Free Witches' Waves by Teresa Noelle Roberts Page B

them,” Meaghan said. “They’re intense, but they don’t buzz in my brain, except for that one woman, Portia. I know they’re there, the way I know a quiet normy is in the room with me, but they don’t intrude without asking.” She wondered if that made any sense to Kyle. In her short time in the outside world, she was starting to realize that she perceived the world differently from most people, and it wasn’t just her blindness.
    â€œI like them too,” Kyle said. “I don’t know about buzzing in the head—I think that’s a witch thing—but they seem a lot less intrusive than my raft.” He paused and corrected himself. “My family. I love my family, but they’re really in your face. Perpetual two-year-olds, in some ways, but that’s the way most…” He paused again. “Let’s get you to the couch.”
    Kyle’s touch was featherlight on her arm, but Meaghan could still feel ocean and fur in that soft connection. Ocean and fur and heat and the energy of another man, a hint of what she was starting to recognize as Donovan energy.
    Interesting. That charged tension between him and Declan Donovan hadn’t been dislike, but desire. She smiled ruefully to herself. Her sex visions must not have been premonitions about her being with Kyle, or Kyle and another guy, but premonitions she was going to meet two guys who were in to each other, mixed up with imagery from that last series of audiobooks Becky had loaned her, the ménage erotic romances.
    Damn. It had been such a happy thought. She’d really like to have some great sex, the kind the books talked about, before she got too sick to enjoy it properly. Hell, she’d like to love and be loved, but she’d settle for a sexy good time with someone who wasn’t using her for creepy magical purposes.
    Maybe she should tell Kyle she was happy for him. No, that would seem weird, especially since she didn’t know if he and Deck had actually said anything to each other yet, let alone done anything. But there was, it occurred to her, something she ought to say. “Kyle, you can stop pretending to be human. I feel fur and ocean whenever you touch me, and I remember animals around me when I was drowning. And now that I’ve been around more humans, I realize your energy simply feels different. Are you and your family seals?”
    â€œOtters.”
    She remembered what little she knew of otters: smart enough to use tools in minor ways, playful, lived in large family groups. “You can practically live in the water when you’re animalside. You’re so lucky!” She paused. “Or you would be if it wasn’t for the fucking Agency.” She put her hand on Kyle—she’d hoped for his arm but got his bare thigh instead, smooth and strong and unexpectedly hot under her hand. Her breath caught and she pulled her hand away quickly because it felt way too good where it was. Inappropriately good, especially if he was involved with Deck.
    Kyle barked out a dry laugh. “You seem so otherworldly, the way you talk so calmly about feeling my fur and sensing people’s energy and having visions. Then you drop the F-bomb like a pissed-off Marine. Your voice even sounds different. Harsher and deeper, like a little girl imitating her daddy.”
    Memories of the monster she used to call Daddy, the monster who’d then seduced her, flooded her. Meaghan froze. Her heart began to race so fast she thought it might explode. Pressure built inside her skull. Something was either trying to get in or get out. She couldn’t let it, not with the baby here, not with all these witches and other Differents so close. She pressed her hands over the top of her skull. “No!” she screamed, not that it had ever done any good before. “I won’t let you use me again.”
    Kyle wrapped around her, sinuous as the otter she now knew him to be. “No,