To Seduce a Witch's Heart

by Nadine Mutas

  Still holding her wrists together with one hand, he let her feel his weight as he shoved in all the way. The pressure of his body pinning her down, his fingers tight around her wrists, oh, it was enough to incite every primal female instinct in her that relished being overpowered and taken. He thrust in hard and then withdrew deliciously slowly, until only the tip of him was still buried inside her. He repeated the move, and the mix of roughness and slow friction made her burn oh-so-good. Just a little further, just a little more…

  He stopped, almost outside her.

  Her breath caught at the abrupt interruption of their slow spiral into shared pleasure, and she frowned at him, all her focus coming back to his face, his eyes—which now held a glint of wicked calculation.

  “Good,” he said, voice darkly sensual. “I see I have your attention. Let’s talk.”

  “Say what?” He wanted to talk? Right now?

  “I’ve been wondering,” he went on casually, “about what’s going on in that pretty witch head of yours.”

  Right at this moment? There were vivid images of how she could make a certain demon on top of her suffer a slow and painful death.

  “It’s day.” He moved ever so lightly, pushing just a little more inside.

  It was enough to make her pant. “So?”

  “You don’t need to feed me.” He brushed a finger along the inside of her thigh, up, farther up, to where all her nerves seemed to be bundled in one spot, aching to be touched. He skirted around it. “Why did you come to me just now? You had no reason to.”

  She tried to focus, to keep her wits together. It was damn near impossible. “I guess I was bored.”

  He nipped at her lower lip. “Wrong answer.”

  She wiggled her hips to get closer to him, to feel him. A sharp swat on her butt made her freeze.

  He held her hips in place with one hand. “Why, Merle?”

  “Fine. All right.” She trembled with how much she wanted him to move. “I had an itch that needed scratching.”

  His expression darkened. “By just anyone?”

  She was so high-strung with desire, she couldn’t lie anymore. And there was something in his eyes that made her heart cringe, made her want to tell him the truth. “No.” It was a whisper. “I wanted to be with you.”

  He touched her cheek, his thumb tracing her trembling lips. “Why?”

  She swallowed, mouth gone dry. “You take the weight off me. When I’m with you, it doesn’t hurt as much.” Her heart, it split wide open as she said those words.

  For a moment, he stared at her with silent intensity, with those eyes the color of a yet-undiscovered lagoon. The kiss he gave her then was so unexpectedly tender, it broke her inside. His lips lingered on her mouth, his breath embracing her own, and his hand closed around her throat in gentle possessiveness.

  “Now,” he said in a timbre that was a caress in itself, “tell me what thought made you blush a blazing scarlet earlier.”

  “You sneaky bastard,” she groaned. She still felt the pulse of her desire between her legs, around the delicious hardness that he refused to move. And she knew he’d remain waiting until she told him.

  “Ah, I love how you talk in bed, my little witch.” A smirk that could steal her sanity. “Now spit it out.”

  Her face glowed with heat again. “I was thinking of how much I want to lick you—everywhere.” A pause, more searing fire in her cheeks. “You know. One spot, um, especially.”

  Raw hunger swirled in his eyes, dark shadows underneath that clear lagoon water. His hand tightened around her wrists.

  “But,” she went on, spurred by a sudden, wicked impulse, “I won’t ever do that unless you move now, dammit.”

  “You,” he ground out on a barely held-back groan, “are devious.”

  “That’s rich coming from you.”

  Her amusement shattered in a scream of pure joy when he finally thrust again. Every single nerve ending in her body flared awake as he rocked against her, increasing speed, fueling the fire in her core. Just when she thought she might sob from the sheer pressure of the building yet blocked release, he put his hand between their bodies and rubbed her clit.

  The world exploded into shards of pleasure. She bucked and trembled under the force of her climax, moaning the name that haunted her soul.

  He let go of her wrists, only to catch her hands with his own, and at the height of his release, he intertwined their fingers. Putting his forehead to hers, he muttered something, a harsh curse turning the air blue and possibly involving the words “witch” and “undoing.” Merle wasn’t sure. Her mind was shaken, her thoughts scrambled, and she might not even have noticed if the building had collapsed around them.

  All she knew, at this moment, was that if the building and everything else did collapse around them, he was the one thing she’d want to hold on to.

  The realization of it jolted her, made her heart beat faster with fear and bittersweet agony. She was falling for Rhun, and the impact might smash her to smithereens. For he was the one thing she couldn’t hold on to. However this all might turn out, she wasn’t allowed to keep him—the Elders would make sure she’d bind him in the Shadows again.

  And even if, by a miracle, she’d be able to give him his freedom back, she wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d even consider staying with her. Why should he? To him, she was probably a nuisance, the witch who held him bound, who threatened to send him back into the Shadows. While he obviously enjoyed being intimate with her, that didn’t mean he felt anything but a physical attraction.

  So, in short, he was a heartbreak waiting to happen. If her having to bind him back in the Shadows didn’t do the job, his leaving her eventually would.

  Rhun stirred, reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the bottle of water, opened it and held it up to her mouth. “Drink.” His voice was still hoarse, a deep tremor rumbling down to her bones.

  She took the bottle and drank with greedy gulps, harboring a thirst going beyond the physical. He was still inside, his weight half-settled on her, skin on skin, his heat seeping into every cell. A caging position that should have intimidated her, but with every breath that brought her chest up to his, that increased the searing contact of their bodies, she felt a rush of purest joy in her veins.

  Oh, she was so, so screwed.

  Maybe she could still salvage some of her heart, her soul, her mind, maybe if she pulled back now and went cold, buried the fledgling hope for the impossible, maybe then she’d get out of this halfway sane. She’d lived through worse in her life, hadn’t she? All she had to do was put some distance between them, and a major wall of ice.

  While Rhun put the water bottle back on the nightstand, Merle scrambled out from under him with panic beating under her skin. She managed to crawl to the edge of the bed before Rhun’s hand closed around her ankle.

  “And just where do you think you’re going?”

  She kept her face turned away from him, lest he read the maelstrom of emotions on her face. “I’ll sleep in the other room.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. You’re staying right here.” With a move of casual strength, he pulled her into his embrace, her back to his chest, one of his arms sneaking around her waist, pressing her to him. “I’m a snuggle bear, remember?” He nuzzled her neck, inhaled her scent.

  Inside, she trembled. His breath coursed the skin of her shoulder, his hand spread over her heart, and she was desperately trying to not let him take it.

  “This doesn’t change anything between us,” she whispered. Maybe if she said it out loud, it would make it true. One more time, with more strength. “This doesn’t change anything.”

  “And here I was thinking you’d wanna have my babies now.” A melodramatic sigh. “This always happens to me after sex.”

  The giggle escaped her before she knew what was happening. Through the turmoil of emotions twisting her heart, through the fear and the anguish and the panic wrecking her on the inside, unexpected laughter rose up, streams of suns
hine breaking through clouds. She giggled like mad, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming in short pants in between bouts of laughs, and the fact that Rhun chuckled behind her only made it worse.

  They lay like this for so many minutes, laughing together while wrapped into one.

  When they both had quieted down, Rhun kicked off his jeans and then immediately claimed her for his arms again, turning her to face him. His hand tangled in her hair, one leg put over hers, he planted a kiss on the top of her head and sighed with unconcealed contentment.

  Against all odds, Merle felt strangely at peace. There was just no room in her heart for anything else at the moment. Well, except for her fear for Maeve, of course. Ever-present, it sat like a thorn embedded in her flesh, stung again each time she moved. Still, the strange, unbidden, warm and fuzzy happiness she felt in Rhun’s arms, it had managed to subdue her sorrow, if only for a bit, just enough so it wouldn’t crush her anymore with every breath she took.

  “Rhun?” A whisper breaking the caress of silence.

  “Mhm?”

  Hesitating for a moment, she then said quietly, “I don’t think you’re evil.”

  The following silence was cut with a razor-edge. “I’m not exactly good either, little witch.”

  “You don’t kill indiscriminately, do you?”

  His body tensed by the slightest fraction. “No.”

  “How many innocent lives have you taken?”

  The longest pause, woven with threads of darkness. When his answer came, it surprised her. “One.”

  She blinked, took a breath, and inhaled his scent, now laced with the aroma of sex. It was an intoxicating mix. “I assumed—I thought you must have taken more to be bound in the Shadows. My grandmother…”

  “…saw what she wanted to believe. She didn’t bother asking.”

  His cryptic statement made her frown. “What happened back then, Rhun? Tell me.” When his silence crept into her heart, she spread her hand on his chest. “Please.”

  A moment of consideration. Then, trust. “Rowan found me in a room drenched in blood,” he began slowly, quietly, “full of bodies, so many you couldn’t see the floor. When she saw me, I was in the process of breaking the last one alive, after I’d drained him dry. I snapped his spine as she stepped in. She took one look at the room, at me, covered in blood, and bound me.”

  He paused, and the quiet echoed with so much pain, turned bitter with time. Her fingers curled against his chest.

  “What she didn’t know,” Rhun continued, “what I didn’t get to tell her because she never let me, was that I’d been in that room for days, weeks for all I know, immobilized and chained to the floor, starving. I’d woken up there after I’d been jumped and knocked out. The demon fuckers who’d taken me made sure to drive me insane with hunger, so much so that I hallucinated. Then they brought the humans.” A small silence, broken only by his tight intake of breath. “They killed one by one in front of me, slowly, so I could taste their blood and pain in the air without being able to feed on it. The last one, they kept for me. Before they released me, they called Rowan. They wanted me to be found by a witch who would bind me.” Underneath her hand, the muscles in his chest turned to granite. “Bastards did a good job.”

  Merle was shocked speechless for a while. His heart beat against her palm, ten times, twenty times, thirty. She lost count. Inside her, a new sense of betrayal rose, and it had nothing to do with her own life.

  “You don’t believe me.” His hand tightened in her hair. “Didn’t expect you to. After all, I’m just a de—”

  “You didn’t mean to kill that man, did you?”

  Only when he exhaled, heavily, did she notice he’d been holding his breath. “I wouldn’t have taken his life if I hadn’t been starved out of my mind.”

  The twist in his voice, the need in it, made her realize—this was the first time in twenty years that he spoke of what had happened, the first time he could tell his side of the story. Just the thought of what it must have been like for him to be locked away in painful darkness with a truth in his heart that he couldn’t voice to anyone else, it made her ache for him.

  “They set you up,” she whispered, and her nails dug into his skin. Rage licked up her spine. “Why?”

  “Told you. I’m not exactly demonkind’s darling. My career choice was a pain in the ass for many of my brethren.”

  She swallowed, gut churning with silent outrage. On an impulse, she wrapped her arms around him, a gesture of comfort as much for him as for herself, for she felt a kind of hurt that could unhinge—and holding on to him, it steadied her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Rhun grew still, so very, very quiet that she thought he might have been snuffed out like a candle. Then his arms tightened around her, crushed her to him, and against her cheek, his heart drummed faster than her own.

  Chapter 14

  Merle awoke to the faint sound of her cell phone ringing. With an effort, she pried her eyes open. The pull of sleep was so strong, it took her a moment to see anything at all, to get her brain working in a logical way. Her bones were molten in her body, every single muscle weighed down by blocks of concrete. She peered at the clock on the nightstand. It was half past four in the afternoon—they’d only slept about three hours. No wonder I feel like something the cat has dragged in.

  The phone was still ringing, the sound coming through the open door to the hallway where she’d dumped her purse earlier. With a groan of exhaustion, Merle disentangled herself from Rhun, who had wrapped himself around her in his sneaky, monopolizing way. She wriggled free of one of his arms and one leg, but as soon as she pried off the other two limbs, the first two snuck around her again.

  “Rhun. Phone. Need to answer.”

  He grunted.

  “It might be something important. Let me go.”

  Grumbling, he did as she asked, not opening his eyes. “If it’s Bahram,” he said, his voice all sleep-gravelly sexy, “tell him to go fuck himself.”

  “Rhun!”

  “What? He knows better than to call me during the day.” He turned over and buried his face in the pillow.

  “He’s your friend!”

  “That’s why he knows better,” came the muffled reply.

  Shaking her head, Merle got up and walked into the hallway, retrieving her cell from her purse. One look at the display and the caller ID had her stomach dropping to her feet.

  “Hello Sarah,” she answered the call, wide awake now. “Has something happened? Is everything all right with my dad?”

  “Hi,” the nurse said. “Well, actually, no, that’s why I’m calling.” A pause, filled with a sigh. “He did it again. I’m sorry. You know we’ve been trying to keep a closer eye on him, but we’ve just gotten three new residents and things have been a little busy. He managed to sneak by me and ran.”

  Deep inside Merle, a part of her puffed up with pride, even as anxiety beat under her skin. “Have you informed anyone else yet?”

  “No. I called you first thing, like always.”

  “Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate it.”

  “Of course, sweetie. Just make sure to bring him back soon, before my boss gets wind of this.”

  If it was discovered that one of the residents of the home had the nasty habit of escaping on a regular basis, and that Sarah had not reported it, it would be her ass on the line. The nurse was a former class mate and high school friend of Merle’s, and she and Merle had an unofficial agreement for situations such as these—when Merle’s father fled the nursing home, it was Merle who would find and return him. She wouldn’t let anyone else drag him back like an escaped inmate from a prison. It was bad enough he had to live like this.

  Sarah helped her, did this as a favor for her because Merle was the reason she’d made it through high school, but it was risky and could cost Sarah her job if something went wrong.

  “I know,” Merle now said. “Don’t worry. I’m getting him right away. Thank you so much.�
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  She hung up and immediately dialed another number. Lily picked up after the second ring.

  “Hey. You all right?”

  “Lil, what’s the situation at my house right now?”

  A pause, the sound of footsteps as Lily apparently retreated out of someone else’s earshot. “Isabel is over there,” she then said, her voice hushed. “Why? Do you need something from your house?”

  “No. My dad’s escaped again.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah, exactly. I need to pick him up. Can you…?”

  “…set my aunt’s hair on fire so she runs screaming from your house? You got it.”

  Merle grinned despite herself. “Lil.”

  “I can distract her, yes. Draw her away from the house, but only for a bit, so you need to hurry, okay?”

  “Thank you. You’re the best.”

  “I know.” Lily’s smile shone through her voice.

  “Hey, by the way,” Merle said, walking into the living room, “any info on how to break the blocking spell?”

  “Nope, sorry. I haven’t found squat so far. But I’m on it. Raiding the whole Murray library, and you know how extensive that one is.” Merle was about to express her gratitude for her help again, as Lily added, “And stop thanking me, silly.”

  Smiling, Merle said goodbye and hung up. She collected half her clothes from the living room and went to the bedroom for the other half. Rhun lay on his back on the bed, propped up on his elbows, frowning at her as she got dressed. And damn if he didn’t look especially yummy nude amidst tangled sheets.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “We have to go.”

  “I got that much. What for?”

  Without looking at him, she said, “My dad ran away from the nursing home he’s living in, and I need to pick him up and bring him back.”

  Rhun moved off the bed instantly. “Your father? He’s alive?”

  “Yes.” Barely.

  “Why is he living in a nursing home?”

  She walked into the hallway. “We have to hurry, come on. Lily can only get Isabel away from my house for a little bit. We have to move now.”