Rescued (Book One of the Silver Wood Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (13 page)

“Haven’t you done enough to him?”

He reached down to help Wilson up, but the younger man shook him off and after giving Aileen a sullen look stalked out of the house.

The dogs surrounded Troy and began to wag their tails even as they bared their teeth in unwilling snarls. He looked over at Lachlan as he wiped some blood from his chin.

“Call them off, now.”

The dogs returned to their normal happy selves as soon as Abel’s assistant waved a hand and hurried out after Wilson.

“Lachlan can control any warm-blooded animal,” Aileen said, her mouth flattening. “Except himself.” Without another word she retreated back to the kitchen.

That left Summer along with Troy, who now looked a little sheepish.

“I’m sorry about all this. My father isn’t too happy about us, and every time I glance at Aileen my brother thinks I’m trying to steal his wife and first born from him. What have you been doing?”

“Oh, you know. Hanging with the witches, cleaning up the kitchen, finding out you’re immortal.” She tucked her arm through his. “Let’s take a walk.”

• • • • •

Troy took Summer through the woods to the source of his creek, which spilled down over a cliff side into a deep spring-fed pool. Over the years he and his father and hauled the rocks they cleared from the pavilion’s yards and gardens to pile them at the water’s edge. Summer climbed up to one flat rock they often used for diving and sat down to take in the view.

“This place is so beautiful,” she said as Troy joined her. “I’d never want to leave it if it were mine. So why were you fighting with your dad over me?”

“I wasn’t, until he called you a Templar spy.” Troy picked up a pebble and tossed it into the pool. He hated that his father was so suspicious of outsiders, but it seemed even more ludicrous now that he had to explain it to Summer. “He believes it’s the only rational explanation for your amnesia. He thinks they deliberately mind-wiped you so you wouldn’t remember that you are spying for them.”

“That’s an interesting alternative theory.” She handed him another pebble. “And your brother thinks you’re going to steal his wife because…”

“Aileen and I were involved, a long time ago. We ended it, and we’re just friends, but Wilson is convinced that I still have feelings for her.” He uttered a bitter chuckle. “He accused me of bringing you here to confuse and distract him so I could seduce his wife. Who, if you haven’t noticed, is eight-and-a-half months pregnant.”
 

“Yeah, but she’s still pretty hot.” She gave his shoulder a friendly bump with hers. “Don’t look so depressed. I like you. Ewan likes you. Erica likes you. Lachlan…hey, did I mention Ewan likes you?”

“Ewan likes everyone.” Soothed by her good humor, he pulled her onto his lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the immortality factor. I was waiting for the right time.”

She rested her head against his shoulder. “Like when? Your birthday? How old are you going to be this year? Twenty-nine, for the five hundredth time?”

“We stop counting after five hundred.” He rubbed his thumb across her full lower lip, and smiled a little when she kissed it. “Why don’t we go back to my place? I’ve restocked my condom supply, and it’s much quieter and nicer there.”

“I would like that very much.” She pressed his hand to her cheek. “But you can’t keep using me to avoid dealing with your family problems.” He gave her a narrow look. “Your dad has every right to be suspicious of me.
I’m
suspicious of me. Plus you got me from a Templar, remember?”

He shook his head. “Michael is different.”

“For which I am very grateful, but it doesn’t change the facts. I don’t know who I am or how I got to Central Park. I could be anything.” Her expression tightened. “And we don’t know all of what I’m capable of doing yet.”

“You are not a Templar spy, because if you were, they would have already overrun the place,” Troy told her, and helped her up before he circled her waist with his arms. “As for your abilities as a witch, we just have to test you. There’s a very old test, in fact, that should prove what you are.”
 

She gave him a wry look. “Oh, yeah? What is it?”

“The dunking test.” He pulled her against him and jumped off the rock, laughing as she shrieked on the way down before they plunged into the ice-cold water.

Summer surfaced with him, gasping and squealing before she took her hand and shoved a handful of water at his face. He stopped it so that it hung between them, and she gave him a dirty look.

“Don’t you dare.”

Troy laughed and used the water to lift her up onto one of the long, sun-warmed rocks, where he climbed out and sat down beside her to dispel the water from her hair and clothes.

“Never mess with a water elemental in winter,” he advised her as she sat up.

“Come here.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him down on top of her, her lips meeting his in a ferocious kiss.

Troy’s residual anger over fighting with his father and brother shifted into something far more urgent, and he tore open her blouse to get at her breasts, sucking one and then the other as he unfastened her jeans and shoved them and her panties down to her knees. As she worked them off he pushed down his own trousers, pausing only long enough to sheath himself with one of the condoms from his pocket before he hoisted her legs up around his hips and guided his iron-hard shaft to her damp sex.

“You’re the one who really makes me crazy,” he told her as he rubbed his cockhead against her before pushing it between her slick folds. “Look in my eyes. I want to see yours as I take you.”

Sinking into her softness made him swell even bigger, for she was as wet and hot as a hungry mouth. The way her lashes fluttered as she caught her breath and tightened around him made him feel a fierce satisfaction. She could kid and pretend nothing mattered to her, until he got his cock inside her. Then things got very, very serious. He laid her down on their clothes.

“That’s it. Feel me filling that soft, sweet, little pussy,” he crooned as he stroked into her. He needed her too much to do anything but fuck her, deep and hard, his cock pumping like a piston for the engine of his lust. “Does that feel good, sweetheart? Are you going to come for me?”

“Troy, oh, yes.” She clung to him as she made a whimpering sound, her slim hips rolling under the power of his thrusts. “Please, please.”

He took hold of her legs and pushed her knees back almost to her shoulders so he could forge deeper into her fluttering softness, pounding her pussy now with his rigid shaft and prodding the edge of her cervix as he filled her completely. Summer writhed, her pretty breasts heaving as she took everything he gave her, and then she released a wild wail as her body shook uncontrollably.

Troy jerked his cock out of her, stripping off the condom and working his fist up and down his shaft. She reached up to help him, and the touch of her cool fingers made him instantly come, the pleasure exploded from him in long, silky white ribbons of cream. He watched them lace across her belly and breasts and felt the satisfaction of having marked her with his seed, for she was his woman now.

He fell beside her, his chest heaving as he closed his eyes and let the sunlight bathe his sweat-shined hide.

“Gods, that was amazing,” he breathed. “You are the sexiest woman I’ve ever touched.”

“I’ll let Wilson know that,” she said primly, and turned her head to press her lips to his shoulder. “Maybe he’ll stop imagining things. By the way, if you dunk me in that icy pool again, I’m going to be the last woman you ever touch.”

WHEN THEY RETURNED to the pavilion Summer learned everyone except Ewan had gone into town on an impromptu shopping trip that she suspected had more to do with cooling off and putting some distance between Troy and his family than any actually necessary errands.

“You’ll know when things will go back to what passes for normalcy around here,” Erica’s brother told her as they watched Troy head off to the chopping stump. “We’ll have too much fire wood, more game than we can eat, and very shiny cars and floors.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Everyone deals with stress in different ways. Troy chops wood. Wilson goes hunting. And Abel?” He lifted his shoulders. “He waxes. Everything.”

Summer nodded slowly. “I wonder what I do.”

“Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones, like me.” He gave her a wink. “I’m never stressed. It’s because I never take sides. I just go hang out with the dogs in the barn until the yelling is over.”

“Great idea.” She reached down to scratch behind the ears of a grinning Irish setter. “Next time I think I’ll join you.”

Summer went back to their rooms to shower and change, and while she dressed she thought about what Aileen had said. She did need to talk to someone about what had happened in the kitchen, and Troy was the logical choice. If she could stop time without even thinking about it, then she might do it someday and be unable to restart it.

She also wanted to tell him about the condition she’d been in when she’d woken up in the park. If her blood-soaked clothes were proof that she had hurt someone, she needed to know now before she got any stronger.

After Summer dried and braided her hair she felt her shoulder itch, and pulled back her blouse to see if she’d gotten an insect bite. Her skin twitched, but there was nothing there. She rubbed some skin cream over the spot before she buttoned up and left the room.
 

Outside she found the axe and a huge mound of chopped wood by the stump, but no Troy. She walked across to the barn before she noticed the Jeep was missing from the yard.

“So he took off without me,” she told the dogs, who herded around her briefly before they bounded off to follow Ewan into the house. “Yes, abandon me, too. It’s the story of my life.”

Summer started to head back to the pavilion when she heard what sounded like someone whispering her name. She turned around until she heard it again, and then moved in that direction.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

She stepped over a fallen tree trunk and moved through a small sea of fern toward a thicket of firs, the soft-needled trees perfuming the air with the smell of Christmas.

“Hello? It’s Summer.”

A pair of hard hands seized her from behind, and hauled her up against a broad chest as a damp, smelly cloth came over her nose and mouth. She looked up to see Michael’s green eyes fill with regret.
 

“I am sorry, my Beauty,” he told her as her vision began to gray. “But you must come back to me now.”

• • • • •

Summer’s story continues in
STOLEN: Book Two of the Silver Wood Coven Series
, available now.

For a sneak peek, turn the page.

Book 2 Excerpt:

STOLEN

Silver Wood Coven Book Two

“That’s right, you’re a warrior-priest. You’re not allowed to have fun at all.” Suddenly furious, Summer went to him. “Or have you decided to break your vow of celibacy, Michael? Is that really why you brought me back?”

He went rigid as he looked over her head. “I can never be with you. I belong to the order.”

Summer slapped him, and as the pain of it blazed over her palm and up her arm, she watched the red mark of her hand appear and then fade almost instantly from his cheek. She couldn’t hurt him, and knew he wouldn’t strike back. But thinking straight took a back seat to her temper, which went from seething to nuclear so quickly she thought she might explode.

“I don’t care about your order, or your vows, or your prissy rules.” She shoved his chest, which was like trying to push over a brick wall. “And you’re lying. You’re not afraid of them. You’re afraid of
me
.”

Now his gaze dropped to her face, and his mouth tightened. “Go back to bed.”

“Sure, no problem. I like your bed. The silk sheets feel amazing.” She traced a rough heart shape over his sternum with a shaking finger. “Why don’t you join me? Isn’t that what you really want?”

“Summer.” He sounded like he was grinding his molars together now. “Enough.”

“You could have had me before you sent me away. But that’s all right. I was with your friend, Major Atwater, at Silver Wood.
Several
times.” Her hand flew up to his neck as she pressed closer. “Would you like to hear what Troy did to me? Maybe it will give you something new to think about the next time you take matters into your own hands.”

His big hands clamped on her shoulders as if to thrust her away, but his fingers moved against her skin with caressing gentleness. The practiced indifference faded from his features as he tugged down the straps of her bra.
 

His touch sent an explosion of sensations through her.

“I dreamt of you with him,” he said, his voice growing deeper and rougher. “I watched you pleasuring him with your mouth.” He cupped her chin to lift her face, and stroked his thumb across her lips, parting them to test the edge of her teeth. “I watched while I buried myself in your wet, hot softness.” He slipped his other hand between her legs, pressing his fingers against her. “Here.”

Summer felt the anger inside her shifting into a different heat, one that flooded into her breasts and burned down into her lower belly.

“Don’t fool with me, Paladin.” She used Troy’s nickname for him deliberately, to remind him of the other man in her life. “I’m not going to walk away again.”

“You asked what I wanted.” He began mapping her face with his mouth, his fingers sliding into her hair, his palm stroking over her thigh and hip to settle at her waist. “It’s you, Beauty. I want you. Only you. Always you.”

• • • • •

Buy
STOLEN: Book Two of the Silver Wood Coven Series
Now

MORE BOOKS BY HAZEL HUNTER

THE SILVER WOOD COVEN SERIES

Though she’s taken the name given her by a kind stranger, Summer can no more explain waking up homeless and covered in blood, than she can the extreme attraction drawing people to her. Amnesiac, confused, and frightened, she’s not even aware that she’s a witch. But help arrives in two very different forms: the cool and restrained Templar Michael Charbon and his centuries-long friend Wiccan Major Troy Atwater.