StrategicLust (6 page)

Lightning flared, blinding Joshua for a moment. When he
managed to recover and blink his eyes clear, the thug Kate had hit was on the
ground, huddled into a heap, and the other two men were running away.

“Bam!” Josh shouted…or he
tried
to shout, his voice
coming out hoarse and thickly slurred now. He half-heartedly pumped a fist in
the air in celebration, his body seeming to shut down on him.

“Josh, pull the needle out of your neck,” Kate ordered
sternly. Josh blinked uncomprehendingly at his lover.

Needle? My neck? Huh?

Clumsily, he groped his hand around his neck, his fingers
feeling as thick and useless as sausages. After a moment a sharp prick told him
he’d found the needle Kate had told him about. With a wince, he pulled the
sharp item from his skin and swayed sickeningly.

Before he could conjure words to speak with, a slender body
jumped down a few feet from them. A witch in what looked like leather pants and
a catsuit-cut top molded to her torso landed agilely on her feet. Long blonde
hair pulled back into a braid fell most of the way down her back.

“Give him to us, Kate Williams,” the witch insisted firmly.
Josh blinked again, certain he was hallucinating this. A few times he’d
fantasized raunchily about two highly trained warrior women fighting over him,
but the reality appeared rather different to what he had imagined.

Not to mention that he was damn fond of Kate and had no
desire to see his witch fight
anyone
for him. Now, if chocolate fudge
sauce or massage oils of some description were brought into play, he would
know
he was unconscious and dreaming.

“Who are you?” Kate asked. The blonde grinned and shrugged a
shoulder disarmingly.

“Does it matter?” she replied cheekily. Kate shook her head,
her red ponytail swishing and capturing Josh’s attention like a wonderful shiny
thing created purely for his pleasure.

“I like your hair, Kate,” Josh slurred, the words sounding
more like “Eeeye ike orr aire”.

Kate appeared to focus internally for a moment and Josh
worried she would cause herself damage by trying to summon another lightning
charge too quickly. When one drew too hard too fast on their magic, it was
possible to burn out, a state requiring much rest and recovery—if indeed more
permanent damage was not caused.

Seeming to realize she didn’t have another charge currently
within her, Kate pushed Joshua farther behind her and nudged him closer to the
busy main street. Josh desperately wanted to help, to fight this skinny blonde
witch—after all, she was a slender thing, she couldn’t possibly be too
difficult to control—but once again Kate took matters into her own hands.

“Fire!” she cried shrilly. Warm hands wrapped around Josh’s
upper arm as Kate hustled him without turning her back to the blonde. “Someone
call the fire department—there’s smoke coming from that restaurant!”

People paused at the entrance and peered down the small
street, curiosity piqued by Kate’s screams. The blonde witch’s eyebrows rose
and she nodded her head curtly in silent acknowledgement of the hit. Kate
shoved Josh back into the growing crowd and a moment later they were swallowed
up by the press of people as Kate half-led, half-dragged Josh back to their
car.

Kate let go of Josh’s arm as she hastily inserted the key
into the passenger side door lock. Josh found his legs none too steady and he
held on to the hood of the car to keep himself from face-planting onto the side
walk.

“Wuz ’mazing,” he complimented Kate woozily, his whole body
seeming to shut down on him. Kate wrenched open the door and all but threw Josh
into the seat. He struggled to sit upright—his face seemed drawn almost
magnetically to the dashboard. Kate had started the car and pulled into the
heavy peak-hour traffic, tires squealing, before Josh even realized she had
climbed into the driver’s seat.

“You,” he managed to articulate over-carefully. Kate nodded
and cast a worried glance at him.

“I know,” she replied, not unkindly but still fairly curtly.
“I was amazing. The blonde witch was pretty. We rescued that poor woman those
cretin thugs were using just as bait for us. Joshua, you were injected with a
drug I have no knowledge of. I’m going to take you to a good friend of mine,
someone I can trust. I know you must be terrified but—”

“No!” Josh insisted determinedly, cutting into Kate’s
seeming litany. She peered at him and risked taking one of her hands from the
wheel of the car to feel his forehead in the age-old gesture of checking for
fever. Josh batted her hand away—or rather his mind sent the directive and his
arm didn’t follow.

“Not worried,” he insisted. Josh knew for certain that he
was about to pass out. Either that or puke everything in his stomach up onto
the rug. He felt revoltingly ill. But it was imperative that he get this
message to Kate before he did either. Josh focused in a manner he only ever
needed to when performing an especially tricky magical task.

“I. Trust you, ’ate,” he ground out slowly with agonizing
precision, though even he could hear his words slur. “Not scared. Rrrussssss
ooooo.”

As soon as those final words passed his lips Josh felt as if
he had run a marathon or concluded the single most important task of his entire
life. With a horrendous gagging motion, he determined he was indeed going to be
ill. He sent a quick prayer to the Goddess for mercy, hoping he would pass out
before he could live through the indignity.

Josh worried in a faint flash of insight that his head would
hit the dash and he would wake up with a cracker of a headache. It was his
final thought before he lost consciousness.

“It’s been two hours, Aubury,” Kate repeated for the third
time. She winced slightly at the whining quality in her tone but continued to
speak regardless. “Are you
positive
you gave Joshua the correct
antidote? Maybe we should—”

“If you question my methods one more time, Kate,” Aubury
replied calmly, “I swear to all that’s holy I will throw you out into the back
yard and you can wait there instead of hovering over your charge like a
ministering angel. How many years have you known me?”

Kate hunched her shoulders, suitably chastised. She could
feel her face flushing in embarrassment and turned her head to stare at Josh’s
still-unconscious form instead of meeting her old friend’s gaze.

“Pretty much my whole life,” Kate mumbled only partially
coherently. A warm, soft hand rested on her shoulder and Kate turned to meet
the gray gaze of the man who was practically her grandfather.

Mostly bald with only a small circle of closely buzzed gray-white
hair, Aubury Mavern made up for the lack on his head with a thick, bushy beard
he kept long but well-maintained. The gray in his beard had been losing the
fight to the white for the last year or so.

Tall and solidly built, if Aubury didn’t have his cane it
would be impossible to think this bear of a man could have anything remotely
close to a weakness. Despite outward appearances, an old wound to his leg had
worsened with age and Aubury now regularly used a sturdy cane, which he
loathed.

Kate hung her head and accepted the one-armed hug from the
Healer. Aubury had been friends with her parents. He’d stepped in to help to train
and raise her in her mid-teens when her parents had been killed in the field.
Partners in the Enforcers, they had lived large and fast, Kate always something
of a mystery to them with her quieter ways and more reflective spirit.

Aubury had helped her to understand her magic, that of
Guarding and protecting those less able. It had been almost instinctive to
bring Joshua here when he had passed out from the drug the blonde witch had
injected him with. Aubury, thankfully, had recognized the effects of the nerve
toxin and administered an antidote.

Joshua hadn’t woken yet and Kate was beginning to worry.

“This isn’t a regular job, Kate, is it?” Aubury asked, as
clued-in as ever. Kate flushed slightly defensively.

“Of course it is,” she insisted firmly. “Joshua has a
contract out on his life and Hayden—you remember Hayden Foxworth, the Special
Operative agent?—hired me to…”

Kate let her words drain away into silence as Aubury smiled
gently at her, his gray eyes filled with understanding and just a hint of
laughter. Kate huffed and swallowed hard before starting again. She had only
just begun to stop lying to herself—there was no point in lying to the only
real member of family she felt she had remaining.

“He’s witty, deadly charming and sexy. I’ve never had so
much trouble balancing my focus between keeping a client happy and occupied and
assessing the risks and dangers. He’s… I’m… No, this isn’t a regular job,” Kate
admitted. “You can’t tell, what with him being unconscious and all, but Joshua
Delamere is a complete playboy and ladies’ man. He’s probably had more partners
than I’ve had dates in my entire life, and is a walking heartbreak waiting to
happen.”

“And?” Aubury prompted gently. Kate wasn’t sure whether she
smiled or grimaced. Likely her look fell somewhere in between and ended up
being a slight smirk.

“And he has a kind soul, a whip-smart brain and, despite his
every intention of hiding it, he is a closet chivalrous wizard who leaps forth
into the fray to defend witches and the weak alike without a single thought for
his safety or the larger situation at hand.”

“In other words,” Aubury summed up neatly, “he can give you
passion, zest and an intoxicating freedom of life, while you can offer him
reliability, organization and a safety he has never dreamed of? Sounds like a
match made in heaven, sweetheart.”

“He would hate being tied down,” Kate said with a frown.
Aubury shrugged, completely unconcerned.

“You’re not the sort to insist a man wear a chain to your
belt,” he insisted. “You never have been and you’re not likely to want to start
now. Josh will help you to relax and let go, and you can prove to be the safe
harbor he can find peace in. I think I like this wizard already.”

“He divides my focus. I’ll be lucky if they don’t suspend me
from duty.”

“He makes you feel and react,” Aubury countered.

“I don’t need to feel!” Kate insisted vehemently. “I need to
do my job. I need to be three steps ahead of the enemy, analyzing the data,
assessing the risks, saving lives. Not jumping into a knock-down fight with
another witch and having Joshua clinging to me telling me how pretty my hair
is. That wizard will drive me batshit insane.”

“He…what?” Aubury appeared caught somewhere between being
perplexed and on the cusp of laughter. Kate sighed, not even wanting to recount
it.

“You know the rules,” Kate answered more wearily now. “You
know how strongly I need to focus on the job. I can’t have him distracting me.
Teasing me.
Tempting
me.”

“Darling.” Aubury cupped her jaw and Kate was reminded of
all the scrapes this man had fixed for her, all the tears he’d wiped away when
the loneliness or pain or a bitter disappointment had seemed to shatter her
world. “I’m not saying you should let this young man walk all over you. Far from
it. Nor do I think you should neglect your duty. But if he’s half the wizard he
appears to be—even unconscious—and if he makes you even a tiny bit as happy and
satisfied as you seem to me right now, then he’s worth a bit of pain and a bit
of extra focus. Don’t you think?”

Kate swallowed hard, feeling for some strange reason on the
verge of tears. Hearing Aubury state the very words she’d been repressing made
them more real. Better yet, it proved to her that she wasn’t as biased as she’d
believed. If her mentor and beloved grandfather figure believed she could
juggle this, then it was more than possible.

“He might break my heart,” she said with a wobbly tone to
her voice. Neither needed to speak of it, but they both knew she was bouncing
her own thoughts and fears off Aubury, wanting his input.

“He might make you happier than you dreamed possible.”

“He might dump my ass when he’s finished with me,” she
postulated with a small, weak chuckle.

Aubury snorted in abject disdain. “Then we can rend his body
limb from limb and together we’ll bury the charred remaining pieces.”

Kate laughed, lighter and happier than she’d been in days.
She threw her arms around the old wizard and hugged him tightly.

He was right—she had to try. She’d already practically
decided it, but hearing Aubury insist on it and knowing he believed her
perfectly capable of juggling her personal and professional duties gave her a
zing of confidence she’d badly needed.

“Your Joshua should be waking soon.” Aubury soothed her with
a quick pat to her shoulder as if she were a young witch who had skinned her
knee out in the playground. “Just be a little patient—his body is ridding
itself of the neurotoxin and these things happen in their own time. I’ll be in
the den if you need me.”

With a quick peck to her cheek, Aubury picked up the cane he
had left resting against the single, cot-style bed Josh lay on in the spare
room and limped his way out and down the hall toward the main living room. Kate
sighed and rubbed her palms tiredly over her face. She had run the gamut of
emotions in the last few hours and it was beginning to take its toll on her.

She ached for a shower and something to eat, but she flatly
refused to leave Josh’s side while he was helpless and unconscious. Worse still
was the fact that every time she thought back to earlier in the morning, all
she could picture was how Josh had looked with his cock thrust deeply inside
her pussy.

She continually, vividly recounted how it had felt to have
her cunt possessed by his thick shaft and how incredible the sensation of
having his body slickly aligning itself with hers had been. Kate could feel her
face heating and her lower lips getting slick with remembered pleasure. Her
breath began to come faster and the urge to touch herself, to stimulate the electric
pulses running from her clit to her nipples, grew hungrily.

While the actual tingling sensation had abated on her lips,
Kate could still feel the erotic burn from Josh’s kisses. She could all too
easily imagine the feel of his mouth pressed hungrily to hers, his tongue
slickly diving into her mouth to penetrate her and prepare her for that far
more intimate possession of his cock.

Kate’s heart hammered in her chest and it took several deep
breaths for her to regain control over her wayward imagination and reign in her
growing, passionate desire for this wizard. Kate dragged the spindly wooden
chair closer to Josh’s cot and cleared her throat, determined to not work
herself up into such a frenzy that she wanted to jump the unconscious wizard,
regardless of how sexy he appeared.

Josh’s carefree, flirty manner returned to the forefront of
her beleaguered mind and Kate had to resist the impulse to sigh softly. Part of
her yearned to return his flirtatious ways and lighthearted, irresponsible
manner. She loved his sexy initiative, even if she didn’t feel free to return
it except for in privacy, behind closed doors.

Part of Kate worried that if she allowed herself to fall in
love with Josh, she would be doomed to disappointment. She knew that once the
adrenaline of the situation passed he would no longer need her Guardian
services and she’d be left behind. Kate had to continually remind herself that all
she could honestly expect was a brief albeit wonderful, lusty and heated fling
with the sexy, charismatic wizard.

Even though Aubury clearly thought them a good match, Kate
couldn’t see Josh wanting to be permanently saddled with someone in her line of
work. She had a genuine talent for Guarding, and more importantly she
liked
her work. She enjoyed protecting people and making sure they stayed safe. She
had no desire to move into another area.

More importantly, this was where her magical talent lay.
Josh hadn’t made idle comments about her work being a source of worry for him,
but every other relationship she had entered into had ended up going in one of
two directions. Either it became so boring and monotonous that the partnership
turned stale, or the wizard became fed up with her strange hours and protective
focus upon another person. Sometimes Kate could go a whole week and not even
see her apartment, let alone be able to make a dinner date.

Her work frequently became the kiss of death to any
relationship.

Josh shifted restlessly on his cot and instantly Kate’s
attention reverted back to the wizard. She shook away the maudlin thoughts and
instead focused on the man before her eyes. He had a strong jaw, soft, full
lips and amber eyes that could burn into your very soul. Warm brown hair cut in
the latest slightly shaggy, sexy style fell into his eyes when he tilted his
head in a certain unconscious manner.

Kate smiled softly as Josh mumbled in his sleep and shifted
again. He appeared to be waking up and Kate’s heartbeat accelerated wildly.
Such simple things could set her heart racing when it came to this wizard. For
seemingly the millionth time, she tried to remind herself that this was lust
and not love. It couldn’t last and she didn’t want her heart broken yet again.
Josh mumbled and blinked his eyes. Slowly he opened them and he turned his head
so his amber gaze met hers.

“Hey there, stranger,” Kate greeted her lover softly. “How
are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been beaten over the head repeatedly with a
baseball bat,” Josh replied with a groan. He scrunched his face into a frown as
he appeared to try to recover his wits. Kate instinctively stroked her hand
across his forehead, brushing the stray strands of hair away from his eyes.

His brow cleared slightly at her touch and Kate breathed a
sigh of relief that he didn’t appear to have any amnesia or ill-effects from
the drug the blonde had injected him with, nor the antidote Aubury had given
him.

“We’re safe for now, but I want to move you somewhere safer
when it’s possible,” Kate explained. “This is the home of a Healer friend of
mine, Aubury Mavern, and I don’t want to put him in any jeopardy. He thankfully
recognized the neurotoxin that witch injected into you and knew how to create
the antidote. The worst of the effects should pass soon. Can you wriggle your
fingers and toes?”

It took Josh a second to process what she told him, but he
obligingly lifted his hands so they could both watch him wriggle his fingers.
The slender digits flexed and bent as per his wishes and Kate quietly released
a pent-up breath in relief.

“Aubury said there shouldn’t be any lasting issues, but he
couldn’t swear to me, so I needed to check,” Kate said.

Feeling free for the first time since they’d left the motel
hours earlier, she perched on the edge of the cot and let the tips of her
fingers stroke over the smoothness of Josh’s skin. His hair felt feather-light
as it brushed over her hand and it took every ounce of Kate’s inner strength
not to lose herself in stroking him.

“Can you remember everything? You seemed to have a fun time
flirting with Melissa,” Kate teased him lightly.

She did not feel jealous in the least, merely wanted to
subtly check that Josh recalled everything that had occurred. Kate worried
there might be some gaps in his memory and teasing him playfully seemed the
best way to ascertain that everything was well. Questioning him harshly would
solve nothing. Kate had no desire to become Josh’s inquisitor.

“Flirting?” Josh replied with a crinkle on his forehead as
he seemed to think back.