Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem)

by AJ Myers

  “Are you always angry?” he asked softly, giving me this really amazing, tender look that had my heart racing for a completely different reason.

  Very slowly, he reached up and brushed a damp curl from my cheek, letting his fingertips linger against my cheekbone as it started to warm up. Part of me was dying to kiss him, just to see what would happen. But the other part of me, the part that was still shriveled up in a humiliated little ball thanks to him, was smart enough to stop me.

  “What can I say? Being kidnapped tends to kind of piss me off,” I snapped, pushing at his shoulders again.

  Nathan must have seen the return of sanity in my eyes. He looked down at me for another second, like he was trying to figure me out. And then, surprising me so much I didn’t even think to push him away, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead before whispering, “Sweet dreams, Ember.”

  Before I could respond, he turned over and cut off the lamp, hitting the power button on the remote in his hand at the same time and plunging the room into darkness. Feeling suddenly very alone, even though he was only a few inches away, I turned on my side, away from him, and curled up under the scratchy hotel blanket.

  Two hours later, I was asking myself why I had made such a big deal over the sleeping arrangements. Between the stupid vampire in the bed beside me and the smoky smell of the room that was giving my nerves road rash, I didn’t see sleep in my near future. That being the case, I could have just curled up in one of the stiff-looking chairs and stared out the window. Hell, I could have actually been constructive while the big oaf next to me slept and painted ‘Help! I’ve been kidnapped! Call 911!’ on the window with soap.

  And that’s when it hit me. I was just lying there like a good little victim, in the same bed with my kidnapper, and I wasn’t doing a single damn thing to save myself. When had I become so irritatingly weak and pathetic?

  Okay, so I couldn’t beat him up. And, lamp-impaling fantasies aside, I was honest enough to admit that I really didn’t want to kill him—most of the time. He’d also proven I couldn’t outrun him. But, he had told me himself that he was tired.

  And he couldn’t chase me if he was asleep.

  The Price of Flight

  I actually had to give myself a pep talk before I attempted what I was contemplating. Trust me, that threat he had made hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. What really decided it for me, though, was the memory of Tyler’s probably permanently disfigured face. Tyler was a guy, and not a small one. If Nathan could do that to him, what could he do to me if he was pissed off enough?

  I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

  Holding my breath, I rolled over on my stomach and turned my head in his direction. His eyes were closed and he was breathing in a slow, even rhythm that I thought looked about right for someone who was sleeping. I held my own breath for a few more seconds, waiting for him to open his eyes and blow my hopes out of the water—again—but they stayed closed and his expression remained relaxed and peaceful.

  It looked like I was going to get lucky, after all.

  Inch by agonizing inch, I slowly slid my legs off the bed, letting the rest of me slither off after them. I knelt next to the bed for a second, peering at Nathan over the edge. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to jump up at any second and grab me, but he didn’t so much as twitch. Forcing myself to my feet, I crept around the end of the bed on tiptoe.

  I grimaced down at the t-shirt swirling around my knees as I passed the bathroom door, but I couldn’t risk trying to get my clothes. I only had once chance to get away. If I had to do it barefoot and dressed in Bigfoot’s t-shirt, so be it.

  With my hand on the doorknob, I turned to check on Nathan one more time and found myself frowning. It was too easy. He was playing with me. He had to be. No kidnapper in their right mind would just go to sleep and give their victim a chance to escape. But he looked like he was sleeping soundly, the only change in his expression the slight smile that had tugged up the corners his lips.

  I hoped he was having some really sweet dreams, because as soon as I found a phone his ass was toast.

  The click of the door opening made me wince. Tensing, I looked back at Nathan again, fully expecting him to be on his feet, probably right behind me, a single brow lifted in patronizing amusement as he waited for me to continue the farce. But he was sleeping like a baby. Somehow, his creepy vampire senses hadn’t tipped him off to the fact that his walking juice box was about to make a run for the border, nor to the hordes of SWAT that were about to show up the moment I made it to somebody with a cell phone.

  In a rush of triumph, I gave up the stealth and ran, leaving the door open behind me. If I could just make it to the lobby, I could ask the desk clerk to use his phone. The cops could have the hotel surrounded before Nathan ever even knew what had hit him.

  Yep, dumbest kidnapper in history, I thought, almost giddy with relief as I ran down the stairs two at a time. I nearly slipped on the freshly waxed floor at the bottom and had to grab hold of the handrail to keep from breaking my neck. I didn’t even pause, just kept running.

  The front desk area was empty, and I knew better than to yell because then Nathan would hear me. The counter was too high for me to jump over it, but I could see light coming from a doorway down a dark side hall that probably led to an office. Hoping that the desk clerk wasn’t napping again, I took off in that direction.

  I was so close to freedom. As I ran toward that door, I could see the clerk at the desk with his feet up, eating chips and playing Solitaire on the office computer. I could even see that he had two more moves and the game was over.

  But I never made it to him. I got close. Like, really close. Like, standing in the doorway close. Just as he started to turn his head to look at me, though, a steel band of an arm wrapped around my waist and a meaty hand slapped over my mouth, pulling me out of the light spilling into the hallway so fast that it felt like I was flying.

  “Don’t you dare scream,” Nathan hissed in my ear, pulling me into the dark room next to the office. The fury I could hear in his voice caused my heart to thud to a stop long enough to make me dizzy. “Just be very still and very quiet, Ember.”

  I tried to nod, but the hold he had on my mouth didn’t allow a lot of room for moving my head, period. I felt him tense behind me and move us farther into the darkness of the windowless little cubicle of a room as the desk clerk stalked past us, looking kind of freaked out.

  I guess he would, since he probably thought he’d just seen a ghost. Come to that, I was probably about to become a ghost.

  “Are you trying to make me kill somebody?” Nathan whispered against my ear, sending a chill down my spine that had my whole body quivering in about a millisecond. I tried to shake my head, but I still couldn’t move thanks to his big, meaty paw covering my mouth.

  “You’ve tried my patience for the last time, Ember,” he continued, his voice no more than a breath in the dark corner he’d tucked us into. “I’ve been very gentle with you so far. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and compelled you, but I didn’t. I could have tied you up, but I didn’t.

  “It’s time you understood who’s in charge here. I’m bigger than you, faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot more determined. I am also angry, exhausted, and pretty damn thirsty, and you smell like heaven right now.”

  He moved his head to the side as he spoke, and I pretty much felt my blood freeze in my veins when I felt two very sharp T-Rex teeth graze the side of my neck, almost like he was trying to decide where the juiciest place would be to bite down. At that moment, I was sure he was going to kill me. He was going to kill me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he whispered against my throat as my eyes filled with tears that I couldn’t blink away. The cold hiss of his voice and the unspoken “yet” I heard in it was enough to make me want to flinch away from him. Something I couldn’t do since he still had me in a vice-like hold I couldn
’t have gotten out of without the Jaws of Life. “I warned you, love. I told you what would happen if you ran from me again. You’ve left me no other choice…”

  My heartbeat went so crazy that I was probably making his freaky fangs vibrate. I tried to jerk my head away, but his hand over my mouth stopped me from moving so much as an inch. With an almost tortured groan, he let his fangs sink into my neck.

  I won’t lie to you, it hurt like hell, but the pain only lasted for a second. The moment he drew in his first mouthful of blood, my back arched, and I didn’t even attempt to suppress the moan that slipped through my lips. Pleasure like I had never known rocketed through me. My hands reached up to tangle in his hair, holding him closer, and his arm tightened around my waist. For the first time in my life, I felt complete, as if I had been asleep and was just waking up. The world took on a dazzling clarity and everything made sense.

  He drew away long before I was ready for him to. I shivered when his tongue slid over the small puncture wounds his fangs had left, the erotic feel of it too much for my raw nerves. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and held me tighter in response.

  Then I remembered what his biting me really meant for me.

  His head jerked back when my arms fell back to my sides and I stiffened against him. I could almost feel the regret rolling off him when I cut my eyes up at him just in time to see a single red-tinged tear form in the corner of his eye. He had done it. He had really done it.

  He had branded me! Like I was a cow or something! I would never forgive him for that. Never, ever, ever, ever.

  “Now,” he breathed, brushing his lips against my throat again, “We are going back upstairs together like this never happened. If you make one sound to draw attention to yourself, if you try to run, if you so much as look like you’re going to do something foolish again, I will drain you until you’re too weak to lift more than your pinky finger. Am I making myself clear, Ember?”

  Perfectly, I thought, letting the tears in my eyes overflow without shame.

  “Good,” he whispered. Then, just to add insult to injury, he gently kissed the side of my neck.

  Without another word, he let go of me and wrapped his hand around my wrist instead. Leading me to the door like a toddler, he checked to make sure the coast was clear, then dragged me back down the hall and into the brightly lit lobby. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, some of my terror had worn off, and the anger that had flared to life in that dark little room was starting to burn through me like acid.

  “I hate you,” I whispered, too furious to manage more than that, stopping in the middle of the hall and glaring at him.

  “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “You should, but you don’t. I wish you did. This would be so much easier if you hated me.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  And, at that moment, I really did hate him. He had gone too far with his stupid control freak act. I was tempted to start screaming at the top of my lungs just to test him to see if he would make good on all those other dark little threats of his.

  “Damn you’re stubborn,” he grumbled, giving me a warning look. “Ember, if you test me you aren’t going to like the results.”

  “Oh, really?” I snorted. “What about your friend, the one who’s so concerned about my well-being? Don’t you think she’s going to be a little pissed when I show up with the equivalent of a GPS microchip on my neck?”

  “Probably, but it was a chance I was willing to take.” And the look in his eyes said he meant every word. “Now,” he continued, rubbing his hands together in a way I didn’t like at all. “Are you going to behave? Or am I going to have to tie you to the headboard so I can get some sleep? Tying you to the bed gets my vote. Maybe without that shirt…”

  I should have been scared out of my mind at the idea of being stripped and tied to the bed, but I was just so infuriated with him that my mind wasn’t functioning correctly. Instead of cowering away from him when he started toward me like I should have been doing—like anyone with half a damn brain would have been doing after being bitten by a vampire—I just stood there and continued to glower up at him, too angry to realize I was just asking for another dose of terrorism from him.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I seethed.

  To demonstrate that he wasn’t just making threats, he pulled several long pieces of material he had obviously torn off the sheets from his back pocket and dangled them in front of me. I looked at them for a second, swallowing hard, then turned my glare back to him again.

  Then, out of sheer spite, I punched him in the stomach. A course of action I immediately regretted. I swear, it felt like I had just punched a brick wall.

  “Ow!” I yelped, cradling my hand against my chest as my knuckles began to throb.

  “Well, that wasn’t very smart.” Chuckling, he reached for my hand. “Let me see. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

  “Bite me, Nathan,” I snapped. I winced when I realized that might have an entirely different meaning to him. Like, oh, say, ‘Nathan, would you like to use me as a Slushie machine? Really, I don’t mind. Go right ahead.’

  Then again, he’d already done that, so what difference did it make if he sucked me dry?

  Blinking away the tears in my eyes, I turned around and marched back to the door of my temporary prison and stood there and waited. He didn’t say a word as he reached around me and slipped the keycard in the slot and threw the door open for me, but I knew he felt the anger rolling off of me in waves. Without a word, I stomped to the bathroom and slammed the door behind me before locking it so he couldn’t follow.

  I had to force myself to look in the mirror. When I saw the pearlescent outline of the very symbol on my neck that was emblazoned on Nathan’s, I started to cry. Then to sob. I clamped my mouth closed so Nathan wouldn’t hear me, but there was no stopping the tears. I sank to the cold tiles and then laid down on the cheap bathmat in front of the bathtub and continued to weep for everything I’d just lost.

  I was no longer free to go where I wanted.

  I no longer controlled my own life.

  I belonged to him.

  As much as I mourned for what he had taken from me, that hurt the most. I belonged to someone who didn’t give a damn about me. In a single act of cruelty, he had taken everything I valued away from me. And for what? To prove a point?

  Well, I hoped he had enjoyed it, because it was never going to happen again.

  I was staring blankly at the wall across from me when Nathan snapped the lock on the bathroom door and let himself in. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him when he got a cold washcloth and bathed the tears from my cheeks, so I just closed my eyes and pretended he didn’t exist. I didn’t make a move to stop him when he scooped me up in his arms and carried me back to the bed.

  I cringed when I felt the mattress sink a few inches as Nathan climbed back in next to me, but I didn’t utter a single word. Trying not to be obvious about it, I scooted as close to the edge of the bed as I could get until I was practically hanging onto the edge so I wouldn’t fall off. I heard him suck in a shaky breath in response, but I didn’t turn to look at him. I never, ever, wanted to look at him again. I didn’t want to look at him, talk to him, or even think about him.

  I wanted him to go away and never come back. I wanted to go back in time and tell him to take a flying leap off a short pier instead of letting him in my car and, by doing so, into my life. I wanted him to disappear and take the hatred and anger eating a hole in my stomach with him.

  But, more than all of that, I wanted to forget what it had felt like to be that connected to him. I wanted to erase how incredibly close we had been for those few seconds. I wanted those amazing tingles to stop chasing each other beneath my skin. I wanted it all to be a bad dream. Because, to him, it hadn’t meant a damn thing. But, to me, it had meant everything.

  I found myself counting Nathan’s breaths after a while out of sheer boredom and was surprised to find it was soothing to me. Maybe it w
as the steady, quiet sound of it that did it. Maybe it was how comfortable he was, sleeping less than eight inches from someone who was slowly starting to hate his damn guts. Whatever it was, I felt my muscles start to relax and my eyelids started to get heavy.

  Just before I closed my eyes, I pulled the collar of my borrowed t-shirt up close to my nose and took a deep breath. Like the sound of his breathing, that scent was strangely calming to me and gave me that final push into sleep. It followed me into my dreams, painting pictures of a fantasy world full of flowing gowns, dancing in the moonlight around a garden shimmering with white roses, a Prince Charming who looked entirely too much like my kidnapper, and stolen kisses in the dark.

  Dream a Little Dream of Me

  The next morning, I woke up with a light, warm feeling in the pit of my stomach. For a second, I just let my dreams from the night before play in my head like a movie reel. I should have been horrified that Nathan had haunted me even in my dreams, but I wasn’t. With every imaginary stolen kiss, I had felt myself come to life. If I could have stayed in my dream world, I would have.

  Realizing I wouldn’t be able to hide behind my closed lids forever, I stretched—and froze like a five-foot-nothing leprechaun ice sculpture when I realized I was pressed against something hard and cool. Something with its arms wrapped around me.

  Something breathing.

  I could feel the heat creeping up my neck to my face even before I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the line of Nathan’s jaw. I turned so red my hair was probably steaming when I realized I had been sleeping on his chest. My hand was pressed against cool, silky skin, and I was even more mortified to discover it had somehow found its way under his t-shirt to rest over his heart. And, if that wasn’t bad enough—and trust me, it was—I had thrown one of my bare legs over his thigh. In essence, I was wrapped around him like he was the ultimate body pillow…or my boyfriend.

  Neither of which, I might remind you, he was ever going to be.