FUR FOR ALL, Book 5 in FIXED (3 page)

“I find it comfortable indeed,” he purred, shifting his hips to press his erection harder against her. “The way you breathe now is positively entrancing.

But if you truly wish to be free, I suggest you begin to cooperate.” Tess had never taken suggestions very well. “Or what? You’ll beat it out of me?”

He shifted his grip, transferring both her wrists to one of his large hands, but though she redoubled her efforts, she still couldn’t break that grip. “Hm, would you like that, sweet Tess? Would you like it if I turned you over my knee, bared that lovely bottom to the moonlight and turned it pink and glowing with the weight of my hand?” His free hand slid around her back and cupped her bottom, kneading the muscle and making her quiver. “Would you like that, Tess?” Christ, for a woman who’d never been into bondage, the mental image caused an unexpected jolt in her pussy. She ignored it and concentrated on not wrapping her legs around his waist. “Trust a man to resort to violence.”

“Only if it pleases you, sweetheart.”

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“What would please me is you letting me go!” That damned chuckle again. “Ah, but it would not please me, sweet Tess, and since I am currently the one in control here, it is my wish that counts.” Tess harrumphed. “And isn’t that just like a man.”

“Or like a beast.” His eyes flashed and his gaze slid to her lips. “And you know the truth about beasts and beauties, don’t you? The beasts always take what they want and damn the consequences.” Her only warning was a flash of gold before his head dipped and his mouth settled hot and hungry over hers.

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Christine Warren

Chapter Two

Rafe purred his approval at her taste. Rich and sweet, like whipping cream, it made him want to lap her up. Her lips parted readily beneath his, probably more from shock than desire, but he pressed his advantage. His tongue slid inside to tease and taste, exploring her flavors and textures like a mapmaker charting new territory. She was more than he had expected, and the overflow threatened to swamp his senses.

He leaned into her, acquainting his body with hers, learning the heat and scent and curve of her. He felt the tension in her muscles and the subtle yielding in her lips as they began to cling to his. Christ, she tasted so good! Her flavor seemed to deepen with each taste, flooding through him and feeding his arousal.

He’d thought at first it was just reflex. When he’d felt himself begin to harden against her hips, he’d written it off as a natural and unavoidable reaction to his proximity to an attractive woman. After all, she’d been pressed up against him like a lover, and he had a healthy sex drive. It was only natural.

What wasn’t natural was the way her scent wrapped around him, teasing him with that indefinable foreign quality that had started his curiosity. It tickled the edges of his brain like a forgotten memory…the idea that he
should
recognize it, whatever it was. He felt like he knew what it was if he could just remember…

Then she whimpered against his mouth and he felt his curiosity fading. It didn’t matter who she was. Didn’t matter that her scent was getting stronger as her arousal flared, getting muskier, hotter, smelling more intensely of magic—

The thought slammed the door on his libido. He wrenched his mouth away from hers and snarled. “Damn you. Tell me who the hell you are. What kind of witch are you?”

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His question startled a laugh out of her, curving those kiss-swollen lips in surprise. “The regular kind, I guess. I didn’t know we came in thirty-one flavors.”

Damn, but he’d like to taste every flavor she
did
come in.

He stuffed the thought down and lifted his body away from temptation. “So I was right.”

She must have read the skepticism in his face because she shrugged and scowled. “It’s not like I was lying. Just because I’m a witch doesn’t mean I’m not human.”

He wasn’t in the mood to debate her. He’d lived among humans all his life.

He knew how they smelled, how they tasted, and he knew she was different. “So tell me why you were following me. What does a witch want with a Felix in a dark alley in the middle of the night?” Unable to resist, he leaned forward to nuzzle the rapid pulse at the base of her throat. “Aside from the obvious.”

“I’m not the one who forced us unto the alley, Einstein, so why don’t you tell me?”

He felt her struggles, but he also heard the barely audible hitch in her breathing and knew her confrontational façade was an act. “I asked first.”

“Oh, and this is suddenly the third grade? Fine. Like I said, I was following you.”

He lowered his head to snarl at her and noticed how she licked her lips and jerked away. So his little Tess didn’t want his kisses? He smiled.

“I knew you were following me, sweet Tess.” He bent his head, nuzzled the line of her jaw, flicked his tongue out to taste her skin. “Now I want to know why.”

He felt her jaw clench under his tongue. “I already told you, I was supposed to deliver a message and I got curious.”

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The hand on her ass shifted, squeezed. “And why would you have any kind of message for me, sweet Tess? You don’t even know me, do you?” She snorted, the sound less than elegant but very clear. “Your name appears in the papers so often you practically have your own section. I doubt there’s a person in Manhattan who doesn’t know you.” He digested that as he flicked his tongue against her earlobe. She quivered in his arms. “You may be right. But with all those people who know who I am, very few of them have ever tried tailing me through the streets in the middle of the night. Unless they planned to mug me. Were you planning to mug me?”

“Were you planning to check yourself into Bellevue?”

“I didn’t think so.” He’d get the truth out of her eventually. Even if he had to keep her here for hours. He nuzzled her ear, inhaling that intoxicating scent.

Days even. His hand stroked her truly fine ass through the snug denim. Maybe weeks. “You need to tell me what sort of message you have for me, sweet Tess, before I find something else to occupy myself.” He pressed his erection against her belly and felt her freeze.

“Let me go and I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me and I’ll let you go.”

She gave a credible growl of frustration that made him grin against the curve of her shoulder. “When I get free, I am turning you into a guppy and feeding you to my cat.”

“Tell me, Tess, before I decide I don’t care about the answer.” She bucked one last time against his hold before falling into a sulk. “I told you, I never saw the damned message. It was given to me in a sealed envelope.”

“Tess…”

She scowled at him. “That’s the truth, damn it. I was told to deliver the message to you, unopened, when you left the council meeting tonight.” 22

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He pulled back to frown down at her. “What council meeting?” Tess rolled her eyes. “Just because I was careless enough to let you see me tailing you does not make me terminally stupid. What council do you think I’m interested in that meets at one a.m. on the nights of the new moon?”

“And what would an ordinary, very human witch know about the Council of Others?”

Suddenly her luscious scent and feminine body slipped a few notches down on his immediate priority list. The Council, of which he was the reluctant head, had operated for centuries in the city without incident, mainly because it kept itself a guarded secret from the mortal world. If this woman knew about them, they could have a serious problem on their hands. If she had succeeded in tracing him to the council chambers in the secret basement at Vircolac, the consequences would be far-reaching and bordering on disastrous. The sobering thought had his hand sliding away from her ass and bracing against the wall beside her head.

“Not a whole hell of a lot, or I wouldn’t have had to wait for you outside until it was over, would I? Because everything I could find out about it told me it didn’t officially exist.” She glared at him from big blue eyes that should have looked innocent, but instead snapped with fire and irritation. “You seem to have better security than the Pentagon.”

He dismissed that. “The Pentagon has lousy security. But you knew I was on the Council. You shouldn’t even know the Council exists.”

“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know until two weeks ago.”

“And what happened two weeks ago?”

She paused and he could almost see her weighing her answer. “I got hired to tail you.”

“You’ve been tailing me for two weeks?” The thought blindsided him. Surely he’d have noticed that kind of presence. He still had instincts. He couldn’t have 23

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gotten that soft, not even living in the middle of a city for so long. “That’s impossible.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’re so modest, too. No wonder all the ladies go for you.”

He felt his eyes narrow and he pressed back up against her. “Shall we see how quickly I can make you go for me, sweet Tess? Or would you like to confine your comments to answering my questions?” Rafe watched her mouth open, then close again with a snap. He waited for a moment before he continued. “Were you watching me for two weeks?”

“Not exactly. I kept track of when you were seen in public places to get an idea of your schedule, but I wasn’t tailing you.” That sounded an awful lot like being tailed to him. “If you kept turning up wherever I was going, I should have noticed you.” Again, she rolled her eyes. It seemed to be a habit. “Right. Like you notice every woman who stares at you when you’re going about your business.

Sweetheart, you are so used to being ogled, you don’t even see it happening any more. I would have needed to slip my hand down your pants to get your attention. And I’m sure most of the other women watching you seriously considered that option.”

He found that to be a very distracting mental image. Not the other women, but the idea of this woman, who smelled of spice and magic, sliding her hand down his pants. He imagined the feel of her smooth fingers curving around his cock, and growled. He apparently needed to keep his thoughts on a leash around this woman.

“But there was no reason for you to pay attention to me,” she continued. “I didn’t follow you from place to place, just occasionally popped up where you were, noted the time and left. I wasn’t stupid enough to think you wouldn’t have noticed if I had been tailing you.”

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“All right, I’ll set that aside. For the moment.” He eyed her pointedly. “I still want to know who hired you and what they want.”

“I can’t tell you what they want.” She must have seen his mouth open to protest, because she quickly cut him off. “I’m just the messenger. I don’t know the text of the message, and I imagine that if they had wanted me to know about it, they wouldn’t have given it to me in a sealed envelope. You’ll have to read it and ask them what they want.”

He snarled. “And just who are
they
?” She drew a deep breath, blew it out and glared at him. “The Witches’

Council.”

The Witches’ Council
? Rafe frowned and pulled back another inch. He’d never even heard of a witches’ council. Oh, he knew there were witches in the world, and probably some in Manhattan, but he hadn’t known they were organized. Of course, as far as he knew, the last diplomatic contact between a witch and the Others in New York had happened in 1627, so him being in the dark wasn’t that surprising. Given the present distraction, he thought remembering the whole 1627 thing was pretty damned impressive.

He looked down at said distraction and flexed his hands around her wrists, not so much squeezing as kneading the captive limbs. “So you’re a witch who was hired by a Witches’ Council to follow me and confront me in a dark alley, but you don’t know what they want with me?”

“Like I
said
, they didn’t see fit to share that with me.” Rafe gave in to temptation enough to lean in close and taste her skin again.

Her fear was fading, making her sweeter, and her irritation increasing, making her hotter. He could make a meal of her. If his curiosity would leave him in peace. “Would you care to hazard a guess?”

“What, are we playing twenty questions now?” 25

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He had to stifle the urge to grin at her expression. Somehow the narrowed eyes, twisted lips and crinkled nose looked less than threatening on her. The curls that were dark gold in the faint light and those big blue eyes just spoiled the effect. He schooled his expression into a feral mask and scraped his teeth delicately along her jaw line.

“Not yet,” he purred, “but we could. I could ask you what you taste like, what you look like spread out on silk sheets, how much it would take to make you beg me to touch you…” He lapped at the sensitive skin beneath her chin.

“Do you want to play that game with me, sweet Tess?” He heard the desire as well as the defiance in her snort. “What part of this conversation has been about what I want?” He chuckled. “Why don’t you tell me what you want, sweet Tess.” He paused to inhale deeply, catching the ripeness of her scent. “Or better still, I can tell you what you want…”

She shivered in his arms and the telltale motion made him smile. His little witch was just as affected by him as he was by her. That offered some interesting possibilities.

“I have another idea,” she said, and her voice sounded strained. “How about I just give you the bloody message, you let me go, and we both pretend this never happened.”

He laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so, Tess. I think we have much too much to talk about for that to happen. No, I think you should come with me.” He pulled her wrists down in front of her and tugged her away from the wall and toward the mouth of the alley. He managed to move her about seven feet before surprise wore off and she dug in her heels.

“Wait. Where are we going?”

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“To the building I just left. A friend of mine lives there. He’d be happy to provide us with someplace to discuss this message of yours where it’s a bit more comfortable. And better lit.”