She really had to stop it. Now. Blanking those thoughts, she didn’t dare look at the man who’d set off a storm of lust inside her.
Squirming, she ignored the thrumming between her legs and moved her piece. She landed on the light blue property. “A house, please.”
“A house is a good place to start, unless you prefer to stay out in the elements. Stand out in the rain and let it play on your skin. Do you like to dance in the rain, sugar?”
“That could be nice,” she stammered. She couldn’t breathe properly. The flirtation he’d started in the woods, he’d deepened while massaging her. Face-to-face, she didn’t know what to do, how to respond. It confused her and made her forget why he was off-limits.
“You’ll probably want insurance for that new house. Of course, that doesn’t cover Acts of Griffin.” He twirled his finger and a puff formed, as if a curl of cigarette smoke sprang from his finger. It danced over the board and surrounded the little house on her property. The plastic lifted, caught in a vortex of a miniature twister, right there on the game board.
She laughed and shifted on her seat.
His playfulness put her at ease, even as her interest intensified. She hadn’t lost the arousal that made her skin flash warm and her hardened nipples rub against her bra. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was intoxicated. “Acts of Griffin, huh? What about heading to jail, you landed on the wrong spot.”
“Damn it. Didn’t think you’d notice.”
“You’re trying to cheat?” She giggled and slammed a hand over her mouth. She shouldn’t reward him.
“Wouldn’t think of it.” He grinned something mighty sinful.
Later, he landed on her property again. He raised a brow and the corner of his mouth lifted. A gust of air streamed under her shirt and circled her nipple. Her flesh tightened and her lips parted. Griffin’s smile grew.
She choked out, “Pay up.”
“Sure thing, sugar, how do you want it?”
“We might as well not be in the room.” Clarissa laughed.
Ray’s reply killed Astrid’s blooming lust. “Good thing we are. Our
guest
needs to keep away, and Griffin needs to keep his hands off. Until she decides to tell us what she was doing up there, we don’t really know what she intends, do we?”
Her head jerked back but she didn’t look at Ray. She stared at her stack of play money. A flash of memory froze her. She’d been at odds with her mother after a severe dressing-down for deciding to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after school. Her mother always insisted she have an apple instead of junk food. In retaliation, Astrid had cheated her mother in the game that night.
Ray and Clarissa had a heated, murmured argument. Griffin’s chair screeched along the tile and he strode to the sink. Leaning over, he splashed water over his face and remained, drops dappling his arms while he gripped the counter. The muscles of his back played against the fabric of his shirt, and again, that incredibly nice ass totally did it for her. Neil’s just didn’t.
Neil. She needed to remember him. She sighed.
Nobody paid attention to her. No matter what Ray just said, they didn’t really suspect her of anything. If they hadn’t worked with her family in the past, she doubted she’d be let in at all, but her mother had known that. Just like Helen Collins knew everything. Despite Ray’s stated suspicions, they obviously extended to her some amount of trust.
She glared back at the board.
Her fingers itched.
Her mother never caught her cheating.
Fast as lightning, she slipped a five hundred from the bank and rolled the dice, ignoring the numbers that put her on a spot to pay Clarissa rent and moved to a safe property.
Nobody noticed.
Her mother, dictating what she could wear, how to style her hair, claiming she knew what Astrid did after school, had never seen Astrid’s sneaky moves.
Astrid always won.
The hollowness returned to her stomach and she surged to her feet.
“Long day. Thank you for dinner and your help.” She scurried out of the kitchen. A gust of wind followed, bringing her body to life. Her core pulsed and ached around a sudden hollow deep inside.
Griffin hadn’t slept for shit. His skin ached from the high pressure his body had exuded all night. His storm was imbalanced and he had a pretty good idea why.
Finally outside, he strode straight around the side of the mansion. Purposefully, he mentally brought up an image of the CTF syphon, Susan. Nothing. No response like this to Susan whatsoever. No rise in barometric pressure when he let his mind wander. No fluctuating wind patterns.
It wasn’t Astrid’s syphon talent that had his storm in turmoil. He didn’t understand why he tried to touch her. She could kill him with one finger. Plus, yesterday when his storm had ranged freely, he’d connected with his blonde talent-partner. Hell, he’d mind-fucked his potential mate, and it hadn’t been Astrid.
Come to think of it, no wonder he’d tossed and turned. He hadn’t tried to reach out to his mate in his dreams again. Instead, he’d pondered Astrid all night. That was what was wrong with him. After finding a lead to his mate, he wanted to connect with her and it made him antsy.
Susan, the CTF syphon, he trusted. They’d raised her since her mom had brought her here for protection. Astrid was an unknown. A danger. Why he’d been compelled to kiss her hair, massage her shoulders and touch her shirt-covered waist, he had no idea. For a few moments last night, he’d lost his sanity.
He needed his control back. A woman who threatened it was not a woman for him.
“All good now.” Except that he was talking to himself. He chuckled and picked up his pace.
A syphon was anathema to a weather mage. A high-level mage with that power could take atmospheric energy and channel it into the ground until the weather para-talent was empty. For someone like Griffin, drained of that energy, he’d die. He shouldn’t want to be around Susan. She should rub him raw, but he loved her as a sister.
He shouldn’t want to touch Astrid, but he wanted to fuck her until he couldn’t walk straight.
All he could do was stay the hell away from Astrid—but be sure Ray got her home safe. Both because she could be victim to whatever was still out there from Vince’s plot and from any other para-talents. Bigoted violence against their kind was a possibility. Living syphons were rare. Not to mention, until they knew her better, she could be a danger to anyone she met.
Ray would take care of it.
Griffin wrenched open the garden shed doors. He needed to empty his mind and nothing did that better than working up a sweat. Shoving on his gloves, he stalked to the wall hung with myriad landscaping tools. Unlike his brother, Griffin had a job outside CTF. He needed the outlet. His landscaping business thrived and he reveled in it. It kept him honed, worked out the frustrations and calmed him.
The hedges on the south lawn needed clipping. He grabbed the long-handled clippers instead of the battery-powered trimmer. Using his muscles would clear his head faster than the buzz of the electric one.
His long strides crossed the green lawn in no time. Ignoring the back of the mansion with its rows of glass windows, he refused to wonder which room Astrid would be using. The hedge of rhododendrons gave off their heady scent when he attacked them and he immediately hardened, the image of soft hands pushing through branches—the way he’d first seen Astrid—gave him pause before he scrubbed it from his thoughts and started in on the overgrown shrubs.
The sun bore down on him and he stopped long enough to strip off his shirt. Storm clouds roiled in the distance. The half-erection had subsided but he hadn’t calmed enough. He snipped, snipped, snipped some more. Heat sank into his muscles.
As he relaxed, a disturbance rippled over him.
Static erupted along his skin and his cock went hard and aching against his jeans.
“What are you doing out here?” He didn’t turn toward the intruder. Or apologize for the biting tone.
“I’m to meet Ray to go over what happened, now I’ve had a good night’s sleep.” A soft snort accompanied that. So she’d slept as badly as he had. Well, good. “But I wanted to apologize.”
“Shouldn’t you be in there right now explaining what you were doing with a bunch of rogues, out in the middle of nowhere?” He needed to remind himself to be suspicious of her. Damn he was getting stupid in his old age. “How old are you, anyway?”
“What does that matter?”
“It doesn’t.” He turned and sucked in a breath when she stepped back, a look of fear crossing her face. “No need to fear me. I thought we went over that last night.”
She stared at his bared chest and blushed.
He bit back a smile and prodded her. “Besides, I’m too old to be a threat to you.”
What a load of nonsense. Mages lived long lives and he hadn’t even reached middle age, but she ripped her gaze from his pecs and faced him with her mouth slightly open. Her soft, parted lips needed to be filled, and images of filling them with his dick flashed through him before he could stop it. He nearly groaned.
“You’re eighty-seven. Young for a weather mage. I’m twenty five, plenty old enough.” She actually sounded as if she was defending him. Something dangerous warmed beneath his ribs.
“Legal then, aren’t you?” He stepped closer and she crossed her arms as if she willed herself not to move. “You’ve been checking up on me.”
She blushed again. The visual proof spread from her cheeks, down her neck and across the tops of those amazing tits of hers. The impact of her discomfort sizzled over him, raising the hair on his arms. But he controlled himself. He didn’t move an inch. When a para-talent needed to talk, as he’d learned with Daisy, it was best to listen first, then take action.
“I did. When Vince and my partner Neil decided to make their group.” Her gaze skittered until it landed somewhere over his head. “I heard that CTF robbed para-talents of their powers. I just—”
She swallowed hard and he watched the action of her throat, unable to move or speak, fascinated by the play of sunlight on her creamy skin as the clouds passed overhead making shadows dance in her eyes.
“It’s why I went with them. At first.” Her voice shook and she gripped herself tighter, pulling herself inward. “Because it’s not right. To rob a talent of their powers.”
“And you say you’ve never done that?” His question came as rusty as the old hoe he’d found behind the tool shed last year.
She shook her head and seemed so lost, standing there.
“It takes time to learn to control your talent. I’ve had setbacks. Trying your best, that’s all we can expect from one another. But not all of us can and we need help. That’s how someone of your talent is such a wonder. You help us. I could have used a talent like yours when I was younger.”
He paused. She’d returned her attention to him, and he was slightly disappointed it wasn’t directed at his shirtless chest, but at his face. Attentive and soaking up all he said. He wanted like anything to reach her and answer her unvoiced plea for honesty.
“My storms used to lash out when I was angry.” Or when he was sad, but she didn’t need to know about the emotional wreck he’d been as a teen. Besides, they all had that. “I learned to control it by trial and error with Ray. Eventually, we found outlets. For me, learning to release some excess energy to feed plants, to landscape.”
“You learned to help yourself. You’re strong.”
“So are you. You didn’t take power from me last night.”
At that, she turned a bit toward the house and the fledgling connection broke. Before she could walk away, he blurted, “What did you come to find me for? To apologize for?”
She grimaced and instead of rushing to comfort her as instinct screamed, he forced his boots to stay where they were and to grab his shirt from where he’d stuffed it to hang out his back pocket. He shrugged it on, showing her and himself that we was actually in control of himself. It shoved a barrier between them, even if it was just a fabric shirt.
“Well?” He couldn’t take much more of this. It hit him, as much in his hardened cock as between the eyes, she gave off an air, something that made him feel he needed to protect her. That had to explain his reaction. She was vulnerable and he needed to make sure she was safe.
“I cheated last night. At Monopoly.”
He laughed, big and loud. His head went back and he watched the clouds dancing above. “No problem, sugar.”
“It’s something I can’t help doing. It’s this way I get back at my mother. I couldn’t stop myself.”
He dropped his gaze back to study the play of emotions cross her face. She was so easy to read.
“Does your mother ever catch you?”
Her eyes glittered. That vulnerability was still there, but so was something crafty. He liked her more and more. Honest and open, she was blunt but also softened by an innate kindness. She was amazing.
“No.” Her lips trembled out of her frown.
“Hmm. I think you need to be punished. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s why you confessed?”
Her eyes rounded, going wide and capturing him. Unstoppable, beastly urges rose in his chest.
His hand shot out and gripped her arm. They both startled. He stared at where they connected. His gloves wrapped her flawless skin above the elbow. The difference in color of her pale flesh and his new leather gloves entranced him. Slowly, he moved upward watching in fascination as bumps erupted over her. The hum of the wind sounded low beneath her rough breathing.
“That’s not why I confessed,” she whispered.
“But you want to be caught, don’t you?” His low tone rumbled with thunder in the distance. “Take off your shirt, sugar.”
“What?” She blurted a shrill laugh. “Out here? With you?”
“You asked to be punished.”
“I didn’t.” Her breathing was so labored he caught himself matching her rhythm, his lungs working hard to pull in the increasingly humid air.
“You need it. I can see it in the way that little pulse point in your neck is fluttering.”
“This is just your way of getting my clothes off.”
“It is. You want that too.”
“Not out here.” She bit her lip, and he could practically see the groan she held in, as if she wanted that small admission back, but she couldn’t.
“Yes. Out here. Outside sex is the best kind.” Hell yeah, it was.
“We can’t have sex.”
“We’re not. You are. I’m going to punish you until you scream your orgasm.”
Her blush deepened and she licked her lips. Wind blew through her hair, sending it the brown strands dancing around her cheeks. “You’re insane.”
“Used to be. Not now. I’m totally in control. It’s what we both need, to burn off this frisson. You feel it, don’t you?” Of course she did. Her chest heaved. She licked her lips again. Her eyes went glassy, but she didn’t back away. She leaned into his glove, sending the skin above the leather into licks of heat that went straight to his balls. “Don’t you, sugar?”
Her stillness answered him. She felt it too.
Indecision played out across her face but she wanted him, maybe as much as he wanted her. Impossible as it was. With his other gloved hand he gripped the bottom of her top and tugged. Her arms tightened momentarily across her chest but when he stroked across her belly, she let go.
Slowly, he lifted the shirt up her arms and when it covered her face, breaking eye contact, he let his gaze drop to her chest. Thank the storm, no bra.
“You have the most amazing tits.”
She made a disbelieving groan. “Oh. I can’t believe you said that.”
“You liked it. Your nipples are so tight they have to ache. You want me to help with that, sugar?”
She whimpered as he tugged the top over her head. Before her hands could come down to cross in front of her again, he grabbed her forearms and held them out wide.
“Gorgeous.”
Her legs sagged and he gripped her so that her body hung for a few moments. She steadied herself and asked, “What are we doing?”
“Hell if I know.” Stuck, he had her by the arms and as much as he enjoyed the view of her delectable, firm breasts, he couldn’t touch. His mouth flooded. The need to lick, nibble, bite, engulfed him but he stood immobile. If he dared flinch, he’d fall on her and suck those nipples ‘til his energy ran dry.
“Let me go, Griffin. This is a mistake.”
“Sit down. Before you fall,” he growled. “You cheated. Now you have to pay me for that.”
They both knew that wasn’t true, and that cheating at a silly board game was an excuse that got them here, but she nodded and slowly dropped to her knees. Gazing up at him, kneeling at his feet, her arms stretched upward in his hold, she looked submissive and ready to please him in every way he demanded.
He moaned and closed his eyes. Sight obliterated, he let his senses expand. The current of wind that tickled up his spine, the scent of rain from the clouds that rolled closer, and the sizzle of heat that licked him everywhere, enticed him to slide down his zipper, free his cock, and shove it in her mouth.
But he couldn’t.
Her whimper of need finally did him in. If he couldn’t drive into her and lose himself, he could find what he needed in other ways. A dim recognition in the back of his mind prodded him to get out of view of the house. Not just to soothe the possessive grip that nearly strangled him, but to avoid an interruption. Hell, he knew he couldn’t touch her but he was going to—and nobody was going to stop him.