“Maybe you just don’t know you’re dead.”
“Does this feel dead to you?” He pressed his hand against the small of her back, forcing her to acknowledge the erection against her belly.
“Rigor’s been known to do strange things.” Yet she shivered anyway. Her body knew what to expect in this plane and she was already wet, aching and ready to be fucked by him any way he wanted to give it to her.
The scenery around them changed and morphed, echoes of the past etching themselves into the ice. Esme watched as a young Nicodemus Frost crept away from the festivities with the witch who’d just become their queen. He pressed her against a wall, his hand up her white velvet dress, plunging between her thighs.
She arched into his caress, hooked a leg around his waist and threw her head back in hedonistic delight. “Save me, Nic,” she cried out.
“I love you, Esmerelda,” he groaned against the woman.
Those words were sharper than daggers, piercing her skin, her bone—her heart. She rebelled at the idea she’d ever been that woman in any lifetime. Yet something about it rang true like the tinkling of silver bells.
Nicodemus yanked her hair to turn her gaze away from the tableau and tilted her head at an uncomfortable angle, forcing her to look at him and only him. “That will never happen in this plane or the next,” he hissed.
“I never thought it would.” She wet her lips. “And you can bet your ass, Nicodemus Frost, that I will never ask you to save me.” Esme had wondered what it was like to be the object of his devotion and know she knew. He’d followed her soul through time to make her pay for whatever she’d done.
“Glad we understand each other.”
“We don’t, but I think maybe we’re beginning to.”
He yanked harder and her nipples tightened to painful points. “Don’t think just because you catch a glimpse of a few of my memories that you know me.”
Her heart thundered and her mouth fell open as her breathing became erratic. Esme was ready to be touched, fucked and at the mercy of his every desire. “I could say the same, Frost. Now, are we going to talk all night or are you going to fuck me?”
“So eager for your doom, witch?”
“With every touch,” she whispered, “you damn yourself along with me. It’ll be a good way to go, screaming your name.” Esme cupped his face, her thumb tracing along the hard line of his jaw.
He grabbed her wrist and snarled, “Don’t touch me.”
“You didn’t bring me here to talk, did you?”
“I decide how and when you touch me, witch.”
Esme smiled. The Black Eros was doing its job, and he was angry—so angry about it. It was making him want her, crave her touch the same as she craved his. She knew instinctively he hated to be so bare, so vulnerable. Especially since he believed she was the reincarnation of the witch who’d destroyed his people.
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I was kind enough to give you a show last time. It’s your turn.”
“You want to watch me fuck myself?” she asked with a laugh. Males were all the same, whatever their species.
“Literally.” He pointed to where the images of his memory still played out in front of them.
Esme approached the writhing couple, but when she tried to touch the woman, the vision of herself—
She was sucked into the memory. Into the woman’s body.
“I love you, Esmerelda.” The young Nicodemus Frost was talking to her, and the details of their little assignation became clear.
The woman had married Nicodemus’ older brother because she wanted to be queen, but she was in love with Nicodemus. She’d chosen power over love, and Esme couldn’t blame her. Power was what would keep her strong and safe.
She looked at the profile of the man who held her and there was such an innocent youthfulness to his face, an uncorrupted hope. It almost made Esme sick to be so close to something that pure. Though her body responded to this Nicodemus just as it had to the bitter assassin.
His touches were different. Furtive. Adoring. This was her fantasy too, one more secret than any other. That day she’d first seen him in the village, all she’d known about him was that he was an important man, and she’d made him into the hero of her youthful fantasies long before she’d learned he was the Witchfinder. Long before she learned he hunted her.
Once upon a time, her imagination had painted him as one of the heroes in the stories her grandmother had told her by firelight, the kind with princes and Happily Ever Afters.
“We can’t do this, not here,” she said, her mouth moving of its own accord, miming through the memory.
“Close your eyes, my queen. These halls are still too cold for you, you seem to have fainted.”
Esmerelda allowed him to haul her up in his arms and she did feel the cold he spoke of; it was in the air, in her lungs and on her skin. Even in his touch, but she didn’t know if it was because he burned so hot he was cold, or if it was just the power of winter that belonged to his kind—the Frost folk.
It wasn’t long before he deposited her on a bed, lush and lined with soft, luxuriant furs. She couldn’t see the man who wanted her dead any longer; it was as if this fantasy-memory had run away with a life of its own.
“You’re mine,” he whispered against her skin. “No matter whose ring you wear.”
She tunneled her fingers into his platinum hair and guided his mouth to hers. The first touch of his lips was electric; sparks flickered like a transformer hit with a power surge. Esme was lost in this Nicodemus, her body an instrument and him a master of his craft.
He kissed the pulse in her throat and followed the curve of her neck down to her heart. “This is mine too.” Nicodemus descended farther, peeling off her dress as he went, taking a nipple into the hot cavern of his mouth, his tongue working the stiff peak mercilessly.
He filled his hand with her other breast and continued to thrum her nipples, the pink buds so sensitive to both his touch and the cold that every stroke strummed something deep inside her and sent arcs of pleasure straight to her clit.
This Nicodemus she wanted to pleasure for the sake of pleasure. It wasn’t about moving him around like some sort of fuck-me doll for her own bliss. She didn’t want to think about what that meant, if she really had been this witch who’d destroyed his people. Because this woman whose body she was in, she loved him back. In her own way.
“No, I’m going to come,” she said when he dipped his head, obviously intent on licking her pussy.
“I know.”
“No. Today is for you, Nicodemus. Later tonight, your bother will have use of my body. He’ll fuck me and he’ll make me come. He’s good at what he does. But this…this is just for you. Something I’ll never do for him.” Again her mouth moved with words that weren’t her own.
She wanted to please him, wanted to make him come for more than just the sake of the power it would give her over him.
“Don’t deprive me of my meal, your majesty.” But instead of continuing his descent, he crawled up the length of the bed, shucking his fur-lined breeches as he went. “We can both dine.”
He straddled her, his thick cock hanging above her lips like some succulent treat as he bent to lick her pussy. His hooked his arms around her thighs, splaying them wide, and curled his tongue around her clit before swiping at her seam.
Esme arched her neck and licked along the shaft of his cock to the sensitive part of his balls. She cupped the hard, granite globes of his ass in her hands to guide his thrusts into her mouth. She took him deep the first time, relaxing her throat to let her mouth lube his cock, then pulled back to tease the silken head with swirls of her tongue. She loved the texture of him, the contours of the hot, velvety flesh. She sucked and licked, keeping time with the tempo he set with his tongue against her clit, every stroke sending her higher.
“You taste like the honeysuckle you brought with you from the summer land,” he murmured against her flesh.
She took him deep
er, working her mouth and tongue on his cock, the strain of his muscles and stiffness of his body both signs he was about to come. Esme was nearly to the edge herself—the tight anticipation in her core, the clenching of her pussy around his fingers as he teased her, the building starburst behind her eyes.
Esme didn’t want it to be over. She wasn’t ready for it to end.
When it did, she’d go back to being herself and Nicodemus would be the man who grudge-fucked her to get what he wanted. That had its own appeal, but this quiet worship of her flesh was something new, something she’d never known, and the embodiment of all her secret fantasies.
Nicodemus thrust into her mouth then his body went taut, his cock surging against her tongue, and she continued the caress, increasing the intensity to push him over the edge. Just as he spilled in a burst of hot salt in her mouth, her climax peaked and she swallowed him down while her hips jerked up to his ministrations. That looming starburst exploded behind her eyes, every other sense going numb except for her pleasure receptors. Ecstasy rocketed through her in crash after crash of sensation…
And the scenery faded, leaving her shaking in the assassin’s arms.
“Where did you go, you treacherous bitch?” His cold voice stabbed through any remaining bliss, freezing it like drops of water then shattering it like glass.
“Where you told me to,” she managed, swallowing hard.
“Don’t think you can escape me by trying to leave the Eros plane.”
“I swear, Frost. I didn’t try to run. I went—” She broke off. If he didn’t know where she went, why should Esme tell him? “I don’t know where I went. I approached them as you said and then…everything went black.”
“Lies,” he hissed. “You’re flushed and mussed, like you just got fucked.”
She hid away the memory of what happened, locked it in a little black box inside her mind and imagined it disappearing so he couldn’t find it. As his eyes bored into hers, she knew he was searching for the truth in her words. Esme didn’t know how long she could keep him out of that memory box, but she was hoping forever.
He growled when he didn’t find what he sought. “This fucking spell.”
“It evolves and changes with us as we evolve and change—as what’s between us changes.”
“There is nothing between us but death.”
“Nothing else?” She slipped her hand inside the waist of his slacks and cupped his cock in the circle of her fist, jacking him slowly. “Not even this?”
The scowl on his face didn’t change, but he didn’t stop her. She worked her hand up and down his shaft. It seemed mechanical after what she’d shared with his past self, but she needed this too. Esme needed to see he wasn’t that man. He was a cold-blooded killer. Sex with him was only sex—any pleasure he gave her wasn’t worth her life. He thought he was training her to associate him with pleasure, but she was training herself. If sex was a weapon, Esme was the best at wielding it.
She knelt in front of him, keeping her gaze on his and freeing his cock, but he jerked her to her feet.
“No.”
“You’re going to go mad if you don’t come. Then you’ll never get what you want from me. Or if you do, you’ll be too far out of your head to enjoy it.”
“I have a high-class supernatural whore sucking my cock in the real world right now.”
She didn’t stop jacking him. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll try that for our next encounter. A high-class whore eating my pussy in the real world while you fuck me on this plane. I like that, Frost.” But she couldn’t deny his words cut. Esme knew he wanted her, and not just in the Eros plane. He wanted to bury his cock deep inside her body and remind her who she belonged to. But instead he was sating himself with a whore. Esme supposed it shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did.
“Show me. What does she look like? Does she have dark hair like me? Red plump lips wrapped around your cock?” She stopped her motion. “Does she have pretty, straight white teeth she’s going to miss when I knock them the fuck out?”
He laughed, the bastard. “The Eros making you feel extra territorial, witch? That’s part of your punishment. I know you want me to come for you, but I won’t. Never for you. Only for every other woman I’m with while I’m doing you here.”
“I hate you, Frost. And I’ll pay you back a hundredfold. Don’t you ever doubt it.”
“You’ll be dead before you can pay me back.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of a woman scorned, especially tainted with the Black Eros. I’m still a witch, Frost.”
“Your magick doesn’t work on me.” He laughed again and cupped her breasts, as if they weren’t discussing revenge.
“Oh, but it does now. When you cast that curse, you opened the door.”
“So are we back to the skin flaying?”
“Maybe,” she said, arching into his hands. Esme whispered in Latin and the landscape turned black, all pretense of a setting falling away into darkness. “There. I’ve amended our little spell. You can have all the whores you want—but if you don’t come with me, you won’t come with them either.”
“It’ll work the same with you.”
“Sure, but I never fight my orgasm with you.” She laughed. “So, I’d tell you to fuck yourself right now, but I don’t think you’d get anywhere.” She laughed some more. “I’ll see you on the flip, handsome.”
She ejected herself back into the real world, her laughter not so amused anymore, but short, guttural barks that could have been mistaken for grief.
Chapter Five
When Esme’s magick settled over him, Nicodemus Frost was torn between strangling her and fucking her until she screamed his name. He wanted her, more than he’d ever wanted any other woman.
He’d lied to her. There’d been no whore, though he’d seriously considered one. But he couldn’t stand the thought of another woman’s mouth on him. The Black Eros was doing its job. And now, even if he wanted to engage a whore’s services, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to come without Esme. Not even by his own hand. She’d cut his timeline by ninety percent. He’d planned to drag this out for a while, make her suffer, but he wasn’t going to punish himself any more than necessary.
His little witch thought she could just disappear after laying down some magick like that? Hell no. It wasn’t to be suffered.
Nicodemus wasn’t going to bother dragging her back into the Eros plane this time, even though he could. There were ways to chain her there so she couldn’t disappear, but it left her body vulnerable to her enemies. If someone took advantage of her trance state and killed her before he got what he wanted, there would be hell to pay.
Scar Alder had been to see her. Nicodemus had sensed her presence even as he’d pulled Esme into the Eros plane. He’d been careful to make sure Scar didn’t pose a threat before immersing Esme completely.
Scar was on the clock too. If she died, her magick died with her. Or at least any curses she’d wrought.
Thunder crashed overhead and rattled his house all the way to the foundation. A series of storm cells were headed toward the area, lots of fuel for magick, but volatile and dangerous, especially because of where they were in Missouri. Kansas City was part of tornado alley.
And a tornado had just the right amount of power to blow open a portal big enough to bring Galatea back through into the world.
Esme Payne could give him what he wanted tonight.
* * * * *
The drive to Esme’s was short, his extra sense of her better than a GPS now. The sky above him, heavy with clouds, shifted quickly to a dark blanket of what resembled burnt marshmallows. He’d rarely seen a storm like it. He knew there’d be sheets of rain, hail. The electricity in the air ricocheted through his bones and he sensed this storm was going to change everything.
He climbed the steps and rang the bell as if he were any friend come to call rather than the Witchfinder. Rather than her death.
Esme opened the door just as unfazed as if they’d done thi
s a hundred times. “Didn’t like that last bit of magick, did you?” She stepped to the side and allowed him to enter.
Seeing her in the flesh for the first time after all these years, it hit him like a wrecking ball to the gut. This wasn’t a reflection of herself, this was her. The homey apple cider scent of her house, the honeysuckle of her hair.
The yoga pants that clung to her thighs and ass.
His cock was hard enough to drive steel through concrete.
“Are you here to fuck or fight, Witchfinder?”
“Neither.”
“That tent pole in your pants says otherwise,” she taunted.
“A real man isn’t ruled by his cock.”
“So what are you here for?” She wandered into the kitchen and put a teakettle on the stove.
“The storm. You and I both know there’s enough power headed this way to raise the dead.”
“I told you, Frost, I’m not doing it. That’s beyond wicked-witch bad, it’s pure evil.”
“Then your death, my dear Esme, is going to be one of the hardest in recorded history.”
“Why? Are you going to fuck me to death?” she sneered, trying to act unafraid. He would have believed the façade too, if not for the slight tremor to her hands.
“If that’s how you want to go.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Never pretended otherwise, sweetheart.”
“I already said I’m not doing it,” she repeated. “So you might as well get started with whatever you’re going to do.”
“You will do it. You took my entire race! You can give me back my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” she gasped, eyes wide.
“The Amazon Galatea. I adopted her. I was training her. Upon my death, she would have inherited everything.”
“I thought you couldn’t die?”
“Everything dies, witch. Everything.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Have you ever thought that maybe she doesn’t want to come back? Living hurts. The Amazons honor their dead and leave them that way.”
He grabbed her. “Have you ever loved anything, Esmerelda? Ever?”
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