by April Vine
“Am I under a spell?”
She frowned. “Yes, that would explain why your cock can be used as a flare.”
“No, I’m not talking about my dick in that sense. Am I under a lust spell? Can you tell?” He inched closer. Her gaze fastened on his. Staggering icy-blue eyes outlined in thick black makeup rocked the ground beneath his feet. What the hell was happening to him? “Just tell me.”
“No.”
He paced the floor. “You’re sure?”
“Why do you ask?”
He stopped midstride and faced her from the other end of her tiny apartment.
“Because all I want to do when I look at you is fuck you.” Which was good, excellent, since he’d never encountered a woman he wanted more than three times consecutively, and for precious moments he saw himself making love to this witch multiple times over an eternity he was sure he wasn’t meant to live. He thought the witches had placed a lust spell on him. He could never be too sure with them—they changed his friend into a freaking canine for fuck’s sake, but before that, they cast him with a no-holds-barred lust spell. He wouldn’t put anything past them. His cock proved that already. So, he wasn’t under a mindless fuck-the-witch-called-Nikita spell, which meant all he needed to do was plant his dick inside her body. Oh fuck.
Nikita resisted the urge to lower her eyelids, to feel his words sink into her body just as he would. This was a business arrangement. Schoolgirl antics, stupid girl crushes and foolhardy romanticism had no place in her world. She was a witch, cursed with gloom, an outcast of the only world she ever loved, banished to aimlessly roam through this one without reprieve. And then there was Sumatra. One silly stranger just did not have the power to cause her such upheaval.
“Don’t worry. You aren’t going to fall in love with me. You aren’t going to lust after me until you can’t think straight. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” He removed a piece of paper from his pocket and walked to her desk. “Give me a number.” He gripped her pen in his fingers.
“One hundred thousand rand.” Without hesitation, he scribbled down her request and handed her a cash check. She took it from him and, folding it in half, slipped it into her pocket. The money could keep Sumatra safe for another three months at least. She looked up at him. Her mouth went dry. Her gaze brushed over the expensive clothes he had discarded. He stood completely naked and forced her to retract her gym-trained body assumption. No machine on earth could muster that body, or the scars, not with those authentic muscles curved out in his bronzed abdomen, or the concrete power in his thighs. A sizzling fear throbbed along her spine. He could break her in half, he could throw her onto the floor and work his way roughly into her body and she’d do nothing but scream like a weakling, forgetting she was naturally empowered to send him flying across the world with one blow of air from between her lips.
Get a grip.
He closed the distance between them, his large hands cupped her face.
“I can give so much more if you lift this spell off my body.”
His lips cruised over hers. Softly. She whimpered, but killed the sound. She couldn’t let him continue being in charge. Her control depended on the show being hers to run. She pushed into his chest and walked him backward toward her sofa.
“This isn’t making love. You don’t get to kiss me, or touch me. You do that and the deal is off.” She dropped him onto the sofa and straddled his waist. His cock, the sight that had made her thirst for his cum, pressed into the tight crotch of her jeans. She threw her arms back, balancing on his knees, afraid to drape them over his shoulders in case the touch broke her. She gyrated against his stiff cock. His hands went to her ass.
“Do not touch me.”
“Whatever you want.”
She hated the instant coldness he left behind when his hands fell away. She closed her eyes and murmured a spell. Her clothes melted off her body. The sharp exhalation of his breath whispered against her hair as he entered her.
“What about protection?” he rasped.
“Do you think I would take you inside my body if I thought you were anything but clean?” She pursed her lips to restrain the gasp forcing escape as his body hardened and sweet slivers of excitement pricked her skin. She’d gone too long without. Centuries too long.
“And I’m a witch. I’m above mere human illness.” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. His beauty took her breath away. But he came at a price she couldn’t afford. She threw her head back and milked him. Careful not to touch him, to keep what touches she couldn’t avoid clinical and only as an aid to keep herself balanced.
“Come inside me.”
“Zach. My name is Zachary Wilson.”
Anger sprouted inside her. She didn’t want to know him, didn’t want a name to conjure his face. She wanted him to remain an empty entity, a ticket to financial freedom for both her and her sister. He had no right to tell her his name. She didn’t ask him for it.
Her fury quadrupled. She singed his wrists in bounds that stretched his arms above his head and kept him imprisoned with invisible ropes. She squeezed her legs together, drawing him into the deepest, hottest part of her pussy. She lured him there, then played on his cock until he gave up and gave in and filled her with hot cum. Her body sucked up every drop, hungrily, greedily, knowing she might never have him inside her again.
She disentangled herself from him abruptly, slamming the clothes back onto her body before he’d even realized he was no longer inside her.
She looked at his cock. She had managed to absorb a mere inch of light. Damn. As much as she wanted to take him inside her again, she couldn’t bear it. He weakened her ice-tinged shield, trespassed in areas she closed off and that shrunk to nothingness. How could this plain human mortal unearth and ignite a heart masked with death? If she had any sense she’d refuse to help him further. And yet, the money could save her life and her sister’s.
“You need to come by again tomorrow with another hundred K. Same time. Don’t be late.” Her instructions were punctuated with a vulgar odor. He wouldn’t be able to smell the sudden decay in the air, the stench was meant for her alone. She stiffened at the fast approach of the unwanted guest.
“You need to leave now.” She waved her finger at his clothes and in seconds he was fully dressed. She pushed him out the door and bolted it closed. She daren’t turn around and see who the intruder was who had crept into her house. She knew her very well.
Meralda. Her nemesis.
“You’ve been busy,” she said.
Nikita’s skin crawled in revulsion as Meralda neared, crowding out the air as she sniffed at it. “What do you want?”
“Ahh…who is he, this male I smell on your body?”
Nikita avoided the ancient woman’s lewd glances. She’d had to fight off Meralda’s attention for as long as she could remember. The cursed witch believed that if she lay with Nikita, her beauty would be restored. Nikita would rather die than see that theory proved correct.
“Nobody.”
“You expect me to believe that? You remain celibate, wave aside my extraordinary advances for centuries, yet today you’ve taken a man inside your body and you call him nobody? Oh, I think he is someone—”
“My personal life is my own business and since my payment isn’t late, I can’t understand why you’re here, Meralda.”
“Is he a warlock?”
She hesitated. A part of her wanted Meralda to believe that Zachary Wilson was indeed a warlock, one powerful enough to conquer her sorry ass and banish her to the dungeons. But that would only invite undue attention to Zach and she felt compelled to protect him.
“No.”
“No?”
“He is a mere mortal of the human kind.”
Guttural laughter shook the walls of her house.
“A mortal? A human? You opened your cunt for a mere human being? Why?”
“His dick is bigger than yours.”
Meralda didn’t appreciate the joke. A talon-sprouting ha
nd struck out and curled around her throat, blocking her next breath. The pain brought tears to her eyes. A rancid scent filled her lungs. The sight of Meralda’s face brewed nausea in her belly. The rotting flesh beneath the oversized coat permeated the air as an unattended butchery would in hundred-degree weather.
“Your insults make me want you more, bitch.” Meralda’s words slurred in her ear.
“You will never have me, bitch.”
“So you say. Nathaniel needs more money, he is upping it to one million in American dollars. Your sister is stirring his loins. He said to tell you he can’t hold off much longer, and once he gives in and takes your sister’s virginity, he promises to leave me what is left of her. Ah, sweet Nikita, your sister is just like you. If I call her Nikita, I shall imagine she is you…” Pure evil glinted from her creased eyes. She licked her leathery lips with a tongue pale and grotesque. Nikita clenched her fists and stopped herself from digging into the female serpent’s chest, ripping her heart out and feeding it to piranhas. But doing that would ensure Sumatra’s demise.
She didn’t have any more money. Her last payment had come from taking over both day and night shifts at The Rusty Mug. How much more money could she make from brewing remedies for the sick and diseased who lived in the underbelly of the supernatural? They paid her in gold nuggets, which she passed on to Nathaniel in order to buy and maintain Sumatra’s virtue. She existed off rampant hexes bestowed in drunken fits of fury. But it wasn’t as steady an income as it was before and she felt the strain every day.
She might be invincible in the face of death, but being condemned to Earth for as long as she had been, human nature was bound to integrate itself into her bloodstream. The weight of fatigue rained on her shoulders, harder with every day that passed.
“The money is too little. He has another victim such as yourself and he pays three times more than you do for his sister. Nathaniel needs it by the end of the week. Or else you can say goodbye to your sweet little sister.” Meralda swept her cloak around her body and disappeared, leaving a circle of dirt on Nikita’s clean floor.
Panic welled up inside her. Nathaniel needed more and more money to cover his gambling problem back in hell and the only way he could serve his addiction was to kidnap innocent girls and hold them for ransom. If their family couldn’t pay, he raped the innocents and sold them into slavery. He had dared to snatch Sumatra from the secure comfort of their house, had killed their wizard father, the king of the once-rich and -prosperous domain, with black magic and destroyed their mother, turning her into a comatose vegetable. Nikita’s home now belonged to Nathaniel and he destroyed every part of it. She had vowed to take him on. Yet so far, she couldn’t get close enough to him to do any real damage, not without giving up her own existence.
Her fingers caressed a small wooden box on her dressing table, her nail played with the gold clasp holding it closed. Inside it lived an ordinary eight-legged spider. But when that spider fused with her skin, it would release a poison designed specifically for Nathaniel. The venom would decimate his powers and roast his body to a hell deeper than anyone imagined existed. All she needed was to touch him. The only way to touch him was to go back to hell. And the only way to go back to hell was to die here on Earth. That was the hardest part. In order to keep Nikita safe from Nathaniel here on Earth, her aunt had cast a love spell on her. To break the spell she had to give her heart away in this realm so she could enter the next one, but not without devastating consequences to her life.
Chapter Three
One day later, Nikita opened the door seconds before he could knock. She sensed his approaching presence the same way she did danger. Yet he was by far the most dangerous entity she had ever met. She just didn’t know why or what made him so threatening to her.
“Did you bring the money?”
“You have something against pleasantries?”
“Only when they’re false.” She turned and led the way into the house. “We aren’t friends. We have a business arrangement, that’s all. Now did you bring it?”
He handed her the money. She wasted no time in stripping off his clothes and sent him flying into the sofa. She straddled his lap and sucked him into her body. He resisted her. The cocky grin on his face infuriated her.
“Slow down.” The gruff texture of his voice brought her gaze to his.
“This isn’t supposed to be enjoyable.”
“No? Why is your pussy so wet around me then?”
“Don’t read anything into that. It’s a natural process.”
“I don’t think so.” He raised his hips, wedging his cock into the spongy area deep inside her. She shuddered without control. He clasped his broad hand around her jaw and pounded back into her. “Let me touch you.” His thumb brushed against her lower lip. “I can make you come so good if you let me touch you, Nikita.”
“I don’t need to come.” She jerked away from his touch. “I already warned you about touching me.”
“Yes, you did. But I think I’ll take my chances anyway.” He slid his finger against the skin of her breast. Her nipple swelled even more. In the space of a breath, she had him shackled to the same invisible cuffs she had used the day before. She smiled and sucked his cock deeper inside, showering him with pussy juices until he groaned in defeat. Increasing the friction of his flesh against hers until sweat poured off his glorious body and he emptied himself inside her. But she wasn’t done with him yet.
She milked him triumphantly, forcing him to climax again, draining the last drop from his cock as his cum seeped into her womb. Again and again until he exploded inside her. The hot passage of his cum inside her elicited an unwanted spasm of pleasure. She shoved it away. She had a job to do, that was all.
She kept her moans tightly reined in, snubbing his effect on her. She isolated the muscles in her pussy and contracted them around him. The fluid from her core cleansed his cock. The luminance she captured spilled into her veins. She thrilled at the feeling, giving away nothing in her face. He could never know exactly what he did to her and how much control she required to stay unmoved by him.
She rose and he slipped from her body. Again she felt empty without him. The glow of light had decreased a rung. And still he needed one more lesson. She didn’t allow him to get his breath back before she rubbed her pussy against his balls. His cock stood straight up between their bodies, cum drizzled down the length. She warmed and fucked his balls, covering them with her essence, careful not to touch his cock.
“What are doing to me?” He dropped his head and together they watched his overly long and aggressively thick dick jerk and twitch between their bodies.
“I’m fucking you, Zachary Wilson. Isn’t that what you’re paying me to do?”
“Fuck,” he roared. A fountain of hot cum shot from the head of his cock. Every last drop of his silky white substance showered her breasts, leaving his body completely uncovered from his ejaculate. It flowed over her nipples and down her abdomen, catching every cell in her body and tainting them with his name.
She raised her head. Her gaze collided with his. The emerald-green flecks in his eyes darkened and burned dangerously. He held her attention for a few seconds before his long-lashed lids dropped. The raw heat of his gaze burned her body as he stared at his cum coating her breasts. She closed her eyes. Part of her wanted to swipe away his mark, but nothing could bring her to that action. She savored his elixir as one would a cure to unhappiness. She released his shackles without even realizing she’d let her powers slip.
The heat before her turned to flames. He lowered his head. His breath caressed her. His tongue licked a droplet off her nipple before he opened his mouth and sucked on it. A stream of colors whirled around in her head. She couldn’t tell reality from fantasy. His hand enclosed her other breast, massaging his cream into her skin and making it as sensitive as the one he suckled on. She sighed. The desire to touch him fractured what little sense she had left. But thoughts of Sumatra invaded.
She tore away
from him, fully dressed even before she fled to the other end of the room. Not facing him. Not daring that. The silence between them spread into awkwardness.
“Are you going to re-dress me?” he asked at last. She spun around. He hadn’t moved from the sofa.
“I’m sure you can manage that on your own.”
She turned away from him again, craving a shower to wash off his heat with the same intensity she wanted to keep it on her skin, to relive it every second of the night.
“What happened to the Neanderthal you told me about?”
“He died because I refused to help him.”
“Are you saying I could die from this?”
She expected fear and anguish to litter his voice. He gave nothing away. Was this man accustomed to having his life endangered? She knew so little about him, and what little she deduced on their first meeting—he had done nothing but prove her wrong at every turn.
“You’re not scared?” She forced herself not to face him.
“I’ve been brainwashed to get over my fear of dying but I do like a heads-up now and again. So again, can this kill me?”
“Not unless I refused to help you and in a mad rage you ran yourself off a cliff. But it will deplete your energy eventually, reducing you to nothing more than a vegetable.”
“Thank you then, for helping me. I have a reputation to uphold and dying from a fucked-up fluorescent cock will certainly mess with it. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.” She raised her hair off her neck, intent on tying it into a knot, keen for him to leave so she could take her shower. His aura did strange things to her.
“Who did that to you?”
She swirled around. He had closed the distance between them with predatory speed. Shock rocked her footing and she nervously moved away from him.
“Who did that to you?” Suspicion glinted in his eyes.
“I’m going to need more money.”
He had slipped his jeans on, the zipper up but the button unfastened. “Yeah? How much more?”
