Marked By Magic by Christa Wick

Chapter Twelve

A faint whisperof flesh on wood announced Michelle's presence outside Tanner's room.

He had been waiting for that sound.

From the hour since the house settled down beyond the rotating security patrols, to the several excruciatingly long minutes since she had reached the second floor landing. It’d all felt like a damn eternity since he’d parted company with her in the woods until that very second with her outside his door.

It had been an unbearable wait, the seconds ticking by with Tanner fervently hoping the knock would never fall, hoping that Michelle would retreat no matter how much her presence stirred his spirit.

But then that whisper knock had pounded in his head, the handle turning as he waited with his back half plastered against the wall like the next-to-last victim in a horror film.

Of course she would know he was awake and that he had heard her.

Knowing she could read his mind, he tried to still the thoughts running through it. But then the door opened and the moonlight coming through the window illuminated her beautiful face and shapely, round form.

The first emotion to surge through him was love.

The second was lust.

The third was shame because he was not alone inside his head.

"Please," she whispered, closing the door. "Don't send me away."

Tanner started to shake, the faint vibrations rolling through him from head to toe.

"Wherever you want to go, you can go," he said, forcing a rough growl to his voice instead of the anguish he felt.

"Just not with you at my side," she said.

"Exactly."

Michelle fell out of the moonlight and into the shadows the closer she approached. She got on her knees next to where Tanner lay on his side in the nest of blankets. She lifted the top blanket and crawled in with him. Her body, with its human metabolism, was cooler than his own.

Maybe that was why she snuggled against him.

"It's not," Michelle whispered.

Her presence made him all too aware of the hard floor beneath them. She should be on a mattress or a cot, but everything like that had reeked of the Hunters' dark spells. At least in the room she shared with the other latents, cushioned chairs had been brought in for the women to sleep on.

"I'm okay," she insisted, her body embedding itself against his.

When Tanner started to squirm, she fisted the t-shirt he wore and wedged her leg between him and the wall to hook him.

Not like he wasn't already hooked from the second she reached his hallway.

"Do you know what I've been doing the last two hours?" she asked.

He didn't bother verbalizing that he knew. Michelle and the other latents, along with Iris, had been with Esme, working to heal her despite the fact that every second the witch spent with the monstrosity on the altar weakened her.

"It's sucking the life out of her somehow," Michelle whispered, her face close enough to his that he could feel the warm caress of her breath. "But it's dying, too."

"And what's it doing to you?" he whispered, even though there was no need to say the words out loud. She was in his head in more ways than one.

"Well, I'm bone tired," she admitted. "But I couldn't sleep away from you, not when you're in the same house."

Right, he'd have to remedy that.

As soon as the thought ran through his head, Michelle clutched his shirt tighter and with both hands.

"You're just a girl," he reasoned, trying to extricate his clothing from her grip.

A hot blast of Michelle's anger scoured his insides.

"Twenty-five," she growled, forcefully butting all the adult bits of her body against Tanner.

The two decades between them didn't seem like anything when her flesh warmed against his. Then her hands released his shirt, darted upward, and wound through hair grown shaggy with all the constant missions.

Shaggy, hell, he had intentionally cultivated the look of an absolute bum to keep Michelle away.

She laughed, the sound light.

"Stay out of my head," he rumbled.

"I don't know how to, now that I'm in it," she answered with contrition. "Just like I don't know how to stop loving you now that I do. Doesn't matter that I'm like the plague to you."

Her words stabbed through him hard enough that they in turn loosened Michelle's grip on his hair as she expelled a soft cry.

Tanner shushed the woman, wrapped his arms around her, then worked his way onto his back so that Michelle's weight pressed down on him instead of the cold, hard floor. Still trying to calm her, he rubbed at her back. She burrowed her face against his neck, her cheeks damp with tears.

He kept rubbing until the tears dried and her muscles relaxed.

It wasn't until she stretched against him that he realized just how much her mood had changed from hurt and crying to some—

"Baby," he groaned. "Don't do that."

Somehow, he had managed not to get an erection while holding her. Only the worst kind of wolf or man got hard over a crying woman. But she wasn't crying anymore. She wasn't gulping anguished breaths between the tears. Instead, the air whipped in and out, her breath hot on his neck as her hips wiggled.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

He couldn't let it happen.

"What are you going to do to stop it?" she asked, sliding her palms to press flat against his chest as she pushed up and molded her strong legs against his lean hips.

She whipped the skirt's length behind her, the quick motion revealing the pale flesh of her thighs. Seeing the scars they bore, he touched one.

Michelle froze for a second then tried to brush his hand away.

"How did this happen?" He had wondered since the rescue on the lake, but wouldn't give himself the right to ask her.

Until now.

She shook her head at the question, but it felt as if she was also flinging the answer at him, letting him see into her with the same detail as she saw into him.

A late middle-age woman wielded a belt. A child in its tender years but still recognizable as Michelle tried to grab hold of the strap as it slapped and pounded against her torso and legs. Welts formed as she called the woman "grandma" and begged for the punishment to stop. In the end, all she could do was protectively cover her face as the sharp blows continued.

Each time the belt hisses through the air, the woman screams.

There's a demon in you, a demon stealing my secrets.

But I…will…drive…him…out!

"Stop," Michelle begged, not to the woman as she had when she was little, but to Tanner and the way he had invaded her memories.

Weeping, she rolled to her side, facing the door instead of him. Even with all the confusion twisting through Tanner, he knew he didn't want Michelle to leave, was desperate for her to stay. Cradling her soft curves, he hummed a song from his own childhood.

Michelle took up a gentle rocking motion as her cries grew more desperate. Tanner kept hold of her, kissed her hair, then her cheek. He promised to stay as long as she wanted. He told her how beautiful she was, how she was the most beautiful woman in the world to him. He told her these things even after she stopped crying and rocking.

Ever so slowly, the nature of his kisses changed. They no longer fell on her temple or the back of her head. They landed on her neck, then her shoulder as he pulled down the blouse's collar.

Then the kisses stopped and the sucking began, his lips fastened firmly to her flesh.

Pinned by Tanner's passion, Michelle uncurled. She eased his hand to where the skirt still rode high on her hips, brought it to the top band of her underwear, then pushed it beneath the band.

For the first few seconds, she controlled his fingers, shoving and sliding them between her wet folds. Canting her hips, she increased the pressure between them, her breathing harsh and accelerated as she raced atop Tanner. He grew hard against her, his cock hugged by the cleft of her ass but barricaded from skin-on-skin contact because of her panties and his own clothes.

He promised himself he wouldn't free his cock.

But he would penetrate her—if that was what she wanted.

A needy whine from Michelle gave him the permission he needed. His fingers escaped her control.

His touch slid from rubbing against her at the front to sliding down the back of her panties. His palm skimmed over the curve of her ass. His fingers found her where she was wettest, but he didn't invade, not then. First, he found the swollen pebble of her clit and rubbed, his middle, index, and ring fingers working as one.

Michelle wiggled harder, tried to move so that the tight cluster of those three fingers would press against the entrance to her pussy. He slid them back up to her clit, his thick thumb pushing into her tight hole at the same time. Her pussy clutched at it. Her lungs sucked in harsh gasps. The gasps mingled with groans that any and every wolf in the building could hear.

"Ah, please…Tanner…please…"

Her voice filled the room as a high-pitched keen that sounded like a distant whistle, but he understood.

More of her juices pushed from her to cover his hand. Tanner wanted to lick his fingers, wanted to know her taste with the same acuity he knew her smell, but he promised himself that he would bring her to climax first.

Still in his head, Michelle shoved her hand down her panties, jousted with Tanner for a second as she coated her fingers with her cream. Bringing her hand out and up, she reached behind her to where his mouth was. Tanner reverently sucked the tips, licked the palm.

She bucked at that first suck, but she didn't climax. She had to ride it out, had to grind tighter and tighter against the triangle of fingers he worked into her. Tanner licked harder at her palm, took a soft nip at its pad. Michelle drew more juice from her slick folds. Her ass ruthlessly bobbed up and down the surface of his cock as need and pleasure robbed her self control.

"I want you in me," she begged, her voice in the air around them and inside his head.

She tried to twist around, growled at him when he blocked her attempt to face him. Stealing her fingers away from his tongue and lips, she forced her hand between them, unzipped his pants then rubbed and squeezed at his cock.

You won't climax, she whispered inside his head. Not in your pants.

His need to shift raged at her teasing.

His control hung in tatters.

Rolling onto his back, Tanner brought Michelle with him and roughly spun her around. She tried to outmaneuver him with a lift of her hips and widening the part of her thighs. Keeping an iron grip, he stopped Michelle from impaling herself on his hard cock.

Witch light flashed in her gaze, but she acquiesced. He didn't care if it was to him or to her own need to climax. He just wanted to give her something hot and sweet without ruining her future.

She took it, raced with it. Forward and back, over and over, she slid her clit and slick folds against his shaft. His testicles swelled with seed meant to spill inside her.

"Yes!" she whispered with a fevered desperation. "Let me feel you come inside me."

Tanner abandoned his hard grip on her hips to wrap his hands around the full globes of her ass. He needed her utterly spent before she drove him too far. His middle finger found the pucker of her ass. He teased it, threatened invasion. Feral groans escaped Michelle. The quivering tremble of release started at her thighs, overtook her core and then her torso, reaching, at last, her pale shoulders and quivering mouth.

Shattering against Tanner, she triggered his own release.

Michelle rubbed, groaned, trembled, then collapsed into his embrace. Their skin was slick and sticky, but he held her against him as the aftershocks running through their bodies slowly faded. He held her long after she had fallen asleep, her face buried against the side of his neck.

Staring up at the dance of shadows against the ceiling until the moon abandoned the sky, Tanner asked himself the same question over and over.

How will I ever let her go?