WyndStones

by Wyndstone (lit)

  “Now do you see?”

  Chrysty appeared at the foot of the bed. His voice was low, not in her head, and she snapped her face toward her sleeping husband.

  “He is dead to the world, awareness drained from him with his seed,” Chrysty said. “Come with me, now. There is much to do, much more for you to learn, and I can feel your hunger, Lorna-love. The feast I promised you awaits.”

  Easing from the bed for she feared to wake Cail despite Chrysty’s assurance he was sound asleep, she thrust her feet into her slippers and reached for the robe flung over the desk chair, belting it around her nakedness.

  In the main room, the table had been set with all her favorite foods and her belly growled, mouth watered, as she approached the place setting. Chrysty pulled the chair away from the table for her then trailed his fingers along her upper back when she was seated.

  “What shall I serve you first?” he asked.

  The food made her roll her eyes as each new helping was placed before her. The baked ham was juicy, the vegetables cooked to perfection, the salad greens crisp and tomatoes succulent, the cornbread dripping with melted butter. Even the iced tea he poured from a cut glass pitcher had been brewed to absolute perfection, just the right amount of sugar and lemon to enhance the bold flavor.

  He sat with his chin propped in his hand, watching her eat, smiling as she groaned with pleasure. His eyes glowed with a light that she knew was affection.

  “If only I could learn to cook this well,” she said, sighing as she tasted the egg custard pie he slid over to replace her empty plate.

  “You can,” he said. “Think it, wish it and it will appear.” He shrugged. “Why spend your day slaving over a hot stove when all you need do is wave your hand and the meal will be there? Why wear your knuckles to the bone washing clothes when you can do the same and have them laundered, pressed and hung in the closet in a matter of moments? Why scrub and scour, sweep and mop when you don’t have to?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “I can do all that?”

  He nodded. “By the time this night is o’er, sweeting, you will discover there are a million such tricks waiting in your arsenal. If you can conceive it, it can be. All you need do is share you abilities with your Sisters so they, too, can be eased of the heavy yokes and crushing burdens that weigh them down.” He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms over his chest. “But you must never let the males know what you can do.” He gave her a steady look. “Such things are why the witches of long ago were burned at the stake.”

  She took up her napkin to wipe her lips. She was full, her hunger for food sated but there was another hunger beating at her. She was shocked to find she was aroused as she looked at him. There was a heavy feeling between her legs.

  “Learning first, passion later,” he said with a glint in his amber eyes.

  Lorna had a wild notion to stand, sweep the dishes from the table and demand he take her then and there. The thought reached out to him and he grinned.

  “If that’s what you want but it would be uncomfortable for you unless I bent you over the edge and take you from behind,” he said with a twitch of his full lips. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Her face flamed but his words made her weak in the knees. She swallowed hard. “L…learning,” she said, wanting to get it over with so she put her hands on him.

  Chrysty threw his head back and laughed. He unfolded his arms, scraped his chair back and got to his feet. He helped her up, threaded his fingers through hers then led her to the door. Lorna looked back at the open bedroom door, her footsteps faltering.

  “He’ll not waken ‘til morning,” Chrysty told her.

  “That’s only a few hours away,” she said. The grandfather clock told her it was already three a.m.

  “A lot can be taught in two hours time,” he said in a husky voice then crooked his finger under her chin to tilt her face up so their eyes locked. “A lot can be given in two hours time.”

  He rubbed against her and she sucked in a breath as the hard erection prodded her through the heavy fabric of his pants.

  The front door was opened by unseen hands and the screen door moved back without its usual squeak. Outside, the night air was still—not a creature stirred, not a firefly flitted among the stand of corn bordering the left side of the cabin, not a waft of wind moved. With her hand in his, he led her to the edging of wyndstones that glowed milky white in the moonlight.

  “Chrysty,” she said, nervousness making her heart race.

  “Trust me, sweeting,” he said, stepping over the wyndstones.

  Lorna stopped—hearing the blood pounding in her ears. She was breathing quickly, shallowly, a fine sheen of perspiration suddenly forming on her forehead.

  “I don’t know,” she said, staring down at the whitewashed stones.

  “Trust me,” he said again, tugging gently on her hand.

  She looked back at McGregor’s cabin. Did it really matter what lay on the other side of the wyndstones? Could life be any worse for her there than here? She tucked her lower lip between her teeth, indecision drying all the moisture from her mouth.

  “I could be damned for all time,” she mumbled.

  “Or you could be saved,” he said.

  She lifted her eyes from the wyndstones. “I’m afraid.”

  He reached out to cup her cheek. “Aye, I know you are, but the fear is behind you in that cabin, Lorna. Not in here with me.”

  She searched his eyes for a long moment then took a deep breath, lifted the hem of her robe and crossed over the wyndstones.

  * * * *

  Lorna sat with her legs tucked under her and to one side in the swing on the front porch of her new home and watched the sun’s rosy fingers scratching at the heavens. Birds flew from branch to branch. A pair of squirrels chased one another up a chinaberry tree trunk—spiraling around and around, chittering, bushy tails waving. One lone rabbit hopped out of the corn, saw Lorna then scampered away. On the porch rail, a small green lizard ran in fits and starts then sped up a column to the rafter where it perched, staring down at her with red eyes. A soft breeze brought with it the first faint scent of impending rain.

  She leaned her head against the swing’s chain, plucking at a bit of rust where the chain splayed like an upside down Y on the swing’s wooden arm. She was wistful, calm, at peace. Now and again she would raise her head and listen for Cail to be stirring in the bedroom but as yet, there had been no sound. She knew she had time yet for when she’d first returned to the cabin from her sojourn with Chrysty, she had tiptoed into the bedroom and stood at her husband’s bedside, staring down at him for the longest time.

  “Sleep long and hard, McGregor,” she said, sending that thought deep into Cail’s brain. “Sleep until the sun is above the horizon.”

  Going out to the porch, she had sat in the swing with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms around them, her chin propped atop one knee and stared at the spot where Chrysty had taken her from this world to his realm. It was darker there in the forest, the doorway into her demon lover’s abode hidden from prying eyes.

  The pathway had surprised her for it was a long, gently winding serpentine trail covered with crushed oyster shells that crinkled under foot. Under the light of the full moon, without any other illumination, the path shone brightly.

  It was to a small little hut he led her. A simple place, there were two comfortable chairs to either side of a table holding the Book of Shadows, and a full-size brass bed with a night table atop which sat an oil lamp. A soft fur cover stretched across the bed. There were no windows in the hut and only two doors—the entry and a door into a small but serviceable bathroom with only a sink and stool—but the room was as cool as an underground cave.

  “You live here?” she asked. The floor and wood paneled walls were bare so her voice sounded hollow.

  “I reside here,” he said.

  She looked about her. “But there’s no kitchen area.”

  Chrysty smiled. “I don’t eat cooked
food, sweeting. What nourishment I need I find in the forest.”

  Raw meat, her mind told her and her stomach roiled at the notion. But what else would a demon eat? She felt bile flood her mouth and had to look away.

  “Sit,” he said, sweeping a hand to the chairs. “The Book awaits you.”

  It seemed as though she sat for hours on end listening to his instructions. He showed her illustrations in the Book, went over spells and pronunciations. She didn’t think she could possibly remember a tenth of what he said but her mind was absorbing the directions and directives, the advice and guidelines as though it were a sponge. Information in perfect sequence and order began to fill her head. She could see the diagrams in her mind’s eye and knew which spell went with which drawing. She assimilated which candle, which incense and oils, which day and time and phase of the moon went with which incantation. Though it seemed hours, it was only a matter of moments for time had stood still in that barren little hut with Chrysty’s mesmerizing voice holding her rapt attention. When he voiced the last word and sat back, closing the Book, she knew there was nothing she did not know about the craft she was expected to utilize.

  “Tomorrow, pick three young women to teach,” he said. “Do it quietly and stress to them the importance of secrecy. When they are ready, when the time comes they are to be initiated into the Sisterhood, call me and I will bring to them their own Nightwinds.”

  It was that easy, he’d said, and that complicated. The need for concealment from the males of what was planned was of vital importance. Lives depended upon it. Success rode on a woman’s ability to keep secret the powers she would one day wield in her bid for freedom.

  “In three days, there will be a funeral,” he told her. “Maggie Regis will be a widow and the mantle of Laird will fall entirely upon the McGregor’s shoulders. With such power will come change and you will need to temper your anger for the time being.”

  “In other words, Cail will become even more overbearing,” she said grimly.

  “You must learn—as have most women from the dawning of time—how to control him, sweeting. Remember a fly can drown in honey but will shy away from vinegar.”

  Lorna got up from the chair to pace. “I can’t stand the feel of his hands on me!” she said. “Of him pressing me down!” She turned tearful eyes to her demon. “It makes me sick to feel him inside me!”

  Chrysty rose from his chair and went to her, wrapping his hands around her upper arms. He shook her gently, his eyes fused with hers. “What makes you think he will ever touch you again? Do you think I would allow it?”

  Her forehead creased. “But….”

  “He will go to bed each night and rise each morning believing he lay rutting between your sweet thighs when in reality it was the sheet he humped,” the Nightwind stated. “While he fucks his hand you will be in my bed, my cock deep inside your cunt!”

  Heat rose in Lorna’s cheeks at the unseemly words.

  “You belong to me and no other man will have your body save this man!”

  He let go of her and swooped her up in his arms, took her to the bed—their clothes dissolving as he walked—and laid her down, falling on her, wedging her legs apart, his steely erection probing at her opening.

  “You are mine, Lorna Tabor,” he said, giving her the clan name through clenched teeth.

  He thrust hard into her sheath. She cried out—not from pain but sheer ecstasy. His cock went deep and it filled her, stretched her, and pressed right up against her womb as he drove hard into her wet channel. He hooked a hand under her knee, jerked her leg up to slap it across his back, pushing her legs far apart with his knees as he penetrated her as deep as he could go.

  Lorna clung to his muscular arms. The sound of his body slapping against hers drove her wild with lust. She clawed at his flesh, digging little half-moon indentations into his shoulders when he slid a hand beneath her ass to lift her.

  His mouth was ruthless upon hers, his tongue an invading force. He swept it across her teeth, probed at the sensitive corners of her mouth, drove deep until she though he might well touch her tonsils. His hips were like pistons as he drove into her with such single-minded fervor he began to grunt with each forward thrust. Beneath them the brass bed shook, the headboard banging against the wall.

  “Mine!” he hissed against her lips and Lorna had to reach up to grab hold of the headboard as he slammed brutally into her.

  There was no pain, only intense gratification as his hard shaft slid in and out of her sheath. His crazed rutting was nothing but carnal pleasure taken to a dizzying height and he was taking her there, scaling the peaks of sensuous delights and wicked satisfaction.

  He had promised her pleasure and he delivered. Her body burst around a white-hot prod of intense bliss as her lower body flooded with juices milked from rippling vaginal walls filled to their limit. She screamed his name as the orgasm rocked through her, jerking on the headboard as wave after wave of release took her. The pulses had barely begun to fade away when he came—hard and copiously, spurting hot fluid deep into her core—and her cunt started to spasm all over again with rapid quivers that brought the stars down from the heavens to race across her vision.

  Outside, heat lightning lit the sky and strobed against the spaces where the hut’s door did not fit snug in its frame.

  Tumbling down from that supreme height to which she’d been taken, Lorna lay limp with her thighs spread wide, her arms outstretched on the pillows as though she were a willing victim awaiting sacrifice. Her breath was ragged, her heart pumping wildly in her chest, the blood racing through her ears but she lay there like the dead—unable to move a single muscle as he rose up over her, his gaze steady on her sweat-pebbled face.

  “Every night, my lady,” he said. “I will come for you every night and every night we will come to this bed and I will give you pleasure that will only increase as time goes on.”

  Lorna moaned. If there was more pleasure available for him to bestow, she wasn’t sure she would survive it. She felt completely drained. Her entire body was a heavy stone. She could not have gotten up from the bed had her very life depended upon it.

  “Every night,” he said then slid his hands under her ass to lift her again.

  Her eyes widened for she felt the press of his iron-hard shaft at the folds of her sex. She whimpered but before she could dredge up the energy to deny him, he had impaled her and the itch that she was beginning to associate with this handsome devil began again deep in her womb.

  “Every. Night.” He stressed each word with a long, slow thrust. “All. Night. Long.”

  His hips rotated against her, driving his cock deeper, then he picked up the speed. Her limp arms came up to circle his neck.

  “Every night,” she whispered. “If I don’t die from the pleasure.”

  He grinned—that wicked white-toothed grin that sent shivers of delight racing through her—and thrust his hip forward savagely.

  A sound from inside the house brought Lorna back to the present. She turned her head toward the screen door as it opened. Cail came out—bare-chested and barefoot—with his black pants unbuttoned at the waist.

  “Good morning,” he said, eyes holding a touch of uncertainty in them, lips not quite pulling back in a welcoming smile.

  Lorna knew what had to be done and she knew it would take awhile to accomplish. Until every woman on the Hill belonged heart and body and soul to the Sisterhood and could wield her craft with assurance, she would need to bide her time with the man who was her husband.

  “Do you want breakfast?” she asked, lowering her feet to the porch floor.

  Cail blinked. “Have you decided you will cook for me after all?” he inquired, suspicion turned his gray eyes a darker shade.

  She shrugged then got to her feet, the swing lazily bumping against the back of her legs as she stood there looking at him.

  “My mother always said it was best to make the best of a bad situation until you can do better,” she said, then winced at her
wording but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Does that mean you won’t spit in my food?” he asked.

  “You’ll never know, will you?” she countered and moved to go past him. She stopped when he caught her arm, holding it gently.

  “I’ll help you,” he said.

  He was running his thumb up and down her arm and Lorna was thankful she had the fabric of her robe between her and his flesh. It sickened her to have him touch her but she managed to plaster a tight smile on her face.

  “Fine by me,” she said, shrugging out of his grip.

  He opened the screen door for her, following close on her heels as she went to the kitchen area.

  “Bacon and eggs, toast and coffee would be good,” he said. “I make good coffee.”

  “So do I,” she said, moving to the stove to light a burner. She filled the coffee pot with water, added the coffee then placed it on the burner.

  “I’ll get the bacon and eggs from the cooler,” he told her and went to open the trapdoor.

  For a moment after he descended the steps, she had a wild desire to slam the portal shut and lock it but the urge passed. She pulled the cast iron skillet he had used the evening before to make his meal onto the hot burner. There was enough grease left in the bottom to fry his eggs. After the sumptuous meal she’d had earlier that morning, she was not hungry.

  “I can make the toast,” he said when he brought up the meat and eggs and butter. “I don’t mind sharing the work with you for a few days.”

  “To make sure I don’t blow snot in your scrambled eggs,” she mumbled as she sliced four thick sections of bacon from the slab then laid them in the hot frying pan.

  He actually laughed. “That, too.”

  Lorna clenched her teeth. There was nothing amusing about the situation but she knew she had to relax, to play along until the time was right. Gradually, Chrysty had urged her.

  “To change all at once would make him suspicious. Act as though he is wearing you down, winning you over.”

  It was sage advice she had decided to implement. Slowly she would pretend to warm to her husband. A little here; a little there. Nothing to make him distrustful or skeptical of her sudden change of heart.