Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

His nostrils flared, like a stallion scenting a mare. His hands dropped to my coat, and he ripped it down the back and threw it on the floor before backing away from me.

  “Damn it,” he said gruffly, his head against the door. “Damn it . . . I can’t do this.”

  I pulled my shirt over my head and stripped off my jeans and underwear. Warren didn’t keep his house at seventy degrees—since he was mostly sleeping at Kyle’s these days. But I didn’t feel the cold, not while I could feel the force of Adam’s need roaring like a welding torch.

  “What can’t you do?” I asked gently, pulling back the bedding and lying down on the sheets.

  “I can’t be gentle. I know . . . I know you need care, and I can’t do that right now.” He pulled open the door. “I’ve got to go. I’ll send—”

  “If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I’ll—”

  I didn’t get to finish the threat. I think it was the word “naked,” though maybe it was “bed,” but before I finished my sentence, he was on me.

  He was right; he wasn’t gentle. Up until that point in our relationship, our lovemaking had been passion tempered with humor and sweetness. I’d been hurt and he’d been so careful of me.

  In the darkness of Warren’s guest bedroom, sweetness and humor had no place in him. And though there was care in his touch, he was anything but careful. Not that he hurt me—quite the contrary. But he was fire and need that went so far beyond simple desire that it consumed me—and like the phoenix, I found myself reborn in the crucible.

  I met his urgency with my own, digging my fingers into the silk-covered stone of his arms as his sinful mouth tasted my skin wherever it fell. He was hot and hard, his need forcing me to rise to meet his fire with my own. Sweat dripped onto my skin, and the scent of it was an aphrodisiac because it was all Adam. If he needed me, I needed him every bit as much.

  He rose over me, closing his golden eyes as he pushed through me, into me, became a part of me with one heavy thrust. Only when he was all the way in did he look at me again, and in that look was triumph and a claiming so basic that it should have scared me.

  “Mine,” he said, rocking his hips against my own in a move that was more about possession than passion.

  I raised my chin and held his eyes in a challenge only I could make without consequences. I tightened my belly and dug my heels into the mattress to give my own thrust power. “Mine,” I said.

  Adam’s wolf smiled at me and nipped my shoulder. “I can live with that,” he said. And then he demonstrated what that possession would mean when it involved an Alpha werewolf who knew how to be patient and thorough when hunting coyotes.

  I DREAMED I WALKED IN THE SNOW, BUT I WASN’T AFRAID. There was a thick golden rope wrapped securely around me. It was free of fray or knot and led me into the forest, lighting my way with its bright warmth. I followed it with a light heart and the humming anticipation of finding something wonderful. At last I came to the end of the rope and a blue-gray wolf with golden eyes.

  “Hello, Adam,” I told him.

  “SHH,” SAID ADAM SLEEPILY. HE PULLED ME TIGHTER against him and rolled over the top of me as if that would make me be quiet. “Sleep.”

  My body was tired. I was warm and safe. A return to sleep should have come easily, especially since I’d awakened from such a good dream. But it had reminded me of what it had felt like to be lost.

  “I couldn’t find you either,” I told Adam, burrowing against him. He was thinner than he’d been the last time I’d been in bed with him. The fire had left no scars, and he kept his hair short anyway, but the ribs I could feel told me I had cost him.

  “I quit trying,” I admitted. “I was so afraid she was going to use me to enthrall the whole pack. I didn’t understand that she couldn’t do that, that she didn’t have the power.” I closed my eyes and let myself remember how terrified I had been. I opened them again, almost immediately, needing to see him to feel safe. “In that place, it felt like she had all the power to do anything.”

  He was so still that I thought he might have gone back to sleep, until he spoke. “She hurt you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “She did.” I wouldn’t lie to him. “But it was just pain, not real damage. I knew you would come for me if I could just hold out.” I let him hear the sureness of that in my voice.

  He rolled over until I was on top of him. His hands moved to my shoulders, and he gave me a little shake. “Don’t ever make me go through that again. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I won’t,” I promised him rashly. “Never again.”

  He laughed then, and hugged me tight. “Didn’t Bran teach you not to make promises you can’t keep?” He sighed. “I suppose if you won’t shut up so I can sleep, I might as well find something to do with the time.”

  When he was through, we both slept.

  ADAM WENT WITH ME TO RETURN THE BOOK TO PHIN the next morning, an hour before the store opened. The book was still wrapped in Kyle’s towel and had apparently traveled from Kyle’s linen closet to Adam’s with no fuss. Darryl and Auriele had brought it to us, along with a new coat for me and clothes for Adam, since his hadn’t survived. Darryl didn’t crack a smile, though it would have been obvious to him what we’d been doing, even if he’d been a human and didn’t have the nose of a wolf. Instead, both he and Auriele had observed us with a satisfaction I found a little disconcerting. I was glad when they’d left us.

  Phin was at his desk in the bookstore, looking very much as he had the first time I’d seen him, except that he’d lost a little weight: a man of indeterminate age with fading golden hair and good-humored eyes. There were a few new bookcases, but otherwise the bookstore looked much as it had the first time I’d seen it.

  “Hey, Mercy. Adam,” Phin said with a friendly smile.

  “Hey. I have something for you.” I unrolled the towel carefully and set the book on the counter.

  When I touched it, the leather was butter soft under my fingertips.

  “Ariana has a fine sense of irony,” observed Adam, reading the title for the first time—Magic Made was embossed on the cover and spine in gold. “Hard to believe that is glamour.”

  “It isn’t, quite,” said Ariana, coming around the end of a bookshelf.

  She’d changed her appearance. She didn’t look like a middle-aged woman anymore; instead, she’d altered her real appearance just enough that she looked human. Her skin was tanned and human-smooth, her eyes gray, and her hair as blond as Phin’s must have been when he was a young man.

  She looked at Adam for a moment, and he stayed still with the coaxing quietness of a man trying not to startle a wild creature.

  “You’ve changed,” she told him, relaxing a little. “She contents your wolf.”

  “I’m sorry I frightened you.” Adam’s voice was carefully gentle, and I remembered that he’d said she hadn’t been able to stay in the same room with him.

  She shook her head. “Not your fault—neither the old fear or the new. But still, you are not so terrifying now.” With a resolute breath and raised chin, she strode across the store to us.

  She looked at the book and shook her head. “You cause me more trouble.” To Adam and me, she said, almost shyly, “Would you like to see what it really looks like?”

  “Please,” I said.

  She put both of her hands on the book, and I felt a wave of magic. She picked up the book, and when she moved it, a small silver statue of a bird was left behind. A lark, I thought, though I was no expert. It was no bigger than the palm of my hand and amazingly realistic. I looked at the book sitting next to it.

  “The best disguises are real,” she said. “I just used the book to hide the artifact.”

  Adam put his hand on my shoulder, bent down, and said, “Such a small thing to cause so much trouble.” And he kissed the top of my ear.

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