Wicked Enchantment

by Anya Bast

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “About what?”

  His head turned and his gaze fixed on her. “You.”

  “Uh. What were you thinking . . . about me?” She could only imagine. Probably things that ran along the same lines she’d been thinking. Heated bodies. Silken skin. Tangled legs. The press and rub of his chest against her breasts as he kneed her thighs apart and . . . “Never mind. Maybe I should”—she swallowed again—“go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

  He rose and slowly crossed the floor toward her. “Bed sounds like a good idea. No lights. Not much else to do.”

  Uh-oh. Fifty alarm bells went off in her head even as her hormones did an Irish jig. She wanted to back up, retreat away from him. But if she did that, it would make her seem weak and she wasn’t weak.

  Anyway, Gabriel was a man who got what he wanted. If he wanted her, he’d just follow.

  She put a hand out and touched his chest to stop his advance. Touching his bare skin was a mistake. He was warm and the muscles under his skin moved as he breathed. It made her think about smoothing her palm down over his nipple, over his stomach, and then lower. She wanted to touch his cock. She hadn’t yet taken it in her hand, stroked him, made him sigh and moan. She craved that sort of sexual power over him, especially when he had so much power over her.

  She brushed his skin once, twice. He smiled. She could just see it in the candlelight. It was the smile of a man who knew what he wanted, the smile of a man confident he would get it.

  Forcing her fingers to still, she spoke again. Her voice was shaky. “I meant, I need to go to bed al—”

  He dipped his head and caught her lips against his. Slowly, he brushed them back and forth, making her knees feel like they might buckle. A sexual cloud filled her mind. This was dangerous. A moment from now and she’d be completely lost. She had to act before he pulled her under.

  She pushed at him, rocking him back on his heels and moving those devastating lips away from hers. “This is not a good idea.”

  His mouth curved in a smile. “Why not?”

  She couldn’t exactly tell him the truth: I need to keep my distance from you in case, by some miracle, we survive this because you’ll take my heart, mash it into a bloody pulp, and then walk away. Her mind searched for alternatives.

  “I’m tired. It’s been a long day.” Oh, that was lame.

  The laugh that rolled out of him was like leather, wood smoke, and chocolate. All things that gave her pause, made her stop and inhale, savoring the fragrance. “And I intend to make it a long, tiring night.”

  “Gabriel—”

  He captured her wrists in his hand and pressed them upward, pinning them against the wall. His head dipped, his lips coming close to hers. “I want to immerse myself in you. I want to touch your body, kiss your breasts. I want to make you forget all this, the Shadow King, the sluagh, just for a little while. I want to make you forget everything but my breath across your skin and the skim of my lips on your inner thigh and maybe a little higher. I want to make you sigh, moan, call my name, and claw the sheets. Aislinn, let me.”

  A small puff of breath escaped her.

  His lips brushed hers again and this time she didn’t fight it. She pushed forward, pressing her mouth more firmly against his, craving a deeper taste of him.

  He dragged his hands from her wrists down over her arms and then over her braless breasts through her shirt. Her nipples hardened against his palms and he made a low, appreciative sound in the back of his throat. “See? I knew you’d come around,” he murmured against her lips.

  “I have the force of an incubus seducing me. What chance do I have?”

  “None, sweetness. You’re all mine.”

  That was exactly what she was so terrified of. Yet she couldn’t push him away, no matter how loudly common sense was yelling at her.

  He slipped his thumbs under the waistband of her pants and pushed down. They fell to her ankles, leaving her bare, since she had no underwear. Then he pushed her shirt up and left that part of her bare, too. His hands covered her breasts, teasing her nipples until they were diamond hard, until a rush of heat swept through her, centering between her legs.

  Now she was well and truly lost.

  Her fingers quested for and found the button fly of his jeans, the trail of his coarse dark hair brushing her knuckles. She undid the button and the zipper, reached in, and sought the prize she’d been longing to hold. Ah, heaven. At last.

  He groaned and his head fell back as her fingers closed around his thick shaft. She used his foreskin to pump up and down. It was everything she’d imagined it would be—long, wide, and silken hard.

  With one sweeping, powerful move, he lifted her, pinning her against the wall. She wound her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck as he ground his beautiful cock against her vulnerable, bare sex. This time it was her head that fell back, her groan of need that tore from her throat, her eyes that closed in surrender. His teeth nibbled at the skin of her arched neck, tongue stealing out to taste her from time to time.

  “Gabriel, please,” she breathed. She wanted to feel him inside her.

  He ground his hips again, this time stimulating her clit. It made her move her pelvis like she was in heat. Gabriel was the only man in her life ever able to put her into this state of erotic longing. Her fingers twined in his hair as his mouth came down on hers. He consumed every gasp and sigh she made.

  “Please, Gabriel,” she murmured against his lips. Her sex was heated, needy. Her body had slipped into a place that bordered on mindlessness and all he’d done was whisper at her, stroke her breasts, and kiss her.

  “Not here. Not up against the wall. Not hard and fast. Long and slow. This time I want to savor you.”

  Her answering groan was something between anticipation and disappointment. If he moved just a little, his gorgeous cock would slip inside her and sink deep. He could take her up against this wall. A few pumps and she would come, screaming his name, into the quiet house. Instead, he lifted her away.

  Somehow they made it to the bed and somehow she ended up rolled beneath his big body, his hands roaming her heated flesh and his lips trailing the sensitive skin of her throat, limning her chin and then once again claiming her mouth.

  She pushed his jeans down past his hips and helped him get them all the way off. Then his long, lean, muscled body was pressed flush up against her, the press of his hard cock against her leg. He shifted a little and his thigh rubbed against her sex, making her cry out. She reached for his cock, but he pulled her wrists up, pressed them against the mattress, and lowered his mouth to one nipple, exploring every single ridge and valley until she squirmed on the bed beneath him. Then he did the same to the other.

  When he released her wrists, she searched again for his cock and found it. A ragged groan escaped his throat as she stroked him, trying to push him into skipping the foreplay and simply fucking her. Instead he rose and returned with two long silk ties. He’d had them ready somewhere, obviously intending to use them on her at some point. They’d simply been sitting in a drawer—handy for when he’d need them.

  She regarded him warily. “Why?”

  “These are so you don’t make me come too soon, sweetness. Keep touching me that way and you’ll get what you got before. On your knees, me behind you, hard and fast. I said I wanted it slow this time and I get what I want.”

  The silk ties slipped smooth and tight around her wrists. He secured the opposite ends to the metal feet of the bed. Her arms were up, her offending hands immobilized. He circled the bed, staring down at her like a wolf ready to devour his prey. Her heart beat out a rapid cadence, her breath coming fast. Her nipples were hard and supersensitive. Even the slight stir of air he made from his passing made them tighten further. Her sex was heated and swollen with need. This was sexual torture and he knew it—he meant for it to be that way. It was clear he had every intention of nearly driving her crazy before he gave her what she wanted.

 
“Spread your thighs,” he commanded in his wood-smoke voice.

  She allowed her knees to fall apart and cool air bathed her, that sensation alone drawing a ragged moan from her throat. He stopped at the bottom of the bed and let his gaze trace from her feet, up her inner thigh, and over her sex. She felt it like a physical touch. He knelt and his hand followed the same path, moving from her calf, agonizingly slowly over her inner thigh, to her sex. His fingers traced her folds, rubbing, exploring, and gathering moisture. He petted her clit, pulled so completely from its hood and pouting at him—begging for attention.

  She moaned and moved on the mattress, pulling against the ties that held her in place.

  “What do you want me to do to you?” he asked. He seemed so calm, so completely in control, but there was a slight tremor in his voice that let her know that was just an act. He was suffering as she was.

  “You know what I want,” she answered in a breathless voice.

  He slipped a finger inside her and she jerked, trying not to move her hips but wanting to seek more contact. “So pretty,” he murmured, his gaze fastened on his thrusting finger. He added a second, further stretching her muscles, and another low moan escaped her. “Do you want this? Don’t be shy. Tell me.”

  “I want you, Gabriel. You.”

  His thrusts became a little faster. “Do you mean my cock?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. Her body was straining toward him as much as it could, her hips moving in time with his thrusts.

  “You want me to fuck you.”

  “Yes.”

  He touched her clit with his opposite hand, pressing and rotating as he thrust his fingers in and out of her. Aislinn grabbed the ties that bound her as her body shuddered in release. The pent-up energy of the withheld climax burst over her, making low, animalistic sounds tear from her throat, making her spine bow.

  Then he was there, his head between her thighs, lapping gently at her clit while her sex still trembled and pulsed around his fingers. With the flat of his tongue he brought her to climax again, using the tail end of the energy of the first. Her head tossed back and forth on the pillows as she whimpered under the force of it.

  “Now, Gabriel,” she gasped. “Don’t make me wait any more.”

  He mounted her, guiding his cock into her sex, sinking in as deep as he could go. His hips met her inner thighs just as his gaze met hers. She gasped at the intimacy of it, having him in this position—face to face, hips to hips, chest to chest—instead of behind her.

  “Aislinn,” he murmured. Her name seemed filled with a meaning she could barely discern, layered, as it was, under so many blankets of lust and passion.

  He levered up, sliding out of her to his crown, and then pushed back in, hilting within her and stretching her muscles so deliciously with his girth. She closed her eyes against the sensation of it. It was just what she wanted, just what she’d craved—to feel completely possessed and overwhelmed by him. Her fingers curled around the silken ties and gripped tight, hanging on for dear life as he thrust into her over and over.

  Her hips rose and fell with the tempo he set, driving them both in a primal dance. His head fell to her breast and his lips covered her nipple as she came again, her body surrendering to his in a rush and a cry.

  After he’d released himself, he stayed buried deep inside her and kissed her long and thoroughly. His tongue mated with hers over and over and she gave herself to it, despite the fact that kissing Gabriel was like conceding a part of her soul. Kissing him was too much like bliss and she couldn’t deny herself the pleasure of it.

  She wasn’t kidding herself; she was falling in love with him. She’d started to do that way back in the Rose Tower. She wasn’t the type of woman who could have sex with a man and not have feelings for him. Many of the fae could sleep around just for the erotic thrill of sex—and never lose a little bit of their heart to those they slept with.

  Like Gabriel could.

  Aislinn had never been that way. It was unavoidable—she was going to get hurt in the long run if they survived, but she could try to limit it as much as she could. And, if it came down to it, she would reject Gabriel before he had a chance to do it to her. At the very least she could do that much to protect herself. She was not going to go through what she’d gone through with Kendal.

  Never, ever again.

  For now, she would enjoy this man and the bounty he offered her. When staring death in the face, there wasn’t much reason not to.

  NINETEEN

  BELLA snuggled into Ronan’s side, inhaling the scent of him and trying to relax. When Gabriel had been busy breaking Aislinn out of the dungeon, they’d been busy running, too. They’d known that as soon as the Shadow King discovered Aislinn was gone and how it had been done, he would know Niall and Ronan had helped.

  Niall, like always, had gone his own way. She and Ronan had taken off for the Boundary Lands. They weren’t able to be tracked, thanks to Ronan’s perfection of countermeasures to block such spells. They figured the Shadow Guard and the goblin army would be dispatched immediately to go door-to-door and the Boundary Lands offered them the best chance of survival. They had some experience with this.

  The wilding fae would either warn them of the approach of the guards or they would choose to do nothing at all. They were unpredictable that way. They’d gone to Aurora, one of the birch ladies, for shelter and she’d been more than willing to give them a small cabin in the woods to stay in. She could be trusted.

  It felt familiar, except this time they were on the run from the Shadow King instead of the Summer Queen. They were running out of royals to piss off and she wasn’t sure what would happen to them when this was all over. Ronan had explained the fact that together Aislinn and Gabriel could call and control the sluagh. It appeared there was a war brewing and if Aislinn and Gabriel could come together, they had a good chance of winning.

  Maybe.

  It depended on whether or not Aislinn had survived the dungeon. Bella’s mind couldn’t comprehend the possibility she may not have, so she’d immediately dismissed that.

  It depended on Aislinn controlling the sluagh. Whether or not she would want to. Whether or not she could. It was hard to imagine her gentle friend commanding legions of unforgiven dead in a war against the Shadow King in a bid to take her place on the Unseelie Throne.

  Bella shook her head a little at the strangeness of it all and nestled in closer to Ronan. How bizarre a turn of events their lives had taken.

  There was no telling what would happen to them at the end of these unfolding events. Ultimately, she was willing to change her life drastically for Aislinn. If it meant her friend would survive, she and Ronan would live out the rest of their days hidden in the Boundary Lands, residing in this small birch-built cabin. She’d be happy anywhere, as long as she was with Ronan.

  Ronan turned, pulled her into his arms, and kissed the top of her head.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” she murmured. Moonlight filtered in from the few windows in the cabin, leaching the light from the already pale birchwood floors and walls. The bed beneath them creaked with their movement.

  “No.” He exhaled long and slowly. “I feel something tonight. Something in the air.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something’s changed. It’s different now. I don’t know what.”

  “Something good or something bad?”

  “Something good.”

  She lifted up to look at him. “I’ve thought up five million different curses for the Shadow King for what he did to Aislinn, but not a one of them have taken hold so far as I know.”

  He cupped her cheek. “Everything will turn out the way it’s supposed to.”

  “I wish I shared your faith.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her lips. “I just feel like we’ll be all right, no matter what.”

  She smiled and kissed him back.

  And the door splintered open under the force of the Shadow Guards’ boots.

  B
ella screamed in surprise and scrambled back, up against the headboard of the bed. Ronan leapt in front of her, trying to shield her from the guards and goblins that were pouring into the cabin. They lined up on either side of the bed as though waiting for something.

  The Shadow King himself sauntered into the room, holding Aurora’s arm. The ethereal birch lady who had given them shelter was paler than usual and obviously angry. Her normally calm blue eyes were a tumultuous ocean of hatred as she looked at her captor.

  “Ronan, Bella,” the Shadow King greeted with a cold smile. “So nice to find you here.” He shook Aurora. “You thought going to her for help was a good move, but you failed completely to understand the nature of the wildings. Some of them are easily bribed for information. I just kept throwing money at the problem until an obliging Hu Hsien told me who was providing you shelter.” He smiled again, showing sharp white teeth. “Nice try, though.”

  GABRIEL awoke on a long groan. In the moonlight, he could see Aislinn’s light head near his hips, her lovely full lips moving up and down on him. It was a sight straight out of his fantasies. He dropped his head back and gritted his teeth, trying not to come instantly.

  It seemed like some dam within Aislinn had finally given way since the last time they’d made love. She’d been so deliciously sweet and wanton when he’d tied her up and stroked her with his hand, moving her hips as if looking for something to fuck, pulling against the ties and making soft sounds of need. She was different in every way since the dungeon, a little more intense and with a slightly harder edge than she’d had before.

  She would need it.

  After they’d made love they’d taken a shower with the very last of the warm water in the heater. In the candlelight, their bodies had slid together, wet and soapy. Her hard pink nipples had peeked from between white bubbles, bubbles that had slipped down her abdomen and into her belly button and driven him crazy. She’d been shameless, her inhibitions gone, rubbing up against him like a cat in heat, and caressing his cock, which seemed like it never went soft in her presence. She’d begged him to fuck her again.