Shock iced Emma’s lungs. The Wrapphone was gone? While she’d been facing stock one aisle over?
Had a thief taken it under her nose?
Puh-lease, her inner wolf sniffed. She stifled a laugh. Under a wolf’s nose? No way. She’d have smelled something off.
“Keep calm, everyone,” Dr. Light said.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him stride purposefully off the platform, headed toward Carol. Emma scooted out of his path, along with a handful of other employees.
“I’ll look into it and if necessary, call the police. In the meantime, that shipment of new plasma screens has come in. I’d love to see them on the shelf before the store opens. Carol, could you see to it?”
“Yes, sir.” The assistant manager nodded, panic leaving her body and suddenly all business. “David, Joy, and Emma, please clear the way for the forklifts. Ann, Joe, and Brant, come with me.”
Emma was frankly admiring. He’d calmed all their panic and then put everyone into a productive mode with just a few deft actions.
She’d already memorized the routes the forklifts used to bring product onto the floor. Starting at the doorway to the loading dock, she began sliding displays from the path to the home theater area.
Minutes later, a forklift came roaring out of the back, a six-foot television carton atop the forks, careering near-misses with the heavily stocked shelves. Emma straightened with a sucked-in breath.
At the wheel of the forklift was the gangly teen Brant.
The vehicle swerved. A set of high-end cameras was on its way to being so much shrapnel.
Emma didn’t think, she just acted, dashing out, waving and calling. “Brant! This way.” Her arms scissored like an Airforce signal officer or a demented puppet, trying to guide him in. When he headed for her, she leaped to shove clear the last few displays before he hit them. “Okay stop. Stop!”
Half a foot from her, he squealed to a halt.
She released a relieved breath—too soon.
The pricey flat panel atop the raised fork began to topple off.
Right over her head.
Good packaging meant the TV would be fine. Her, not so much. Sure, her shifter nature could heal a few broken bones or concussion, but it would hurt like hell.
She danced aside, choosing not to test her shifter’s healing.
Footfalls rang along the carpeted concrete from behind the forklift, getting nearer. “Damn it in milk, he’s not supposed to be driving.” Gabriel Light’s voice, not the smooth baritone he’d used giving that speech, but deeper, hard and flat and determined.
“I’ll fix it!” Brant jerked the steering wheel of the forklift. The box righted itself, wobbled…and started to fall the other way.
Right to where she’d moved.
An instant before she was smashed into a pulp by the plummeting television, strong arms scooped her from her feet.
A muscular leap carried her safe from disaster. Or at least the smaller, Brant-sized disaster. She’d barely comprehended that she wasn’t hurt when she realized the full magnitude of the giant, Gabriel-Light-sized disaster.
Warm arms, thick with muscle and strong as tree trunks, plastered her to a chest as hard as polished contoured marble. Male scent filtered into her nose, crisp and clean and better than her best wet dream.
Her heart leaped and thudded. Slowly her eyes rose.
Gabriel Light’s chiseled jaw was just a nibble away. Her tongue and teeth throbbed to take a taste.
“Brant, get off that thing.” Dr. Light gazed sternly at the teen, a muscle ticking in his jaw. The man had insanely touchable-looking skin. “Ms. Singer, are you okay?”
She swallowed past her need, pushing away thoughts of insanely touchable skin. “I’m fine.”
“Good. Sorry about that.” Dr. Light’s gaze was still on the forklift as he shook his head. “Brant the Blundering strikes again.”
A laugh bubbled up in her throat. Brant the Blundering? “Appropriate.”
“Yeah. I’d do something, but the kid desperately needs this job.” His gaze shifted to Emma. Their eyes met.
Electricity leaped between them.
Her whole body went up in flames, as if a grain fire had whooshed inside her.
His pupils dilated abruptly and he swallowed hard. Gently, he set her on her feet.
She wobbled. His hands were instantly there, steadying her. She gazed into his eyes as if her soul was tethered to him.
“I have to…the missing phone…” He released her and dashed away.
Leaving her standing there, cold and shaken.
* * *
Wizard Prince Gabriel Light got the hell out of scent range of the pretty little she-wolf before she got a whiff of him.
Before she could scent the testosterone pouring off him like Niagara Falls.
Holding her warm, curvy little body, smelling her sweet, wild scent…he’d ignited in a bonfire of lust. He could smell it.
And if he could, she certainly could.
He strode from the store proper into the back area, making straight for his office. There, he locked himself in and activated the wards.
Throwing himself into his chair, he dragged exasperated hands through his hair. Scrambled eggs and damn. What do I do now?
While he was out of state last week, Carol had texted him about the new hire, and on paper he agreed with her scooping Ms. Singer up. He’d been prepared to ratify his assistant’s decision this morning as soon as he’d seen the small woman working so industriously. He went toward her to introduce himself, opening his third eye on her just as a matter of routine—and had been astonished to see her pulse with magic.
A shifter.
That changed things. Shifters didn’t care much for witches. True, she wouldn’t know he was a witch, as magic was only visible in a thing or being of magic, like a talisman or shifter. Witches, as manipulators of magic, weren’t visible to the third eye.
He didn’t intend to mislead her, but he couldn’t have mundane ears overhearing him when he told her. Regular people didn’t, couldn’t know about magic. Magic was all about manipulating the power of possibility. If everyone knew it was real, magical possibility would become concrete and collapse into mundane reality. Poof, no more magic.
So he’d decided to tell Ms. Singer in private, and had passed her to give his glad-to-be-home speech, meaning to call her into his office later.
Then Carol had shouted that the Wrapphone was missing. He’d called the police and had been busy searching the area when Brant caromed out on that forklift.
Gabriel was rarely rash. He kept a belt of talismans for just about every eventuality, from calm spells for pissed-off customers to a find spell for lost children. He’d reached under his vest for a discreet Slow when he’d seen Ms. Singer in imminent danger.
Something primitive inside him went from zero to sixty in two seconds flat. He’d abandoned spells to dive in personally, leaping to her rescue like he’d grown tights and a cape.
The instant he felt her curvy warm body and smelled her soft femininity and fell into her big brown eyes he started spurting testosterone like a gorilla. But, holy cereal bombs, the new hire was the most beautiful morsel of a woman he’d ever seen…and as he stood there, wanting her with every fiber of his being, he realized he was a crunchy-in-milk idiot.
Witch. Shifter. Huge taboo.
If the Witches’ Council, the magical community’s governing body, found out he was insanely attracted to a shifter, they’d have his head.
Literally.
Ever since an insane werewitch king had tried to take over the world, witch/shifter sex was declared illegal, immoral, and fattening—as in, we’ll remove ten pounds instantly, not with liposuction but with an axe.
For himself, he might have risked the headsman’s axe to try for a coffee date, or for dinner and a movie followed by a little meaningless sex… His groin wrenched with need. He dug his hands deeper into his hair, pulling the roots, hoping a little scalp pain might keep him from dashing right back out there for more caveman rescuing.
He forced himself to remember it wasn’t just his life on the line. Ms. Singer would also get penalized, and the Council’s Enforcers usually hit the female with the worst of the punishment.
He couldn’t stand the idea of one hair on Emma’s head being harmed.
Emma?
I mean Ms. Singer.
He’d have to tell Ms. Singer everything. If she wasn’t attracted in return, problem solved. If she was…well, maybe between the two of them, they could figure out a way to deal with it.
Except she might not care what the Council thought. Shifters often didn’t. And she was a wolf, highly sexed. She might not only not say no to a coffee date followed by a little meaningless sex, she might throw him to the floor, throw one leg over his hips and…
He clenched his eyes. His groin was on fire simply from imagining she’d want him. Much more of this and he’d be coming in his pants. Imagine if she actually told him she desired him, too?
Then how could he keep her safe? He found himself filled with a fiery need to do just that.
Change of plans. Don’t tell her any of it. Don’t tell her I’m a witch, don’t tell her I want her so badly I’d risk the headsman’s axe just to steal a kiss.
And especially don’t let her smell the desire wafting off me.
Resolutely he stood and reached under his sweater vest for his belt of ready talismans—he wasn’t just a wizard prince, he was a battle mage and always kept his belt stocked.
It took a lot of raw power to throw a spell, which was why most witches prepared talismans in advance. Like a battery versus plugging in, talismans were easy and quick but limited, whereas a witch’s personal well of power, while easily depleted, eventually recharged.
His office was innocent-looking enough, his desk, his executive chair, two guest chairs, a set of filing cabinets, and a supply cabinet. A credenza lined most of one wall, the area over it tiled with beaming photographs of all his employees.
But underneath the ordinary was the magical, just waiting to be revealed.
Finding the talisman he wanted, he touched it, releasing its prepared spell. The air above the credenza shimmered, revealing his cauldron and other spell-casting paraphernalia sitting atop.
He couldn’t let Emma—Ms. Singer—smell his desire, therefore he had to magic a way to keep the stink hidden.
Considering his options, he took down several talisman blanks and got to work.