Chapter 18 Lowell
Lowell
Gods, the witch is a comely thing.
His gaze roamed over her, from her sensual smile to her bonnie brown eyes to her thick black mane. He craved to loosen her hair so that it spilled over a pillow as he pounded between her soft thighs. He pictured her full breasts bouncing—
“Right then,” she interrupted his thought, sharp as a snapped wand. “Let’s brainstorm. You start.”
Huh? He dragged his focus from her mouthwatering chest. “Ah, aye. Been thinking we’ve got to get your leader and mine to meet again.”
Meera arched a winged brow. “Easier said. I’ve never seen King Thane so cold. He hates Ditch, doesn’t he?”
“He…harbors strong feelings about her,” Lowell said carefully. “But cold? I thought he handled it rather well with her. Why would she be so antagonistic to him?”
Meera’s tone went defensive. “Maybe Ditch should have smiled more? We are enemies. She treated him as one.”
“That’s what I’m telling you—we doona have to be enemies.”
“Yet here our factions are.” She swirled her whiskey, the liquid catching the firelight. “From what I can tell over these last few days working with Ditch, she truly wants power. Can Thane concede an inch?”
“Rewarding thefts with concessions?” He shook his head.
“He’d lose the pack’s faith and signal a weakness to them.
” They would understand if he announced that his mate was a witch—fate is never wrong—but Thane had kept her connection secret, lest word get back to Ditch.
“Does your coven need food so badly? Thane has no interest in your people starving. Mayhap we can help.”
“A few weeks ago, I would have said we were fine. But lately the market’s been bare. I intend to find out more.”
He nodded. “Several of Umber’s crops failed this harvest. Winter will be lean for all unless we help each other.”
“How? Ditch and Thane’s hatred seems intractable. Unless…” She finished her second glass, looking lost in thought.
He smoothly refilled her, eager to hear her mind at work.
“Unless what?” He was tempted to drink his own—he’d brought a bloody splendid bottle—but wouldn’t hasten his time with this female.
As suspected, she wanted him in return. He perceived her skin warming as she relaxed and scented the sweetest beginnings of her arousal.
“We might get movement if either leader found a mate,” she said. “Ditch would negotiate with a queen more than she would with Thane. And it is an Accession. Fated pairs are appearing everywhere across the Skein. Why not Thane? He’s well overdue.”
Waaaay overdue. “Fifteen hundred years he’s waited.” Born a prince, raised as a future king, he believed he was due all good things. So to be denied the best thing for so long?
Infuriating. To that male, unbearable.
“Has he never encountered a hint of a mate?” Meera asked.
Lowell wasn’t a liar by nature, but he was loyal to the bone, so he hedged. “Once a Lykae finds his fated one, few things can prevent him from reaching her on the night of the full moon. So, nay, he’s never experienced that pull before.” But in weeks, he will.
For now the king paced his study, staring at the growing moon as he considered and rejected ideas to deal with his thorn-in-paw mate:
Propose another official meeting. Reave her like the Highlanders of old. Or the most impossible—relinquish her.
“Your mood has shifted,” Meera observed, her gaze assessing him.
“Kingdom cares. ’Tis naught, lass.” He had many.
Aside from all his other duties, he would oversee the containment of two royal Lykae during this month’s full moon—one newly mated and one truly mad.
The prospect was fraught with danger. For Thane and for any of his men.
Once risen, a Lykae’s inner beast became a maelstrom of force and brutality.
“I’ll think more on what concessions we might be able to offer, and you’ll find out about the food situation. ”
“And we’ll hope matehood visits Thane this Accession.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Lowell lifted his glass, trying to lighten the air. “So tell me more about your studies…”
As the night grew later, talk and laughter replaced strategy. Meera’s wit cut through her prim mask. She was clever, funny, and far too captivating. He poured with a thief’s precision, always keeping her glass just full enough.
Underneath their banter, something even warmer, mysterious, crackled in the air. Like the hum before lightning, it prickled over his skin, flooding him with awareness.
The energy between them…gods, it bit.
She caught him watching her and smiled faintly. “Have you noticed that we keep—”
“—finishing each other’s sentences?”
She sighed, tipsy and amused. “Yes. And we like all the same foods. The same books. The same sights in the Skein. I’m just drunk enough to say that it feels like something pulses between us.” She traced a finger over the rim of her glass, slow and sensual.
He imagined that finger trailing down his chest, circling the head of his cock. His shaft, half hard for an hour now, thickened painfully.
“Am I wrong?” she asked softly.
“Nay, I feel it too.” Whatever flowed between them was a great deal more than the passion he’d shared with other lasses, more than chemistry. He wanted to explore it fully—in bed with her. He leaned closer, flashing the grin that had undone countless females. “Yet another thing we have in common.”
She stared at his lips, and her breaths shallowed.
“You ready for that kiss?” he murmured.
She blinked. “Uh, what kiss?”
“Our inevitable first one.” His tone was teasing, but his voice had gone hoarse. “I’ll say it plain: I want you. Have since the beginning.”
“Seduction for seduction’s sake.” She tilted her head, and her hair loosened to spill over her shoulder, filling him with its mesmerizing scent. “I’m not your mate or anything, right?”
He didn’t believe so, but the energy said otherwise.
Over his lifetime, he’d noticed some Lykae impulses inside him were muted.
His Instinct didn’t seem to be as loud, his wolvenness not as pronounced.
Could his matehood be one of those times when his experience didn’t match up to those of other wolves?
Unfortunately, no.
Even he couldn’t have stayed away from her after their first meeting, not month after month on the nights of the full moon. “Nay, lass. Though I might wish that were different.”
“So every female before ‘the one’ is just practice?” she asked sharply. “A placeholder?” The idea seemed to pique her temper again.
“Some Lykae say that. I’m more pragmatic. I might never find this nameless, faceless female. I doona dwell on it.” Unlike Thane and seemingly every other Lykae, Lowell could take the prospect or leave it.
“You’re surprisingly blasé. Isn’t matehood sacred? The religion of the wolves? That’s what I was taught.”
“Aye, to most. I guess I’m agnostic.” He wanted to pick his female. He wanted that right.
Lowell resented the idea that some cosmic force was supposed to intrude so completely in his life—yet another way he differed from other Lykae.
He never spoke to friends or his family about these resentments, nor about how he sometimes dreamed of living outside pack dynamics, able to set out entirely on his own and chart his destiny.
“I’m more of a free-will kind of bloke.”
She studied him, intrigued. “A fate fighter then?” Meera’s tone said, Let me know how that works out for you. “You don’t crave the children only a mate can bring you?”
He shrugged. “Canna miss what I’ve never had.” At times he imagined he might like bairns, but his parents had produced a litter of boisterous pups after him, siblings who filled any void.
Bringing the subject back around, she said, “I think a kiss is a bad idea. It might lead to more, and I’m not looking for a one-night stand with a male whose mate is waiting in the wings.
” Her words grew in volume, her eyes flickering.
The air in the cottage seemed to stir, fanning the fire and rippling the curtains.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
She pressed trembling fingers to her temples. “Oh, no.”
“What’s happening here?” The witch’s magic brushed against his senses. But he felt it inside his veins. Felt her inside his veins.
A weird sense of wrath stoked within him. He and anger were all but strangers, so its sudden presence bewildered him. The needles under his skin flared again, anger and desire twining into one hot pulse.
He didn’t recognize this feeling. Didn’t trust it. But he wanted more. “Tell me what you’re doing, Meera. You using magic on me?”
She shook her head hard. “No! Maybe? I don’t mean to.” Her gaze darted around the room, reflecting firelight like prisms. “Y-you need to go.”
“Go?” Fuck that. He set his glass on the coffee table. “What’s your power? And for that matter, what’s Ditch’s? She must have something on tap other than sensing desires or whatever bullshite she admitted to.”
Meera’s magic surged visibly; the air shimmered around her. Seemed her fuse was sparking too. “Do you know how rude we find it when someone asks us about our abilities? We don’t owe you a power declaration!”
Shivers made his hair all but stand on end. “Rude? Doona be daft,” he shot back. “We talk of working together, but I have no idea what you can actually do.”
“Daft? Daft!” Anger and lust danced within her as well. She kept looking at his lips.
“Aye, daft!” Something about grating that word made his blood sing. The fury, the heat—it all mixed into something reckless and alive. “Witch,” Lowell rasped, voice dropping to a growl, “if you glance at my mouth one more time, I’m going to take yours. Hard. Will no’ stop there either.”
She held his gaze, chin high.
Then…
Her eyes dipped downward.
“Bloody hell, lass,” he breathed, and the last of his control snapped.
He was on her like a wolf on a bone.