Taken (6 page)

No answer.

“Fine!” Channie was too filthy to go to bed without bathing but the wash basin had been sitting in the coals too long. The water wasn’t quite simmering, but it was too hot for comfort. She used a stick and scattered the coals piled up around the base of the tub, then dipped out two buckets of water. The weather had warmed up considerably after the blizzard. Most of the snow had melted, but the night air was still cold enough to fog her breath as she muttered about Josh’s childish behavior.

When the water in the buckets had cooled to a tolerable temperature, Channie stripped out of her filthy clothes and wound her braid into a knot on top of her head. Her skin prickled into gooseflesh but she wasn’t some namby-pamby city-girl that couldn’t handle a little cold air.
 
She dipped a wash rag into the still steaming bucket then wrapped it around a bar of lye soap. She lathered her arms, chest and neck then froze when she felt Josh’s gaze on her body.
 
Her first reaction was shock, followed by anger. How dare he spy on her like a peeping Tom. She covered her breasts with one arm and her privates with her other hand. “I know you’re watching me.”

Josh didn’t answer, but the air around Channie grew warmer, then downright balmy. Channie grinned in spite of herself. “Josh. You aren’t supposed to be wasting energy on warmth spells. Aunt Wisdom said—”

“I know what she said.” He stepped out of the shadows and closed the distance between them, never taking his eyes off her face. “But you’re my wife. And it’s my job to take care of you.” He took the wash rag out of her hand and said, “Turn around.”
 

“Josh …”

“I’m not going to seduce you.” He smiled then said, “Unless you want me to.”

“We can’t.”

“Yes. We can. But I’m not going to beg. Now turn around so I can wash your back.”

Josh put one hand on her shoulder and washed her back with the other. Maybe he wasn’t trying to seduce her, but that didn’t mean his touch had no effect.

She trembled when he slid his hand over her ribs and across the dip of her waist.

“Are you cold?” His breath was hot on the nape of her neck.

“Hardly.”

“Does this feel good?”

Channie grabbed the wash rag out his hand and looked over her shoulder at him. “What do you think?”

“I think … you’ll feel a lot better if you just relax and let me take care of you.”

“What do you mean ‘take care of me’?”

“It’s not your fault I can’t curse Hunter. Why should you be punished for my incompetence?” Josh slid his soapy hands over her hips and around to her belly. Channie had to grab his arms to keep from falling as her joints turned to jelly.

“Josh, stop. I can’t take much more.”

He sighed and removed his hands from her body.
 

“Step up.” He indicated a large flat rock and picked up the other bucket of hot water. “I don’t want to splash mud on you.”

Channie climbed onto the rock, feeling even more self-conscious as Josh rinsed the soap off her body without touching her.
 

He said, “The water in the tub is a hundred and four degrees. Is that still too hot for you?”

“How do you know how hot it is?”

“Mage. Remember?”

“I could never do that. Not even with Enchantment’s magic.”

“In you go.” Josh held her elbow with one hand and her waist with the other as he guided her into the tub. Channie sank into the hot water with a sigh of pleasure. Her muscles unknotted as Josh unwound the braid from her hair, then combed it out with his fingers. He dipped half a bucket of water from the tub then sat on the apple crate behind her and washed her hair.
 

When he finished, Josh wrapped a towel around Channie and picked her up. She buried her face against his neck. He smelled so good. Lemon and sandalwood and just a hint of musk.
Wait a minute.

“Josh? Did you take a shower?”

He chuckled. “If you’ve been hiding a shower out here all this time without telling me, you’re in big trouble.”

There was a shower at Aunt Wisdom’s house and one at the school, but if Josh had gone beyond the boundaries of the misdirection spells, Channie would have felt it. “How did you get so clean?”

Josh laid her across the bed then knelt on the floor beside her. He tucked the towel more securely into the hollow between her breasts, but didn’t linger. “When you stomped off and left me sitting by the fire all by myself, I got really pissed and decided to take a walk to cool off.”

“I did not stomp off.”

Josh raised his eyebrows and smirked at her.

“I might have walked away a little briskly. But I did not stomp.”

“Whatever.”

Channie considered telling him why she’d gotten mad, but she didn’t want to risk him changing his mind about not fighting Dominance. And that’s exactly what would happen if he thought she was the least bit unhappy about the situation. The decision was made, and it was the decision she wanted so she needed to let it go. Besides, she couldn’t stay mad at Josh when he was so obviously excited about something and grinning at her like a possum in a henhouse.

He sat back on his heels and stretched an arm across the bed, reaching for her hand. His long, slender fingers fit perfectly in the spaces between her own. He rested the side of his head on his bicep and licked his lips. “I really wanted to mess around tonight, even if we couldn’t have real sex, so when you shut me down and said we couldn’t bathe together … it hurt my feelings.”

“I’m sorry.” Channie squeezed his hand.
 

The corners of his mouth curved up into a soft smile. “I know.” He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “So anyway, I was wandering around in the woods, feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could take a shower and shave with a new razor and something besides lye soap.” He lifted his chin, tilting his head to the side then guided her hand to his cheek.
 

Channie slid the back of her fingers up and down his jawline then cupped his face in her palms and smiled. “Your skin’s softer than a baby’s butt.”

Josh chuckled. “I haven’t felt this smooth since sixth grade.”
 

She lifted her head and glanced across the room. Moonlight glinted off his razor, sitting in a tin can on the windowsill. “How?”

“I was just walking around and thinking about the last time I’d felt really clean and all of a sudden this electric buzz ran over my skin. It originated in my power-well so I knew it was my own magic, but I had no idea what triggered it. I still don’t.”

Channie rolled onto her stomach and said, “Go on.”

“All the hair on my body stood on end, like I was about to be struck by lightening. Did you ever feel anything like that?”

Channie nodded. It sounded like a cleansing spell, but Josh didn’t have the skill to cast one yet and even if he did, he would have been exhausted afterwards. He obviously had plenty of energy.

“I felt itchy all over and sort shook myself.” He shimmied his shoulders, demonstrating the technique. “A cloud of grime formed around my body and then … pow!” He flung his arms out to the side. “It exploded and disappeared.”
 

“Wow.” No doubt about it, that was definitely a cleansing spell. “I’m impressed.”

Josh lifted his left elbow and sniffed his arm pit. “Even my clothes are clean.”

Channie sat up. “Your clothes?”

“Yeah. If I can figure out how to do it again, we’ll never have to do laundry.”

“You can’t use a cleansing spell on non-living matter.”

“My jeans are cotton and my sweater’s a hundred percent wool.”

“Yes, but after the fibers go through the manufacturing process, the high heat and chemical dyes destroy any residual life along with any potential to hold or respond to magic.”

“You sound like your Aunt.”

“I was quoting her.” Channie stroked his cheeks with her thumbs. “And I’ve never heard of a mage that could shave with magic.”

“I didn’t exactly shave. It was more like the stubble just dissolved.”

“You’re lucky you aren’t bald. Did you lose hair anywhere besides your face?”

Josh grinned, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Wanna check?”

“I meant your arms and legs.”

“Nope, still manly.”

“This doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, all I can say is, I’m completely clean and so are my clothes. Even my shoes.” He yanked one off without untying it and held it out to her. “Take a sniff. It smells good as new.”

Channie shook her head. She’d smelled Josh’s shoes before, from a distance. There was no way she wanted to inhale with it anywhere near her face. “No thanks. I believe you.”

His eyes sparkled with mischief. He thrust the shoe under her nose. “Go on. Smell it.”

Channie laughed and batted his hand away. “No.”

“Okay. If you don’t like my left shoe.” He tossed it over his shoulder and jerked off his other shoe. “How bout this one?”

“Josh. I don’t want to smell your shoes.”

He stood up and peeled off his sweater. “You should at least smell my sweater.” He wadded it up and held it over his nose then inhaled deeply. “It smells
really
good.”

Channie took his sweater in her hands then leaned over it and sniffed cautiously. It didn’t just smell good. It smelled like lemons and sandalwood and
Josh
.
 

She closed her eyes, pressed the cloud of wooly fabric against her face and drank in his scent. When she opened her eyes, Josh was staring at her. He looked like something out of a dream, bathed in moonlight, bare chest heaving with every breath. A stretching sensation deep inside her own chest ached. This hunger was more than lust. It was a physical need as real as the urge to breathe.
 

Josh pressed a hand against his chest, over his heart. He felt it too. Channie wanted to give in, but she refused to disobey Aunt Wisdom.
 

They could abstain for as long as a year without breaking their bond. But how long before it broke them?

She slipped Josh’s sweater on over her head then wiggled out of the towel. “A cleansing spell is advanced magic.
 
Especially a cleansing spell that works on non-living matter.” She fisted the front of Josh’s sweater and lifted it to her nose for another hit of his delicious scent. “If you can clean your clothes with magic, there’s no reason you can’t curse Hunter.”

“Channie, I tried. I gave it all I had. But it just didn’t work.”

Channie crawled across the bed on her hands and knees then stood on the splintered floor in her bare feet. She took Josh’s face in her hands and tilted his head down to gaze into his eyes. “Tomorrow you are going to knock Hunter Feenie on his ass and then we’re going to make love all night long.”

Josh shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so.”

“I do. Now come to bed. You need a good night’s rest because tomorrow night, you aren’t going to get any sleep at all.”

“God, I hope you’re right.”

~***~

The next morning, Hunter announced his arrival by banging on the door and yelling, “Wake up sleepyheads. I brought breakfast.”

The aroma of bacon and eggs sent Channie’s salivary glands into overdrive. She jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans under Josh’s sweater then darted to the door, but before she could open it, Josh grabbed her wrist and said, “Put on a bra.”

Channie blushed and nodded then dug a clean bra out of the paper bag at the foot of their bed. Josh chewed on his lower lip as he watched her put it on. When she grabbed one of her own shirts, he shook his head and handed her the sweater she’d slept in. He smoothed it down over her hips and said, “I like seeing you in my clothes,” then opened the door.
 

Channie suspected what Josh really liked was Hunter seeing her in his clothes. She was getting a little tired of his alpha-dog attitude.

Josh glared at Hunter for thirty seconds, then turned his back and dug a sweatshirt out of the bag.
 

Channie said, “Come on in.”
 

Hunter shook his head as his gaze travelled over her body. He folded his arms across his chest then leaned against the doorframe, and stared at their unmade bed.
 

Channie blushed, and pretended not to notice. “Where did you get the bacon?” They all knew where he got the eggs.

“It ain’t bacon. It’s tenderloin. I brought my own kit, so just grab a couple of plates and meet me out by the fire.”

Hunter had a dutch oven buried in the coals, a skillet full of scrambled eggs on the grate and two pork loins on a make-shift spit. Channie turned the meat and licked her lips as a ribbon of grease dribbled onto the coals, hissing and popping and making her stomach growl. A rush of saliva forced her to swallow before she could speak. “Whose pig?”
 

Everyone that raised pigs notched the animals’ ears to help sort things out and minimize feuds when the pigs escaped their pens. Something that happened on a regular basis.

“Old man McCray’s.”

“He’ll skin you alive if he comes home and finds out.”

“You gonna tell on me?”
 

“‘Course not.”

“Okay then, let’s eat.” Hunter divided the eggs onto everyone’s plates then moved one of the tenderloins onto the empty skillet and cut it into inch-thick slices with his hunting knife. Channie removed the lid from the dutch oven with a stick and gave them each a ladleful of hot, buttered mush sweetened with maple syrup.

Josh said, “Please tell me that’s coffee I smell,” and nodded at the blue enameled pot on the far side of the fire pit.

Hunter nodded. “It’s a blend. Coffee and roasted chicory. Help yourself.”

The morning air was cold and still. What little smoke the coals produced rose straight into the sky. Channie sat next to Josh on the warm rock ledge circling the pit and watched him put away half a dozen eggs, a quarter-pound of pork and three helpings of mush. Channie could tell from the size of the tenderloin, it had been a very young pig. Information she had no intention of sharing with Josh.

“Hunter, thank you so much for breakfast. I don’t know what we’d have eaten if you hadn’t been so thoughtful.”