Calling the Wild Read online

  “Just do it.”

  “With pleasure.”

  The razor blade was once more pulled from his pocket, and Moira looked away as he took the blade from its sheath and held it to her breast. He took his time, lightly scraping her flesh with it, before setting one sharp end against her skin.

  He opened a thin cut, deeper and shorter than what he’d done to the blonde. Moira gritted her teeth against the pain, hands clenched at her side. Thought it was no great wound, the soft skin of her breast was sensitive, making the shallow wound painful.

  Drak watched in pleasure as her blood welled, beginning to drip in thick lines down her breast towards the edge of her corset. Before blood would have met fabric, he swiped his tongue across her, shivering in pleasure at her taste, before setting his lips to the wound.

  Moira leaned back over the arm he’d placed at the small of her back, staring at the ceiling as she counted the seconds. He sucked her flesh into his mouth until she felt his teeth scrape against her. Her entire breast began to tingle, and arousal, unwanted and unwelcome, surged through her. Moira closed her eyes, letting the feeling sweep through her for a moment. As Drak sucked at her breast Moira remembered the feel of the centaur’s too-hot fingers on her, tracing over her body from neck to waist.

  With a jolt she realized that Drak had sucked for longer than the agreed upon forty seconds. Cursing herself for having lost track of time she shoved him away, her flesh sucked from his mouth with a pop.

  Drak collapsed back, eyes half lidded. Green sparks danced around him, weak ghosts of her magic.

  Moira crawled to him and grabbed a wrist in each of her hands. She forced his hands close to one another, laying them on his thighs so that they were a few inches from each other, palms facing in. She set her hands along the outsides of his.

  “Swear that you will not use my blood to harm me.”

  “I swear it.” The space between his palms glowed blue.

  “Swear that by neither word nor action you will let another being, human or other, know that you have taken my blood.”

  “I swear it.” Again blue light flashed between their hands.

  “Swear that as a vessel for my blood you will do to me no harm, and do all in your power to aid me.”

  “I…swear.” This was the brightest flash of all.

  Moira smiled and pulled away, the last was not a pledge that they had agreed upon, but he was too power drunk to fight it. Sharing of blood and power was a huge risk, but she’d turned it to her advantage. Drak was well informed and well connected, a good ally.

  “Thanks.” Moira slipped her fingers into the rip in his shirt and gave his nipple ring a friendly flick. “I’ll be in touch.”

  When she pulled her hands away, his eyes slid closed, head tipping to the side. He was out, as drunk on power as he would have been on a bottle of 151.

  The other people in the room were looking their way, and from the startled looks she could tell that they had seen the flares of magic. For some, her brief flares of magic were their first confrontation of the reality of the magical world they craved.

  Others looked at her with hunger in their eyes. They knew what else was out there, and knew she was real magic, an object of great desire.

  Several men and one woman rose, their eyes on her breast. Looking down Moira saw that the cut still seeped blood, the area around it, where he’d sucked on her, already bruising. She was going to have the mother of all hickies in an hour. Snatching up the razor blade from where it had fallen on the couch she licked it clean, tasting the metal of the blade and the copper of her blood.

  Once she was sure that there was nothing left that could be used against her, Moira stood, just as the first man stepped up behind her and made a very disgusting proposition.

  “And why exactly would I want to do that? Play with the blonde. There is nothing else I want here.”

  “Let me change your mind. My tongue is much more skilled than Drak’s.”

  “I’m leaving, and no one in this room is going to follow me.” She raised her voice so that the others who had come to her could hear her pronouncement. There were several mutinous expressions, but Moira stared them down. A display of magic, though normally intimidating for those who had none, might have excited these people.

  When she pushed forward they let her pass, and pink bob, who still stood guard by the doorway, didn’t meet her eyes.

  Once outside of the little room, and away from the prying eyes and oppressive atmosphere, Moira picked up the pace, threading her way through the press of bodies. She found herself on one side of the dance floor, the exit on the other. The walls were crowded with bodies, people pushed back against the walls in groping, kissing, groups of twos or threes.

  Moira opted for the most direct path, straight across the dance floor. She started into the fray, dodging undulating bodies and thrashing arms. A girl dressed like Morticia Adams grabbed her ass, and Moira stomped on her foot. Goth boots trumped black ballet slippers every time. Taking perverse satisfaction in the girl’s howl, Moira started forward again.

  The song changed, and the lights mounted on the DJ booth changed with it. Wild pulsing and strobe lights blinded her, the other bodies now hulking shapes in the lightning flashes. Hands reached for her from the swirling dark.

  Moira held out her own hands, but met only air. A warm body molded to her back, hands tight against her hips to keep her still. The hips against her ass began to rock, moving their bodies in time with the slow pulsing beat of the music. Moira latched onto the hands at her hips, trying to pry them away. Her efforts were half-hearted at best, for she was seduced by the hot press of body at her back and the way the fingers rhythmically kneaded her hips.

  Hands slid to her waist and spun her, their groins now pressed together. Moira looked up into the face of her dance partner, the flashing lights leaving her with an impression of a strong jaw. He was tall and well muscled, the other end of the spectrum from the skinny Drak. His hair was straight and pulled into spikes that wrapped down the side of his face. Dark eyes, lined in black, met hers.

  She recognized those eyes.

  Planting her hands on his chest, Moira pushed back, though she only got arm’s distance away as he refused to release her waist.

  He wore black pants that laced up the side and a black poet’s shirt complete with a necktie and ruff. He looked like a Goth pirate, a dark poet. Moira reached up and cupped the strong jaw, brushing the spikes of hair out of the way to examine his face.

  Around them the dancers raged like a violent sea, until time seemed to slow. His eyes were black, no white surrounding the iris.

  Moira raised her other hand, cupping both sides of his face, and kissed him.

  It was chaste, with no rough mingling of tongues or nipping teeth. For a long moment their lips fused, souls meeting, as magic swelled in a halo around their joined bodies. His magic wrapped over both of them, and for the first time in more months than she could count Moira felt safe. He smelled like woods and ocean, loam and salt. He tasted like leaves and sunlight.

  Someone, oblivious to the power around them, bumped into Moira, breaking the kiss. Her hands slid to his shoulders, and she came down on her heels.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I have many magics you know nothing of.”

  It sounded like her centaur and the face and eyes were his, but her enemies were wise and skilled. Grabbing the ruffled sleeve of his shirt Moira flipped it back, exposing the metal cuff her spell had placed on him.

  “Satisfied?” he asked, deducing what she was checking for.

  “No,” she said, looking up at him from under her lashes, “but I won’t start something here, in the middle of the dance floor.”

  “Then we should dance.”

  He slid his hands down to her ass and pressed her groin to his. He lowered his head as if to repeat the kiss, and she turned away, but this exposed her sensitive neck to his lips, teeth and tongue. Teeth nipped at the tendon that stretched from he
r shoulder to neck, then his tongue laved the sensitive spot behind her ear.

  Moira dug her nails into his back, riding the desperate arousal his touch and magic raised in her. From his first touch when they had stood at the truck to his brief caress in the warehouse, his touch, and the want for more of it, had been a thrumming need within her.

  Moira slid her leg up the outside of his hip, wrapping it around the small of his back, trusting her weight to his arms. He used her movement to press their bodies closer together, his hips wedged against her, rocking to the beat of the music.

  If she’d harbored any doubt about the attraction being mutual, the feeling of him between her legs dispelled it. He was as aroused as she, tormenting them both by moving in time with the music, thrusting against her in a sweet parody of sex.

  Moira dropped her head back, feeling the halo of magic move with her. When she breathed in the air smelled of oak and brine, tasted like storm clouds. There were sparks of white magic flashing in the air around them, lost in the strobe lights for those who did not know to look for them.

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  It was a strange time to say such a thing, as he pantomimed fucking her in the middle of a dance floor, but with her body dangerously close to orgasm that seemed to be her greatest concern.

  The centaur levered her up, bringing them face to face.

  “Names,” he licked her lower lip, “are power.”

  “I can taste you, salt and earth on my tongue, but you will not tell me your name?”

  He wrapped his hands over her ass and lifted. Moira put the leg not already around him over his back and hooked her feet together. He moved, and a moment later the wall pressed against her back.

  He took her hands and placed them above her head on the wall, pinning her like a captured butterfly. The warm iron of his body between her legs, pressing hard against her, was terrifying and pleasurable at the same time. When her eyes fluttered closed, he nipped her jaw.

  “No, look at me.”

  Green eyes met black, and he started rubbing against her, hard, each stroke forcing flesh to give way, scraping cloth over skin, until Moira shattered, splintering apart, green magic flashing around them, infecting the white of his magic so the sparks were swirls of green and white together.

  He pressed his head to hers and rubbed against her hard and fast, moaning when he too found completion. His white magic flashed supernova bright, consuming her green, before fading away.

  Moira’s trembling legs slid from his back, their heaving breaths mingling together until the air between them was hot. His cheek rubbed hers.

  “My name is Kiron.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Kiron.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  He grabbed her jaw, tilting her face up for a rough kiss. Her still-trembling body bucked against his and when he squeezed the side of her face, Moira opened her mouth.

  She’d tasted his magic, but that paled in comparison to actually having his tongue sweeping though her mouth to flirt with hers, carrying with it the sweet-bitter flavor of new grass and the musk of deep oak. He ended the kiss by scraping his teeth over her lips and pulling back. If this was his way of saying “you’re welcome”, Moira was going to make “thank you” a much bigger part of her vocabulary.

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed, remembering the room full of people who wanted her blood, literally.

  Shaking herself, Moira pushed away from the wall and when Kiron stepped aside, led the way out of the club. Their progress was halted by pushy would-be lovers. The first came after Moira, his hand sliding over her ass. How he could have failed to notice Kiron at her back, she didn’t know, but they left him sliding down the wall with a dazed look on his face after Kiron smashed him against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.

  The next interruption was a woman who slid herself against Kiron. With Kiron walking behind her it felt like she was being trailed by a furnace, and when the warmth disappeared, she turned.

  A chubby girl dressed as a fallen angel, with black-tipped white wings on her back, was plastered against Kiron. Her fat little fingers toyed with the ruffled neck cloth that spilled down his chest.

  Hands off, bitch.

  Moira took two steps, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off Kiron. She turned, hissing and spitting like a cat, so Moira shoved her hard into a knot of onlookers.

  It happened several more times before they reached the door, and Moira could understand why. Even to the laymen in the club, they glowed. The combination of magic and sex caused them to sparkle and throw off pheromones as potent as hot whiskey.

  Their final hurdle was the bouncer, whose nostrils flared when Moira stepped out.

  “Hey, you came back for me.”

  Kiron stepped up behind her. “Mine.”

  “Damn girl. Next time you come, you gonna wait for me. And I won’t be so rough with those pretty titties.”

  Moira sent him a flirty smile on the off chance she needed to come back to this place.

  She and Kiron made their way to the truck, where Moira reached into her cleavage, fishing for the key.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The key’s in here.” Moira pulled it out and turned to open the door, but Kiron stalled her. His hands were gentle as he turned her to the light. They were on the far side of the van, its bulk hiding them from the club, but a florescent pole-mounted light illuminated the cut and growing bruise on the swell of Moira’s left breast.

  Kiron traced his fingers over it. “Who did this?”

  “I did. I let it happen.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed information and paid in blood.”

  “That is dangerous.”

  “Everything about my life is dangerous.”

  Kiron bent low to examine her, his thumb tracing over line of the cut. Within the confines of her corset, Moira’s nipple beaded.

  “We need to leave,” she whispered.

  Though it was true that they needed to get away from the club, Moira was using it as an excuse. Away from the pulsing lights and music, what they’d done seemed like a terrible idea. She didn’t know enough about centaurs to know if it has meant anything to him. She had some vague memories from Greek art and archaeology classes that the centaurs were known for their lust. Lust for drink, lust for battle and lust for women. If that meant that what had happened inside meant nothing to him, she would deal with it. What would be a problem, would be if she let what happened mean too much to her.

  “Open the back,” he said, stepping away from her. Her breast felt cold without his fingers.

  “Why? You can ride in the cab.”

  “I will not wear this weak human form any longer.” He stood back and spread his arms, lips pulled back in a sneer. Moira looked him over. He was tall as a human, over six feet. His upper body had the same muscular build, and his legs were thickly muscled also. She knew they were, because she could see the muscle definition in his thighs through his pants. Speaking of his pants… Moira looked him up and down.

  The hilarity of her mythical centaur dressed in black PVC pants and a poet shirt hit Moira.

  “Where did you get that outfit?” she asked on a giggle.

  “I watched a man come out of the club wearing this and replicated it. He also had on a long red coat, but it was too hot so I discarded it.”

  “Too bad about the coat. I would have paid good money to see you in it.”

  “I look stupid.”

  “No, I’m sure all the other badass centaurs wear frilly shirts.”

  “Are you laughing at me, witch?”

  “Laugh or cry, those are the options.”

  White sparks spilled over him, growing until he was concealed by a waterfall of white. The sparks dimmed and cleared, the few stragglers blown away by the breeze that danced through the parking lot.

  Kiron stood before her, a centaur once more.
He even had the sword on his back.

  “Where did the sword go when you changed?”

  “I brought it into me, made it a piece of me.”

  “You can do that? How?”

  “I will show you when we get back to that messy place.”

  Moira swallowed her questions about his magic and moved to the back of the truck to open the door and pull down the ramp. Looking around nervously, she waited until the lot was clear and then waved him in.

  Kiron thundered up the ramp, the ring of his hooves on the metal ramp as loud as gunshots. Wincing, Moira slid the ramp into place and grabbed the door.

  Kiron had finished turning around, though this time she had no sympathy for his cramped posture as she knew he could make himself more comfortable.

  “Food,” he said unexpectedly.

  “What about it?” Moira jumped on the bumper to grab the door.

  “I do not know how often humans need to eat, but I am hungry.”

  “Oh, right. Do you like burgers? Do you know what they are?”

  “Yes, I do like burgers. Order me four.”

  “Four burgers. Check.”

  Moira closed the other door and bolted it in place, before racing to the front of the van and hauling herself up into the cabin.

  With a final look at the club, she put the van in gear and pulled away.

  An hour later Moira, comfortably clad in sweats, a tank top and a zip-front hoodie, sat on a hay bale munching on a fry as Kiron polished off his third burger.

  “So where’d you learn to dance?” she asked.

  “We would make trips into the cities, especially when we were young. We found the humans exotic and interesting.”

  “Two questions. Who is ‘we’ and why don’t you find humans interesting anymore?”

  “We meaning my brothers and I, seven in all, and the terror of our forests we were. We would gallop as far into the cities as we could, following the smell of human sweat. Once we found a discoth—,” he looked at Moira, who started to grin, “—disco, we would change, replicate the clothes we saw them wear and go inside.”