Wicked Good Witches- Complete Series Bundle

by Ruby Raine

It was a risk, using and trusting Courtney in this task. One, they hardly knew anything about her and had to accept what she told them at face value. Two, she was new and yet untested vampire. Volatile and potentially dangerous if put in the wrong position.

  But it was a safer alternative than using Melinda. Or Lizzy. Or anyone else who was only human, or a witch.

  Michael whipped up a small dinner for Emily, determined to make her eat. No one else was in the mood, including him, and he doubted she would either. But he had to try. He hoisted a tray up the stairs but when he got to their bedroom, she wasn’t there. He heard water running in the shower. He put the tray on his dresser and went in to see if she needed anything.

  A step through the doorway to the bathroom, he stopped.

  Through the steam, Emily was sitting on the floor in the middle of the shower, staring at nothing. She heard him and rustled to her feet, pretending to shower.

  He saw only one option. A few seconds later, he slipped in behind her.

  “God, Em. You’re shaking.”

  “I’m fine. Nothing a hot shower can’t fix.” She refused to look at him. There was a whiff of an emotion fluxing, but she capped it, sealing it deep somewhere Michael could not reach.

  He swept his hand to her chin and turned it gently, so he could see her eyes. “I don’t want to push, Emily. I just want to be here for you.”

  “I got lost in thought. It’s nothing.” She forced a smile and went to grab the shampoo but he stopped her, grabbing it himself. He poured it onto his hand and rubbed it into her hair, massaging into each long strand. He reached over her head, and removed the handheld showerhead, rinsing away the shampoo. He wished rinsing away her pain was as easy.

  She leaned into him, unconsciously, her eyes closed, lost in the moment. He put the showerhead back in its place, his arms circling her waist, bringing her up against him. She trembled, her hands bracing his. Michael nudged his lips around the hair stuck to her back, kissing her shoulder up her neck, in a purposeful motion. He reached her chin and she turned to meet him. His lips tender against hers.

  She rotated, facing him, keeping their bodies touching, searching his eyes for something.

  He waited for the onslaught of emotion to hit him. To tell him what she needed. But he didn’t need it, he could see it in her gaze. Feel it in her breaths. The way her body moved against him.

  And then the emotions slammed into him.

  Longing.

  To be whole again. To be loved utterly and completely.

  “Emily...” her name fell off his lips like silk. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her tightly against him. There suddenly seemed no way to get close enough to her. Not even if they’d shared the same skin. Her arms glided around his neck, lips locking together. The kiss was deep. Penetrating into their souls. Heaven would have been getting stuck in this moment, forever.

  The outward calm hid the desire building inside. Slowly leaking out into heavier breaths and tighter grips of each other. Michael’s hand splayed against her back, locking her against him, unable to bear the thought of their bodies not touching so closely.

  He pushed them back against the shower wall. His other arm sliding down over her thigh, picking her up so she balanced on the lip of an empty shelf. He pushed his body into her, opening her to him, keeping that skin to skin connection they both craved. Her legs went around him, enclosing, and pulling him in even tighter.

  A burst of yearning flew out of her, sending his senses into a trance-like overdrive. She needed him inside her, but didn’t want to lose the feeling of him against her. He reached down and guided himself to her entrance. Pushing inside with a gradual motion, pulling her ass to meet him until he was buried so deep neither wanted to move again; the act fusing them together. Michael branding her heart, Emily imprinting her entire being into his mind, his core; their souls melding together in a single desire.

  His lips captured hers in a slow torture meant to drink in every moan. He moved his hips with a deliberate motion that kept their bodies glued to each other. If death came at this instant, he’d die in bliss. His right hand dug into her thigh, his left hand raised up over her head grasping the top of the shower. Emily’s arms and legs tightened around him.

  Michael wished so desperately to fix her. To make her whole again. To let his beautiful light shine again. To make her understand how much he loved her and would do anything to make her happy and prove she’d never be alone. That he was her security; but also that they belonged to each other, and no matter what was thrown at them he’d always take care of her.

  He groaned against her lips, throbbing inside her. He couldn’t hold on much longer and Emily was close. Her nails dug into his skin and she panted out a gasping cry against his lips. Michael thrust hard a few more times sending them over the edge together, and although sated, the fire burned on.

  If only making love to her over and over and over could fix her.

  It couldn’t.

  But maybe there was something that could.

  The words slipped across his tongue before the thought or meaning even fully registered in his brain.

  “Emily, marry me.”

  She gave a start.

  He pulled back just enough to see her eyes.

  “Marry me, Emily Morgan. You belong here, with me. My world is your world. Let me spend the rest of my life taking care of you. I’ll always protect you. I love you so much I can’t even think straight imagining a life without you in it.”

  Emily said nothing.

  Only stared, blankly. Blinking flatly. Her breaths heavy, her emotions swinging erratically.

  Michael tensed. Not because of the answer she had yet to give, but to the floodgate drowning him in an overabundance of suddenly freed feelings bursting at their seams. Everything Emily had been holding back from Michael. All the things she did not want him to know. Or feel, or sense. Everything she’d tried to spare him from.

  Her body heaved in thick breaths. The misty haze dulling her brown eyes these last weeks, lifting, replaced by tinder about to ignite.

  Anger. So much of it. Over the loss of her father. Over the existence of someone as evil as Eva Jordan. Or the Feyk. Over her inability to rise above this and move on.

  Fear. She’d lost the last of her family. Without the ring stolen by Stricker, her body was open for business to spirits seeking out a new home. Even with it, she’d been powerless to do anything, or stop anything. She was unable to help her father. Or Lucas, Melinda, or William, or herself. Or anyone.

  Resentment and blame...

  Emily released her grip on Michael, sucking in the last emotion. Like a car screeching to a halt, but skidding off the road. She pushed their bodies apart, each breath an uneasy quiver. A coldness encasing her where a minute ago, she’d needed him fused to her; now she could not get far enough away.

  Resentment and blame...

  The rest of the feelings belonging with those, hidden from him, precariously swinging by a thread about to break. Emily scurried out of the shower. She couldn’t face him when it did.

  Michael let her go, breath stuck in his lungs. Water pummeling his skin but only washing away the surface of him.

  The last of her hidden emotions breaking free.

  The thread spiraling apart. Unraveling a deluge of misery.

  Pain... she was going to hurt him and there was no way to stop it. She’d tried. So hard. To keep it locked up. Praying it would go away. It was so wrong to feel like she did. And unfair. And yet the most honest thing she’d allowed herself to feel in days.

  Michael was frozen solid under the steaming water.

  He missed Emily drying off furiously, still half-wet, throwing on the first clothes she could find. Grabbing a suitcase.

  Resentment and blame...

  Emily blamed him.

  His family.

  Herself.

  And the entire damn magical island she’d called home, for stealing her father’s life. She despised this place and what it had take
n from her.

  The last of the thread broke with a plink, like a violin string plucked at sharply.

  It might as well have snapped in two, both broken strings stabbing at the same time. One through his heart, the other through his back. Emily’s blame and resentment coiled around one person, more than anyone.

  He swayed under the water, grasping to turn it off. Stumbling out of the shower, throwing a towel around his waist. His feet shuffled into the bedroom.

  Emily smashed a suitcase closed. It might as well have been his heart. Her hands splayed against the top to keep her balance. She refused to look at him.

  “I’m sorry, Michael. I don’t want to feel those things. I can’t stop it.”

  “Because I failed you.”

  “You really didn’t.” She said the words, but they were empty as her emotions screamed the opposite.

  How could she not blame them? Or him?

  He should have known. Guessed this is what she was hiding.

  It was the Howard’s job to protect the Isle. To make sure things like what happened, did not. They’d failed. All of them.

  But there was a personal resentment aimed directly at him.

  Regardless, his voice worded his plea before his brain could even catch up to it.

  “Don’t go. Please.” He was a pile of taut nerves about to grind into mush. “Forget what I asked you. It was stupid of me. Just don’t go.”

  Even as he begged, his nerves crumbled.

  Emily was already gone in her mind.

  She grabbed the suitcase mustering every bit of strength she had to go through the doorway.

  “Where will you go? When will you come back?” Michael’s legs disobeyed his order to go to her, and stop her.

  “I don’t know.” She dug up a whip of bravery and faced him. She owed him that much.

  “We could find you a place on the island, away from me.” This idea was already more than he could bear. And he wouldn’t get this much.

  “I’m sorry, Michael. I really am. But I can’t stay here. I can’t stay on the island. Please don’t call me and ask when I’ll be back, because I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll know for a long time.”

  What was her measure of a long time? Days? Weeks? Months? Never?

  He’d barely had any time with her. Their lives together just starting. There was no one else like Emily in the entire world and he’d been such a dope not to admit it sooner. And now, he was losing her. And she had every right to run away. Every right to hate this place. And him.

  “The only thing I’m sure of is that I have to leave.” Emily’s words filtered across her tongue now of their own volition. Unable to hold them back after holding them for so long. “It’s not fair, what I’m thinking and feeling, Michael. I know it’s not, but I can’t stop it. I don’t think it’s going to go away until I get away. My dad came to the Isle for me. To protect me. And his reward is getting murdered... he’d be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

  Michael wanted to argue but the strength left him.

  Emily’s emotional outpouring flooded on.

  “I can’t even look at you without so much hurt, and anger. God that’s miserable to say. So much of this is all me, Michael. I’m not trying to pull the it’s not you, it’s me card. It’s not like that. I’m just so angry, and so much of it’s at you and I don’t want it to be. When Eva took over my body I was half way to dead. And suddenly I popped back to life and you didn’t question it was really me. The situation was so impossible, and the thing is, you did figure it out before it was too late. And still, I can’t make myself give up the resentment that you didn’t know sooner.”

  Michael just stared, about as blankly as Emily had been these last weeks.

  “I started to remember things,” her voice dropped, speaking low. “I started to remember things from while Eva was inside me. What you did to her, thinking it was her, not me.” She had wanted to tell him before, but the moment never felt right.

  Michael forced the bile rising in his throat down. It pushed its way back up, threatening to send him flying to the toilet. Emily remembered him strangling her with the silver chain. Charlie, stabbing her with his wolf claws. Both of them filled with such anguish, and taking it out on her body.

  Emily lowered her gaze, unable to hold his any longer.

  “I remember the way you sounded. The venom in your voices. The repulsion in your hands when you touched her... when you touched me. I understand your reaction to her, it would have been mine too. And yet the memories of it felt like me. You did those things to me.”

  Michael stared blankly into nothing. His mind a momentarily emptied space.

  “I have no one to help me. No one who knows what being a Spirit Vessel means. What will happen to me, or how to handle these things... these things that feel like memories that I know are not mine, but feel like mine. I know you want to help, but you can’t. Not this time.”

  It didn’t seem like more than a few seconds, a few eternity building seconds, but when his vision refocused on where Emily had been standing the space was empty.

  In blurry movements he located a pair of shorts and shirt, put them on and somehow got himself down the stairs without falling.

  Melinda caught him at the front door. She’d just come down to wait for Lucas.

  “What’s Emily doing putting a suitcase in her car?”

  He ignored her, floundering out the door and down the porch stairs.

  Emily was getting into the driver’s seat of her car. Michael froze on the bottom steps.

  Her gaze said enough to keep any words from forming. Goodbye...

  Please don’t let this be forever, his gaze begged of her.

  She gave no indication of her intent to return and drove off toward the ferry landing.

  Michael slumped down onto the step, in shock. Charlie, Lizzy, and Melinda were behind him, giving each other questioning looks. Melinda sat down next to Michael and touched his knee.

  “What happened?”

  He turned, his face blank, unable to explain.

  Melinda saw the pain etched in his eyes and tears threatened to surface in her own. They’d broken, exactly like she feared they would.

  “Michael?”

  He looked forward, away from his sister.

  “She left.”

  “What do you mean, left?” inquired Charlie, behind him.

  “I um,” Michael shook his head, ashamed of how dumb he’d been. “I asked Emily to marry me.”

  “And her response was to tear out of the driveway?” Charlie responded, baffled.

  Michael got to his feet, rubbing his hand over his face.

  “I thought Emily was holding in her feelings because she thought it would be too much for me to handle. Because of my gift,” he blubbered bitterly. “But in truth, she blames us. She blames me. She hates this place.” He let out a shaky sigh, unable to ignore the sympathy and sadness pouring out of his siblings at him. “I thought I was doing the right thing by asking her to marry me. I thought it was the only way to show her,” he gave up explaining. Why bother?

  “Men,” muttered Lizzy. “You’re so daft sometimes. Of course she hates this place right now, and you just asked her to spend forever, here.”

  Charlie eyed her, pleading for her to stop before making it worse. She shrugged. But obliged.

  Michael lumbered to the top of the stairs at the edge of the porch. If he could go back in time and force his mouth shut. Not ask that moronic question.

  Marry me... those two words had just ruined his life.

  What the hell possessed him to think asking her to marry him would solve their problems? Or suddenly fix her? It wasn’t out of love between them, it was a desperate attempt to fix something he could not fix. His request unmasking a larger, more unsolvable problem.

  Marry me...

  Worst decision he’d ever made.

  “She’ll come back,” insisted Melinda.

  “You didn’t hear her. You didn’t feel what she
was feeling. It was,” he broke off, the pain of it too much. He’d give up so many things to be able to shut down and tune out. If there was ever a moment he needed to... there wasn’t enough alcohol on the island to black him out long enough to turn this bad nightmare off.

  Melinda met him on the porch. “Give her some time. You’re the only guy Emily’s ever been head over heels in love with. She just needs to get away. Mourn. Heal.”

  “She doesn’t have her ring. She’s vulnerable. I can’t protect her out there.”

  “And she can’t be here right now. And you have to be, Michael. We need you here.” She didn’t want him to get silly notions about running off to follow Emily.

  It wasn’t long ago he’d been itching to get off the island.

  Finding out their father was alive, and telling Emily he loved her, had kept him here.

  Their father was dead.

  Emily was gone.

  Michael said nothing more, needing to be alone for a while. As if this day could not get any worse, they still had a vampire to vanquish. And not any vampire... William.

  Fuck this day!

  Fuck this place!

  Fuck my life!

  Charlie gave him a supportive pat on the arm. Michael shrugged out of it, winding his way back to his bedroom. His and Emily’s room. He’d fallen in love with that idea. No more just him. Or just her. But them. Their lives intertwined.

  But her coming to the mansion was bred out of tragedy. It wasn’t because of choice. They’d talked about moving in together, but hadn’t made any plans yet. Time and life hadn’t permitted it.

  And her time here had been centered around his concern for her, not their future together. And he’d missed the most important signs. The obvious ones. He, who knew Emily Morgan better than anyone else did. He’d failed her again. By not seeing the truth, soon enough.

  Michael sank to the floor, unable to feel much of anything except regret. Not going after her felt wrong. Not knowing where she would go, or be, felt wrong. Would she even answer his call? If he gave her a few days alone. It was already driving him crazy, the not knowing.

  He refused to think about this situation lingering on for more than a few days. Perhaps she’d come back, fast, realizing she did want to be here, and needed to be here.