Black Magic Bayou (15 page)

“I don’t know.”

“And what if he has to touch you again, huh? What if he says the only way to taste your magic is by being inside you? What then?”

His anger was so intense it was like another person in the room with us, one who was hovering outside of my range but was ready to throw punches at me any moment, just to really make me feel guilty.

“He won’t.” He might. He might, and I knew it, but I lied. Because I had time to wiggle my way out of
that
particular outcome. What Santiago claimed to want from me was a little taste of my magic, only a smidge, and while sex was a very powerful source for magical energy, there were other ways. “I’d give him my blood before I ever let that happen,” I said honestly. “And blood is the most powerful magical agent I know of. Ain’t nothing sexy about blood.”

“Tell that to a vampire.”

“Do you know any?”

Wilder glared at me, but the sharp edge of his rage had damped slightly, so I moved closer, standing right in front of him. I got nearer still, forcing him to spread his knees wider to make room for me.

“I know what he wants from you, and it’s not blood.”

“No,” I answered. “It’s power.”

“It’s sex.”

“He can’t have that.” I stared at him, making sure he saw I wasn’t lying. I needed him to see it in my face, to know I wasn’t going to let another man’s desires be the thing that weakened us. Because whatever Santiago wanted, it had nothing to do with Wilder and me. “He doesn’t get to have that.”

Wilder’s expression changed again. It was still raw, still hurt, but there was heat there too, the kind unique to situations like this, where anger bled into passion until it wasn’t easy to tell if you were feeling lust or rage or both. He leaned forward and grabbed me by the back of my thighs, yanking me off my feet and onto his lap.

I settled myself there, hugging my legs tight to his hips and bracing one arm on either side of his head. When I leaned in, my hair fell around us like a curtain, blocking us into a small, secret world that was just us. Just me and him and no one else.

His grip on my thighs tightened, fingers kneading flesh too hard, bruising through the material of my jeans.

It was pain, but I liked it, because he wasn’t doing it to punish me. He was holding tight so he didn’t have to let go.

“He wanted to touch you.” Wilder’s voice was a low, raspy growl.

“He doesn’t get to touch me.” I scooted up higher, our chests touching and my pelvis right over his groin. I settled in, and he let out a little groan, the air escaping his lungs tickling my lips.

He inched his hands higher, cupping my ass, and pulled me so close I felt his belt buckle against my stomach.

“Genie.” This one word, my name, was barely more than a whisper that dampened my lips as he said it. God. Goddamn.

My brain was melting. One more move and I was going to come completely undone, and there’d be no going back. If there was such a thing as a point of no return, I was standing on it, looking over the edge, and he was just on the other side telling me to jump.

“He wanted…” Wilder bit my lower lip, and an electric shock tore through me, making my whole body tremble as a result. His grip tightened, and he arched his hips ever so slightly, enough for me to feel how hard he was.

“I don’t fucking
care
what
he
wanted,” I growled against his mouth.

“Do you care what I want?”

“Yes.” I breathed it without hesitation, brushing my lips over his. The smell of him was intoxicating in its familiarity, so masculine and wolfish and so very
Wilder
. I remembered how I’d felt the first time I ever saw him. He’d seemed too beautiful to be real, like he’d just stepped off a Times Square billboard modeling six-hundred-dollar jeans.

Only he was real, and as handsome as he was, I knew now there was more to him than I could have fathomed when we’d met on that empty stretch of highway.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You know what I want.” He pushed my hair back over my shoulders, and a lick of cool air caressed my skin. He trailed his fingers from my jaw down my neck and over my arm, and in return I cupped his face in my palms, running my thumbnail over the growing stubble under his bottom lip. I wanted to memorize his face like it was a Braille alphabet, so I could read it with my eyes closed.

I wanted to know the precise topography of his skin that created the perfect map of features I couldn’t get enough of.

“What do you want?” I was going to keep asking until he said the words.

His fingers were under the hem of my shirt now, tiny, searing touches leaving their mark across my skin. I started to undo his buttons, revealing a hint of chest hair as I went.

“I want what he wanted.”

In response, I stuck my index finger in his mouth. He bit down, nipping at the top joint, then sucking. A quivering sigh rolled from my throat, and I rocked my hips against his. He sucked harder.

“Tell me what
you
want.” I scratched his chin with my thumbnail, staring at him as his eyes fluttered closed, then opened again. “Because he can’t have what he wants. But you can have anything you ask for.”

That was it.

It was as if I’d said the magic words to totally undo whatever restraint had been holding him back and keeping him decent. Wilder’s hands went to my hips, fingers groping, clasping, and then he was standing, and I had to use both my hands on his shoulders to keep from falling backwards as he lifted us off the couch.

I let out a little
whoop
of surprise, clinging to him.

He kicked the coffee table over, and magazines sprawled onto the floor, coasters rolling under the couch and towards the kitchen. We didn’t make it any farther. He knelt, supporting me as we went to the area rug, and then his whole glorious weight was on top of me, and his mouth met mine in a kiss so ferocious my toes actually curled.

I could barely breathe he was kissing me so hard, all tongue and teeth and biting. But who needed to breathe when this felt so good? The world went blurry and fuzzy around the edges, erasing any kind of thought or worry or sense.

This foolhardy, animal need was precisely the reason I’d gone on the pill when I started dating Cash. Because my logic centers tended to shut down when my more primal brain took over. Prevention is the best medicine, in that case.

One werewolf in a lust frenzy was bad enough. Two of us together and there was no hope of stopping. My shirt ripped with the distinctive sound of shredding cotton. Wilder’s buttons went flying, skittering across the hardwood floor and under the furniture never to be seen again.

“I want you,” he said finally. “You. I want you.”

I fumbled with his belt, my desperate fingers so stymied by the buckle I was ready to bite the damn thing off. He helped, expertly unclasping it and undoing my own zipper just as easily.

My jeans were barely over my hips and he was inside me.

I gasped, fingernails digging at his back, and the rug beneath us rasped against my exposed skin. He kissed me again, slower, cradling my head in his wide palms as he rocked his hips, finding a way to get even deeper, so deep I felt like he had become a part of me. I let out a little whimper, but when he tried to withdraw from the kiss, I grabbed his head, holding him in place, and arched my back to meet his motions.

He was big, but didn’t feel too big. The way he stretched me felt right, the kind of pain that tells you you’re alive.

When I pulled back from the kiss, I whispered, “I’m yours.”

The smell of fresh coffee and the rasp of a broom on hardwood dragged me out of my sleep.

Sunlight filtered through the living room window, illuminating what looked like the site of a bar brawl. The coffee table had cracked when Wilder kicked it over—apparently IKEA did not do stress testing for sexual outbursts—and was still lying on its side.

The ruined remains of my shirt and bra were scattered over the couch and dangling off one leg of the coffee table. We’d never gotten beyond the living room, but at some point we had shed the rest of our clothes, because our jeans were in a twisted puddle of denim by the loveseat, and Wilder’s button-down was draped over the TV.

He was breathing softly beside me, more at peace than I’d seen him since this whole ordeal started. A faint smile turned up the corner of his mouth, and the deep lines of worry were gone from between his brows.

A knit blanket was covering us.

I definitely hadn’t put it there.

The sweeping noise stopped, and I tilted my head back to look towards the kitchen.

Magnolia was holding a dustpan in one hand and wearing the most self-satisfied
I knew it
smirk I’d ever seen.

“I would like to tell you I didn’t see anything.” She dumped the contents of the pan in the trash, little pearl buttons clattering into the bag. “But I’d be lying.” Then she pointed at Wilder, winked, and gave me two thumbs-up.

“Shush, you.”

“I suppose I should be grateful you guys only broke a coffee table. Beds are way harder to assemble.”

A small snort of laughter from beside me announced Wilder’s introduction into the conversation. With one eye half open he assessed the area around us, then peeked under the blanket and over at Magnolia.

“I see,” he said, as if just now realizing she must have been the one to cover us.

She lifted her hands in the air in an exaggerated
stop
motion. “It’s not my fault you guys couldn’t make it to a bedroom. I’m here every morning. Your cute butt wasn’t what I expected to see when I walked in, either.” Without another word she put the broom back against the wall and stepped through the side door out into the yard.

She wouldn’t go far, but I appreciated that I didn’t need to figure out how to hide Wilder
and
keep myself decent with Magnolia standing over us.

As it was I felt a flush of shyness, realizing he and I were totally naked under the blanket together.

He brushed a few strands of hair off my forehead and smiled at me lazily, with the kind of contented warmth that gave me the impression he couldn’t be happier to be lying here with me. I touched his face, his nose, his mouth, then kissed him gently.

“You didn’t even need to take me on a first date. Does that make me easy?” I smirked as I said it, but a small part of me worried.

“Easy?” He chuckled and looped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him, his whole body warm and soft.

Well, one part wasn’t all that soft.

“There’s nothing easy about you, Princess.” He planted a few slow, sweet kisses on me, and I was briefly tempted to go for another round, until I remembered Magnolia was about ten feet on the other side of the door and would hear everything.

Not to mention we still had a whole litany of problems that hadn’t gone away just because we’d had some great—no, amazing—sex.

“I still want a date.” I got up, taking the blanket with me, giving him an appraising once-over as I stood. Yup, impressive indeed.

“Don’t suppose you have a shirt I could wear?” He was looking past me to the ribbons of his button-down that had been reduced to flannel streamers decorating my entertainment center.

“Sure.” Cash had left a few things behind when he’d collected his stuff, including a cozy gray sweater I’d all but claimed as my own. I thought of it more as mine than Cash’s now anyway.

Wilder followed me into the bedroom, holding our balled-up jeans under his arm. He, like most shapeshifters, had no shame whatsoever about flaunting his nakedness. Bare-assed, he started poking around my bedroom, abandoning the denim bundle on the bed. I watched him for a minute, because if an ass that fine is in your line of view, you take the time to appreciate it, then collected the sweater from a bottom drawer and left it out for him.

I showered first and was already dressed and puttering around in the kitchen with Magnolia when Wilder emerged again. His hair was fluffy, free of product, and he smelled sweeter than normal thanks to my coconut-vanilla shampoo and Dove soap. Definitely not the same hypermasculine scent he usually radiated.

Maybe this would help me keep my paws off him for a little while.

Probably not.

With my coffee refreshed and no naked werewolves to distract me, I sat at the kitchen table with Mags and opened up the Big Book of Demons Santiago had given me the night before. Mags had her laptop out and was responding to emails from the pack, periodically asking for my input or opinion on various concerns. Because the death hadn’t hit the papers, there wasn’t too much of a panic yet, but Magnolia was ready to nip any problems in the bud before they became bigger issues.

I had no clue how I’d functioned before her.

Since my kitchen table was too small to comfortably seat three, especially with the enormous book and a laptop on it, Wilder jumped up onto the kitchen counter, reached over his shoulder to get a mug, and poured himself a coffee while he watched us work.

Ours was a peculiar little family, but somehow this felt absolutely perfect.

Each page of the book included a description of a demon, along with drawings. Some of the write-ups had more than one image, showing a face and a body or unique characteristics, while others just had a rudimentary sketch. I was guessing some were based on word-of-mouth accounts and stories, while others had been witnessed in person by the author.

With every new creature I found yet another reason I’d never sleep again.

Wilder, who had a clear view of the book over my shoulder, said, “Does that thing have a penis for a tongue?” He nonchalantly sipped his coffee.

Since I couldn’t read the Latin descriptions, there was no way to be sure, but it absolutely looked as if this particular demon had a tongue made out of seven dicks.

No thank you.

Page after page went by with exciting new horrors that I now knew were real. It got me to wondering what kind of person would be crazy enough to call up one of these things. Demons forced their way onto the mortal plane in a lot of different ways, but they were also summoned. After about sixty pages of the demon encyclopedia, I couldn’t fathom
why
.