He had her locked against him so she couldn’t struggle and she was vaguely aware of the furious snapping of camera shutters and the blinding waves of flashes as they all fought to be the first to snap a picture of Tristan Belledare and his witch of the week. Which was definitely not her.
Suddenly, he was unceremoniously plucked from her like a nasty little specimen of lice. Seemingly flicked away with the same disgust.
Dred to the rescue!
Middy would have to ponder that bit of incongruity later. The cameras were still flashing with a sick intensity and caught the entire exchange.
“What the hell, Shadowins?” Tristan said with a smirk.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to assume the role of the offended party, here.” His cold, perfect smile was brutal.
“Are you going to challenge me to a duel or something?” Tristan asked lightly.
“Not quite. I am within my rights to do so under magickal law though,” Dred offered with the same casual de-meanor, but he pulled Middy close to his body.
“It’s not like you’re engaged,” Tristan snorted.
“Actually,” Dred began and the corner of his mouth turned up in a wicked smile. “Midnight just agreed to become my magickally wedded witch.”
Middy wasn’t sure how she kept her mouth from dangling open like a broken door with one rusted-out hinge, but Tristan wasn’t so lucky. She imagined the pictures in tomorrow’s paper would be less than flattering.
She didn’t know what the hell Dred was playing at, but she decided for the moment to just go with the flow. She could have slapped him, hexed him, made a big show, but his announcement could benefit her
and the charity
later.
After all, he’d claimed her as his fiancée in public, in front of witnesses, the silly warlock. She’d have him over a barrel when he tried to get out of it and then she could guarantee his support of the Gargoyle Masque for years to come.
Plus, Tally would get a great kick out of Tristan’s startled face on the front page of
Magickal Mayhem
tomorrow.
The reporters rushed them in the middle of the dance floor and security had to push them back outside. They were all madly hooked on Dred Shadowins’s announcement and the look of total devastation on the hero’s face.
CHAPTER SIX
Down and Dirty
“The car’s magickally sealed, we can talk inside,” Dred whispered in her ear as he pushed her to a waiting limousine.
She wasn’t sure if she was thankful or disappointed that they weren’t going to teleport again. Middy had liked being pressed up against him and smelling his cologne and . . .
“Are you listening?”
No, not really. Just watching your mouth move, that strong jawline, those sensual lips, and thinking about using you like a gigolo.
“Huh? No, sorry. I was a little distracted.”
If she’d been thinking correctly, she would have sat next to him instead of across from him. Why? Because he was the only place that there was to look and she’d been jilling-off to him for so long that she was wet just looking at him.
She felt like a Pavlovian dog, setting her girly bits to slob-bering when the bell rang. Middy wondered if she was going to soak through her dress and leave a spot on the leather. Or worse, she was going to have to sit with her legs clamped together. If she relaxed her knees, he’d be able to see up to her muffin.
Damn Tally for making her go sans panties. She was going to choke that witch twice when she got home.
“I’m going to tell you something that you can’t tell anyone else. I need your witch’s word. On your magick.”
She didn’t think that Dred Shadowins knew anything that was worth her witch’s word. He made it sound like he was about to drop a state secret on her or something. There was a weighted intensity about him that hadn’t been there before, a seriousness.
“I swear on my magick that I won’t tell anyone else.” Middy felt the binding of her vow slide through her.
He seemed to relax a little bit. “Obviously, I need you to pose as my fiancée.”
“I gathered that much from your oh-so-sudden announcement. You’re lucky I didn’t hex your balls off for that.”
“You weren’t enjoying Tristan’s slug of a tongue in your mouth anyway. I thought you’d be happy for the save.”
“You shoved me in front of the paparazzi like a sacrificial lamb.”
“Sorry about that and I’m equally sorry to say that for the run of this charade, that’s not going to change.” He shrugged.
“A little warning would have been nice.”
“Hence our discussion here, in a magickally sealed con-veyance instead of teleporting. You were amazingly cool under pressure, by the way,” he said as he pulled his eye patch off.
“Thank you, but can we get to the whys and wherefores?
And it better be for a good reason, or I’m not doing it.”
He took a breath as if to fortify himself. “I’m a spy.” Dred watched her carefully and when she didn’t respond, he continued. “I need a fiancée to move about through certain social circles to find out who is smuggling dark objects. These warlocks are doing horrible things and if I don’t stop them, we could end up at war with the gargoyles again.”
“You’re planting stink pickles.”
“Pardon me?” Dred looked offended.
“Shit. This is shit and you’re full of it.” Middy rolled her eyes.
“I swear on my magick that I am a spy for High Chancellor Godrickle.”
Middy didn’t know if she should scoff some more or be very afraid because he was delusional. Dred was obviously insane; there was no other way to explain it. Perhaps from the guilt he felt over Shale Creek?
It was then that another vehicle slammed into the rear of the limo and the force sent Middy hurtling through the space between them and she found herself straddling the deliciously hot and unfortunately insane warlock across from her.
It really couldn’t have been more horrible and perfect all at once if she’d planned it. She was mortified because his hand just happened to catch her bare ass. She was surprised she had enough blood left in the upper regions of her body to color her cheeks.
But she didn’t think that he was wearing anything underneath those breeches either. He must have liked what he’d found because his cock was hard and if not for that thin material between them, it would have been inside of her.
That would have been just her luck, too, to go flying through the air and land impaled on the most notorious dick in the magickal world—to lose her virginity to a fender-bender.
“All right back there, Sir?” The chauffeur’s voice echoed through the speaker, though it did nothing to cut the tension.
“I think we’re just fine,” he said, his gray eyes now like mercury, liquid with lust.
“It will be a moment while I exchange information with the mortal, Sir.”
“We’ve got everything in hand.” Dred splayed his hands wider on the flesh that had been unceremoniously shoved into them to punctuate his meaning.
Middy didn’t know what to do.
It felt so naughty to feel her bare skin against his clothes and to know that he was just as hot for her. He shifted and the friction sent a jolt of pleasure through her. She wanted to rock her hips against him and demand he continue.
On the other hand, she wanted to run screaming from the limo because he thought that he was a spy. His elevator clearly stopped a few floors from the top. Right now, all she could think about was what was stopped at the juncture of his thighs.
Of all the things that she would have expected him to do, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her tighter against him was last on the list. He didn’t taunt her or use her desire like a weapon; he seemed just as driven as she was.
Dred didn’t look away from her, didn’t close his eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing and watched her face with expectation as he moved against her. She wanted to look away, to bury her face in his shoulder, or even close her eyes, but his gaze held her.
Middy dared to push back and damn if she didn’t just want to yell, “Take me now.” How did a witch ask a warlock to plow her like a cornfield? Especially if that warlock was crazier than a shithouse rat? She wondered, as she rolled her hips, if this was the conundrum that warlocks faced.
There were some crazy witches out there who plucked bristles from brooms and hexed bodily functions. . . .
Anything that felt this good had to be worth it though.
She didn’t think she wanted to be on top when it happened.
She was sexually active only with herself and wasn’t sure if that irritating little veil of flesh was still there or not, but she’d heard that losing her virginity could hurt like hell.
She wanted him to kiss her, but he was still intent on her face.
That’s when she realized that technically, nothing had happened that they couldn’t back away from. He obviously wanted her, but right now all they were dealing with was her naked muffin against his very hard cock.
She was a modern witch; she could make the first inten-tional move. Flying across a seat from the inertia of a horny Jeep with an eye for a sleek limo’s rear end couldn’t be con-strued as the first move. Not really. Middy pushed a stray lock of white-blond hair from his forehead and his grip tightened on her when she traced down his jawline with the pad of her finger.
Dred closed his eyes, but didn’t let go of her. “You don’t want this,” he whispered.
“I’m a witch grown, Dred Shadowins. I know very well what I do and do not want.” She rolled her hips to make her point.
“No, not this, not me.” His hands spoke a different language from his mouth because they moved to her hips to anchor her to him.
“If you don’t want me, Dred, that’s one thing.”
Middy found herself on her back, and Dred’s mouth just a breath away from hers, His hips were between her thighs, his cock still thick with desire.
“I am such a bastard,” he said as if he were resigned to it.
Then his mouth crashed into hers.
He had no talent for romance, but heat bloomed wherever he touched her. She was on fire. Dred’s kiss was devastation; so much more so than the pale imitation of his centerfold. The centerfold catered to her ideas of romance and desire. It tingled centers of her brain that would have been stimulated by the act, but it wasn’t the act, it wasn’t real.
This was stark reality—she was splayed beneath Dred Shadowins and he wanted her. He wasn’t a fantasy; his mouth didn’t move over hers with a practiced tenderness, his hands didn’t touch her with a devoted reverence. No, this was much more visceral and blatantly animal.
His kiss was brutal, but she met his onslaught with her own demands. Middy arched up into him and wrapped her legs around his waist. Dred slipped his hand between them to touch her slick heat.
Dred’s fingers felt so good, so right.
Until they didn’t.
She shrieked at the sharp pain and Dred froze.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked in a jagged whisper.
“Depends on what you think it is.”
“Now is not the time for banter. Middy, are you a virgin?”
“Does it matter?”
It was at precisely that moment when Middy realized Dred could fly. That was the only logical explanation for how fast he moved away from her. She didn’t think he could have moved faster if she’d been on fire.
Literally, not figuratively. Because figuratively, she was still burning. She could see from the bulge in his breeches that he was, too, but she didn’t understand what the problem was.
“Hell, yes, it matters.”
“Merlin, Dred. Everyone comes with issues. You’re insane and I’m a virgin. Whatever.”
“Whatever? How can you be so cavalier about something that important?”
“It’s not important. It’s in the way. You should be flattered.”
“Maybe I would have been if you hadn’t just said I was insane.”
“I thought all men, warlock and mortal alike were eager to be first and last. Kind of like how cats feel they need to be the first one to mark the litter box.”
“Midnight! Your virginity should not be compared to cat litter.” He sounded like a scandalized grandmother.
“Why do you care, honestly?”
“Because you’re a nice witch, Middy.”
“Oh, puke. Is that the ‘friend zone’?”
“Look, I really need your help and I can’t risk fucking it up with the old stick and move.”
Stick and move? What the hell was . . . ? Oh. So, he didn’t want to fuck her because he needed her. Middy was sure that his reasoning was backwards somehow.
“Are you a bad lay?” It hopped out of her mouth like a gerbil on an escape mission.
Dred choked on the sparkling water he’d just opened.
“Pardon me?”
“Well, why else would it be an issue? You think that if you sleep with me, I won’t help you. Logic leads me to believe, based on the criteria, that you’re a bad lay. Simple, really.”
“I’m just not looking for a relationship.”
“You’re such a pompous bag, you know that? Why would you assume that I want a relationship? I don’t even like you.”
His mouth hung open again and he looked a bit like a large-mouthed bass the way his chops were opening and closing in rapid succession.
“But you’re a virgin,” he managed.
“Which means exactly what? I was thinking I could just get it over with. I assumed it would be good since you’re you. I mean, I’ve heard things.” Middy shrugged and gave him a knowing look.
She wasn’t sure what had gotten into her, but she found that she enjoyed the startled look on his face more than cheesecake. He was speechless and unsettled. The combina-tion made her smile.
Perhaps the filter that had been installed between her brain and her mouth had been overrated. From now on, she was just going to say whatever she felt like. Middy would have to work on the not blushing part later. She had the cherry for his sundae in more ways than one.
“You know what? You want me to help you by posing as your fiancée? Then you’re just going to have to put out.”
“And I’m the one you think is crazy? You don’t know what you’re getting into on either count. I’m the dark warlock, remember?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to marry you. I just want all of the perks that I would get if I was really your fiancée. I want your continued support of the Gargoyle Masque until you die, and I want the use of your wand; though Merlin knows the odometer has been turned over at least twice on that thing. I suppose it’s like a car really: You don’t buy a brand-new car for a brand-new driver. There’s bound to be dings.”