[Southern Arcana 2.0] Crossroads (12 page)
“I need—” Her words melted into another desperate cry as the pinpoints of heat and pleasure scattered through her began to gather and tighten. “Kiss me.”
His mouth landed on hers, hot and a little rough. There was no hesitancy, no doubt. Just his tongue, sliding over hers before thrusting into her mouth, and his low groan as he hurried his movements.
Nick forgot to be still, forgot everything but
Derek
and the way he surrounded and filled her. She shoved her fingers into his hair as release swelled in her, then dug her heels into the ground as it took her.
She managed to muffle her scream against his neck, but nothing could stop the shudders that wracked her.
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65
Moira Rogers
“
Yes.
” Her body still shook when he pulled his hand away and the world tilted. Derek’s fingers wrapped around her hips and dragged her upright until she straddled his legs. “Like this, so I can watch your face.”
His words barely registered, and she cut them off with another kiss. A lingering hunger made her writhe in his lap, lifting and moving until the head of his cock nudged her entrance. She pulled back far enough to meet his eyes, whispered his name and started slowly lowering her hips.
He growled and dragged her the rest of the way down to him with a sharp tug of his hands. “
Fuck
, you feel so good.”
Nick could barely breathe through the vise of pleasure that squeezed tight around her, and she dug her nails into his back with a moan. “Whenever I saw you, I thought of this. Of making love to you.” One of Derek’s hands skated up her back and wrapped in her hair, pulling her head back. “Is this making love?” he panted, the words low and feral. “Too hard, too fast…” His voice was gentle despite the harsh tone of his words, and she sighed. “It’s
you
.” He kissed the pulse pounding in her throat and drew his tongue over it as he shifted their bodies, settling into a tormenting, rocking grind. “No, Nicky. It’s you. You’re everything.” She had to cover his lips again to silence the satisfied scream that had as much to do with the adoring look in his eyes as the pleasure set off again by the hard thrust of his body inside hers.
Mine.
There was no room for doubt here, stripped of everything that didn’t matter, with nothing separating them.
Derek rocked back suddenly. He crashed to the ground with a muffled grunt, her body still on top of his. His feet found purchase on the ground, and he rocked up into her with another strained noise. “Ride me, Nick.”
Her knees hit the ground, and the weight of her body drove his cock even deeper. For a moment, all she could do was shiver over him, lost in sensation, in possession. Then she began to move, need urging her to take up a hard, fast pace.
Over the past two months, she’d seen a thousand variations on guarded or wary flicker through Derek’s eyes. Now they were gone, replaced with an open, desperate longing that reflected her own, so deep it stole her breath. Large hands curled around her hips as he found her rhythm, just like they’d done it a thousand times before. “So good—so
good
—”
Heat blazed through her, and she’d have lost the rhythm completely if he hadn’t been guiding her hips to move. Blood pounded in her ears, and she only vaguely heard her own voice chanting Derek’s name.
Then everything stopped, closed in for one still, incandescent moment, and she screamed again as pleasure crested and crashed over her.
He whispered her name and thrust up, hard, and it was magic. Their energy meshed as easily as their bodies, power swelling between them until it felt like one glorious, continuous wave.
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She collapsed against his chest, relishing his scent and strength as well as the mingled power that lingered around them. “That was… I don’t even know what that was.” Derek’s voice was nothing more than a rasping whisper. “That was making love, dirty style.” Her hands slid over his skin, slick with sweat and humidity. “That was mating.” Underneath her, Derek’s body went rigid. “Shit.”
Nick froze. “What is it?”
“We forgot the birth-control issue again.”
The glow faded abruptly, and she pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. “We’re not always very good at that, I guess.”
He rubbed his hands up her back. “I didn’t think. God, when you touch me I
can’t
think.” His words were reminiscent of the ones Michelle had given her to explain how she’d ended up pregnant. Nick laid her fingers over his lips. “It happens, a
lot
. Not to me, I mean, but in general.”
“Yeah. The math of mating.” Derek squeezed his eyes shut. “I think Alec left out a few variables when he tried to explain it.”
“What did he tell you, exactly? Besides the sexy-blind-date thing?”
“That chemistry was bad, emotions were worse, and both together would wipe out your higher reasoning capacity.”
Nick laughed helplessly. “That about covers it, actually. It probably lost something in translation, what with Alec’s amazing powers of understatement.”
Derek lifted his hand and stroked the back of her head, his fingers sifting through her hair. “I think the gist of it is that I’m going to need a lot of condoms and you might need pants that I can’t unbutton so easily.”
“Good idea.” She stretched and kissed him softly. “Though this time I think it was the shifting.
Sometimes it makes me
crazy
.”
“Maybe it was…” His voice faded, and he tilted his head to one side. A moment later, Nick heard it too—the sound of underbrush snapping in the distance as someone or something approached them at a run.
Derek moved fast, coming to his knees and getting his body between hers and the noise. Nick gripped his shoulder with a noise of protest and moved up beside him.
The wind shifted, and carried with it a scent she recognized. Derek frowned a little, his eyebrows coming together. “Is that—?”
A sleek cougar burst out of the trees and skidded to a stop, paws slipping on the moss. Magic shimmered in the air before the cat regained her balance, and Mackenzie appeared, trembling and out of breath.
Fear seized Nick. “What happened?” Her own voice sounded far away and hollow. “Oh God, Michelle—”
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“Not Michelle.” Mackenzie looked at Derek. “It’s Kat and Andrew.” 68
Chapter Nine
Holt and Jacobson Investigations sat tucked away at the edge of the Central Business District. The windows were covered with thick blinds and a faint feeling of magic that spoke of strong wards, probably Jackson’s work.
Derek fought panic as he shoved through the unlocked door, panic that doubled when the sick scent of death slammed into him. The front of the office was a mess, with papers and computer equipment scattered all over the floor. Several upended file cabinets sat in one corner. The room was dark, most of the light coming from the open door at the back that led to the rest of the office.
Slight movement to his left drew Derek’s gaze, and his heart seized. Kat was tucked into the corner, so small and silent he hadn’t noticed her. Her scent was lost in the sharp smell of blood that hung in the air and stained her hands and clothes. She stared blankly ahead, her only reaction a flinch when Andrew’s pain-filled groan rose in the back room.
Nick touched his arm. “Kat needs you,” she whispered. “I’m going in the back.” The words propelled him out of his daze. “Check on Andrew,” he managed in a tight voice as he crossed the room. “Then come tell me. Please.”
“I will.”
Kat didn’t move as he approached. Her eyes stayed fixed on some distant point, dull and unseeing, but he could hear her heart pounding. “Kat. Sweetie.”
No response.
He knelt a foot away and reached out, alarmed at how cold her tiny hands were when he enclosed them in his own. Her breathing hitched, but it could have been in reaction to another pained noise coming from the back room.
Derek rubbed her hands to warm them. “Look at me, Katherine. Tell me what happened.” She blinked once and licked her dry lips. “I didn’t kill them,” she whispered, her voice so pained it nearly broke his heart. “I didn’t kill them, but what I did was worse. Alec—Alec was scared. Of me.” He’d spoken with Alec on the drive over, but the man had told him only that there had been an attack, and Andrew was clinging to life, but maybe not to humanity. And Kat—
Derek heard Alec’s voice again.
“Just a little bruised up, nothing big.”
At the time, he’d taken the tense tone as concern, but there had been something else there. Something a little like fear.
Moira Rogers
The idea of Kat doing something terrifying enough to scare Alec made Derek queasy. “What happened?”
She pulled her hands free and looked away. “I need Jackson.”
“Kat—”
“
Now.
”
Nick hurried into the front room. “Franklin Sinclaire is back there trying to stabilize Andrew. It looks pretty bad, but Alec said he’s…” She stopped and looked away. “Alec said he’s already healing.” He steeled himself against emotion as he rose and dug in his pocket for his cell phone. “Better than dying. Kat wants to talk to Jackson. Can you call him on my phone while I go—”
“Jackson’s not here?” Kat’s voice broke on a hitched sob, and Derek choked on the protective rage that fought to break free. There was no one here to kill, no one he could punish for terrorizing Kat and destroying Andrew’s life. Futile, helpless fury tightened his fingers around his phone until plastic cracked.
Nick’s hand slid under his collar. “Derek, stop.” Her other hand pried at his until he opened his fingers and let his ruined cell phone fall to the floor. “Jackson can’t leave the safe house right now, but you can take Kat there.”
That meant leaving Andrew. Worse, it meant leaving Nick. With the scents of blood and death heavy in the office, the idea lifted the hair on the back of his neck. “I don’t know if I can leave,” he whispered roughly, not wanting Kat to hear the words. “Not until I know Andrew’s going to be all right.”
“We still have to get her to Jackson, or she’s going to break down. Tell me what you need.” He nodded and turned back to Kat. Another wave of rage washed through him when she whimpered at the sudden movement. It hurt to go slowly, but he knelt in front of her and eased his hands up to frame her face. “Katherine. Listen to me, honey. Nick’s going to take you to Jackson. Nancy—Jackson’s mother, remember? Can you go with Nick? I promise I’ll take care of Andrew.” Kat finally looked up at him and shivered. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“You won’t,” he promised, hoping like hell he could believe his own words. Then again, if Kat’s empathy had been functioning, his rage would have had her clawing his eyes out. Shock or fear had apparently dulled her senses—and Nick had to get her away from Andrew’s pain before it wore off. “Come on.”
Nick followed his lead, keeping her movements slow and easy as she helped Kat to her feet. “Just outside. Come on, sweetie.”
Derek paused at the door to check the street for anyone who might find the sight of a bloody secretary staggering from the office to be worthy of investigation. When the street was relatively clear, he glanced over Kat’s shoulder at Nick. “Thank you.”
“Be safe,” she whispered in return. “Take care of Andrew, and I’ll do the same with Kat.” It hurt like hell to watch them walk away, but the animal inside him trusted Nick with Kat’s life.
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It trusted Nick with everything.
When they’d gone, Derek crossed the paper-strewn office and stopped at the door to the back room.
The scene inside unfolded in snapshot nightmare images. Andrew bleeding on a table while Franklin bent over him, stone-faced. Alec on the other side of the table, with some sort of metal instrument that held Andrew’s belly open. Chairs overturned, blood spattered on the walls, and in the corner…
Two naked men, both covered in blood and reeking of wolf. Dead, glazed eyes stared up at the ceiling, still etched with the remnants of fear. It made Derek’s skin crawl. If it weren’t for the awkward angle of their necks, he would have sworn the two men had died of fright.
Alec glanced up and followed his gaze to the corner. “That’s part of a Conclave strike team. Pretty much the scariest motherfuckers around.”
Derek tensed. “What happened to them?”
“Kat happened to them.” Alec turned his attention back to Andrew. “From what I got out of her before she clammed up, the team ambushed them and someone hurt Andrew. So she fried their brains.” Derek didn’t have time to ponder the terrifying implications of that statement. Franklin tossed down what looked like an oversized pair of tweezers with a clatter. “Almost there. I need another clamp.”
“Got it.” Alec reached out to dig through the bag at his side without looking up, but he addressed his words to Derek. “Did I hear Nick leave with Kat?”
Franklin accepted the clamp with a bloodied hand and swore. “She shouldn’t have left. She could be going into shock, especially after what happened.”
Derek’s gaze drifted to the two bodies in the corner again. “So what did she do to them? Knock them unconscious? I’ve never even heard of her using her empathy as a weapon before, but I guess she could have…”
“She fried their fucking brains, Gabriel.” Alec’s voice was hoarse. “They were drooling vegetables when I got here. Killing them was a fucking mercy.”
It was impossible to process. Kat was his harmless little cousin, the one who was practically his bratty kid sister. Brilliant and precocious, but always alarmingly unprepared for the dangers of the world she inhabited. In the supernatural underground of New Orleans, psychics were barely more than human. Kat’s dogged determination to play with wizards and shapeshifters was what got her shuffled off into protective custody every time shit hit the fan.
She was helpless. She was harmless.
And the most intimidating shapeshifter in New Orleans was
scared
of her.