Wickedly Good (Hex Appeal)

by Anya Breton

  Her next exhale was ragged, another good sign. Aston took his time exploring the texture of her skin and her ripe lips with his own before finally delving his tongue between. She tasted of salt and a hint of onion that was somehow sensual rather than off-putting. Beneath was the flavor of Gemma—sweet, savory and entirely sexy.

  Aston’s tongue swirled along with hers in practiced motions designed to weaken her knees. However, the sweet miss had her own agenda. He barely contained his groan when her fingers closed around his dick through the cotton chinos. And when she arched forward, brushing his thighs with hers, he nearly forgot he’d intended to show her the merits of leisurely lovemaking.

  Drawing away for a breath, Aston leaned his head on her bare shoulder. Her scent filled his nose, etching her on his sensory memory. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when she took hold of the button fastening his slacks. Gemma had led their lovemaking during the past two nights. But she’d thought he was Drew. Aston assumed she’d relate differently now that she knew the truth.

  Had he been right all along? Had Gemma known the identity of her late-night lover from the start?

  Her fingers curled around his dick, startling him out of his thoughts. When had she undone the zipper? How had he missed that?

  Aston let out the moan he’d been holding in. He liked that she took liberties with him that others hadn’t. But he needed to establish their roles, now that they were out of the dark.

  He dragged his head from her shoulder, up to her ear. He held her steady while he whispered, “That was inside you, Gemma. Three times. It’s been me. Always me.” He thrust forward, impaling himself in her hand. “It will always be me.”

  They both froze. Aston, because he had no idea what possessed him to add the final bit. He could only assume her rigid stance was because she wasn’t pleased to hear the domineering words.

  She released him, making a move to step back. The grip he had on her neck precluded that. Gemma’s wide-eyed, thin-lipped expression could have been either from shock or anger, he didn’t know her well enough to guess. That bothered him. Enough that he abandoned his plan.

  And threw her on the bed.

  Gemma stared up at the ceiling for a split second, as long as it took Aston to pounce beside her on the queen-sized mattress. The set of his jaw was determined, a change from the softness of his earlier kisses. But what he’d said moments ago chased away the majority of lusty feelings he’d built.

  It will always be him?

  No matter what he said about not asking her to hide, this relationship between them could never be public. Once he earned the position of regional high priest, he’d be in constant campaign mode.

  And knowing the Haizea family, they wouldn’t be content with simply being regional priest. They would want the position all the way at the top—the spot on the Centralized Coven Coalition. Gemma didn’t want any part of that, hidden or no.

  Aston yanked the polo shirt over his head with a swift gesture, and then he was arched over her chest, lips closing over her mouth. His talented tongue swirled over hers, depositing his unique flavor on her taste buds. For what must have been the tenth time, Gemma found herself breathless at the knowledge that this was Aston Haizea—her tall, dark and intimidatingly hot coven priest. A shot of sensation dove down her body, waking her clit all over again. She let loose a noise of need when he failed to touch her throbbing bud.

  Without breaking his kiss, Aston pushed his thick knee between her thighs, nudging her left one down until it was flat against the bed. He followed suit with the right one, leaving her spread for whatever he planned next. A heated palm closed over her panties. The light graze against the lace translated teasingly over her damp folds. Her sex pulsed with aching need. Gemma pressed her pelvis closer to him, hoping to soothe it.

  Her lover groaned and then rewarded her with a slow massage of the cream into her skin. Gemma tugged at his waist to get his cock where she needed it. But he was having none of that.

  Aston nipped at her lower lip before pulling his mouth away. “Slow,” he rumbled into her ear. “You owe me. Remember?”

  “I thought I paid my dues in the parking garage.”

  He emitted a low growl. “No. I didn’t get to do this.”

  Gemma gasped when he slid down her body to land at her belly. He made wide, kissing motions over the flabby protrusion she wished she could be rid of. It wasn’t sexy, not by half. At least not until he laved his tongue over her skin while staring up at her from beneath the fringe of a darkly hooded gaze.

  Aer above. Was anyone as gorgeous as Aston Haizea?

  Her breath held when he began unfastening her wide belt. He spread the black elastic to either side. Gemma’s lungs remained still as he yanked at the skirt. Both garments easily slipped down legs he manipulated open, and then closed.

  Clad in only her undergarments beneath the hungry stare of her coven priest, Gemma wanted to shrink into the mattress.

  Aston sat back, his thighs hugging hers and his hand still on her leg. He idly caressed her knee, something she wasn’t sure he meant to be arousing. The bumps prickling her leg proved it was. He took her in, all of her. Gemma waited for the inevitable snort of disgust. But it never came.

  “Remove your bra.”

  Gemma’s eyebrows drifted up at the slow command. Did he think she’d observe homage to him when they were in bed? They’d just see about that.

  His head tilted to the left when she failed to argue or heed his command. “Gemma.” Aston’s tone and unchanging expression gave her little to go off.

  So she merely lifted her brows a little higher in question.

  He cupped her pussy, slowly working his thumb into her folds through the fabric. Aston discovered her throbbing clit. And then he circled it as he had her nipples—that steady, wonderful pressure that would only worsen with time. Or improve greatly, depending upon how one looked at it.

  “Remove your bra. Or this is all you’ll get from me tonight.”

  She let out an incredulous laugh that sounded a hint nervous. He wouldn’t hold her to that. Not with the hard-on straining his open zipper. Unless…

  Maybe he didn’t find her as attractive as he claimed. Suddenly her exhilaration threatened to plummet.

  Torn between asserting her independence and seeking acceptance, Gemma didn’t know how to react. A small, urging voice reminded her she’d gotten this far with bravery. The brave action would be to assert her independence.

  Gemma reached for her skirt rather than undo her bra. “I’m not interested in ultimatums,” she explained.

  And nearly laughed gleefully when his jaw dropped open.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Had Aston ever botched a day quite as badly as this one? If he had, he couldn’t recall it. Nothing had gone as planned. And things weren’t looking up.

  What was he doing wrong?

  Gemma wanted him. He’d felt the evidence on his fingers. Why wouldn’t she remove her bra? More importantly, what was he going to do to stop her from dressing?

  “Gemma,” he protested dumbly. “It wasn’t an ultimatum.”

  “Do this or I won’t do that,” she said as she lifted herself into an upright position. “That’s an ultimatum.”

  Aston made himself speak calmly rather than go on the defensive. “It was meant to be playful.”

  “It was meant to exert dominance over me.”

  He opened his mouth to argue but nothing came out. His initial words would have been to refute her statement—they would have been a lie. Gemma was exactly right. He had been exerting dominance.

  “I’m a dominant male,” he told her rather than start down the path of falsehoods. “It’s my nature to lead.”

  The beautiful witch stilled. He must have done something right if she was no longer trying to dress. “Is it? Or is it just the role your mother has put you in?”

  He blinked back surprise, staring dumbly for a pair of seconds. Was his dominance because of his mother? Was that what Gemma
was asking? “No…” But he faltered on the word because he couldn’t rightly remember. “I…I’ve always been like this.”

  “Then why did you let me dominate you for the past two nights?”

  His flagging erection sprang back to life because it was the first instance Gemma that admitted they’d been together. “I didn’t want to frighten you off.”

  “In the dark?” Her soft, almost laughing tone mocked him. “When I thought you were Drew?”

  “You didn’t think I was Drew.” Aston restrained a wince at the hard edge to his words. But he was tired of hearing that excuse. She’d known the moment her hand pressed over his face in the darkness that she couldn’t have been with his brother.

  Gemma’s chin rose half an inch. But she failed to argue the point.

  “You fled my office the day before.” His pitch lowered into a bitter range. “Like I was some sort of fairytale ogre. I had a valid concern. And so I let you take the lead.”

  “That would explain the first night. But not the second.”

  Aston ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He couldn’t believe he had her half-naked, in bed at a bed-and-breakfast, and they were having a discussion instead of fucking.

  “I tried to take the lead,” he reminded her in his most practiced calm voice. “You stopped me. It felt good enough that I didn’t argue.”

  “You’re arguing now?”

  “Now that everything is on the table, yes.”

  One auburn eyebrow arched. “You’re not worried about frightening me off?”

  “Of course I’m worried about that.”

  “If I leave now, it won’t be because I’m frightened by you.” But she still contemplated leaving.

  Aston resisted a slew of dominant urges to keep that from happening. “Why would you leave?”

  “Because I don’t require your acceptance to feel good about myself.”

  Aston opened his mouth to argue he’d never implied such a thing.

  She spoke first. “I’m not going to give up my independence and submit to your ultimatum because I want you to like me. You’re going to have to give me a better reason.”

  Now he understood. It was so like a woman to take a tiny little thing like foreplay and turn it into a make-or-break situation. But he supposed she was doing him a favor. This was an issue that would have been raised sooner or later. Best they address it sooner than when he was well and truly caught.

  Aston drew in a long, sighing breath. “What if the reason is I have a selfish need to control?”

  Her plump lips pursed and parted at uneven intervals. Aston imagined them closing over his dick. The organ wiggled in anticipation. He dearly hoped she didn’t try to leave the room without letting him fuck her. Spread out in her lacy things, she was a veritable seductress.

  “That depends,” the gorgeous vixen replied.

  “On?”

  “Do you really need to control? Is it truly in your nature? Or did someone suggest you were a controller?”

  His patience was wearing thin, and since she was trying to get personal, Aston would give her a personal answer. “I’ve wanted to dominate you since I saw you in my foyer next to Drew. And at the brook yesterday, I seriously thought about tying you to a tree and fucking you until the only thing you associated with that place was me and fucking.”

  A pink flush built in her cheeks as if she’d just finished a short sprint.

  “Does that answer your question?” he pressed rather than imagine what color she’d be after he finished with her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Louder, Gemma. Did that answer your question?”

  There was a quick inhale and then she replied at a louder volume, “Yes.”

  “I’m dominant,” he went on now that the floodgates were open. “However it was instilled in me doesn’t matter any longer because it’s now part of who I am. I won’t ask you to call me Master. I won’t collar you. I won’t cuff you to the bed. That is, unless you want me to do those things. But I will require you to submit to me.”

  “In bed?”

  “In bed.”

  She hesitated. Her pink tongue moistened her lips. “Out of bed?”

  The simple gesture undid him. Desire squeezed his intelligence. Aer. He needed her. Aston gave a half-contemplated answer. “To be honest, I don’t know.”

  She nodded as if she knew that better than him. He smiled a little because she probably did.

  “I don’t have a lot of experience with women outside of bed.” He admitted what she also knew.

  “I’m my own person,” Gemma announced as if there’d been any question of that. “My life isn’t yours to control any more than it would have been as just another of your witches.”

  Something squeezed inside him, a need he only just recognized. He’d badly wanted to control every aspect of her. Aston had already imagined positioning her exactly where he wanted her—a job at a gallery in Manchester until they could create one for her, his table for meals, the wardrobe he’d buy her to replace the one the airline had lost and of course his bed. Perhaps he was far more dominant than he’d guessed, because he was even now scheming ways to make her accept each one of those points.

  It wasn’t an answer to the larger issue but it was the only one he was willing to give now. “I want to fuck you, Gemma. Now. Tomorrow we’ll discuss the future. At length. I promise you. But in this state, with you undressed in bed and me craving you painfully, I can’t think straight. Please, let me have you.”

  Her chest shook in a ragged exhale, mouth parting again to the perfect width for his dick. And then she replied, “Okay. This time.”

  He nearly fell over in relief. Instead, he rallied to strip off the remainder of his clothing while she removed her bra. And then he went down on her before she changed her mind.

  The lips closing over Gemma’s clit wiped away the heavy conversation in an instant. Her back arched, shoving her pussy that much closer to his mouth. He’d not bothered to draw her panties down. The tongue sliding over the lace felt positively sinful.

  She played with her nipples, a move that kept her from yanking his hair. Gemma gnawed on her lower lip to quiet her whimpers. But she couldn’t soften the moan when he drew the lace aside, smoothing his fingers through her folds. Despite the serious chat they’d had, the evidence of arousal was still plentiful.

  Aston waited until she strained against him a sixth time, and whimpered six times as loudly as the first, before slipping his index finger within her pussy at a slow, teasing pace. Her muscles immediately clamped over it. A long, shaky sigh broke through her.

  A second finger soon joined the first. Both mimicked the sex act Gemma wished he’d begin. But she had to admit he was rather talented with that tongue of his. The steady circling over her clit would do the trick in no time flat.

  He ensured her orgasm when he drew the panties down her thighs. Aston made quick work of pushing her knees together so he could remove the lace completely. Seconds later she was spread and his mouth fastened on her clit with delicious pressure.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she moaned. “Faster.”

  He laughed against her skin. And then he went slower.

  Gemma gritted her teeth in irritation. The next swirl of his tongue wiped away the negative emotion, leaving behind only need. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please, Aston, faster!”

  Was that a pained sound that tore from his chest? It must have been a good kind of pain, for his tongue wildly swirled. Gemma soon writhed on the bed, digging her nails into the quilt as she shoved her head into the nearest pillow.

  Desire zinged up her torso, straight to her brain. If her eyelids hadn’t been squeezed shut, her vision would have dimmed. Aston’s sounds of pleasure vibrated against her clit. The wonderful wave of heat rolled across her body, tightening muscles as it went. Her inner walls clamped over the fingers rapidly working in and out of her pussy.

  She lost count of how many times she moaned his name into the cool co
tton pillowcase. It wouldn’t be long before she broke.

  Gemma brought the pillow down, panting loudly in between words. “I’m so close. I’m so close. Don’t stop.”

  He drew her clit between his teeth for a powerful suck, all the while finger-fucking her G-spot with expert precision.

  Gemma’s back shot off the bed. “Dear Aer, that feels so fucking…goooood!”

  One last lave, a final thrust against her G-spot and Gemma soared over the edge. She howled her orgasm to the ceiling without a care for who heard.

  The sight of her, the column of her neck stretched taut and her glistening breasts thrust upward, was too sensual to ignore. Aston climbed onto the bed, straddling her as he did. He made sure she saw him and noted what he intended to do. He positioned his dick at her entrance.

  Gemma released one of her sexy, ragged exhales as he breached her core. The shaking of her chest tugged at his primal need to claim her. He thrust cleanly into her pussy with one motion, marveling at how her muscles held him tight. He drew the panting witch upright, pausing to enjoy the view. He was responsible for her breathlessness.

  Her gaze slid away. Avoidance. Again. Aston cupped her face, forcing her focus back. Once he had her full attention, he withdrew from her heated core only to thrust right back in. Aston’s lungs stalled and his lashes fluttered at the perfect heat surrounding him.

  Withdrawing was splendid torture. A feminine gasp reminded him he’d wanted to see her. She looked half sated and half desperate—a sultry expression he tried to memorize. The effort threw off the rhythm he’d established.

  “Don’t stop, Aston,” she whispered just before fastening her mouth over his.

  Aston stilled. She’d kissed him. Him. Gemma had looked him in the eyes, spoken his name and still demanded he continue. Whatever excuses she’d given about the previous two nights, now it was real. Now she was with him. Not Drew. And she damn well knew it.

  He set about making sure she never forgot it.

  Aston’s hands on her cheeks, his face dominating her vision and his body filling hers—Gemma decided the position, initially awkward, was now intimate. She wanted to imagine she was with anyone else, rather than Aston Haizea, but his grip made that impossible. And she suspected he did it on purpose.