Love's a Witch (7 page)

She handed me a bottle of water. The only reason I put the bottle to my mouth was the unbroken seal. Kari just watched as I guzzled the clean water and tried to wash the nasty taste from my palate.

“You don’t trust me.” Kari’s voice lilted in surprise.

“Well, you just gave me funky jinxy tea. That tasted horrible by the way. Why can’t magical herbs taste better? Someone should work on that. Witches have all this magic and they can’t make potions taste good? That just sucks.”

Kari was still chuckling as she got up. I was really ready for my friends to get back. I also wished I was something more than a friend. But I would settle for someone not trying to get something out of me at this point.

“Your aura is so troubled. We need chocolate to get rid of that blackness. Nobody can have black in their aura after chocolate. Come on. I have a bag of Dove squares stashed under my altar.”

This chick was nuts, but at the same time full of awesome. She was talking about chocolate and it was getting close to that time of the month. I would have followed her into a snake breeding pit for some chocolate.

“You really keep chocolate in your altar space?”

“If there is anything more magical than a good bar of chocolate, I certainly haven’t found it. Hell, some sex magic isn’t even as powerful as the orgasmic properties of a good piece of chocolate.” Kari spoke and I fell in step with her. She was calm, and I felt some of the stress leave my body. This was my kind of witch.

“Wait…aura? You see the colors too?”

Kari stopped our chocolate trek, with a warm palm on my cheek. I didn’t have one to compare it to, but it felt like a mother’s touch. “You were meant to come here, Mary. You are so important to what lies ahead. I get to lead you, and it is my honor to do so. I’ll have tough times soon, and I plan to enjoy every bit of our right now.”

I was feeling some serious performance anxiety. Everybody kept telling me I was so important. So why did I feel like I couldn’t do anything right?

“Don’t look like that. Most people feel like they fail when they can’t do what they see others doing. You have to do something no one has ever done before. When you do something for the first time, there is no wrong. There is just perseverance. You will persevere.” Then she pulled away.

She opened the little door to the altar and rustled in what looked to be a handmade basket underneath. She came out with a cellophane bag.

“But first, you will eat chocolate, and enjoy the company of someone who understands. We have a lot to do tomorrow. Let’s get to know each other tonight.” Kari made it sound like we were heading on an adventure, not dodging vampires and werewolves left and right.

“So we aren’t going to talk about what happened to your house? I know you saw something to be desperate enough to put all that goo on yourself.” Instead of answering she just smiled and put an individually wrapped piece of heaven in my hand.

I opened the wrapper, and the words printed inside jumped out at me.

Try something new, and succeed at it.

I was never one for fortune cookies, but I took the piece of foil and tucked it in my pocket. It was about time I succeeded at something. We sat moaning at the fabulous taste exploding on our tongues until everyone of the furry persuasion had returned from their run.

They came up still adjusting their clothing. If I hadn’t known what was going on, it would look like they were returning from a dirty threesome in the woods. Amber got to watch both guys strip naked before shifting. She said she didn’t even notice the nudity anymore. It was a natural thing for a werewolf to see their Pack naked. She assured me hybrids were no different.

I still wanted to watch them shift. If nudity was no big deal I thought it would be great vibrator fodder to see both Jake and Craig strip down. They were tall, broad, and so cut. I’ve never seen an ugly vampire or werewolf. Hot must be a side effect.

When I think back to all of the creatures gathered around Amber as she lay dying there wasn’t a fugly one in attendance. It was like everyone had plastic surgery—not on a Michael Jackson level, but just the right amount to create perfection.

“I have to admit, I have never fed hybrids before. How much food do they need? If I remember correctly the wolves eat like they have six stomachs, but hybrids are new for me.” Kari was talking as if she didn’t really expect an answer.

I bet this woman talked to herself a lot. I pulled some pans and bowls from the cupboard, and handed them to Kari. Jake came into the kitchen with us and Amber and Craig were going over finances in the adjacent dining room. Amber was determined to get a van that didn’t scream child-molester. Craig was determined to have some privacy with the living arrangements. Since the money was a balancing act, they both had their hands in the books to make sure they got what they wanted. Luckily the stock market was on a slight upswing. A well-paid financial planner had deposited a good chunk of change into a certain offshore account for us. Keeping secrets is expensive too.

Kari asked Jake about his food needs. Ever the polite guy, he didn’t talk down to her, just explained. “We can take nourishment either way. Amber and I can sustain each other’s basic need for blood. But our food supply needs to be high enough to support the blood production. We did catch a buck while we were in the woods, so it should ease the food bill.”

“Ewww. Just don’t have Amber tell me about it, please. She creeps me out when she talks about the texture of rabbit fur between her teeth.” If I had to hear about how animal fur worked great as dental floss again after that funky tea, I would not keep this meal down.

Jake just laughed. Even the polite guy laughed at me. That kind of thing does wonders for one’s ego.

“I promise there is no rabbit in the stew, Mary.” Kari opened the fridge. The door hung a little sideways on the hinges, but she was able to push it back up and into place enough to seal after she grabbed the bottle of wine she had gone in there for.

The soup Craig had thrown together had enough time to cook down. A good portion of the house smelled like heaven. Kari had thrown together a bread and veggie tray. I sat nibbling on the carrots just watching everyone around me. People who know me wouldn’t call me quiet. My brain-to-mouth filter was almost as weak as Amber’s, but when I felt out of my element, that same smartass took a back seat to my insecurity.

Amber and Jake would never grow old, and even though Craig would, he would age much slower than me. I would be sporting grey hair and varicose veins and he wouldn’t look a day older.

Kari found some tumblers that had survived the ransacking. She poured us all a glass. I downed it as I contemplated my wrinkled ass hanging with this crew after fifteen or twenty years. It didn’t seem plausible.

I refilled my drink and tried to think of an option for my future that made any kind of sense.

Kari pointed to the dining room where Amber and Craig were chatting. “Should I take some wine to your friends?” Kari was a nice lady. “The alcohol will kill any germs from the fresh kill.” But weird. So very weird.

“’Sall right, Kari. I got this.” I topped off my own glass before filling two mismatched goblets to take into the other room. I hoped this wasn’t the only bottle. It was darn near empty already, and if my brain wouldn’t shut off, I would need a lot more.

Chapter Ten

Craig

I couldn’t believe I was negotiating on this. Amber was the female head of this group. Man, I hated the term ‘Clan’. I sometimes wondered why I had followed her in the first place. Then I remembered when she walked into the room. Mary.

She was why I was really here. I had to stop denying it to myself.

“I thought you’d both like some wine.” Mary knocked her soft hips against Amber’s shoulder. “Maybe some booze will help with your negotiations, Craig.” She winked and sashayed back to the kitchen. There was also no denying controlling my wolf around her was complete and utter torture.

Watching her retreat I could tell she had already started drinking. Everything she did was exaggerated. Her strut, her scent, it all went straight to my groin.

“We’re eating in ten minutes!” Mary called out over her shoulder.

I swallowed the saliva that flowed around my canines. What I was hungry for was not cooking on the stove.

Amber’s voice snapped me back to reality. “Roll your tongue up, dude. The drool might mess up the tablecloth.”

I looked down at the tablecloth we had pulled from the points of the chandelier. You couldn’t call it an heirloom any longer, that’s for sure. I looked up and Amber had a lopsided grin on her face. “This is so cute.”

“Amber, now is not the time.” Having your Alpha call you cute will kill your erection every time.

“You can just call me Queen.” Had to give her points for persistence.

“I will not insult the memory of Freddie Mercury like that.”

The point of a fang poked through her lips. I shook my head, trying to look down, but I know she saw me share her grin. There was a lot I had come to expect from Amber. I never really saw her as a leader before we left the Paulson Pack, but I felt the ability inside her. My wolf followed hers. Were she male, she would have broken from her father long ago. She was different. I was fascinated by her strength, and there was a huge part of me that wanted to see what she could accomplish. My brain loved to gather information in books, but Amber really was history in the making. Foul-mouthed, over the top history, and I wanted to be a part of it.

“You do know you’re our Beta, don’t you?” Amber drank half the glass handed to her. Meaning I had to get the negotiations for the financial plan done quickly.

“I never thought I would be in any position of authority, but yeah, Beta suits me better than Alpha.” I pulled out the receipts from the last three hotels. If we went somewhere that cut out the extras like WiFi and free breakfast we would probably save enough to make it work.

“Craig…listen. I don’t know everything. Hell, I think most days I know the opposite of everything, but there is one thing I have figured out.” She paused for effect.

This ought to be good.

“We find our path if we look hard enough.” Amber touched her chest.

The small leather sack she wore ever since she turned was a visible bump under every shirt she wore. It stayed on her even when she shifted. Her wolf respected its place there. Amber didn’t say what it was, and I hadn’t pushed. When she decided she was ready, I was dying to get the backstory on the leather sack. But now was definitely not the time.

“Sometimes our path isn’t restricted to our own species.” She looked over her shoulder to look for her friend. “Craig, if she’s it, you go for it. Trust me when I say fighting the pheromones is not worth it.”

“What are you talking about?” I touched the vial in my pocket. I needed another dose of dragon’s blood. There was something banging in my skull that I wanted to go away.

“Fine. Don’t admit it.”

Just because I had admitted it to myself didn’t mean I had to say it out loud. So I picked up the wine and envied Amber’s unique lack of alcohol tolerance.

Amber got up and left the room. I pulled out our investment ledger. It took quite a bit of bouncing around, but our accounts didn’t lead back to Indiana. We were a state over, and on the move as far as I was concerned. I focused on the numbers. Mary was someone who tilted me on my axis whenever she was close. If I just worked, I could get past the thrashing she did to my brain.

I thought back to some of the other times I was trying to work in the library with her reading to me. Research was always so much more interesting when the background was Mary’s voice. The memory of her reading washed over me. And the books she would read…good gods, the woman was a temptress. She had this quiet voice that didn’t jar you from the story. She wove the tale around me every day and I was lost in her vision of how each character sounded. Then the sex scenes would pop up. Damn. My cock was a pillar of concrete whenever she was around simply because it remembered her voice.

She put me in the stories, and I was there. I was the Duke taking his mistress into the maid’s quarters to work his way beneath her undergarments. I had nights spent awake just imagining unlacing an elaborate corset off Mary’s body. The soft curves would be revealed to me one glorious inch at a time. I would let her wispy mewling breaths work the laces looser until I couldn’t resist the dance any longer and would pull them out in a long fast yank. In my mind she’d turn around with her arms trying to hide her ample chest, but she couldn’t hide them from me. Her hair would fall from whatever knot she had on top of her head as I removed a nest of hair pins one at a time.

I shook myself. Female werewolves were pretty, but they were so hard. Their wolves kept them tense, and constantly in motion. There wasn’t much room for soft. Mary was made of softness. I spent so many nights wanting to feel her skin beneath my hands. I touched her arm to guide her on occasion, but not to be polite. I enjoyed brushing my skin against hers. There was barely any hair on her arms, only a soft down that added to the incredibly silky feel to her. She had hips that flared from her tiny waist and swayed whenever she walked. She had a softer belly too. The thought of nuzzling my nose into every soft part of her…it drove me mad.

Today I’d watched her help clean up a room for Amber and Jake. Her fingers stretched up to the tall post at the end of the bed to pull down the shredded fabric. The tee she wore rode up. Her belly button dipped in her stomach, and I wanted to drill my tongue around the little divot. She stood up on her tip toes and it arched her back. That dramatic curve from the top of her ass to the base of her neck was so graceful and stunning. Or at least, it was until she slipped and fell.