“She asked me to.” He held up his hands to portray his mock innocence. “Both times.”
Aerin flipped him off which only deepened his smirk.
“And you,” she turned to Dru. “You’re the whole reason Claire is with that zombie freak. You’re messing with her head, and her heart, and that’s just… well it’s fucking uncalled for is what it is.”
“That’s not your business,” Dru growled.
“Christ.” Aerin pinched the bridge of her nose. “You even sound like her. I don’t know what’s going on there, but you two need to seriously figure some shit out before the world explodes.”
“You speak as though we’ve already lost,” Julian murmured.
“And I sure as shit ain’t talking to you,” she spat in his direction. “You’re the worst of the lot! You are a Machiavellian liar, Julian Roarke, and I wish it was you rotting in hell.”
"I never lied to you." Julian's eyes shimmered with sincerity from a face the study in masculine symmetry.
"You said you loved me!" She hated the plaintive note of hurt beneath her righteous anger.
"I never lied," he repeated, paying no heed to the two very uncomfortable-looking men to his right.
Their eyes locked, and Aerin not only saw but felt the truth emanating from him.
Which pissed her off.
Then why didn’t you fight for me? she wanted to scream at him. Of course, she knew why. Because Julian held his honor, his goddess-given duty above his own desires, his feelings, his very life.
And hers.
Well, you know what? That just wasn’t gonna work for her. If she was going to love someone, she wanted that love to defy the laws of nature, nay, the very Gods. Every single bitch ass one of those narcissistic tool bags who put them all in this situation in the first place.
“Yeah… we’re going to go see what’s happening to that guy with the sword,” Dru nudged Nick toward the alley down which Barriston had taunted the other men away from her. “I haven’t seen a fencing stance that great in nearly three hundred years.”
“I could stand here a little longer.” Nick shoved back, not wanting to miss the drama.
“We’re leaving them alone,” Dru insisted. “Speaking of people who have shit to work out.”
Aerin barely noted their exit as she stared, unflinching, into Julian’s eyes.
All right, she guessed they were going to do this, right here, right now.
She wished he didn’t look so wild, his black and silver hair loose to his shoulders in disarray, his eyes flashing hot, silent promises. To see him like this was surreal. The consummate and collected scholar, the brooding and pensive gentleman, these were the iterations of Julian Roarke she’d been introduced to thus far.
But this man, this immortal advancing on her was different.
In every rendering of him she’d Googled, he was a dark, sinister, skeletal being. An inescapable affliction. Something you couldn’t outrun, outwit, or hide from. No king nor Emperor could defeat him. No warrior could oppose or withstand him. For he was the unseen terror. Those touched by Pestilence begged for Death, the brother that followed him, to grant them oblivion.
Release.
Aerin realized as he closed in on her that, though he’d made multiple attempts on her life, she’d never truly been in danger from him.
Not until now.
Chapter Nine
Julian saw Aerin open her mouth, preparing to defend herself—or to cast aspersions at him, he couldn’t yet tell which—and something drawn tight and cold inside him snapped.
Not this time, he thought as he yanked her into his arms and stopped her words with his mouth. He didn’t have much of a frame of reference, having never kissed another, but there was nothing in the world with a sweeter texture than Aerin’s lips. When vitriol and curses weren’t spilling from them with dizzying alacrity, she had the most alluring mouth and accompanying voice he’d encountered in a handful of millennia.
She made a sound, whether protest or submission, he couldn’t be certain, and didn’t much care.
She didn’t get to be angry. Not this time. She didn’t get to charm and exasperate him with the dichotomy of her foul words and beautiful lips. Not this time. She didn’t get to dictate the course of their passion.
Not. This. Time.
Not when he’d seen that witch-hunter’s hands on her body. Not after he’d watched her kiss another, paw at him, rub herself against him in a hollow rendition of the ardor they’d once shared.
Aerin de Moray would learn once and forever that, though he was not her first lover, he would certainly be her last. Because any man who’d dare touch her would rot from the inside out.
He’d make sure of it.
Even as the thought imprinted itself into Julian’s mind, he knew it was archaic, barbaric even, but he didn’t care. These lips, this mouth, and the woman attached, they belonged to him. And the world could go to hell if he’d ever be without her again.
Because to kiss her was to taste heaven. To touch her was to feel divinity. He couldn’t imagine what making love to her was like, but in a handful of moments he wouldn’t have to.
She tasted like rich coffee and salted caramel when his tongue slid past her lips. He lapped at her, showing her in slick, strong thrusts of his tongue just who was in control this time.
She, of course, was no passive, sibilant recipient of his passions. She met his challenge with a dueling tongue, battling his control with wild abandon. Surging against him, as though to press him back, she brought every curve and inch of her against him, but he refused to budge. Instead, he grabbed each of her wrists, much as the man he’d melted had, and imprisoned them against the brick of the building, effectively rendering her his captive.
Their lust had teeth, sharp and hungry, ready to tear what they needed from each other with a desire that bordered on desperation. He wanted to punish her for allowing another man to touch her. He was equal parts need and anger. He wanted to spank her. To pull her hair. To hold her down and ride her into a lathered submission.
To have her up against this wall.
And so he would.
He’d thought it would be different than this… that their joining would be an exploration of all things denied him for untold millennia. That he would revel in the contact of flesh, in the binding of molecules, in the exploration of their powers and how they could combine them to culminate in a sweet, delicious gluttonous feast of a man eternally starved.
But he was past that now. Past all reason. All hope of control and relish was lost the moment he’d seen that man touch her. He might have spent the endless span from pre-history to this moment learning to be a cultured and erudite man, but in his core he was as much a beast as any of his brothers.
And his territory had been breached.
The rip of her flimsy shirt and bra was just white noise to the roar of his blood in his ears. Then his hands were full of her breasts, the warm weights softer than anything he could have imagined. The tips puckered against the cold, and the friction his palm created against them. In the past he would have written odes to the perfection of these glorious, feminine orbs. But there was no time for that. There was no time to make love.
This was naught but fucking.
Tearing his mouth from hers, he sank his teeth into the delicate curve where her shoulder met her neck as he freed himself from his trousers.
“Julian,” she gasped out his name on a low moan as a shudder undulated down her entire body. “We can’t—”
“We will,” he countered, sliding his hands behind her and lifting her so her legs split wide enough for him to fit between them. “Don’t you dare tell me to stop.”
He pressed his cock against the apex of her thighs. With her skirt riding almost up to her waist, only her panties separated his sex from hers. He could feel her slick heat, the answering moisture of her body soaking through the thin scrap of silk and lace and beckoning to the aching length of his need.
&nbs
p; He bared his teeth at the exquisite torture of it, ready to claim her. To brand her as his own.
Something in her quicksilver eyes changed, deepened, and the unexpected shock of it gave him only a momentary pause.
Vulnerability. An open exposure he’d never expected. Not from her. Fear. Hurt. Maybe something else. He was too hard and starved to tell.
“Aerin I—”
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, and wrapped her legs around his waist. Coat and all.
Apparently now was not the time.
He couldn’t agree more.
Then her panties, that saturated and insignificant barrier, were thrust to the side, and he drove into her with such force, a raw sound ripped from them both.
In that moment, tens of thousands of years of languages escaped him, leaving him with only one word to describe the experience.
This.
This was what he’d eternally sought. This woman. This sensation. This wet, aching, wild pleasure. There was nothing beyond this or above it.
Above her.
Today he’d found a new Goddess to worship.
This.
They didn’t kiss again. Didn’t speak. His every muscle was locked, including his jaw, so he stared into the liquid lightning that flashed in her eyes.
Her tight feminine flesh pulled at him as he withdrew and speared her again, and again, driving her higher against the rough brick. He was not cruel, but neither was he kind. A dark beast within him reveled in the carnal, savage things he’d never even conceived of.
The wet, sharp sounds their body made as he mercilessly drove deeper. The high, tight note of pain in her gasps. The blood of his enemy, the man who’d dared to touch her, only feet away. The taut flesh of her ass gripped in his hands. The sting of her nails scoring his shoulders through his shirt.
Spurring him on, making wordless demands whilst pulling him deeper, faster, harder. Her beautiful face contorted into something primal before a savage cry preceded a spasm of the muscles that engulfed him so sweetly.
Only a few primitive words returned to him in great, pulsing waves that started in his spine and gathered in strength and potency with every thrust.
Fuck. Yes. This.
Mine.
With that, he was ripped away from himself. White hot pleasure shot through his body, his bones, and lanced his very soul. He emptied it into her in incredible, jetting pulses. His love. His loss. His pain and darkness. His pleasure and need. His incomprehensible power, and his ultimate helplessness. Whatever made him more than a man, but less than a God.
And she took it gladly. Greedily. Until every last throb and shudder had coursed through them both and feathered across their flesh, escaping into the gathering wind.
He remained inside her for a breathless moment, his eyes locked with hers as they panted and pulsed with the last vestiges of the aftermath.
It all rushed back to him in a swarming charge clogging his throat with the things left unsaid between them. The words. The reasons. The guilt. The love. He wanted to plant his emotions inside of her just as powerfully as he had his body. For how could he convey… how could he make her understand? How was there not a language from here to the cosmos that could adequately express the depth of his feeling for her?
“I love you,” he whispered.
He read something different in her expression every time she blinked. Pleasure. Doubt. Uncertainty. Indecision.
Then resolution.
She reached a trembling hand to her side, and before the realization permeated his bliss-muddled thoughts, something slipped from her fingers.
She was gone before the amulet clattered to the stones.
Chapter Ten
Aerin appeared in the Maison de Moray’s kitchen, assembling her molecules with the last bit of strength she had left and took a moment to orient herself on trembling legs.
“What the shit?” Tierra gasped in astonishment, causing Clare and Moira to look up from where they were sorting herbs on the island to dry.
More Horseman repellant, Aerin guessed. Too bad she hadn’t armed herself with that earlier…
Something sharp stabbed her in the chest, right behind where she clutched the ripped blouse over her breasts. It felt like grief and weakness and fear, pressing down on her shoulders with such a weight, her knees hit the cold floor of the kitchen with no small amount of force.
She was still slick between her legs, still pulsing with aftershocks of explosive pleasure around emptiness. Her underwear was in disarray, her bra torn, and—oh balls—was that mascara staining the tears falling from her chin? Shit. Shit. Shit. She was such a mess.
In every sense of the word.
She didn’t want to do this in front of anyone. Didn’t want to do it at all. But, it seemed, her heart had decided to break down and take her body with it.
The gentle hands of her sisters stung against where the brick wall had abraded her back. They surrounded her where she curled into a ball like a protective wall of magic and concern.
They all spoke at once.
“Who did this? I’ll kill them.” Claire hissed.
“Was it Lucy? The Horsemen? Zombies? The Sisters of the Serpent?” Tierra demanded.
“Are you bleeding? Where are you hurt?” Moira soothed.
Aerin opened her mouth to inform them that she was okay, that they didn’t need to worry about her; she’d be off the floor any second.
Only a dry sob escaped on a wave of pain.
Tierra was right, what the shit? Why had she run? How could she have just left Julian there with his dick literally hanging out?
What was she afraid of?
That he would come to his senses after so thoroughly robbing her of her own.
She’d never been attributed a great deal of emotional maturity, but she was self aware enough to recognize panic when it stabbed her in the heart. She’d done what she always did when she was not in control and could see no way to take it back.
She’d run.
No, not run. It was more like a strategic retreat. She just needed to regroup before facing him again.
It had been in his possession that she’d lost herself. He’d made it clear in no uncertain terms, somehow without even saying a word, that he was claiming his territory. That he was throwing down the gauntlet.
And, Goddess help her, but she wanted him to… but…
“Aerin,” Tierra took her face in gentle hands and lifted it to meet searching verdant eyes. “Did someone attack you? Were you… have you been…”
“Can’t rape the willing,” Aerin muttered bitterly as another hot tear branded its way down her check.
Her sisters just looked at her.
“Yeah, okay, bad joke,” she admitted. “Help me up?”
The thing about sisters like this was…when you couldn’t stand, when you didn’t think you could get off the ground, they lifted you.
Every time.
Moira wrapped an extra soft throw around her shoulders and it felt like a hug. Tierra and Claire took each of her elbows and they were her legs until she was settled at the table.
Tea appeared, and alcohol. Then snacks, sugared and salty, so she could hand-craft whatever she needed for self-medication.
The next tear that fell was because of them. A grateful one.
Once they were settled around the four-person table at their respective places in the correct directions, north, south, east, and west, they patiently waited for Aerin to explain.
She didn’t know where to begin, so she ate chocolate instead, and washed it down with whisky.
The wind had chased the storm clouds away, and the late morning sun cast its eye through the stained glass above the bay window, warming her in a kaleidoscope of color.
It was too early to be drinking.
But after the morning she’d had… down the fucking hatch.
“Julian?” Claire correctly guessed.
Aerin couldn’t say anything around the golf ball sized lump in her throat,
so she just nodded and drank some more, letting the warmth of the alcohol release the knot in tiny, burning increments.
“He…I…We…” She poured another shot and knocked it back.
“Did he hurt you?” Moira asked carefully, wrath lurking behind the gentle concern in her eyes.
Aerin stared into the empty glass for a long moment before shaking her head. “Not yet."
“Then what happened?” Tierra prompted, her impatience showing. “Who ripped my shirt?”
“He said he loved me,” Aerin murmured, still looking no one in the eyes. “And then he ripped your shirt.”
“Oh, sheeeeit,” Moira moaned.
“I know.” Aerin’s forehead met the table.
“Goddess knows, my panties have dropped for the ‘L’ word,” Claire confessed. “More than once. And to be honest I’m kind of impressed by Julian. Didn’t think he had that kind of fire in him.”
“Neither did I,” Aerin said. But he had it. And then some.
“Was it at least good?” Moira asked. “You know, up until the runnin’ away part?”
Aerin straightened, her sister’s lack of judgment giving her a little courage to lend voice to the fears paralyzing her. “It was soooo… good.” Understatement of the century. It hadn’t been good.
It had been the best.
“He is so good.” It was what she’d meant to say. “And I’m… well I’m…” She tried to pluck good descriptors out of the air. Ruthless. Ambitious. Selfish. Bitchy. Unstable. Fucked up. “I’m other words than good,” she finished lamely.
She’d never been good enough. For anyone.
“You’re too hard on yourself.” Tierra reached across the table and took her hands. “You’re a good woman, Aerin.”
“A good sister,” Moira agreed.
“A good witch,” Claire chimed in.
Aerin shook her head, unable to accept their platitudes. “I’ve sabotaged every chance I’ve ever had at a healthy relationship.”
“Welcome to the club.” Claire smiled wryly, tossing her straight, heavy hair over her shoulder.
They all nodded in agreement.
“I’ve done ruthless, calculating things to get ahead in business,” Aerin continued.
Which Witch is Wild? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 3) Page 4
