A Witch's Fate_A Reverse Harem Romance

by Cheri Winters

  I can see genuine contrition in her eyes. This softens my temper, and I say, “I appreciate that. Thank you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ivy Sparks

  When I first put my head on my pillow, I briefly wonder if I’ll be able to sleep at all, since I’ve had Ben beside me every night since our first night together, with the exception of having fallen asleep in Nathan’s arms just a little bit ago. The exhaustion of everything catches up with me almost immediately, though. I barely have time to realize that some part of me is melding my feelings for those two men into something that is not a memory, as much as it is a memory of how it felt to be held by someone that I loved. Even as angry as I am at Ben for how suddenly he just abandoned me, I will never be able to forget the good moments of quiet contentment and of passion between us. The same with Nathan. Even though we were lovers for just an hour or so, I have spent most of my life with his companionship. A thousand positive emotions I have felt for both of them stir together as I drift off to sleep.

  Morning comes bright with the smell of coffee drifting up from downstairs. I have to look at my phone to see that it’s a Saturday. Being away with Ben with neither my phone nor any calendars in the cabin had me forgetting to worry about what day it was. That’s why I never heard Grandma coming up the steps to get me, despite the fact that it’s well into midmorning.

  When I did look at my phone, I saw that there were a ton of notifications stacked up. There’s a part of me that just wants to blank them all, and just pretend that for the past few weeks, the world outside of Ben’s cabin simply didn’t exist at all, and that the best thing to do would be to figure out what Grandma had told everybody about my sudden absence, and just play along until I catch up naturally.

  I get dressed and go downstairs. Grandma is in the den reading. I greet her, and from the sound of her voice and the gentle look on her face, it seems she is not upset about anything that happened. She is very clearly concerned about me, but not angry. I think I even see some pride and admiration in her, as I make myself some breakfast and sit down next to her. I look back, and realize that I have done a damned good job of dealing with what fate has been throwing at me. Even when I had to deal with something Ben sensed about the future, which is what has driven him from me. On my feet, eyes open, middle finger up and out, loud and proud.

  There is still a lot I need to make right, though. And two people that I desperately need to see soon, Kate and Carl.

  I feel it is most important to catch Carl as soon as I can. I finish up my breakfast, and tell Grandma what I need to do. She tells me to not worry about the dishes, and to just go and take as much time as I need to set things right with him.

  I drive over to his house, knock on the door, and huddle over to the side of his stoop where he can’t see me from his peephole. He opens the door a crack and peeks through. As soon as he recognizes me, he pulls the door all the way open and takes a step back, leaving me room to come in. There is a lot on his face I can’t read, but he doesn’t look mad at me, at least. Just, like he is glad to see me, but doesn’t really know what to do with me now that I’m in front of him again.

  “Should I have called first?” I ask.

  “Uh. Probably not. I think I would have spent the whole time you were on your way fretting. But I’m also not presentable for company,” he says. He looks disheveled, as if he hasn’t been up long, and didn’t really sleep well. He self-consciously puts his hand in front of his mouth, as if painfully aware that he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet.

  “Can we chat while you clean up?” I ask.

  “Sure, sure. Come on,” he says. I follow him as he walks toward his bedroom. “You, know, I never should have come out looking for you. I knew better, and it wasn’t cool at all. I’m terribly sorry about that. You and Ben deserved your privacy without me all snooping all over the place.”

  “It might be for the better that you did,” I say. “Your arrival started a little chain of events that led to Ben sending me home and now I have no idea where he’s off to.”

  Carl stops suddenly at the door to his bedroom. “What?” He stands at the threshold, confused for a moment, like he is suddenly trying to make three decisions all at once, and their stepping all over each other. “Sorry. Keep talking,” he says, closing the bedroom door most of the way.

  I hear him start undressing.

  “So, after you showed up, he got panicky that a… Oh, how do I even start telling any of this?”

  “I know about Ben, and I know there is another vampire looking to kill him, and that she’d take you as well.”

  “Oh, good,” I say. “Ok. This makes everything easier. By the way, Ben told me about you, too, and Nathan’s a demon and Grandma and I are witches. I think that covers everybody weird in Stokers Mill, unless you know of something else I don’t.”

  “Nope.” Ben emerges from his room in a bathrobe, and crosses the hallway to the bathroom. He again mostly closes the door, and starts running the shower.

  “Ok. Back to the story. Ben completely flipped out that the hunter might have followed you out there.”

  “We don’t think she did. Seems like Nathan got her off my tail for a little while.” I hear the shower curtain open and close, so I step into the bathroom and sit on the sink.

  “That’s good,” I say. “Because Ben wasn’t looking forward to having to face her down. Anyway, while we were out looking for you, he finally figured out that I’m a witch, and completely freaked out. He went on about horrible things will happen if we stay together, and that I needed to get as far away from him as possible, and he needs to get as far away from here as possible. I mean, he didn’t even give me time to tell him that if terrible things are going to happen if he’s with me, he’d already been with me for quite some time. The ball’s rolling now, you know? You can stand in front of it or get behind it.”

  “So just like that, it’s done between you two?”

  “As far as I’m concerned. To not even give me a chance, to just abandon me just like that?”

  “He doesn’t feel about fate like you and I do,” Carl says.

  It is surprising to hear him defending Ben at this moment. I had gotten used to Ben giving Carl a certain amount of respect, but all that time, I was still picturing Carl as harboring a huge amount of hostility toward Ben. Considering the warmth I still feel for my time with Ben, I’m glad that Carl seems to have tempered his opinion in the time I was gone.

  “Not all of us are lucky enough to be descended from crazy Viking werewolves who actually looked forward to fighting valiantly for the losing side at the end of the world.”

  “True,” I say.

  I find something else sitting on the tip of my tongue, dying to leap out, but I bite it back. What I did with Nathan last night was impulsive and a bit rash, but also me taking advantage of a small window of opportunity to have him that may never open again. From what I know, Carl and I have plenty of time to develop a relationship different than the one we’ve had up until now. But I woke with that familiar ache inside of me again, and this time, it’s been screaming Carl’s name at me.

  “Can you toss my toothbrush over the curtain?” he asks, completely oblivious to what I’m feeling, just two feet away from him.

  I grab the brush and toothpaste, and resist the urge to open the curtain to give them to him, instead of putting them into his upraised hand.

  “You know,” I say. “When I got so mad at you right before Ben and I went on the run. Every day while I was out there, I regretted that the last thing I ever said to you was angry. And I also missed you terribly the whole time. I can never take back what I said, and I hope that you’ll be able to see that I truly regret it.”

  Carl stops brushing for a second to say, “So, for ten minutes, your temper was as short as mine, and you spoke from it instead of your heart? I’ve been there. I understand.”

  “Good,” I say. “It really did hurt me to realize how poorly I treated you, when you were really doin
g your best to care for me, and after all the time we’ve known each other and been best of friends.”

  He peeks his head around the shower curtain, so he can speak to me, face-to-face. “There is really nothing to forgive, Ivy. We’ve been wrapped up in some pretty heavy stuff, and some of the time, we weren’t the best people we could be. But we did what we did, and most of the time, we did the right things by each other. That’s the best anybody can give.”

  “Nobody’s perfect?” I ask.

  “Nobody. Now, you go scoot on out to the living room so I can dry off and get dressed again.”

  “No,” pops right out of my mouth. I am simultaneously mortified, and aware that I’m smiling.

  “Ivy,” Carl says. “I’ll tell you once more to go. If you don’t. Well, I’m going to handle you like my crazy Viking werewolf ancestors. I’m not going to fight what happens next, I’m going to embrace it. Now, living room. Now.”

  I swallow hard. I know that I’m supposed to get with Carl, and most of my body wants to, but within the last day, I’ve been with one man, lost him, threw myself on a second that I will never have again, and am now making an earnest pass at a third. There’s a part of me that is screaming that a proper young lady simply does not do things like that.

  Whereas the rest of me is screaming that I spent too much time being too proper for everybody else’s expectations, and maybe I can catch up for a bit. Plus, I may not be the ancestor of crazy Viking werewolves, but if I’m fated to be with Carl, I should face it like a witch.

  I take Carl’s towel from the bar and hand it to him. He shuts the water off and opens the shower curtain wide. His naked body is so different from Ben’s or Nathan’s. Carl is all powerful and clean masculinity. Nicely developed muscles, a broad chest and shoulders that look like they could hold up the world, thighs that look like they could carry that weight, all covered by dark, luxurious hair. As he dries off, I put my hand to the opening of my blouse.

  “Should I unbutton it, or do you want to tear it off of me?” I ask.

  “Undress yourself for me,” he says.

  I find this sudden impish impulse that makes me hop off of the counter and turn my back to him. I look over my shoulder and watch while he continues drying off, and I unbutton my blouse. By the time I shrug out of it, I have got the full and undivided attention of his entire body. I am also glad that I had the foresight to make sure I was dressed to impress under my clothes. I undo my pants, and put way more swing into my hips as I lower them to the floor. I step out of them and turn to face Carl. I lean back against the door jamb and arch my back, to show off my breasts. I reach back to unclasp my bra, but don’t take it off. Even when I straighten up, the straps keep me covered, until I bend forward at the waist again to deliver a kiss to that most masculine part of his body.

  I take a chance, and as I take him into my mouth, I bite down lightly. A very approving growl escapes Carl’s mouth. I do the necessary wiggle to let my bra fall to the floor, and let my teeth scrape up and down his shaft lightly. He finds many ways to communicate his appreciation.

  I stand up and turn around again, back to him. I put my feet together, hook the waistband of my panties, and slip them down to the floor. I put a hand on the door jamb for balance, and part my legs wide. A glance over my shoulder, at the look on his face, tells me my instincts are still spot on with guessing what he might like. Seeing him almost panting, towel in his hand forgotten, eyes fixated on me, I feel much less self-conscious than I ever expected I might, showing off and exposing my body to a man that way I am now. Instead, I feel intensely powerful, using it to such tremendous effect on him.

  “Alright. I’ve undressed for you. Now what?” I ask.

  Carl steps up and gives me a playful spank. I yip in surprise and stand up. He takes my hand and leads me past his bedroom – a quick glance shows it’s quite a mess and the bed is unmade – to the living room. He sits on the couch and pulls me onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me. The best way to describe the way he kisses is devouring. He kisses deep, and he nips and bites. Not only on my mouth, but my chin, neck earlobes, shoulders, the tops of my breasts. His mouth moves all over me, tease here, tease there, bite hard enough to leave a little mark, but not enough to be unpleasantly painful. I take his cue, and every change I get, I bite and nip at him, or suck on his skin. Every time I really clamp my teeth onto him, I can feel it in his entire body.

  Yet for all of this, I also feel supremely protected at the same time. His arms are solid and real around me. Being up in his lap, I am fully aware of his body. He is not claiming me or possessing me, he is enfolding me, surrounding me. I now know a new shade to the meaning of being embraced. Yet I am still free within that embrace to tease him and bite him and leave marks on his skin. I feel like I belong to him, not in a sense of being owned, but in a sense of being a part of him. This must be what it means to be a part of his intimate pack.

  His chest hair is just thick enough that I can grab onto it when he touches me somewhere that sends an especially powerful jolt of pleasure through me. That builds his own excitement and possibly despite himself, he redoubles whatever it was he was doing to me.

  One of those times, he starts something cascading in me that cries out for relief. I grab his hair and twist off of his lap, sitting back on the sofa and guiding his head down between my legs. He smiles up at me, and starts rubbing his beard against the inside of my thigh. It’s nice, but not what I put him down there for.

  “You can play later,” I say, and I pull his face all the way up and grind myself against him.

  He understands immediately what I am demanding, and accommodates my need by devouring me as much down there as he had been to my mouth, neck, and shoulders. He is attentive, but not subtle. Once he finds the spot, he attacks it with a vigor that makes me scream out loud and take two big handfuls of his hair so I can keep him where I want him while I thrash my way through a very primally satisfying climax. As soon as I’m released from its grip, I let go of him. He starts with the beard on the inside of the thigh again, his mouth moving between playful nips to my thighs and belly, and long, wet strokes of his tongue up between my legs. After giving me another good orgasm, he is nipping at my inner thigh again.

  “Mark me,” I say, and I feel him tighten his bite a little bit and suck on the skin capture between his teeth. “Like you mean it,” I say, gripping his hair, and wrapping my other thigh over his shoulder, so I can crush his mouth into the task. The most delectable sensation of pain rises from the part of my leg he is biting, that turns out to also fire off pleasure sensors all over my body. “Harder,” I say. “Harder!”

  He clamps down, and I feel him shift his body to get a better angle on his task. I put my free hand down between my legs, and that focuses all of the pleasure that his painful bite is causing right where I need it, and I find myself screaming again while I close my thighs tight around him. When I let up, he backs away with a desperate inhalation.

  “Sorry,” I gasp, realizing that I must have smothered him with my thighs.

  “I’ll take it as a compliment,” he says, through a very heavy breath. He takes his hands and parts my legs wide, and looks down at my thigh, very obviously admiring his work. I look down to see tooth marks deeply embossed in skin that is a deep, dark red. One of his hands suddenly pulls back, and I realize way too late to avoid a very sharp slap to the bite. The pain is sudden, intense enough to cross my eyes and cause my body to reflexively start to ball up, but the sting itself is even less than momentary, leaving a deeper, hot, very pleasant soreness in its wake.

  “Is that what you wanted?” he asks, when he sees me looking at the lighter, pink handprint overlaid upon the bite mark.

  “Perfect,” I say.

  “Good.” He kneels upright and moves closer to me, putting his hips between my wide-spread thighs. I know what’s coming next, and I smile brightly at him, and slide myself a little closer.

  “Oh, no,” he says. “This is going to seem terribly cli
ché, but…”

  He grabs one of my legs, and the next thing I know, I’m kneeling on the ground, upper body bent over the seat of the sofa. One of his hands is on the small of my back, the other guiding himself into me. He enters me slowly, maddeningly slow, and he knows what he’s doing, by the way he presses down on my back to keep me from hurrying him up.

  It becomes very quickly apparent to me that this position is a whole different world than my admittedly limited experience up to this point. The angle is different, and he hits completely different parts of me, opens up completely different sensations. Once he gets all the way in and settled, I appreciate the slow entry, because I am feeling completely filled again, but in a very different way than before. He pulls back, then slides back in. Each thrust comes a little faster than the one before, and a little deeper, until I feel his hips slap into me. A few more, and I’m being pushed into the cushions of the sofa. I find that by crossing my arms and resting my forehead on them, I can at least keep my face clear so I’ll be able to breathe.

  That knowledge frees me to tell Carl, “Like you mean it.”

  “Like this?” he asks, and his next thrust slaps against my hips, and I feel the solidity of the wall through the sofa.

  “Like that,” I say. The next few minutes of my life are lost in a fury of sweat and grunts and screams, me throwing cushions, the sofa banging off the wall, the sharp sound of his body slapping against mine, nails raking down my back, somewhere in there, teeth at the nape of my neck…

  Culminating in Carl yelling, “Yes! Yes! Oh, Yes!” as I brace myself with my arms against the back of the sofa and push my hips against his with everything I’ve got, trying to get him even deeper into me.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Carl Wilson

  “It’s not going to get any better,” Grandma says, coming out of the bedroom. She smells strongly of healing herbs and incense she was using on Ivy, and she wiping off her magical tools before putting them back into her satchel. Nathan is sitting across the room from me.