Witch Interrupted by Jody Wallace

hideout.

Chapter Six
    “Come on, Marcus.” Katie swung the herb, and the blasted wolf dodged again. “I might be the most despised person in both of our worlds, but I know my duty.”
    “Your duty?”
    “My duty to protect shifters from discovery. The sheer chaos that would erupt if wolves found out about witches. It would be the end of all secrecy.”
    She considered breaking for the door, but he’d be on her before she got two steps past the threshold. She had to knock him out if she had any chance of escape. She’d worry about neutralizing him later. Without other resources, dealing with Marcus might mean accepting Vern’s latest bribe—some new location spell that used family DNA. Vern hadn’t badgered her in months, which was unusual for him, but he’d jump at the chance to buy her services.
    Marcus, eyes glittering, grabbed a blanket off the back of a chair and shook it. “You’re about to be very sorry.”
    “I’m already sorry.” She snapped off a thread of valerian and flipped it at him, but it didn’t have enough heft to reach his skin. “You’re the biggest threat to my existence since Lars decided to kill me after the memory wipe. That was what they were going to do, you know. Vern just let them think they succeeded.”
    “You’ve spent too much of your life being a traitor to be able to trust anyone else,” Marcus snarled. “That’s your problem.”
    It hit Katie deep, somewhere she tried to hide from Tonya and Dad. Was she broken? Was she unforgivable? “That’s not—”
    Marcus sprang at her, blanket first, as if he was capturing an angry cat that didn’t want to go to the vet. He’d wrapped half her body before she’d finished registering his attack. Her valerian hand stuck out at one end of the blanket.
    Katie writhed in her fuzzy prison. All she needed was a whisk of his skin. A tap. Damned cognizant wolves. Always a trial, and Marcus wasn’t as fooled by her tactics as others had been. He’d covered her exposed areas with the blanket, including her head.
    She could hear him bitching and growling, but she couldn’t see him.
    She kicked and yelled. One moment he was friendly and thought-provoking, the next hot under the collar—and in other places. The constant U-turns were getting old. She suspected he shared her sentiment, but what else could she do? Go along with a wolf who was obviously imbalanced, just because she liked him?
    Wolves couldn’t turn back into witches. Becoming a wolf was a banishment from which there was no escape. If he preferred magic to fur, he should have kept it in his pants.
    And whoever he’d slept with to become a wolf, she was one lucky bitch.
    Katie tried to curl into a defensive ball. Marcus’s strong arms held her upright. A stinging blow smacked her extended hand, numbing it. She yelped and dropped the small tangle of valerian.
    He scooped her up, yet again, bundling her through his trailer. Her head swam as she fought. The blanket smothered her. He jostled her, slinging her forward. She landed on a relatively soft surface. Fabric tangled her arms, her face, part of her legs. His fingers grabbed her handcuffed wrist and dragged her arm up until she heard an ominous, metallic click.
    She tugged, hard, confirming she was now cuffed…to something.
    Uh-oh.
    Her nightmare. And her something else, something sordid and forbidden. She was almost entirely at his mercy, except for the lavender stashed in her bra and shoe and the mint in her pocket.
    Katie yanked anyway, to see if the handcuffs would hold. His abuse of the lock should have weakened it, but it wasn’t weak enough for her to break. She’d have to pick it.
    She’d never done this without backup. Keepers didn’t work alone. There was no way Tonya and Dad could find her in time to prevent…what?
    What was Marcus planning? If his primary goal was to keep her from wiping him and stopping his all-important research, wouldn’t running have been his best choice?
    He unfurled the blanket