Authors: Christine Warren
His head turned, and Tess found herself staring into golden eyes that blazed with impossible heat above a mouth drawn thin in accusation.
“You smell like a witch.”
Tess stared up into those amber eyes and felt her first wave of fear. Suddenly she remembered that this man wasn’t just a man. He was a Felix—an Alpha werecat—and the most powerful Feline in the history of the city. If he wanted, he could tear out her throat with a swipe of his finger. With the tension radiating off him, she was no longer sure he didn’t intend to do just that.
“Well? Are you a witch?” He asked it in that rasping growl and shook her by the hands he held pinned. “You aren’t human. I can smell it.”
“You smell wrong.” She could feel how wide her eyes had grown, but this time it wasn’t a ploy. It was fear. “I am human. My name is Tess Menzies.”
He pressed his nose against the hollow below her ear and inhaled. She had to bite back a moan as her womb clenched. Never in her life had she reacted to a man like this.
Shit, her timing sucked.
“You’re not. Humans smell … muddy. Thick. You smell clear. Sweet. Spicy.” Again that tongue, rasping like damp sandpaper across her skin. “Taste that way, too. Not human at all.”
Fear prodded her into temper. “Eaten many humans, have you?”
She felt his mouth shift into a grin.
“A few here and there.” He paused. Nuzzled. Purred softly, “Want me to eat you?”
That sensual, amused question had nothing to do with consumption, but a hell of a lot to do with sex. Sheesh. Did the man usually come on to women when he had them pinned against the wall during an interrogation?
The image brought a flood of moisture between her legs, and she cursed.
“Hmm, smells like you like the idea.” A lazy stroke of the tongue. The soft, delicate scrape of teeth. “I’d love to taste that cream I can smell. I bet it’s thick and rich and hot.”
His legs shifted, forced hers apart. He settled between them until she could feel the ridge of an impressive erection nestling against her mound.
“I’d like to lap it all up. And I will. Just as soon as you answer my question.”
“Qu—question?”
Her stammer made him chuckle, and she gritted her teeth.
“Yes, question.” He nuzzled the sweet spot below her ear and pressed his hips against hers when she tried to squirm away. “The one where I asked if you’re a witch.”
If he really wanted to know what she was,
horny
was the most honest answer she could come up with, but she didn’t feel inclined to share that little tidbit.
If she were smart, she wouldn’t be sharing any of her tidbits with this man. He was trouble.
“I told you,” she gritted out, “my name is Tess, and I’m as human as the next person.”
“Considering the next person at the moment is not human at all, that fails to convince me of anything.”
This time when she experienced the scrape of his teeth, she could feel the elongated canines, and she squeaked. He didn’t sink them into her flesh, and she didn’t expect him to, but the message was clear. He was far from human and far from civilized, no matter what he looked like on the surface.
“It’s the truth.”
He pulled back then and stared down at her with eyes that had gone molten. Even in the darkness, she could see the way his pupils had elongated to feline slits.
“You are very stubborn, and very wrong. Also very unsurprised to find a man with fangs and cat’s eyes pinning you up against an alley wall. Would you care to explain why?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not really.”
“Do it anyway.”
Stalling for time seemed like her best bet. Well, honestly, it seemed about as hopeless as anything else, but it made her feel better. “How about you let go of my hands first and give me some breathing room? This Spanish Inquisition thing is getting kind of uncomfortable.”
“I find it very comfortable indeed,” he purred, shifting his hips to press his erection harder against her. “The way you breathe now is positively entrancing, room or no room. 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 the answers out of me?”
He shifted his grip, transferring both her wrists to one of his large hands, and 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,
gatita
?”
Christ. Although she’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.”
“What would please me is you letting me go!”
That damned chuckle again. “Ah, but that 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.
Two
Rafe purred his approval at the first taste of her. Rich and sweet, it made him want to lap her up like whipping cream. 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 power of her 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 good. Her flavor seemed to deepen with each hungry sip, 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 piqued his curiosity. It tickled the edges of his brain like a forgotten memory, an indefinable something that he should recognize, whatever it might be. He felt like he knew what it was if he could just concentrate …
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.
Magic. Witch. Liar.
He wrenched his mouth away from hers and snarled. “Damn you. Tell me who the hell you are. What kind of witch are you?”
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 shapeshifter 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 into 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 facade 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? Or maybe she didn’t want to want them. 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.”
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 a layer of snug denim. No sign of a panty line. Did she wear a thong? Or nothing at all.
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 so turning you into a guppy and feeding you to my neighbor’s 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.”
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
AM
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 priority list. At least for the moment. The Council of Others, 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 should not 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 assigned to tail you.”
“You have 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 gotten that soft, not even living in the middle of a city for so long. “That is 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. Garfield, you are so used to being ogled, you don’t even see it happening anymore. I would have needed to slip my hand down your pants to get your attention most days. And I’m sure more than one 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 shaft, and growled. He apparently needed to keep his thoughts on a leash around this little witch.