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Chapter Ten
Blake
I get not twenty paces from Tamsin before my wolf comes roaring out of me. Feeling her body against mine is too much to handle for my inner animal. It wants to claim her, now, as its mate. As it should have all those years ago.
With a flare of magic, I change forms and bound across the moorlands. I feel the frozen earth beneath my paws, the sharp wintry air in my lungs. I can still taste Tamsin in my mouth, still smell her arousal. It’s all I can do not to turn around and hunt her down.
My human brain maintains control because I have a much grander plan. Well, revenge sex isn’t exactly a grand plan. But I want Tamsin to beg for it first. To want it so badly she can’t think straight. And that requires patience. Patience, and a lot of foreplay.
I’m in this for the long game.
First, however, I have a job to finish. Back at my barn, Ainsley is waiting with Colin and the others. Colin shoots me a knowing look when I walk in, a look that says he knows why I took so long.
“Are you ready to get started?” he asks.
I give a sharp nod, and my eyes fall on Ainsley. “First, see if you can glean anything from his memories. Before you alter them.”
“Of course. But I can only look at recent things, surface level,” she responds. “If I go too deep it’ll leave a trace. We don’t want that in case they have someone screen him for mind manipulation when he reports back to his bosses.” She adds with a shrug, “It’s what I would do, in this line of work.”
“Makes sense,” Daniel says. He’s standing over the spy’s prone body, keeping him under the sleeping spell.
“Alright,” I say. “Be careful, then. Erasing what he saw here is the most important part. He needs to remember that he went to town and asked around, and no one had seen Tamsin MacPherson for decades.”
Ainsley nods and moves closer to Daniel and the sneak. I feel a breeze as she summons her magic, the air inside the barn turning in a slow circle, lifting bits of hay and dirt. She closes her eyes and the movement settles, replaced by an aura of silvery light encircling her body. Crouching, she reaches both hands out, hovering them a few inches above his forehead.
Her body twitches and her eyelids flutter as she enters his mind. After several moments, she begins to make a gesture with one of her hands, almost as if she’s turning the pages of a book. Then another as if she’s pulling a string or threading a needle.
Abruptly, her eyes pop open. She stares ahead at something I can’t see. Her irises are the same silvery color as her magic. Another movement of her hand, this time a slow counterclockwise circling of her index finger. There’s a final pulse of magic from her palms, and the glow fades.
“It’s done.” Ainsley stands, flicking her gaze between me and Colin. “Take him to the bar where you found him and leave him there. He’ll wake up, think he drank too much after questioning the locals and finding out Tamsin hasn’t been here, and return to his employer, thinking it a dead-end mission.”
“And did you see anything helpful in his memories before you edited them?” I ask.
“Not much.” She frowns. “He hasn’t met with his employer recently. He got a call on a burner phone with the assignment. I also caught the other half of his assignment, which he already completed.”
“And?”
“It was to monitor a man named John Harrington.” Ainsley fidgets ever so slightly. “Apparently a friend of Tamsin’s back in New York.”
I stiffen and my jaw tightens. It confirms what I thought when I did my internet research—the man must be Tamsin’s boyfriend. “That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you, Ainsley. I’ll have the usual payment sent to your bank account.” We don’t hire the witches often, but I of course compensate them when we do.
She narrows her eyes. “Tamsin is a friend of mine. I won’t accept payment. I did that for her.” Her tone makes it clear where her loyalty lies. Not that I’m surprised.
“Very well.” I glance over at my men. “Colin can take you back to MacPherson House.”
“I can do it,” Daniel says, a little too quickly.
I suppress a smile. I’d always suspected he had a sweet spot for the red-headed witch. “Sure.”
After the two of them vanish, Colin looks over at me. “You know you’re going to have to fix his kneecap, right?”
A groan rises from my chest. He’s right. The memory alteration won’t work at all if this guy wakes up and doesn’t know why his leg is broken. And I never even got to break the other one. Tamsin had me too distracted.
We cart the unconscious sack of shit out to my truck, Colin floating him through the air with a spell. After he sets him down quite ungently in the bed, we climb into the cab and I rev the engine. If I’m lucky, he’ll get frostbite on the way back to town.
One creep out of the way. Now I just need to figure out what to do about Tamsin’s boyfriend.
