Bait This! (A 300 Moons Book) Read online

  Hedda wriggled on his lap, trying to convince herself to get up.

  But she only succeeded in wrapping herself around him more tightly. And now she could feel the hard length of him, swelling against her behind.

  Her own body responded instantly, surges of need lifting her in their wake, her sex swelling, unfurling like a flower for him.

  She wanted this man, felt strangely as if she were already his, and all the admonitions her conscience wanted to give wouldn’t stem the tide.

  Besides, it wasn’t like they were getting married or anything. It was a single moment of pleasure. She’d probably think of it fondly one day when she was a crazy old woman with five cats.

  As if he could hear her thoughts, the man let go of her hips to cup her cheeks, turning her face toward his.

  His hands were so enormous, Hedda felt like a doll sandwiched between them.

  She closed her eyes to be kissed, but nothing happened.

  So she opened them again.

  He was staring down at her, his blue eyes flashing.

  “What have you done to me?” he demanded.

  She stared back at him helplessly. Oh no. He must feel the pull of her magic.

  “N-nothing,” she whispered.

  Her heart beat wildly and the pulse in his cock throbbed as if in response.

  He leaned down, as if in defeat, and brushed her lips with his.

  Hedda whimpered softly. Why hadn’t she told him the truth?

  There was something about this man…

  Derek growled and pulled away.

  “This is your one chance. If you don’t want me to claim you, get off my lap now. When I lay you down, you’re not getting up again without belonging to me,” he told her, his calm tone belying the intensity of his words.

  Hedda felt her whole body come to life at his words. She wanted to scream for him to take her, right now.

  But the little voice in her head protested.

  Letting him give in to his attraction without knowing why he wants you is wrong.

  And besides, you saw the omen. Don’t trust him.

  With every shred of will power she had, Hedda dragged herself out of Derek’s lap and curled her arms around her knees next to him, clasping her hands together to keep herself from crawling back into his lap.

  Her whole body was trembling. Her breasts ached and her nipples were hard as pebbles. Her legs quivered and between them, her sex was swollen and throbbing with need.

  She could feel him, frozen beside her. He hadn’t expected her to take the out. But she was grateful he had offered it.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said weakly.

  “Derek. Derek Harkness,” he said.

  “Hedda Lane,” she replied, offering him her hand, then thinking the better of it and locking it back around her knees.

  Derek laughed a deep laugh and it seemed to Hedda that the fire burned a little warmer before them, and the moon shone a little brighter overhead.

  13

  As the sound of their laughter faded, Hedda turned back to look at Derek.

  His blue eyes were dancing, but they seemed to darken as she let herself study them.

  He wanted her.

  And Hedda wagered there wasn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t burn for him as she did. How long could she resist?

  And if she was going to give in anyway, wouldn’t it be nice to do it now…?

  Suddenly, the fire went out.

  It didn’t flicker. It went out flat, like a bucket of water had been dumped on it.

  “No,” Hedda moaned.

  But it was already too late.

  She had let herself get distracted and miscalculated what she was up against.

  A shadow demon. And it was close.

  The warning wasn’t about Derek after all.

  She was on her feet before her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Demons were dangerous anyway, but when they caught you off-guard you had no idea what would come next.

  She’d never encountered one personally before, but she had done a lot of studying up here on the mountain.

  They generally darted about unseen. Creatures of pure evil, like living, liquid shadows. A shadow demon could possess any living creature from the tiniest toad to a great white shark.

  But their powers were limited. Possessing an animal took a lot of strength, so the larger the animal, the faster they would burn out and need to return to shadow form.

  Hedda crouched and spun, trying to sight the thing.

  “What the—” Derek began.

  “Shh!” she cut him off.

  The shelter was bathed in darkness. Above them, just outside the roof, the star-studded sky was still.

  Hedda didn’t dare to move, or even breathe. Any clue she gave it could be the difference.

  Derek panted beside her. He sounded like he was really going through something. It was probably shock after the day’s experiences and injuries. But she couldn’t let this be the straw that broke the camel’s back. She couldn’t deal with an unpredictable animal in the presence of a demon. That kind of vulnerability invited possession.

  She grabbed Derek’s shoulder to calm him. The warmth of his skin under her hand had the effect of calming her too. He stilled under her hand just as he had stilled when she searched his scalp for the wound earlier.

  Good boy.

  And then there was movement between the shelter and the stars.

  The fluttering motion suggested a bat.

  At least it wouldn’t take too much to knock it out.

  “Get down,” she cautioned Derek.

  Dark wings fluttered and flapped against the sky. The creature was coming closer, though Hedda couldn’t feel the displaced air against her skin yet.

  “Obtundo,” she said, pressing a hand upward toward the demon. The magic slid from her fingers in a bright spark.

  But the thing had moved away.

  “Obtundo,” she tried again.

  It was moving quickly, too quickly for her to hit.

  “Sile,” she tried, gesturing over her head, leaving a mist of swirling light behind her hand.

  The dark object still darted and dove, circling just overhead.

  The thing was just too damn fast. From everything she’d read, demons usually had some awkwardness inhabiting their hosts. It shouldn’t be so easy for this one to escape her spells.

  Just as she began to rack her brain in earnest for a solution to the slippery problem, it swooped toward her one last time, then veered right to fling itself out into the woods at the last possible second before a collision.

  Hedda followed as quickly as she could, jumping over the shelter’s half door easily and sliding in the mud on the other side.

  She searched the sky but saw nothing.

  No, no, no, she couldn’t lose it.

  What if it called to its brethren? What if it found a way into the mine?

  She spun around, scanning the creek below, the trees, then back upward toward the top of the mountain.

  There.

  A single flicker of movement, but it was enough.

  She took off after the thing, praying she wouldn’t lose sight of it, and that it would tire before she did.

  14

  Derek felt as if he had been submerged in icy water again.

  He’d gone from the shock of the plane crash to the cold outside, to the frigid water, to the wrenching pleasure of Hedda’s arms, all without losing himself to the agonizing burning on his hip.

  But the expression of terror on her face as the light was extinguished threatened to push him over the edge.

  The bear inside him exploded with fury at whatever had put that look on her face, even as the man who was always in control cowered at the thing that could make the fierce young woman tremble.

  Before he could take in what she was trying to do, or accept that the light coming from her hands was magic, real actual magic - Gloria Cortez style - she ran.

  For a moment he was frozen - suspe
nded between fear and fury.

  Then the exasperated bear pushed him to action.

  Derek jumped over the half door in a heartbeat and landed in the spot where she must have stood, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  The woods outside were only slightly brighter than inside the shelter. He scanned the mud for her footprints, but the temperature had dropped again, quickly enough to cause a haze to rise from the ground.

  The bear shoved him out of the way, and pulled the intimate sounds of the woods in. The bear had enhanced Derek’s hearing before, but this was different. It was as if the whole forest were playing on headphones turned up to the max.

  Hedda’s footsteps were ahead of him.

  The bear tracked her, pulling Derek further and further into the trees.

  At last he spotted her in a small clearing. She had stopped. Her breath came out in clouds. She searched the clearing, violet eyes moving quickly across the landscape before her.

  “Hedda,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her.

  “It’s gone,” she murmured.

  Derek looked around too. But as he wasn’t sure what he had seen in the first place, he didn’t know what he was looking for.

  “Was it some kind of a bat?” he asked.

  Hedda hiked off determinedly to the right, so he followed.

  “It was a shadow demon,” she replied.

  “Uh, I’ve lived kind of a sheltered life. Can you explain?” he asked.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, surprise on her face, then instant regret.

  “I’m sorry, Derek, I’d forgotten you were —well, that you didn’t grow up with wolf parents,” she caught herself.

  He nodded to show that she hadn’t hurt his feelings.

  “Wolf packs tend to stay in the same place for generations. Is that true in the town where you lived?” she asked.

  Derek thought about it.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he agreed. “Tarker’s Hollow is the nearest town to ours. The wolves have been there for generations.”

  “Do you know why they’re there?” Hedda asked.

  Derek shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about it. Most wolves have forgotten the answer, if they ever knew it. But there is a reason. And that’s to guard the portals,” Hedda explained.

  “What portals?” Derek asked.

  “Did you ever wonder why there’s so little magic in the world?” Hedda asked, instead of answering him. “I mean, the old stories are full of magic. But there’s not so much of it anymore.”

  “I don’t know. No, I guess not. Though I’m beginning to think there might be more of it than I thought,” he replied, giving her a pointed look when she glanced back at him guiltily.

  “You have no idea,” she told him, shaking her head slightly before turning back to her trek through the trees.

  He wondered what she meant by that. Did she have powers greater than what she had shown him?

  The searing in his hip distracted him from asking questions. Sweat was beginning to prickle on his upper lip in spite of the extreme cold outside.

  What was happening to him?

  In despair, he wondered if she had enough magic to give him three hundred more moons.

  “You take it in stride that there are shifters because you are one,” she said, rousing him from his thoughts. “But there used to be more magic than that. A long, long time ago, dark magic creatures, called moroi, threatened to destroy the world, and take humanity down with it,” she explained.

  “What were they?” he asked.

  “Moroi are sort of like… vampires,” she explained. “But instead of drinking blood, they feed on life-essence. Souls, you might say. And they can take on the forms of their victims. That particular skill assists them in taking more victims.”

  “What happened to them?” Derek asked. The whole thing seemed like a stretch, but then, he could turn into a giant bear, so who was he to judge?

  “The Native Americans with their spirit animals were among the first to battle the moroi. Although humans can be fooled by the moroi, in the end, spirit animals and shifters are harder to fool. And they are fierce enough, especially when they work in packs, to fight the moroi off.”

  She looked to him, as if to see if he understood.

  He did. He knew his bear had advantages that went beyond the physical when it came to empathy. He nodded and she went on.

  “In time, the Native Americans were able to trap most of the magic in another… dimension, I guess, is the easiest way to think of it. They opened doorways, and then tricked, threatened and fought the dark magic inside. Afterward they sealed the portals with their own light magic.

  “It sealed off the bad guys, but also cut this world off from the source of most of its magic.

  “Of course, there is always a price to be paid. In that case, trapping the moroi and saving the earth drained most of the Native Americans of their powerful spirit animal magic. When their numbers started dwindling, the shifters were brought into the secret. The wolves’ loyalty, plus the fact that they are resistant to most forms of magic makes them the perfect guardians.

  “So now the wolves guard the portals. Even if they don’t all know that’s what they’re doing.”

  Derek thought it over, even as they began to jog through the dark woods.

  “So what does the shadow demon have to do with this?” he asked.

  “Shadow demons are sort of symbiotic with the moroi. The same way a fish cleans the crocodile’s teeth, a shadow demon sucks the excess energy from a moroi, allowing it a clean slate for its next victim, so to speak,” she explained.

  “So, if the moroi are trapped beyond the portals, what is a shadow demon doing out here?” Derek asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Hedda replied, a bit unsure. “They’re usually only attracted to a serious surplus of magic. I’ve been careful. And there’s nothing else around here with enough magic to attract one.”

  Derek bit his tongue. Probably not a good time to share that he’d been carrying around magic inside him for the past 300 moons. And besides, that couldn’t be enough to attract a thing like this. Could it?

  “It probably means that a moroi is close to the surface,” Hedda said sternly. “And that means I didn’t do my job.”

  Derek pondered that for a moment. Hedda was a young woman living alone in a cottage on top of a mountain. She wasn’t a shifter.

  “What do you mean you didn’t do your job? You said you aren’t a shifter,” he pointed out.

  She was silent, her lips pressed together.

  Then she burst into a run.

  Derek took off after her. They were headed back down the hill again, toward the creek and the town.

  He slipped and stumbled, but he didn’t let it slow him down. He was getting used to the topography and the idea that keeping his weight forward and his feet moving was the best way to avoid wiping out.

  Though of course it was nothing like the way Hedda moved.

  Her form slipped effortlessly through the trees, her posture perfect.

  The bear rumbled in satisfaction at how at peace she was outdoors, just like he was.

  The clouds partly slightly and the sliver of moonlight reflected back in her glossy hair.

  Derek’s hip smoldered more than ever before and the bear groaned in his head.

  15

  Hedda paused in the clearing, breathing slowly and expanding her consciousness out of her body, through the long grass and into the trees.

  As her awareness spread wider it lost strength. They said that those with the most powerful and most practiced magic could push themselves out of the stratosphere with this exercise and then pull back in, knowing everything in between at will.

  Though of course they would not try to absorb everything. The tiniest sliver of that had sent the most talented of her kind into madness.

  Hedda could reach beyond herself in a small way. She had chosen the clearing because the less life between her
self and the demon the better. It was too easy to get lost in the ants and the birds and squirrels and come back into her own head ten minutes later with none of the knowledge she had sought.

  Her sweep told her nothing.

  Hedda sighed and ran her hands through her hair.

  “Everything okay?” Derek asked.

  She could have asked him the same.

  He looked rough.

  His blue eyes blazed out from under his too long dark hair. His five-o’clock shadow only highlighted the tension in his jaw.

  She knew the exact moment when she had stared too long into his eyes.

  The tension between them was suddenly palpable. Hedda felt the attraction like a rubber band, stretched too taut across the clearing, pulling her toward him.

  She went to him slowly, forgetting the demon, the magic, everything that might stand between them.

  Derek’s jaw rippled.

  She tried to picture what he must be seeing: Venus rising from the ocean, Eve extending an apple.

  She wished just once a man would look at her that way because of herself and not because of her gift.

  But at the moment she would accept it, because if her gift got her into the arms of a man who made her feel like this one did, she had to be grateful.

  He was brave. He had followed her without knowing what they were chasing. And then he’d followed her again, after he found out how bad it really was.

  She was close to him, so close that she could smell the spicy male scent emanating from his big hard body.

  Then it happened again.

  From the corner of her eye she saw movement.

  Movement that was somehow out of place.

  She turned to look, and then she felt Derek grasp her wrist, hard.

  “It’s not right,” he hissed.

  Damn skippy it wasn’t right.

  She shook him off impatiently and headed toward the movement.

  It was no longer subtle. Branches rustled as they were pushed aside in the wake of something.