Forbidden Witches (Tarot Witches Book 2)

by SM Reine

  Rage sidled up to me, putting an arm around my shoulder. “Glowing, huh?”

  At the sight of our familiarity, Chad’s eyes literally bulged. “Oh my God.”

  Miss Manners didn’t say anything about how to introduce one’s rock star friend-with-benefits to one’s cross dressing classmate, but I had a feeling that any introduction was better than none. “Rage, this is my friend Chad. Chad, this is…” A nervous chuckle slipped out of me. “I guess you already know who he is.”

  “You think our kitten’s glowing?” Rage asked Chad with a strangely intent look.

  The way he was talking made me think there was something else going on. I threw a questioning look at Rage, which he totally ignored.

  “Yes, our kitten is definitely aglow.” Chad added a special emphasis to “kitten.”

  “Interesting,” Rage said.

  Did he think that Chad was a witch, too? I was dying to ask, but I didn’t want to blow any secrecy surrounding the whole witchcraft thing. Of course, being magical was kind of The Forbidden’s marketing line, so maybe it wasn’t all that secret, but…

  Rage lifted the yellow tape that separated Chad from the restricted area surrounding the bus.

  “Come inside. Any friend of Leah’s is a friend of The Forbidden’s.”

  Chad gave a wiggle of delight as he ducked under the tape. I almost stopped him. Call me crazy, but I wanted to shelter him from this insane life of magic and werewolves—as wonderful as it could sometimes be.

  “You clean up good, girl,” Chad whispered at me.

  It felt so good to give him another big hug. “You probably need to get back to school. I’m not going to make you stick around.”

  “Finals are over,” he said. “I have nothing to get back to. All the time in the world.” Chad was talking a little bit too fast. He didn’t understand why I was trying to get rid of him.

  “Great,” Rage said, steering Chad toward the bus. He tossed a wink to me over his shoulder. “You want to party with the band tonight?”

  XVIII

  I slept like the dead my first night at the mansion. Luckily, I wasn’t the “mauled by a werewolf” kind of dead, but more like the glamorous dead girls who decorated the covers of The Forbidden’s albums.

  If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have slept at all. I would have stayed awake to hang out with Chad and the coven. I could hear them carousing in the kitchen below. Probably doing shots served up by Ofelia, who I’d learned used to be a bartender.

  Ofelia and Cooper had come back to the mansion with us, loading their motorcycles onto a truck and hitching a ride on the bus. I’d had plenty of time to get to know both of them. Cooper had been very interested in my studies at OSU. Not what I would have expected from such a beefcake.

  It sucked to hear everyone partying and have to stick to my room.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice. Total exhaustion sucked me under the instant my head hit the pillow. I was too tired to dream.

  But not so tired that the sound of someone entering my bedroom didn’t wake me up.

  My eyes flew open just as quickly as they’d closed.

  “Who’s there?” I asked, rubbing my face. I felt strangely groggy. A glance at the clock told me it hadn’t really been three seconds since I’d lain down to rest—more like three hours. It was well past midnight, into the beginning of the first day of the rest of my life as a witch with Rage and Ofelia.

  The bedroom was still dark, though. I could only make out the shape of a man sitting in the chair opposite the foot of my bed.

  Click.

  Donne turned the lamp on. He was wearing just his sweatpants again, giving me a good view of the muscled expanse of his torso. There were no injuries from his earlier struggle. Thank God for werewolf healing.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Donne grunted.

  I pushed the sheets off of me and settled onto the end of the bed. I waited for Donne to tell me what he was doing there. I knew he couldn’t have slipped into my room for no reason.

  But he remained silent.

  “Are you okay?” I ventured.

  “Thanks,” Donne said.

  That one word made my heart melt, just a little. He sounded so gruff, almost shy. I couldn’t quite convince myself that was a word that should be associated with Donne, though.

  “So, um, guess we’re mated,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “Mates. For life.”

  Donne was glaring at his hands as though they had betrayed him in some way. “Yeah.”

  The abruptness of his response wasn’t too inspirational.

  I felt hopelessly lonely, even with him in the room. There was this huge wall between us that seemed impossible to breach.

  But I wanted to breach it. I wanted to get to him so badly.

  After all we’d been through together, after all the signs that had been flashing at me, I couldn’t believe that this was how things were meant to be. Donne and I needed to be together, and not just physically.

  “You know, there’s this idea in my religion—this concept that there’s one person out there specifically intended for us,” I said. “We don’t call it soul mates, but it’s pretty much soul mates. Destiny. There’s someone out there that God wants us to be with, and He makes it happen one way or another. Maybe that’s what this is. God’s giving me guidance, if only I can be smart enough to listen.”

  “I know I’m not the kind of man a woman like you would choose,” Donne said.

  That was so silly that I almost laughed, but I didn’t want him to feel like I was mocking him, so I held it back. “I was actually just thinking about how lucky I am. I don’t know you very well, but everything I know about you is…amazing.” And smoking hot. That part didn’t hurt.

  He looked up at me in surprise. “Amazing? I’m a werewolf.”

  “I’m a Mormon,” I said with an apologetic shrug that was only half-joking.

  The corner of his mouth twitched. It almost looked like it was meant to be a smile, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually seen Donne smile yet.

  “You’re just so beautiful,” he said, voice hoarse.

  I looked down at myself. I was in the same body I’d always had.

  He thought I was beautiful.

  “You’re good to your dad, and to the family you’ve chosen. You’ve taken good care of me. You’re smart and strong and handsome and…” I gave another shrug. Nothing apologetic about this one. “What else could I ask for?”

  He rose from the chair. Suddenly, he was standing just an arm’s length away from the foot of the bed, looking down at me with heat in his eyes.

  “A man who isn’t broken,” he said.

  That was the problem. He thought that being a werewolf made him bad in some way.

  But I was bad, too. I was a witch. I could do magic. I was supposed to meet a greater destiny, and I’d have to work with a bartender and a rock star to figure out exactly what that was.

  Donne and I were broken in the exact same way, fitting together like shards of a mirror. We were meant to be united. Two fragments of a whole.

  I took one of his hands, opening his fingers by stroking his wrist. His hand relaxed. I nuzzled my cheek against his palm.

  “You’re fine the way you are, Donne,” I said.

  His hand crept around the back of my hair, pulling gently so that my head tipped backward, forcing me to look at him. He didn’t really need to control me like that. “Did Rage tell you how Graham and I ended up as werewolves?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “Only that werewolves last for about twenty years, and then they tend to…run out.” I couldn’t think of a nicer way to say it. “Expired” sounded too fatal.

  “I was bitten when I was five years old,” Donne said. “Twenty-four years ago.”

  But Graham had been bitten twenty-three years ago.

  My eyes went round. “You mean…”

  “It was my uncle who changed me. My mom’s brother. He did it on purpo
se. He thought that I might survive longer if he did it while I was young. My parents were…” Donne trailed off, lost in thought. “My dad tried to help me. He couldn’t do anything. I bit him less than a year later.”

  “Oh my gosh, Donne.” I rested my hands on top of his. “You can’t tell me that you blame yourself for something you did as a child.”

  “I had to save him,” Donne said. “I screwed it up because I wanted to be with you so badly, and I claimed you first. My selfishness almost killed him. But you saved him anyway.” His hands tightened on my hair. “I’ll always owe you for what you did for my family.”

  Tears burned my eyes. “We’re family now.”

  I knew what The Hierophant was trying to tell me. It all made sense.

  Donne dropped to his knees. He was tall enough that this put our faces level. He kissed me gently, his tongue exploring my mouth. All of his earlier harshness had vanished, leaving nothing between us but his gratitude, my need to help him, and the slow burn of desire.

  He lowered me to the bed. His hand peeled the layers of skirts open—another one of Desdemona’s beautiful gowns, which I’d changed into on the bus. Its skirt was like the petals of a flower rather than a single piece of cloth. He exposed me by inches of fabric at a time.

  Donne’s fingers traveled over my thighs, seeking the tops of the garters. I didn’t feel self-conscious about my size anymore. Not in his eyes.

  “If you don’t want to be with me—” he began.

  I pressed a finger to his lips and shook my head. “No talking.”

  We would be able to talk later. We were about to become mated—as far as I knew, that meant we would have the rest of our lives together. Plenty of time to talk, get to know each other.

  For now, it was just the two of us in the moonlight, werewolf and witch all tangled up in the destiny neither of us had chosen.

  Donne opened the bodice on my dress, exposing my chest to the cool air. He explored my wanting body with mouth and fingers, urging my nipples into moist peaks, eliciting groans from deep within my chest.

  I liked him this way, all cautious and gentle. I liked him rough, too, but this was…special. Almost reverent.

  We were the worshipers kneeling at the feet of The Hierophant. We were obeying his screed by uniting our bodies. The temple in which we met was not a church or some other holy ground, but the four-poster bed, consecrated by the sanctity of our union.

  This was exactly what was supposed to happen.

  At another time, I’d have been happy to spend a few hours on foreplay. I couldn’t wait to familiarize myself with every single ridge of muscle on Donne’s body. Tonight, I couldn’t wait. I felt like I’d already been waiting too long.

  “Please, Donne,” I whispered into his lips. My fingers strayed over his belt, but I wasn’t courageous enough to invite myself into his clothes.

  He leaned back on his knees. I got to watch as he opened the belt with a jangle of metal, popped his fly open, and lowered his jeans over his hips.

  Oh my goodness.

  I’d seen Donne naked, but not like this. Not when he was kneeling over me with hunger in his eyes and moonlight making every exposed inch of his skin glow.

  He was an incredible sight to behold, and he was mine.

  I wasn’t certain what I’d done to deserve destiny delivering this man into my life, but it must have been pretty awesome.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Words had left me. I just nodded.

  Donne collapsed on top of me, and he was almost too heavy. But I liked it. I wanted to feel every inch of him against me, driven into the bed, consumed by his heat.

  He lifted my knee, hooking his arm underneath my thigh.

  I opened myself to him just as I’d opened myself to the magic. I prepared myself to be taken. Overwhelmed.

  He pushed inside of me.

  The noise I made wasn’t even human, as though I was the werewolf of the two of us, and he was the witch.

  Donne was definitely working some kind of magic.

  He set a rhythm that reminded me of Rage’s music—not just in the harsh beat of it, but in the way that it dragged emotion out of me, welling up in my chest and burning low in my belly.

  It didn’t take long for him to bring me to orgasm. We came together, our cries mingling in the night, my flesh glowing the color of the summer grass.

  I wasn’t scared of the magic we made anymore.

  The power of it almost brought me to tears. I’d stumbled onto something enormous entirely by accident, and it had changed me in a profound way.

  I wasn’t just a girl anymore, going through a shy and boring life on my own. I had a partner now. A family. And a destiny.

  I was a tarot witch, and I was ready.

  ***

  Winter Court

  Tarot Witches Book 3

  Get it now!

  Dear reader,

  I hope you’ve enjoyed Forbidden Witches! You can read about the next Tarot Witches book on my website: Winter Court

  If you’d like to know when my new books come out, make sure to sign up for my new release email alerts. I hope you’ll also leave a review with your thoughts on the site where you bought Forbidden Witches. It helps other readers find the series!

  Happy reading!

  Sara (SM Reine)

  http://authorsmreine.com/

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