by Sarina Dorie
I imagined my muscles relaxing and unclenching. He grunted and tensed momentarily before continuing.
A deep rumbling voice chuckled. “He’s a regular Casanova.”
The queen snarled, “I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
It was more difficult to concentrate than ever. The conversation brought even more attention to the morbid audience.
Thatch’s finger squeezed my hip firmly, but not painfully.
“Concentrate,” he said.
I visualized soothing energy healing micro abrasions. I imagined my body responding, becoming aroused, lubricating itself.
Now as he thrust into me, I didn’t feel pain. I remained centered, attention on my body and my energies. My affinity didn’t recoil, and my body didn’t shudder like when he’d first started. I wasn’t aroused, but at least I wasn’t in pain.
A foot tapped impatiently. The Raven Queen cleared her throat. “Pardon my interruption, Felix, but I fail to see how you’re going to bring out her affinity this way. You’re boring me half to death. And her, too, I’d wager.”
I suspected she’d never bought his excuse that my magic was fueled by dancing. It made me wonder what else she was privy to. The queen made another snide remark, but I missed it.
“Do you expect me to be some kind of miracle worker on demand?” Thatch asked. “These aren’t exactly the ideal conditions to work under.”
The queen’s voice radiated malicious intentions. “Perhaps we should have someone else take your place. I have plenty of Fae and Witchkin minions alike who would be happy to taste such a delectable morsel.”
Fear rattled me to my core. It was bad enough I’d been forced to have sex for a bunch of horny harpies and monstrous Fae. The only thing that would be worse than that was being forced to be intimate with someone who wasn’t my choosing. My breath hitched in my chest. I pushed down the rising tide of panic and pretended this was no different than any time I shared Felix Thatch’s bed.
“Poor Felix,” the Raven Queen said. “You always did have performance anxiety.”
Thatch said nothing.
The way she taunted him made something inside me snap. I could not allow her to hurt him again, like all the times she had done during his childhood. I would not let him die.
I needed to figure out how to beat the Raven Queen at her game.
He leaned closer, pressing his body on top of mine. His heart thundered in his chest, the drumming mirroring the fear of my own. He breathed into my hair, lips brushing the back of my neck. I knew he needed my magic to succeed in freeing us, but if he was getting anything, it was only pain.
I couldn’t feel aroused when all I was thinking about was how much I loathed the Raven Queen for humiliating him. If he needed my magic so the two of us could get out of there, I would give it to him. I would show her we were stronger than her. We might have been Witchkin, but we wouldn’t allow her cruelty to rule us.
I needed pleasure to increase my affinity.
“I need you to stop,” I said.
His muscles tensed, and his fingers squeezed my shoulders. He hesitated before continuing to pump into me.
I raised my voice. “Stop. I said stop. I want to you to kiss me.”
Again he hesitated, his gentle heart battling with pragmatism, no doubt.
“If they want to see my magic, you need to kiss me,” I said.
He took hold of my hips and slid me back off the table. He left me little room so that I had to squirm against him to turn around. I leaned against him, my hands fastened together and awkwardly placed between us so that I couldn’t hug him or show him what I needed. He knew me well enough to know, though. He massaged his fingers into my back and arms. The entire time his erection pressed into my belly.
After another moment, he lifted me up onto the table and sat me in front of him, adjusting my legs on either side of him. Fabric rustled, and I felt him shift against me. The rough tweed of his suit in front of me disappeared. In its place, the silkier vest brushed against my cheek. He shimmied the jacket underneath my hips, providing a cushion to protect me from the harsh edge of the table. Or perhaps simply to elevate me to make it easier to reach me.
I clutched his shirt, the only thing I could do with my hands bound. Someone snorted in the room, and it drew my attention away. I left my body with my awareness and probed my surroundings. My psychic awareness wasn’t the same as using my eyes, but I was able to sense the razor-blade edges of plants and the toxins in many of the leaves. There were more bodies in the room than there had been before. At least three dozen now, their forms jagged and spiked in the shadows in addition to smaller creatures that might have passed for Tinker Bell fairies if their souls hadn’t been so dark.
The Raven Queen sat behind me on the other side of the table. Bringing my consciousness near her hurt like a toothache. Her soul was brilliantly black. I had never imagined a black hole being able to glow, but that’s what she felt like: a void sucking away goodness and light while she radiated evil. This wasn’t at all like the Princess of Lies and Truth when I had felt her watching me in Thatch’s room. I had been able to recognize the fingerprint of her energy when I had felt her possessing Vega. Queen Morgaine’s aura was all her own.
She watched impassively, an amused smile lacing her lips. I drew back, afraid to sink under her skin and become one with the sticky tar of her soul.
Leaves rustled like before, only now I could make out words and almost-words of the creatures surrounding the queen. Someone whispered I was a succubus, but that wasn’t true. If I was, any kind of sex would have been fine.
Thatch dipped his head lower, breathing into my hair. “Come back to me.” He turned my chin toward him.
He brushed his lips over mine. I slipped my arms over his head, drawing him closer.
“I’m not a succubus,” I said.
“I never said you were.” He held me close, his arms protectively wrapped around me.
The seeds of kisses he planted against my lips blossomed into desire. He smoothed his hands up and down my arms. When his fingers slipped under the back of my blouse, it sent goosebumps across my flesh. The longer he kissed me, the more my affinity stirred.
“Well done, Felix,” the Raven Queen said softly.
He slid into me. My hips moved in sync with his. He slowed, and I slowed. He sped up, and I followed. His lips brushed against my cheek, forming words I could almost grasp. Magic skated across my jaw, his incantation sinking into me.
My flesh tingled where his skin met mine. Electric currents raced under my skin and into my core. I’d so often fought to keep my magic in check, it was difficult to relax into it, to allow it to flow freely and radiate into him. He absorbed every pulse of magic as it left me.
Pleasure throbbed inside me, rising higher. I moaned into his mouth as he kissed me.
“Yes,” he said. “Give yourself to me.”
“That’s enough of a demonstration,” the Raven Queen said. “I can see what she is.”
He pumped harder, faster. My insides clenched. I clutched him to me, fingers digging into the back of his neck. He buried his face in my hair. He recited the mantra of his spell between pants.
“Felix Thatch, that is enough,” Queen Morgaine said sternly. “I don’t want you to kill this one.”
I cried out in ecstasy. Bright light flared inside me. Thatch clamped me to him tightly, moaning.
That was the moment I understood what he’d done. He’d released his magic. He’d come.
Inside me.
Cold fire tore through me. Electricity crackled through my affinity and away from myself, but it didn’t hurt as I’d expected. The lightning only added to my pleasure. It made me feel alive and strong. Power made a circuit from me and back into him. The energy was focused. I sensed Thatch snapping it at the creatures around us.
A banshee wail rose up behind me, joined by another shriek and another. The shifting jumble of hot and cold t
umbled around inside me in chaos. I squeezed my eyes closed under the blindfold.
Even through the fabric, I could see rainbows flashing against my eyelids. It swallowed up the world and banished the darkness. Wind pushed against me. At first I thought it was Thatch’s wards, then I realized the storm came from me.
For the briefest of moments, I was outside my body, floating in the cosmos. My body wasn’t my own. I was a pale serpent, scales shimmering as if I were made of a thousand twinkling galaxies. I coiled around my mate, his own body mirroring my own. Thatch embraced me, surrounding me, the indigo of his scales sliding against mine. The writhing of our bodies were like snakes mating on warm rocks. Only we weren’t snakes. We had wings and arms.
Was I a dragon?
Just as quickly as the vision had come, it vanished. I was once again in my own body, Thatch hugging me to him.
He drew in a deep breath and with it, I felt him pulling our energy back into ourselves, weaving it in protection. His lips moved against my cheek, but his words were lost against the roar of wind and screams around us.
The illumination of rainbows faded. My breath was sucked away, and a twisting wind circled me in its embrace. I shivered against Thatch and held on to him. It was his transportation spell. At least I thought it was.
I buried my face against his chest. “Felix?” my voice came out as a reedy echo of wind.
He fell, and I fell with him, my landing cushioned by his lap and then his jacket underneath my rear end. He grunted, in pleasure or pain, I couldn’t tell. His erection jabbed deeper inside me, and I cried out in alarm. It wasn’t as painful as earlier, but it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.
His breath came ragged against my ear.
“Clarissa, are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
He fumbled to help me to my feet. My jelly legs were more uncoordinated than usual, and I couldn’t gain my balance. I tried to unfasten the cravat from around my wrists, but the fabric was moist with sweat and stuck to my skin.
“Where are we?” I asked. “Did we get away? Are we safe?”
He held me to his chest for a long moment before releasing me. “You are safe.”
We’d beat her? He was still alive!
I shoved the blindfold up, but I could only see out of one eye. I blinked and took in my surroundings. He stood turned away, adjusting his clothes. It looked like he was tucking himself back into his pants. A sconce cast a warm glow on a moldy stone wall. A portrait of a witch in midnight clothes hung on the wall. To my right, stairs descended into gloomy shadows.
“Are we at Womby’s?” I placed a shaky elbow against the wall, hoping it wasn’t an illusion.
He extended a hand toward me. “It looks as though we are on the landing between the third and fourth floor, near the women’s dormitories, if I’m not mistaken.”
I trusted he knew the school better than I did.
He tugged me into his arms, closing his jacket around me. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. I felt drained and hollow inside. I was too exhausted to think. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling, and my legs were so weak I would have collapsed to the floor again if he hadn’t taken hold of my elbow.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” My hands were still bound, awkwardly placed between us so that I couldn’t hug him like I wanted to.
“I don’t think you are. You’re in shock.”
His words caused a strange sense of déjà vu to wash over me. That’s what he’d said when I’d burned myself with lightning. It was what he’d said when I’d burned myself on my ring-of-fire dress. Tears of relief streamed down my face. I couldn’t believe we’d escaped. I laughed.
He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. “You should never have allowed them to take you there.”
“What other choice did I have? I couldn’t have said no.”
“Yes, you could have.”
A tide of fresh panic wanted to rise in me when I thought about how narrowly we had escaped. “They said they were going to torture you.” I sniffled and blinked my tears away.
“So?”
I grabbed the front of his vest. “They would have hurt my fairy godmother. I had to make a bargain with your sister so they wouldn’t hurt her. I don’t even know if she’ll keep her word to stay away. Will she leave my mom be?”
“I can’t say for certain. Perhaps.”
“Felix Thatch, would you please tell me, for once, what’s going on? Why do you pretend to be in her employment? Why did you have to go with them in the first place?” I stared at the crack between the slabs of brick where the mortar had crumbled away. Pinpricks of stars dotted the inky sky. I wondered what time it was.
He drew back, eyes searching mine as if apprehensive about my response. “I don’t pretend. Part of me still belongs to her. Or it did. I don’t know if I’ve won my freedom this time or not. Do you understand now why I didn’t want her to know about us? About you? What you experienced tonight was only a fraction of my own upbringing in a Fae court.”
No wonder he was so messed up and pushed people away.
Fatigue weighed down my body. I leaned back against the stone wall, but it wasn’t where I thought it was, and I stumbled back. I tripped on my panties, caught around my shoe. My hands were tied together, and I couldn’t reach out and steady myself.
Thatch grabbed onto my elbow. I tried to pull up my underpants, but they were hooked on the buckle of my shoe.
“Allow me to assist you with that.” He crouched down in front of me, one hand on my lower hip as he tugged my underpants free.
I wobbled but remained upright, clutching his shoulder. I tried to slide one hand free of the binding, but my hands trembled, and the fabric clung to my skin. I bit into the knot to untie it with my teeth.
He guided my foot through the other hole of my panties and leggings and slid them up my legs. “You were very brave, Clarissa. And you’re going to have to be brave a little bit longer. We must tell Khaba and the principal we were abducted. Do you need me to heal you before we go to see them?”
I shifted my weight, stretching and taking note of how I felt. I ached, but I didn’t hurt. “I’m fine.”
He remained crouched before me, his eyebrows kneading together in concern. “I’m afraid I might not have used up all my . . . energies in the spell. You could be burned internally and be in too much shock to realize it.”
I doubted I would have missed that.
Under my skirt, he placed a hand just above my pubic bone and closed his eyes. It wasn’t sexual. I could feel his presence, an ethereal probing for injuries. The astral sensation tickled.
I tried not to twitch, but I did giggle. “You didn’t burn me. If only you had figured out that creative solution to your flaming-hot semen problem sooner.”
A smile played across his lips, the smallest ray of sunshine on this otherwise dark night, before melting into seriousness again. “You know I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know.” And I did. Tears filled my eyes.
The crinkle of plastic drew my attention, and I turned.
Josie stood on the stairs, descending from the floor above. She was dressed in a flowing nightgown, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head. For once she wasn’t wearing a hat. In her hands she held a bag of potato chips. She stared with wide eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
“Um,” I said with my usual grace and quick thinking.
Just as I had feared would eventually happen, Josie had found out about us. This was worse than being tortured by the Raven Queen.
CHAPTER NINE
Caught Red-Handed
Thatch removed his hand from under my skirt. He stood, hands up in a placating manner.
Josie strode forward. “What are you doing to Clarissa?” She drew her wand.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. I tried to hold up my hands to ward her off,
but I hadn’t finished untying the cravat from around my wrists.
This looked bad. It was one thing to be caught kissing a boyfriend in the hall. It was something else entirely to be caught with his hand up my skirt while I was tied up and the blindfold was pushed aside.
Josie slashed her wand in the air, a yellow-and-lavender spell shooting out at him. The air sizzled, and he stumbled back from me. He didn’t attempt to protect himself. If he was as exhausted as I was, I didn’t blame him.
“No!” I said. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Can’t you see it? He’s enchanted you!” Josie’s face flushed red, and her feet crunched over her bag of potato chips.
If only I had told her. The only thing that probably saved Thatch from being hexed was that I stepped in front of him.
“Josie, calm down,” I said.
Thatch’s voice was calm and appropriately quiet compared to hers. “We were abducted by the Raven Queen. Fetch Khaba and Principal Dean.”
“Sure you were, asshole.” Josie circled an arm around my waist and hugged me to her side. “If you want Dean and Khaba, you get them. I’m staying with Clarissa.”
He sighed in exasperation. “Very well. Meet me in the principal’s office in five minutes.”
“No.” Her lips pressed into a line.
His narrowed. All this showdown needed was the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to be complete.
“Please, Josie,” I said. “We need to see the principal. Will you come with me?”
She guided me toward the stairs, glaring at Thatch as we passed. “You’re a freaking mess. You can’t go to the principal’s office looking like this, honey.”
“It’s really important we tell him what happened. And I need to text my fairy godmother, but I left my phone at her house. I want her to know I’m okay. I don’t want her to go with anyone from the Raven Court if they tell her they have me.” They had my coat. They might use that to lure her like they had used Thatch’s pocket watch to convince me to go with them.
