Witch and Werewolf: The Fire, The Pursuit, The Reckoning (BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance) (4 page)

Deston
was standing beside her, a man, the wolf having receded.  He stared wordlessly at the pile of singed matter which once was Kristoff.  Alicia fingered the place above his shoulder.  “You’re hurt.”

He shook his head.  “No, it isn’t bad.”  He told her about Ryah.

Alicia hung her head, dismayed.  “I am sorry.  About your people.”

“No, it isn’
t your doing.  Nor is it mine.”  He braced a strong arm around her, troubled.  “They’ll find us.”

Alicia admitted the truth.  “They’ll try.”
  She buried her face in his neck, the adrenaline leaving her with little but weariness.

***

They
had buried Ryah in the woods and cleaned up as well as they could.  Deston could hear the soft snoring of the caretaker in his snug apartment beyond the front desk.  He left the note on the counter.  An apology, and a promise to compensate him for the loss of the cabin door. 

Alicia waited for him outside in the driver’s seat of the truck.  She had dressed his wound but
soreness pervaded his body.  He climbed stiffly into the passenger seat.  Alicia watched him.  He leaned back into the seat leather and slept for a time. 

When he woke he saw water.  “It isn’t the ocean,” Alicia said.  “Not yet.”  She had found a small lake and
directed the truck to its rocky shoreline.  No one else was in sight. 

Deston
looked at her, his lusty witch.  Despite all the rules of his kind and her kind and nature itself, he belonged to her now, body and spirit.    He ran a finger over her creamy thigh and she shuddered with the electricity of his touch.  “Come on,” he beckoned.  She followed him to the shore which was a blanket of hard pebbles.  He removed his clothes and then gently undressed her.  “My mate,” he whispered.  He ran his mouth over her breasts, her belly, between her thighs, inhaling the scent of her.  She groaned and met him kneeling on the ground.  She pulled close to his ear and whispered the word, “Wolf,” and he took his cue to spread her open right there on the ground as his hard organ demanded her warm wetness, her eager mouth, every part of her in every which way.

WITCH AND WERE
WOLF

***

S
he could feel her witch strength dissolving with each passing day.  She tried not to mind.  Instead of spending her hours engaged in the solemn practice of the craft with morbid sisters of the coven, she was satisfying the desires of her body.  And his body.

Deston
.

As her mind whispered the name of her werewolf lo
ver, her hand went unthinkingly to that warm place at her center which moistened with welcome.  He had called her his mate, and that she was.  She had left behind another life in the brown heat of Arizona and taken the werewolf into her body and her heart.  Even now she was restless out of his presence, scanning the cool woods for his strong form.  They had found this place two months earlier and, weary of running, had stopped.  The cabin occupied a desolate corner of Texas’s Piney Woods, close to the border of Arkansas.  It was a forgotten place, evidently abandoned for years, but the small gray structure had beckoned to them when they had longed for rest.  A fresh stream burbled nearby and game was plentiful.  A weapon wasn’t needed for hunting.  Deston was enough.  Alicia heard the crack of a stick and tensed, peering into the twilight, relaxing when a deer skipped by. She still half expected Magda, the grim coven queen, to descend from the sky seeking retribution.  Alicia was a renegade.  Moreover she had succumbed to a werewolf.  Magda would regard it as treachery and witches did not forgive.  She would call the fire.

Alicia shuddered at the memory of the fires, of the screaming and the blackened remains.  A chill swept over her and she realized the sky was darkening.  Her anxiety deepened.  She couldn’t bear to consider what would happen if the witches found them. 
Deston was more than her lover; he was her other half.

And there he was.  He was whistling with a pair of bloodied rabbits slung over his shoulder.  Alicia’s eyes hungrily raked his naked form.  Clothes tended to tear when he turned wolf so he avoided wearing them when he disappeared into the woods for a hunt.  He always waited until he was out of her sight; she knew he avoided letting her see the wolf whenever possible.

Deston casually dropped the rabbits by the fire she had built.  His large, thick organ began to rise as he came nearer.  Alicia felt that familiar throb between her legs as her body responded with a slippery greeting.  She removed her clothes carefully only because they had so few wearable items remaining.  He scarcely waited until her large breasts were bared before feasting hungrily.  His teeth ran along her nipples, teasing, and she groaned, impatiently shoving his head lower.  It was what she wanted and she knew it was what he wanted.  After a hunt he always sought to be enveloped in her heady scent.

She remained standing as his thick tongue plunged her depths and she helped him find the rhythm that pleased her most.  His broad hands circled her wide hips and held tight as he knelt before her.  As Alicia’s pleasure crested she seized his buried head, her fingers raking his dark damp hair.  Once she finished her orgasmic writhing, she let him push her to the floor of the forest and spread her legs wide to receive his engorged maleness.

As her werewolf delivered one delicious thrust after another, Alicia thought, as she always did, that no pleasure this divine could possibly be forbidden.  She screamed with raucous bliss as she came again.

***

The feel of her body always made him forget the dangers at hand, at least for a little while.  Deston traced the round swell of Alicia’s hip with one finger. He loved her curves.  His past encounters - the quick couplings with the wild she-wolves, even a few eager humans - could not compare the pleasure he enjoyed with Alicia’s body.  She purred at his touch, tossing her dark hair.  Deston felt himself getting hard again as he looked at her ripe body in the moonlight.  He glanced up at the sky where the mysterious pale disc showed its face.  Only one more night and it would be full.  Werewolves didn’t need calendars.  The phases of the moon were written in their blood.

“What’s it like?” Alicia asked dreamily.  She had shifted to her back. 
Deston was distracted by the curling triangle which was still wet from the spill of his seed.

“What?”

“The change.”

Deston
shrugged.  He did not know how to explain the shift to one who wouldn’t know.  “It just…is.  Like your witch doings.”

“No,” she said.  He could feel her frowning.  “It isn’t like that.  Witches are made.”

He understood.  “And werewolves aren’t made.  They are born.”

She was quiet.  He knew the power she had cultivated for so long was leaving her slowly, drifting away.  It was not a sense
he could relate to.  The wolf would never leave him.

The move was sudden.  She was lying there dreamily and t
hen she was straddling him, her open cavern searching feverishly for fulfillment.  He gripped her hips and shifted, filling her with his instantly rigid tool.  It was always like this.  No matter how often he joined with her, it was never enough.  He always wanted more.  He watched in wonder as his witch goddess arched her back and let her plump breasts jut forward.  He allowed her to dominate the tempo this time, no matter how he wished to reverse their poses and pound her soft body into submission.   She climaxed after only a few thrusts and he followed, digging his fingers into the flesh of her buttocks as he released his spray into her depths, yet another time in a thousand couplings since they met in a wild confusion of blood and lust.

He felt her roll off and nursed the sting of loss as the warmth of her skin left him.  The moon stared at him like a frozen eye.  The euphoria of the moon’s fullness was near.  He could not have adequately described to his mortal mate what it meant to become the wolf, traveling with the sinew of a brute animal and yielding to primal instincts.  The needs of the wolf were always strongest during a full moon.

And now a full moon is coming.

Yet
Deston found himself filled with disquieting dread as he lay there in the moonlight next to his contented mate.  He had not wanted to worry her but he was troubled by his trip into the woods.  He had picked up a familiar scent.  Something in between the realm of animals and people.  He knew Alicia fretted obsessively over the witches.  He knew that when she searched the sky it was their grim black outlines which she feared most.  Deston could do nothing to quiet Alicia’s worry about the witches.  He worried about other things.

***

Alicia had never been much of a cook but she was learning to be inventive in consideration of their limited resources.  Among the scattered possession left behind in the cabin were a bevy of cracking cookbooks and a small store of flour and spices.  Alicia learned how to make sourdough starter and supplemented their meals with lumpy biscuits cooked in a cast iron kettle over a campfire.  The domesticity of it all pleased her as did the vision of her mate feasting on the combined spoils of his hunting and her labor.  Sometime she laughed at herself .  This was not a life she had ever envisioned.  She had always figured she would live in a quick breath of the universe performing her duty and dying when it was time.  But this… the serene housekeeping and the long passions satisfied something earthy in her soul.

Though sometimes the small fires did make her tremble.  She knew the power of fire better than most. 
Deston never spoke of his lost colony of werewolves.  If they could believe the words spoken by a rage-filled she-wolf, the witches’ attack had wiped many of them out right away.  And Alicia knew that the coven would coldly pursue the survivors.

Especially us.

Alicia shook off the anxiety and tried to occupy her mind by tidying up the cabin.  The biggest thing she sometimes missed about the witch ways was how to push away emotion.  Fear, unhappiness and all their relations were kept at bay once.

And love.  The only problem with love is that it comes with the terror of loss.

No, she wouldn’t miss the days without love, without warmth and lust and even the more staid feelings of companionship.  She was so lost in her musings she did not hear Deston’s bare footfalls until he had seized her.  He liked to do that, to ambush her without warning and take her without asking.  She gasped as his fingers found their way inside.  In their short months together Alicia had noticed how ferociously lusty he became as the sky turns waxed to a full moon.  He was impatient this morning, fingering her roughly to conjure the needed juices.  It was what she needed.  She buried his hand inside her further until she was wet enough to drip.  She knelt abruptly and took him in her mouth but he was too eager to wait.  He turned her around and bent her at the waist, crashing into her from behind.

Once they had both shattered memorable heights, he said nothing.  He looked out the small square window, the handsome plane of his brow furrowed.  Alicia stared at his body and once again and delighted in the knowledge that he was hers.  She was sure the passion would never get stale. 
Deston ran a restless hand over his face and she realized something was wrong.

“What is it?”

He continued to look out the window.  “We should leave here soon.  We’ve stayed for too long as it is.  The longer we stay, the more easily our enemies will be able to find us.”

The day was becoming hot and Alicia’s hair was damp.  She felt suddenly weary, suddenly very ordinary and human.  “And where would we go?  You know we don’t have any money.”  Her mouth twisted wryly.  “It’s not like we have friends and family we can turn to.”

He looked at her.  His eyes were dark.  “Nonetheless, Alicia.  We need to leave.”  His instinct for danger was far stronger than hers and she realized he was right.  She sighed.  The unfamiliar hot tingle of tears pricked her eyes.   What had happened to her?  This was humiliating.   She did not want to face the world and all its terrors.

Deston
smoothed her hair, kissing the crown of her head.  “Alicia, look at me.”  When she did not obey he cupped her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his.  “There is nothing I would not do for you, for us.”

Alicia closed her eyes, allowing the luxury of one fallen tear.  “I know.”  She gave a little cry and threw her arms around his muscular shoulders.  He kissed her softly and whispered endearments.  Oh, how she loved him.  Once, long ago, when they were both practically children, she had saved him from a terrible fate.  Caught outside his pack boundaries in violation of the truce, the witches had descended, meaning to teach the impudent werewolves a lesson so that none from the pack would dare to stray again.  His friend had suffered the fire, but Alicia had allowed
Deston to escape.

She no longer had the ability to save him from anything.

“I love you,” she said.  He smiled and closed his eyes, as if the words were something he had tasted.

“I love you too.”  His kiss was tender this time.  He held her for many long wonder
ful moments, stroking her back as the sun rose higher in the sky on the day which was to be a full moon.

Alicia was confused when he stiffened.  A low involuntary growl came from his throat as he glared out the window.  “What is it?” she whispered.

“Company.  And not the human kind.”

***

They weren’t far and were closing in quickly.  Deston put his arm around Alicia protectively even as the instinctual part of his mind vibrated with alarm.  A white truck pulled into view and parked fifty yards away on the gravel path leading to the cabin.

There were four of them; three males and one female.  Upon exiting the truck they began casually walking towards the cabin.   One, a hulking yellow-haired brute, walked a few steps behind, warily looking about.  The other two males wore t-shirts with Greek lettering.  They were handsome and young, their faces tanned with the arrogance of dazzling youth. 
Deston had seen their type before.

College kids.  Likely part of a larger pack.

The girl wore very high wedges and her ankles twisted on the rough ground.  She was incredibly pretty with sleek blonde hair and a sculpted face.  She stumbled, swearing, and adjusted her orange tank top.  The big one in the back swore and grabbed her by the arm.  She jerked free, her rosebud lips in a pout.

Alicia turned to
Deston, her face a question.  He shrugged.  They were wolves, to be sure, but did not seem bent on confrontation as they had approached so plainly.  If they had been seeking a bloody ambush they had missed their opportunity.

Deston
hurried into his jeans and took Alicia’s hand.  He had doubts, but the four unwanted visitors were coming, whether they wished it or not.  Best to meet them directly to show no threat was intended.

The two frat brothers stopped cold when they spotted Alicia and
Deston.  One carried an open beer bottle and took a gulp, glancing back at their companions.  The girl was still unhappy, glaring daggers at her escort.  He shot her an annoyed look, then turned his attention to Deston and Alicia.  He grinned.  “Hi y’all.  Hope we’re not being a nuisance.  We’re just out here for the long weekend, getting piss drunk and enjoying nature.”   His gaze centered on Deston.  “And the moon.”  He continued to approach until he stood directly in front of Deston.  He was an inch taller and even more powerfully built.  He flexed his muscles, still smiling.  He was certainly the alpha of the group.  He was letting Deston know that if there was to be a fight the struggle would be fierce.