Magical Menages 1: Shifters' Captive (17 page)

The energy lifted her and slammed her against the rock again. Sherrie could swear she heard the back of her skull crunching. The pain was so intense she couldn’t even scream. Blackness filled her vision, and she blinked it away. This was no time to lose consciousness.

This time her body didn’t drop to the ground. Janus held her pinned to the rock by the power emanating from his upraised palm. “Betrayed me! You liar, I’ll kill you.” Black thoughts swirled from his mind into hers like a cloud of angry wasps, stinging with raging hatred.

She fended them off as best she could, striving to repel his fury with positive thoughts. “Sorry.

Couldn’t let you kill people. Nothing personal,” she beamed back at him. “Let me go and we’ll work it out somehow. I know you’re not a bad person at heart.”

But an invisible hand clenched around her throat, crushing her larynx, stopping her breath. She pushed back against him with all her might and felt the balance of power shift just a little, enough for her to draw a breath.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. A tawny streak bounded into the cave and leaped on Janus, driving him down to the floor. Grant, in panther form, pinned the man to the ground, his huge paws holding down his shoulders and legs while he snarled into his face.

“Don’t kill him!” Sherrie screamed aloud and inside. “He still has hostages.” The power she’d accrued from John and Grant was fading fast. She felt disoriented from the blow to her head, and her body was so weak she didn’t even try to drag herself from the ground. Instead, she focused every bit of strength and willpower she had left into reentering Janus’s mind while he was distracted by the growling beast at his throat.

She pushed through the barrier he’d thrown up to block her and searched for the remaining lifelines she hadn’t had a chance to cut free. There’d been eight before. There were only four glowing lines now.

She could only assume he’d drained the others dry, leaving lifeless bodies behind.

Quickly she disconnected each precious thread and watched them zip away like the broken line of a flying kite. All Evan’s external power sources were gone. Without them propping him up, he wielded no real strength of his own. Janus was once more Evan Blake, a lonely man who walked through life feeling the world owed him more than what he’d been given.

Sherrie faced him in the dark, cluttered space inside his head. Blake’s presence was still a seething mass of impotent rage, coiled and ready to lash out at her.

“You did this to yourself,” she said. “If you’re unhappy, it’s because you’ve made yourself that way.

You can’t blame the shifters or anyone else for the life you’ve chosen to live.”

“Liar. Bitch. I should never have trusted you.”

“I’ll try to help you, to convince Grant not to kill you, but you have to swear you’ll never try anything like this again.”

A wordless roar of despair and rage was her only answer.

There was nothing she could do for him. Sherrie withdrew from his dark prison, leaving him to rant and bellow alone.

She pulled back into her own aching body. Grabbing hold of the rocky wall, she dragged herself to her feet. Grant was still slavering over the prone man, and she realized only seconds had passed.

“Don’t,” she urged. “You can’t just kill him. He should have some kind of trial.”

The big cat turned his sleek head toward her, golden eyes shining in the semi-darkness. His angry yowl resounded off the stone walls, and he bared his huge fangs but stepped off of Blake. In the distance, John’s quiet howl replied, as haunting as a cemetery at midnight.

Settling on his haunches, the panther shimmered and twisted, morphing back into Grant. The first words out of his mouth were, “He’s dangerous. I should put him down.” Sherrie continued to advocate for the man who may or may not be her blood relation. “It’s not right.

Besides, there might be some questions the shifters want to ask him. Find something to tie him up with then let’s get John out of the pit.”

Grant suddenly grinned, his surliness disappearing. “Do we have to? Couldn’t we leave him awhile?”

“We’re not going to cover this ground again. Our law prohibits executions, no exceptions. All we can do is banish him from our territory.” Pack leader Robert St. Claire spread his hands and shrugged. “But if Blake returns, all bets are off.”

A low murmur went around the room, sounding mostly like agreement this time. The angry dissenters like Brian Cox had finally adjusted to the fact they weren’t going to get the death they’d demanded. Once the Council had made a decision, pack members conceded to it.

John just wanted the village meeting to be over. He was exhausted, starving, filthy and anxious to see Sherrie, who was waiting at his house. He’d been requested to tell, first at the Council meeting then at the town hall meeting, the sequence of events that had led to Evan’s capture. John had omitted exactly what the union of their threesome had entailed. No one needed to know that much detail. Enough to say they’d joined their power and Sherrie had used it to free the hostages from Evan Blake.

Some had suggested she might be a threat to them. John assured them Sherrie had no intention of harming the pack, despite the fact she’d been kidnapped and brought here against her will. It was all he could do to restrain his temper at some pack members’ narrow-minded exclusivity. They didn’t see that their actions were part of what had driven a man like Evan to feel so isolated he attacked them. Not that Blake’s behavior was excusable in any way.

At last it seemed the meeting was winding down as St. Claire delivered one of his rambling monologues about pack unity. He finally ran out of steam and adjourned the meeting. People shuffled from the rows of seats to cluster in the aisles and block the flow of traffic. Wearily, John nudged his way toward the door, accepting congratulations and pats on the back and fending off longer conversations.

The door was in sight. He was almost free when a voice spoke behind him. “Walker, hold on.” He turned to face Brian Cox, who approached him with his hand extended.

“I want to thank you for what you did for Liberty. She’s doing better already. Lydia’s home with her, but she asked me to thank you too.”

John shook his hand, but reminded him, “You owe your thanks to Sherrie. She’s the one who saved your girl and all the others.”

Cox nodded. “I was wrong to dismiss her just because she’s human. Please pass our gratitude along to her as well. As a matter of fact, why don’t you bring her by the house before she leaves town. I know Lydia and Liberty would both like to see her.”

“I will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to go home and crash. It’s been an intense couple of days.”

John walked outside, blinking in the bright light of mid-morning. It took him by surprise, seemed like it should be twilight. His inner clock was fucked up from staying awake for almost three days straight.

It had been past midnight by the time Grant and Sherrie had knotted their clothing together and lifted John up the shaft then trekked all the way to the Blazer with their prisoner. Evan Blake had remained mute and stone-faced on the drive to Browning, which had taken another few hours. He continued his stoic silence during the trial before the Council members.

After they’d incarcerated him, the leaders had called a pack meeting in the Town Hall. Since neither Grant nor Sherrie were pack members, they’d been excluded. In the early hours of morning, John had given Sherrie directions to his house only a few blocks away and watched while Grant escorted her down the street. Reluctantly, he’d turned and entered the Town Hall to tell his tale once more for the assembled village. Heated discussion of how their prisoner should be dealt with had followed, but, as usual, the Council’s word was law and everyone eventually bowed to it.

Now, as John walked home, he couldn’t wait to take a shower and fall into bed…with Sherrie. He wished he could have her to himself, but imagined he’d find her curled up in his bed with Grant. The thought made his hackles rise.

Their threesome had been necessary, and if he was going to be honest, he’d been turned on by the panther’s deep kiss. But he sure as hell didn’t want to share Sherrie with him on a regular basis. If she was even his to share. His gut told him they were meant to be mated, but that didn’t mean she felt the same way.

Maybe she wouldn’t want to stay with him. Maybe he was completely nuts and jumping the gun by thinking of her as his.

When he reached home, the front door was unlocked as always. One of the perks of living in Browning was the practically nonexistent crime rate. Perron wasn’t sleeping on the couch, and John’s heart dropped as he walked back to the bedroom, expecting to find the pair of them together.

He pushed open the door. The blinds were drawn. Only a little light crept in around the edges, but it was enough to see that only one person occupied the bed. Sherrie slept naked with the covers pooled around her hips and one arm flung above her head. A gentle snore issued from her parted lips.

John stared at the delectable sight of her breasts rising and falling with every breath, her brown hair tumbled across the pillow. He wouldn’t have thought he had enough energy left to raise another erection, but his cock evidently had more resiliency than he did as it sprang to attention. He didn’t spare a thought about where Perron had gone as he stripped off his clothes and climbed beneath the covers beside Sherrie’s soft, sleepy body. He sank gratefully into the mattress and wrapped his arm around her.

Sherrie snorted and her mouth snapped shut. She made a small grumbling sound of annoyance and rolled onto her side. John snuggled against her backside and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. She smelled of his shampoo and soap, and her hair was still a little damp. He probably should’ve grabbed a shower too, before lying down, but he was too damn tired.

A moment later, Sherrie shifted in his arms and pressed her bottom against his erection. “You’re back,” she murmured. “How’d it go?”

“Banishment. That’s the worst punishment we have, sending someone away from the pack. I don’t know if it’s much of a punishment for Blake, but that’s what they decided. If he’s ever seen in our territory again, he’ll be hunted and killed.”

“Sounds fair, but creepy having him still out there somewhere.” She glanced over her shoulder at him.

“If you could’ve seen inside his mind, it was a scary place.”

“I worry that he might try to come after you when you go home. Maybe you should stay here awhile.” She rolled onto her back and looked into his face. A smile curved her lips. “Is this your way of asking me to live with you? John, we barely know each other.” He ducked his head, feeling like a fool. “I know, but I want you to stay. Not because of Blake, but because I like you. I feel…”

“…a connection,” she said in unison with him. “Me, too, as crazy as it sounds. And it’s not about the sex or the power-sharing. It’s something more.”

“We call it the mating bond. I never much bought into the idea before, but this has hit me upside the head like a baseball bat.”

Her smile broadened to a grin and she reached up to touch the side of his face. “How romantic.”

“Will you stay? See how you like living in Browning?” Her mouth was drawing him like a magnet.

He couldn’t drag his gaze from it.

Sherrie bit her lower lip as though considering. “Got any diners in town? I may be only a mediocre actress, but I’m a helluva waitress.”

He dipped his face toward hers and latched onto her mouth, tasting minty-sweet toothpaste, then he pulled away and answered. “Considering you saved our people, I think you can have about any job in town you want. We all owe you.”

“Naw. It took all three of us.” She curved her hand around the back of his neck and kissed him again, slowly, tenderly. “By the way, Grant’s gone home. He wanted to check on his people. Says he’ll drop by sometime for a visit.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

He shrugged. “Not just him. Panthers make me twitchy.”

“And maybe just a little bit horny?” she teased. “Come on. Admit it.” He shut her up with another kiss, long and lingering this time. When he pulled away at last, she sighed.

“I’ll have to go back and say goodbye to some friends, quit my job and break the lease on my apartment, but yeah, I think I’d love to stay here with you.” Warmth of a different kind than that percolating in his groin flooded through John, and his heart lifted. “Good.”

After giving her one last kiss, he groaned and sat up. “I’ve got to get cleaned up. I’ll be back.”

“Need help in the shower?” Sherrie pushed up on her elbows, which thrust her breasts out before her, the nipples pointing enticingly.

He feasted on the luscious sight of her sprawled across his bed. “If you want to.”

“Oh, yeah, I want to.” She tossed back the covers and sprang up.

Suddenly he didn’t feel nearly as exhausted as he led her into the bathroom and turned on the water.

They stood together beneath the hard spray, enjoying the heat and warmth for a few moments, then she picked up the shampoo and squirted a dollop on her palm.

John bowed his head so she could wash his hair. He closed his eyes and let the water stream across his face, while she lathered and massaged his scalp. He nearly whined in pleasure at her gentle touch. When she was finished rinsing the shampoo from his hair, she picked up the bath mitt, applied gel to it and began to soap his body.

“You’re so sweet,” he murmured as he submitted to her care.

“My pleasure.”

She scrubbed his back and buttocks, his shoulders, arms and chest, and lingered on his abdomen and groin. Her hair hung in dark, dripping curtains on either side of her face, and water rolled down her cheeks like tears as she stood beneath the showerhead and lathered his cock. He remembered how she’d looked on hands and knees, her head bobbing as she sucked him off, so sexy. And Grant thrusting his hips against her ass then suddenly leaning in, curling a hand around John’s neck and kissing him. His mouth tingled at the memory of that hard kiss, different from a woman’s—or at least any of the women he’d been with—aggressive, demanding.