Maximum Witch: That Old Black Magic, Book 3 (28 page)

Her irritability, along with her choice of words, stirred the wicked beast within him. Drawing to a halt at her table, he awarded her his best wolfish smile. “Just name the time and place, shug.”

“You know damn well that isn’t what I meant.”

“No? Because I’m thinking that’s precisely what I’d like to do.”

Her cheeks bloomed with a vivid splash of red. “I’m not in the mood for this tonight.”

Clarissa’s testiness only managed to rekindle his anger. “Well, now, I’m real sorry you feel that way, shug. ’Cause the last thing I’d wanna do is piss on whatever urgent plans preempted our dinner tonight.”

“There’s no need to be a prick.” She stood, her eyes narrowing as he strategically blocked her path. “Or make a scene. Please move.”

“What are you gonna do if I don’t? Whammy me? Might be kinda hard explainin’ that one to everyone here, darlin’.”

“Logan, please.” Her voice broke on the last word, stunning him. She glanced down, but not before he caught the faint glimmer of moisture in her eyes. The sight hit him like a sucker punch in the gut, making him feel like the prick she’d accused him of being.

If there was one thing guaranteed to shred him to pieces, it was a woman’s tears. Having that woman be Clarissa only made it a thousand times more terrible. “Clarissa…”

Without saying another word, she rushed past him and hurried toward the rear hallway. Even her strongest holding spell wouldn’t have kept him from chasing after her.

He caught up with Clarissa before she could duck out the door or into the ladies’ restroom. Not that either location would have deterred him. He tugged her into his arms, the ferocity of her expression revealing just how much she hated showing the vulnerability hidden beneath that legendary icy exterior she’d perfected. Tucking her against his chest, he nuzzled her forehead. “Rissa, I’m sorry.”

She stiffened. “Please don’t call me that. I—it’s very inappropriate.”

“Hush.” Unable to help himself, he followed the delicate, silky arch of her eyebrow with his lips. She trembled and sighed, making both man and wolf silently growl in triumph at her tiny show of capitulation. Holding her this close was both heaven and hell, a heady torment that teased every single one of his heightened senses. She smelled luscious and feminine, a delicious main course he could easily feast on all day and night. His hands slid down the slopes of her shoulders, a not entirely unconscious marking of his territory.

Her breath stuttered in her throat. “This isn’t the place to be doing this.” She must have caught her slip of words because she jerked her gaze up to his. “I mean we shouldn’t be doing this at
all
.”

Tuning out her weak protest, he traced her mouth with the pad of his thumb. “That’s where you’re wrong. Right now, I need to kiss you more than I need to breathe. I wanna taste you. Eat you up.”
Make you mine
. The thought sprang full born from the most primal part of him, where wolf overruled man.

Clarissa’s eyes widened, but she didn’t draw back as his head descended. Their lips met, clung briefly, before he gave in to the fierce hunger burning low in the pit of his gut. Intent on making his possessiveness—and his desire—known, he nudged the hard ridge of his erection between her thighs. “Feel that, baby? That’s what you fuckin’ do to me.”

He filled his palms with her ass and squeezed, deliberately rolling his hips against hers. Yeah, he was dry humping her against a wall right outside the damn restrooms. But if the frequency of her gasps were any indication, she was enjoying the hell out of it just as much as he was.

His tongue slicked past the nonresistant barrier of her lips, and he relished the soft, breathy moan that escaped Clarissa. She was even more intoxicating than he remembered. Her magic shimmered around them, mingling with his energy and creating a charged buzz that tingled across his skin. He broke off the kiss, his breath ragged against her cheek. “Come home with me.”

She licked her lips. “That would be an epically bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Because we both know where it would lead.”

He ducked his head and nibbled a path along her jaw before exploring the soft hollow behind her ear with the tip of his tongue. “If you’re referrin’ to you tied to my bed, then yeah, damn straight.”

Her shallow exhale whispered against the side of his face. “Th-that’s not what I…” She swallowed. “You want to tie me to your bed?”

“More than you could imagine. God knows
I’ve
imagined it more often than I can count.” He released the tempting swells of her ass and glided his palms up along her hips, taking his time to properly enjoy her lush curves. “You’d be spread-eagled, your whole body tremblin’ and your nipples unbearably tight.”

“W-why would I be trembling?”

He grinned against her neck. “Don’t you also want to know why your nipples are tight?”

“I figured you’d get around to telling me, regardless.”

“Aw, shug, am I that predictable?” Yeah, he was. No way in hell he could temper the urge to tell her everything he wanted to do to her. In precise, Technicolor detail. “You’re tremblin’ because I’m eating your pussy. Lickin’ you inside and out, nice and slow. Savoring you.”

Her pulse skittered beneath his lips. “Logan, please—”

“Yeah, those are exactly the words you keep repeatin’ while my tongue is workin’ your clit and your sweet honey is filling my mouth.” He groaned and shifted, resting his forehead against hers. The fantasy had him hard as granite and desperate to sink into her softness. “Christ. Have mercy on me, Rissa. Say you’ll come home with me.”

Is love the biggest con of them all?

The Slipstream Con

© 2011 S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore

A
Ylendrian Empire
Story

For three years, Kellen Frey has led bounty hunters Tal and Vanya on a merry chase, evading capture with flair and style. Now, just when they finally have their pet project—and object of their mutual fantasies—cornered, the elusive con artist turns the tables and gives himself up. A sudden attack of conscience, perhaps? Tal and Vanya know better.

Their suspicions are confirmed when a crime lord comes dangerously close to killing them all, and the rapidly sickening thief is forced to confess the truth—he’s been accidentally dosed with a highly illegal form of nanotechnology.

If Kellen can’t get his hands on another dose, he’s finished. The problem is, the only thief who’s ever broken in to Slipstream Labs is his ex-girlfriend, and she’s allergic to bounty hunters. As he does his best to play both sides, he struggles with his growing desire to be more than a prisoner to Tal and Vanya. Without trust, they won’t survive long. The clock is ticking as they race to uncover a conspiracy that spans the Ylendrian Empire.

Warning: This book contains an anti-hero with no qualms about redecorating your spaceship, a heroine capable of killing you with her hair stick, and another hero who would like nothing more than to shag them both without the inconvenience of a conscience.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Slipstream Con:

Kellen Frey woke to the worst headache of his life and the warmth and security that came of knowing that he had been royally screwed by the universe. Both of those things seemed trivial when compared to the unwelcome press of confinement, the thrum of a strange ship around him and the pair of bounty hunters waiting at his bedside.

“If I make a comparison to vultures, which of you is going to hit me first?”

Tal smiled rather grimly. “Since you just blasted the shit out of Van’s notebook, I’m going to guess her.”

“I did
what
?” He started to push himself up, unwilling to have them both looming over him, and hissed in pain, dropping back onto the bunk with a head-jarring thump. The fingers on his left hand felt like he’d jammed them against an engine core, blistered and painful. He stared blankly for a long second, then looked up accusingly. “I was joking about hitting me. But honestly, this is worse.”

“Oh, that was all you, Frey.” Vanya gestured towards a dead pile of plastic on the floor. “Your hand and my computer. You want to tell us what the hell’s going on?”

“I seem to remember saying that I don’t know.” He tossed a hand over his eyes to block out some of the light. “I didn’t have any revelations while I was unconscious.”

Tal took a step closer, leaning over until his face was inches away from Frey’s. “Don’t be a smart-ass.” Tal enunciated each word with what seemed to be barely contained anger, and Kellen did his best not flinch. “You touched Vanya’s computer and it fucking melted. You can tell us what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into or I’m going to be really tempted to space you, bounty or no bounty.”

The one reply he had to that wasn’t going to make Tal any happier, and it didn’t seem wise to antagonize the man any further at the moment. Kellen settled for using his right arm to lever himself into a sitting position, left hand cradled against his chest, stubbornly silent.

Suddenly there were two of them hanging over him, forcing Kellen to squint against the haloing effect of the overhead lights. Vanya rested fingertips on Tal’s shoulder before gently pulling him back. “Get me a med kit, love. I should look at his hand and do a quick scan. I’m not sure he didn’t have a seizure.”

Tal scowled, reluctance in every line of his body as he stepped away from the bed. “Okay, but he’s still going to answer some questions.”

“Good cop, bad cop.” Kellen laughed, the sound catching painfully in the back of his throat. “And you accused me of being clichéd.”

“Nobody ever believes me as the good cop,” Tal said over his shoulder. “It started to hurt my feelings, so Vanya said we could switch.” He popped the kit open and set it on the ground, ostensibly out of Kellen’s reach. After handing her the scanner, he shoved his hands into his pockets, standing behind her like a sentry. “You’re not getting out of this.”

Kellen watched Vanya unfold his hand, swallowing over nausea as he caught sight of his blistered fingertips. It hurt like hell, but worse than the pain was the sick feeling of fear over having his hand damaged and all that that implied. No work, and worse, no art. It was more than he could deal with at the moment, so he turned his attention to Tal instead. “If you’d like, I could give you some tips on maintaining a pleasant demeanor. We could do some role-playing. Help you develop a more winsome attitude.”

“You do seem to have perfected those talents, what with that trail of besotted victims across at least ten known systems.” Tal rolled his eyes. “It never ceases to amaze me how few of them can seem to manage to hate you. Do you know how annoying it is to interview an infuriated art dealer? There’s screaming, and arm waving, and yet they still seem to work into the conversation how wonderfully
charming
you are.”

Vanya smothered a giggle, then struggled to straighten her face when her husband gave her a betrayed look. “It’s true.”

“Thank you, Vanya,” Kellen said with equanimity. “If only your husband would learn from your deportment, he wouldn’t need lessons from me.” He bit down on his lip for a second as she worked a burn cream over his fingertips.

“I’ll take your assessment of my manners under advisement,” Tal replied. “In the meantime, I’ve had a lot of success with intimidation and my winning smile.” A flash of the aforementioned smile distracted Kellen, and he quirked his mouth in response. “Now, why did you just hand yourself over to us?”

“Your pretty, pretty eyes.” He yanked his bandaged hand back to his chest and sighed as Vanya began waving a scanner at him with a frown. Tal looked even less pleased.

“Really? Because I think it had more to do with you wanting off that station pretty damn bad and using us to that end. And I think I speak for us both when I say we don’t appreciate being used.”

Kellen started to shrug, and then thought better of it when even that movement made his head throb. “You wanted your bounty. I wanted off Station 43. It seemed like a win-win situation. I’m not sure why you’re complaining.”

“We’re not complaining. We’re suspicious. There’s a difference.” Vanya put a finger under his chin, tipping his head to the side. “We don’t like surprises.”

“Birthdays must be so much fun for you both.”

The Kellen Frey philosophy of life forbade gambling on the unknown, not when success rested on evaluation of all the risks, and then a carefully weighed decision about the chances of achieving the identified goal. The fact that he’d spent almost as long studying Tal and Vanya as they’d spent studying him had made this decision as safe a bet as it could be, but even that knowledge wasn’t doing much to dispel the crushing anxiety at being a prisoner.

“Look, I’m…I’m sick, okay? I’m off my game, and Cassie asked me to deliver something, so I figured it’d be a nice, simple drop and dash. Except
you
turned up, and there went my ship, and the people I was delivering to decided they didn’t like the goods, so I needed to get out of there, fast. It’s not like I’m looking forward to prison, but I was looking forward to
death
even less, so here we are.” Mustering up a grin, he flashed it at Tal, as Vanya was busy holding his head still with the palm of her hand. “I figured I’d just escape before you could turn me in, and we’d all be happy. You can keep chasing me, and I can keep doing things that make you grudgingly admire my inimitable skills.” Vanya pushed his head to the side, and he frowned at her. “As I said, it’s win-win.”

“You may be sick, but you’re definitely not suffering any lingering brain trauma,” Vanya reported. “And stop teasing my husband about his little crush on your career.”

“I hardly see how it’s
my
fault that I inspire romance and lust in
your
husband.” He quite enjoyed the way Tal’s face pinked up to the very tips of his ears, mouth open in indignation before Kellen cut him off. “Besides, it’s just the thrill of the chase. Now that I’m actually here, I’m sure the infatuation will fade.”

“I’m not infatuated with you!”

Vanya’s tight grip on his chin made Kellen yelp. “Enough. So we’ve established why you’re here. What we haven’t got an answer to is how you managed to melt my notebook.” Her hand went from his face to his clenched fingers, prying them open. “And something else odd. The scanner says that these burns are from the inside. How in all that’s holy did you manage that?”