Lori Handeland - Marked by the Moon

Her voice was full of disgust and because of that, when she muttered, “Fuck me,” he dropped his hand and said, “I did.”

She punched him. He couldn’t say that he blamed her.

Alex didn’t realize she’d rounded on Barlow until her fist connected with his face.

He could have stopped her. That he didn’t confused her, and when she was confused, she lashed out. A lot of people did.

“What did you do to me?”

He rubbed his jaw as he looked her up and down. “Isn’t that obvious?”

She’d been shaking her hand, trying to make the numbness fade. He had a hard head, no shock there. But his words made her fingers curl inward once again.

He noticed and lifted a brow. “I gave you a shot,” he said. “I deserved it. But one’s all you get.”

She rolled her eyes. If she wanted to punch him again, she would. Alex let her fingers go limp. Right now she didn’t want to.

Just to be pissy, Alex yanked the blanket off Barlow and around her. Unfortunately that left him naked when he sat up, resting a wrist on his knee, open to her gaze.

She yanked her eyes from what lay below his waist and focused on an area just below his face. She’d left a mark on his neck.

“God,” she muttered, and ran a hand through her tangled hair. What the hell had happened?

Suddenly everything came back—the bear, the fight, then…everything went fuzzy.

Alex glanced down. The only remnants of the attack were some dried blood, a few bruises, and several scabbed-over claw marks. “What the—?” She ran her fingers over the wounds, wincing. They might be nearly healed but they still hurt.

Alex glanced up, but he was staring out the opening of the cave and not at her. “How?” she murmured.

He lifted one shoulder, lowered it. Alex had a flash of those muscles bunching beneath her palm as he thrust into her so deeply—

“Magic.”

She blinked, and the memory went away. “Magic,” she repeated. “Like shifting in the daytime.” He nodded. “Putting an invisibility cloak around us in LA.”

“A what?” he asked.

“Harry Potter.” She’d done a lot of reading in those hotel rooms. Alex waved her hand. “Never mind. You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Like that.”

“You healed me by magic,” she said slowly. “Then you made me do you.”

“You think I used magic to make you—” His cool blue eyes blazed hot with fury. “I don’t need sex that bad.”

“Could have fooled me,” she muttered.

Was she imagining things or did his cheeks flush just a little?

“Glass houses,” he said.

“Huh?”

“From the way you were writhing and moaning and coming, you needed it, too.”

She had. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

“What kind of man climbs into bed with an injured woman—”

“According to you, I’m not a man,” he snapped. “And because of me, you weren’t exactly injured. You were, however, blue with cold.”

Alex glanced at the still-swirling snowstorm outside the cave. “You were just keeping me warm?”

“Someone had to.”

Alex narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t have to seduce me.”

“Are you so sure it was me who seduced you ?”

Alex opened her mouth, then shut it again. He was right. She wasn’t sure.

“How about we just forget it ever happened?” Alex asked.

“If you can, I can.” He lay down and yanked the quilt off her and onto him with one sharp tug.

“Hey!” She yanked it back.

He shrugged and let her, placing his arms behind his head and crossing his ankles. Unfortunately the sight of him—long and bronzed, legs and arms thick with muscle—made Alex consider throwing the quilt back over him again. Because for every inch of his skin she appeared to have a memory of touching, tasting—

“Stop it,” she muttered.

He opened one eye. “Stop what?”

“Your hoodoo, voodoo, witchy crap.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You made me want you.”

His lips quirked. “You wanted me?”

“As much as you wanted me.”

“Who said I did?”

Alex lowered her eyes to his now limp member; it twitched beneath her gaze. Alex smirked.

Barlow sat up, flicking the corner of the quilt over his lap. “I did not use magic on you.”

“You said—”

“I healed you,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I did not have the anger for anything more.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“My magic is based in anger.”

“What are you, some kind of witch?”

“Do I look like an old woman with a cauldron and a cat?”

She tilted her head, peered at him for several seconds. “If you put on a hat, scowled just like that— maybe.”

He sighed, unamused. “I’m not a witch.”

“Sorcerer? Wizard? Warlock?”

“I don’t know what I am. I only know that when I get angry, what I want to happen, does.”

“Seriously?”

He lifted one finger. “Invisibility cloak.” A second finger. “Shifting in the sunlight.” A third. “Healing you.”

Alex lifted her thumb. “Doing me.”

“That I didn’t want.”

“Felt like it.”

He made an impatient sound. “I thought we were going to pretend that didn’t happen.”

“Right.” She flashed her hand in front of her face. “Forgotten.” If only it were that easy. “Tell me more about your anger magic.”

“I guess we aren’t going to sleep anymore.”

“You’re tired?”

“Guys usually fall asleep…after.”

“After what?” Alex asked sweetly, and batted her eyelashes.

She could have sworn she heard him laugh, but when she stopped batting and peered into his face all she saw was the same sour expression he wore whenever she was near.

“I have no idea how I became magic,” he said. “I only know that the first time I changed, I did so because of my fury.”

“You weren’t bitten?” she asked.

“Not all werewolves are bitten.”

“True,” she agreed. “There were the genetically engineered ones.”

“Mengele.”

Alex cast him a quick glance. “You know about that?”

“I’ve been around a very long time. I know about everything.”

Not everything. He didn’t know Alex had been engineered to spy. And he’d better not ever find out or she might end up magically dead.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I was born in the year 836 in what is now called Norway.”

Alex let her gaze wander over him from his big feet, to his big hands, to all the big parts in between. “You were a Viking ?”

“To be correct, Viking was a verb. To go a Viking.”

“The act of conquering wherever, whatever, and whomever you wished.”

“Technically, yes.”

“How did you become furry?”

“Have you ever heard the Norse legend of the berserker?”

“No,” she lied. She wanted to hear his version.

Barlow lifted his brows, surprised. “Aren’t all Jäger- Suchers supposed to learn as much as they can about as many different types of shape-shifters as possible?”

“Where did you hear that?” He appeared to know more about the Jäger-Suchers than they knew about him.

“I have my sources.”

Edward had said every agent he’d sent after Barlow had never returned, so Alex could surmise just who those sources had been. She wondered how long they’d lasted under Barlow’s torture before they’d told him everything.

She didn’t plan to.

“A berserker,” Barlow continued, “is a Norse warrior who, in the heat of battle, becomes an animal.”

“Poof, he’s a zebra?”

Barlow’s lips twisted as if he wanted to laugh but would never allow it. At least not around her. “Legend said that there were Norse warriors who wore the skin of a wolf; then they became one.”