They did, indeed, have so many things to discuss, Julian conceded. But it would have to wait. It would have to wait until after he indulged one encompassing curiosity that had consumed him in the moments since Drustan had brought it up…
Before another word was spoken, Julian would find out just exactly what Aerin tasted like.
Everywhere.
With a speed belonging only to the revenants of the Other World, he dragged her against him and claimed her mouth.
Her lips were soft and familiar, though Julian wondered if he’d ever accustom himself to the electric charge of her touch. The husky sound she made rippled over his skin like silk and velvet, a sensual abrasion of sound and desire.
He knew she was angry with him. That his deeds had caused her pain, yet still their kiss was soft and achingly sweet. Julian drew his lips over hers again and again, the tenderness he felt for her blooming to the surface, melding with her ire and softening it.
Something about this kiss held more power than any magic spell or prophecy ever could. Aerin made him feel like a man. Only a man. A creature of blood and bones and hunger and lust. Nothing more. Not a soldier of destiny. Or a destroyer of souls innumerable.
A man making love to his woman. To the woman he loved.
With a moan made of equal parts pleasure and torture, Julian ran his hands down the dramatic slope of her back as it dipped into a narrow waist and flared into an ass that filled his kneading palms. Gods, there was nothing in heaven or on earth so perfect as Aerin de Moray’s ass. As the feel of her lush curves pressed against his stark angles.
He’d yearned for so long. For a lifetime
For an eternity.
The scent of her, of storms and spices, frayed the edges of his sanity.
Picking her up, he split her legs around him as he walked them toward the white cloud of her bed, devouring her lips the entire way. Gently, he lowered her onto the bed, pressing her to lie back, though her legs dangled over the side.
Standing over her, he let his eyes drink their fill of the utterly erotic sight of her stretched beneath him like a pagan delicacy as he rid himself of his shirt. Her skin glowed creamy and iridescent in the candlelight, like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly.
Slowly, with blatant lust shining from her moonstone eyes, she parted her robe, and then parted her thighs.
It was then, and only then, that he hit his knees.
Thousands of languages deserted him at the sight of her. Thousands of prayers and spells, of curses and compliments. There was nothing to say no words applicable enough, no prayer appropriate enough. Not for an altar like this. Pink and pretty, shamelessly inviting him to worship.
Julian never wanted anything like he craved the pale body glowing beneath him. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been so hard. So out of his mind with need. So fucking insatiable with lust.
And yet. A reverent patience drove him to chart the insides of her thighs. To rest her legs on his shoulders. To kiss the divots of her knees, then the thin skin protecting tiny blue veins of her inner thigh, until she made some foul demand on a breath so desperate, the words were unintelligible.
Though the sentiment was decidedly apparent.
“I’ve waited for more years than you can comprehend for this, Aerin de Moray,” he rumbled, letting his hot breath waft over the damp petals of her bare sex. “I’ll not be rushed.”
This woman, his woman, was not one to beg. But the look she sent him down her luscious body was full of command and promises of retribution. Beneath it, though, if one looked deeply enough, a plea underscored it all.
And Julian knew he could never deny her. Not even if she asked him to damn the entire world.
His gaze never leaving her lips, parted in silent demand, he let his hot breath once again caress her intimate flesh before lowering his mouth to taste it.
Her ragged sound echoed his sentiment as she tossed her head back in equal parts relief and frustration. She tasted wild, like salt and carnal sin as his tongue slipped and snaked around the folds of her body.
She would beg, he decided, settling his shoulders between her thighs, pressing them ever wider. He would worship her. But she would beg.
Testing the entry to her body with his tongue, he found the slick desire he sought in abundance. He split her open with a sinuous lick, latching on to the exposed nub of sensation he’d uncovered, enjoying the tortured rasp of her increasingly desperate breath.
He abraded the soft pearl with quick, playful motions, and then long circular ones. His curious finger found her opening and sank inside her. She was so wet, so incredibly slick, that he glided in with no resistance, welcomed by the velvet warmth of her body.
She gasped and moaned, writhed and bucked beneath his ministrations, and a masculine thrill of victory speared him with feral desire. Tight sounds tore from her in hitches and sobs as his tongue circled and flicked, teased and tormented her to the edge of release, only to deny her.
The third time he pulled back, she literally growled at him. Reaching down she clutched at his hair, only to be thwarted yet again.
“What’s the magic word, Aerin?”
“Fuck,” she gasped.
“No, my love, that is what we’re about to do…I’m sure you know a slew of magic phrases, but there is one, in particular, that is the most powerful. It will get you what you want.”
“Don’t make me say it,” she said from between clenched teeth.
He curled his knuckle inside her, flicking at her clit with his tongue. Then he pulled back, delighted to note that her hips curled off the bed, seeking him.
“Please,” she begged.
Ever the benevolent immortal, he gave her what she asked for with his hand and his mouth. Her legs gripped at his shoulders, her hips surging, pressing her sex against his mouth as he feasted like a Roman in the throes of Saturnalia. She moaned his name.
And then she screamed it, loud enough to drown out the surge of wild, tempestuous wind battering against the old bones of the mansion.
Once her spasms of pleasure melted into little quivers, Julian withdrew his fingers from inside her and undid his belt. He distracted her with tiny licks and soft nips on her sex, reluctant to end his feast.
She collapsed to the bed in a puddle of pale limbs and shimmering hair, her hand resting on her head, the very essence of a Waterhouse painting. “Fuck me,” she breathed, as though awestruck.
“If you insist.” With a self-satisfied smile, Julian prowled up her naked body, settling his bulk atop her. He kissed her again, pouring an eternity of deprivation into her open mouth. He knew his lips were no longer gentle. That they were rough and demanding, perhaps even agitated. He knew he forced her to taste the essence of her pleasure on his tongue.
But it had been long enough. Now was the time to claim what was his. What would forever belong to him.
Heart thundering with the strength of his desire, he drew her knee up his waist to grant him easier entrance before surging forward. He didn’t stop until his entire length was buried in the succulent warmth of her body.
How, he marveled, had anyone ever convinced themselves that this act was a sin? Nothing else existed so close to divinity as this place, this soft place close to the womb of a magical woman.
“Take me,” he breathed, sinking into her again, staring down into those lovely, lovely silver eyes, and uncovering all the secrets that she shared with no one. “Take all of me.”
“I will,” she gasped, lifting her hips to meet his. “I do.”
He couldn’t stop to consider the full extent of the meaning in his words to her. Take me. Take my heart, my soul, my needs, my emptiness.
Take all of me.
It was too much for any one woman to hold.
But she did. She held him so sweetly in the cradle of her thighs he thought he might expire from the bliss of it.
Julian had the strange notion one does when they’re certain that this had happened before. That in some other lifetime—in a
nother place—they’d met like this. They’d felt like this.
They’d loved just like this.
He forced his mind away from thoughts of fate and destiny and focused on the tight sheath of her flesh already pulling tremors of pleasure from the base of his spine. He slid his hand beneath her ass and set an erotic rhythm with his hips, one she met with thrusts of her own.
I love you, he thought.
Her fingers threaded into his unbound hair, her features shimmering with lust, pleasure, vulnerability and fear.
“I love you, too.”
At her words, a bolt of lightning touched down in the garden, sparking the world with light as brilliant and blinding as the sun. Answering sensations exploded within him with a force he could not comprehend and a power he had no name for. Greater than the Gods. More potent than prophecy.
Aerin wrapped her arms around his back and locked her legs about his hips, clinging to him like one would an anchor in the storm. She screamed her pleasure to the sky, her body clenched around his in an endless shudder of ecstatic release. The contractions of her sex sent even more violent pleasure into his own until his orgasm became a spiraling cataclysm of sensation. Crippling. Destructive. And full of the redemption they both sought.
Thunder rumbled in answer to the lightning, and the electric build of the storm that accumulated over the sea held the whisper of danger on the wind. Though as Julian watched the woman he loved come apart in his arms, he could think of nothing as dangerous as she.
Once the storm of their passion passed, they lay entwined for a silent eternity, contemplating the meaning of things. Of the lightning. Of their admissions to each other.
Of their love.
“Say it again,” he rumbled, nuzzling at the downy skin of her temple and placing a kiss on her sharp cheekbone.
“Fuck me,” she sighed.
He smiled against her hairline. Nothing with this woman would be easy. Then again, he wouldn’t even know what to do with easy. It wasn’t a concept he had much experience with.
“No,” he said patiently. “The other thing.”
She gave an undignified snort. “You get one ‘please’ a day, buster, don’t get greedy.”
“Don’t deny me, Aerin,” he said seriously, rolling on top of her. “Tell me you love me. Give me your heart.”
“I can’t.” A veil of tears shimmered in her eyes and she fought them down, valiantly. “If I give you my heart, then I give you control. I give you power. The power to break me. I can’t…I shouldn’t have…”
A tender laugh escaped him, and he adored the wrath gathering in her eyes. “Don’t you know that I already gave you the control? Don’t you understand that you’ve had it from the beginning? From the moment I saw you in that airport. From the moment I touched your hand.”
“You tried to kill me, twice,” she reminded him archly.
“Because I knew how dangerous you were. How much power you could wield. Not only over me, but over the entire cosmos. I knew, in that moment, that if you set your cap at world domination, not even Lucifer could stand in your way. I want you to be the companion of my life, but the thought of you as an overlord is utterly terrifying.”
“Well…in that case…” She kissed him, mollified. “I love you, Julian Roarke.”
“And I love you.” He caressed the silk of her hair, marveling at the color. “I want you to know that I never wished you harm. I thought that your demise would save the world from certain destruction, and that my personal hell, my curse, would be to forever walk this earth without you. But now I—we—think that maybe there’s another way.”
“We being…”
“Nick, Dru, and I. Though we’ll have to wait for them to arrive to discuss it with your sisters.”
“They’d better take a while,” Aerin said before thrusting her hips up and using the momentum to reverse their positions, rolling him to his back. “Because I’m not finished corrupting you. Cum to the dark side, Julian Roarke, and I’ll show you how fun sinning can be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lucifer seethed.
As the agent of evil and insuperable ruler of her own otherworldly realm, she’d never before had to deal with the kind of disrespect and bullshit she’d been subjected to by these self-important mortals. She had to merely but whisper her whims, and her minions obeyed. If a tiny sliver of displeasure showed upon her face, they cowered. Her name, nay, the very idea of her was to be feared. Hated. Reviled. Not bandied about like a riddle meant to be solved.
There was no solution for the hell she was about to unleash upon this world.
Beginning with Port Townsend.
Julian was hers. She was meant to be the one to corrupt him, to initiate him to the sins of the flesh. To beat him into submission until he worshiped her on his knees.
Just who the mother fuck did Aerin de Moray think she was? Better yet. Who did she think she was dealing with?
Merging with the shadows in a brimstone wisp of smoke, Lucifer had found the crack in the wards and filtered into the de Moray manse with no more tangible shape than a breath. She’d slunk through the rooms of the house, following the pulse of wicked desire to the Air Witch’s chamber in time to watch them fuck in the shower, eliciting another bout of wild lightning to whip across the cloudy sky.
Lucy’s out-of-control emotions made it more difficult for her to hide herself, to remain anonymous, but she had the dark will of the ages on her side, and somehow managed to contain the magical pulses of her fury.
She’d gone about this all wrong, Lucy decided as Aerin stepped from the shower and towel-dried her admittedly impressive voluptuous body before slipping on a filmy white satin robe.
How could she have been so blind? The perfect opportunity had been there all along. She’d tried the conservative approach before, and should have known that it would fail. There was no tempting a druid to the dark side. Not completely. Not if you left them their free will.
If you wanted something, someone, you had to take by force.
And Aerin de Moray and she shared an element.
Better yet, they shared a proclivity for dark magic. And it was that dance with the darkness that left Aerin vulnerable to what Lucifer was about to do next.
Relaxed and pleasured beyond imagining, Julian padded out of the bathroom with a towel about his waist, still not comfortable giving up his habitual modesty. Regardless of every illicit thing they’d only just done.
Aerin had traded her filmy white robe for a silken black one and was coiling her hair in a serpentine knot above her head.
“Hello lover,” her eyes burned up at him like liquid smoke, and her lips curled into a smile that was at once familiar and unsettling.
She looked different than she had all night. Their new found intimacy, the vulnerability she’d revealed, had somehow…dissipated.
Perplexed and disappointed, Julian reached for her. It was as though she’d donned not only a change of clothing but a change of skin.
“Is everything all right, darling?” he inquired, pulling her into the circle of his arms.
“Everything is just as it ought to be, my lover,” she said against his chest.
A pang of warning speared him. Maybe it was the way she’d emphasized the last two words. The possession in which he’d thought to enjoy, somehow chafed.
Enough for him to pull away.
The act of dressing gave him an excuse to avoid her touch, which saddened him. Just what was he missing?
A tug at his otherworldly senses informed him of Nicholas and Dru’s approach. They’d finally decided to bite the bullet, as it were, and brave the dangers of the de Moray territory to come after him.
He was glad they’d waited. That they’d not… interrupted.
But now…
He cast a covert glance at Aerin, at the only woman he’d ever fallen for, and was surprised at his lack of desire.
Perhaps it was nothing. They’d spent many hours in each other’s arms, reached climax m
ore than was possible for most humans.
Maybe he was just depleted. Maybe he needed a moment to build the lust back. Though, he’d not thought that possible. Not with how insatiable he’d been all night.
The doorbell rang, and Aerin’s head whipped around at an almost unnatural angle.
“My brother’s are here,” he informed her, trying to put her at ease.
“Not all of them,” she murmured with the ghost of a smirk.
“Not all of them,” he echoed. “But that’s the purpose of our visit. Like I said, we want to talk about finding a way to rescue Bane from Hell. To release him from Lucifer’s clutches.
“Well.” She lifted her eyebrows over eyes sparkling with an anticipation he didn’t at all expect. “Let’s go meet them.” Gliding to her door she opened it and sashayed through, moving with a sensual swing to her hips that hadn’t been there before.
Rather overdone, in Julian’s opinion.
“Come, lover,” she beckoned. “I’m just dying to hear what they have to say.”
Gliding down the grand and winding staircase of the de Moray manse, Lucy let her hand trail along the banister with a possessive sort of glee. Lord what power coursed through her, what pure elemental bliss.
She'd previously underestimated these witches. She understood that now. Not since the dark ages had she felt this kind of unmitigated strength.
What a pity, really, that the devil's magic was—like all deities—linked to faith. To belief and worship. But no longer. Now entirely new opportunities presented themselves like the prostrate forms of the hopeless damned.
Beneath her fucking Jimmy Choo sling back heels.
One of these prospects was beneath them all, quite literally, as a writhing tortured Horseman. Her plaything. Her possession.
The other, was regrettably still inside her. Or, rather, Lucy was inside the air witch. In the most intimate possible way. This was a penetration of the soul. An intrusion of the mind. A rape of Aerin de Moray's very self.
A secret smile lifted the corners of her mouth as Aerin's creative and emphatic curses screamed from the dark cage where Lucifer had imprisoned her awareness. Of course, Lucy planned to get rid of Aerin eventually. But she'd have to gain more power first. More souls, more fear, and more electric sex with Julian Roarke. How delicious it would be to make Aerin watch as Lucy crushed everything and everyone she cared about.
Which Witch is Wild? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 3) Page 6
