A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums (Lilith and Co. #1)

Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

C onnor dropped his hands from my back to grab a hold of my butt, hefting me up until I was able to wrap my legs around his waist, locking my ankles to keep myself from slipping—not that the man would’ve let me. Hard to ravage my lips without access to them. It appeared that death hounds liked it rough. I had no idea that I liked it rough until this moment, when he moved me from the door, tossing me on the black leather sofa that Luc had in the corner of his office. I bounced only once because he threw himself on top of me.

One thing could be said for the man: He moved with precise quickness when the situation called for it. Say, like when you were about to bed your mate for the first time and really wanted to get her naked to commence that bedding.

And not to say that I had a world of experience in the bedroom—again, I hadn’t been a virgin when I met Jeffery, but I’d hardly been open all night for business. Still, judging by the handful of lovers I’d taken to my bed once upon a time, I could say with authority that Connor told the truth about his assets. No exaggerating here—so not exaggerating. Thank you universe!

A little bout of panic hit me as I wondered how he was going to make it fit. The fear quickly abated, however, when he dropped his lips there . The magic spot. And the best part was you didn’t need to be a super to take advantage of that little nub of sorcery. Just a willing partner with a willingness to learn. I was partial to the swish and flick—but that was just me.

I widened my legs to show that I welcomed him having his wicked way with me in all the wicked ways he planned to be wicked.

Maybe because of this whole being Connor’s other half thing, I didn’t know, but… I’d had great sex, phenomenal sex with Jeffery, the kind that would’ve kept me happy for the rest of my life. Yet the moment Connor slid inside me, I knew no other man would ever satisfy me again—there could never be another man. Other men no longer existed in my world.

Though that was as much as I thought about it because rough .

Gloriously so.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if they heard us on the international space station.

Connor’s intensity— whoa! I warred between never wanting it to end and needing it to because I couldn’t take a minute more.

Thankfully, our tsunami wave crested, wiping out the entire coastline of my body in the process, and I floated on the calm sea that was Connor holding me, nuzzling my neck with the tip of his nose while pressing tiny kisses to my jaw.

Sated didn’t begin to cover it, and who knew Connor could be sweet?

Really sweet.

“What’s your last name?” I asked, thinking on the situation and how funny it was that I let this man into my body in all the ways, yet I didn’t really know him.

He smiled, a kind that looked depleted of energy but highly satisfied.

“Baghest. I can’t believe I never told you.”

“Honey—” I patted his chest. “You haven’t even told me your phone number.”

“When I can move again, I’m going to have to rectify that, too. Though, I’d be lying to say I didn’t enjoy you showing up here tonight.”

“Good boy,” I said and I scratched behind his ear. “I’ll point out that you weren’t singing that tune earlier tonight.”

“Different song drifted down.” He smiled, rolling in to kiss me for real. I tingled all over. “What’s yours? Your last name?”

“You mean you haven’t looked me up?”

“Been sort of busy working two jobs and trying to keep you safe from bad guys.”

I couldn’t believe that I’d never given him mine, either. We’d certainly dropped the ball on the whole “getting to know you” portion of mating.

“Lamia.” I pushed my lips up to kiss him again. “That’s the only thing I know about who I am. It was in a book left with me when I was abandoned as an infant.”

Connor’s face hardened when I talked about being abandoned as an infant.

“What?” I asked. “You knew that.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Any thought of you being alone and vulnerable kicks in a protectiveness that I’ve never experienced before. It’s annoying as fuck.”

Well, that just pissed me off. Here we’d shared this amazing, wild—did I say amazing?—experience and he was going to complain that he felt protective? Screw him and screw this. I didn’t need it. I pushed him off me and stood from the sofa gathering my clothing that until minutes ago I was happy he’d torn from my body.

Why did men have to open their mouths and… and… men ?

Was it the best situation? Not remotely. Especially not for a girl with supernatural powers being raised around regular old humans, but I was over it. Some things just were. My childhood wasn’t so different from a whole lot of other kids’—well, aside from the whole zappy-zap fingertips on the full moon. And I didn’t need his protective bit when he neither meant it nor wanted it, but was stuck with it because of some cosmic blunder tying us together.

Upon opening my mouth to tell him just that, I got cut off by an annoying knock on the door and Luc calling through. “Sorry, lovebirds. I tried to give you as much time as possible, but there’s some stuff going on in the cemetery. We’ve got alarms going off down here. Need you to check it out.”

Ha! Love birds? As if, but curiosity got the better of me and I wanted—no, needed —to know what set off the alarms. “Want me to come with you?” I asked, rather hopeful that he’d say yes.

“Are you nuts ?” he snapped. Snapped . Whatever. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a few specialties. Or one. One that would work bringing a baddie down. In light of that, his response hardly felt like the correct response after getting to know each other in all the ways. The man should’ve had faith in his mate, in the universe giving him an other half who could keep up with a death hound.

I tried to look badass as I pulled up my panties. It wasn’t easy to look badass while gliding up panties, so I did it with a scowl on my face.

“Simone.” He used his lightning-Connor-quickness to pull my still-almost-completely-naked body back against his still-very-naked one, which created quite the conundrum because I didn’t like being snapped at. He had an inside voice—everyone did—and he needed to learn how to use it.

But at the same time, my body reacted to his nearness. To his naked nearness. It was a lost cause. I hated myself for melting beneath him.

“You’re aware of what just happened between us?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied. “Since I gave you my consent to rock my world.”

“Right. So why in the hell do you think that I’d want you anywhere near trouble?”

“Because I have powers. I can help. Besides, do you think I want anyone else to get all the fun of kicking your ass?”

Uh, yeah… that answer went over about as well as I expected it to. As in, it didn’t. At all. He growled at me. How did a man who’d just been spectacularly laid—in my opinion—find enough annoyance in him to growl?

“Get dressed,” he ordered.

“Say please .”

What did you know… Rather than growl again, or even sigh, he smiled as he bent in to press a kiss to the hinge of my jaw. “Please, Simone, baby… get dressed so I don’t have to kill my best friend.”

“For clarification—” I did sigh, leaning into him. His breath dancing over my skin. His delectable scent filling my nose. I couldn’t help it. “Your best friend is…”

“Luc.”

“Gotcha.”

Given the state of our relationship now that we’d bumped uglies, he wasn’t kidding. He’d end Luc for seeing me au naturel . Something he found annoying. But in this instance, I chose to be the bigger person and take pity on both men by hurriedly pulling back on my clothing.

Once I had my last button buttoned, Connor called, “You can come in.”

Luc stepped inside the room with a knowing smirk on his face. He did a cursory glance around the room and that smile fled when his eyes landed on me.

“You were hoping to see me naked, weren’t you?” I put a hand on my hip.

He shrugged. Shrugged—of the sheepish, why bother to deny it variety.

“ Luc ,” Connor yelled.

“What?” He threw out his hand toward me. “We both know she’s hot.”

“Yeah, she is. And she’s my mate .”

“At least tell me, did she rock your world? I need to live vicariously through you, brother.”

Connor narrowed his eyes. “Watch her— don’t touch her,” he warned, but as he passed by Luc, he dropped his voice, smiled slightly, and whispered, “You don’t even know.” And I watched the high-five eye-volley between them.

Part of me couldn’t help but get really happy that he felt that way. Focus, Simone . I needed to figure out how to get outside to help Connor. I’d already lost one man and that just about broke me. Jeffery, he’d meant the world to me. I had the feeling that I’d never come back from losing Connor.

He grabbed a handful of my shirt to tug me into his arms and crashed his mouth down onto mine in a hard kiss. “Behave,” he warned and I decided to forgive his earlier comment because Connor kisses magically healed all wrongs in my world, even if those wrongs came from him. Then the coolest thing happened: He dropped to the ground, and where the all-man Connor just stood, now stood a giant, black, death hound with glowing, red eyes. His clothing lay in a shredded heap on the floor. He chuffed then turned to run out the door that Luc left open for him when he’d entered.

“So, Simone,” Luc said. “What should we do until Connor gets back?”

“Are you flirting with me?” I asked and he smiled another sexy smirk, then winked. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell Connor.”

Luc’s face immediately dropped. “Let’s not do anything hasty.”

“Connor’s going to kill you,” I singsonged, liking the way I got this big, strong fallen angel to squirm.

For an office in Hades, Luc’s was surprisingly cozy. The crazy-soft sofa I got to break in. Framed western prints on the walls painted a deep maroon. His huge desk looked like mahogany. Two leather club chairs sat opposite the desk, and he even had a large, stone fireplace taking up the entire wall across from the sofa. I couldn’t deny that the man had good taste.

“I think you ought to get some work done while you’re still alive to do it,” I said. “I’d hate for you to leave this place in a state. It’ll be hard to get someone to fill your shoes.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Probably take a nap on your incredible sofa. It’s so soft.”

It’s not as if I wanted to nap, but I needed Luc to forget about me long enough for me to get the chance to escape. No matter what Connor said, I knew he could use my help.

As providence or whatever worked in Hell came to play, one of Luc’s employees… I guessed a demon? A demon made the most sense. He knocked once on the door then entered before being told to.

“Sorry to bother you, Luc,” the swarthy man said in a distinctly cockney accent. “But there’s an incident in quadrant three.” I felt bad for him. Not that he was necessarily unattractive, but given he worked around Connor and Luc every day, I figured that’d give anyone a complex.

“Incident?”

“It appears as if one of Lev’s people left a cage unlocked and at least one kraken escaped.”

Lev? Who’s Lev? Luc apparently sensed my confusion as he turned his head toward me to say, “Leviathan,” before turning back to the demon. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He pressed his fingertips to his forehead, taking in a long, cleansing breath, or it could’ve been a suffering sigh, given the situation. The two sounded so similar, it was kind of hard to tell. But Luc looked at me again. “Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I shooed him off. “Not to worry. Tell Lev I said ‘hi.’”

Both men looked at me like I had just gone round the bend and I got the distinct feeling that Lev wasn’t nearly as personable as Luc.

“Or not,” I mumbled, but neither of them heard me, as they’d both already left the office. Still, it couldn’t have worked out better for me. I gave Luc plenty of time to forget I existed, which equaled about another five minutes, before I said, “I don’t want them to see me.” Just as before, my body faded from view. I watched myself starting with my feet become invisible, but it was like I could still see myself at the same time. Magic rocked, but it was also screwy.

No one saw me as I walked out of Luc’s office. No one saw me as I took the spiral stone staircase up to the cemetery. Then, after I whispered, “Don’t let anyone in the cemetery see the door open,” no one saw me leave the mausoleum and join the group facing off in the dark. Eerily dark. The unnatural kind—or what I considered unnatural.

It seemed smart to hang back and get a feel for the situation before I joined in the rumble. Connor had his back to me. He growled one of those deep, rumbling, shook the ground beneath us kind of growls.

Badass.

Well, except for the acid drool that singed the ground as it soaked in. That was pretty gross. My other half was a drooler. The singular Connor stood between the mausoleum and six brawny, angry, gritty-looking men. Beetle’s men. Not only did I know it because I simply felt it, but I recognized most of them from Monnie's.

The hulking figure who stepped forward, cloaked all in black, narrowed his beady eyes on Connor. “Give us what we want,” he said.

Connor didn’t speak as he was in death hound form, but he growled again, and I got the feeling that Beetle’s man understood exactly what he said.

“You’ll regret that,” the man warned, then the six of them lunged. At my Connor. Uh… forget that. Only I got to manhandle Connor. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I’d never actually manhandled him aside from that time I’d kneed him in the boys, but— focus, Simone .

“The war starts now,” another man shrouded in a dark cloak shouted, lunging toward Connor with some kind of black, glowing knife while Connor was occupied defending himself against the other five. I didn’t even think, jumping into action, pressing my taser fingers to the dark figure’s exposed skin on his neck. He literally never saw me coming.

The air in the cemetery went wired when he screamed and dropped to his knees. I kept right on pressing until he passed right out. Beetle’s men looked frantically around trying to figure out what they’d just witnessed. Connor took the opportunity to lunge at another. I went after another man, too.

We’d taken out all the men save one. We left him standing. His hood had fallen off during the fight and really, with his dark beady eyes and that thick scar running down the length of the right side of his face, he looked like every stereotype a girl could come up with to describe a henchman for a bad guy named Beetle . Then a very naked Connor shifted back from his death hound form. I bit my lip to keep from giving myself away, but the man just did it for me. I couldn’t help it. He stared down the last man in quite the menacing fashion. “You tell your boss that he’ll get her over my dead body, and I’m damn hard to kill.” When the man just stood there, Connor barked, “ Go! ”

That lit a fire under his feet. As the man ran like a coward, Connor then shifted back to his hound form, but not before yelling, “Simone, back inside. Now .”

Clearly, I’d given myself away with my sizzle fingers. As I headed back down, a group of demons passed me and instinctively, I knew they were the cleanup crew. Well, Connor could be angry all he wanted, but I did the right thing going out to help him.

He found me back on Luc’s sofa waiting patiently. Okay, so Connor didn’t need to slam the door. I sensed when he walked in the room now. That was complete overkill. But I looked up and smiled. “Hey, how’d it go?” I asked, hoping to both head him off and make him think I’d been in here the whole time.

“How’d it go? How’d it go?” If he wasn’t careful, his head might explode.

“Yeah. You’re here, so I take it you took care of things.” I blinked big eyes to appear innocent.

One second, he stood by the door running his fingers through his hair and the next, he stood right in front of me, lifted me up with a firm grip around my arms, flipped us around so he could take my spot, and deposited me on his lap. “What in all of Hades were you thinking?”

“First of all, can you put some clothes on before you yell at me, especially while I’m in your lap? I find your nakedness distracting. Secondly, what do you mean?”

“Simone.” He shook his head. I smiled as I bent in to peck his nose. “You’re going to be the death of me, I just know it.”

“No. It’d hardly do me any good for you to die.”

He sighed. “Where’s Luc?”

“Kraken escaped in quadrant three.”

“Please tell me you aren’t serious.”

I shrugged. “Lev’s people aren’t very reliable.”

“What do you know about Lev? Did he come here? Did he see you?”

“No. One of Luc’s guys popped in to give him the good news.”

“Woman,” he grumbled, shaking his head as he wrapped me snuggly in his arms.

“You’re not going soft on me, are you?”

“Baby, you’re going to beg for me to go soft on you when I get you home.”

Yes, please.