Haunted Sanctuary (Green Pines Sanctuary) (14 page)

“We could have a
little
decorum, couldn’t we?” But she sighed and grabbed Jay’s hand, then Eden’s. Her eyes fluttered shut, and the air around them began to throb with power.

It didn’t feel like a wolf. It didn’t feel like anything Jay had experienced, not until the witch whispered a quiet incantation and the magic snapped like a string drawn too tight, lashing through the room.

When it settled, all Jay could feel was
Eden
. “That’s it?”

Stella opened her eyes. “Standard three months. If it looks like I’m not going to be here at the end of it, I’ll prepare a talisman that you can destroy to break the bond.”

Eden stared blankly, her eyes wide and dazed. Through the bond, Jay could feel her wolf, stunned but rallying. Magic rose inside her, a wave that rushed down the newly opened connection before it could crest.

Exhaling in relief, she swayed.

“Oh, hell.” Keith groaned and reached out a hand to catch Eden’s shoulder. “First lesson—don’t say fast if you don’t mean
fast
. I should know better by now.”

The witch blinked. “What’d I do?”

“My fault, Stella. I should have warned them.” Keith patted Eden’s shoulder as she steadied. “You’re stronger than most, sweetheart. It’ll take some time to grow into that power, but you will. If you ever need someone to talk to about it, Stella can tell you how to get in contact with my wife. She went through the same thing a few years ago.”

Still looking a little dazed, Eden murmured her thanks. But under the table, her hand found Jay’s and squeezed tight.

Stella saluted them with two fingers at her temple. “My pleasure. Now, if you don’t mind…” She snatched up her bag. “I’m getting out of here. Little house, right?”

“That’s where Shane is,” Jay confirmed, three-quarters of his attention still fixed on Eden. Her fingertips traced teasing patterns over the back of his wrist, her skin warm.

She jumped when the door swung shut behind Stella and blinked at the witch’s empty chair. Color flooded her cheeks. “I’m being a terrible host.”

“She’s used to wolves, honey. Right, Keith?”

Keith smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Stella will do just fine. She’s used to living with wolves, and she’s seen her share of trouble. She’s been itching to get out on her own and flex her spellcasting muscles without her mentor staring over her shoulder, but Sasha wouldn’t have sent her if she wasn’t ready.”

Jay dragged his focus back to the wolf sitting across from them. “Long term, what do we do about Memphis?”

“My advice?” Keith tapped his fingers on the table. “Try to find a spy, someone who can warn you if they’re going to come. But either way…be ready for war. Have wards to protect those who can’t fight, and train those who can. Have a plan in place so everyone knows which is which.”

Zack might know someone left in Memphis who’d be willing to pass on information about the pack’s movements, but even asking could put the would-be spy in mortal danger. “We have to expect them at any time. I’ve got some contacts through my job, but using them is a tricky, messy business.”

“You’re local law, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“That’ll help with the other problem, hopefully.” Keith shook his head. “You’re not as remote as I’d like, certainly not remote enough to be hidden away from humans like Red Rock. That’ll be trouble if more refugees keep showing up.”

It was a small town, and people had already been talking. “This place is a farm. Farms need labor, and little boutique organic outfits have been popping up all across the South over the last decade. As long as we keep our noses clean, we can make it work.”

Keith smiled slowly. “Yeah, Stella told me about the alpaca business plan. She’s a city girl with wide-eyed dreams about life on a farm. Don’t shatter all her illusions on the first day.”

“She’s not our only former city dweller,” Eden told him with an answering smile. She nudged Jay’s foot with her own, rubbing their calves together under the table as her bright, innocent gaze stayed fixed on Keith. “I’ll turn them all into country girls in no time.”

Minx. “And if that fails, we’ll keep them away from the creatures,” Jay promised.

“At least the ones that might bite them,” Eden said cheerfully.

Keith eyed her for a moment, then snorted. “Yeah, I forgot this part of the bonding too. I suppose it’s inevitable.”

“Lunch.” Jay stood, keeping Eden’s hand in his. “Can you at least stay for that before you have to head back?”

“Sure.” Keith rose as well. “Where’s Fletcher hiding himself? I haven’t seen him in a year or more. Wanted to catch up before I roll out.”

“He was out there with Shane earlier. Should still be.”

“Good. You two get used to that bond now, while you have a chance.”

Keith started for the door, and Eden must have had a moment of guilt. “We can walk you,” she blurted out, giving Jay a helpless look. “It’s only polite.”

Keith snorted again. “Ancheta, time to teach your Initiate about priorities and pack…and how little use werewolves have for polite manners.”

The door slammed behind their guest, and Jay picked Eden up and deposited her on the table. “What he means,” he said slowly, “is that there’s a time and place for everything…except when you’re newly bonded.”

She heaved out an unsteady breath and tangled her fingers in his shirt. “So the fact that I’m all tingly isn’t just my own sexual frustration?”

“Common side effect.” His voice came out too thick, almost hoarse.

One of Eden’s hands squirmed under his shirt to brush his abdomen. “Are you tingly too?”

He’d been tingly for
days
, and he didn’t bother to shield the edge of his lust from her. Instead, he slipped his hands into her hair, held her still—his gaze fixed on hers—and let her feel every pulse. Every heartbeat.

Her eyes flared gold. “You’re under my skin,” she whispered. Her fingers slid up his chest and brushed one nipple, and she sucked in a sharp breath when he let her feel his pleasure along with his lust. “Oh, this is
dirty
.”

“Fringe benefit.” He tipped her head back and scraped his teeth over her jaw. She shuddered and scratched his chest, her moan filling the kitchen.

He bit off a groan. The kitchen table was no place to seduce a woman—especially not for the first time—but it didn’t matter. Not enough to make him stop.

Jay dragged her to the edge of the table, sliding her halfway astride his thigh. “Nothing dangerous about this now. Kiss me, and show me how you let go—”

Eden’s mouth crashed into his, swallowing the last word. She rocked forward, riding his leg as her tongue drove in search of his.

He steadied her hips with one hand and slid the other up over her breast. Her top was made of some kind of thick chambray, but her nipple tightened in a heartbeat. She moaned again, a soft, hot sound that Jay coaxed into a lower, deeper noise by slipping free the first button on her shirt.

Two buttons later she tore her mouth from his, throwing her head back as she squirmed against his leg. “Oh God, oh
God
. This is insane. Why are you not as crazed as I am?”

He was burning, and the fact that she thought he might not be drew a ragged chuckle from this throat. “Control. Don’t think about what I’m doing, Eden. Feel what I feel.”

A heartbeat. Two. She exhaled on a shaky sigh as her fingers tangled in his hair. “You want to—to take me.”

“Until there’s no part of you that doesn’t belong to me.” Her shirt yielded under his hand, baring a white bra so sheer he could see her nipples, dusky against her pale skin. He bent his head and rocked her hips harder against his leg as he sucked one peak into his mouth.

Pleasure spiked. Tension spilled down their bond, and she slammed her wrist to her mouth to muffle a cry. Paying attention to the jolts sparking between them made it laughably easy to find the perfect rhythm, the speed and pressure that had her clutching at the edge of the table with one hand as she bit her wrist hard enough for him to feel it.

The wet mesh fabric clung to her nipple, and Jay gave her the slightest edge of teeth before turning his mouth to the flushed center of her chest. “That’s it, honey. You’ll feel so good coming all over me.”

As if the words had been a command, her hips jerked. Her back bowed, arching over his arm until her hair pooled on the table. She came in virtual silence, her face slack and her lips parted on a soundless moan, but the intensity of it slammed into him as her wolf surged.

“Kaley, were you thinking of—” Lorelei walked into the kitchen, her eyes fixed on the catalog in her hand. She looked up and clapped one hand over her eyes before spinning around. “Oh shit.
Shit
, I’m sorry.”

Eden sat up so fast she crashed into Jay as a choked squeal of embarrassment escaped her lips. Her cheeks flamed and she shoved at Jay’s chest with clumsy hands. “No, no it’s okay, we weren’t—we were just—” She clutched the open edges of her shirt together, but her fumbling fingers popped the button off when she tried to fasten it. “
Fuck.
”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled out of Lorelei. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Jay cleared his throat as he took over buttoning Eden’s shirt. “The witch is here.”

“She is?” Lorelei half-turned before snapping her head forward again. “Already?”

“Yeah.” Eden finally met Jay’s eyes, and embarrassment faded as her lips curved into a wry smile. “She’s over at the little house with Shane. Once she made Jay my Guide, everyone fled. And now I’m understanding why.”

“Uh-huh. I think I’m going to follow suit.”

“We’ll be out in a little bit,” Eden promised.

There was no mistaking her look, and even as Lorelei hurried away, Jay shook his head. “Later, Eden.”

Her breath hissed out. “I know. I
know
. But this is uncomfortably like being a teenager again. I just want enough privacy to get my damn hands on you.”

“Tonight,” he promised. The guys could take a hike for a few hours, maybe even until morning. He and Eden could be alone.

She shivered as he fastened the button over her breasts, and her eyelids drooped. “How do you do it?” she asked in a whisper. “If I couldn’t feel you, I wouldn’t think you were all that turned on. You’re still giving me a complex.”

The same way he did everything—because he had to. Because people were counting on him.

“Because it’ll be worth it.” He brushed her disheveled hair back from her face. In return, she turned her head to nuzzle his palm, her lips soft as they ran along his skin. A whisper, a quiet acceptance of his promise and an intimacy that went beyond sex.

Stopping was hell, but the tender way Eden touched him eclipsed all the discomfort. Knowing she wanted him just as much as he wanted her was soothing in its own way, turned a frantic rush toward pleasure into something more complex and rewarding. A chase in every sense of the word—stop and go, back and forth, but when they finally managed to catch one another…

The chase would end, and hell would turn to heaven in a heartbeat.

Chapter Nine

Eden had assumed the warmth and arousal of her new bond with Jay would fade eventually.

She’d been half-right.

Lunch was long behind them, and the men and women had parted ways for the afternoon’s work. Only practical when Mae still froze up when confronted with Jay or Shane and outright avoided Colin and Fletcher, but the division of the genders made the farm feel a little stuck in time. Eden could hear the men in the distance through the open back door, the pounding of hammers and occasional buzz of a saw interspersed with thuds and grunts. Masculine sounds, sharply contrasting with the bright chaos of yarn and crafting materials littering every surface of the kitchen.

It might have perturbed her more if Shane and Fletcher hadn’t seemed perfectly willing to sort yarn and package decorative soaps alongside the women. Respect had the males keeping their distance, not disdain or antiquated notions of gender roles. And no matter how far they strayed from the house, Eden could track Jay’s presence, a warm awareness that brought whispers of emotion along with a steady embrace of soothing power.

She wasn’t alone anymore. The knowledge made the ground solid under her feet again, and the shards of glass tearing up her throat had vanished. With a little time and luck, maybe they could make that true for all of Zack’s pack.

Eden opened the next box in her stack and inhaled the scent of lemon and lavender. “Is this lotion?”

“Body cream,” Kaley offered with a grin. “Mae’s skin-care specialty.”

“
Our
specialty,” Mae corrected, tucking a strand of pink hair behind her ear. “Kaley’s pretty much responsible for all the most popular scents. She has good instincts.”

Eden lifted one professionally labeled jar declaring
all natural ingredients
in a clean, elegant font. “How much profit do you make per jar?”

“With that? A few dollars wholesale, a little more retail. I was working on an online storefront when…” Mae trailed off and shoved her hands into the pockets of Shane’s hoodie. She’d taken to wearing it instead of a jacket, and no one had commented on it, not even to tease.

Undoubtedly no one wanted to risk taking away the small comfort Mae had found. Eden filled the awkward silence by lifting the box. “So which scent is your favorite, Kaley?”