Lions' Pride Read online

“What?”

  “I missed my last two doses of Drozz. I’m about due for the morning dose and it’s at home. I guess I’ll have to…” Then his pupils widened, turning his eyes entirely black, and he grinned. No, he snarled. He showed his teeth, but it wasn’t a human smile. “The hell with that!”

  “What?”

  “I’m tired of playing their game. I’ve done it all my life. Been a good boy, followed their rules, pretended to be human. But I’m not human. Ever since the other night, I haven’t been able to forget that. Jude and you…you’ve changed me.”

  Fear and lack of sleep, she figured, must be catching up with her, because Rafe was talking in code.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We’re getting Jude back. I’m not sure how yet, but we will. And when we do, when we go up against the Agency, I’m going in as who I am. A dual, not a human.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Where had that come from? He was a cougarside dual, sure, but that didn’t mean he knew how to be one.

  “What the hell am I thinking?” He stood and started pacing, hoping the movement would jar him into thinking clearly. “Going up against the Agency with only two people is a sure way to die.”

  “Got a better idea? An army for rent, maybe?”

  He thought about Jude, about his blunt words that had rearranged his head. No, he didn’t have a better idea—he hoped like hell they could come up with one—but if necessary, he’d try the crazy, suicidal one. “And while we’re at it, what’s up with my brain lately? You don’t forget Drozz after ten years. It’s like forgetting to breathe.”

  He didn’t expect an answer, but he got one—just not one he liked. “Something’s leading you, I think, but I don’t know what or why.” Elissa reached out like she wanted to touch him, then drew back.

  Rafe shook his head and sighed. “Great.” What was that supposed to mean for someone who wasn’t sure he believed in fate or a higher power?

  It was all Elissa’s fault somehow. Elissa’s and Jude’s. He didn’t believe in love at first sight anymore than he believed in fate, but whatever was going on here, with the colors and the sense of power and healing, it was more than just his hormones reacting to the presence of a sexy woman. Or a hot man, for that matter. Too quick to be love, but it was something major.

  God, this family was going to be the death of him—although he might die with a big, idiotic grin on his face and his hand in his pants. Or in a fiery ball of magic and gunfire at the Agency’s hands, but he’d rather not think about that.

  Rafe’s cock, still half-hard from the earlier kisses, began to throb and ache. Elissa was so close, so very soft and tempting, smelling of sex with Jude and new arousal.

  She’d been sweet in his arms when he kissed her, moving against him like she was in heat. He imagined she’d also felt something more than simple desire, something akin to the sense of completion he’d felt as their lips met. He’d never felt incomplete before, but he felt more whole with her—no, with them—than he ever had. If only he could reach out, caress her until her juices bubbled and boiled like lava, then bury his aching cock deep in her sex…

  It would help you find Jude, he distinctly heard in his head—a deep, rumbling voice. Was the voice part of being a dual that he didn’t know about? Some kind of weird instinctual prompting?

  Yes, that weird inner voice said, or maybe the right word was snarled.

  No, his common sense told him. This—like the aura of colors he saw around Elissa, like the inexplicable connection to both Elissa and Jude—was all part of Drozz withdrawal, or of starting to experience his dual senses for the first time in ten years. Things were bound to be bizarre for a while.

  His dick made its opinion known: nothing helped what ailed a man, be it drug withdrawal or a plain old-fashioned attack of the crazies, like a warm, willing female body.

  His dick might have a point.

  He took a step forward, brain bewildered, but body eager.

  “I’m sorry about what happened earlier,” Elissa said quietly. She hugged herself. It hid her breasts a little, but hiked up her big T-shirt to expose the curve of her ass. He tried not to be obvious about checking it out. “I don’t know… I’ve never… Listen, I’m a witch and we’re monogamous. I needed a warm body to cling to for a few minutes, and things got out of hand. It can’t happen again. Ever.” She bowed her head, half covering her face in a fall of red hair.

  Rafe looked away. She’d opened a door to someplace beautiful with that kiss then she’d slammed it in his face. But what had he expected? The fact she’d kissed him at all proved how desperately scared she must be.

  How much she trusts you, that weird inner voice suggested.

  He nodded absently. “I understand. I’m sorry, too.” More than he could ever say.

  Because he had no idea who else he’d ask, he threw out something that to Elissa must sound like the non-sequitur to end all non-sequiturs. “Does Jude’s lion talk to him when he’s in human form?”

  Elissa gaped for only a second before she caught up with his runaway train of thought. “The lionside communicates with the human side—Jude calls it the wordside—but it’s not exactly in words. He says something pops into his brain, and it makes sense to him, but when he tries to explain it to me, it’s alien. You and your animalside are the same being, but the animal perceives things…”

  “Differently?”

  “Yeah. And it makes sense to Jude, but not always to me.” Her eyes narrowed. “Your cougar’s trying to tell you something, isn’t it?”

  Rafe nodded. “It thinks it knows how to locate Jude, maybe even rescue him. But you’re not going to like it.”

  He told her.

  He was absolutely right. She didn’t like it, not one bit.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elissa felt her face going first red, then white, then red again. Her body burned with indignation—and with more arousal than she wanted to admit—as Rafe explained what he thought his cougar was suggesting. His posture—dark eyes lowered, his body half turned away from her as if making it easier for her to repudiate him—suggested shame. But his cock filled the crotch of his jeans proudly, and the angled view showed off the bulge, as well as his flat stomach and the sweet shape of his ass.

  In the pale, watery dawn filtering through the kitchen curtains, Rafe’s coppery skin offered the only warmth. He should have been wearing a feather headdress and war paint in some old painting romanticizing noble savages instead of standing in her kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of faded Levis.

  She didn’t want to stare at him, didn’t want to appreciate his masculine beauty. Wanted to maintain righteous indignation. But with Rafe in front of her, it was hard to think clearly.

  Images rushed through her head. Recaps of their kiss and the shameless way she’d responded, her magic as well as her body reacting to his touch as passionately as to Jude’s. The vision of Rafe stroking himself, the way his strong-featured, handsome face contorted with pleasure so fierce it was almost pain. Rafe lying over her, his thick cock filling her almost as perfectly as Jude’s, while Jude, in turn, drove into his ass. Rafe’s cock in her mouth while Jude fucked her. Rafe leaning against her knee, quietly and companionably, as she stroked his tawny cougar coat. Jude, too heavy to lean on her comfortably, sprawled on a rug within easy reach, his throbbing lion purr filling the house.

  Rafe’s sage and gold aura woven into the house’s defenses.

  A child snuggled in Jude’s arms, a baby with Rafe’s coloring and the green and red aura of a Donovan witch.

  Elissa’s breath caught in her throat.

  On fire. She burned for the second time this terrible night. Only where the first had been pure pain, this was sweet heat, and more frightening for that.

  “How dare you,” she blustered, the only reaction she could think of that didn’t betray her confusion, her lust, her self-induced madness that told her maybe she should listen to him. “Trying to take advantage of Ju
de’s danger… I told you. I’m a witch. We don’t do things like that.”

  “I know. I told you you wouldn’t like it. It doesn’t feel moral to me, either. I have a rule about not playing with married people. But it feels right.” He put his hand on his chest, over his heart—a gesture she’d seen Jude make when trying to explain some lion prompting that sounded completely fucked-up when put into human terms. It meant Cross my heart, I mean what I’m saying. I don’t quite get it either, but I mean it. “There’s some kind of power between us when we touch, and my cougar swears if we make love, we can use that power to rescue Jude.”

  Hearing it a second time didn’t make it any easier.

  A witch raised strictly in the Donovan tradition shouldn’t consider such a suggestion. Red magic could destabilize hearth, home and heart if used injudiciously, so the Donovan tradition developed layer upon layer of rules about its use that boiled down to one thing: anything other than monogamy was too risky.

  But Elissa wasn’t just a Donovan.

  She was Josie Clemens the wild witch’s granddaughter as well. Grandma Josie taught her—when the rest of the family wasn’t paying attention—there was more to magic than the ways laid out in the Donovan grimoires.

  What would Grandma Josie do?

  Not simply jump into bed with this guy. But Grandma wouldn’t dismiss the evidence of her seven senses and Rafe’s cougar, either. She’d find another way.

  “If you’re serious about trying to help Jude,” she finally said, “I have an idea. It may not be what you want to hear—” Powers, it wasn’t what certain insistent, if not very smart, parts of her wanted her to say—“but it might work. Without compromising my marriage.”

  “I’m all for win-win situations. Tell me more.” Rafe cocked his head to one side, classic “cat studying something interesting” pose. She thought he was trying to diffuse the conversation by being cute, but he wasn’t built to do cute and the way he studied her was far too intense. More like a cat stalking prey, only with an edge that went straight to her cunt.

  Just keep talking. She’d use these feelings later, and meanwhile she’d do her best to ignore them.

  “Almost all Donovans are red witches—that is, we do sex magic—to some degree and we need to learn to channel our powers when we’re pretty young. Only you’ve heard how insular witch families are, right?”

  Rafe nodded. “They talked about it a little at the Academy, and I saw that PBS documentary, even though it was probably crap.”

  “It’s all true. Most of it, anyway, except the part where we’re a cabal secretly running the government. There sure as Powers wouldn’t be an Agency if we were. The point is we live in extended families—I’m considered a freak because I got a full-time job away from the family compound—and that makes learning red magic tricky because everyone around is related to you. And of course some people are gay, but for certain spells you need both male and female principles involved. You see the problem?”

  He nodded and leaned forward. His gaze was still intense, but the heat was banked, his eyes serious in a way that told her he was striving to understand, not just pretending to listen.

  “So we’ve developed basic exercises where people can raise power together without touching. It’s not as powerful as partnered sex, but it works. And if the only tool we have is a hammer, we’d better use the damn hammer, even if we need a crowbar.”

  “Or a nuke.” He tried to smile. It didn’t quite come off, but she appreciated the effort. “I’ve got the magical abilities of a cardboard box, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “I’ll do the actual magic. Your part is to get yourself really turned on, but not come until I say it’s okay. Can you handle it?”

  He said, “Oh, yeah!” but flushed ruddy as he did. The aroused embarrassment, echoing her own, made her want to hug him.

  Elissa fought the urge for a heartbeat, then gave in to it. She did her best to make it a friendly hug, not a lover’s embrace, but as soon as they were skin to skin, her magic flared, her nipples ached and she canted her pelvis forward to press against his thigh, her sex desperate for contact.

  Okay, bad idea. She pulled back to an exaggerated buddy-hug, A-frame position, putting some distance between their bodies. “Thank you,” she whispered. He ruffled her hair, and even that awkward, brotherly gesture made her stifle a groan of pleasure.

  “No problem.” He sounded edgy himself and looked both aggrieved and relieved when she stepped away.

  Elissa wasn’t ready to let Rafe into the bedroom she shared with Jude. Instead, she opted for the kitchen, a hearth in its own right and the only room where she felt there might be some resonance for Rafe, since it was where he’d first been pulled into their home and their life.

  She set up kitchen chairs facing each other on opposite ends of the room, not a long distance, but long enough that if either of them had a regrettable impulse, they’d have to walk a few steps and maybe have time to come to their senses.

  “Take off your clothes,” she said, wishing her voice sounded less small and squeaky, “and sit down.”

  She was still in Jude’s T-shirt. At least it made it easy to undress. Anything more complicated, she suspected, would have defeated her trembling hands.

  In what was either seconds or centuries, they were naked and seated, facing each other.

  Elissa didn’t want to meet Rafe’s eyes, but looking at any other part of him was worse. She opted for the moment to stare at a stain on the floor roughly halfway between them, where Jude had spilled his morning au jus and didn’t wipe it up.

  She felt an instinctive pang of annoyance at his sloppiness. Sometimes her husband seemed to lack thumbs—or be all thumbs—in his wordy form, and he was terrible about cleaning up after himself. Hells, the lion would have licked it up, if only to not waste the tasty beef juice…

  Then she cringed.

  If they couldn’t rescue Jude, would that damn stain turn into a memorial?

  Focus on the spell. If they couldn’t find out where he was, they couldn’t save him.

  Fighting roiling stomach brought on by a wicked cross between anxiety and arousal, Elissa forced herself to look at Rafe. He sat Victorian proper on the edge of his chair, his spine straight, his legs together, and he was chewing on his lower lip. His full, kissable lower lip. The tense posture only accented the lines of his muscles. He was Greek-statue perfect, except most Greek statues didn’t have hard-ons. More sleekly built than her husband, he was strong and toned, with abs she’d love to nibble her way down until she reached…

  Focus on the ritual. “I honor your body as I honor the God,” she said, “the male principle in all life.”

  He replied as she’d instructed him. “And I honor your body as I honor the Goddess, the female principle.”

  He sounded hesitant. Natural enough. Magic was unfamiliar, and so, probably, were the words. Normy pagans were a minority.

  But when he finished speaking, he licked his lips. She didn’t think it was nerves, not with the heat of lust in his dark gaze and the rise in his cock. His posture relaxed as he slid into a more comfortable position. She’d done the same thing, she realized, and the awful tension in her muscles had eased a bit now that they’d gotten started.

  Never taking their eyes off each other, they began to stroke themselves.

  Elissa’s pussy was drenched, her clit so swollen she jumped as soon as she touched it, had to back off so she didn’t build too fast to a climax. The point was to build desire, and with it, energy.

  But it wasn’t going to be easy. Powers, no.

  This had never seemed so erotic with her cousins.

  Almost all the cousins were handsome guys—not surprisingly, most red witches were attractive—but they were still her cousins, guys she’d known since they were all snotty-nosed brats running up and down a rocky Oregon beach. You tried to focus on the power, not the partner.

  This time, Elissa was definitely focusing on the partner.

  Rafe’s b
ody was more compact than Jude’s, more on the same scale she was, at least compared to Jude’s six foot five. A cougar tattooed just above his heart twitched as his hand moved up and down the length of his shaft.

  His very thick and nicely shaped shaft that she could all too easily imagine wrapping her lips around, or sliding into her wet sex.

  She ached to cup her hand over his, to feel his silken heat, to learn how he liked to pleasure himself.

  Focus. Focus on the power forming around him.

  Not on the intent way he studied her fingers circling her clit.

  Not on his hungry smile when she let out an involuntary gasp of need. Certainly not on the bead of pre-come on the head of his cock. She shouldn’t be able to see it that clearly from across the room, but to her witch-sight it glowed like a luminescent pearl.

  She wanted to lick it off, wanted to take his whole cock deep into her throat—and then inside her pussy. She couldn’t. Couldn’t do it, shouldn’t even think it.

  Focus on the power rising, that red, throbbing energy.

  Shameless in the face of the magic—or maybe in the face of Rafe, but she didn’t want to consider that—she spread her legs wider and penetrated herself. She was wet enough that she slid two fingers in without any resistance.

  Lord and Lady, that felt too damn good.

  How could she be so turned on when Jude was missing, endangered?

  She was a red witch. Sexuality was a pleasure, but it was also a tool. So was her arousal. So was Rafe, at the moment.

  A tool. A means to an end.

  That was all this could be—all Rafe could be for her.

  She saw the rising power with her witch-sight. It vibrated through her whole body, spiraling from both of them to form a cone of red and green and gold.

  “Think about Jude,” she said, her voice ragged. “I know you don’t really know him, but there’s a connection. So think about him. And I’m going to try to ride the line of our marriage and reach him.”

  Rafe nodded, but his abs were quivering, his eyes screwed shut. “Don’t come,” Elissa warned. “Hold it—ride the arousal.”