Wicked Magic

  Wicked Magic

  Madeline Pryce

  Samantha has almost everything she needs to inherit her magic. Everything but Trent, the sexy shapeshifter and local sheriff she’s lusted after her entire life. She’s known for years Trent is destined to be her familiar, but the last time she approached him he turned her down flat.

  Trent isn’t about to fork over his bachelorhood to a witch, especially one he knows is too good for him. Turning her down once was easy—she’d been too young and innocent—but Trent never anticipated she’d grow into such an obstinate, sexy, entirely-too-tempting woman. When she serves herself up, deliciously naked, walking away suddenly becomes difficult.

  Out of time, Sam focuses on enticing Trent into her bed and into her life. But Sam’s toying with a predator, and once Trent decides he wants her, beneath him and beside him, he’ll pour every ounce of his stubborn pride into protecting what’s his.

  A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Wicked Magic

  Madeline Pryce

  Chapter One

  “Time’s a-tickin’, babe. Are you gonna fuck him or not? Trenton Gregory is one hot piece of man-meat,” Brenda declared.

  “What?” Sam jerked her gaze from the stream of pale-amber liquid swirling into the pitcher and stared at her roommate. She prayed Brenda, the loud-mouthed, full-figured, gorgeous redhead, hadn’t just said that.

  The words—hollered more than conversationally spoken—hit the Watering Hole during one of those strange, silent lulls. That should have been impossible considering how many shifters had packed into the bar. Gazes, several hot, curious pairs of them, settled on Samantha Monroe. Heat rushed to her face. She wished that the ground would open and swallow her whole. Was this really happening to her?

  Green eyes twinkling with laughter, her friend popped a bright red maraschino cherry between her teeth and grinned around the fruit.

  Nope. The bitch had totally announced that tidbit aloud.

  At the bar, Brenda wedged herself between two heavyset men, their wide shoulders stretching the limits of their red and brown flannel shirts, and set her empty tray on the scuffed counter. She leaned forward until her double-Ds all but spilled from the tight, black-and-orange-striped cat shirt she wore. Her little black skirt and a faux tail completed her costume. It was an ironic choice for a woman who turned into a werewolf three days a month.

  The collective smoke from the numerous lit cigarettes created a haze in the air that gave everything a foggy quality and stung her eyes. The patrons, more rowdy then usual considering Samhain was nearly upon them, vied for the waitress’s attention. As usual, Brenda ignored them. No, her friend had other things on her mind.

  “If you don’t wanna ride that, I will. I heard he fucks like a stallion and has a tongue that’ll do wicked, dirty things to your honeypot. Let’s not forget the man carries handcuffs, a gun and a badge.”

  Oh. My. God.

  Sam released the tap she’d been pulling and calmly set the full pitcher of ale on Brenda’s tray. She glanced left, then right. The bar, a safe haven for shape shifters of all species, seemed to get more crowded by the minute. The booths lining the rustic wood-paneled walls were full. In the center of the room, mismatched round and square tables hit capacity. Good for business. Unfortunate for her pride. Several interested patrons stared back at her as if waiting for her response. The only people who weren’t focused on her were a pack of werewolves dressed in studded leather. No, they were more intent on slamming back shooters and beaning each other in the head with quarters. She hoped she wouldn’t have a problem with them.

  She shook her head, determined not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her blush. Oh she’d heard firsthand how good Trenton Gregory was in bed. The walls in his family home, a place she’d spent countless nights at thanks to her friendship with his brother, had been paper-thin.

  Sam looked to the ceiling, drew in a breath laden with sweet, acrid cigarette smoke and willed her racing heart to slow. A fan swooshed overhead and shook the decorative cotton cobwebs placed in the corners of the room. The dozen or so tissue-paper ghouls hanging from strings swayed in tight, rhythmic circles. She shouldn’t have let Brenda decorate.

  “Seriously,” Brenda continued. “Fuck him or you’ll be stuck doing grunt work for the coven for the rest of your life. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. Let him give your honeypot a lick.”

  She glared at her friend and knew, honeypot aside—seriously, who even used that term anymore?—Brenda was right. Time was a-tickin’. If she didn’t give up her V-card in two days during Samhain, when the spirits of her ancestors could pass through the veil between the living and the dead, she’d be doomed to stay a fledgling witch for the rest of her life.

  Barely thinking about, she grabbed a series of shot glasses and filled them with Jack. “Damn it, Brenda. Will you stop blurting out words like ‘fuck’ and ‘honeypot’? What’s wrong with you?”

  Brenda grabbed the full tray and straightened her spine. “Unlike you, I’m not a sexually repressed prude who uses her vibrator every night. Talk to him, lay it out, get your world rocked. I don’t know why you’re being such a girl about it—so what if he turned you down one time six years ago? Get over it.”

  Turned her down was putting it mildly. Sam narrowed her eyes.

  “Thanks for bringing it up. And it was five years ago actually. I hate you, do you know that?”

  The sting of his rejection had shredded her pride and obliterated her confidence. She’d been sixteen, impressionable and convinced all she had to do was take off her clothes and man-whoring Trent would do the rest. Wrong.

  Brenda threw her head back, sending her tangle of red curls dancing as she laughed, the sound carrying over the ruckus of clinking glasses and male conversation. “I love you too, bitch.”

  “Hey, wait a sec,” Sam said and used her chin to motion to the table of bikers who were getting louder by the second. Full moon aside, Samhain tended to bring out repressed traits—both good and bad. “They cool?”

  Her friend eyed the leather-clad wolves before turning and giving Sam a lustful smile. “Oh they’re cool all right. I’ll keep an eye on them for ya.” Without another word, she moved through the crowd and set about delivering drinks and checking on her tables.

  “Sam, I’m dry, darlin’,” one of her regulars yelled and drew her attention away from where Brenda had perched herself on the lap of one of the bikers.

  The front door to the bar creaked open. A wave of fresh air swept out the lingering smoke and heat, cooling her sweat-slicked skin. It was unseasonably hot for October. As she’d done a thousand times in the last three weeks, she glanced at the entrance and held her breath.

  She tried not to stare when the stallion in question strolled through the door and stopped dead in his tracks the second he caught her gaze. His younger brother Jeremiah, the same age as her, ran directly into Trent’s broad, muscular back.

  “Shit,” Sam groaned.

  If she’d known Trent, the object of her lifelong fantasy, the source of her ultimate humiliation and the answer to her problems, had been planning to crawl out from beneath the rock he’d died under, she would’ve done her hair or dressed up a little. Makeup would have also been nice.

  A knot of anxiety and lust tightened the muscles in her stomach. Butterflies swarmed inside, tickling her throat and making her feel as if she was going to throw up at any second. Her heart sped until the only thing she could hear was its erratic pounding.

  Thrown off her game, she knocked over the bottle of Jack she’d been about to snatch off the counter. The bottle clanked, liquor gurgled as it spilled out. The dark liquid dripped over the edge of the bar, directly onto her pants. Could her night get any
worse?

  A chorus of boos rang out at her sacrilege of spilling good liquor.

  “Leave the lass alone. She’s honoring the faeries!” someone shouted.

  “Shut up, Dev, it ain’t for those pansy-ass faeries,” another patron argued. “It’s for the ghosts.”

  A hot flush crawled up her neck and she quickly turned to dodge Trent’s gaze, hoping he’d magically blinked or something while she’d made an ass out of herself. The last thing she wanted to see was his smug-as-hell grin. The ass always had gotten off on making her blush and fumble like an idiot, something she’d been doing around him her entire life.

  “You know…” She glanced up at the sound of Jeremiah’s deep, rumbling voice, and found herself subject to one of his intense stares. It made her wonder how he’d crossed the room so quickly. “You never spill a drop unless my brother’s in the room.”

  He grinned while she sopped up the alcohol with extra vigor. The glare she gave him wiped the smile from his face, but it didn’t hide the amusement in his big brown eyes.

  “Brenda called you, didn’t she?”

  Jeremiah shrugged.

  Anger simmered. She threw the rag at him. The effortless way he lifted his hand and caught the towel ramped up her irritation. “You told him I wasn’t working tonight, didn’t you? He’s been avoiding me since, ya know…”

  She grabbed the silver pentagram hanging between her breasts and closed her hand around its round, familiar shape. Back and forth, she drew the medallion her mother had given her across its chain, a nervous habit she’d acquired since being abandoned a few years ago. If only her mother were still around to help her through the transition—if there was going to be one.

  Jeremiah’s gaze darted to the side and he set the towel down on the bar a little too softly. His actions said it all. So Trent had been avoiding her. She should have been pissed—after all, he’d been the one who’d punched her sorta-kinda boyfriend in the face. Talk about mixed signals. So what if the guy was a jerk, she’d been more than ready to defend herself. She was mad at Trent, right up until she gave in to instinct and glanced in his direction.

  A shiver of pure, undiluted lust raced through her and heated her blood from the inside out. Her nipples tightened. Shivers of anticipation danced through her belly. She absently lifted a hand to fan her face to help soothe the hot flash.

  Tonight, the blue shade of Trent’s shirt matched his eyes. When he moved, the cotton stretched tight over his chest and hinted at the muscles beneath. He strode straight to the table that he’d deemed his and the bar quieted as all eyes fell on the group who’d chosen to sit there.

  Trent narrowed his baby blues and placed his strong, large hands on his hips. His stance drew attention to the shiny police badge affixed to the waistband. Or maybe it was the black and brown gun in its holster that caught the men’s attention. One at a time, the men shuffled from their chairs and moved over to another table without question.

  She’d never understood how he commanded that kind of reaction with a look. So what if he was Area Enforcer, the police liaison who dealt with the shifters in the area. If she’d been those guys Trent had made switch tables, she’d have told him to fuck off and sit somewhere else.

  In the three weeks since she’d seen him last, the normally smooth curve of his jaw was now dusted with hair. The unruly mop of curls that touched the top of his ears made him look as if he’d recently rolled out of bed. His wrinkled Levi’s said the same thing.

  God, she really wanted to rip those jeans off him and see what was underneath. All the pent-up sexual frustration inside her was going to explode if she didn’t do something drastic. She imagined his finger, rough and slightly calloused, trailing along her neck. The back-and-forth rhythm of her necklace slowed to match her fantasy. A bolt of desire raced straight between her legs and made her wet. Aside from the whole “if she didn’t give up her virginity to her chosen familiar by her twenty-first birthday” thing—the day after Samhain—she really needed to get laid.

  “I might have told him you had the night off.”

  The sound of Jeremiah’s voice jarred her back to reality. That was a good thing. Maybe Brenda was right. She should go for it. If he shot her down—again—she’d find someone else to tie herself to for the rest of her life. Ugh. She didn’t really want to be a full-fledged witch anyway. Fetching ingredients and mixing potions was fun. Who needed the elements to answer them? Spells and hexes were stupid.

  She reached below the bar and grabbed a longneck, popping the top on the edge of the counter. She tossed a round orange paper coaster on the bar before she set the beer on it. The chilled bottle that left her palm wet did nothing to cool off her libido.

  As she always did, she pushed her lustful feelings aside and gave Jeremiah a full smile. She glanced from Trent to his brother, and her smile widened a bit. “You know he’s going to kick your ass, right?”

  Jeremiah shrugged, picked up his beer and took a long swig. “You’ll take care of me when I’m bloody and beaten, won’t you?” He fingered the two black triangles on the coaster and looked up at her. “Since when do you celebrate Halloween? You went a bit overboard with the decorating.”

  She hadn’t done anything. Pumpkin coasters? Please. The Watering Hole was a bar, not a funhouse. It was Brenda’s fault.

  “Brenda. You think it’s bad in here?” She groaned. “You should see our house! In the hall, Brenda put this green, half-decomposed hand that pops up from a bowl every time you walk by. I swear I almost peed my pants on the way to the bathroom last night.”

  Choking on his beer, Jeremiah slapped his hand on the bar to rein in his laughter. It wasn’t working. His uncontained amusement gave her a warm, all-over comforting feeling. It helped ease her apprehension. While she was doing all she could to keep her eyes off Trent, he sure the hell wasn’t being as considerate. He tracked her every move.

  She’d been sixteen, Trent twenty-four, when the double doors of her family bar had slammed open and in staggered Trent with a shiner and a bloody lip, and she’d known for sure he was her familiar—the shifter who’d help her tap into the innate magic running through her veins. It wasn’t because of the presence he demanded or the way he looked at her with a mixture of dominance and hunger. It was because, for the first time in her life, her skin tingled with magic the way her mother said it would when the time was right.

  A smear of blood had framed his narrow jaw and drawn her attention to the slit at the side of his swollen lower lip. A thin rivulet of crimson rolled over his chin before it dripped onto his dirt-smudged shirt. There were five diagonal slashes across the tee from the neck to the hem. When he limped forward and grasped a chair for balance, his shirt gaped to expose the hard, tanned lines of his torso. It was smooth and flawless. Whomever he’d tussled with had gotten only cotton.

  Dumbstruck, unable to move, she’d stood there and tried to push away the instant lust that slammed into her. Heat bloomed in her stomach and moved up, to her neck. Her skin felt tight with the first wisps of energy wrapping around her.

  “You should see the other guy,” he’d said, the first real words he’d ever spoken to her despite her lifelong friendship with his brother.

  His voice had been deep and sexy, and had only amplified her desire. He’d slouched farther into his chair, and the half grin he shot her had been pure sin. Kicking his feet up, he’d lounged back and studied the way she played with her necklace. It had been as if he were commanding her magic.

  The bottle in her hand had slipped, moist against her palm, before it had crashed to the floor. She’d gasped. Energy had flowed through her fingers and chilled her deep to the bone. Although twenty tables separated them, she’d beckoned his animal to her and the velvet touch of fur had tickled her neck.

  She’d gotten a crisp image of his jaguar. Its fierce blue eyes looked luminescent against the black fur. Freckling gray rosettes lined its back and wrapped down muscular legs. The graze of teeth had drawn against her throat. As she�
��d breathed through the sensation, the magic, the feel of him had faded. His cat had retreated and taken a piece of her with it. Then everything had gone to shit.

  After she’d cornered him in his bedroom later that night, her naked and vulnerable, him fully dressed and drunk, he’d grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head. The hostility in his voice, the way his jaw had clenched and his narrowed eyes hardened, had almost been more intimidating than his callously spoken words.

  “You couldn’t handle me, little girl.” His voice had rumbled low with rage even though his cock had been hard against her tummy. “Go home and play with your dolls.”The final insult, the fear, had driven her away in tears. If he’d wanted her, why be an ass about it?

  Ugh. Damn him for making her remember. As the years had ticked by and she’d searched for a different familiar, her thoughts always strayed back to Trent and the heated looks he gave her when he thought she wasn’t looking. She hadn’t approached him again though. He’d gone back to mostly ignoring her, policing the county and notching up his bedpost while she watched from afar, wanting what she couldn’t have.

  This was the night she had to try again. One more time because apparently she was a masochist. No more stalling. In two days, the stars would align, the Samhain festivities would begin and she’d have everything she needed to inherit the magic of her ancestors. Assuming, that was, Trent didn’t hammer the final nail in her coffin. God, would she survive it if he told her no again?

  Chapter Two

  Trenton Gregory stared across the crowded, smoky bar and glared at the woman he’d vowed never to touch. Witches—rumor had it—stole your independence with some crazy voodoo shit that left you neutered. As a man, he valued his freedom almost as much as he did his balls. Too bad she was the same woman he craved with an intensity that bordered on obsession. He’d known Sam her entire life. From birth, to childhood, through her awkward teen years and then later in life, when she’d become the woman half the men and all the boys in town jacked off to—including him.