Mandy M. Roth - Magic Under Fire (Over a Dozen Tales of Urban Fantasy)

by Unknown

  “How long have you been with him?” he asked, his voice strained.

  She focused on the Spanish-tiled floor, anything to keep her mind and gaze off him. She knew how much she’d let him down, how much she’d hurt him and it killed her. It would only hurt him more to find out that Ivon, the man she would be marrying, was a vampire. Not only that, but Ivon was as old as, if not older than, Dante. Nothing she had to tell Dante would please him. Still, it needed to be said. “I met him the day after I left for college.”

  “The day after I sent you away?” The hurt in his voice was evident.

  Francy nodded, her throat feeling very dry all of the sudden. “Yeah.”

  “And not once in five years did you feel the need to share the fact that you were with someone? We talk on the phone at least once a month. You never thought once, in all that time, to let me in on this?”

  Snorting, she cast him a wary glance. “Oh, like you shared details of your sex life with me.”

  Something passed over Dante’s handsome face that she couldn’t read and her instincts told her not to dwell on it. He lifted her hand even higher and plucked the ring from her finger. “Dante!” She tried to grab it back but he held it high in the air. “Give it back.”

  “No, while you’re here with me, you’re not engaged.”

  “What?” she asked, going to her tiptoes in an attempt to retrieve the ring. “It doesn’t work that way. Stop acting like a two-year-old. I should have told you sooner but this is ridiculous.”

  “Aspetta un attimo!”

  Francy stared at him with a blank expression, unsure what he’d just said. Taking a deep breath, Dante appeared to get a handle on his emotions. That was a good thing. Francy was well aware of the beast he carried within him. Having him calm himself, even slightly, was imperative. The last thing she wanted was to be forced to use her powers against Dante. Not only could it harm him, it would emotionally kill her.

  “Wait a minute! I am not the one who is acting like a child. I am not the one who stayed away so long. I have been here.” He gave her a hard look. “I’ve said I was sorry for snapping at you, Francy. Emotions ran high that night. It wasn’t something we planned or expected. I’d change it if I could. You didn’t need to lash back like this. You could have just yelled at me. Telling me you’re engaged seems a bit much.”

  “And said what?” She stopped trying to get the ring back and started shoving him as hard as she could. The only problem was he didn’t budge. That didn’t really surprise her. Dante was special, like her. Different from humans yet not like the monsters, the demons they’d been born to fight. They were supernaturals sworn to uphold good. Sworn to protect unsuspecting humans from things that they thought existed only in their nightmares. It was who they were and who they would always be. “Why are we even having this conversation? It’s not like we’re anything more than friends.”

  “Oh, we are a hell of a lot more than that,” he said, picking her up quickly.

  She yelped and clung to him. His earthy smell moved over her, exciting her in ways it shouldn’t. “What are you doing?”

  Dante didn’t answer. Instead, he backed her up against the wall and took her mouth with his. There was little time to protest. Dante had her skirt up around her hips and his hands on the backs of her thighs before she could blink. The knowledge that she didn’t want to protest took her by surprise.

  “Dante.”

  He cupped her ass cheeks and ground his hips against her. “I want you, Francy. Tell me that you don’t want me. Tell me and I’ll stop.”

  Her mind raced. The idea of him stopping, of his pelvis no longer grinding against hers, terrified her. Moaning, she held tight to Dante. “Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please fuck me.”

  Sliding a finger under her thong, he sent shivers through her entire body as he skimmed across her swollen clit. It took everything in her not to cry out his name again. She clung to him, savoring the feel of his powerful frame.

  2

  Dante Guerrasio inched his tongue along Francy’s outer ear, no longer bothering to control his breathing. He had more pressing issues, like the beast within him trying to surface, fighting to be free and finish what it had started to do five years earlier—claim its rightful mate.

  How could she even presume to be engaged to another? She was his. His love. His everything. It didn’t make any sense. She shouldn’t have been able to love another. She was his true mate. That didn’t come with light stipulations. That meant they were made for one another and no one else could come between them. Yet somehow, someone had managed to do just that.

  Caressing Francy’s swollen clit, he took in her floral scent as well as that of her arousal. Oh, she wanted him. That was easy to tell by her elevated heart rate, ragged breaths and soaked pussy.

  How could she have even thought to try to replace him? Better yet, why had he felt the need to give her freedom to live away from him? Why had her need to see more, live away, learn about herself been so important to him? He’d practically driven her off by forcing her to experience life on her own for a bit. Never did he suspect she’d take that as a sign he was shutting her out of his life.

  All Dante had wanted was for his mate to never look back, never regret a moment they would spend together once he took her. He’d watched his mother struggle with “what ifs” his entire life and had vowed to never let his mate go through that. The only problem was that she had found someone else to quench the thirst he’d unlocked on the table in this very room five years ago.

  Now she would see what he held back from her then. What he hadn’t wanted to use to tie her to him before she was ready. She’d see him in full mating glory, his cock untiring and insatiable. It was what happened to his line of werewolves when the time came to claim their mates. He’d fuck her tight little cunt until she begged him never to allow another man to touch her.

  “Please.”

  Her plea was soft, and Dante knew he couldn’t answer it as gently as he wanted to. The beast within him demanded he take her and soon. Francy would either love it or hate him forever. With what he’d found on her finger only moments earlier he knew he didn’t have a choice. It had to be done.

  Inserting a finger into her hot pussy, Dante growled out at the sensation. It was just as he remembered, tight, wet and welcoming. Too tight to have been well serviced by the man she’d dared to pledge her life to. The man he would hunt and kill. The very thought of Francy sharing herself with another set his inner beast on edge. The only thing that grounded him was the feel of having Francy back in his arms.

  He could still remember the way her channel had held his fingers tightly as he drank her sweet cream. The very scent of it seemed to coat his tongue, reminding him of what he’d gone without for so long. He’d been unable and unwilling to take another to his bed after he pushed her to go. The very thought of sinking his cock into anyone that wasn’t Francy turned his stomach. His mate was all he wanted.

  For five years he lay in bed at night, fisting his cock as he pumped it to images, memories of Francy spread out on the table before him. The idea of her taking him in her mouth, her pussy, her ass had kept him going. And with each release he would vow that one day soon he’d expel his seed in her, fill her with his child, his love and start the family the gods always promised.

  He held back, always wanting to go to her but afraid that he’d drag her home before she was ready. Now, as he thought about the situation, Dante realized that he should have gone to her. Should have laid claim to her, made her his long ago. He’d been a fool. A silly romantic who believed that love would indeed lead her back to him, not into the arms of another.

  Unable to wait any longer, Dante freed his aching cock from the confines of his drawstring pants. It bobbed obscenely and he took hold of it, blindly seeking the entrance to Francy’s wet core. Letting a claw extend from his fingertip, he cut the tiny string of her thong with ease, removing the only restriction that stood betwe
en him and paradise.

  It was at this point last time that Francy’s magik had broken loose and burned up the hearth. This time he was prepared. Slapping his dick against her clit, he encouraged added blood flow while grinning with the knowledge that he’d already made the beauty in his arms come so hard that she mystically started a fire. And that had been without even getting to sink his shaft into her.

  As he pressed the head of his cock to her, she whimpered slightly in his ear. “Dante, a condom.”

  The very idea of covering himself, dulling the feeling of his mate’s body accepting his was absurd. Each knew the other was supernatural, immune to human diseases. As far as pregnancy went, it was a matter that was left up to the gods. They determined when it was time for a mated couple to reproduce. Sure, they listened to prayers, dreams of the size of the family one wished to have, but in the end it was in their hands. If they deemed that he and Francy were to be blessed with a baby, then it would be and he knew she wanted children. She always had. It was why he’d refused to fully claim her when he’d first been given the chance.

  With as much as Francy desired to be a mother and as much as he wished to see her swollen with his child, Dante knew the gods would have answered them and that Francy would have never experienced life on her own. Never known what else was out there. But now, she was ready to sign her life over to another—a man that wasn’t her mate and who could never give her the family she had always wanted. It was time to take action. It was time to take Francy.

  Easing the head of his cock into her slowly, he bit down hard on his lower lip in an attempt to keep from coming. “Francy…you’re so fucking tight,” he whispered, unsure how he was going to move another inch without finishing too soon. “You feel so good. Do you like that, baby? Do you like me entering you?”

  “Dante, we need…”

  “You need to let me finish what I started, Francy. Let me finish making you my wife. I started five years ago but didn’t have the heart to complete the claiming until you’d had a chance to have a life of your own. Let me complete it now. Let me make you mine forever.”

  “What?”

  “You are my true mate, Francy. Five years ago, in this very room, I began the claiming ritual. It’s past time I finished it. Let me be in you. All of me. Nothing between us.”

  The confused look in her eyes answered the long-standing question he’d always had. He’d wondered if she knew what he had begun. It was clear that she had no idea that he, in the eyes of the supernatural world, had bound her to him with the promise of marriage. He should have known. It wasn’t as though her family were shifters. Francy came from witches, not lycans. It was different for them. They didn’t practice the same custom.

  That night five years ago, he had proposed by starting the mating process and she had accepted his advances, rendering any proposals to come after him void. Fate gave Francy to him and the nature of their supernatural species assured that they would be one. When he’d taken her, his mate, and begun to make love to her it was set in motion. He had started the claiming rights. Any other woman it wouldn’t have mattered but with Francy, it did. She was his chosen one.

  “Dante?” The question in her voice warmed his heart. There was no malice in her, only genuine concern. “I didn’t know. I thought you didn’t want me like that. That you only wanted me as a friend. I didn’t know it was the start of a claiming.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Surging forward, Dante buried himself to the hilt in her, crying out as he did. It was truly heaven within the walls of her body. He stilled, allowing her time to adjust to his size. “I do want you as my friend, Francy. My friend, my lover, my life mate, my wife and the mother of my children. I want it all and it’s past time I took it.”

  Francy held tight to him and began to wiggle her hips ever so slightly. Long strands of auburn hair fell forward, covering half of her flawless face. As she stared up at him, one vivid blue eye visible beneath the veil of hair, he felt his heart melting. The fiery vixen had won his love upon first sight so many years ago and had only increased her hold on his soul as time wore on. Being in her, knowing he was stretching the lips of her pussy taut and she was loving every second, was more than he could handle.

  Thrusting in and out of her, Dante lifted her higher so he could drive her down onto his throbbing cock. Francy cried out and bit down hard on his shoulder, causing the beast within him to answer her call. It moved through him quickly, lengthening his incisors and forcing him to lean forward. Before he could even think of stopping himself, he was piercing her skin, much the same way his dick was piercing her body, long and deep.

  The coppery sweet taste of Francy’s blood ran through him, invigorating him. He moved faster, pumping himself into his mate as he let her blood slide down his throat. The animal noises that sounded around them came from him but he didn’t care. The need to be sure she was forever his was too great to be concerned about anything else.

  He felt it then, her magik rising up to envelop him. Pressing to her firmly, Dante took extra care to assure that his lower abdomen rubbed against her clit as he resumed his piston-like thrusts. The animal in him wanted to drag her to the ground, unload his seed and then flip her over and fuck that tempting ass of hers. He struggled hard to maintain control.

  As it stood, the feel of her cunt wrapped around his shaft was pushing the beast towards the winning point. Dante fought to stay in control but Francy made it difficult, moaning, running her hands over his body while she kissed him passionately.

  “Dante, please.” Francy’s velvet voice ran over him, causing his stomach muscles to tighten, indicating an orgasm fast approaching. “There, Dante. There. Gods yes, fuck me harder. There. Mmm. So close.”

  The second her pussy began grasping him, pulling him back into its oasis, Dante knew Francy was coming. Her sweet cunt fisted him and he wanted to howl out in victory. He didn’t. Instead, he held tight to her as his balls drew up and his cock began to jet seed into her.

  “Amore,” he whispered, licking the wound on her neck closed as the last of his semen filled her. It was done. She was officially his wife now and nothing could ever change that. There would be no more five-year spans between tasting her lips and holding her in his arms.

  3

  F rancy wiggled on the king-sized bed, a bit restless as she waited for Dante to return from the hunt. He’d left shortly after their lovemaking session in the kitchen and had not returned. The sun had already set for the day and Francy was doing her best to remain calm. The wolf he carried within had sensed something dangerous in the surrounding area and had left Dante little chance of ignoring it. Not that Dante ever would. He took his destiny seriously and let no evildoer go unpunished. He was a protector—the product of a witch and a werewolf.

  He hailed from Italy and had been here for many decades before she’d even been born. Dante had entered into her life when she was fifteen, around the same time that she came into her powers. When her father had taken her before the council, as was standard to do with all of-age witches, they put a call forth on her behalf. It wasn’t until five years ago, near the hearth downstairs, that she’d learned that Dante was the one they had summoned. Now she knew why. He was her mate.

  Ivon.

  The very thought of the man she’d promised to marry, the man who waited for her now back in the city, sickened her. Francy’s intent when coming to visit Dante had truly been honorable. She’d never wanted to hurt Ivon. It was hard enough to know that the mere mention of coming to the countryside had upset Ivon—his finding out she’d mated with another man would be the lowest blow yet. As much as Dante disliked her being around vampires, Ivon disliked lycans. It wasn’t as though this was common. Other vampires and lycans had no problems getting along.

  I won’t be helping their opinions on the matter any.

  No part of her had thought that she’d fall into Dante’s arms. He’d seemed so headfast, so sure that she needed
to move away from him that she’d assumed he didn’t desire her as she did him.

  It was obvious she’d been wrong. So wrong in fact that she’d betrayed another. A man she still couldn’t understand her attraction to but had promised her hand to all the same.

  How the hell am I going to break this to Ivon? He’ll want to come and try to work it out. I’m sure of it. Dante won’t stand for that.

  Francy’s chest tightened as her mind raced. This was all too much. Too soon. A whirlwind that she couldn’t seem to find her footing in, nor did she have any desire to change what had happened.

  It was wrong and she knew it. She also knew that she loved Dante with all of her heart. What she had with Ivon, while wonderful, was so very different. For some reason, Francy felt removed from it all. It made sense when she was with him. But once she stepped away and looked at the situation, she wondered why she’d ever agreed to marry him to begin with.

  I love Dante. The proclamation chased some of the guilt away and left her thinking of her mate. Running a hand over her lower stomach, Francy closed her eyes and wished with all of her heart that she now carried his child. If the gods offered their blessing then she and Dante could very well be parents before the year was out. It was something she had always dreamed of and when Dante had carried her up the stairs she’d found herself slipping into his mind, reading his thoughts. It was a trick they would perfect over time. All mates could do it. It had taken her by surprise at first and when she found him hoping that their union would produce a large family she couldn’t help but smile.

  Francy slid her hand down further, running her fingers through the juicy aftermath of their lovemaking, skimming over her clit in the process. Fire shot through her inner thighs as she made another pass by her swollen bud. Biting her lip, she did her best to keep from crying out in agony as her body burned with desire. I need you, Dante.

  Amore. Dante used their bonded link for the first time to communicate with her.