Witch Interrupted (16 page)

“But your essence, your magic…there was only one path for it, Marcus.”

He’d observed that during his time with the keepers too, but disagreed it was permanent. He sniffed the bread to make sure it hadn’t molded and laid four slices on two paper plates. “Witches form new outlets for their power every time they master a spell. Mustard or mayo?”

“Mustard.”

“Me too.” He spread the yellow condiment with a knife. “As I was saying, witches can add to their magical repertoire limitlessly. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be the same for wolves.”

Each spell a witch used, each ingredient or recipe, forged a unique path, creating a lattice of connections and power. It wasn’t difficult for witches to work new spells if they had the capacity, so he ought to be able to regain the magical paths he’d lost.

He knew how to cast the spells. He knew the magic was there, simmering inside him. But the wolf had driven a channel so deeply into his soul that the magic had nowhere else to go.

“It isn’t the same for wolves. That’s what being a wolf means.” Though she’d watched him make the sandwiches, Katie peeled back the top slice of bread in the sandwich he’d given her to inspect the cheese, meat and lettuce. “You have one way to use your magic. One all-consuming way. It’s a tradeoff.”

“Pack bonding ceremonies and other wolf rituals involve component-related magic use,” he pointed out. “Is something wrong with the sandwich?”

She stuck the bread back together. “Habit.”

“I’m not trying to drug you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I just like to see what I’m getting,” she said around a bite. After she swallowed, she returned to their topic of discussion. “Pack spells aren’t the same as witch magic. Wolves can’t cast them at will. Do pack wolves’ lattices show signs of the rituals?”

Marcus didn’t like to eat standing. It was bad for digestion. After he wiped all traces of bread crumbs from the countertop, he seated himself at the tiny table. “No, but I’ll be able to remove my constraints. I just need a…backhoe.”

“A backhoe,” she repeated dubiously. She sat across from him.

“Magical TNT. That’s where you come in. But first we need to become accustomed to linking.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“Magical linking.” He wouldn’t mind becoming accustomed to fucking, but outside the scope of the experiment, it wouldn’t be strictly necessary. “There are waters in the bottom drawer of the fridge if you like.”

She got up, opened the door. “In the crisper? No veggies?”

“I’ve sort of lost my taste for them,” he admitted. “I’d appreciate a water too, please.”

“Just because you have magic doesn’t mean we can link. I couldn’t, well…” As she opened the water bottles, her back to him, her voice grew formal and concise. “I may have tried to use your magic to augment the spell I was working at that particular time.”

“You tried to use my own essence to life wipe me?” It was so ballsy, he almost admired her.

“I failed.” She handed him a drink but didn’t return to the table. Holding her plate in one hand, she paced to the Airstream’s door to stare through a crack in the blinds. “I don’t know if I can bring you into the true eye.”

“You can.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Not all the experiments I did for the keepers were unsuccessful.” With the right herbal inducements, a witch could link with a wolf and absorb wolf magic to bolster a spell. That discovery, which he’d made under the keepers, was part of the foundation of his entire hypothesis.

Witches and wolves. The same.

She glanced his way, her expression blank. “Did you hurt any wolves in your time with the keepers?”

“Did
you
hurt any wolves in your time with the keepers?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” she said simply. “Though not as many as rumor would have it. I neutralized a much higher proportion than I had to…put down.”

Though their acquaintance was short, he believed her. If she was being honest, he could be honest as well.

“I didn’t see the point in hurting anyone for the trials I did.” It had taken fancy footwork to avoid cruelty while making himself valuable enough not to be killed. Lars had wanted weapons. Marcus had given him theories. And, apparently, the foundation for a large-scale berserker spell. “Are you concerned I’ll hurt you?”

“Hurt
me?
” She crumpled her empty paper plate. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Do you like being hurt?” He had wondered. That was another variable he hadn’t calculated and wasn’t sure it would lend itself to his thesis anyway.

She crossed her arms. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s not complicated. Do you like pain?” He pictured her on her hands and knees, her ass pink from a spanking. Her slit wet and shining because of it. Perhaps that was something he could incorporate, if required. The sexual urges he felt toward Katie were more forceful than he’d ever experienced. He hadn’t been around enticing females since his transformation, and wasn’t sure if it was him—or her.

He hoped it was her, because he didn’t appreciate his wolf changing him in yet another intrinsic fashion.

“When I said the bullet wound made me giddy, I was kidding.” Her fingers tapped her elbows. “Is there some reason you need to know my pain tolerance?”

So he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed asking questions. “Your, ah, completion is necessary in phase one.”

“Well, that’s good news.” Red tinged her cheeks. “And here I thought you wanted to see how tough I was.”

“Is there anything else I should know about your preferences?” One thing he’d verified—non-orgasmic sex acts didn’t push a witch over the edge. He’d had several encounters with his test female before spending the night with her and transforming himself.

“I like chocolate, gift cards to the organic grocer and long walks on the beach.”

“You require romance?” he asked, secretly intrigued. Romance meant pursuit and seduction, and pursuing Katie appealed to him. “Last night you were ready to—”

She cut him off. “That was another joke, courtesy of that hilarious comedienne Chang Cai. I agreed to your terms. Trying to woo me would be ridiculous at this point.” She lowered her gaze. “I know this is business to you.”

He’d do his best to make it business, but pleasure snagged his imagination. Carnal images that had little to do with professional inquiry flashed before him. The idea of removing Katie’s clothing was giving him his three hundred and seventh hard-on of the past twenty-four hours.

“You’ll benefit from my success,” he told her, uncrossing his legs for comfort. “If we can recover transformed wolves, keepers won’t be as necessary. Lars will be demoted. He won’t be able to attack us. You’ll be safe. One assumes the community will be grateful to you for your part in the discovery.”

“Is that your locker room speech?” She raised a fist. “Go team. We got spirit.”

What did she expect? As much as he’d like to coax her, seduce her or chase her, she’d nixed wooing. “We don’t have to be antagonistic. We just have to follow procedure.”

She sighed and sat on the bed, which he hadn’t put up last night. She toed off her shoes. “Do you have the whole thing diagrammed?”

“Not yet. I’ll work on it this afternoon while you nap.”

“Mmm, titillating. Have at it, Dr. Ruth. I’m going to sleep.” She crawled onto the mattress and curled on the far side of it, her back to him.

Katie wouldn’t transform tonight—but he had to make damn sure she felt as if she was going to. She needed to understand the wolf inside her in order to help lead him back to his magic.

The niggling discomfort he felt with regard to their bargain meant nothing. He’d had sex for science five point five times, and the ladies hadn’t considered themselves mistreated. Sure, they hadn’t known, but Katie being in the loop should enhance productivity.

Moreover, she desired him. They both knew it. If he could approach this from a research angle, he should be able to remain objective. He’d get his analysis and she’d get her sex. Why was this transaction in any way a bad thing?

Katie handed the sex charts back to Marcus and shot him a sour look. She’d managed to sleep, despite her guilt over deserting her family in a Dumpster, her unease about Lars and her qualms about the night ahead. A small, fresh pocket of magic simmered inside her. She was loathe to use it for Marcus’s bullshit experiment.

Yes, she wanted to sleep with him. Oh, hell yes. But why did they have to jump into this? They had larger concerns. His crazy theories weren’t going anywhere, and Tonya, Dad and Vern might be. His rationale that recovering transformed wolves would protect her from Lars wasn’t that compelling.

Lars wouldn’t let anything stop him from finding her now that he knew she was alive.

They should check the rendezvous point. They should don masks and sneak back to the shop. They should drive to a public phone several counties away and call Vern’s cell. They should go see a human she knew about buying a lot of guns.

But no. They were going to screw. In a very stupid way.

She suspected this was more about Marcus’s personal goals than outside factors. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could be free of him. Which was what she wanted—right?

“Did you read the charts?” Her handsome scientist, her sexy wolf, wore a lab coat, latex gloves, goggles and a frown. He’d mutated into another person while tucked away in his Airstream, his safe space, crunching numbers and diagramming the missionary position. “You can’t possibly have read the whole thing.”

“It won’t work.” Her desire had been squelched by the dispassionate way he planned to go about this. She hadn’t had sex in four years, and she’d been fantasizing about Marcus for a month.

This
was what she got?

Where was the man who’d kissed her in the middle of a crowd of humans? Where was, good Goddess, the man from last night? The one who’d strip searched her and made her so wet she’d been ready to toss their hostilities aside and beg?

If she had to fuck someone for science, she wanted that guy.

Only that guy could make her forget what she should be doing right now—finding her family.

“Why won’t it work?” Marcus shuffled the papers, returning them to chronological order. “This is a non-strenuous series of movements that should lead to the desired conclusion within an economical time-frame.”

At least he hadn’t illustrated his diagrams with stick people. “So you want me to lie on my back…”

“That would be simplest.”

“When the clock chimes once, I cast true eye and link you in.”

“I need to read your chi. At that juncture I will rise until I’m perpendicular to your body.”

“Perpendicular. Perpen…dicular.” She felt like a twelve-year-old, giggling because she’d met someone named “Peter.”

“That means our bodies form a ninety-degree angle.”

“I know what it means.” She had to bite her lip. The entire situation was becoming so farcical she wanted to laugh.

Better than crying. She could either think about Marcus’s boffing blueprint or about the torture Lars could be inflicting on Dad, Tonya and Vern. While she hadn’t had a brainstorm for rescuing them yet, hiding here, prepping for sex like a horny little coward, sat poorly with Katie’s conscience.

“What about when the clock chimes twice?” Marcus asked patiently.

“That’s when I’m supposed to narrate into the digital recorder whether I’m feeling anything magical.”

“We’ll place the recorder in a handy location,” he offered. “By stage eight you should be quite conscious of the wolf inside you.”

“Stage eight. Is that the one with the…” Was she really going to say this? “Once-per-second thrusts?”

He inserted the papers into a manila folder. “So you did read it.”

She pressed her hand to her forehead. “This is not happening.”

“You agreed,” he reminded her. “And need I remind you, I know you’re interested?”

“Am I right now?” she asked bluntly. “Smell me.”

His lips tightened. “I’m sure it’s nerves. Those should disappear once we’re underway.”

When, in stage one? That’s where he’d committed himself to two minutes per breast. That was his first move. Nowhere in the chart had he mentioned kisses. He hadn’t even graphed in a handshake.

“It’s important we don’t amend any variables.” He stripped off his lab coat, placing it in a hamper. “Think of it as a spell recipe. You create the mixture the same way each time if you want the magic to be the same.”

Her lust was gone. She had nothing left inside but worry. “No two women are the same.”

“I allowed for a five percent margin of error.” Marcus removed his shoes and stashed them in a drawer under the bed. Next he stripped off his socks.

“Are you undressing?”

He paused, socks hovering over the hamper. “Nudity is standard during sex, Katie. Is that an issue?”

“I…” Good Goddess. Did he expect her to strip like it meant nothing? Nervous and flustered—but not in an eager way—Katie stalled. “So we’re doing this now.”

“It’s 10:15 p.m., and you have enough magic for three chi readings.” He unbuttoned his shirt. Because she was so flummoxed by the situation, the sight of his chest didn’t intrigue her. “We’re fifteen minutes behind schedule, and we took the dittany. Can you sense its effect?”

The honey-based mix had given her a sweet taste in the back of her mouth and a tingly tongue. He claimed it would enable her to link with him as she did with witches.

“I can tell the spell is ready to be activated.” She’d used wild dittany in healing concoctions, but not for this. “Whether or not it will behave as promised remains to be seen.”

“Then we can proceed.”

Reluctantly she rose from the bed and walked to him like a child dreading punishment. “Can I get some privacy?”

“To undress?” He switched on the light in the bathroom, a harsh, white glare. “I’ve seen most of you already. And I am a doctor.”

“Not that kind of doctor.” She couldn’t tell if he was ribbing her. Surely, if he was in the mood to rib her, he’d be flirting. Offering her libido enhancer, complimenting her figure, double entendre-ing about completion.

From the minute he’d walked into the tattoo parlor yesterday, everything between them had felt like foreplay. Now that the time had come, he was as enthused as a fence post.

Marcus folded his shirt into a neat packet. Then he tucked the ever-present bay capsule into a bottle and slid his pants down his long, powerful legs. His entire body, everything about his physique, was perfection. His build was neither too bulky nor too lean. His white briefs, as geeky as the day was long on most men, did his hips all the favors in the world.

To her disappointment, not even the sight of his manly radiance motivated her.

Marcus calmly folded his pants, set them atop his shirt and raised an eyebrow at her. “I would like to document phase one before midnight, Katie. The intercourse stage will take twenty minutes. Then I’ll need to input the data.”

Twenty minutes. Nine stages of one to three minutes apiece. And he thought this would complete her?

Katie licked her dry lips. He’d find out, she supposed, when she did as the charts bade—and lay there. “You’re serious about this.”

“Very.” According to the fit of his white briefs, this wasn’t arousing him any more than it was her.

She stripped off her dark T-shirt, throwing it onto the floor. He frowned, of course. Next she unsnapped her pants, watching for a reaction. Any reaction.

Nope.

She slid the pants beside the crumpled shirt. She’d stashed some flower fuzz in her cuffs. The dried agrimony could turn out to be useful, and she’d noted some cedar outside the Airstream. Marcus had put his other, more interesting simples in lockboxes, as well as the gun and ammunition.

Her brassiere was a sports bra, her preference during situations that might include running and jumping. Marcus blinked twice.
Dammit. Here goes.
She stripped it over her head and shoved her panties off without ceremony.

Here she was. Birthday suited up. About to have sex.

He placed a big, warm hand on her chilled shoulder. “Place yourself on the left side of the bed so you can reach our materials.”

In stage one, she was supposed to be flat on her back. Actually, he’d written her as flat on her back the entire time, with minimal input into the proceedings, but he had allowed for her to arrange her legs as needed.

With an eyeroll, she flopped onto the bed. If Marcus remained in his scientist persona, this wouldn’t be as orgasmic an experience as he was assuming. She had a lot on her mind. Life and death, mistakes and regrets, pain and suffering, and another man. A man named Hiram Lars who wanted to kill them all.

If it turned out she wasn’t alpha and lost her magic after this, it would serve him right.

But in her heart, she knew that wasn’t the case. She was alpha. It explained too much.

Marcus fetched the kava powder he’d prepared, the digital voice recorder, a clean cloth and the small clock. She was surprised he hadn’t included a bay capsule. “Are you ready?”

“Are you?”

“Of course.” He set the clock as if readying himself for a night of sleep. “True eye first. We need a baseline.”

He’d stored the herbal mix in a shaker, which he extended to her. “Hold out your hand.” She did. He sprinkled the powder into it and clasped her hand with his own. “Link us.”

If only he meant that in a sexy way. Katie closed her eyes and spooled out her magic, stingy and cross. Sent it through the kava, waking the true eye. She sank further into Marcus’s psyche in search of his essence.

As he’d said, it wasn’t hard to connect him to the chi spell. In fact, she realized, with a poke or two, she could scoop up his magical essence from the lattice and…

Katie felt her probe snap back with a stinging blow. The true eye flared around her body, and her vision misted with the hazy dark blue of her chi.

“That’s got it,” Marcus said, satisfied. His handclasp was strong but not particularly ardent. “I should have warned you not to try and filch any power. I incorporated some defenses against that. You probably noticed the first time too.”

“I wouldn’t have taken much.” The possibilities intrigued her. Witches could borrow from wolves. If Marcus had discovered this in his time with the keepers, why hadn’t it been acknowledged by the rest of the coven network?

But then something occurred to her. “Marcus, I’ve been drained since last night. We’ve been in danger. If you could have shared your magic with me to protect Tonya and Ba, and they end up getting hurt, I will personally—”

“Your assumption is off-base.” Marcus hovered over her, his free hand outlining her aura as if caressing it. “When you’re drained, you can’t precipitate a link to absorb the magic in the first place.”

She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but he started talking into the digital recorder. “Mostly dark blue, turquoise highlights, elements of forest green, white core, of course, approximately ten percent illumination. Moving deeper, a vigorous lattice, impressive range, all directions, some that aren’t familiar. Many threads seem doubled. I’m wondering if that’s the portion of the test subject that’s convex. She’s the first keeper I… Never mind, take that out. Where was I?”

“Blue, turquoise, green?” Tonya had read Katie’s chi any number of times, if not her lattice. She said it told her Katie was quick-tempered, untrusting, passionate, practical and—most stupidly of all—easily hurt. She wasn’t so sure Marcus categorizing her as easily hurt worked in her favor.

“Not as much purple frill as I’d have expected.” His gaze cut through the aura and trained on her face. “I thought you said you were ready, Katie?”

“What, for my visit to Doctor Marcus’s Good Time Sex Clinic?” she asked. “It’s super. I’m all kinds of turned on.” As perturbed as she was, it surprised her that she continued to speak to Marcus as if they’d known each other years. Her father, Vern and Tonya were the only people she’d ever been informal with. The intensity of her and Marcus’s time together had breached her normal barriers.

Or maybe at this point she had nothing to lose.

“Ah. Well.” He wiped their palms with a damp towel as the effects of the true eye faded. “This did seem to go differently when my subjects weren’t aware it was an experiment.”

“I’m sure your Casanova act had them aflutter.” Marcus could be charismatic and sexy—she’d witnessed it herself. Apparently she didn’t merit the effort.

He climbed over her as if she was an obstacle and stretched out at her side. “Can you reach the chi mix and the digital recorder?”

She should be feeling anticipatory. Instead, she found herself wondering where Vern would have taken Dad and Tonya to hide.

“I asked you a question,” Marcus reminded her.

Right. She stretched an arm. “I can reach the table.”

“Make sure the clock is positioned where I can see it. The stages are timed. Please release the stopwatch button and place your hands above your head.”

Katie stifled a sigh. But she complied, stretching up, wondering if she could pretend this was last night and he had her handcuffed. Last night, he’d been into this. He’d been wrestling her, desiring her, and she him. It had been the hottest thing she’d ever experienced.

He cupped one of her breasts softly. His thumb skated across the nipple. His attention was laser-focused on her chest. “Are you sensitive here?”

“Normally.” Right now he could have been giving her a breast exam for all the feelings he was rousing in her. He dutifully palmed her, alternating sides, until he glanced at the clock.

“Huh.”

She clasped her hands, wondering whether it would offend him if she dozed off briefly. “What’s huh?”

He met her gaze, his eyes a deep, dark brown. “It’s been four minutes.”

“Already?” she asked in mock surprise. Time sure flew when you weren’t having fun.

He gruffed at her, “I’m going to move to the second stage.”

He rested his hand on her stomach. Katie tried to conjure up some eagerness and failed.

“There’s no stage where I get to touch you, is there?” Despite her fantasies about wolves and about Marcus—about fighting, forced seduction and handcuffs—in practice Katie had never been passive in bed. She trusted no man enough to surrender control. She chose her partners, what they did, and when. What would he do if she flipped him onto his back and went down on him? Would he deny himself a blow job because he hadn’t calculated it as part of the trial?