“That’s pretty damn cynical, Midnight. I think I might just have to marry you after all.”
“You could ask me right now in front of a cleric and I would say no,” Midnight said as she charmed her clothes out of her bags and instructed them to hang themselves up.
“Right now, you have to say yes.”
“Oh, and why is that? Did you trip and fall in love?” She snorted like a fat piggy with her head in a particularly lush trough.
“No, we just need the tattoos.”
“Oh. Right.” Middy had kind of hoped he was serious. Just so she could say no, of course.
“So, Midnight Cherrywood, would you do me the honor of becoming my lawfully wedded witch?”
“You’re not even on one knee! And where is my ring?” Middy put a hand on her hip.
“You’re getting tattoos—why do you need a ring?” Dred asked with disgust.
“It’s a good thing that you’re not doing this for real. Any witch worth her salt would tell you exactly what you are free to do with your tattoos and your proposal.”
He was still standing. There was no knee dropping in sight. Midnight decided that if she kicked him in the knee, he’d have to bend down on the other one. Now, did she want him on the right or the left? She wasn’t going to say yes until he did it the right way.
Suddenly, she found herself in his arms on the receiving end of a panty-shredding kiss. With one hand tangled in her hair and the other at the base of her spine, he bent her backwards, bracing her with his forearm. He was so focused on her mouth, it felt as if time had stopped and her whole world swirled with colors like a Monet canvas.
Middy was aware of nothing but the heat between them, the way she fit against his large body, his expert touch causing a symphony of sensation that drowned out anything that wasn’t Dred. Even her breath was his and the beating of her heart was like a stampede in her ears.
He wrapped up the kiss gently as if the lack of contact would break her. She clung to him, unwilling for the moment to end.
“Marry me, Midnight.” Dred’s whisper was harsh and ragged in her ear. The warmth of his breath sent shivers down her spine and curled in her belly before reaching the core of her.
“Yes.” The words tumbled out of her mouth unbidden and she tilted her head up to meet his lips again.
She realized there was something soft beneath her now, the bed. Dred kissed her again and Middy cried out. Even the mindless desire he ignited with his kiss couldn’t drown out the pain of what felt like a sewing needle jamming into the skin of her wrist.
They both watched as the mark that branded her as his slowly bloomed to life there. Tangled vines and blooms erupted on the canvas of her flesh and curled around the Shadowins crest that became visible on the sensitive side of her wrist. Middy had to admit that even though it burned like hell, it was beautiful.
Dred’s wrist was dark with larger vines and foliage, but no blooms. They twined around the scrolling letters of her name which encircled his wrist. Blood welled in places and smeared before disappearing as if it had never been.
“This is completely unfair,” Middy muttered as soon as the pain ebbed.
“Oh, how is that?” Dred asked, still inspecting his wrist as if it belonged to some aberration from the Abyss rather than himself.
“I get pricked twice. Once by the needle and once by you.”
“It will be more than twice, Midnight, I promise you,” he said as he ghosted his fingers over her cheek and down to the hollow of her throat. “And it will be well worth it.”
“Don’t make promises that you can’t keep, Shadowins,” Middy challenged him.
“I never break my promises, Midnight.” Dred continued to stroke her flushed skin and trailed down to the valley between her breasts.
“Well, you certainly won’t be putting out right now, will you?”
“Alas, no.” He didn’t sound as if he meant it. “There are many . . . pressing matters.”
Midnight shifted and arched into his touch, the heat from his hand burning awareness into the sensitive flesh of her breast.
“You could tempt an angel to sin,” he said as he edged her blouse open.
“You’re no angel, Mordred Shadowins.”
“No, I’m certainly not,” he said, the pad of his finger tracing farther down toward her belly, but then back up again to her lips. “You’re making it awfully hard to not be a bastard.”
“How’s that?” Middy looked up at him.
“It’s the way you look at me, your eyes soft and wanting.
The way you arch your body to my touch, the way your lips part when you think about our kisses and”—he leaned in next to her, the weight of him pushing her down into the mattress—“the way you flush that shade of pink when you think about fucking me.”
He brushed his lips against hers before he continued. “All I can think about is what it would be like to feel your heat around me, how tight you’ll be, and the rapture on your face when you come for me.” Dred touched his lips to hers again, hard this time, but it still wasn’t a kiss. It wasn’t enough. “I could be inside you right now, but there’s not enough time to make it good. Not enough time to push you to the edge so that when I take you, it will be a pleasure-pain instead of only the tearing of your flesh.”
Middy felt the evidence of his words pressing hard into her thigh and she wanted more of it. His words, titillating though they were, made sense. She confessed to knowing nothing of sex except what she’d heard from Tally and the perversions she’d inflicted on a centerfold.
She didn’t want to stop taunting him, though. Not only did it turn her on to see his desire, but it was a rush like no other she’d had before to be in command of his complete and utter attention. No one had ever made her feel that way.
Middy knew that it wasn’t love and it wasn’t going to be, but this was enough for her. She wasn’t looking for love.
She wanted passion, adventure, excitement, and Dred was all of those things. Just these last few days had been filled with more of all that than she’d had in the whole of her quiet lifetime.
“What if I give you permission to be a bastard?” Middy said and kissed the corner of his mouth.
A low sound came from the back of his throat, almost like a growl. “That would be a sin. You should know only pleasure.”
“How can I know the beauty of the pleasure without the pain?”
“Indeed, you are a devil. I’ve never wanted another witch the way I want you.” Dred met her eyes and pushed a curl behind her ear. “Perhaps once I’ve had you, I will never feel that again.”
Middy didn’t think the word feel should have anything to do with Dred Shadowins. He was a bastard extraordinaire.
He wasn’t supposed to have feelings. She saw an out and latched on to it. “Perhaps. Or you could just wait for ten years until the next generation of witches is ready for your attentions.”
“You’re heartless,” he sighed dramatically. “We haven’t even had our mad affair and you’ve already moved on.” He whispered a grooming charm and was immaculate again.
Middy liked it when he looked rumpled and well-used.
She wondered if warlocks liked that look on a witch, too.
“We should talk about that,” Middy said, veering back to the subject.
“Talk about what?” He scowled.
“I don’t want you to see anyone else during our little charade.”
“You either.”
“What?”
“It’s fair. No sneaking around with Belledare.”
“Tristan is a douche bag.”
“He seems to have reason to think that your feelings are of a more tender nature.”
“Like hell,” Middy said as she used her own grooming charm.
“Are you ready to put on your happy bride face?” Dred smirked.
“Not until I get my ring.”
“Merlin’s Blue Balls! You’re still stuck on that? Fine.”
Dred pulled s
omething off a chain around his neck and jammed it on her finger rather unceremoniously. “That was my grandmother’s. When this is over, I get it back.”
Middy looked down at the simple band and took it off so she could inspect it. There was an inscription. “Altig Mig Hjerte.” The scrolling letters were beautiful and she felt a warm pulse coming from them when she slid the ring back on her finger. Then she felt the letters on the ring burn into her wrist, tangling in the vines of the engagement tattoo.
Sweet Circe’s Tampon!
What if they didn’t come off? She’d heard stories of witches who’d lost their warlocks to death or other witches, which amounted to the same thing in Middy’s mind, but the tattoos had never faded.
“Uh, Dred? What does the inscription mean?”
“It’s Danish. It means ‘Forever, My Heart.’ ”
She stole a glance at Dred and put the ring back on.
The scowl on his hard features told her that maybe she shouldn’t tell him that the words had become part of the marriage tattoo.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chancellor Snow, in the Library, with the Candlestick
Three days at the house party and he still hadn’t fucked her.
It wasn’t as if this was some revelation that had hit him like the hammy fists of an angry troll. No, Dred had spent three agonizing, horrible nights with his cock posing as an alert and anxious soldier—ready to go to war. The thing seemed to be under the impression that it was auditioning to be a cannon.
There had never been any question of sleeping arrangements. Not that he would have offered to take the floor.
He’d been fully prepared to demand that they share the bed since she was in such a hurry to engage in certain activities.
He’d expected her to demure, but she hadn’t even asked about arrangements when she’d seen the bed. In fact, he was sure she hadn’t given it a second thought. Middy had smiled her innocent smile, donned her pink, sheer night-gown, and gone along her merry way, which included dragging him down the primrose path to Hell behind her.
Things were completely fucked. He was the cad, the mil-lionaire playboy who, wait, make that billionaire playboy, who didn’t give a shit about anything. Especially not what happened to witches after he’d made them scream in tongues unknown to gods or warlocks.
So, he’d let a little of his devil-may-care attitude slip by spying for the council. A warlock had to care about something. That didn’t mean he was going soft.
Maybe he owed Middy something. That was it. Per her demands, he owed her a ride on his wand. So what was the holdup? Why didn’t he just fuck her seven shades of blue and call it day? Merlin knew he wanted to. So why wasn’t he wand deep right now? This very second he could be enjoying her gasps of pleasure and the tight sheath of her virgin body.
He’d done his part. He’d told her up front what to expect and why this whole thing was a bad idea. He hadn’t promised her anything and she hadn’t asked for it, at least out loud.
After he’d pulled all of her layers away, she was still a witch. Could she really be that different from the rest of her kind? Her mouth hadn’t formed the words, but it was still there in her eyes. Middy wanted to be loved. She deserved nothing less. Dred just didn’t have that to give.
He’d tried to reiterate that it would be nothing but a bodily release for him, but she’d given him her carefree Middy smile and told him not to worry, that she didn’t have expectations. What bothered him was that he wanted her to have expectations; he wanted her to know that she deserved to have them.
So he’d tried to keep his hands to himself. He’d done his damndest to do the Right Thing. It was easy for his brain to confuse what exactly the right thing was when it was three o’clock in the morning and she was soft and pliant, pushing her rounded curves against his cock, and begging for his touch. Especially with that sweet, feminine scent of hers, the silk of her hair, and the eagerness of her body wrapped around him like a shroud.
Dred argued with himself that he had to fuck her at least once. He’d sworn. A magickal bond bound him to her until he did. And what really pissed him off was the cold chill down his spine when he put fucking and Middy in the same sentence. As if she were too good to be fucked, as if it ought to be called something else.
He had a stray, niggling thought that maybe he was feeling guilt.
This was not a revelation he cared for. Not one damn bit.
Not that he even knew what he was feeling guilty for.
Fucking was fucking. He didn’t see why it had to stop being fucking just because he happened to like the witch he was doing it with. Or not doing it with as the case had come to be.
It was just stupid. She wanted to be fucked. He wanted to fuck her. What was the problem again?
Last night had been the worst; she’d been having some sort of sex dream and it had obviously been about him.
She’d been writhing around, pushing her ass up against him, and making small sounds that had become his name.
Dred had thought that it couldn’t get any worse than that, but it had.
She’d cried out in need, her fingers had moved between her thighs, and she’d been flicking her clit and pleading with him to make her come.
If Dred had been a lesser warlock, he would have given her what she’d begged for so prettily. Instead, he lay beside her, watching her hands travel her body and do all of the things that he wished to do. He remembered the taste of her, how she’d come for him, and only him. Not to some magickally altered version of himself, but him. In the flesh.
She’d arched up for his tongue, spread her legs for him and Dred had to admit, he loved hearing his name on her lips.
He also loved kissing her afterward, watching her face as she tasted her own pleasure.
That witch was a fantasy made real.
She was the archetype virgin Jezebel that all males, mortal and warlock alike, sought. She was untried flesh, unmarked territory, yet her body was like a Stradivarius violin—he knew it would sing with the touch of a master.
And a master he was. He’d studied the ancient and for-bidden tomes of sex magick. With a touch, or a breath, he could ruin her for any other warlock for all time. He could make her believe anything he desired, make her do anything he desired just by playing the right chord within her.
With what he had learned, he could invoke a magickal orgasm that was indeed la petite morte, the little death. It would stop her heart.
He had all of this power, but when he was around her, it was as if he was still just a warlock trying to get his wand wet.
Dred felt another moment of ball-breaking clarity coming on. He didn’t want it. That was the bad thing about being honest with yourself—it was always brutal. Dred wanted to be the good guy. Yeah, that was a revelation that had been a canker on his ass for some time now. He wanted someone to see that there was good in him and that night in Shale Creek hadn’t taken what was left of his soul back into the Abyss.
No, not someone. Middy Cherrywood. He felt warm around her and he felt it in places other than his cock. He wasn’t sure what that meant, and he wasn’t even sure if he liked it, but he didn’t want it to stop until he could decide.
He knew when the drunken revelry of the sex magick had faded and the sun was bright on what she’d done, she wouldn’t look at him the same way. It was for purely selfish reasons that he didn’t want to complete their bargain.
His cock had other ideas. Other ideas that in any other circumstance, with any other witch, would be the right ones.
He’d always had such tight control of his body; it was something he’d learned when he was captured in the war. Not something he cared to remember now, sitting in his aunt’s library waiting for his Uncle Roderick.
Uncle Roderick was the man he believed to be responsible for his capture after Shale Creek. Dred would have been content to disappear into the night with no one ever knowing he’d been there. Roderick had been the only one who’d known his location. Roderick was als
o the warlock he believed to be smuggling dark objects. If it wasn’t him, it was someone in his employ. He’d tracked dark signatures of magick back to Snow Manor. Dred knew for a fact that Barista wasn’t involved. She’d lost her first husband to a dark object mishap. So perhaps Roderick had a mistress who was helping him?
Dred drew a copy of Gaston LeRoux’s Phantom of the Opera down from one of the immaculate shelves. He still had a raging case of wood, cherrywood, to be precise. He opened the leather-bound tome and sat down at the massive desk in the middle of the room.
Roderick had always called it his “reading table.” Dred was sure that it was more like his “drilling the maid table.”
There was no other reason for it to be so large. Unless it was hiding something.
“I wouldn’t have thought to see you reading such drivel,” Roderick Snow said as he entered the library.
“I’ve always found the Phantom’s plight engaging.” Dred leaned back in the chair and dropped his booted feet like two bricks on the surface of the desk.
Roderick eyed his nephew with blatant disapproval. “Really? I’ve always found it trite. He was a weak man.”
“How’s that?” Dred let the pages flutter closed as if they held only a passing interest.
Roderick leaned over the desk. “He had everything he wanted, but he let it go. Christine had agreed to be his forever. It was her choice. Not a pleasant one—” Roderick’s sharp features bloomed into a smile that was more like a bird of prey opening its beak for a fat mouse. “Still, it was her choice and he let her go.”
“I see, but I beg to differ.”
“Really? Did you fall for poor little Christine’s sob story, too? An innocent ingénue who had enough foresight to move herself from the corps de ballet to diva to vicomtessa.”
Dred snorted. “Certainly not. But I wonder why he wanted her to start with. A well-schooled whore would be better suited to a man of his depravities.”
“Your choice of bride-to-be belies that philosophy.”
“Does she?” Dred tossed the question back with little interest. If Middy Cherrywood was to be his bride in truth, he wouldn’t have cared less what anyone thought about it. Least of all Roderick Snow.
How to Marry a Warlock in 10 Days Page 10
