Witch Interrupted (30 page)

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Katie said.

“Could this have anything to do with Frank?” June asked. “Maybe the memory wipe didn’t take.”

“It took.” Katie checked the clip in the gun. “The problem is, even if Lars heard chatter about four witches who jumped one of his lackeys yesterday and concluded you and Harry were the other two, it doesn’t explain why he’s hunting your friend Annette.”

“I’m afraid I can answer that,” Marcus said. “Annette is Vernon’s sister. That’s her connection.” Since Lars already had Vernon, the only reason Marcus could conclude Lars needed Annette would be to use her to convince Vernon to cooperate.

Or to murder the poor woman in front of him to watch him grieve.

However, it did mean Vernon was probably alive.

Harry, oozing menace and rain, reentered the room. Marcus didn’t need his wolf abilities to sense the ferocity steaming off the other man.

“Nobody’s out there right now.” He glanced at Katie. “But I don’t like this.”

Marcus reassured the Travises, who’d never expected a life or death situation when they’d agreed to help their friend Vernon. “Katie and I have experience living under the radar. There’s no reason to believe Lars can find us despite the supply run to Kentucky yesterday. We owe you, and we’ll help you.”

This factory had been one of his first investments when he’d begun planning his revenge. In all this time, it had been undisturbed by humans, witches, wolves—practically even animals. It wasn’t likely Lars would be suddenly inspired to look for them in a moldering Ohio factory.

“You expect us to hide while our friends are being hassled by those bastards?” Harry asked, bristling. “Millington is my home, and those are my friends. I will deal with this.”

His classic alpha reaction to territorial invasion was noteworthy, considering a coven wasn’t a pack, but right now it was more a hindrance than a help.

“What could one wolf do,” Katie asked, “against trained convex witches? If they can handle a pack, they can handle you. You don’t want to be anywhere near them.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Harry growled.

“I could handle you.” Her voice held little inflection. “I could handle you right now.”

It was her first reference to the monkshood she’d stolen. Even though Marcus trusted her not to hurt them, the comment prickled his skin like a cold breeze. He appreciated her competence and experience, but that didn’t mean the glimpse of her deadly side wasn’t daunting.

Harry’s eyes flashed silver. “Don’t fuck with me, Zhang. I’ve got Marcus’s bay pill on me, and I know you’re drained.”

Katie shrugged and placed her gun on the table. Her hands remained near it. “Lars isn’t drained. He’s never drained.”

Though Marcus’s wolf was subsumed by his witch lattice, at the threat toward Katie he grew instantly provoked.“She’s providing tactical information.” He rounded the heavy armchair and calculated the distance between himself and Harry.

If this escalated, he could get to Harry before Harry got to Katie. Her threats were empty ones, and he refused to allow the other man to touch her.

Harry’s head whipped toward him. His eyes narrowed and his alpha flared. Marcus’s skin crawled. It wasn’t his wolf answering Harry’s but something angry and innate. Something protective. Something that didn’t care what or who Harry was. “I’m sorry to inform you, but any convex witch with the right components is more than a match for an alpha wolf.”

“Maybe keepers can handle alpha wolves, but they aren’t trained to take down alpha witches,” June said fiercely. “I can help him in Millington.”

Katie, who seemed surprised by Marcus’s defense of her, began to speak.

Harry interrupted. “Not you, June. You’re staying here where it’s safe. I’ll go and—”

“You aren’t an acceptable sacrifice.” Marcus might be ticked at Harry for snarling at Katie, but that didn’t mean he wanted the man dead. “You’d get yourself captured or killed, and then what would your wife do? If Lars covers Millington up like Alabama, it’s all the more important for us to offer the region elders a solid motivation to attenuate the keeper council. Once transformed wolves are no longer so hazardous, the keepers are no longer that necessary. They’ll be curtailed and their spy network ferretted out.”

And he, Katie and her family would be safe.

“How long will that take?” Harry said.

Marcus hated rushing experiments. He hated rushing science. He hated this whole situation.

He didn’t hate Katie.

“We’ll go to the region elders in three days no matter what,” he decided. “Until then, the factory is warded and has no traceable connections to any of us. We’ll be safe here.”

“You’re wrong.” Katie’s voice was level but foreboding. “If they’re gathering biological family members, they deciphered Vern’s location spell. They have my father. That gives them a direct link to me.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.” Since Lars hadn’t laid a trap for them yet, Marcus had changed his opinion on how much knowledge the keepers had. “I presume Lars wants family members for blackmail purposes.”

“How would someone in June’s family be used to blackmail her when he can’t contact her to negotiate?”

“He could be planning ahead. Collecting leverage.” If Marcus reached his goal tomorrow, the region elders could extricate the captives from Lars. Did Katie not see this—or did she have other reasons for wanting to leave him?

It wasn’t as if she’d remained with him voluntarily. Her focushad been helping her family the whole time.

“I don’t want to take the chance.” She set a full backpack on the table. “If Lars has Vern’s location spell, none of you are safe around me anymore. I’m the one he wants. I have to go. Now.”

“You’ve been planning this.” He’d sensed it in his bones, in the space between them that had grown chillier and chillier. He’d hoped to appease her when his experiments succeeded.

He hadn’t been fast enough.

“It’s too soon. What about the permabrand?” he demanded, grasping for straws. “My experiments can’t progress if you leave.”

“Your experiments can’t progress if you’re dead.”

Marcus crossed the floor, hands fisted. Not because he intended violence—because he didn’t want to snatch her.

“We should leave you two alone,” June said tentatively.

Katie yanked the straps on the backpack. The one she carried with her everywhere. Marcus had known it was a go bag but hadn’t realized she meant to use it to go away from him. If he were hooked to the heart monitor right now, it would register him at dangerous levels.

“The three of you relocate,” she said. “After what happened in Kentucky, you ought to realize you can’t fuck around with the keepers. Apparently they have eyes everywhere. None of you can handle their firepower.”

Harry scoffed. Katie raised a hand, and her expression silenced him. “Shut up, Harry. You can’t. Ditch the macho and get your pregnant wife out of here.”

Pregnant? June was… Marcus turned to her, piecing together impressions and facts.

The blonde slumped against the wall behind the cot and sighed. “How did you guess?”

“It’s not because you look fat,” Harry said instantly.

Katie stared at them over the top of her glasses. “Your husband is not a subtle man.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Marcus said. Not that they’d have been safer if they’d have ignored Vernon’s request and remained in Millington.

June straightened, glaring. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid. I’ve still got more magic than any of you.”

“But you have twice as many reasons to avoid the keepers now,” Katie said. “If the keepers get their hands on you, you don’t want to know what they’d do to an alpha witch pregnant with the child of an alpha wolf. I’d advise leaving the country.”

June blanched. Harry’s manner lost all cockiness.

“All right,” he said gruffly. “We’ll relocate, but you should come with us. Keep helping Marcus. They can’t track us as well in another country.”

“They still have my family.” Katie twitched the last pocket on the backpack closed. “Do you have passports? Your crossing will show up in the humans’ systems, but if you’re quick, you can disappear before the keepers realize what happened.”

Marcus caught her hand. It was a trapped bird in his grasp, frantic to escape, while the rest of her was pure steel. What was she actually feeling? “No.”

She finally looked at him. Her eyes glistened like winter ice on an overpass—black and deadly. “I’ll give you a list of the other witches who do brands. Save up a couple years and you can hire one to finish what we started.”

“That’s not my primary concern.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s funny, because it’s the only concern you’ve mentioned the entire time we’ve known each other. What I can do for your research.”

He stared at her, trying to find the right words. When he couldn’t find them—when he couldn’t find any words—she sighed. “Marcus, it’s time for me to go.”

A clank distracted him—June and Harry sneaking out the metal door.

“We’re, ah, going to the hotel,” Harry said. Their room was protected with stronger wards than the standard ones Vernon’s location spell had pierced when Tonya and Zhang Li had found Katie in Marcus’s trailer. “We’ll call you early in the morning to see if…to see what you plan to do.”

Echoing the metallic thunk of the door, the storm outside kicked up again. Thunder rolled overhead. Katie tried to tug away from him and follow Harry and June, but Marcus didn’t need to be at full strength to hold on to her.

“Three more days,” he bargained. “Two.”

She shook her head slowly, side to side. “I’m death. I’ve brought misfortune to everyone I’ve ever lo—everyone I’ve ever known. You have a future, Marcus. You’re going to help people. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Go make good things happen.”

She slid free of him and backed toward the door. Her gaze never left his. If she was using alpha to persuade him, he couldn’t feel it with his witch lattice. Hell, right now he couldn’t even feel the permabrand.

But he could feel pain. Ripping. Something inside him breaking.

Katie reached the door.

Laid her hand on it.

Throat completely dry, he said, “Wait, Katie. Wait.”

She nudged her glasses up her nose, that familiar gesture almost more than he could handle. His panic crested, a desperate, edgy sensation that bore little resemblance to the oddness he usually felt in witch state.

“Why would I wait? My being here puts everyone in danger.”

“One more day.” He needed time to find the words, to find the right persuasion. “Do the brand tomorrow and…”

Her eyelashes lowered and she twisted the handle on the heavy door. Wrong answer. “Goodbye, Marcus. Be safe.”

He was on her before the door opened all the way. It slammed as his body hit hers, as she hit the door. He didn’t know where he’d dug up the speed to move like that and didn’t care.

Marcus shoved the backpack off her shoulder and kicked it sideways. Katie raised a hand to punch him in the throat, and he deflected it, pinning her wrist to the door. She cursed him. He trapped her other hand behind her back. Their bodies touched all the way down.

Who was he? Was this the wolf taking over?

When he looked at Katie, nearly any time he thought of Katie, it was a struggle not to ravish her. He had crude impulses. Base desires. Raging hormones. He wanted to tie her up and never let her go. Desire simmered inside him no matter which lattice was ascendant. His preoccupation had worsened by the day.

Now it had exploded.

He wanted to be inside her.

He wanted to fuck her until she agreed to stay with him.

He wanted to imprint himself on her until she could never leave him.

He wanted her to want him back.

“I don’t…” How could he express what he didn’t understand? “I can’t…”

“Control yourself?” she suggested. “I thought you were in witch state.”

“I am.”

She struggled a little, and he pushed his thigh between hers. He had no wolf senses to tell him if she was aroused, furious or frightened. He had to rely on his experience with people to read her. It was giving him nothing.

He was completely adrift. All he knew was… “I want you to stay.”

“I’m aware of that.” As the storm raged, the power flickered. The lights popped off and back on. “Let go.”

“Never.” Lightning struck again, followed by a hissing bang. The electricity gave up the ghost and dropped them into complete blackness except for the pallid light of his battery-powered laptop.

Even after his weak witch’s eyesight adjusted, he couldn’t see her. But he could hear her soft breathing and feel her heat through their clothes. He could smell her soap and the spicy relics of cayenne and kava.

When he bent his head and found her lips, he could taste the reason he wanted her to stay.

Because he was crazy in love with her.

Katie froze in astonishment when Marcus kissed her. When she didn’t yell at him, he let go of her wrists and caught her head.

His hands were trembling.

“Katie.” He stroked her hair, placing butterfly kisses beside her mouth, on her mouth. His tongue brushed the seam of her lips as if he’d never done this before. Though it was pitch black, she closed her eyes, bewildered by his tenderness. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

Couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t just her family in trouble, or Harry and June. Marcus was in danger. “I have to.”

“We got away from Lars. You poppied Frank. We’ll think of something.” He trailed kisses along her jaw. His teeth scraped her pulse. He returned to her lips and teased until she let him inside. His tongue quested for hers, tasting her until her knees weakened and her stomach quivered. Tentative, not sure where this was going or how stupid she was for hoping it meant something, she placed her hands on his warm chest.

His heart raced.

She tilted her face toward him and kissed him back. When her fingertips brushed his neck, he pulled away from her with a gasp. The faint blue light from his computer screen revealed little, no matter how wide she opened her eyes.

His voice rasped over words she thought she’d never hear. “I love you.”

“You can’t.” It was impossible. He couldn’t love her. This was lust. This was possessiveness, the wolf in him. She felt the same way—reckless, needy. Willing to sacrifice everyone for another day with him.

Leaving him felt like stabbing herself in the chest, but it had to be done.

“I do.” He shoved his fingers in her hair, and his mouth found hers again. Whiskers abraded her lips. “I love you. I can’t help it. I would have told you but I didn’t know. Until you said you were leaving.”

“I’m still leaving,” she insisted, but he had her snared against the metal, his big body a cage with no door.

One hand dropped to her ass and hoisted her more firmly against his growing erection. “Let me have this. I need you so much I can’t think straight.”

His breath sizzled against her skin. His need kindled hers, a profound longing that was so much more than lust and had nothing to do with him being a wolf.

He wasn’t a wolf right now. He was Marcus, and she loved him too. Enough to do anything she could to save him.

The next time his lips found hers, she opened for him in helpless invitation. She pushed the unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders. Muscles bunched under the smooth skin she admired with her fingers. She found his nipples and he groaned.

Katie melted between him and the door. His kisses became savage. His tongue curled into her, demanding she surrender. Ardent hands massaged her ass, between her legs. He stole her breath. He stole her heart.

She could never tire of touching him. She ran her hands all over his torso, down past his belt. She groped for his cock and noticed a tiny lump in his pocket.

Fucking antidote. Katie ripped the capsule out and hurled it toward the corner. It pinged off the extra glassware on the shelves. “I hate that you carry that around. Like you don’t trust me.” She took his face and kissed him. “I would never hurt you.”

“Lars would kill me. Then I couldn’t protect you.”

“Protect me? I—”

He lifted her, suddenly, so he could nuzzle her breasts. “Stop arguing.”

Katie leaned her head against the cool surface of the door as his teeth locked on her nipple. She stifled a cry. It hurt her and thrilled her at the same time. Her pussy began to ache for him, for his attention, his cock. He bit her other breast. The heat of his mouth bled through her shirt to her skin.

Need rushed over her like the thunderstorm pouring outside. Lightning crackled. Marcus lowered her feet to the floor, pinioning her against the door when she would have crumpled. Eager hands fumbled at her waistband. He shoved down her pants, her panties, before dropping to his knees to yank off her shoes.

She groped through the blackness and brushed his close-cropped hair. Chilly air whooshed up her bare legs under the bottom of the door as gusts of wind tore around the factory. His teeth scraped her thigh. She grabbed his hair and tried to pull him up, but he tossed one of her legs over his shoulder and buried his mouth in her pussy.

When his tongue searched out her clit, she cried out. He ate her as if he was famished. His teeth snapped, his lips sucked. He licked every inch. Two fingers thrust into her so powerfully she nearly swallowed her tongue. He brought her to the brink of ecstasy.

“Lonely up here.” She wanted to come while he was hard and high inside her, not like this.

He rose, nearly thumping her chin. Her turn to fumble with his pants. Her hands shook as much as his. He growled against her neck, sucking the skin, raising her blood. Finally she freed the part of him she wanted. He wasted no time, lifting her with impatient hands, parting her thighs, seeking her wet, slick heat.

The angle wasn’t right. His cock slid up, between their stomachs. He drew back, thrust forward. Another miss glided past her clit in a way that made her moan out loud. He gripped her ass, adjusting her position. She tightened her thighs around his hips.

“Katie, I need…” He braced her firmly against the door when she started to slip. “Help me.”

She wriggled her hand between their bodies. When she latched onto his cock, he groaned. Guiding it down, she fit the hot knob against her entrance.

She expected him to jam himself deep and take her violently, but his lips found hers. As he kissed her, he mated their bodies. Inch by inch, his cock pushed inside until they were as close as two people could be.

When she was completely impaled, he rested his cheek against hers. Air wheezed in and out of him. “I love you.”

She wished what he said was true. “That’s not what this is.”

He rocked her. Their pelvises tilted and swayed. The angle of his thrusts chafed her clit. Good. So good.

His lips moved against her jaw. “I know what I feel.”

Her pussy clenched around him. Every movement of his body drove her wilder. She clung to him with all her might. He kept the rhythm, stroke for stroke, like a conductor. Steady. Steady.

Faster.

Rising tempo.

He kissed her again. His tongue twisted with hers, his lungs breathed with hers. “I love you.”

“No.”

He added more speed. The push and pull of his cock weakened her resolve even as it strengthened her feelings. “I love you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.” Two hard thrusts. She was going to come. Another. Katie gulped. Gasped. Held onto him. As her climax spiraled closer, she grew wetter. Her nails bit into him. “Because I do.”

Goddess, she needed this man. “Don’t stop.”

He obliged her, thrust after thrust. Three. Two. One.

She burst like the clouds and rained down on him. He groaned. Could he tell? Could he tell she was coming so hard she could see stars against the utter blackness of the room? His cock rammed inside her, hard and high, exactly where she wanted him. Where she always wanted him.

His breath harsh, he drove her through her climax. He didn’t rest. Her juices spread all over them. Now his beast emerged. He fucked her until she was over the crest and rising again.

“Katie.” All he said was her name.

“Yes. Do it.” He thrust deeper, somehow, or grew larger, his cock swollen with desire. She dragged him close. Her heels dug into his ass. She found his face in the darkness and kissed him instead of telling him how she felt.

One of his hands dropped down. He had her so tight against the door, she didn’t fall. He withdrew almost all the way from her pussy and smacked her ass with the flat of his hand.

Katie moaned. She wouldn’t hide from it and didn’t question it. She loved the pain he gave her. She loved Marcus being so crazy for her that he let himself go. He let his wolf do what it would to them both. And his wolf would have her submission.

He spanked her. Thrust in and out, catching her clit on the stroke. Spanked her again. It wasn’t like the first spanking; his angle was shit. But it was hot. Goddess, she wanted it harder, wanted it all harder. She wanted him to whip the truth out of her and make her admit it.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth and his cock into her pussy. The next time he paddled her, it was particularly keen, like a tightrope of rapture. She whimpered into his mouth.

Her cry shivered through him as if he could feel the same thing. She realized her cheeks were wet with tears. Marcus cupped her ass again with both hands, his fingers slick with her juices. “Tell me you love me.”

She opened her mouth to obey, and he thrust into her cruelly, thumping her against the door. She lost her ability to speak. His cock deep, her legs wide, he found her anus with his fingers.

“Tell me, Katie.”

Again she tried to obey. This time he pushed fingertips into her, past the tight muscle. The intensity of that sensation arrested her words in her throat.

He had two fingers in her. Not deep, but her heart raced like a hummingbird. He began rocking her with his hips and his fingers. In and out. Both entrances pleasured. His cock deep, his fingers shallow.

His lips moved against hers, barely making sound. “I love you. Believe me. I love you.”

A tear slipped past her jaw. She gave him what he demanded. “I love you too.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I couldn’t bear it if they hurt you because of me.”

“It will hurt worse if you go.”

She rested her forehead against his. Her body trembled with passion and a spinning rush of relief now that she’d said it. She’d said the words. She’d never been more vulnerable to anyone in her entire life.

“Make love to me,” she said. “I want you to come inside me.”

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. She could feel him release the last of his restraint. He rolled into her, slow and deep, then faster. Wilder. His cadence ensnared her and she started begging.
Please, Marcus. Please. Harder. Fuck me.

His fingers slid deep into her anus.

She gasped. He whispered things to her. The nonstop strokes of his cock, the way he was filling her. His fingers, she couldn’t believe his fingers. The strange wonder of it pushed her over the edge into a ferocious orgasm.

Marcus drove relentlessly until he clenched and came. He spurted inside her, cock throbbing. He quivered like a spear that had struck the ground. They held each other for several minutes until they caught their breath.

He loved her. She loved him. As impossible as it seemed.

It was going to be so much harder to leave him now.

* * *

Marcus shrugged out of his shirt as Katie watched. His hands were steadier than hers, and he was the one about to experience hours of excruciating pain.

June cinched protections around the hotel room, which she claimed would block Vern’s tracking spell. Katie, a full snoot of power after the best night of sleep she’d had since before Marcus, could sense the brick-solid magic settle around them. An expensive spell with rare components, it wouldn’t do for everyday use. It deadened input from the outside by half. But they’d all decided—after June obsessed about impurities—that these protections had a high percentage of success.

Well, the three witches had decided. Harry’s vote had been to drive straight for the Mexican border and disappear.

They hadn’t heard from anyone since last night. June obtained another burner phone and dialed several numbers, including Millington, but nobody knew anything.

Annette didn’t answer at the last number she’d used. They downloaded a contact list for region elders but hadn’t escalated to it yet. How could they prove anything was amiss in Millington if the keepers cleaned up after themselves like in Alabama?

Because of who they were, they’d never sway the region elders without substantial backing. Marcus and Katie were renegades, and June and Harry weren’t universally acclaimed themselves. Frank’s existence might be approved instead of an illicit infiltration. Soon, they’d call the region elders regardless. They had to act one way or another.

Katie recalled, with a pang, her father’s claim that he’d hacked the region elder forums. That would be really useful right about now.

So would a fast forward button. For the next several hours, she had agreed to cause her lover the worst pain in his life. If Lars had Vern’s tracking spell and began his search in Kentucky, the brand had to be inked as soon as possible, no matter how strong June’s ward was. They’d run out of time. They’d run out of options.

They’d almost run out of cayenne and heal-all. It was going to deplete their stores to set Marcus’s brand.

“I’d rather be doing this in my laboratory.” Marcus inspected the flawless expanse of his back in the mirror. He hadn’t wanted Katie to draw designs on him before the tattoo, as she usually did, since it would take extra time.

“The power’s out and it’s isolated,” she said. Not to mention large, spooky and decrepit. “This is the better choice.”

The electricity in the factory had been whacked by the lightning storm. They’d transported the essentials here, a busy hotel, rather than the Airstream in a nearby RV park. Not that it was optimal to place humans in the crossfire, but the throng of people would serve as camouflage and deterrent.

They hoped.

Nobody had mentioned June’s pregnancy—but nobody had mentioned the love bites on Katie’s neck, either. Or the fact she was still here.

Harry prowled the room nonstop. Though he was in two-leg form, Katie could practically see the prick of his ears and his hackles.

“How long is this going to take?” he asked again. Did he think Marcus’s estimate would have changed in the past hour? “I want to be on the road before dark.”

Once Katie set the brand, Harry and June were headed out of the country until this blew over. June wanted to stay and help, but the others had outvoted her.

All of them were getting outvoted on something.

Katie had been outvoted on this fucking permabrand.

She didn’t want to cause Marcus this pain. He theorized the massive power would flood both lattices and raise him to dual state. Theories and extrapolation. It wasn’t enough to go on.