The Problem With Witches: An Arcane Shot Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  Sex with Ben was always an over-the-top experience, narrowing the world down to just the two of them. In contrast, this was as if the world had widened. Everything she saw, felt, inhaled, heard, was saturated with sexual suggestion and promise, two sides of the perfect coin.

  When Ben cupped his hand over her nape, brought her elbows back down to the bed, lifting her hips higher in the air, she pressed her mouth to Raina’s again. Marcie made a noise in her throat as the power of Mikhael’s thrusts translated through Raina’s rhythmic movement against her. Then she bit back a soft cry as she felt Ben’s bare flesh touch hers. The broad head of his cock rubbed against her sex, gauging the depth of her wetness. To take Ben, a woman had to be oiled up all the way to the womb, ready to baptize the head of his cock with a gush of juices. Fortunately, he was very good at finding that reservoir in her.

  She widened her stance, lifted, and he slid in. Even drenched as she usually was when he took her, he was never an easy entry, because he was far bigger than the norm. Now, as he stretched her tissues and sank slow and deep, into the clasp of her body, she was gasping, pleading. Overwhelmed by…

  Held in the grip of Raina’s magic, every scrap of control she’d learned was lost. Things were getting crazy, overwhelming, a wall of fire swooping down on them. Ben grasped her jaw to turn her mouth to his, so he swallowed her rising cries.

  Mikhael was thrusting into Raina, his speed picking up. Marcie wondered if his wings had ever lifted them as they were joined like this, if he’d ever taken her in the air.

  “Hold onto her,” Mikhael said shortly.

  In some fixed point in the swirl of response, Marcie knew he was talking to Ben, and there were so many meanings to that, including the literal one.

  She was very familiar with that moment of helpless, blissful terror when all control was going to be lost, when words like please, help, no, would break from the lips. All of them meant only one thing.

  Hold onto me. Catch me. Go with me. Carry me through the storms, and ride the winds with me.

  This was that, all of it, all at once. Ben had one thigh pressed to the outside of hers, muscle flexing against her hip as he pushed deep. When he was deep as he was going to go, he stopped and held, dropping to curl an arm around her chest. He gripped her shoulder, his forearm a solid bar before her, the roughness of his jaw against her cheek, his thick hair silk against her temple.

  A world full of pure light and pleasure, all the questions and answers there together, darkness and light joining hands as they always had. The power of the magic wrapped around their souls, spun them.

  Marcie could hear her heartbeat, her pulse pounding. The snow-white covers gleamed as if touched by starlight. The seascapes on the wall were so vivid she thought she could taste the salt on her lips. The room had tiny motes of gleaming gold and blue light dancing through the air, swirling.

  The storm of magic rose, pulling their response higher with it. In some distant way she realized that she literally stood on a threshold between life and death. That was why she could hear the rapid beat of her heart, was so aware of the rasp of her breath, her gasps of arousal. It was that, that impending mortality, that gave this climax its unforgettable, ephemeral edge. And it felt too damn good for her to care.

  Raina’s eyes were upon her. The witch was gripping Marcie’s wrists where her palms were pressed into the mattress, restraining and supporting her at the same time. When her sharp nails pierced Marcie’s flesh, she gave Marcie all the things she needed – restraint, support and just the right amount of pain.

  Her breasts felt full and tight. Ben’s hand closed over one, nipple stabbing into his palm, and Marcie threw her head to the side, turning her face toward his throat. She snapped at him savagely, like an animal. Her hips worked on him, her body taking his full length, deeper, faster.

  He responded with a growl and pushed her down so her cheek was against the covers, in the soft fall of Raina’s hair. It smelled like rain and roses. The wet sounds of her cunt sucking on his cock maddened her, made her lick her lips, cry out, snarl with a defiance he answered as she fully expected. He fucked her within an inch of her life as those waves of energy just kept coming.

  “God… Ben… Master… Please…”

  “Keep holding on, brat. This ride’s not even half over.”

  Oh God. She really was going to die. She wanted him touching her everywhere. Her skin was on fire, especially where he was touching her. Did he feel it?

  “You don’t go anywhere without me,” he said. “Nowhere I don’t take you. Now, brat.”

  The climax was crashing over her, wave over wave, no time to breathe. She fought it as he expected her to do, even as the pleasure tumbled her over and over, leaving her no way to stop it taking over.

  Wildly she bucked against him, cries becoming screams. He kept burying himself in her, hands pinching, squeezing, demanding, not giving her an inch of the virtual tether he always had on her, as if it were wrapped tight around his knuckles, making her feel the hold of her physical collar even more.

  She knew the power her arousal gave him, the way it would push him to the edge. Now, deep as she was inside him, she felt it, the two of them going over together.

  She gasped, her eyes widening as it felt like they literally joined hands and leaped, soaring on a pleasure with weight and substance, a river in truth.

  Raina’s eyes were black, teeth sharp and bared. She reared up and bit Mikhael high on his chest, much as Marcie had done, only Raina drew blood. Mikhael cupped her skull, holding her to him as he kept driving into her, taking her full climax before he let himself go. Every muscle in his upper body was taut. At the deciding moment, Marcie thought she saw markings appear on his body, etched in black fire, sweeping heat over all of them, here then gone. Raina licked the blood from his chest, bit him again, maddened.

  She might have passed out. Or maybe the universe blinked. All Marcie knew was some time later, she was lying on her side on the covers, one hand loosely clasped in Raina’s as the woman faced her in a mirror position, several feet between them. Ben was stretched out behind her, his mouth on Marcie’s shoulder, nuzzling, nipping, as he stroked her from shoulder, to hip, around her backside and between her legs, which loosened automatically for him, always.

  “Goddess,” Marcie whispered. Maybe several times. But she literally couldn’t move. So caught in a haze of aftermath, still so close to arousal, it didn’t feel like they’d left.

  At length, Ben turned her toward him, curled her into the shelter of his body. Marcie felt Raina shift closer, and murmured in pleased acceptance as the witch put her mouth to her ear, stroked Marcie’s hair away from her damp neck to taste her there. Those long-nailed fingers drifted down over the soft skin between Marcie’s shoulder blades, then stroked along Marcie’s back, a continuous pattern.

  Another movement of the mattress beneath them, and Marcie suspected wherever Mikhael had gone, he was back, and behind Raina. The witch’s mouth went tight against her skin, an erotic response, and then she let out a breathy sigh that rippled over Marcie’s flesh. The Dark Guardian had slid back into Raina. He began a slow thrusting while he fondled her breasts so that his knuckles brushed Marcie’s spine as he did it.

  Marcie wanted to turn over and watch them. She didn’t have to say it. Ben knew, and would decide if she could do that, or if he preferred to tease her with the sounds, the hints of movement and touch.

  When he used his arm around Marcie to shift them away, it was to give them enough space for Marcie to turn, spoon herself back into the curve of his body.

  “Watch them, brat,” her Master murmured against her ear. “You can touch only her hands, but you can watch all you wish.”

  Marcie extended her arm, laid her fingertips in Raina’s palm, lying open on the bed covers. She traced the lines there as she watched the witch be pleasured.

  Raina had a glow to her, a sated look that was more than just desire. There was a contentment to her that had been missing earlier,
an easier sensuality. She had twisted her upper body to reach up and stroke Mikhael’s face as he moved with such purpose inside her. Though he’d recently climaxed, he showed no signs of stopping, or needing all that much recuperation time. He kissed his witch’s pulse, her forearm, all while holding her securely in one arm, keeping her safe and surrounded as he took her body.

  Marcie understood. He’d channeled Raina’s feeding so they could have the experience of a full surrender to a succubus’s power, without risk of loss of life. And they had all fed her.

  She also saw how very much Mikhael loved his witch, and how much Raina loved him. She thought of what Mikhael had said, about how Raina’s life had been before. The witch had had the strength to persevere without aid, but no one’s strength was limitless. Marcie wondered how close Raina had been to the end of that strength when Mikhael came into her life.

  Whenever it had been, it was clear the witch had embraced her need for him, and Mikhael’s intent to meet those needs appeared limitless, a hunger just as strong as Raina’s succubus appetites.

  Ben put his mouth to Marcie’s shoulder, then he was moving down, leaving her with her cheek pillowed on her hands as he explored her back and the upper rise of her buttocks with his mouth. He gripped her thigh in mute command so she lifted it, bent her knee and braced the sole of her foot on the bed by the other knee, opening herself to him. Then he put his mouth between her legs, over her sensitive pussy, working his tongue in, sucking on her clit.

  “Aah.” She sucked in a breath, tipping her head back, though her half-lidded eyes still watched Raina, the way Raina watched her, a curve on her desire-taut mouth.

  “Insatiable,” she whispered. “The both of them.”

  Insatiable was the closest word for Ben’s libido, and Marcie wasn’t even sure if that captured it. Her man was capable of rousing again to full hardness in a matter of minutes and taking her again. Two, three, four times.

  Since she was sure Mikhael had climaxed seconds before he put himself inside Raina again, it appeared he had a similar revival time. It was a vaguely alarming thought, that the two alpha males might get competitive, think they had to prove who could keep this going the longest, how many rounds they could take their women to that sharp edge, again and again.

  Some men were drained by sex. Ben used it like nitrous in the performance machine that was his gorgeous, muscled body. Thankfully, his passion could fuel hers, always. Even if she had no energy to do anything but accept him in her body.

  He proved it now, sliding back up behind her body and guiding himself into her once more. She opened to him with quivering thighs, and he held her, supported her through it.

  “You’ll let me fuck you to death, won’t you, brat,” Ben muttered.

  In response, she locked onto him even tighter, earned a grunt and a dark chuckle. It was all his. Her life, her breath, her heartbeat. It had been, from the moment she first met him at sixteen years old, when he was thirteen years older and so seemingly beyond her reach. Treating her like a little sister, when she knew she was meant to be his. She’d had to wait over seven years to prove it to him, but she’d refused to take no for an answer. She would have been his, or the most important part of herself would have died trying.

  “You give them everything they demand, because there is nothing beyond that,” Raina breathed, seeing the answer to Ben’s question in Marcie’s face. “Nothing that matters as much.”

  Their hands were tangled in a knot on the sheets. Marcie lifted her gaze enough to see Mikhael move Raina’s thick hair, bare her throat and bend his head to taste her once more. Raina’s eyes half closed, her hand tightening on Marcie’s.

  Even while fully tuned into their presence, wrapping them in Raina’s energy to take them on that ride, the Dark Guardian still hadn’t, not ever, not once, looked away from Raina. As if he couldn’t get enough of absorbing her every reaction.

  The power had been Raina, a star burning bright in the dark sky…and Mikhael was that dark sky.

  Perhaps because they were creatures of another species, though still humanoid, the shape of Mikhael’s Dominance and Raina’s submission was different from hers and Ben’s. Raina belonged to the Dark Guardian. No other defining parameters. The utter simplicity of that relationship underlined the incredible power that had surrounded all of it, clarified it.

  Ben’s tight glide to the root had Marcie shuddering around and over him. As she realized his attention was wholly upon her, because she was the center of his world as he was hers, she wondered if any differences were just window dressing.

  What was between their two souls was no different than what lay between the otherworldly creatures who’d just shared a bed with them.

  The knowledge was a reassurance, promise and comfort.

  It was some time later when Ben slipped out of the bed, his hand resting on Marcie’s shoulder so he didn’t break the contact and wake her. It’d be too much to hope she’d sleep past them leaving for the cemetery, but he could at least make sure she was well-rested for the quagmire of what-ifs that was ahead. He’d have to wake her to feed her, but then he’d let her go back to sleep as long as they had.

  She lay on her stomach, her head turned toward him but her eyes closed so her long lashes fanned her cheeks. Mikhael had shifted into a more comfortable spot on the bed for the sleeping Raina. The Dark Guardian didn’t look tired at all. Maybe he didn’t sleep. He had the sheet pulled up loosely over his hips. At the height of his climax, Ben remembered intricate symbols across the male’s shoulders, around his arms, but his skin was clean now of everything but a couple interesting scars.

  “What were those?” he asked, low.

  At Mikhael’s quizzical look, Ben nodded toward his chest. “The tattoos that appeared and then disappeared.”

  “They are magic-seared brands, declarations of my loyalty and service to Lucifer and the Underworld, for my immortal lifespan.” Mikhael tapped himself high on his chest. Ben remembered one tattoo that had been set apart from the others. It had looked like a star and a moon together. “That one is my oath to her.”

  Raina was sprawled over her Master, his arm around her as he watched her breathe. She had one arm folded up against her, the other low across his waist, so that her hand was beneath the sheet, resting on his upper thigh and hip bone, her fingers curled there. When she murmured in her sleep, Mikhael’s attention returned fully to her, and that attention had many different levels, all of them familiar to Ben.

  He bent and slid his arms around Marcie, lifted. She cuddled into him immediately, his brat. Like he was her teddy bear, one she could hold tightly through the night.

  “I’ve got you, baby.”

  “I know,” she murmured sleepily. “You take such good care of me, Master. I love you.”

  The simple sincerity was a miracle. Not just because she meant it, but because she’d made him believe it. He was her husband and Master, who owned every inch of her body. Who plundered it regularly, mercilessly. She was his. As much as he was hers.

  Elagra couldn’t touch that, and he would tear her apart if it even crossed the female’s mind. He wouldn’t waste a moment of guilt, self-reflection or doubt on the savage course of action.

  The loving Master rode shotgun with the cold-blooded killer, and he had no problem with the wheel turning from one to the other whenever the need called for it. Marcie didn’t understand that part of him, but had faced it, accepted it, soothed it.

  Mikhael’s gaze was upon him, giving Ben the unsettling notion that the Guardian was following the darker direction of his thoughts. Not one to be cowed, he met the male’s gaze and gave him a short nod.

  “There’s some food coming up, if it’s not already waiting for us outside the door. Help yourself when you’re ready.”

  The Dark Guardian inclined his head, somehow remote yet connected in this moment, through the obvious bond they had with their women. Much as Ben liked calling Marcie his wife—to an absurd level he wouldn’t ever admit—he like
d what Mikhael had called Raina. His mate. Soul mate, mated for life, a perfect match.

  Even if his bond with Marcie was beyond his understanding, Ben wouldn’t question it. Not anymore. Too many questions might reveal it had been some kind of divine clerical error, so he wasn’t going to keep pointing it out.

  But even if it was, tough. He’d fought what he’d thought were his baser instincts to keep from holding onto her, but he’d lost that fight. The only fight he’d ever been glad to lose.

  Now he’d fight all the forces of Heaven and Hell to keep her.

  Chapter Seven

  When he, Marcie, Mikhael and Raina slipped into a side gate of the St. Louis cemetery, Ben reflected that he could count on one hand how many times he’d come to this place during daylight. Whereas as a kid and even later—hell, pretty much until Marcie—he’d been there after dark as often as the ghosts.

  It looked different under a daylight sky, though it was a cloudy one. Despite the thirty-minute halt in the schedule, there were groups assembled out front, carriages waiting to take people to and from. Fortunately, the high walls around the place and the rabbit warren layout of the vaults meant once they were deeper in, they wouldn’t be visible to the crowds. Mikhael wouldn’t have to expend the energy to screen them from anyone but a wandering caretaker.

  When they’d entered, Mikhael had spoken some incoherent words, moved his hand in a deliberate stroke through the air, as if sketching a symbol. Ben felt a light ripple of energy move over him, lift the hairs of his arms, then they settled. Mikhael gave him a slight nod, telling Ben the screen was in place.

  “It works on sound, too,” the Dark Guardian said. “So we may speak freely.”

  “Handy.”

  Ben took the lead, moving through the maze of vaults in myriad sizes, a garden of weathered gray and white stone. Their feet crunched in the gravel. He knew all the family names along this path, had spoken to them in the past like a guy might speak to the regulars at a bar he frequented. Hey Harry, how’s things with you and the family? Still dead, I see. Want some of this whiskey? He’d pour some on the grave, because Harry was always a good listener.