about four feet tall, so after he sat her there, he leaned against it next to her, his hand curved over her thigh, her arm crooked on his shoulder. They sat there in companionable silence, thinking different thoughts, but she had to ask, because she did know him, knew he would have initially recoiled at the idea that she was pregnant.

  “How did you…become okay with it?”

  He curled his fingers in the waistband of her jeans, playing with the belt loop, a light tug. “Same logic that slapped me in the face with you. When I thought of someone else taking care of you, having you…” His jaw flexed. “I wasn’t having that. Same thing with a kid we made together. Someone else raising him, someone else helping you every step of the way, being there for you… I’m sorry you were worried. Sorry you felt you couldn’t come to me right off. But I get it. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt you in the first few moments of my what the fuck, terror down to my balls reaction.”

  “Did Lucas get it on video?”

  “If he did, I will add that to my list of reasons to run his bike off the road. I’ll borrow one of the company trucks so I don’t scratch my car.”

  She swatted him. “You can’t do that to my sister.”

  Ben curled a hand around her wrist, held her. “You’re right. It’s way more fun to get into his computer and hack his numbers so they’re off by seven cents, then watch him go crazy trying to figure out what the hell happened. But I’ve already done that once and now he’s password protected it with something like a NASA launch code. If fingerprints other than his touch his computer, it sets off an alarm at a local military base and they scramble the Stealth fighters.”

  She chuckled then. Her hand curled into the front of the shirt, fingers caressing him through the openings between the buttons. Her stomach, still doing flipflops, was nevertheless starting to feel better than it had the past couple days.

  He stepped back enough to brace his hand on the wall, give her a direct look. “I’m sorry, Marcie.”

  She was about to tell him he’d already said that, but he shook his head, anticipating her. “About how this will affect you becoming a cop.”

  “You’re not sorry about that at all,” she began, trying to tease, but he knew her too well. He touched her face, the intent behind the touch taking away her ability to shrug it off. Which meant the loss showed.

  “What do you want to do?” he said seriously. “You want to enter the police academy right after, I’ll start working from home. Become a full time Mr. Mom so you only delay it a few months. I’m not going to be the misogynist asshole who knocked up his wife to keep her from pursuing the career she dreamed about.”

  Her eyes filled again, because she saw he meant it. What’s more, she knew what it would cost him. Not the Mr. Mom part. She could see him doing that, easily, managing the legal side of things for Matt from their home, working it out however needed. No, the cost was in knowing how much, how deeply, her being a cop had worried him, and he was genuinely shoving himself away from the escape clause the pregnancy could easily give him.

  “I thought about it a lot these past couple days,” she said slowly. “Being a cop isn’t a nine to five job. When I embrace it, I want to be sure that he’s had what he needs from both of us in those first years of his life. So, we’ll play it by ear. We’re lucky enough to have the means to make that choice. I’m not going to throw away the gift of being with him during that time, for a career I can embrace a few years down the road.” She touched his face. “Remember, I know better than anyone that waiting a few years for what you really want sometimes ends up being exactly the right time for it to happen.”

  He moved between her knees then. On the wall, she was a few inches higher than him, so he put his arms around her, drawing them together. His firm torso pressed between her legs, his head where he could tease her throat with his lips, which he did, but then he dropped his forehead to her breast. She curled her arm around his shoulders, her other hand curving over the back of his skull, her fingers tunneling into his hair once more.

  It was a more nurturing position for him than he usually allowed. But he did it more often than he used to, laying his head on her breast in their bed in the early morning hours, letting her stroke his hair and shoulders.

  Most of the time he was pure Dom in his interactions with her, but she cherished those moments, like this one. It was evidence that while he could always give her pleasure, meet her needs, he was opening up a part of him that would let her give him that as well.

  He lifted his head to look her in the eye again, and now there was something in his gaze, a mix of the man she knew and something more vulnerable, from his past, that had her hands tightening on his chest, his waist. "You know, Marcie, there've been a lot of times in my life when I couldn't protect those I care about, even incidentally. A stray dog, a prostitute I exchange shit with in the morning, things like that. Then, with Matt and the others, I started thinking I could protect the things I care about again. But this brings it all back. The fear that I won’t be able to keep him safe."

  He gave her buttock a light pinch. “I thought worrying about you would give me gray hair. Overnight, I’ll be turning instant white.”

  She smiled, but closed her eyes. She curled her legs around his hips and upper thighs, holding him to her with all available limbs. Joy was starting to brim over in her heart, because it really was going to be all right. He’d once again proven himself to be the man she needed him to be.

  "You started thinking you could protect those you care about because you weren't alone in the world anymore. There were others who could help,” she said. “Bad things can happen, do happen. Can't change that. But you can find and hold what you need to fix it, get past it. Survive it."

  "Live with it," he said quietly. As he cupped her face in both strong hands, she nodded, folded her hands on top of his.

  "Together."

  The End

  Something About Witches

  Chapter One Excerpt

  In the Company of Witches is Mikhael and Raina’s story, and Hostile Takeover is Ben and Marcie’s. However, since you didn’t get to spend as much time with Derek and Ruby in this book, here’s the first chapter of their story…

  Chapter One

  Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. The Macbeth quote fit to a fucking T as Ruby stared through the
ten-power Nightforce scope of the McMillan 50-caliber military-grade sniper rifle and saw 100 percent trouble coming her way. Complete with battered cowboy hat, his own Chris Cagle “Chicks Dig It” theme song and honest-to-Goddess dragonskin boots. How the hell had Derek Stormwind found her?

  Okay, scratch that. She’d always known he’d find her. She’d just nurtured an unrealistic hope that he would be like most men and, once he realized she didn’t want to be found and that she’d made following her trail a real pain in the ass, he’d sniff out easier prey. But Derek Stormwind was definitely not like most men. Which was why she’d rather be stuck up the backside of one of Artemis’s hunting hounds without a flashlight than face the next few moments.

  Putting the rifle down on the counter, she uncapped a mini-sized vodka bottle and dashed the contents into her open Dr Pepper can, then brought the soda to her lips for a healthy swig. Too healthy. She choked, hacking over the part of it that had gone down the wrong tube. Meanwhile, he was crossing the street, seconds away from putting his hand on the brass doorknob and invading her store. Unless she was mistaken and he was in town for a French manicure from the salon next door.

  Hell, she needed an extra moment. Flicking a glance down at her feet, she wheezed out the command. “Theo. Kill.”

  The elderly mastiff erupted from behind the counter, a bulldozer of rippling muscle and sheer bulk that would have knocked her off her feet, if she wasn’t practiced at flattening herself against the ammo case behind her to give him takeoff room.

  As Derek came through the door, the dog was clattering across the floor like an approaching herd of marbles, making menacing and somewhat asthmatic noises similar to low-level wheezing thunder. A froth of drool hit the front display case, spattering the glass and obscuring the array of handguns there. Ruby stuck the soda back under the counter and pummeled her chest with a decisive fist at the same moment the dog launched his considerable weight onto his hind legs and hit Derek’s chest with both front paws.