Page 12 of A Brighter Yellow
Her hands stroked along his spine and then plunged down into his boxers, pushing them lower on his hips as she toyed with the elastic, one hand sliding inside to palm his ass. He boosted her up onto the edge of the sink and returned the favor pushing her dress up, his fingers pressing into her soft thighs. From the moment she’d put her hands on his flesh, his dick had stiffened, and now it pushed against her. He realized that the only thing between them was the thin fabric of his cotton boxers. She rubbed against his dick, breaking away from his kiss with a moan. He was practically inside her, and his boxers were growing wet from her body.
Somewhere out in the yard, a door slammed, and Anna pushed him away. He stumbled back, staring at her in shock, although he couldn’t have said if it was because of the sudden contact or its equally sudden removal.
“Um,” she said, her eyes wide and her breathing heavy.
“Uh,” he said.
“I should probably go?” She didn’t sound certain. He wasn’t certain either. He gave a nod because she seemed to be looking for something.
“OK,” she said. She took one step toward the door and then came back. “Um, box 360. I’ll leave my light on.” She handed him a key from her pocket and then practically ran from the room.
He stared at the small gold key in his palm, then back at the door as it swung closed. What the hell had just happened?
Episode 7
The Mission
Ochre
Pick up the package. That was all Anna had asked him to do. Why had he tried to get clever?
“Did you want a table, hon?” asked the waitress, staring at him in puzzlement as he stalled out at the edge of the bar section.
“I was just going to sit at the bar,” said Ochre, trying not to stare at the trio of Warlock bikers at the table in front of him.
“Sure thing. The bar is open seating. Sit wherever you like.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Ochre. If he turned around now, would they be more likely to notice him or less? All three men were wearing orange Warlock Motorcycle Club patches on the back of their black leather jackets. The cartoonish Warlock masked the evil that they were capable of. Like witches, warlocks were human magic-wielders. Unlike witches, warlocks believed in the genocide of all the Supernatural races. Ochre had run into a few warlocks, and on an individual level, they weren’t too formidable. However, in groups, they could wield a frightening amount of power of a nasty variety that was hard for any of his kind to counteract. The times that he’d encountered their lethal brand of hatred reminded Ochre of an oil spill. Their magic was sticky, disgusting, and lingered.
“Yeah, I know,” said the waitress, noticing the direction of his gaze. “They’ve been coming in here for the last three nights. They tip like crap too. But they haven’t started anything, so there’s nothing we can do.”
“The last three nights?” asked Ochre, a stir of foreboding shivering down his spine. She smiled apologetically and shrugged.
“Just sit wherever and I’ll be around in a minute,” she said and bustled off.
Ochre pulled out his ponytail and hoped his hair would be enough to cover his ears. Gathering his courage, he walked past the table and sat down at the nearest bar stool. The bartender handed him a menu, and he picked a random selection of things that were probably vegetarian. By the time the waitress brought him a beer, he still hadn’t managed to learn anything about the bikers, and he was seriously doubting the wisdom of his actions.
The trip to the post office had been easy enough. Ochre had the small, square package right next to him. It had a Montana postmark but no other distinguishing features. It felt heavy and dense in his hand, as if whatever was inside was heavier than the size seemed to indicate it should be. He’d brushed a tentative exploration spell over it and found that whoever had sent the package had sealed it up tight in more ways than just packing tape. He’d been tempted to open it on the spot but had clung to his patience. But that effort had made him all the more annoyed that he was playing errand boy in return for one kiss, so he’d thought it was a bright idea to eat dinner before going back out to the Allanach property just to make sure that Anna knew that he wasn’t that easy.
Only now he was here with three Warlocks and a chattering table of fifty-something moms who clearly understood how to do book club right. Unfortunately, they were loud, and he hadn’t been able to hear more than a word or two from the bikers at the table.
Most of the Eastern seaboard had been warlock-free for the better part of a decade. Liam Grayson had managed to bankrupt most of their civic clubs, formally known as The Temple of the Unified Vision. Liam’s financial battle against the warlocks wasn’t considered very wolf-ish and had gone unacknowledged by most of the Shifter community. But the rest of the Supernaturals in the area had noticed as the warlock temples had gone down one by one. Meanwhile, in the mid-west, the Warlock Motorcycle Club had flourished unchecked. Something that Azure had found out a few years earlier when she’d been attacked on her way out to Oregon.
When Scarlet had told them about Liam’s private war against the Temple of the Unified Vision, their grandmother, Diana, had done something that Ochre had not known her to usually do—she went visiting. A few choice visits and random gossip sessions with somemy new son-in-law’stossed into the mix, and suddenly every Supernatural up and down the coast had known that the New York pack was taking care of business. It had paved the way for Azure the next year when she started making visits and asking Supernaturals to consider joining in an alliance known as the Pact, the first of its kind in North America. Azure and the Portland pack were intent on putting the power of the Supernaturals into political play. She believed that the humans had been fucking up the planet long enough, and it was time for the Supernaturals to step forward and push the humans into cleaning up their mess. Ochre agreed with Azure’s principles, but he did sometimes feel lost in the sheer size of her proposition. He kept looking for an action where he could see the difference he was making, but so far, his work just felt like—one man trying to put up a tent in a rainstorm.
The book club finally paid their tab and blew kisses to the bartender, who grinned and waved in as they left. The room quieted perceptibly, and Ochre had no trouble hearing the table behind him.
“Well, at least we know she hasn’t come here,” said the Warlock with a cross tattooed on the side of his neck. “We’ve watched that road for the last two days.”
The hairs on the back of Ochre’s neck stood up at the mention ofshe. The Warlocks MC wasn’t supposed to be on the East Coast, and they certainly weren’t supposed to be in Virginia, a mere fifteen miles away from Anna and talking about a girl. He felt a trickle of sweat run down the inside of his last clean t-shirt.
“If she comes near here, we’ll know,” agreed the second one, who had a really ugly mullet. “But she probably couldn’t have gotten here yet. It’s a long way from Yellowstone.”
Ochre forced himself to swallow his bite of fried okra at the mention of Yellowstone. The food in his mouth tasted like ash.
“Did the boss say what she did?” asked the third one, who had fewer tattoos. He was wearing large diamond earrings, but something about the setting or cut of the jewelry looked non-gender normative or whatever Scarlet called it. Ochre suspected that the biker had stolen them from someone’s grandmother.
“She killed our brothers in Yellowstone,” said the first one looking like the question was stupid.
