Lauren smiled. “I’ve never thought of it that way. She’s my baby sister, three years younger than me. We grew up taking care of each other in a weird way. My mother was lost in her own world.”
“So she wasn’t the affectionate type?”
“She’s a bitter, fearful woman. She never wanted to be a witch. She’s always wished she was human, and while I don’t blame her, I also don’t see the point of ruining your life wishing for a different one.”
“So she never practiced witchcraft?”
“Never. She is in charge of the family winery, and I think she was always horrified that my sister and I embraced being witches. It made us foreign to her.”
“What about your father?”
“Witch families don’t often include patriarchal figures in the way mortal families do. It’s considered perfectly normal to have children with or without the paternal father sticking around to help raise the kids.”
At the thought of kids—or more precisely the activity that made them—Lauren let her gaze roam over Carson’s body. She wanted desperately to reach out and touch him, to forget everything else and ease the aching they both had to be feeling.
Running for her life wasn’t supposed to make her horny. Her body wasn’t supposed to be channeling her excess adrenaline into her libido. But it was. Then a wave of guilt hit her, because she’d endangered Carson’s life, pulled him into a situation for which he had no coping skills, and here she was thinking about sex instead of thinking about the gravity of the situation.
“Do you even know your dad then?” Carson asked, jarring her out of her thoughts.
“I do. He lives in France, and we’ve visited him a few times. He’s actually bisexual—which is pretty common among male witches—and living with a man now. I don’t think he was ever comfortable with the idea that he had children with my mother. It wasn’t exactly his style.”
“Do witches live longer than humans?”
Lauren frowned. She’d never considered the matter before, oddly enough. “Sure, I guess so. I mean, I had a great-great-grandfather who lived to be like a hundred and five, but other than that, normal life spans.”
“So back to the men thing. Where do they fit into the witch culture?”
“We grew up around uncles and grandfathers and such. It’s just more casual, less structured as to who is a father figure for whom. I was close to one of my uncles—my mom’s youngest brother Adrien who is an artist—and I guess he was like my father figure.”
“Adrien Parish the San Francisco artist?”
“You know of him?”
“I saw one of his shows recently—the biomorphic cement installation pieces. Impressive stuff.”
“He’s amazing. Funny thing is, for the sake of the clan he’s always tried not to achieve any kind of success or notoriety. He’s made his art as unsellable and weird as possible just to stay out of the limelight, and that’s what has started to bring him into it.”
“I was given the assignment of finding a good piece of art for the lobby of the ad agency where I work. That’s what I was doing combing the galleries. His stuff was definitely too weird for corporate America.”
“So you got the big Bronson and Wade promotion, I heard. Congratulations.”
“Pretty crazy when I wasn’t even competing for it. Lucky for me Macy and Griffin left the agency.”
Lauren smiled. During the infamous Vegas weekend Macy and Griffin had been competing for a promotion to Creative Director at the same advertising agency.
Instead of taking the prize job, they’d fallen in love, and decided to leave the agency to form their own firm. They’d been happy with the decision, even with all the stress and uncertainty of starting a new business at the same time they were starting a new relationship with each other.
In the aftermath, Carson had gotten the promotion, and Lauren had spent the past few months avoiding him at all costs. Now here they were, locked in a room together with nowhere else to go.
Life was crazy.
When she looked over at Carson again, she could see that he was struggling to stay awake. Under any other circumstances, sexual tension would be crackling between them, and knowing the two of them, they’d have been rolling around sweating and exchanging body fluids by now.
But these were no ordinary circumstances. It was nearly four in the morning, and their lives had been turned upside down, inside out and tossed against the rocks for good measure. They were both exhausted, and scared, among other things.
Likely they’d exchange body fluids again some other time, but not tonight. Lauren would have liked to think of herself as capable of maintaining an extra measure of self-control, for Carson’s well-being, because the more he had her, the less other women would satisfy. Too bad she knew she couldn’t. She wanted him almost as much as he wanted her, and soon enough, she would have him again.
She would have no choice. Her desires had been denied for too long.
Just when she thought he was asleep, he asked, his eyes still closed, “What does it feel like to have a vision? How does it happen?”
She tried to figure out how to describe it. She closed her eyes and imagined. “I feel like I’m in a trance, like I’m concentrating really hard on something and I can’t look away from it. And the images appear in my head.”
“Tell me the truth. Was I really in one of your visions?”
She was so tired, the very act of closing her eyes had put her on the edge of a dream state, and she answered with her guard down, “Yes, we were in trouble. Running together on the beach, our lives in danger. That’s how I know I have to protect you.”
But she didn’t tell him the rest. She didn’t tell him that she had two kinds of visions, ones that came to her with a startling clarity—those were the ones she knew were real, that she couldn’t change—and ones that came to her like a dream, fuzzy and weird. The second kind were always changeable. They were her chance to alter the future, to make a choice about her fate or someone else’s.
She couldn’t alter her and Carson’s fate, though. She’d only had that one crystal clear vision of him, filled with a sense of fear, of impending doom. She had the burden of knowing he would witness her death on that cold beach at night. It had taken her years to understand that she was the woman in the vision, and that she’d been shown the moment of her own death.
Not exactly cheery news to walk around with, but she’d learned some things were bigger than herself. And she believed her death would serve an important purpose.
She was drifting off to sleep when she felt Carson take her hand in his. Her eyes fluttered open at the movement, and she saw him stretched out next to her, his hand holding hers. Not exactly the physical contact she’d been aching for, but still…nice.
Nice enough to chase away her fear for a little while.
This, she knew, might be the last time they’d ever feel even a little safe together.
5
HER MOUTH WAS ON HIM.
Kissing, licking, teasing. First his neck, then his shoulder, his bicep, his forearm, his fingers.
Oh yeah, his fingers. She was sucking them as if they were…
And then, his belly. And lower still. His cock strained, aching for the same attention. She didn’t disappoint. Her hot wet mouth took him in, sucking gently, and he buried his hands in her silky hair and gasped at the mind-blowing sensations.
Carson could not remember when he’d wanted a woman so badly. “Lauren,” he murmured. “Man, I’ve missed you.”
Her fingertips trailed up his inner thigh, then over his balls, and she gripped him, massaging as she worked that magic with her mouth.
And then in an instant she was on top of him, straddling him, her naked, hot flesh only inches away. He grasped her hips, thrust into her tight, wet folds, realizing a moment too late that he hadn’t bothered with a condom. He felt too damn frenzied to care.
This was the thing he lived for at this moment—being inside of Lauren, claiming her, having
his way with her until she melted like butter on his cock. Until he spilled into her the way he’d fantasized about countless times in the past few months.
Their bodies slapped together as he thrust his hips and she moved in time with him. She was far better than he’d remembered. She felt too good to let go of again.
He was lost, and found, all at once.
Quickly, she reached her climax, and he held her heavy breasts in his palms and kissed her as she came. Her body contracted around him, wet and sated. He held her until she calmed, and then he thrust into her more fiercely than before. In a frenzy, he moved without thinking. Only feeling.
Over and over, again and again, until he, too, felt an orgasm coming on so strong he was powerless to slow it. The sensation hit him like a wall of water, and he rode it to its sweet, delicious end, overcome with the pulsing contractions.
More kissing, more caressing, more limbs tangled together. She was beside him, then under him, always against him—because he’d never let her get away.
He was delirious with the joy of finally having her again. So delirious he could feel tears on his cheeks, and he was not the kind of guy who ever shed a tear….
Carson opened his eyes, and he saw only the gray darkness of early morning. His eyes were dry. He was still dressed. His cock was hard and straining against his jeans. His mouth was parched and tasted bad. Lauren was not beneath him, but rather, as indicated by the sound of her breathing, she was on the other side of the bed.
Their hands were the only parts of their bodies still touching.
He whispered a curse to himself and ran his free hand over his face. He needed a shave, he decided as he yawned and stretched, finally letting go of Lauren.
He’d dreamed that entire episode. Dreamed was putting it mildly, though. It had been the most vivid, intense dream of his life. He rarely had sexual dreams anymore, and this one took the prize. For sure.
He felt as if he really had just had sex, his body was so full of sexual energy.
Then he noticed that Lauren wasn’t sleeping soundly. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and growing more so. She was starting to move around on the bed. He sat up on his elbow and watched her in the darkness.
Her face held a slight tension, and her lips parted as she moaned softly and arched her back. Carson’s dick strained harder.
Could she really have been experiencing the same kind of dream he had? Was this some kind of supernatural witch thing, to share sex dreams?
It took every ounce of his willpower not to unzip his fly and mount her as he watched her moan and writhe. Her breath grew even shallower, until it sounded as if she herself was about to come.
Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he could feel himself leaking in his jeans.
Should he wake her and make love to her?
No, she wouldn’t want that.
But watching her dream like this was the most erotic thing he’d seen in a long time. He wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take before he’d have to get some relief.
He didn’t have to wonder any longer. Her body tensed against the bed, her back arched harder, and she cried out the same way he remembered her sounding in Las Vegas when she came.
He watched, tortured, as the orgasm overtook her and her breathing slowed, then, finally settled to silence.
“Christ,” he muttered, nearly insane with desire, and her eyes fluttered open.
She appeared disoriented for a moment, and then her gaze fixed on him.
“What…?” she said, her voice raspy.
“What just happened?”
“Yeah?”
“From my end, it looked to me like you came in your sleep.”
She sat up on her elbow, frowning, and shuddered.
“Actually,” she said slowly. “I did.”
“Happen often?”
“No.”
“I had a pretty erotic dream myself. Starring you, as a matter of fact.”
She looked at him curiously. “You did?”
He nodded. “I don’t think I got the grand finale you got, though,” he said as he looked down at his erection.
“Wow.”
“Is that some kind of witch thing? Shared erotic dreams?”
She lay back down and sighed heavily. “Um, yeah, I guess. I never thought of it as strictly a witch phenomenon, but I suppose it is. Maybe you were able to experience it because of your little bit of witch blood.”
“Any idea how often this kind of thing happens? Because, you know, if we have to stay in close quarters and aren’t allowed to touch each other—”
“We might go insane,” she filled in.
“Well I will. I mean, at least you got yours in your dream.”
She laughed and covered her face. “I don’t know how often it happens. I think it’s sort of a side effect of pent-up sexual energy.”
“Great. I’ve got more than my share of that right now.”
Carson dropped heavily onto his pillow, his cock stiff as ever, and the thought of going into the bathroom to take care of himself about as appealing as taking a sledgehammer to the problem.
This was going to be one long-ass stay at the Hotel Hell.
SEBASTIAN PARISH KNEW more than most people that trying to lose one’s troubles in the flesh of a woman was a risky prospect, at best. For one thing, it might not have been a popular notion in the postmodern world, but as far as he could tell, women were by their very nature the embodiment of trouble. So even if one care might be forgotten through sex, a whole new storm of problems would be brewing.
But every once in a while, he would try again. Even now, with the pretty girl in the torn jeans and black tank top kneeling before him, his cock in her mouth, he knew he was doomed to fail.
In the dim morning light, he watched her red lips against his skin, watching her head bob back and forth as the sensation of her wet tongue and lips against him caused tension to coil inside him. He should have had an orgasm by now.
She’d been working on him for maybe a half hour, and while he was enjoying himself vaguely, he feared he wasn’t going to come. But he didn’t have the heart to tell her to stop, either. After working all night and into the morning, he should have been going to bed. The sun had risen, and this girl, left over from the crowd of revelers, had wandered into his office.
She was one of the lost ones. They came from everywhere, having heard he was powerful and that he provided a safe haven for witches who had nowhere else to go. He tried his best. But he felt lost, too, and he grew weary being everyone else’s rescuer.
Who would rescue him? Certainly not this girl, with her probable drug habit and her reckless eyes. But somehow he had become the protector of every witch like her, the lost generation who’d been waiting for the powerful to rise up and lead them to a better life, free from fear.
Her mouth on his cock, he was not such a great protector. But he could see it in her eyes that she wanted to give him something back, and some heartless part of him wanted to oblige her in this small, selfish way.
Maybe…Maybe if he could close his eyes and imagine a different woman, a different set of circumstances…
He did. His breath quickened as he brought to mind the image of the woman he’d never wanted to love but who’d nonetheless haunted his dreams for months now.
Maia. Why did she always appear in his fantasies this way, when he wanted so badly to forget?
But it was Maia. Always Maia. He imagined her curly mane of hair, her impetuous smile, her small white teeth, her tiny, perfect breasts, her torso that snaked against the sheets, silky and warm beneath him.
Maia.
His breathing quickened more, and as he imagined plunging himself between her legs, imagined her here in this office with him, he felt his release coming. Faster, closer, almost there. Then, the rush of release, blinding white pleasure for a few moments, until it was gone.
He looked down at the girl, who was not Maia, and remorse flooded his chest, wiping away that momentary
euphoria. This girl, like so many others, was nameless to him. Her dark brown hair was not Maia’s, her slight, lovely body was not Maia’s, and her warm, wet mouth was not Maia’s.
A deep, crushing regret settled on his chest, and he nearly gasped for breath. But no, his lungs still worked, as did most of his other major organs. It was his heart, he suspected, that had died. Otherwise, how could he have done what he’d just done?
He stepped back from the girl as she stood and smiled coyly at him. She took a step closer, pressing her body to him, to kiss him, but he grasped her arms and said, “I’m sorry.”
He leaned in and brushed her lips lightly with his, then set her aside. He tucked himself back into his jeans and zipped his fly.
“What?” she said, her eyes wounded.
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh.” She had probably heard the stories, that this was what he did. That he never let anyone in, that he used women, that he was incapable of real intimacy.
But still, even with the rumors that floated around the club about him, there were always women willing to offer themselves up as the one who might get through to him, who might reawaken his dead heart.
None could, yet he didn’t always have it in him to turn them away.
“I’ll go,” she finally said, when he made no move toward her.
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever.” She opened a compact and checked her blood-red lipstick, which, remarkably, was only a little smeared.
A man with a heart would have taken her into his arms and kissed her, drawn her down to the desk and made love to her. But Sebastian wasn’t that man and everyone knew it.
That knowledge didn’t make him feel any less ashamed.
His physical need overcame him regularly, turned him into something he didn’t want to be, but the need was still there. Always there.
“I’ll go,” she said, turning toward the door. “I have to work tonight.”
Sebastian watched silently as she left the office. He’d given her a job serving drinks at the club a week ago, and she’d spent the time since stealing glances at him every chance she got. It was the burden he had, being a shape-shifter, knowing what people did behind his back. He always saw. He always knew, whether he wanted to or not.
Call Me Wicked Page 5
