Mated By Fate by Christa Wick

Chapter Twenty-Six

Releasing a tired puff of air,Esme wiped a hand across her sweaty cheek, leaving a streak of blue paint. Straightening, she put her brush down and placed both hands against her lower back, kneading at the sore muscles. She had just spent a full hour painting charms on the walls of the clan's meeting hall—the same one Coop had hauled her into and held his trial.

Anyone who had spent a little time touring the farmhouses of Pennsylvania would recognize the work. Circles enclosed a geometric mix of birds for luck and happiness, wheat for abundance, stars for more good luck. Colors enhanced the symbols, blue for protection, white for the infant's purity, more abundance, love and luck with green heart-shaped clovers and dashes of red to make the love and protection more fierce.

Really, they were just pretty little pictures. It was the energy she poured into them that offered safety and fortune for Lana's child.

Alone in the hall, she took another swipe across her face to erase the sweat trickling down her brow.

"Who knew baby showers were so much work?” she laughed.

Picking up the brush, she moved a few more feet down the wall with a smile on her face. She didn't mind the work, needed it after the time she'd spent hiding in her house. Drawing a fresh circle, she felt a zap of energy flow through the brush.

Esme's smile deepened. She wouldn't admit it to anyone, but her magic was seriously juiced after the ceremony. The event—or its effect on her—had also unlocked the last of the artifact. She no longer had to twist and turn its jewel-encrusted cylinders or to puzzle out the other ways in which she could make it slide and reveal its secrets.

She only had to hold the object in her hand and the air around her thickened, witch light and shadow painting diagrams and words. If she completely quieted her thoughts, she could hear the last All-Mother speaking to her and other feminine voices she didn't recognize.

Her brow crinkled as she realized the pregnant shifters also could be giving her a boost. Weird how it worked, but that had always been true. When the clan's numbers flourished, so did the magic of its witches.

The documents the shifters had taken from Quentin's lair before lighting the building on fire had noted the phenomenon, too. The papers also contained nasty spells for stealing that power, both from shifters and witches.

Scowling, Esme grabbed a wet rag and erased the charm she'd been drawing. Hooking a plastic bag, she tossed the small cups that held the various colors of paint in it. She dumped the inexpensive brushes in next and then tied the bag off.

Going back to her work table, she released the dark energy that had grown at the slightest thought of Quentin. With the last of it expelled, she loaded fresh cups and brushes onto a tray, her mind directed at Lana and the baby so she wouldn't taint the magic working its way into the charms.

Picking a fresh spot a few inches above the area she'd spoiled, Esme visualized the most powerful symbol she could think of.

An eagle, gold with red-tipped feathers, took shape at the end of her brush. Carefully guarded within its deadly talons was a wolf cub, a crown of blue eight-point stars adorning its little head. Emanating out from the eagle and cub, she painted a sun wheel of darker gold and brown, red and black rings intersecting the spokes and forming the circle that contained the charm.

Finished, she took a step back. A satisfied smile played across her face until she heard a soft thunk behind her. The thunk turned out to be one of the new, high-power charms hitting a table as its wearer removed it.

Suddenly, Esme felt him. Denver. His presence like a fifty-foot wave slamming into her out of the blue.

Her knees gave out, her fingers extending in search of something to grab. Paint splattered as the tray and its small cups hit the floor.

She would have joined the mess if two strong arms hadn't wrapped around her waist to prevent her fall. Holding her close, his hands curled along her flesh, one just below her breast, almost cupping it, the other wrapped around her hip.

His mouth instantly found her neck. He nuzzled the curve of her shoulder and she felt him draw a deep breath in, scenting her.

And wedged up against her backside, she felt the thick steel of his erection, the sensation transporting her to the night of the ritual.

She choked on a whimper, tried desperately to quell her body's response as she remembered him taking her. All the thrusts and sucks and nips that had driven her to multiple orgasms crowded her mind before melting and dripping down her body, hardening her nipples and clit until they throbbed.

Esme stiffened in his embrace, the hold of the memories easing enough for her to be able to bite out a short command. “Let go of me.”

"Not until you straighten your legs." His lips whispered along her ear. "I don't want you falling and bruising that sweet ass of mine."

Her heart did a little backflip at his possessive claim. Calling her ass his. Hell, given the way he made her limbs weak and her skin tingle, he may as well call the rest of her body his, too.

Not that she’d tolerate any such behavior from him.

Still, deep muscles she'd tried to ignore since the ceremony started to flex and roll inside her while her pulse began racing out of control even as her eyelids soon became too heavy to keep open. Seemed none of her organs or muscles were responding to her commands.

That is, until he kissed her ear, assailing her with that tenderness, which was a far more dangerous weapon than his skills in seduction.

Her legs snapped straight, the hard upward brush of her ass against his cock tearing a moan from Denver's throat.

"Fine, I'm standing. Now let me go!”

A gritty grumble was his only reply as his hands released her promised, though with a slow slide across her body, his fingers splayed and traveling in opposite directions for maximum contact.

Just like that night—her wishes, but on his terms. Maddening jerk.

Determined to ignore Denver completely she turned her back on him and attempted to get back to work. Moving a few more feet down the wall to start a fresh circle, she bent down to try and salvage what she could of the paint cups—

A low, deep growl blasted out of Denver moment she did.

It was a gritty, wholly unbridled, ‘ass-up, belly-down’ growl.

Just like that, her knees went weak all over again and her pussy instantly flooded.

Her brush hand shaking wildly, Esme glared over her shoulder at him. "Why are you even here?" she asked, opting to engage him in conversation instead so he wouldn't growl like that again.

She didn't have the willpower to resist another one.

Denver stepped closer, his gaze slitting, a textbook wolfish grin his only reply as he scented her.

Seeing the rapid dilation of his pupils, she knew her arousal had been exposed. Which was just as well since her heaving breasts and her breathing bordering on hyperventilating wasn’t doing a good job keeping it a secret.

Gentle humor warred with famished hunger in Denver’s expression as he belatedly answered, "Lana needed some supplies dropped off."

Damn it! Esme cursed inside her head, trying hard to be mad at Lana, who knew exactly how Esme was spending her afternoon before the shower started.

The budding witch was only doing what the mate of a pack alpha would do—sticking her snout where it didn't belong.

It was a biological instinct that was likely even stronger now that Lana was heading into the final phase of her pregnancy. She needed everyone happy before her cub came into the world.

Sisterly solidarity bedamned.

Trying to be angry with her best friend was futile. Denver on the other hand—he made her wish witches really could turn people into frogs.

She’d be dining on turtle soup and cuisses de grenouille if she could.

Turning back to the charm she had been painting, Esme gave a dismissive shrug. "So drop the supplies off and go."

His arm brushed her shoulder as he planted one palm alongside her. His other hand took the tray with its brushes and paint away and tossed it down on the table to her right.

When he pushed the envelope and crowded her further, molding his chest against her back, she turned and forced her hands between them as a wedge. "Back off. The ritual is done. As are we.”

His lips parted on a rough, rumbling growl—the growl—that weakened her resistance to him as he came forward again to cage her in his arms. "We're far from over, love."

Leaning in, he let his weight push at her until she was flush against the wall and staring helplessly up into the red-gold glow of his eyes. A shift of his hips ensured she could feel his enormous erection rubbing against the bottom swell of her stomach.

Esme took a hard breath in and held it. His head dipped closer and she knew he meant to claim her mouth with a kiss.

She tried to turn her head, but he captured the bottom curve of her jaw in a gentle caress, instead of simply taking what she wouldn’t give.

He was wearing her down without even realizing it every time he opted to consider her feelings over his primal needs.

"You're mine. I'm yours." He nuzzled his face against her throat, exhaled contentedly before rubbing his rough cheek against her smoother one. "We both know it."

His hand left her face then to glide down to her breast. Instead of deny him, like she had his kiss, her back arched, and her traitorous flesh pushed against his palm, begging for his touch, for the warmth of his mouth.

Groaning, he murmured huskily, “Look, love. Your body knows it, too, even if you won’t admit it.”

Palming her heavy breast as she’d wordlessly requested, he plucked her tight nipples with his thumb before his mouth fastened at the curve of her neck, while his other hand gripped her hip to pull her flush against him.

Knowing mere seconds separated her from complete surrender, Esme swiftly drew on the wards she'd just painted around the room.

Magic enveloped her, muting his effects on her senses while a cold rush flooded through her veins, chilling her body’s response to his warm touch.

She kept going until the sensation of jagged ice crystals sliced through her—the only thing that could rival the pain of pushing him away, of denying her body what it wanted more than anything. Fighting the urge to submit to his touch, to welcome his possession, was as painful physically as it was emotionally.

She was determined to suffer both, even if it decimated her.

As if sensing her pain, Denver pulled back immediately, his hot gaze instantly turning to concern. Surprise hit his expression a moment later when a pale blue glow frosted the air between them like a barrier. His eyes hardened. "Drop the magic, baby. This is between me and you."

She kept the wards up. He countered her mute refusal by ruthlessly shoving his hand through the crackling blue energy field of her swirling magic, and cupping her mound.

Eyes wide with panic, Esme shook her head, pushed at his chest. She couldn’t let this happen, not again. “Please. Don't make me hate you any more than I already do."

That worked where her magic had not.

Abruptly, his hand dropped away. But it was the dimming of his eyes, the shuttering of his expression, which truly severed the connection.

He was shielding his emotions now just as she was.

And it hurt. All over.

His jaw clenched as he inhaled, slowly. If he growled at her once more, drawing on the full strength of his wolf energy, he’d most assuredly shatter her defenses and bring her to her knees in absolute submission. She was halfway there, fighting what seemed like a losing battle.

Moisture flooded her mouth and between her legs, both spaces prepared to accept his cock. Her clit, achy at the absence of his body against hers, swelled and throbbed in time with her pounding heart.

Her eyes closed. Tears rolled down her round cheeks.

She could feel the witch light infusing the liquid, knew they would be tinged blue and sparkling like pale aquamarine. Each beat of her heart felt like a heavy hand falling against a fat drumhead. The rush of blood and deafening thrum drowned out all other sounds.

She counted the beats until her pulse was no longer faster than the seconds ticking away.

Until she realized she was alone.

Opening her eyes, she looked down the hall and saw the door swing slowly shut behind Denver as he left the property.

Then and only then did she unclench her jaw and add what she’d omitted from the latter half of her earlier plea.

“Don’t make me love you more than I already do,” she whispered into the empty room.