Page 27 of The Alpha's Warlock
I cut off with a grunt as Ian rolled on top of me and pinned me down. “Okay.”
“Okaywhat?” I shoved at his chest, which only made him grin.
“Okay, we can fuck. Not like we have anything better to do.” He shifted his hips, and — when had he gotten half hard? I mean, we hadn’t beendoinganything. “I’d rather do that than argue with you.”
Well. Not really going to dispute that, but still…fuck it. I spread my legs a little and pulled him down into a kiss that turned wet and deep and consuming in seconds. Fuck, he was such a good kisser.
And then we both froze as a loud throat-clearing sound came out of the walls all around us. “What the fuck?” Ian asked, craning his head around in all directions.
“I wouldn’t mind watching, but I thought it’d be more polite to tell you I have magical surveillance on the apartment.” Dor sounded casually amused, the bastard. “We’re going to be leaving in a few minutes anyway, so no time for that.”
A fainter voice cut in with, “You couldn’t have let them at least get their clothes off? You’re such a spoilspo—”
The voices cut off abruptly.
Ian stared down at me, wide-eyed and indignant. The laughter welled up so suddenly I couldn’t control it, and I ended up stifling my howls in Ian’s chest. He just sighed and let me.
***
“Nice car,” Ian said, and sounded genuinely sincere. Maybe even a little jealous. Dor drove something black-on-black the size of a tank. Not that I was all that surprised. “It’s a seventy-eight, right? Fleetwood Brougham?”
“Seventy-nine,” Dor said with a raised eyebrow.
Ian turned bright red and sullenly opened one of the back doors. We were in a small and smelly garage behind the bar, where Charlie and Dor had led us a few minutes after their interruption. Ian and I had spent the intervening time splashing water on our faces and avoiding looking at each other as much as possible. Night had fallen while we cooled our heels upstairs, and all Charlie had told us as we went down to the garage was that they’d explain on the way, because we were burning moonlight.
“Is there some reason we’re using a car at all?” I mean, why have magic as cool as Dor’s if you weren’t going to use it? “Couldn’t we go the fast way?”
“Magic’s too conspicuous,” Charlie said. “We’re trying not to look like a supernatural hit squad.”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow and look pointedly at the most conspicuous car I’d seen in years, even counting Ian’s red dick-compensator — not that he needed it.
“To everyone else, it’s going to look like a minivan,” Dor said. “And I can hide all of us in a car. I can’t hide one of my windows opening in the middle of warded territory.”
That caught my professional interest. “Oh yeah? So you can target the endpoint but not extend your shielding beyond the window itse —”
“Can we please nerd out later?” Ian groused, and slid into the back seat. “Places to go, hopefully throats to rip out with my teeth.”
Charlie grinned, showing his own very unfriendly set. “For once I agree with Lassie. Let’s go.”
Dor drove, Charlie climbed in next to him, and I got in the back with Ian. It felt uncomfortably like what I imagined family road trips might be like, not that I’d ever had one. I was pretty sure my birth mother was still alive, although last I’d heard she was living with some cult that used mescaline to commune with coyote demons somewhere in Arizona. She wasn’t the family-road-trip type. She also wasn’t the having-a-son type, and she’d stuck around exactly long enough to get some prescription painkillers from the obstetrician. My father passed me off to a witch who owed him a favor until I was old enough to use for magic. No, not the kind of family that sang camping songs while driving to Yellowstone.
“No fighting in the back seat,” Charlie called out, adding to the impression of a through-the-looking-glass family outing. Dor gunned the impressively growly engine and we rumbled our way out of the garage, Dor waving a hand to shut the garage door behind us.
We headed out of town to the south, and Ian and I glanced at each other. The Kimball territory, then, almost certainly.
Charlie turned around in his seat right as I was about to start nagging him. “We’re going to the Kimball territory,” he confirmed. “I’ve had spies along the boundaries ever since my people were killed. One of them caught sight of the shaman who almost certainly kidnapped you and murdered my servants. This is what I was waiting for to make a move. It was possible before, albeit not likely, that the shaman had gone rogue and Sam Kimball wasn’t aware of the murders taking place on his territory. But my spy saw the shaman with Kimball himself. There’s no doubt now that the shaman and Kimball are still working together.”
“And where the fuck is Matt in this?” Ian demanded. “I’m not eager to put my pack on the line to avenge your bloodsuckers, but Nate and I were set up today, and Nate was kidnapped. If this is connected, Matt needs to be in the loop.”
Ian was a lot more worried about getting in touch with his brother than I was, but I was starting to wonder, too, why Charlie had been so damn reluctant to let us make a lousy phone call about something that affected the Armitage pack so seriously.
Charlie hesitated, opened and closed his mouth, and then glanced at Dor meaningfully. Oh shit. I braced myself, drawing power into my hands, ready to defend us if I needed to. Dor muttered a few words and a pale green sparkly curtain of magic descended between the front and back seats.
Ian growled, and I pulled more magic, though I was fairly sure this was just Charlie’s way of not getting decapitated when he said something to piss Ian off. I was starting to get a really, really bad feeling about that — a heavy lump in my gut that made my lungs labor for enough oxygen.
“Matthew’s involved,” Charlie said grimly. “He’s working with Kimball.”
Oh, fucking son of abitch. I grabbed for Ian as he exploded into red-faced, snarling rage, flinging himself at the barrier with enough force to rock the car and send sparks flying off of Dor’s shield.
