Arcane Kiss (Talents Book 1) Page 22

His only answer was a throaty growl, far too deep for human vocal cords.

  Genevieve wrapped her arms and legs around his hard, lean back. That simple contact sent an explosion of magic through her awareness. Her groan of pleasure mixed with his.

  A low, growling rumble sounded around them, and she knew it came from Stoli. Kurt drew back a fraction, and the tiger burned in his eyes as he stared down at her. He kissed her, his tongue thrusting deep, then gave her lower lip a gentle tug with his teeth.

  As she dug her nails into his back, Kurt kissed along the line of her jaw, taking his time, his tongue tracing sensual sigils over her banging pulse.

  Kisses. They were just kisses. And yet somehow he seemed to be touching something much deeper than her skin in an intimacy more profound than anything she’d ever felt.

  He paused to nibble her collarbone, and she raised her head and threaded her hands through his hair. “Let me,” she gasped. “Let me taste you.”

  Gold flashed as he looked up at her. His thumb and forefinger closed around a nipple, tugging it upward, sending the magic rolling over her skin. “You are touching me.” He grinned. “Everywhere.”

  “But I want to ride you!”

  “No.” His smile was slow and taunting. Kurt pushed upward onto hands and knees despite her efforts to cling to him. She watched his great shoulders bunch under his skin as he kissed and licked his way downward. When he reached her breast, his hand tightened, plumping it upward. He extended just the tip of his tongue and licked, a tiny tease of sensation that seemed to strike sparks from her aura like flint and steel.

  Need clawed at her, and she rolled her hips upward, grinding against his body, urging him on.

  Close. She was so close, already on the verge of orgasm. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting for control. Behind her lids, she found the tiger watching her -- not a manifestation, but Stoli’s magical consciousness.

  “Let me touch you,” she begged. “Let me taste you.” She knew tigers couldn’t smile, but it seemed Stoli did.

  Kurt yelped in surprise as his body suddenly flipped off hers and onto his back. “What the hell?”

  She grinned wickedly. “Thank you, Stoli!” Gen sat up and pounced, swinging a leg over his hips and settling down on top of him.

  “That was dirty pool,” he gasped.

  Her thumbs found his nipples, and she rolled her wet sex across his up and down the length of his shaft. “Do you care?”

  He gasped as his eyes went unfocused, reacting to the surge of sex and magic and pleasure. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she purred.

  It was her turn to nibble her way down the arch of his chest, one thumb playing over his tiny erect nipple, as the other hand reached down to tease the length of his thick cock. A drop of pre-come dewed the slit of the velvet, and she smeared it over him. He fell back with a groan, and Genevieve smiled, enjoying the power his surrender gave her.

  She could touch him, just the way she’d always ached to touch him, hands exploring the thick hard muscle beneath his skin, hot with the burn of their blended magic.

  Genevieve began to work her way down the lean length of his body, stroking smooth, warm skin over hard muscle, savoring the thick hair that pelted his chest, soft and springy against her fingers.

  Each touch, each kiss, sent another delicious swirl of magic through her senses. The pleasure was more intense than anything she’d ever felt this side of orgasm.

  Kurt rolled under her, all but writhing. Gen experimented, alternating little brushes of her fingertips with licks and kisses, drinking the taste of him. Everything she did made him shudder in reaction, fingers digging into her skin.

  “Genevieve,” he gasped. “I’d rather not go off like a bottle rocket. I don’t think you’d like that either.”

  “So use a little of that vaunted Briggs control,” she purred. “Let’s see how close we both can come without coming.” Gen lifted off him onto hands and knees turned around so that she was head down along his torso.

  His big hands came up to cup her ass. “I’ve got to say, I approve of the view.”

  Genevieve, grinned, eye to eye with his cock. “Looks pretty good from here too.” She flicked out her tongue and licked the tip of his shaft. He gasped, digging his fingers into her ass cheeks. Then he grabbed her hips and hauled her backward, forcing her to plant her knees on either side of his head as he gave her a long, juicy lick. His mouth sealed over her clit and he began to suck, a gentle swirl of his tongue around the tight bud.

  Not touching. Not quite.

  The jolt of delight rolled all the way right up her spine and into the base of her brain. She gasped around the fat head of his cock.

  He kept right on licking, sliding his thumb into the opening of her pussy.

  Each stroke, each tiny thrust, jolted her with another burst of magic and sensation. The pleasure made her shudder. She swirled her tongue back and forth over the sensitive mushroom head. Between her legs, Kurt echoed the motion precisely, licking and sucking.

  Genevieve closed her mouth around the shaft and sucked hard -- and almost screamed as hot, blinding light jolted through her. She heard him curse, felt his desperate effort to maintain control when all he wanted to do was fill her mouth with his come.

  I’m feeling what he feels, hearing his thoughts.

  Stoli growled. Next came a blaze of raw male lust so intense, she felt it take even Kurt by surprise. It was the tiger’s lust. But it was hers too, and his: the furious need to couple.

  Strong hands gripped her around the waist and tumbled her off him as he rose onto his knees. He flipped her onto her face and jerked her onto her hands and knees on the blanket.

  Gen knew what he wanted even before he grabbed the back of her head, and gently pushed her face to the soft fabric, lifting her ass.

  Kurt drove into her, an endless luscious rush. She screamed into the blanket as magic exploded behind her closed eyes. Kneeling behind her, he began to thrust, driving in and out in ruthless digs that should have hurt. Each and every lunge felt delicious, a glorious, gliding delight.

  Tiger teeth closed around the back of her skull.

  “Stoli, let go!” Kurt snapped, freezing in mid-thrust. “She’s not a damn tigress!”

  Gen remembered a Nat Geo program she’d seen of a tiger covering a tigress just like this. Gripping her neck to hold her down.

  Tiger sex could be violent.

  “He’s not going to hurt me!” she gasped, knowing it was true. “Just fuck me!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” She howled it.

  He began to drive again, deep, digging thrusts that opened her up and raked pleasure along her sensitive sheath. Banging her hard as Stoli gripped her neck in his jaws.

  It could have been terrifying, but it wasn’t. Instead, she’d never felt such sheer lust, combined with the sense of being united with her partner. Not even Kurt, himself, the previous times they’d made love.

  He slid a hand down around her thigh and found her clit, stroking and circling the bud as he gave her fierce, short thrusts.

  The magic detonated in an impossible blaze of pleasure that ripped a rolling climax out of her harder than anything she’d ever felt.

  Genevieve closed her eyes. Sigils of her spell orbited them, rotating faster and faster, drawing power from the sex.

  Binding them.

  She caught a wisp of a thought -- It reminds me of linking with Stoli when he was a cub, only even more intense. And seeing the memory in his mind, she realized he was right. It did feel the same.

  This was Kurt’s kind of magic, Feral magic, the ability to bind mind and heart and soul with another life. Yet Ferals had never been able to do it with other humans; human minds resisted being bound that way.

  Yet there was some difference from his first Spirit link with Stoli, though he didn’t know exactly what it was, or what it meant. And neither did she.

  At last he rolled off her to collapse onto the blanket beside
her, boneless and panting. Gen could still feel the clamp of Stoli’s teeth in the back of her skull. Then those phantom jaws disappeared.

  Kurt looped an arm around her waist and flipped her over on top of him. She lay panting, eyes closed, watching the sigils revolve slowly, still spinning a cocoon of magic around them.

  “That was…” Kurt shook his head. “I never felt anything like that.”

  “Neither have I.” She reached out through her magical senses and touched the spell to disrupt it.

  It should have died instantly. It didn’t. Instead it sank into the earth and went dormant, yet ready to be called up again whenever she wanted.

  She smiled in wicked pleasure at the thought of repeating this delicious…

  Oh, shit. Gen froze as an icy horror stole over her. Her eyes flew wide.

  Kurt stiffened beneath her, jolting out of the lazy afterglow he’d been savoring. “What?” He lifted his head and looked at her, frowning. “What just scared you? You’re terrified -- I can feel it. What are you thinking?”

  She jumped to her feet and grabbed up her shorts, jerking them on as she looked around for her T-shirt. “Where’s my clothes?” Kurt had destroyed her bra, but she had no intention of going inside for a new one. We might not have that much time.

  Spotting the shirt, Genevieve snatched it up and pulled it on, only to grimace at the sight of the seams. She’d put it on inside out.

  Kurt grabbed it, tugged it over her head, turned it right side out, then put it back on her again. “Would you tell me why you’re terrified?”

  “I tried to break the spell around us, but it’s still there. It only went dormant.”

  He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending, before his golden eyes widened. “The arena spell! You think the arena spell went dormant -- that you didn’t break it after all?”

  “I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve got to check. Get dressed.”

  “Hell, yeah, we’ve got to check.” Kurt dove for his own jeans, jerking them on over his hips without bothering with briefs. He zipped up as he stuffed his sockless feet into his running shoes.

  Genevieve slipped on her sandals, grabbed her phone to call their FBI guards, and… got no answer. “You’re kidding me!” She considered calling 911, but her screaming instincts told her there was no time to waste. “Damn it, let’s go.”

  She sprinted toward the gate, a grim-faced Kurt on her heels.

  An orange and black shape lifted his head as they ran past the porch -- Dave, evidently keeping watch. “Where are you going?” The tiger leaped up to follow.

  They didn’t stop to explain.

  Kurt and Dave at her heels, Genevieve raced for the arena, praying she was wrong even as her stomach twisted with the fear she was right. She gestured for Kurt to open the locked arena gate.

  “Would somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Dave demanded as Kurt pulled out his keys.

  “Genevieve’s afraid she didn’t actually break the spell Indigo cast on the arena,” Kurt explained as he unlocked the gate.

  “I’m worried it just went dormant.”

  Dave’s eyes widened. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Exactly.” Kurt looked grim as he tore down the crime scene tape. “Wish we could call Sawyer. He hasn’t released the scene back to me yet.”

  “If he charges me, he charges me. If I’m right about the danger, he won’t give a damn.”

  “Why do you think you didn’t break the spell?” Dave demanded. “I felt it go down.”

  “Give me a minute.” Genevieve walked over to the patch of sand still dark with Fred’s dried blood. She knelt there, resting a palm on the ground and closing her eyes as if questing with magical senses. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid. I hope that’s all it is.”

  Kurt moved around in front of her until he could see her face. A frown line formed between her red eyebrows. Magic rolled out from her in waves he could almost see.

  He’d felt the magic surge through him when she’d drawn those sigils in the garden, lifting every hair on his body. The sense of her magic now wasn’t quite that strong. He closed his own eyes and looked, trying to see what she saw.

  There was nothing.

  When he opened them again, she still knelt, both hands flat on the sand, frowning deeply.

  Her eyes flew wide as she recoiled, scrambling to her feet. “Fuck. Oh, Fuck!” She strode to the outer perimeter of the enclosure where he’d first seen the sigils of the terrorist spell. Kneeling, she again put one hand on the ground. Her expression hardened, going grim as she muttered a curse, stood and walked a few feet further, then repeated the procedure. “The death spell’s still here.”

  “What?” Dave’s ears flattened. “I thought you said you broke it.”

  “I thought I had too.” A muscle flexed in the fragile line of her jaw. “Unfortunately, it seems all I did was douse the fuse. The barrel of gunpowder is still here.”

  “What in the hell does that mean?”

  She rose to her feet again, dusting her hands off on her shorts. “I broke the spell’s connection to Fred’s life force. Without the sacrifice to power it, the spell should have simply melted like a bar of soap in a shower. But she apparently bound the sigils to the Earth’s magical field, so the spell didn’t wear away. It’s still here. If she killed someone with Talent inside the spell, it would reactivate and go off.” She drew in a deep breath and met Kurt’s luminescent gaze. “Somebody like you or Dave.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Why me?” Kurt demanded. “Is it because I’m Fred’s son, or what?”

  Genevieve shook her head. “No, it doesn’t have to be you, but it does have to be a Feral. Look, think of it like a thermonuclear bomb. You need a hell of a lot of heat to fuse hydrogen, which you’re not exactly going to get from fuel oil and fertilizer…”

  “And a good thing, too,” Dave muttered.

  “So a thermo-nuke has three stages: a conventional explosive to trigger the initial fission explosion, which in turn generates so much heat it triggers hydrogen fusion.”

  “And BOOOM.” The sound effect was so startlingly realistic, Gen jumped.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Dave flicked an ear. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, not buying it. Point is, killing more than five hundred people takes a hell of a lot of magic, so all seven sacrifices must be as powerful as possible. Ferals like you two have far more magic than an Arc like me. Otherwise you’d never be able to generate a manifestation the size of a tiger.”

  “Which is why they didn’t try to sacrifice you in Faraday Square.”

  “Exactly. I would’ve been much easier to kill than you, but they needed a Feral to power the spell. That’s why they targeted your dad and all the other victims…”

  Kurt frowned. “Now that you mention it, my AAFR contact said all of the others were melded Ferals.”

  “So I’m going to tell you what you told me. It’s time to get the hell out of town.”

  He knew she was right, but fury rolled over him at the thought. Half of it came from Stoli -- tigers were territorial as hell -- but the rest of it was his. “What are my animals supposed to do while I go hide?”

  “It’s not permanent, just until we catch these bastards. Or until we figure out a way to break this thing.”

  “How long will that take? And how do you know you can break it? You were wrong before.”

  “There are thousands of Arcanists in this country. If enough of us gang up on the spell, we can tear it down.”

  “The Feds tried that. They still haven’t pulled it off.”

  “Well, we can’t just give up. The lives of the president of United States and the entire legislative branch are at risk. Yeah, a lot of them are assholes, but the stability of this country is on the line. You can’t let them kill you and wipe everybody else out in the process.”

  “They are not going to drive me away.”

  “Kurt, be reasonable. We could take Dave and go on a cruise. How long
has it been since you had an actual vacation?”

  He forced himself to start combat breathing and fight his territorial rage. It took far more work than it should have. “Dad and I used to take turns taking a few days off while the other one ran BFS.”

  “So leave your volunteer coordinator…”

  “Karla Morgen.”

  “Right, Karla. Leave Karla in charge for a while. Can she handle the job?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure she’d be willing to pick up the slack, but that still doesn’t solve the problem. We need to catch these guys.”

  “According to CNN, it sounds like everybody is getting as far away from DC -- and each other -- as possible,” Dave pointed out. “Even if that spell blows up the White House and the Capital building, it’s not going to kill the Commander-in-Chief and the entire legislative branch.”

  “You’re assuming they have to be in one place to die. Considering how complex this spell is and how many moving parts Indigo scattered all over the country, it could easily be designed to kill the targets no matter where they are. In fact, it would have to be designed that way. The Fords have no way of knowing where their targets are at any given time. If I were Indigo, I wouldn’t have targeted buildings.”

  Kurt frowned and raked his hands through his hair. “To cast a spell keyed on individuals, wouldn’t you need samples of their DNA? Blood, hair, something like that. That’s why the Secret Service treats every cell of the president’s body like nuclear waste. They burn the hair from his hairbrush and every paper cup he drinks from.”

  Dave nodded his big striped head. “They’ve been paranoid about that kind of shit ever since JFK.” His voice dropped to a rumbling growl. “Fuckin’ Soviet Arcs.”

  “Yeah, but the Fords have Spook Suits. How hard would it be for an invisible man to get into the White House?”

  “Pretty damned hard. That place has more wards than metal detectors. Same with the Capital building.”

  Gen shook her head. “Okay, yeah. But we’re talking about politicians. They still go out in public to give speeches and campaign. Think of all the hands they shake. There’s any number of ways you could get hair and skin samples. And it doesn’t take much.”