Heart of Stone: a Moonbound World book (Witches of Whitewood 1) Page 2

  The way she said his name made desire thrum through him. Still. Dammit. Why in the hell couldn’t he turn that shit off?

  “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said, a tiny shake in her voice. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  Will opened his mouth again, and a groan came out, but it wasn’t quite the stinging retort he’d hoped for. He kept trying to make words, but he sounded like a caveman.

  “You’ll be able to talk soon, but I’ve bound your hands, so don’t try to move.”

  He forced his eyes open and a blur of light pushed them closed again. Blinking hard, he tried to adjust his eyes to the light, and his head began to pound. It’d been a long time since he’d had a spell cast on him, but the hangover was still familiar.

  The vehicle—probably her beat-up truck—bounced along an uneven surface and he slit his eyes open to see thick leaves on either side, and stretching out ahead of them. Strange, mottled white trunks whizzed past him. It looked like they were driving on grass, but there were two wheel tracks cut into the green. Not a real road.

  “Wh—whe—where…are…you…” The words came annoyingly slow, and Will pushed out a frustrated breath. His mind was working much better, but his body was still slow on the uptake.

  “You shouldn’t have surprised me like that, Will.” She tried to sound scolding, but there was still a tremor under all that bluster.

  She should be scared.

  “Where are you taking me?” he ground out, gravel in his voice.

  “Into the mountains,” Lianne said. “And I’ll decide what to do with you once I have a chance to think about all this.”

  “Where’s my daughter?” The words brought a sting to his nose, and he huffed breaths to cover his anger. “Where is she?”

  Silence radiated from Lianne Matilda Banfield like a cartoon stench. Will turned his head to look at her and his breath caught in his throat. With the sun spilling through her window, framing her golden hair and shadowing the angles of her face, she looked as beautiful as she had the last time he’d seen her. More beautiful, even.

  She had that kind of angular, full-lipped beauty that would make men stop on the street to watch her pass.

  How could so many years pass them by, and she still look this arresting?

  He was fucked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said, her lips tightening around the words.

  “Where’s my daughter?” he repeated, pulling himself upright in the seat and rounding his shoulders. Will wanted to grab her by the throat.

  “You don’t have a daughter.”

  “The hell I don’t.” He wriggled his hands in the thick rope. If he could find the knot, he could chew it open. He turned his hands over, looking for it.

  “Don’t bother trying to get free,” she said, coolly. “I’ll put a spell on you to freeze your limbs in place and you won’t be able to move at all.”

  He smacked his hands on his legs. He hated the magick. The upper hand. She would always have the upper hand.

  Although, if he could get his hands free, that wouldn’t be the case.

  “I found Jamie on Facebook,” he said, watching her carefully for a reaction.

  She stopped breathing, but kept driving.

  “That’s how I finally found you.” He twisted toward her. “I’ve been looking for you twenty-eight years, Lianne. But I finally found you.”

  “It’s Mattie,” she said with a casual shake of her head, resuming her breath. “I don’t go by Lianne anymore.”

  “I’ve seen Jamie’s Facebook page. I know she’s here. You’re going to take me to her, right now.”

  Mattie closed her eyes for a moment, like she was steeling herself for something. Even her mannerisms hadn’t changed over the years. “She’s only twenty-six. Not old enough to be your daughter, William.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but did the math. She was right. If Jamie was only twenty-six, and Mattie wasn’t lying, then she couldn’t possibly be his daughter. She was too young.

  “She’s my adopted daughter,” Mattie said, turning the wheel.

  Will looked around the bright clearing. The almost-road continued up the side of a hill, in a bit of a switchback. At the top of the hill sat a little cabin, just out of the canopy of the trees. “Well, you’re going to take me to her, and I’m going to ask her how old she is, just to make sure.” He held his breath for a moment. Hadn’t considered trying to discover Jamie’s age.

  In the picture posted of her and Mattie, she’d looked old enough, and that was all that’d mattered to him. He wouldn’t know whether to trust her or not until he met Jamie for himself.

  “I am not taking you to meet Jamie.” She turned the wheel again and they pulled in front of the cabin, rolling to a stop. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you yet.”

  “You can’t keep me here. People know where I am.” Will watched those words land on her pretty face.

  She didn’t need to know he was lying just yet. She’d catch his meaning and it might keep him safe for the time being.

  “Who did you tell you were coming here?” Mattie rounded on him, grabbing his shirt and getting so close to his face, he could’ve kissed her.

  Hell, he wanted to. He stared at her lips, then back up at her eyes. Desire rolled through him, the river he couldn’t dam. Especially not when she touchd him. Will’s breath heaved as his temperature rose. Soon, heat would overtake him, and he’d have to kiss her, just to relieve the pressure building inside.

  He pushed her away with his forearms. “No one in your family,” he finally said.

  “But someone in yours?”

  “Yes. My brother.”

  She gripped the steering wheel, staring ahead and not speaking. Thinking.

  Will wanted to touch his pocket, to see if the vial was still there. The gesture might give away the secret, if she hadn’t already discovered it.

  The thought of Mattie digging around in his pants made his temperature rise again, and he had to close his eyes to push it back.

  No good going there. That’s done.

  “Fine.” She opened the truck door and came around the front, keeping her eyes on him.

  Will slid his arms down to his right side, keeping his forearms over his pocket. A small ampule poked out enough, low on his thigh, he breathed out a sigh. Mattie opened the door and he re-centered his hands so she wouldn’t look at his pocket.

  If she hadn’t thought to check yet, she might not.

  He might be safe.

  She pulled him out of the truck and pushed him toward the cabin. She wasn’t speaking, and he wanted to bide his time. His phone was, hopefully, still in his back pocket, and with the spell in his right, all he needed was to get her to release his bonds, and he’d be completely free. He’d find Jamie himself. Or, if there was another daughter, he’d find her.

  Whatever it took.

  Chapter Three

  Mattie pushed the door shut with her heel and glanced around the dark cabin. One side of the room had a wood fire place, surrounded by a green couch and a rocking chair. Behind the rocking chair, the dining table started the kitchen space, which was small. Next to the wood fire place was a door to the bedroom.

  Best not go there.

  She manhandled Will across the room and onto the couch, dropping him on his ass with a thud.

  He made a noise of discomfort, and met her eyes. “Don’t be so violent, Matilda.”

  “I told you, call me Mattie.” She threw her keys on the dining table and paced around through the kitchen. It was June, so they didn’t need to start a fire. But she needed something to do.

  Will was an anomaly. Mattie wasn’t prepared for anomalys.

  Twenty years ago, she still had a plan for what she’d do if he ever found her. A plan to protect her children. To protect Brady. Today, that plan was a wisp of a memory.

  She’d settled into relative safety, once she and her mother had cast the protection spe
ll on the white woods. They shouldn’t have been able to find her. There was no paper trail in her name. No criminal record. No listing in the phone book.

  Even the website for the Bucking Horse Dude Ranch had only first names, where the staff were concerned. No one was looking for a Mattie. Or a Brady.

  Stupid damn fucking Facebook.

  Mattie ran her hands through her hair and gathered it up into a mess of a ponytail, pulling the elastic off her wrist and around the hair.

  “What’re you going to do with me?” Will asked, a tightness in his voice like he was grinding his teeth.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Well, think faster. My brother knows, if I don’t check in with him by noon, to call the Springfield police.”

  The words made her throat sieze up. She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten.

  Shit.

  That didn’t give her long enough.

  “It’s the Sheriff,” Mattie corrected, trying to keep her voice from shaking and failing spectacularly. He had to know how scared she was. Would that make him stronger?

  Or more sympathetic? Was Will the same man he’d been when she left Massachusetts?

  Does he still love me?

  The words came, unbidden, into her mind and she tried to tamp down the emotion that followed. Tears burned up the back of her throat, through her nose, and tickled the back of her eyes. She’d spent so many years not having love like this, the ferocity of the feeling surprised her.

  “I don’t care if it’s the National Guard or the Texas Fucking Rangers,” he spat out, all hostility. “Eddie will find them and send them after you.”

  Fear clutched at her air, and Mattie’s hands went around her throat, mimicking the chokehold he had on her. She couldn’t let him see how afraid she was. She clenched her hands and dropped them to her sides, walking around the couch and channeling her inner bitch.

  “I’ll kill you before I let you at my children.” She meant the words, old love or not, and settled down into the rocking chair, trying to recover some peace. Mattie forced her breath into even puffs. “Besides, all it will take is a little Confusion Spell on the police, and they won’t even remember who they are, let alone why they’re here.”

  Will chuckled, clucking his tongue against his teeth. “Yeah, but eventually, you’ll run out of magick and need to recover your power, and then I’ll get to Jamie.”

  The lock in her brain clicked, like he’d just put her in a straightjacket. She had nowhere to turn. She only had two hours. To do whatever it took to get Will to back the hell off her children.

  She couldn’t let him near her son.

  His son.

  Will could see the gears moving in her head. She’d make a plan, like she always did, and not tell him a damn thing. He snorted out a laugh. “You’re not going to be able to get out of this one, Mattie. Your best bet is to take me to my daughter and I will call Eddie off. I promise.”

  “You don’t have a daughter, Will. I promise. You don’t.”

  “But…” He tried not to let the confusion into his tone. He couldn’t look weak in front of her. “If Jamie isn’t mine…”

  “I told you, I adopted her.” Mattie waved a hand. “She was the daughter of a friend of mine who…passed away and left her children to me. She’s my daughter. But she’s not yours.”

  Will shook his head. He’d been so certain. He’d even thought Jamie looked like him. Or like his grandfather, really. The darker hair, the more Italian-looking features.

  “What happened to my daughter, then?”

  The words hung between them, a stench from the past that wouldn’t clear.

  The day he’d discovered Mattie—Lianne, then—was missing, he’d launched into a mind-numbing search that’d taken most of his life. The pink nursery room in his house—their house—hadn’t changed in twenty-eight years.

  His daughter was out there.

  He knew it.

  “Is that why you’re here?” she asked, leaning back in the rocking chair, almost calm.

  “You know it is.”

  “I tried to tell you, you don’t have a daughter.”

  An ache started low in his belly, rolling around and spreading. Was that why she’d left? Had she…had she lost the baby?

  No.

  Jamie was his. Otherwise, why had Mattie’s mother disappeared, too? Why wouldn’t they just come back to Massachusetts? For the first few years after Mattie left, he’d almost found them several times. New Hampshire, then Baltimore, then Richmond. Then New Orleans, then Dallas. Then, nothing. For years.

  He’d never stopped looking.

  She had to be lying about Jamie’s age. The other siblings were boys. Those weren’t his. Witches had girls.

  “That’s a nice story, about your friend dying,” Will grunted out. “But you’re not fooling me. I know she’s mine.”

  “William—”

  A sharp knock sounded on the old wooden door and Mattie froze like a deer smelling a predator. A strange part of him wanted to free his arms and pull her into them. Comfort her.

  Stop that. Don’t go there.

  She looked around, but whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it. The anxiety darkening her features seemed to cross the air between them and ratchet up Will’s heartbeat as well.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered, leaning forward, wrestling with his bonds.

  “Shutup,” she hissed back. “I need to think.”

  “Mattie!” A deep, dark voice, almost a growl, sounded from the other side of the door. “You know I can hear you in there.”

  “Shit.” She launched out of the chair and grabbed Will’s arm. She put her finger over his mouth and dragged him toward the bedroom. Once they were behind the door, she put her mouth to his ear. The feathering of her breath made his blood rush.

  “Don’t say a word,” she whispered so low, he almost couldn’t hear her. “And I promise I’ll take you to Jamie.”

  His heart lurched, seeming to beat against his breastbone. His daughter. He nodded and she pushed him onto the bed, closing the door behind her.

  A part of him was still thrumming from her breath on his skin, and her hand on his chest, and the press of her body against his… Dammit.

  This Kindred stuff wasn’t kidding around. For years, he thought he hated her, but a little proximity was all it took to rekindle the same desire he’d felt for her when they first met.

  That was not part of his plan.

  Somehow, sitting in a mountain cabin, with the woman he’d been in love with for his entire life, all he wanted to do was strip her naked and be inside her and make another daughter.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Four

  Mattie took a long breath, smoothing the front of her sweatshirt before opening the door. Being so close to Will made heat flush through her body, and she had no doubt she was blushing like a sunburnt ginger.

  Caleb wouldn’t miss that little detail.

  “Matilda Banfield, I can hear you breathing.”

  She rolled her eyes, though he could probably hear that, too. Stupid wolf.

  When she finally had the door open, Caleb hulking form filled her doorway. And he was pissed.

  “What are you doing up here in the middle of the day?” He crossed his arms, his gaze covering all the surfaces behind her. It stopped on the door to the bedroom.

  “This is my property. I can be here whenever I want.”

  “But you’re never up here.” He continued to stare at the closed door. “I was out running and I saw your truck. I assumed something was wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’re not casting any more spells up here, are you?” Caleb’s fingers tapped on his arm, like the tick of a clock.

  Mattie’s chest tightened. He was never going to let her forget about that. Not that she blamed him, but it still hurt to hear it.

  “You know I don’t do that any more.” She pulled the door closed just enough so it hid the sight of the bedroo
m door, and only left a view of the kitchen open to the big wolf. “I don’t do magick around Jamie and Paul. I promised.”

  His chest rose and fell as he regarded her. She could tell by the hard set of his eyes he didn’t believe her, but there was nothing she could do to prove it. She couldn’t let him in the door.

  “We talked once before about what’d happen if either of them got connected with the magick world.” The alpha’s voice had an icy edge that hid a glacier of frozen underneath.

  “I remember.”

  “I almost sent my niece away because of it.”

  “I know.”

  “You know I’m going to keep an eye on you, Mattie. It’s not personal.”

  She glanced around the open country behind him, trying not to make eye contact with the alpha. He had an uncanny ability to read people. She hated that. Mattie couldn’t let him ask questions about Will.

  “You do whatever you have to,” she said. “If you have to stop by, stop by. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job.”

  He flicked his eyes to the ground and his head shook slowly. “They’re my pack. I’m their protector. Even if I have to protect them from you.”

  “They’re my children,” she shot back. “They don’t need you to protect them.”

  “That wasn’t true when Paul almost had sex with my niece two years ago, which you didn’t stop. Or when you almost lost Gabi’s ranch.” Caleb’s nostrils flared. “You said I didn’t need to protect my sister either, but clearly, I should have.”

  That stung Mattie hard, straight through the heart. She took a defensive breath, trying to stop the pain that would wash over her if she let it. She plastered on her biggest smile and started to close the door.

  “You think I’m going to forget you’ve got someone in there with you?” Caleb’s hand stopped the door closing and she couldn’t pull through his strength.

  Her skin began to heat again. “So what?”

  “Who is it?”

  “None of your business.” Mattie pulled defiantly on the door, staring into his gold-flashing eyes. Wolf sideshow trick.

  “Why do you have to hide him from me?”