“I thought I did once or twice, but it was never enough. So I guess I didn’t. Not really.”
“I loved her, Esme. The only thing in this fucking world since you. Give her back to me!”
He knew the minute he had her. Esme’s face softened, the hard set to her mouth relaxed and he knew his show of emotion had gotten him what he wanted—without the promise to spare her life.
“How about we ask her what she wants?”
Nicodemus was sure she’d want to come back. She’d only had a few short years of life. Not even long enough for a mortal lifespan.
“How will we do that?”
“You have to understand, she’s probably in Elysium. It’s the Amazon way. It’s a place of peace, tranquility and everlasting joy.” Esme pursed her lips and searched his face for a long moment. “It’s a place of forgetting, Frost. She may not remember you.”
“Where will you go when you die?” he asked. Suddenly he had to know.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe another turn on The Great Wheel until I stop fucking up? Hell? Hades, maybe, since I’ve served Athena. I don’t know. I don’t think it matters—it all sucks.”
Esme began pulling supplies out of cabinets and a crack of thunder rattled the house. The lights flickered and it went dark, but only for a second. A dozen candles kindled to life all around the room.
“What about you, Frost? When you’re finally done with this world, where will you go?”
“Back to the winter land, where my body will become the snow, my blood will feed the ice rivers and my soul will become one with the aurora borealis.”
“Sounds like a lovely end.”
“I think it’s all bullshit, but that’s what my people believed.”
“Will you tell me something else?” she asked as she arranged the items she’d collected on a tray and brought them into the living room. The rain made heavy splats on the windows at increasingly close intervals until it sounded like some angry god was trying to pound his way into the house.
“That woman you say is me…how did she destroy your people? Did she kill them? Curse them?”
He sighed. He didn’t want to talk about that. Even after all this time, the wounds were still raw. The memory of their history was the only thing that could still hurt him. That and losing Galatea. Every time he let himself care about anyone or anything, it was always destroyed.
“She led me around by my cock, as well as my brother and our half brother who tried to take the throne. She was fucking all of us. When we’d all gone to war against each other, she disappeared. I caught up with her in Sweden and she cursed my people to know her hunger for dark magick and power. And they did, but it manifested differently. They starved to death even with full stomachs. But she left me untouched so I could watch it all. That was my punishment for making her love me, she said.”
“Are you sure things happened as you believe? People are treacherous when it comes to matters of power and the heart. Not just women, not just witches. Everyone. Believe me, I know.”
“How do you know, Esme?”
She smiled sadly. “Wouldn’t you rather just fuck instead?”
“No. I like this more. This is intimate. More so than my cock in your hot little pussy. So tell me, Esme, what do you know of treachery?”
“It could fill books.”
“Trite, and that doesn’t answer my question. Who betrayed you?”
“Why don’t you just look in my head and see?”
She looked so fragile and vulnerable that he just had to push harder. He’d almost broken her, and when she came apart, he’d put her back together the way he wanted. He’d get her to raise Galatea from the dead. “Because I want you to tell me.” Nicodemus moved to stand behind her, inhaled the scent of her for a moment before locking her against his body, his forearm around her waist and his other hand gently closed around her throat. “Confess to me, witch,” he whispered against her ear.
The reality of having her tight, round ass pressed against his cock was much better than any sensation he’d felt on the Eros plane. She fit against him so well—he imagined bending her over the counter and fucking her from behind in the kitchen, her glorious tits bouncing and her pink nipples rubbing on the cold black granite countertop.
“I thought you said pain didn’t turn you on? You’re hard.”
“Power turns me on, just like it does you. And you’re in my power now, aren’t you, poised to confess your secrets to me? Showing me the things that hurt you.”
Her hands curled back around his thighs and she clung tighter. “Don’t forget the Black Eros gives me power over you, too. You’re not the prince anymore, Frost. I’d say the deck is evenly stacked.” She squirmed, rubbing her ass on the hard ridge of his cock.
“Keep taunting me with that ass, witch, and I’m going to put my cock there.”
“Mmm, yeah. I’d like that, Frost.” She squirmed more enthusiastically.
“But later. After you’ve confessed who betrayed you. Think of me as your confessor. Many others have.”
“Frost, even if I confess my crimes, you won’t absolve me of my sins. Will you give me a thousand Hail Marys and thirty acts of penance? Or can I buy my absolution with thirty pieces of silver?” she asked, breathless.
“What are your sins?” he asked again.
“Envy. Wrath. Lust.”
“Tell me in detail,” he demanded. “Tell me, and I’ll give you a reward.”
“What is that?”
“I won’t kill you tonight.”
“Then you will tomorrow. I’d rather just have it done.”
“Interesting.” But he felt the lie in the pounding of her heart and the rush of blood through her veins. “See, I don’t think you’re so sure about that.”
“I thought you wanted to contact Galatea?”
“I do. And we will. Right now, you’re going to tell me a story.” Frost realized he’d gotten what he wanted from her, but somehow it wasn’t enough. He wanted to hear her story, needed to know what led her down the same path as before.
And he couldn’t stop touching her. Not to save his life, or Galatea’s. He slid his hand from her throat to her breasts. He was just as entranced by them now as he had been a millennium ago. She obviously enjoyed the breast play as much as he did, arching her spine to push a firm globe more fully into his hand, making low sounds when he tugged her nipple.
“Start talking, witch, or I’ll have you naked too.”
“Before I was a wicked witch, I was a white witch. A good witch. I was part of a small coven. Very small. It was only me and a girl from the next village. Scarlett Alder,” she began in a shaky voice.
He didn’t speak but led her to the couch and reclined with her between his thighs, her back against his chest. He didn’t stop his ministrations, and she settled into him willingly. Fuck, but she felt good. Not only the sensation of her tits in his hands, but the power of making her surrender to him. The way she responded to his touch.
“I was in love with a Lycanos, only I didn’t know what he was at the time, and Scarlet was betrothed to a man named Sebastian Rafferty.”
The way she said Rafferty’s name twisted something inside him. Something dark. “He hurt you,” he stated.
“He did, but not like you’re thinking.” She turned her head and tilted her face up to his, her fingers curling around the back of his neck to draw him down. He hadn’t planned on kissing her, didn’t want to taste her lying mouth, so he held himself aloft.
“Not until you finish your story. Keep talking and I’ll keep rewarding you, witch.”
“I have a name.”
“And it is witch”
“No, it’s Esme,” she purred.
“Esme, then. Tell me the rest,” he prompted again.
“There were murders in the next village over, Haverdam. Horrible deaths, like they’d been mauled and eaten by a wild animal. I grew up on horror stories about the Lycanos. Sebastian knew what Marcus was, so he told
me even more stories of the breed and their brutality. Painted them as werewolves of modern legend rather than the noble creatures they are. After seeing the remains, when Marcus told me what he was, I ran. I let him think he’d killed me. For nigh on two hundred years, actually. Maybe you met him. He’s the cop working Galatea’s case.”
This woman had once been with Marcus Kage. He found that strangely funny, but pitiful as well. Kage was as noble and honorable as they came. Even despite his choice of a wretched Fury for a mate.
“I ran to Scarlett. She promised to hide me and keep me safe until she married Sebastian. She promised we’d leave the village, all three of us, and never come back. We’d start an apothecary, work as midwives. It was a good plan.” She arched again into his hand and he moved his caress lower, pushing his fingers beneath the waist of her yoga pants, stroking the soft skin of her abdomen but not sliding any lower.
“Keep talking, witch.”
A fork of lightning lit the room from the outside for a moment before thunder crashed again, the rain still pounding away at the house.
“He waited until Scarlett had gone hunting for mushrooms in the forest behind the house. Then he cornered me and held me down on a cot, trying to suck my magick out with my breath. He was a witch too. All he’d wanted from either of us was our powers. Scarlett came back and my dress had torn in the struggle. She thought we were having sex. She conjured something so evil it was as if she’d opened a gate to Hell. It erupted from her like a volcano—burned her face and incinerated Sebastian.
“Does it still hurt that she wants you dead?” He pushed his fingers closer to her heat.
“Yes. Of course it does.” She bucked up to meet him but he still refrained. “Damn it, Frost! You promised.”
“I did,” he said, unable to stop the smirk on his face. “One more question and I’ll give you what you want.”
“What?” she whimpered.
“Is that when you turned to dark magick?”
“Yes. At first it was just to get by, and then it became the way I lived and I’d gone too far to stop. Just like us. This has gone too far to stop.” She writhed until his hand was finally on her mound.
“I can stop,” he taunted.
“If you stop now, I will end you, Frost. I don’t know how, but I will.”
“I love it when you talk sweet to me, witch.” He thrust his fingers into her sopping pussy, loved the feel of her walls as they sucked him deeper.
She shimmied her yoga pants off, still working that ass against his cock. He knew she’d be even tighter in that sweet ass than she was in her pussy. It was too much like surrendering, fucking her cunt—she wanted it too badly.
He maneuvered them to the floor and positioned Esme on her knees, her upper body braced on the couch.
“Yeah, just like that, sweetheart.” He continued to work her clit from behind. Nicodemus dipped his head and used his mouth to ready her for what he wanted next. He touched his tongue to that forbidden entrance and she yelped in surprise, but didn’t try to escape or deny him.
Her ass tightened at the caress, though still she said nothing. He stopped what he was doing to her clit, instructing her to pleasure herself. Instead of sliding a hand between her thighs as he imagined she would, a charmed sex toy answered her call. A whole box of delights appeared, in fact, and opened on the glass-topped table next to the couch. An energetic rabbit worked its way inside her, happily buzzing her clit.
Nicodemus continued to tease and taunt her dark seam, using his mouth, his fingers. When she began rocking back into the caress, on first one finger then two and finally three, fingers covered in the sweet cherry lube her Pandora’s box had provided, he knew she was ready to receive him.
He jacked himself with the lube for a few moments, enjoying the sensation of the thick liquid coating his cock before he rubbed it against her opening. He eased the head in with a gentle touch and she cried out, rocking back on him. Her hips pistoned to find more of what she wanted. Nicodemus buried himself completely, pulled back out immediately then thrust again. She was so tight and so ready for him, her ass squeezing tighter and tugging harder than her pussy had on his fingers.
Nicodemus could feel the rabbit’s buzz in his cock, all the way up to his balls. It felt pretty fucking good, made him wonder how it would feel to fuck her with another cock inside her. The images from their first encounter in the Eros plane came back to him. Yeah, he should have fucked her and himself.
He’d denied himself so long, he was already eager to come. But he’d deny himself again. The longer he held out, the more control and power he had over the situation. Over how she affected him. He withdrew slightly, tightened his thumb and finger in a ring around his cock and squeezed hard, still keeping himself erect but nowhere near ready to come yet.
Suddenly, the idea of an additional cock, even his own doppelganger’s, was so foreign to him, so abjectly wrong, he almost lost his hard-on.
The fucking Black Eros was at work again, even if he hadn’t come inside her yet. He didn’t want anything touching her but him. No doppelgangers, no fantasy men, no silicone, just his hands, his mouth, his cock.
In moments, she was screaming her release and struggling away from him, so he withdrew. He’d promised he wouldn’t hurt her.
Or was it that her death wouldn’t hurt?
Already his memories were jumbled and blurred. The urge to protect Esmerelda Payne welled inside him and he didn’t like it. Not at all.
Esmerelda turned, caged her hand around his cock and began stroking.
“No,” he said quietly.
“Why not?” Her motion stilled.
“You know.”
“Whatever.” She sighed and stood, scooping up her pants as she went. “You should have been a witch. You rival even the fiercest of us in your control and your quest for power.”
“Where are you going?”
“To wash this lube out of my ass. I don’t fancy leaving cherry starfish kisses everywhere I go.”
“If you run—”
“I haven’t run yet, have I? I know you can find me. I said I’d do the séance and I will. I may be a wicked witch, but I keep my word.”
Chapter Six
Esmerelda stepped into the shower, using a chant to keep the water hot since the power was still out.
It wasn’t just the cherry lube she wanted to wash away, but Frost’s touch, his scent. She half hoped she could wash away the memory too, but she knew that would happen when shit tasted like peach cobbler.
She’d been so needy, so trusting.
The worst part was, he hadn’t let her down. She’d trusted him to pleasure her and he had. He’d made her come so hard she was surprised her clit hadn’t exploded. He hadn’t hurt her.
She kind of needed him to, so she could remember he was Nicodemus Frost, Witchfinder. Rather than the man she’d come to expect to expertly play her body until she found some erotic nirvana. He wanted her dead. She should be thinking of ways around the Black Eros or convincing him not to kill her.
Even though all of that conniving would be futile. There would be no swaying him, no bargaining. She’d just had the best orgasm of her life and he’d still been able to deny his own, even knowing she’d cursed him so he couldn’t so much as jerk off. He could only come with her.
And he didn’t want to.
His hatred of her was a juggernaut.
She wouldn’t let him see how hopeless she felt, how beaten. The water would take care of that, wash it all from her skin. At least temporarily, until she let herself feel it again. Esme could do what Frost did; she could cut herself off from her emotions, her feelings. Her needs. Just like him, she could be as frigid and cold as the Antarctic.
Esme washed him from her body and when she was done, she dried and rubbed honeysuckle oil all over her skin and spritzed rosewater in her hair. She felt a little bit like herself again—at least she smelled like it. Rather than sex and Nicodemus Frost.
She walked naked to her
bedroom, flashes of lightning illuminating her path for a moment before going dark. Esme knew her way well enough. She didn’t need the light.
Until a hand that didn’t belong to the Witchfinder snaked around her mouth.
She bit down on the fingers hard, drawing blood—ash, dirt and copper filled her mouth. She got a fist to the face for her trouble that sent her sprawling.
Pain exploded in her skull, radiating outward, boiling under her skin. She opened her lips to scream but a Devil’s Bit was shoved into her mouth—an iron contraption designed to torture a witch and keep her from talking. Metal tongs clamped around her tongue and a piece like a speculum held her mouth open, fitting up against her gums. Once the device was snapped wide, sharp bolts attached to the joints sat at the corners of her mouth. Even if she managed to suffer through the pain to move her lips and cast a spell, the device would snap shut like a sadistic mouse trap and rip her tongue out, and the bolts would tear the corners of her mouth. It was like the retainer from Hell.
Cruel, strong hands held her down, effectively subduing her struggle. A mouth tasting of sulfur and brimstone closed over her own. Terror knifed through her as the ripping pain in her gut confirmed her suspicions.
He was stealing her magick!
She renewed her struggles, but to little avail.
“Witch?” Frost called out.
Her life force began to ebb with her magick. Esme refused to die like this. She struck out with her feet, but not toward her assailant, toward a table, something—anything that would make a noise. Frost would save her, if only because he hadn’t gotten what he wanted from her yet.
She finally kicked over a small plant stand, its glass top shattering when it struck the floor.
A long shadow burst into the room. Frost’s silver-bright eyes needed no light to see and suddenly the weight was ripped from her as if it were nothing more than a blanket.
Frost grabbed the man around the throat, but the form shattered into shards before disappearing entirely.
He turned back to Esme and asked again, softly, “Witch?”
She reached for him and he knelt beside her. “Fuck, Esme. We’ll get that off you. Everything will be okay.”
FelonyHex Page 5
