Master of Fire (29 page)

One big tanned hand covered her smaller one, slid the soap out of her fingers. Giada looked up, still stroking his heavy erection, as he began to work lather between his own palms.

Soapy fingers found one breast and pinched its hard nipple, sending hot little thrums of pleasure along her nerves. The hard, slick edge of the bar slid over the other breast, then dipped under its heavy curve, then up again to rasp against its tip. Back and forth, back and forth, each pass teasing her, ripples of delight pulsing through her veins like waves of honey, hot and thick and impossibly sweet.

He drew in a sharp breath. She realized suddenly that her hand had tightened around his soapy cock. “That feels good,” he whispered.

She gave him a slow and crooked smile, shivering a little as he ran the bar of soap down the curve of her belly. “So does that.”

The bar paused in silent request right over her mound. Knowing what he wanted, she set her feet a little farther apart. Letting him slide the soap between her lower lips, right across the hard little nubbin of her clit. She shuddered, impossibly aroused. “That feels even better.”

“Good,” he breathed, watching her through hooded eyes. “Very good.” He extended his middle finger, sliding it between her lips, almost entering.

But not quite.

The sensation of that soapy fingertip sliding across her sensitive folds was maddening. Giada let her head drop back against the cool tile of the shower stall. Her moan sounded impossibly erotic to her own ears.

The soap hit the bottom of the tub with a
thunk
, slid unnoticed toward the drain as he dropped to his knees. She looked down at the top of his gleaming wet hair as he spread her lower lips with two fingers and leaned in. He paused a moment, watching with absorbed interest as the stream of water washed away the soap from her fine blond fuzz.

His mouth covered her so suddenly, she jolted up onto her toes. Her hands fell automatically to the back of his head, cradling it as his tongue slipped between her lower lips. The raw power of the sensation made her shudder in hot delight. He lapped her clit like Smoke working on a saucer of cream—slowly, with relish, his dark lashes fanning his cheeks. One finger slid up into her opening in a slow, seductive pump. Giada quivered helplessly.

He circled his tongue around her nubbin, drew a lazy figure eight, and pumped that finger. In. Out. In. Out. His free hand reached up, found one breast, and cupped. His thumb brushed her nipple, back and forth, in the exact same rhythm as that busy tongue. Flick, stroke, pump.

Giada let her head fall back, hot jolts of electric pleasure rolling up her spine, fine muscles pulsing in her abdomen. She was so damned close to coming. So close. But not . . . quite . . . there.

“Logan . . .” The word was more whimper than anything else.

A second finger joined the one inside her, a dazzling double stroke that made her pant. His other hand pinched her nipple hard enough to send a sharp jolt of delight through her belly. He twisted those tormenting fingers.

But they weren’t enough. What she wanted was cock. Thick, hard, driving inside her.

Her hands curled into fists in his hair. “Logan, for God’s sake—
fuck me
!”

He was on his feet before she felt him move, strong hands closing around her ass to pull her off her feet with no effort at all. With an eager little gasp, Giada wrapped both arms around his neck and hooked her knees over his narrow hips.

He impaled her in a slick and ruthless rush. They both gasped at the sensation of his big shaft driving deep into her wet sex. “God, Logan!” she managed, as he rolled his torso, pumping in farther, harder, deeper.

“Sweet Merlin’s Cup, you’re tight!” he gritted through set fangs, shifting his grip to support her back.

She dug her nails into his back and hooked her ankles together, then began to roll her hips. The spasm of delight that whipsawed through her had her gritting her teeth and hunching harder, seeking more, reaching deeper.

He groaned, the sound deep and tortured in her ear, as he began to thrust with slow, exquisite care. “Let me know . . . if I go too deep,” he gasped.

“Fine! I’m fine! More!” Close. So damn close, so damn fast. She just needed a little bit . . .

The climax hung just beyond her grasp, hot and white behind her eyes. Giada curled her nails in and ground down on his cock, using all the power in her thighs and calves to try to wrench out that last little bit of friction she so desperately needed.

Big hands helped, sliding under her thighs, lifting her as if she weighed nothing.

“More, Logan!”

He leaned forward, braced her back against the cool tile, tightened his grip on her ass, and began to hunch in a furious hammering drive that made her throw back her head in a yowl of feline delight.

Her climax burst free like a star going nova, spilling bright sparks through her belly in hot rhythmic pulses. Her yowl spiraled into a shriek.

Logan growled in reply, leaned forward, and put his mouth against her hammering pulse. The quick pain of his bite added a wicked additional jolt to her orgasm, kicking its fading quivers back into another ferocious convulsion. She twisted against him, screaming, only distantly aware of his answering groan and the hot pulse of his jerking cock deep inside her belly.

When it was over, they clung together, breathless as shipwreck survivors, stunned and quivering.

Dammit,
she thought.
It just keeps getting better. I am so screwed.

 

 

There was a
witch outside the house.

Amanda Devon growled softly as she reared, paws planted on the windowsill as she stared at the woods behind Sam Taylor’s house. She could feel the bitch out there, radiating magic to her Dire Wolf senses.

“Shush, Jenny,” Sam snapped, before returning to her phone call. “Lori, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. If there’s anything I can do, you just ask. Mark was a damn good man, a damn good cop. We’re all just sick . . .” She paused. Amanda could hear Lori Davis crying stormily for her dead husband. “Oh, honey . . . Honey, you’re going to make yourself sick. You’ve gotta be strong for Tara . . . You want me to come over?” She sighed. “Okay, if you’re sure . . . Don’t worry, I will definitely be at the receiving tomorrow. Me and every cop in Greendale County. Everybody loved Mark . . . Okay, honey. Now, I mean it about callin’. Anytime. You need me to keep Tara, whatever. Anything. Promise me? . . . All right. Bye, sweetie.” She clicked the phone off and sighed, raking her hands through her long red hair. “I swear to God, if I find out Logan had anything to do with this, I’m gonna put a bullet in his brain.”

Amanda ignored her, still concentrating on the witch.

This was bad. Very bad. It meant they’d figured out what “Jenny” was. But why hadn’t they moved against her yet?

Must be waiting for nightfall, when they could mobilize the vampires. They’d be aware that she was resistant to magic, which meant there was damned little witches could do to her.

A hand latched onto her collar and tugged hard. “Get down off that windowsill, dog. You’re scratching the hell out of the wood.”

Amanda turned a glare on the human, who took a step back from her snarl. “What the heck is wrong with you, Jenny?”

She had to shift forms and escape. But she couldn’t do it in front of Taylor.

Taylor, whom Logan considered a friend. What if Taylor, like Davis, died a hideous and bloody death? Wouldn’t that inflict a little additional pain on her enemy?

Besides, she was really sick of playing big, goofy dog . . .

Samantha took a step back, going pale. “Jenny?”

 

 

God, she was
bored.

Sherri Carson yawned hugely as she leaned back in the camp chair she’d conjured. She’d been on edge when she’d first replaced Smoke on guard duty, but she’d quickly realized her greatest problem was not going to be an attack from a rogue werewolf.

It was going to be staying awake.

Sherri was determined not to blow this. She’d been a Maja for only four months, and had spent most of that time training for magical combat. On this, her first mission, she was determined to make sure Sam Taylor didn’t disappear before Arthur’s knights showed up to take her into . . .

A shriek rang out, shrill with terror. Sherri jolted to her feet, staring at Taylor’s house in shock. A wave of psychic agony slammed into her magical senses, and she began to run for the house, knowing even as she ran she should call for backup. But it would take too much time and magical focus to punch a spell message through to the Mageverse. And right now, Sherri knew she just didn’t have the luxury.

A woman was dying, and Sherri was the only chance she had at survival.

The glass door was closed and locked, but it dissolved like morning mist when Sherri’s spell blast struck it. She plunged through the opening, her heart in her throat.

Sherri’s stomach drew into a solid knot of terror and forced its way into her throat. Swallowing, she stopped, listened hard.

A gasping, bubbling sound. Like someone struggling desperately to breathe.
Dammit, should have called for backup, you idiot. Move. If you don’t move now, she’s dead. A healing spell could save her life.

Gritting her teeth, she strode down a short hallway toward that pitiful sound.

A sound that was growing steadily fainter.

She broke into a run again, headed for the source of the dying breaths, knowing each second she delayed put the woman another instant closer to being beyond help.

Samantha Taylor lay sprawled on her back in the bedroom, her throat a red ruin, her mouth working helplessly, her eyes going glassy even as Sherri knelt beside her.

Oh, hell!
Sherri grabbed for the Mageverse with all the power within her, calling the magic as she reached down to try to heal the woman’s shredded throat.

A rumbling snarl sounded. She jerked her head up.

The creature loomed over her, a towering, red-furred monster whose eyes burned gold and narrow over bared knife-sharp teeth.

Sherri acted on pure instinct, transforming the power she’d called into a searing ball of flame that she blasted right into the Dire Wolf’s face. It roared, startled, shaking its red-maned head.

The flames winked out.

A furry red hand slashed downward before she could even finish the thought.

Arthur stared down
at the empty camp chair, his hands curling into armored fists. “Where the fuck is she?”

Giada and Logan exchanged a look. Then the whole group—Giada, Logan, Arthur, Gwen, Lancelot, and Galahad, plus their Majae wives, Grace and Caroline respectively—turned toward Samantha Taylor’s house. They were almost eerily silent in their enchanted plate armor, swords at their hips or sheathed across their backs.

Logan drew his own blade and started for the home with long, enraged strides. Giada plunged after his armored back. “Dammit, Logan, let me scan!”

“Scan, then!” he snarled.

She sent power pouring over the house in the moonlight.

And sensed the house still shivering with the echoes of violent death and searing agony.

“Oh, hell!” Giada started to race past him. Logan reached out, grabbed her wrist, and jerked her around.

“Dammit, do you
want
to run into an ambush?”

“They’re dead, Logan!”
she snapped. “Sam and Sherri are lying in there, dead!”

His head rocked back, eyes narrowing in a wince of pain, before he recovered to growl, “Then getting yourself killed won’t do them any good, will it?”

“Is the werewolf there?” Arthur demanded, his black eyes cool as he drew Excalibur.

“She’s gone,” Gwen said. “She killed them both and vanished.”

 

 

After a quick
search of the house, the group gathered around the bodies of the two dead women.

The young Maja lay over Samantha Taylor’s body, her head at an unnatural angle. “Oh, child.” Guinevere reached out and closed Sherri’s staring brown eyes. “Why didn’t you call for help?”

“She sensed Sam dying,” Giada said. “She was so desperate to save Taylor, she walked right into the Dire Wolf’s ambush.”

“At least she got off a spell blast.” Arthur gestured toward a blackened area high on the wall. The center of the area was white, forming the outline of a non-human head.

“That’s a Dire Wolf, all right.” Gwen raised the visor of her helmet to study the burn more closely. It was almost seven feet off the ground. “Female, by the size. A male would be even bigger.”