Mind Mates (Pull of the Moon Book 2) (6 page)

In truth, the reason she couldn’t sleep was that Gabriel’s masculine scent, so strong it was as if he was in the cabin with her, was driving her wild. Tangy, it smelled of exertion and power and…and the heady musk of
arousal.

Sitting abruptly, she groaned a laugh at herself. Now she
knew
she was imagining things. He wasn’t in the room with her, couldn’t be—not making this strong lusty scent. He’d never ever smelled the least horny when she was around.

She
did, though. Reeked of it. She looked down at herself, her tight nipples poking at her sports bra, her sex throbbing and damp beneath her panties.

Throwing herself back onto the mattress, she flopped around a few more minutes before sighing and sitting up again. No sleeping like this. She’d have to take care of business first.

She stripped off her bra.

A thud, like a dense cushion hitting the bulkhead, stopped her. Frowning, she looked around. But no, the small cabin was empty.

She shook her head, stood, and wriggled out of her panties.

Air moved, as if in a great sigh.

Again she stilled, but aside from that persistent scent of masculine arousal, she saw nothing and heard nothing more.

Lying back down, she raised her knees and slipped her hand between her legs.

She thought of Gabriel. What would it be like to see him where her arm was? Would he look dark next to her skin, or pale? Would his waist fill the gap between her thighs…or spread them even wider?

She’d seen a number of males where her hand stroked—shifters in general were sexual creatures, and even as an iota she’d had her choice of beds—but something told her that Gabriel would be one of a kind. His size, his strength, powering into her…her sex heated and got wet under her fingers, the lips plump and soft. She stroked, thinking of his arms tight around her until her clit rose, its tiny shaft hardening.

Would his finger feel different, rubbing her swelling clit? His hands were so much larger than hers; his fingers would be too. Maybe one of his would be like two of hers. She added a second finger and pretended it was him doing this to her. The scent of him filling her nostrils drove extra power into her strokes.

Her skin began to prickle with perspiration. Would he glisten with sweat as he moved over her, kissing her body? Would his lips tease like feathers or glide along her skin like silk? Or would he use
teeth…

Her sex clenched under her fingers. She rubbed harder, slipping in her own arousal.

When he finally entered her, would he slide in like grease because she was dripping wet? Or would he be almost too big for her and
stretch
her?

She gasped as the first ripples of orgasm hinted at what was coming. Huge, dark, shockingly strong. Much like Gabriel himself.

Would his muscles sheen as he pumped into her? Her hips bumped in rhythm with her hand then started jerking beyond her control. Her breath, sawing in and out, heated and cooled her wet mouth. She tweaked one nipple, imagining it was his hot mouth closing on it with nips that
pinched.

Orgasm rolled over her, opening every pore in her body. She was coming
now.

Would he shout as he climaxed into her? Would he roar her name?

Emma.

She almost heard it for real, a moan of purest anguished desire.

Arching hard, she came, industrial contractions and an explosion of light and pleasure. Smelling him, she vibrated her whole hand, reinforcing the contractions, extending them out into a gorgeous sunset of sensation.

Gradually she came to herself, heart thudding. Clean, refreshed. Happy.

Would he hold her tenderly after?

She pretended he would. With a sigh, she curled up, and went to sleep.

Chapter Six

Gabriel braced himself against the stateroom bulkhead and tried to control his shaking need to bury himself between Emma’s sleek, wet thighs.

Death, he reminded himself. Crispy fried with a side of decapitation.

He’d been invisible, watching her. He hadn’t meant to. Really, he’d offered her the cabin because she needed it, and because he thought he could go slum with his familiar after he gave her the key.

But when he got to Pan’s stateroom there was a metaphysical sock on the door.

He’d returned to the general cabin to find Emma but got sidetracked helping the mother with her baby. By the time he finished, Emma had disappeared, so he returned to his cabin, intending only to stay a mere moment to gather his thoughts, using a talisman to magically open the lock—because after that teleport, he was fried. Even a single-body teleportation was a horrendous power suck, and he’d done two bodies and the whole snap-crackle-damned car.

Before he could decide what to do, he’d heard the scrape of key.

He really didn’t want to have to explain to Emma how he got into a locked stateroom without a key—did not want to have to admit he was a witch. Shifters knew about witches, but they didn’t like them very much.

Emma liked him, and he’d rather keep it that way.

Fortunately as a battle mage, he had a belt full of talismans ready to go, the witch equivalent of Batman’s utility belt. He touched the invisibility talisman, thinking he’d slip out with no one the wiser. It had the side effect of switching off his scent-hiding charm, but as he’d be gone in a second, that wouldn’t be a problem.

She came in looking frazzled, and he knew he’d done the right thing, giving her the stateroom. He sidled toward the exit…then scuttled away when she stalked toward him on her way to the sink.

Whew, that was close.
He waited until she was busy scrubbing her hair to tiptoe toward the door. He touched the handle…

She was staring
right at him.
The hairs on his nape rose and his hand froze. He didn’t want to do a Scooby ghost opening the door, which would raise even more questions in her very sharp mind.

So he waited, but she was never
not
looking at the damned door. He couldn’t leave without alerting her, and then
she got naked
and he couldn’t leave because his damned legs wouldn’t work.

When she started rubbing herself and making those cute little moans and her nipples stood proud and her clit even prouder, if he’d been half a man he’d have looked away. But he wasn’t half a man, he was
all
man, and this was Emma. As if his gaze was pop-riveted, he watched her masturbate, wishing
he
was her hands, so badly that he shook with it…and exactly who was she thinking about when she groaned and climaxed?

She shut her eyes when she orgasmed and theoretically he could’ve escaped then. But he couldn’t move a muscle, tied to the amazing, cataclysmic sight of her spasming body, the sheer beauty of her face lost in pleasure.

As she sighed and curled up in sleep, he used every ounce of willpower he had to force himself away from the wall. Force his trembling invisible hand to grasp the door handle. Force himself to crack the door and slip out.

The air was cooler in the empty passageway. Gabriel let go of his invisibility talisman. He’d have to recharge it as soon as possible, but that would have to wait until he himself was not only replenished, but much, much calmer. Magic was a finicky deal, sensitive to all manner of disruptions, especially emotional. If he went into it with the wrong mindset, he could do anything from blowing out his electronics to sinking the whole damned ship.

Just look at what happened to my parents’ plane.
Pain stabbed him like a corkscrew, the memory endlessly relived.

More recently, look what he’d done to his car. The pain of memory receded. He’d created an incline with a touch of magic channeled by the wand in his shirt pocket, nice and easy. He’d planned to use a controlled spurt of power, funneled by his wand, to steer the car up the incline. Then another tiny heft would lift himself and Emma from the car onto the boat as the roadster fell into the water.

But when Emma squeaked in fright, his adrenaline had spurted spontaneous magic and teleported the whole damned car onto the ferry.

He shuddered. Thank the stars they’d landed on the car deck, not amid the passengers.

Standing in the narrow passageway, he trembled with how near it had been. He wasn’t sure if he meant teleporting the car or getting caught panting for Emma’s gorgeous body, her slim thighs drenched with her pleasure…yes, he needed to get himself under control now.

A good workout would accomplish that.

He kept a gym in a pocket universe. He used it mostly for magical mock-duels with Pan, but the thing also had a weight bench and a couple cardio machines, as well as a bathroom and place to sleep.

He touched another talisman, preloaded with a specific magical spell, and unlocked his pocket universe.

A portal opened in front of him, and he stepped through.

Like a warrior monk or an Alaskan nudist, Gabriel existed in a state of constant dissonance as both wizard prince and Techie Titan. Nostradamus University taught that a pocket universe was a room outside of normal space and time, while physics argued it was a bit of our own universe which had popped off, a bubble. Witches called the way into a bubble universe a doorway, whereas he thought of it as a wormhole.

But what he called it or how it worked didn’t negate the fact
that
it worked.

He stepped through into his workout room. Feeling a bit raw and inflamed after watching Emma’s sweet orgasm, he decided to see if any of his power had regenerated since teleporting the car—by dueling.

Not the real thing. Actual dueling was illegal, and there’d been no wars to give battle mages on-the-job training for three hundred years, so schools used two methods—a paint-ball-like setup where magical hits produced splotches of color and, for individual practice, mirror dueling.

He touched a wall talisman. The far wall shimmered like a stone dropped into liquid silver, then cleared into what seemed to be a flat looking glass. But this mirror reflected more than light. The surface was calibrated to absorb spells and fling them back in unexpected ways, rather like a wild pitching machine.

He’d once told his sister that fighting wasn’t about magic. It was about breathing, preparation, and refusing to lose. About finding mental balance.

But today…

Today he simply drew unseen on any regenerated power and threw a frustrated blast at the mirror. His wand popped into his hand, automatically presenting on
need
instead of
thought
as wands did, but he ignored it and simply let the magic fly. A reasonably large power ball splatted into the mirror.

A lightning bolt immediately sizzled out. It caught his shoulder with a burning sear, spinning him.

His brain shouted
idiot,
and he flung his left arm up with a reflexive shield spell.

A wobbling cylinder rose around him—and dropped almost immediately. He’d wasted his regenerated power on that unchecked blast. He could only duck as the bolt rebounded gleefully around the room. Only once the bolt wound down and the danger passed did he straighten and wipe his forehead with the back of his wrist.

Okay, maybe magic wasn’t the best way to work out his frustrations.

But for everyone’s sake, Gabriel needed to have his wits about him, not behave like a testosterone-driven teen trying for his first bathroom blowjob.

The smell of burnt plastic curled into his nostrils, the scorch marks from where the bolt had rebounded on the floor mat mocking him. Yeah, he needed to find his fucking center, before he did worse damage.

A heavy bag hung in the corner. He wasted the tiniest mote of power to paint Bruiser’s face on it, snarling at fist level.

No, not wasted. Gabriel spent a very profitable hour beating the stuffing out of Bruiser’s mug.

Finally, completely calm and utterly sure of himself, he took a shower. Drying himself off, he looked around for his carry-on suitcase and a change of clothes.
Cuckoo my Cocoa Puffs.
The case was in the stateroom with Emma.

Emma. He’d have to see her again.

Down, boy.

Gabriel put on his old clothes, reeking of arousal and sweat, activated his last odor-hide talisman, and left the bubble universe.

His phone immediately chimed. Seven missed calls, all from his brother-in-law.

Gabriel swore. He and his brother-in-law, alpha wolf shifter Noah Blackwood, had already talked, after Gabriel had given Emma the burner cell magicked by another of his bat-belt talismans. What had happened now?

He hit redial. “What do you—?”

“Where the hell have you been?” The alpha, normally glass-lake still, sounded like he was climbing the walls. “I’ve been calling for hours.”

“
An
hour—”

“Too damned long. I found out more about the snitch.”

“The person who sold out my sister?”

“My
mate,
yes. Fucker is a wolf of my own pack. I’m working on getting a name.”

Gabriel sighed. “I’m glad you’re doing something constructive.” The Council was holding Sophia incommunicado. The only reason the alpha wolf hadn’t already torn down anything and everything between them was the fact that Council jails were actually individual pocket universes, like Gabriel’s workout room. Each prisoner was held in a bubble split from the current reality.

But the jail door, unlike his pocket workout room, was anchored to the place it was created. And unlike his workout room, there was only a single door, controlled by the jailer alone, an Enforcer given authority and power directly from the Witches’ Council.

“You know what would be constructive?” Noah growled. “Having a nice talk with Sophia’s jailer. Involving fangs and claws.”

“Do
not
approach the Enforcer.” Gabriel’s hand tightened on the phone. The Matinsfield alpha was not simply a wolf but also a wizard prince in his own right. The dangerous combination, known as a dual, was the reason the Witches’ Council had banned intermagical sex in the first place. A werewitch king once set himself up as a demigod and tried to kill every other witch on the planet. The Council reacted as one might expect—badly.

The Council didn’t know about Noah. But if he went in with not only fangs and claws but all powers blazing, he’d be executed on the spot.

Gabriel pinched his nose, lifting the bridge of his glasses. “Why don’t you get your beta to help you relax?”

“Mason already managed to talk me down a little…with his fists.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll be there soon to negotiate on your behalf.”

“You’d better.” On that snarled note, the wolf hung up.

Gabriel took a deep, centering breath. After a moment’s thought, he picked a number out of his phone’s contact list and hit connect.

“
Mon ami.
How good of you to call.”

“
Bonsoir,
my friend, or is it
bonjour?
” Francois, Gabriel’s old roommate at Nostradamus U, was now a Witches’ Council Enforcer in the EU.

“France is six hours ahead of Michigan,
mon ami.
But I can tell by the tension in your voice that you have not called to make pleasantries.”

“No. Francois, my sister has been jailed by an Enforcer here. Do you happen to know who?”

“I am so sorry to hear that. I do not know who has done such a terrible thing. I’m sure it is all a misunderstanding.”

Gabriel breathed out some of his tension. Francois was a reasonable man, and he was glad to call him friend. “Hopefully whoever this Enforcer is, he’s as sensible as you. Any general tips for when I speak to him?”

“Unless the charge is magical murder, you will be able to argue for her release on bail. Especially if what I heard is true and she is in the family way…? Congratulations,
mon ami.
I’m sure all will be fine. I will see what I can find out on my end.”

Gabriel hung up feeling more in control of the situation. Head finally clear, he started toward the stateroom to get a change of clothes, or at least a fresh shirt. And as long as he was there, he could find out how Emma was doing. Apologize for the impromptu trip. See if she needed help.

He raised his hand to knock on the stateroom door.

Absolutely not thinking about her sweet face as she brought herself to orgasm… His head snapped down to behold the tent in his pants.

Craptastic crunch, he was right back where he started.