Chapter Seven
It had been a long time since Olivia had done this trick, though levitation had proved useful over the years, often in lethal circumstances. Still, she kept in practice, so she wasn’t worried about dropping either of them.
At least, not until he parted her vaginal lips and gave her a long, juicy lick.
Oh Goddess! The man knew what he was doing. He slid a forefinger into her pussy in a teasing little caress that sent a jolt of delight up her body. Each sweet lick made her nervous system sing.
She had to fight to concentrate on exploring the long vein on the underside of his cock, nibbling and tasting. The scent of him filled her senses. Ozone and sandalwood and man. And something else, something a little feral and wild, a kind of musk that didn’t seem entirely human. Somehow it reminded her of the scent of a cat’s soft, fine coat.
She nibbled her way down to his balls and sucked first one and then the other into her mouth, enjoying the way he groaned in delight.
He rewarded her with a delicious swirling lick over her clit, then closed his mouth and suckled hard. She drew off his balls and went back to his shaft, nibbling her way up the underside along the sensitive vein. To her delight, his powerful torso rolled under her in a shudder of pleasure.
The second of his thick fingers joined the one in her pussy to stroke in and out. Each erotic slide reminded her of that big cock grinding pleasure into her brain
Olivia drew her mouth away to eye his shaft, shivering a little at the delicious magic he was working between her thighs.
Reaching down the length of her body, Rhys found the aching point of one nipple and began delicately to tug and twist. Arousal stormed through her, hot with the need to fuck.
The intensity was such that she raised her head and glanced around at the magic swirling over them. Very little of it was green. Her lust was real.
Opening her mouth, she angled her head and swooped down over his cock, taking every inch she could until he groaned in pleasure between her thighs.
He was far too long to deep throat, so she wrapped one hand tighter around his shaft and teased his balls with the other.
“Okay,” he gasped. “That’s about as much as I can stand.” Rhys surged against her magic, and she knew he meant to roll her over as he’d done the night before.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Olivia lifted her head off him and tightened the grip of her magic, grinning at his surprised gasp at finding himself pinned.
Not that she could’ve held him for very long. Fortunately, Rhys wasn’t really all that interested in escape. His pupils were ringed in irises gone gold, and his expression was feral with lust. She levitated, adjusting her position in midair until she hovered over that fat, delicious shaft.
Aiming his cock upward with one hand, Olivia positioned her juicy sex over the shaft and took him deep, groaning in delight at the slick, delicious pleasure. Letting her magic support her knees, she began to ride him, thrusting up and down as he writhed in the grip of her magic.
Deeper. She needed him deeper. Leaning back on her heels, Olivia grabbed her ankles, gaining the leverage to grind down on him even harder.
Goddess, it felt so good! That thick shaft plunging all the way to the balls, the penetration exquisite as it hit sensitive nerves buried deep . . . Biting her lip, she started plunging thrusts, shivering as he filled her hard with every rise and fall.
Rhys reached between them, slid a finger between her vaginal lips to seek her clit. But with her driving so hard, he had trouble finding the rhythm.
With a restless growl, he sent magic rolling from that teasing finger. It felt like a hot mouth sealed over her clit.
Olivia cried out, the sound high and shocked. And rode harder, faster, loving the sensation of being so thoroughly stuffed as a phantom tongue swirled over her clit. Writhing, she slid up and down the thick shaft, her head thrown back so that her long hair danced over them both.
Rhys lifted his head, his expression savage, teeth clenched with effort as he ground up at her, golden eyes wild. One big hand gripped a handful of comforter and pulled tight. The thick tendons stood up in his throat and his face flushed as his orgasm built.
He did something with his magic, tightening around her clit in wet, delicious friction even as his cock slammed to its full depth inside her.
Olivia came screaming, lost and maddened in the sheer perfect pleasure of it. Rhys roared back, a deep, leonine sound.
And came.
Magic exploded around them, a fountain of swirling blue and yellow sparks. There was no green at all.
Olivia felt his big body start to drop under her—she’d almost lost the spell, dammit—but she caught him and herself, and lowered them both to the bed. She collapsed atop him with a heartfelt groan, sweating and ecstatic.
“That . . .” he panted,” . . . didn’t last quite as long as I’d hoped.”
“We’ll just have to try harder next time.”
He snorted. “I’m not sure I’ll survive the next time.”
Olivia collapsed next to him on the bed, breathing hard. A piece of fabric flopped under her hand. She lifted her head to look at it and laughed. “You tore the hell out of the comforter.”
He rose onto his elbows and eyed the shredded fabric with a grin. “I did, didn’t I?”
Then she frowned. Olivia had spent enough time using a sword to know what a blade puncture looked like. “Wait, that’s not a rip. It’s a slice.”
“Are you sure?”
They got up and flipped back to the comforter to find she was right. The punctures went all the way into the mattress. “It looks like claw marks.”
Rhys stared at them, a muscle rolling in his jaw. “Am I a werewolf?”
“Werewolves don’t use magic, so you’re definitely not a were.”
“But I’m something,” he said grimly. He hadn’t looked that shaken when the gang of werewolves were getting ready to rip him apart. “And I don’t think it’s human.”
Olivia frowned, studying him. He meant it. “Don’t be ridiculous. You may have abilities that we don’t understand, but you’re the same man that you always were—the same good man.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” She lifted a hand to cup his cheek, urging him to meet her eyes. “Rhys, you came to the rescue of a woman you found curled up on a park bench freezing to death. A woman you didn’t know.”
He shook his head. “Anybody would have.”
“No, not anybody. And anybody sure as hell wouldn’t have stood his ground before a pack of werewolf assassins.” She waved at the claw marks. “That’s a feature, not a bug. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need all your powers if we want to survive.”
A fine muscle flexed in his jaw. “One way or another, we’ve got to figure out what I am. Whatever abilities I have, I can only use them if I know what they are.” He reached down to the mattress, hovered his hand over the puncture marks. Blue sparks drifted down from his palm. When they vanished, the mattress and sheets were whole again. “And that means we’re going to have to go talk to my parents, find out what they know.”
Rhys turned to the bedside table where a cell phone lay. He picked it up and began typing, his thumbs dancing in the practiced way that reminded her he was a millennial.
When it came to texting, Olivia herself was all thumbs. Clumsy, clumsy thumbs. “What are you doing?”
“Texting my mother.” He stuck the phone in a pocket. “She helps my dad run his carpentry business. She’ll text back when she gets a chance. Either way, we probably won’t be able to talk to them until seven o’clock or so. In the meantime, I have some other calls to make.”
“Do you want some privacy?”
He gave her a smile at that, though it looked a little absent. “No, though I’m not sure you’ll find it particularly interesting. Just me making a living. Shouldn’t take long. Then after that, I’d like you to demonstrate those magical techniques you mentioned earlier, the ones that work against werewolves. I want to be ready for the furry bastards the next time they show up.”
“I have to agree with you there.” Olivia followed him out of the room and across the hall.
By now she wasn’t surprised to find that built-in bookshelves covered three walls of Rhys’s home office. Books—paperbacks and hardback—shared space with vases and graceful statuary in bronze and marble. The fourth wall held a fifty-inch flat screen.
But the focus of the room was a massive oak desk with geometric carving and a leather executive desk chair. Dropping into the chair, he opened his laptop and booted it up.
Olivia settled into one of the armchairs sitting across from the desk. “What is it that you do, if you don’t mind blatant nosiness?”
He glanced up and gave her a smile. “Play the stock market.”
Olivia’s brows lifted. “Judging from the Porsche—not to mention this house—you must play well. How’d you get started doing that?”
He shrugged. “When I was a kid, my mother did a little bit of investing, more as a hobby than anything else. She got me involved, too, but I think her real objective was to foster an interest in math. Every night we’d sit down together and watch CNBC. One day we were watching the ticker and I pointed out one particular stock and told her it was going to drop thirteen points the next day. And it did—by exactly thirteen points.”
Olivia’s eyebrows flew up. “You have the Sight?”
He waggled one hand in a “kinda” gesture. “It seems more reliable when it comes to picking stocks. When it comes to actual life events . . .” He shrugged. “Depends.”
“With the Sight, it usually does,” Olivia agreed dryly. “At least from what I understand. It’s not one of my talents.”
Rhys nodded. “At first, Mom assumed it was a coincidence. So I started trying to predict the market as a game, experiment, whatever. Turned out I was always right. All I had to do was look at a stock and I had a fair idea what it would do the next day. It wasn’t long before I started playing the market with my allowance. Paid off, so Mom encouraged me to plow the money I made right back into investing. By the time I got out of high school, I’d financed my college tuition.”
“And you just own one Porsche? With talent like that, you could buy a garage full of cars, plus a multimillion-dollar mansion and your own island.”
He grinned crookedly. “That’d just be tacky.”
“Okay, so I’m crass. What do you do with the money?”
“Invest in assorted business ventures, mostly high tech. And there are various charities I give money to.”
“I’m surprised the SEC hasn’t investigated you.”
“They probably would, if I weren’t careful to lose occasionally. And I’m damned careful not to break any laws.”
“Rhys, you’re using magic to play the stock market.”
“Which is not against the law.”
She grinned. “Okay, yeah.”
“So what do you do?”
Olivia shrugged. “This and that. I’ve been an artist, a soldier, a spy, a reporter a few times, a shopkeeper, a midwife, a courtesan during a particularly suicidal patch, captain of a merchant vessel, and my own heir whenever one of my identities started getting inconveniently old. At the moment, I run a high-end antiques store, though I’m older than most of my stock.”
“Well, given that you’re two hundred years old . . .”
“Closer to three, actually.”
His eyes gleamed with curiosity, but before he could ask whatever question he had in mind, his phone began emitting the clink of coins and the first few bars of Pink Floyd’s “Money.”
Rhys sighed. “Annnnd . . . I’ve got a call. Excuse me.” He picked up his cell. Olivia, who knew a bit about financial matters, understood only one word in ten of the call that followed.
Deciding to give him some privacy, she got up and slipped out.
* * *
A couple of hours later, they sat down to a lunch of vegetable soup and thick ham and cheese sandwiches.
Licking mayo off her thumb, Olivia asked, “So what did your parents think of your magical abilities?”
Rhys popped a pretzel into his mouth and crunched thoughtfully. “The stock thing was really the first magic I worked—if you can call it that. Mom taught chemistry and physics in high school, and she didn’t believe in magic. But by the time I was twelve or thirteen, I started developing abilities we couldn’t explain any other way: levitating objects, doing little fireworks displays, that kind of thing.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t end up outing us all.”
He gave her a dry look. “I read comic books and science fiction. I was afraid of ending up in a government lab somewhere, so I was really careful about when and where I did my tricks.” The humor drained from his eyes. “I was in the ninth grade when this older kid decided I’d make a good victim. He was a football player—had about thirty pounds on me, a lot of it muscle. Got me down and started just beating the hell out of me.”
Olivia winced. “What did you do?”
“I lost my temper and gave him one of my bottle rocket spells right in the face. Made a loud boom. A teacher witnessed the whole thing, so I got suspended for bringing fireworks to school.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t expelled.”
“I probably would’ve been, but nobody could find any evidence. No surprise, since it hadn’t been fireworks. No gunpowder smell, no actual bottle rocket. I didn’t really hurt the other kid, though I did scare the living hell out of him. He did rather more damage to me, including a black eye and a split lip, so he got suspended, too.”
“Bet he never messed with you again.”
He smiled slightly. “You’d win that bet.”
“So what did you think about your magic?”
“Like I said, I always figured I was a mutant. My parents certainly couldn’t do anything like that.”
“What was their theory?”
“My mother pointed out I was lucky I didn’t burn the kid. She advised me to practice with my magic, figure out how it worked, and make sure I never hurt anybody by accident.” His lips twitched. “My father, on the other hand, hired this ex-Navy SEAL bricklayer he knew to teach me Krav Maga. Said the next time some asshole tried to beat me up, he wanted me to give him more than a light show.”
Olivia blinked. “What’s Krav Maga?”
“An Israeli combat style. Unlike karate or aikido, it’s not a sport. It’s designed solely to let you kick the other guy’s ass so hard and fast, you can get away. I kept with it; there’s an ex-Marine I practice with three times a week. It’s great exercise.”
“No wonder you were able to handle those werewolves.”
“Didn’t hurt.” He eyed her. “Speaking of the werewolves, didn’t you say there were spells I could use against them?”
“Yeah, though you have to approach it in a roundabout fashion. You can generate natural forces with magic, and use those in your attacks. Bolts of electricity instead of magical blasts, for example.”
“A bolt of electricity will kill pretty much anything. Care to give me a demonstration?”
“No time like the present.”
They spent the next three hours in the basement while Olivia demonstrated electrical blasts, along with assorted other spells. She spent a full hour teaching him how to search for the weakness in someone else’s spell, then use that knowledge to break it.
Rhys’s mother called soon afterward, and Olivia stepped into the next room to give them a little privacy. He joined her a moment later looking satisfied, if a little concerned. “We have a dinner invitation.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“The truth. If they have been lying to me, they had a reason. Once they know the situation I’m in, they’ll come clean. If, that is, they know anything.”
“You do realize it’s possible that they haven’t told you the truth because they don’t know what it is. They could be under some sort of geas, too.”
“If they are, I want to know about it. Even if . . .” He broke off.
“If you’re concerned this may change the way they feel about you, don’t be. Even just hearing about them secondhand, it’s obvious they love you.”
Rhys made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I’m not worried about that.” His expression turned grim. “I’m worried about hurting them.”
They headed for the garage. Olivia was waiting for him to unlock the Porsche when he hesitated, frowning at the car. Then, shaking his head, he walked inside and came back with another key fob. He clicked it, unlocking the BMW.
“So why aren’t we taking the Great White Phallic Symbol?”
He gave her a dry smile as they got in. “Cute. And I don’t know why. I just know we’re going to need the Beamer.”
Shaking her head, Olivia buckled her seatbelt. “Because that’s not ominous at all.”
* * *
Rhys parked the BMW in front of his parent’s two-story bungalow, with its sunny yellow paint job and white trim. Normally he felt a sense of pleasure returning to his childhood home, but tonight his stomach coiled in an anxious knot.
Olivia sat next to him, dressed in casual jeans and a blue sweater that complemented her eyes, glamoured to a more human shade of blue. She was wearing her magical mask again, and she looked like a perfectly ordinary twenty-year-old blonde—a little young for him, maybe. Which was ironic, considering their true age difference.
As if sensing his anxiety, she gave him an encouraging smile, one hand cupping his where it rested on the gearshift. He smiled back, appreciating the support.
Especially since he had no clue how to broach the subject with his parents.
Rhys was just reaching for the doorbell when the door opened and his father smiled out at him. “You know better than that, boy. This is still your house. Get in here. Your mama made her lasagna and I’m starving.”
Tom Kincade stepped back, studying Olivia with approval as they walked in. His was a big man, with big hands scarred from years of driving nails and sawing wood, a perpetual tan from years in the sun, and a head gone mostly bald. But his blue eyes were kind and clever, and he’d taught Rhys everything he knew about being a man.
Rhys made the introductions, and his father gave Olivia a warm handshake and a chivalrous smile. “Glad you could join us.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
Tom blinked at the impact of her smile, even dimmed by her masking glamour. Good to know Rhys wasn’t the only one Olivia knocked off balance.
Tom led the way through the living room with its floral-upholstered furniture and family photos. She gazed around with sincere approval. “Your house is lovely.”
Dad smiled, obviously pleased. “Why, thank you, though that’s more because of my wife than me.”
“Just wait until you taste her lasagna,” Rhys told Olivia.
Inhaling the scent of tomato sauce, garlic, oregano, meat, and cheese, she again flashed those dimples at Dad, who looked properly dazzled. “It smells incredible.”
Mom was just setting down a big square pan full of lasagna on the butcher-block countertop when they walked into the kitchen. June Kincade was a small round woman in her midfifties who still gave the world’s best hugs. She wore her blond hair in a neat bob, and her soft features were expertly made up, especially around her intelligent hazel eyes. Today she wore a pair of dark jeans and a bright blue sweater complimented by a necklace of colorful glass beads. Taking off her oven mitt, she reached to shake Olivia’s hand with obvious delight. “It’s great to meet you, Olivia.” Rhys could almost see visions of grandchildren dancing in her head.
Yeah, he’d been afraid this was going to happen. His mother had schemed to get him hitched for years. She’d never seemed to realize the hazards of the “nice normal girls” she liked to throw at him.
Each time June had tried to set him up, he’d protested, “What the hell am I supposed to do if she freaks out about my magic?”
Her response was always an airy wave. “Oh, you’ll figure something out, dear.”
Yeah, right.
On the other hand, that was hardly a concern with Olivia, was it? A thought that was entirely too tempting. . . .
They stood chatting while his father uncorked a bottle of Chardonnay from a local winery. He poured each of them a glass and they all trooped into the dining room. The table lay draped in a cloth sprigged with spring flowers and set with his mother’s best china.
She must be getting a little desperate.
Rhys made himself a private bet that she’d bought the fresh flowers for the centerpiece after she got his text message about Olivia.
And God, he wasn’t looking forward to this. He and Olivia had agreed to save the uncomfortable questions for after dinner. In retrospect, Rhys wished they’d just gotten it over with. His mother’s lasagna was always delicious, yet it tasted like sawdust tonight. He cut bites and pushed them around on his plate as his parents talked about their day.
“So,” June began, turning to Olivia. “How did you two meet?”
Rhys stiffened a little. He should have seen this coming.
Olivia flicked him a look. They’d agreed ahead of time not to lie to his parents, reasoning that it was counterproductive.
He nodded slightly, giving her permission.
“Actually, he found me freezing to death on a park bench in the middle of town. I might’ve died if he hadn’t come along, because I couldn’t move at all.”
His mother’s eyes widened at that. She darted him a look he had no trouble translating. You’re picking up homeless women now?
Rhys pushed aside his plate as his stomach knotted. God, this was going to be a hellacious conversation. But there was no help for it. “That’s what Olivia and I came to talk to you about. I seem to be in some trouble.”