Magic Bleeds kd-4 Page 19

  We lay together for a while, until the cold air from the open window got to me and I shivered.

  “You’re cold.” He rose and went to close the window.

  My gown clung to my legs and bunched around my waist. I wriggled and slid it off.

  “We’ve ruined your Princess Buttercup dress,” he said.

  “I have the worst luck with that dress.” I raised myself on the elbow to kick it off and caught sight of my apartment. We’d wrecked the place. “At least the building is still standing.”

  “I pride myself on restraint,” he said.

  I laughed.

  We picked the pillows up off the floor and found the blanket. He slid into bed next to me, and I wrapped myself around him, my head on his chest.

  “What the freak said, it’s not like that,” Curran said.

  “I know,” I told him and kissed the corner of his jaw.

  “I’ve never forced anyone and I don’t lie to you.”

  “I know.”

  A long, sad whine rolled through the apartment.

  Curran frowned. “Is that your mongrel?”

  “He’s an attack poodle. I found him at an incident scene, washed him, shaved him, and now he guards the house and barfs on the carpet.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I stretched against him. “Grendel.”

  “Odd name for a poodle.” He turned, taking full advantage of the fact that my breasts were squished against him.

  “He came into a mead hall full of warriors in the middle of the night and scared them half to death.”

  “Ahh. That explains it.” His hand caressed my shoulder, then my back. It was a deceptively casual caress, and it made me want to rub myself against him. He leaned in closer and kissed me. His teeth grazed my lower lip. He kissed my chin and began working his way down my neck. Mmmm . . .

  “I read lions can have sex thirty times a day,” I murmured.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, but it only lasts half a minute. Would you prefer the twenty-second special?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What woman could pass on that offer?”

  His hand cupped my breast. His fingers brushed my nipple and I shivered.

  “I’m not all lion,” Curran said. “But I do bounce back quickly.”

  “How quickly?”

  He shrugged. “Two minutes.”

  Oh, boy.

  “I do slow down eventually,” he said. “After the first couple of hours or so.”

  Couple of hours . . . I slid my hand down his chest to his stomach, feeling the hard ridges of muscle. I’d wanted to do that for so long. “It’s good that we have a whole box of condoms.”

  He laughed low, like a satiated predatory cat, and swung me on top of him.

  CHAPTER 18

  I OPENED MY EYES, SAW LIGHT, AND JERKED UP-RIGHT.

  The magic was still down. Thank the universe.

  The bed was back in its rightful place. Oh, good. I’d dreamed the whole thing up.

  Curran walked into the room. He wore Pack sweatpants he must’ve gotten out of my closet and nothing else. Toned muscle bulged on his chest and arms, hardened by constant exertion. He had the build of a man who fought for his life—neither too bulky, nor too lean, a perfect combination of strength and supple quickness.

  And he grinned like a man who’d had a rather long and exciting night.

  Nope. Not a dream.

  I did sleep with him. Dear God.

  Curran’s gray eyes laughed at me. “Morning.”

  “Tell me I’m still sleeping.”

  He showed me the edge of his teeth. “No.”

  I lay back down and pulled the sheet on top of me. I couldn’t have been that reckless.

  “It’s too late for that,” he said. “I’ve already seen everything. Actually I’m pretty sure I’ve already touched and tasted everything, too.”

  “I just need a moment to cope with this.”

  “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  That was what I was afraid of.

  It occurred to me that I didn’t hear any barking. “Where is my dog?”

  “I let him out.”

  I jerked up. “On his own?”

  “He’ll come back once he’s done. He knows where the food is.”

  Curran strode over to the bed, moving silently, his bare toes gripping the floor lightly as he walked, as if he still had claws. He really was an incredibly attractive bastard. He leaned over the bed. His lips brushed mine. He kissed me. And I kissed him back. He tasted of Curran and toothpaste. Clearly, I had lost my mind.

  “Did I hurt you last night?”

  I could’ve used many words to describe last night, but pain wasn’t one of them. “No.”

  “I wasn’t sure since you told me to stop.”

  “Yes, at five in the morning.” He just kept going and going, and at about five o’clock, my body gave out. “I had to have sleep. But I’m nice and rested now.” Why did that just come out of my mouth?

  He looked like a cat who’d gotten into a pantry and had himself a cream and catnip party. “Is that a hint?”

  “Would you like it to be?” I just couldn’t stop myself.

  He grinned and slid into the bed next to me. “Yes.”

  Half an hour later, I escaped and started looking for my clothes. The air smelled of java—he’d made coffee for me.

  I got dressed and went into the kitchen to fry an omelet and call Andrea for updates.

  “You’re two hours late,” she told me. “Are you okay? You’re never late. Do you need me to come and get you?”

  “No. I’m fine. Just tired.”

  Curran loaded bread into the toaster.

  “Any news of my Mary?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  We dodged the bullet. “Thanks.”

  “Wait, don’t hang up.”

  “Yes?”

  Andrea lowered her voice. “Raphael found out more gossip about the gym thing.”

  Curran glanced at me.

  I had to head her off at the pass before she said something Raphael would regret. “Now isn’t the best time . . .”

  “Look, you, I’m hiding in the armory with the phone, watching the door, and whispering so nobody will overhear me. I feel like a kid cutting class hiding in the bathroom with a joint. The least you can do is hear me out. Raphael says that Curran lay there on the weight bench for fifteen whole minutes trying to lift the damn bar, even though it was welded on there.”

  Curran’s face took on an inscrutable impression.

  “Aha,” I said. “Aha” was a good word. Noncommittal.

  “He broke it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He broke the bar off. And then he smashed the bench with the bar. Bashed the thing to pieces.”

  Just kill me now. “Aha.”

  “He must have a lot of frustration. The man’s unstable. So watch your back, okay?”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  I hung up and looked at him. “You broke the bench.”

  “You broke it. I just finished the job.”

  “It wasn’t one of my brightest moments.”

  He shrugged. “No. I just didn’t get it until I saw the catnip. I thought you were taunting me. It was unexpected.” He growled under his breath. “I’m going to muzzle Raphael.”

  “He just wants his financial machinations approved.”

  “Are you asking me to do this for him?”

  “No.”

  I turned the gas off and got out two blue metal plates. I’d given up on breakable plates after the last time my front door got broken and demonic mermaids wrecked my kitchen. I split the omelet between the plates and stopped when Curran’s arms closed about me. He pulled me against him, pressing my back against his chest. I heard him inhale my scent. His lips grazed my temple. Here we were, alone, in my kitchen, holding each other while breakfast cooled on the table. This was some sort of alternate universe, with a different Kate, who wasn’t hunted lik
e a wild animal and who could have these sorts of things.

  “What’s up?” I asked softly.

  “Just making sure you know you’re caught.”

  He kissed my neck and I leaned against him. I could stay for days wrapped in him like this. I’d sunk in way too fast and way too deep. Yes, this was all well and good, but what happened when he saw the next conquest on the horizon? The thought cut at me. Apparently, I was still fragile. “I didn’t break any bones last night, did I?”

  “No. But that was a hell of a kick. I saw pretty lights for a moment or two.”

  “Served you right.”

  We broke apart, slightly awkward. He checked the fridge. “Is there any pie?”

  “In the bread box.”

  He extracted the pie from the box and sniffed the crust. “Apple.”

  “Made it yesterday.” Magic apples thawed well.

  “For me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Before or after the chair?”

  “After. Although I was really pissed off at you. What the hell did you use?”

  “Industrial glue. It’s inert until you add a catalyst to it. I took off the fabric and filled the chair with a bag of glue in thin plastic, covered the plastic with catalyst, put sponges on top, and reupholstered the thing.”

  That was why it didn’t feel weird sitting on it. The moment I sat down, the bag broke, glue and catalyst mixed, and the sponges stuck to my butt. “That must’ve taken a long time.”

  “I was very motivated.”

  “Did you know the glue produces heat when mixed with acetone?”

  His lips curved. “Yes.”

  “Would it have killed you to mention it?”

  He chuckled.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” I growled.

  Curran dug into his omelet. I drank my coffee and watched him try my cooking. Most shapeshifters avoided spicy food. It dulled their senses. I’d used half of the salt I normally stuck in there, and none of the jalapeños made it in.

  For some reason it was terribly important that he liked it.

  He hooked a piece of omelet with his fork and chewed it with obvious pleasure. “Did Doolittle talk to you about the body?”

  “No. Any news on the missing shapeshifters?”

  Curran nodded. His face turned grim.

  “Bad news?” I guessed.

  “They went wild.”

  I stopped with the coffee cup halfway to my mouth. It was often said that the shapeshifter had only two options: going Code or going loup. The first demanded sacrifice and iron discipline, the second catapulted them down the path of wild abandon, turning them into murderous cannibalistic maniacs. There was the third option, which almost never happened. A shapeshifter could forget their humanity completely. It wasn’t loupism in the strict sense, because loups shifted into human shape frequently, if only to taunt their victims while they ripped them apart. Wild shapeshifters regressed so deeply into their animal forms that they lost the ability to transform, to speak, and probably to form coherent human thoughts. Going wild was so rare, I could count the known cases on the fingers of one hand. It usually happened when a shapeshifter was forced to maintain animal form for extended periods of time—months, sometimes years.

  Unfortunately wild shapeshifters still carried Lyc-V. If they bit a human and the human became a loup, the Pack would bear responsibility for it. That was the greatest burden of the alphas. Sometimes they had to kill their own people.

  “Did you . . . ?”

  “It wasn’t me, but it was done. The bodies are being brought to the Keep today.”

  “What would cause them to go wild?” I stirred my coffee.

  Curran reached over and brushed my hand with his fingers. “Sometimes fear does it. When little kids get startled, they often go furry to run away.”

  “So she terrified them to the point they forgot they were human?”

  Curran stopped. “She?”

  Thin ice. Proceed with extreme caution. If I mentioned Saiman, it might set him off. “I think it might be a woman. She pilots the undead mages the way navigators pilot vampires.”

  He chewed on that. “One of Roland’s?”

  “I don’t know yet. You’ll know the second I do.”

  Curran cut two pieces of pie and put one in front of me. “How long will you need to pack?”

  And the happy morning screeched to a halt. “Why would I need to pack?” I asked casually.

  “Because you’re coming to the Keep with me.” He delivered it as a fact. His face wore the familiar blank expression I’d come to define as the Beast Lord’s “my way or the highway” look. He was actually serious about this.

  “Why?”

  “She saw you at the Guild. She could track you down here. It’s not safe here.”

  “Nice try. She’s targeting you, not me.” If I gave him any hint Roland was after me, he would carry me to the damn Keep and hide me in an armored room.

  “I want you with me,” he said. “It’s not a request.”

  “Too bad. You must’ve forgotten, Your Fuzziness, that I don’t do well with orders.”

  We locked stares over the table.

  “You have no sense of self-preservation.”

  “And you expect me to commute two hours each way from the Keep to the Order.” I kept my voice mild. “I suppose I won’t be needing my job, my house, or my clothes anymore.”

  “I didn’t say that. Although let me get back to you on the clothes. It’s still under consideration.”

  “Look, you don’t get to run my life. We slept together once—”

  He held up seven fingers.

  “Fine,” I squeezed through my teeth. “We had sex seven times in a twenty-four-hour period. Just because I’m your lover—”

  “Mate.”

  Words died in my mouth. In shapeshifter terms, mate meant monogamy, family, children—a union, civil, physical, and spiritual. It meant marriage. Apparently he hadn’t given up on that idea.

  “Mate,” I said finally, tasting the word.

  He winked at me. Dear God.

  I gave him my hard stare. “You’re a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”

  A wicked spark lit his eyes. “Many, many times.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Did I hit you too hard on the head?”

  “My mate lives with me,” he said. “In the Keep.”

  “Have you had many mates before?”

  He gave me a look reserved for the mentally challenged. “I had lovers.”

  “So this is a new rule you made up on the spot?”

  “That’s a perk of being the Beast Lord. You get to make up rules.”

  Going to the Keep was out of the question. They were already in danger, but it would be nothing compared to what would happen if I moved in. Curran protected his people, and I endangered them. I forced my voice to sound normal. “Any other Curran rules I need to know about? Might as well get them out now, so I can veto all of them.”

  “You don’t get to veto my rules,” he said.

  I laughed. “This will never work.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Let’s trade,” he said. “You tell me what you have to have and I’ll tell you what I want.”

  He was trying to negotiate. I must’ve won a victory somewhere. Either that or last night was as good for him as it was for me. “Okay.”

  He invited me with a wave of his fork. “You start.”

  “The Order is off the table,” I said. “I’m not quitting.”

  “I didn’t say you had to.” He leveled a heavy stare on me.

  “But since you insist, I agree. The Order is off the table. My turn.”

  Danger, danger . . . “Okay.”

  “Monogamy,” he stated flatly. “While you’re with me, I’m the only one. Anybody else touches you and I’ll kill them.”

  “What if I accidentally bump into someone?”

  Gold flashed in his eyes. “Don’t.”


  Apparently he refused to feel humorous about this situation. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You said yourself, I’m a control freak. I’m a jealous, possessive bastard and I’m not as human as some. You have no idea what last night cost me. Betray me and I’ll kill him. If you don’t want to be with me, tell me. Don’t go behind my back. I’m trying to be as honest as I can. So there are no surprises.”

  “You do realize that killing the other male makes no sense. If I cheat on you, I’m at fault, not him. He didn’t promise you anything.”

  “It’s not about logic. That’s the way Pack works. I would be within my rights to kill anyone trying to take my mate. I would be expected to do it, I’d want to do it, and I would do it.”

  I pointed the fork at him. “Fine. But the parade stops now.”

  “What parade?”

  “Your girlfriend parade.”

  His eyebrows crept up. “Girlfriend parade?”

  “Curran, you cheat on me and we’re done. That’s fair.”

  “Kate, it goes both ways. If anyone tries to make a pass at me, you’re welcome to their throat.”

  “I don’t care about people making passes at you. I only care if you act on it.”

  “Agreed. The girlfriend parade stops.” He bared his teeth in a happy feral grin. My own personal psycho. “I kind of figured that out when you melted the lock on my guestroom in a fit of jealousy.”

  “You don’t say.” I picked at my omelet.

  “My turn. The not-talking thing—we’ll never do that again.”

  “Boy, that really bugged you, did it?”

  He growled. “Yes, it did.”

  “Okay. I promise never to stop talking to you. You may come to regret this.”

  He grimaced. “I’m sure. We can discuss it in more detail, at the Keep.”

  “And what will the rest of your subjects think about that?”

  He shrugged. “The Pack functions best when hierarchy is clear. Right now most people don’t know why I was irritable, and those who do know are unsure where we stand, so everyone is walking on eggshells. It will be better once the Pack sees us together.”

  No matter what rocks I threw at him, he refused to deviate from his course. I chose my words very carefully. “I’d rather they didn’t.”

  He sat completely still. His voice gained a low dangerous edge. “Are you ashamed of being with me?”