Entwined Strangers (BBW Shifter Romance): Sorcery & Shifters Book 4 (9 page)

The pool is a window and I’m on the other side. It’s me, but not me. Not a perfect copy, in any case. Something is different. I’m different. The version of me beneath the water smirks, a devious grin, and my eyes flash red.

I reach out for the water, but the moment one of my fingers touches the surface, it’s as if the strings holding me up are abruptly cut and I plunge into the pool.

I wake up the very next instant, lying across Trent’s unconscious body.

We’re still in the meditation room of my brownstone. I sit up, looking around, and then down at him. He’s completely passed out. How long have we been asleep?

“Trent. Trent!”

He doesn’t move. I slap his face lightly to see if that will get a reaction.

Nothing.

We must have passed out on each other, probably after my last orgasm. My Preserve the Lust spell isn’t running anymore, or Maintain the Flesh. They would have stopped when I lost consciousness.

I rub my eyes to focus on Trent more closely. He’s sleeping peacefully, if the look on his face is any indication. I shake my head.

For somebody who just betrayed a powerful warlock, he sure is relaxed. Granted, draining him like I did really didn’t give him much of a choice, werewolf or not. The state I leave men is more like a coma than sleep.

I grab a pillow from one corner of the room and place it underneath his head. He actually smiles when I do that, but doesn’t wake up. It makes me wonder what’s he’s dreaming about. The time we just had? Because that’s what I’m revisiting in my head.

I can still feel the memory of him. The enormity of his desire for me.

I adjust a few strands of his salt and pepper hair before I realize that I’m daydreaming.

Okay. Snap out of it, Jessica. You need to clean up around here. There’s no telling when everybody will start arriving.

I grab a washcloth from the bathroom, run hot water through it, and then return to where Trent is sleeping. He’s a mess. Dried cum everywhere. Mine and his. I run the towel over his broad chest, down across his stomach, between his legs.

My touch is gentle, but his muscles ripple even while he’s sleeping. It makes me smile to myself.

What are my feelings for this man? Is it merely camaraderie? Bonding through shared hardship? Or is there something more going on here?

I think about Mason, driving Candice and Saffron to the city in his Mustang. The memory of being with him. The playfulness between us, the roughness. The quiet moments we shared together.

I know the feeling in an instant. It swells in my chest and makes me lose my breath just thinking about him. I love Mason.

So what am I feeling toward Trent? Why am I am washing his body so reverentially? Like I’m invested in him, or have some claim over of this man.

Is it the danger we endured together? The turmoil and uncertainty? The thrill of cheating death? Those can all bring people closer together in a crisis.

Or is it what I found beneath the surface of this man in that room beneath The Vault? Where I discovered something about Trent that I don’t think Trent even knew about himself.

He’s not the vicious werewolf he pretends to be, not by preference, at any rate. I have no doubt that he’s been cruel, but I don’t think it comes to him naturally. It’s a role he plays and one he does well, keeping his pack in line, but it’s lonely being a leader.

I ignored all of that when kissed him. It was one of the most spontaneous instincts I’ve ever followed through with in my life. And by seeing it through, I might have opened Trent up to himself.

For that to even be possible, I must have been the first time. Nobody has ever done that for him before, but I did.

Perhaps that’s my claim on Trent, the thing that connects me to him now.

Yet I sense there’s more to it than that. More than simply making a discovery.

Not only do I like the person Trent is beneath the surface… I like being the woman who liberated that hidden person. Not only that, but I like being the object of that hidden person’s desire. Is that the same feeling of love I have for Mason? I don’t know.

Trent is still smiling to himself as I fumble through these thoughts. Completely oblivious to what I’m thinking while he recovers from my spell.

That’s when his manhood begins to inflate again, glistening with the warm water that I just caressed there.

No. Stop it, Jessica. You are not allowed to be aroused right now.

I still smell like sex, a sheen of Trent and I still commingled on my body. Besides, there are much more pressing matters that need my attention. A warlock to worry about.

I smack his cock away, hoping to discourage it from growing any more. Of course, it has the opposite effect.

Okay, I can’t be here right now. I don’t trust myself around this man’s unconscious body. Around him. Around
that
.

I’m already starting to make little deals with myself, like what if I just plunge him inside me for a second while he sleeps? Just to have the feeling of him again for a second?

I haven’t showered yet, after all. It’s precisely because I’m still covered in Trent that makes it all right.

Bad Jessica. Control yourself!

I quickly mop up the floor with the towel I brought over to wash Trent, pick up the remnants of my torn clothes, and head for the shower.

A very cold shower.

The shower clears my mind, giving me perspective again. Not only does it calm down my raging libido, it lets me take stock of everything that happened lately, which is quite a lot in a very short period of time, even if it doesn’t feel like it in this moment.

I’m definitely refreshed again after magically siphoning Trent’s stamina through my body.

Candice and Saffron will be here with Mason and Sylvia soon, two werewolves with a heightened sense of smell. I need to mop this place down before then and scrub myself thoroughly.

Not just a little clean, either. Squeaky clean. Especially after how much Trent released all over us.

I’m not sure anything less than a wire brush will work at this point. I stick to soap and water for now. Something tells me that no matter how hard I scrub, Mason and Sylvia will still be able to tell. That’s going to be an interesting conversation.

I can imagine Mason reacting in one of two ways.

Badly or…
oh, who I am kidding?
It can only go badly, especially if I tell him everything.

If I decide to lie, that creates a few more options. I’ve been deceiving men most of my life. I’m good at it. I can become whoever they want me to be. With Mason, however, it’s different. I can be myself. That’s why the idea of lying to him doesn’t feel right.

Well, let’s be honest, lying to him
any more
than I already have. Lies of omission are still lies. At least he knows I’m a witch now.

To his credit, Mason handled that discovery very well. He still doesn’t know how old I am, or that I’ve been draining his lust into the quicksilver pool, or that a quicksilver pool even exists.

He definitely doesn’t know that Candice and Saffron can feel everything I’m feeling when we’re together. That would expose me for the hypocrite I am, especially after getting upset when I found out that Sylvia can feel everything he feels.

It occurs to me that it would actually be easier to tell Mason I slept with Trent if he knew that I use men’s lust to fill a magic reservoir.

If I could tell him that my primary role is to gather quicksilver for the coven, it would certainly lessen the blow. I’m sure it would still upset him to find out I had sex with Trent, but at least it would be couched in my responsibilities.

Especially today, with the need to replenish the pool so urgently. He wasn’t around and Trent was. I couldn’t abandon my coven, especially after I almost single-handedly emptied the pool.

Of course, that doesn’t even remotely excuse the first time I had sex with Trent. That had nothing to do with refilling the reservoir.

Sure, maybe it was born out of desperation, possibly even survival, using seduction as a weapon to distract Trent, but then I would behoove me to have actually stabbed him with the silver spike, which I didn’t.

Either Felix interrupted us or I didn’t want to kill Trent.

Would I have really stabbed him at that point? I don’t know anymore. All the feelings I’ve been having about Trent in the meanwhile have made me biased. I had no idea kissing Trent would cause him to change so much.

So the question becomes… how much of this internal drama does Mason need to know? How much would simply be hurtful? What happens next depends on me and what I tell him when he gets here. Him and his twin sister, because what Mason feels intensely, Sylvia does as well.

Dammit. It’s getting so complicated all of a sudden. Any approach I contemplate with Mason, honesty or omission, will cause turbulence, either between us or within myself.

Not just that, but it also depends on Trent’s willingness to go along with any story I fabricate. Trent doesn’t know I siphoned his lust, either. He could be thinking that I wanted to have sex with him strictly for my own sake.

Sure,
I did
, but that’s only part of the reason. Yes, my libido was excited by the idea at the time, but I wouldn’t have even considered seducing Trent—again—if Saffron hadn’t told me the quicksilver pool was empty and needed filling.

It was a crisis situation. An empty magical reservoir leaves us functionally helpless against Felix.

Really, the only important thing to worry about right now is Felix. As Trent said, he’ll be looking for us. Not only that, but he apparently has access to resources and political sway in the city.

Saffron said that Felix never would have let me escape from The Vault after seeing what I did. That must be doubly true of Trent, a trusted general. He’s even more privy to the secret operations of The Vault than any of us.

I’m sure Felix wants to kill both of us right now. The snipers certainly made that point clear. Who knows what lengths the warlock is going to right as I waste time contemplating the possible drama that might unfold between Mason, Trent, and I?

Now I feel foolish.

Relationships should be the least of my worries right now. If Felix really has access to the kind of surveillance technology he told me about, then Candice and Saffron need to know that before coming into the city.

The bathroom darkens.

I turn to see Trent filling the doorway. He’s leaning heavily against one side, propping himself up against the doorframe. His eyes are unfocused, looking around as if he just woke up. Trent is on his feet, but only barely, which is remarkable.

Mason recovers quickly when I siphon his lust, but not this fast. The fact that Trent’s upright at all is amazing. At least his manhood deflated a little. Not completely, but a little. Why am I even noticing that?

“So groggy. What did you do to me?”

I slide the glass shower door open so he can hear me more clearly.

“Nothing you didn’t do to me as well. I wouldn’t be awake right now if this water wasn’t freezing cold.”

It’s a lie, but designed to decrease his suspicion.

Trent shakes his head. Trying to regain himself. I step out of the shower, but leave it running.

“Get in,” I tell him. “Trust me. It’ll help.”

He steps out of the doorway and makes his way into the shower without even checking the temperature first. It should be a shock to his system, but he gives no indication of that whatsoever. Trent must have thicker skin than I thought.

He stands there for a second, turns around, leans against the back wall, and slides down onto the shower floor. There’s the exhaustion I was expecting. I hope he’s conscious enough to answer some questions. I wrap myself in a towel before quizzing him.

“Trent, I’m sorry to bring this up now, but I’ve been thinking. How long have you worked at The Vault?”

“Years. Almost a decade. Not long before Piper was born.”

Interesting. I’m crossed paths with Felix only once before today. The first time was five years ago, when Trixie was twenty years old. That’s when Candice, Saffron, and I warded her against him and his depredations.

“Did he ever talk about three witches in that time? Here in the city? Troublesome women who would have caused him no end of grief?”

Trent thinks about that for a moment, water pelting off his head, splattering across his muscular naked body.
Stop it, Jessica! Focus!

“Maybe. Yes. He mentioned something like that once. I asked him if he wanted me to take care of it. He declined. Said that he would handle it on his own.”

“Does he often do that? Take care of things himself?” I ask.

“Depends. It usually means that he’s in no hurry. Doesn’t consider the matter an immediate threat,” Trent says.

He thinks about it a little more. Starts to see what I’m getting at exactly. “I presume those three witches are you and your friends, then?”

“I think so. How long ago was that?” I ask him.

“Not sure. Maybe five years ago?”

That lines up, and if it’s true, then Trent isn’t kidding. Felix really has been taking his time with us. I don’t think Candice or Saffron have heard from him since then. It makes sense. If Trent had been dispatched to deal with us, he would have recognized me back at Sylvia’s place.