Drive Me Wild (16 page)

“No boils,” he insisted, shuddering. “You can turn me into a toad if you must, but no boils. Skin conditions are much too … yucky.”

Yucky?

Tess snickered. “I’ll try to remember that.”

“If you do not use your magic to clean your dishes or to make all the traffic lights turn for you, what do you use it for?” he asked.

Tess shrugged. “I suppose it depends on what sort of magic you have. It’s not all the same, you know. Some witches couldn’t do a hex if their lives depended on it, and some could turn your private parts twelve shades of green without breaking a sweat. Granddad is a spell caster. If someone has written it down, he can cast it. He’s amazing.”

Rafe stood, scooping Tess up in his arms and taking her chair, then settling her down into his lap. “What sort of magic do you have, then,
gatita
?”

She grimaced. “Not much, if you ask most people.”

“I did not. I asked you.”

She never had been able to explain her magic worth a darn, not even to other witches. Maybe that was one of the reasons why her grandfather had never understood, let alone appreciated, her talents. She had no idea how to make Rafe understand the energy that lurked inside her, but she took a stab at it because he had bothered to ask.

“I see things, usually stuff that’s about to happen,” she said. “Not like a real seer does. I don’t have visions, or anything. Sometimes I just know the way things are going to work, almost like it’s been blocked out for a play or something, and I’ve already rehearsed it. And I don’t see it ahead of time like a real seer, either. It’s usually just a few seconds, like fast-forward déjà vu.” She made a face. “It’s not really all that impressive.”

His gaze on her was intent and inscrutable. “I do not agree with that. I find the idea fascinating.” Then he grinned, and she braced herself against the charm of that look. “But let us try a little experiment.”

“It almost never works on command.” She tried to push aside the twinge of disappointment she felt that he’d dismissed her so easily. Not that she could blame him, really. Most witches found her meager talents just as uninteresting.

“Humor me.”

He rose abruptly to his feet, carrying her with him, lifting her high against his chest. She gasped in surprise. “Where are we going?”

His grin curved like a pirate’s, and a chuckle purred out of his chest.

“You tell me,” he said, darting forward to nibble her earlobe. “Then tell me what is going to happen once we get there, because I believe it will only be a few seconds before it does.”

Tess laughed and shook her head, her disappointment not standing a chance against the feeling of arousal that the look in his eyes ignited inside her. “Please. You could at least make it challenging.”

He carried her through the bedroom door with a low growl. “It would be my pleasure.”

Fourteen

“Hey, you’ve got something. Right here.” Graham set down his burger and pointed to the corner of his mouth, nodding meaningfully at Rafe. “Looks kind of like a canary feather.”

Rafe froze with his hand halfway to his face and glared at his luncheon companion. “Very funny.”

The wolf grinned. “I thought so.”

“With a new cub to care for, I advise you not to quit your day job for a place on the stand-up circuit.”

“Come on, lighten up,” Graham urged, munching on a french fry that drooped under its burden of ketchup. “You’d think a week of witchy sex would put you in a better mood.”

“My mood is fine.”

Actually, if he ignored the irritant of his friend’s teasing, Rafe had to admit his mood was more than fine; frankly, he hadn’t felt so contented and relaxed in years. If ever. He might not have swallowed any canaries in fact, but the smile he perpetually wore these days did conjure up the image of a cat who had. When he had met Graham at Vircolac before lunch, Missy had even called his expression a smirk, but Rafe couldn’t seem to rein in the smug curve.

It was all Tess’s fault.

The little witch bore complete responsibility for his recent state of bliss. Her and her sassy tongue and her tempting little body. They haunted him, distracting him from his work, from his play, from his duties to the Council. Everywhere he went, he pictured her big blue eyes laughing up at him, or her sweet, pink lips pursed in irritation. Every time he thought of her, his palms itched to touch smooth, satin skin; and every time he caught a whiff of her creamy, lemon-herb fragrance, his mouth began to water.

Quite frankly, it was getting embarrassing.

“Your mood is distracted all to hell,” Graham said, cutting into his thoughts. “I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’m happy to see you enjoying a little of the good life, but I’ve asked you the same question three times now, and you still haven’t given me an answer. I’d offer to let you go visit your little witch to work it out of your system, but if it hasn’t happened by now, I don’t have much hope for that strategy.”

Rafe scowled. “What do you mean by that?”

Graham rolled his eyes. “Come on. We all know you’re just the latest victim of the scourge known as woman. Misha even won the pool that guessed you’d go in an entirely non-Other
and
non-human direction. Me, I had you pegged for a sweet little lynx. Someone a little hard to get, but still in the cat family. Now I’m out fifty bucks. Which means you’re totally buying lunch.”

“Was I supposed to understand any of what you just said?”

“Don’t pull that aristocratic blizzard tone on me. I’ve known you too long.” Graham crunched up a napkin and tossed it onto his bare plate. “Look, none of us was looking for a mate when the right woman came along. Sometimes this shit just happens. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re ready to settle down. It happens to the best of us. And quite frankly, there are certain consolations, if you know what I mean.”

Rafe tried to ignore the contented purr of his inner cat at the idea of settling down with Tess. Or better yet, on top of Tess. Pinning her down offered the distinct advantage of preventing her from trying to leave him.

And that was the craziest thought he’d ever had. Where had an idea like that even come from, for God’s sake? He was a cat, not a canine. His sort didn’t do the “settling down” thing.

He sent his friend a glare and drained the last of his beer. “I still have no idea what you might be talking about. I cannot even be sure that you know. Perhaps all those years of being led around by your nose have finally rotted your brain. I am a jaguar, not a puppy dog. I am not looking for a warm bed and a snug-fitting leash. I leave that to your sort.”

“Yeah, that would be a lot more convincing if my nose wasn’t telling me that you crawled out of a very specific warm bed this morning. Again. The same one that you’ve been crawling out of for more than a couple of days now.”

Rafe felt his brows draw together. Yes, he had managed to convince Tess to allow him to stay at her apartment last night, but he had returned to his own home to shower and change hours before he had met Graham for lunch. He should have smelled of little more than his own brand of soap.

“Once again, I do not know what you are talking about.”

Graham gave a small, impatient growl. “Cut the crap, Rafe. I can smell her all over you. If you want to keep lying to yourself, fine; it’s no fur off my hide. But you’re an idiot if you think you can keep lying to yourself.”

“What do you mean, you can smell her? I haven’t seen Tess in hours. You should be able to smell nothing.”

“Tell that to the pheromones that are clinging to you like dry burrs. It smells like
she’s
the one with the Feline tendencies, and that she spent the last four or five hours stropping up against you like her own personal scratching post. If you two were Lupine, I’d say you’d already marked her.”

Lupines staked a permanent physical claim on their mates by biting them during sex. The mark gave visual proof of the partnership as well as leaving an indelible scent mark to warn others that this particular person had been taken out of the potential mating pool. Some Felines had a similar tradition, but it wasn’t one Rafe had ever performed. In fact, he’d never even considered it.

Of course, until he’d met Tess, he’d never considered he might meet a woman he couldn’t get out of his head.

“But we are not, and I have done nothing of the kind,” he snapped, throwing a few bills down on their table and grabbing his coat from the empty chair beside him. “Your nose must be mistaken.”

Graham followed him out of the restaurant and had to stretch his long legs to keep pace with his friend’s angry strides. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, all right? I’m just saying what I think. If that’s pissing you off, I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

The baring of his teeth somewhat blunted the effect of his response, but Graham had finally seemed to take the hint that this wasn’t a subject Rafe wanted to discuss, and he fell silent.

Hell, it wasn’t even a topic Rafe wanted to think about, but now he couldn’t seem to think about anything else. What the hell had happened to him over the course of that last week, and where had it left him?

The answer to the first part of the question came to him in a single syllable:
Tess.
Tess had happened to him.

She had popped into his life like the clown out of a jack-in-the-box, completely unexpected and, frankly, a little bit frightening. To be honest, it would have been much easier for him if his stalker that night had turned out to be a hired assassin. That sort of threat he could have neutralized and moved on from without even a second glance. He’d dealt with similar in the past, and he’d always managed to come out on top. A threat to his life didn’t scare him, but the threat Tess Menzies represented to his heart had him terrified out of his wits.

What man in his right mind would not be frightened of the prospect of his entire life turning upside down? Tess represented just that sort of monumental shift to his reality. Before meeting her, he had known what his future would hold. He would continue to make his merry way through the world as he had always done. He had plenty of wealth to make his life comfortable and a number of close friends to keep him entertained. His work—both in the world of business and in the world of the Others—kept him engaged and challenged, and he had never found any difficulty in acquiring a female companion to satisfy his more basic needs. There had been no reason why he could not have continued indefinitely in such a manner. Of course, at some point he would have liked to find a female with whom he might sire a cub so that he could rest easy in the knowledge that his mark in the world would live on after his own death. He was a man, after all, and a proud man at that, and most men wanted sons.

Now that he had met Tess, though, his wants seemed destined to take a backseat to his needs.

He needed her.

He almost winced at the thought. Rafael De Santos was not the sort of man accustomed to needing anyone. Like the jungle beast that lived inside him, Rafe considered himself independent by nature, the sort of man who preferred to live, to hunt, to be alone. Crowds often made him uneasy, the press of bodies making him want to snarl and snap and slink away to somewhere still and quiet. He enjoyed the company of his friends, people like Graham and Dmitri and, these days, even their ever-growing circle of spouses, mates, and acquaintances. He appreciated lively conversation and enjoyed the opportunity to laugh with those whom he respected and understood. All of that felt natural to him and fit neatly into the world he had already made for himself.

Nowhere in that world had he envisioned making room for a mate.

It went beyond his isolationist nature, however. Part of the reason Rafe had never envisioned choosing a mate had lingered in the back of his mind since his earliest childhood. He had never spared it much thought, never brooded over it or questioned it; it had simply always lurked in the background, like a dark mist obscuring corners he hadn’t cared all that much about exploring. Why worry, after all, over something he could never change?

Why think about the curse?

He had told Graham he didn’t believe in the legend, that it was nothing more than an old wives’ tale. Who believed in things like curses and legacies and the actions of a distant ancestor reverberating down through the ages anymore? It made no logical sense to imagine that there had ever been a witch who fell in love with a jaguar, or that, having been spurned by a faithless cat, she would remove the ability of his entire species to thrive and multiply. Was such a thing even possible? Rafe had never believed so. He had never believed that the actions of some kind of great-great-great-great-grandfather were the reason why his kind never bothered to find mates. Jaguar cats never took permanent mates, so why should the shifters who shared their forms?

But then, it was hard to ignore certain facts. Cat species had never been known for their fidelity to the opposite sex, but they also rarely had trouble conceiving or bearing young. In the wild, jaguars mated and then went their separate ways, but four months later the female would give birth to a litter of cubs. In the animal kingdom, after all, fidelity had never been a requirement for reproduction.

The same was true of all the spotted cats, from leopards to cheetahs to lynxes and ocelots. In the wild, mating resulted in kits more often than not, but in their shifter counterparts, conception had become a hard-fought struggle. In modern times, only one in every fifty female spotted-cat shifters would conceive. Most never bothered with birth control because the chances of accidental pregnancy were so small. The females also tended to conceive later in life—after thirty-five was not uncommon—because it took years of concentrated effort to achieve a pregnancy. The least optimistic among his kind predicted that spotted-cat shifters would die out within the next two to three hundred years. The most superstitious blamed those problems on the curse, but Rafe had never been a superstitious man.

Hell, he barely believed in Fate. He supposed he had accepted in a sort of general way that there might be some kind of higher power at work in the lives of those on earth. When he thought about life and death, about wars and rescues, about natural disasters and people who survived extraordinary events, that kind of idea made sense. What he wasn’t certain he believed was the idea that every man and woman had a mate they were destined to be with. For pity’s sake, he barely believed in fidelity, and he was supposed to believe in love?