“Gross,” I say before I can stop my middle school like attitude towards sex from verbally erupting. “I meant, she’s using toys, not spells.” I can feel his next comment before he says it and I lift my hand to stop his game. “She’s using stolen trinkets and not abilities,” I correct, avoiding the mess of innuendos I know he was about to vocally spill.
“I did a little digging,” he says, taking my mug and the seat next to me. “Jo, if you’re going into the kitchen, Harper needs a new round of coffee and you might want to change that robe, dear. You got a little something on it.”
He’s actually smiling as he talks to her. I suspect he could remark on the color of the sky and somehow make one feel degraded without any effort. I had a friend’s mother who could do such things. She blessed my heart a lot and she was always excited to see people on Tuesday.
“So, you did a little digging? Maybe your own grave if you keep taunting an Italian witch?” I ask him, filled with regret that I allowed him to steal my morning precious.
“She’s a green witch. At worst she may command some vines to ensnare me,” he whispers into the mug.
I want to remind him what I can do, take some of the confidence from his voice, but that would be the opposite of the whole white flag thing I started before I knew he would steal my only morning motivation.
“How did you really heal your face?” Is not the question I meant to ask. It escaped all on its own. I blame the lack of caffeine.
His eyes go dark for a moment. Without turning his head, he stares at me, reading my expression as innocent curiosity and not antagonistic before he says, “It just does.”
“And my back?”
“More shredded meat than a hot pocket, suddenly all better?” he asks, knowing it’s exactly what I already asked, just with less visionary efforts. “As GiGi said, you took power from my moment of weakness and your body used it to heal itself. I will give God five stars for how reliant He made your bodies. It’s like He knew you would all be stupid.”
I chuckle. Not because I find him amusing, but because it’s nine a.m. and he’s bringing up Divinity. I still have to figure out a spa, a book, werewolves and a magical bar Potter never prepared me for. I’m not about to step on into the quicksand of religion.
GiGi returns, all scorn and wearing a new robe. “We don’t preach His name here. In this house, we respect all the powers which be, as it should be.”
Jedrek lifts his arm, palms out surrendering to her building wrath. “Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa,” he says, taunting her even further.
I wait to see if she will respond with some creative explosion. She doesn’t. She strides to her normal chair, and even in such a short distance, her robe flares around her, saying everything she didn’t.
“Where is she getting these trinkets?” I ask Jedrek, trying to return his focus.
“Crossroad demons,” he tells the dark liquid of his cup. “She’s using mortals to trick demons. Once the deal is made, the items given over, the mortal has thirty days before the clock expires. Once it does, the demon returns to collect the trinket and the soul.”
“But she’s showing up first?” I ask, trying to follow along, but the bouncing ball is missing.
“Exactly,” he confirms. “Once mortals know their time is up, they panic. They try to renege on the deal. How would a mortal find a witch strong enough to help?”
“The spa,” I say with wonder over how simple and yet smart it is.
“Yup, the spa.”
“Where this Johanna used to work for the Ripples who own it.” I connect the dots. The lines are crude, but all the dots are slowly getting touched. “Which is why it attacked me.”
“Mmmhmm,” he says after a long sip of what was my coffee. “They are the watchmen, men who long ago sold their souls to keep the witches confined and the owners safe.”
“Regan met us outside thinking the watchman would keep her safe, too.” The dots are connecting faster. “But why would Johanna go against Deon?”
“Because she was sleeping with Richard. Richard promised to wed her, but instead just kept bedding her.” Jedrek smirks. “When he died, she was supposed to be freed, and given a nice little chunk to live her best life.”
“Guess none of that happened?” GiGi sneaks verbally in with her question.
Jedrek just smirks, sipping from the ceramic mug.
“Why would Deon want a source of magic to control the dead?” I ask, confused over why it’s something desirable.
“Vampires,” both GiGi and Jedrek say at the same time.
“Oh, right, because they are real too. Sorry. Forgot.” I throw my hands up with irritation.
“Stop being petty,” GiGi swats at me, missing but not by much. “This is the part you need to think about. If Deon was willing to risk hell itself, “ she gestures to Jedrek, “coming after her for abusing one of their own sources, what do you think she’s going to do to you now that she knows you can do the same thing?”
“She didn’t want her father raised that night, least not entirely,” he tells us with pride over knowing the hidden agenda we didn’t know. Leaning back in his chair, he continues, “She wanted to see if you could raise their father that night,” Jedrek tells me this as if what he really said is Santa isn’t real. “She had Regan there in case you were more powerful than she anticipated. Regan would have drained you and dragged you back. Your enslavement to the spa, and the Ripples, is what was supposed to have happened.”
“But it didn’t.” I remind them.
“It almost did,” Jedrek corrects. “But you were too strong for Regan to force herself upon you. Your walls and your will kept hers out. Otherwise, this little story would have held a very different outcome.”
GiGi has exploded in rapid Italian. The few words I can pick out lets me know someone is in trouble. Not completely positive it’s not me.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from them?” GiGi shrieks.
The coffee-soaked rag misses my face by inches. I’m not sure if she missed or was just venting rage in a healthier way than I seem to, as of late. I’ll take a rag to the face if I get to keep my lips.
“To be fair,” I offer as a false flag of peace, “you told me they were vampires.”
“To be fair,” GiGi mocks, “I told you the town joke!”
I pause, unsure how to counter her truth. “That’s fair,” I agree before moving on. “The family who owns most of our town is werewolves with a fetish for power over the dead. I must have missed that chapter in all the teen half-dressed book covers.”
“Well, that’s because most of those books are written by middle-aged women who think putting the vibrator on a setting above a three is risqué.” Jedrek is flipping through the morning paper with half interest in it and in the conversation. He wears boredom as well as he wears mischief. “You said last night all you wanted was to help the family put the little girl back to rest. Is that still true?”
The warning bells in my head are chiming again. He’s not looking to me, giving me any clues to what hidden games he has plotted depending on my answer. Looking to GiGi Jo, I can see she too has concerns.
“What are you slinking around about, demon?” she asks, her voice a warning in itself.
“Oh, Jo,” he says almost playfully. “You and your trust issues.”
The flipping of the paper’s pages is like a whip to my sanity. Until now, I didn’t even know it was possible for a newspaper to make so much noise. Even the font of the pages with its block style of lettering disgusts me.
“Oh, shit,” Jedrek says from a far hallway even though he’s sitting beside me.
This time, I know something is off. This isn’t me. I’m sarcastic, maybe a touch witty, but not hostile. Not really. Yet, somehow, all I want to do is tear through the house, screaming with my rage, throwing a tantrum over the lies and the secrets. This isn’t me.
“You can fight it, Harper,” I hear GiGi whispering near me. “You’re s
tronger than them.”
“Them?” I ask, trying to find something to focus on. Any little thing instead of my building rage-inspired desires.
“Jo…” Jedrek’s voice is filled with shock and disappointment.
I’m missing something again. Some little silent conversation they are having with their eyes. A conversation about me.
“Would you two just stop it!” I scream and the bookcase behind me hurls its paperbacks.
The room becomes a mockery of a winter scene as the pages are freed from spines, floating through the air to land randomly around us. Books which held themselves together are launched as if from a canon. They become small fragments of weapons, tearing through anything fragile in the room.
“I got this,” Jedrek tells GiGi, keeping his eyes on me. “You go.”
I tilt only my eyes to see the woman who has raised me for most of my life torn in the moment. Her sadness should reach some part of me. It should be the cold water to my inner bonfire, but it’s nothing. It’s almost as if I don’t know her, or have any connection to her.
I watch as she takes his advice, glancing once to the man who urged her to leave. “She’s all I have,” she tells him, but it feels as if she’s speaking to so many more.
He nods, sharing one last look before he’s truly alone with me.
“I know you don’t want to hurt me, but, at the same time, you really want to hurt me,” he says with a face of disarming amusement. “You’re going to hurt me, Harper, and I’m going to enjoy it. We both are.”
He’s right. I’m going to hurt him and I’m going to absolutely enjoy it.
He moves as if at any moment I may strike. He’s treating me with caution, never turning his back to me, keeping his eyes locked with mine as he walks away from me. I follow him into the living room still stained with his blood. Like a ghost of a perfume, the copper scent is still dancing in the air.
“That rage you’re feeling,” he tells me, keeping his voice low, “is the rage from the witches yesterday. You brought it all home like a used coat, wearing it and now they are wearing you.”
Somewhere, deep in what was once the rational side of me, this makes sense. The part of me awash with emotions, too abundant to pluck apart, ignores the logic, embracing only the feelings I am having with gleeful anticipation of what’s to come. They care only for the wreckage and the restoration.
“You should have been taught how to ground, to remove all that baggage, but you weren’t. Or maybe you were,” he shifts his words when my eyebrow does a warning lift, “but just not to the degree to handle all this. We have two choices here, my littlest, deadly witch. I’m really hoping you pick door number two. Door number one won’t be as much fun for me.”
“Why is it always about you?” a cold octave of my voice asks. “It always comes back to you.”
“Just a lucky guy like that,” he teases, daring the embers to keep feeding the flames inside of me.
“What’s door number one?” I hear myself ask.
“That’s where I miss part of my body again, and as you can see,” he says as he slips the dark grey cotton shirt over his head, “it’s a rather nice body.”
Even as deep as I am in this pit, my stomach tightens in agreement. My breath rolls from my mouth slowly with my eyes following his hands. With an expertise he’s learned long ago, he trails just the tips of his fingers over his smooth abs before resting them on the top of his black jeans. I watched all of it yearning for his hands to keep going.
“Ask me about door number two, Harper.”
His voice tightens things low in my body. My breathing has quickened, lifting my chest with each breath as if there’s not enough air in the room for us both. The rage I was feeling is drifting towards a different delicacy. It’s still red hot, but fed by a different type of fire.
Without any verbal prompting, those agile fingers unhook the button at the top of his jeans. The zipper seems agonizingly slow. Tooth by tooth the metal bondage slips apart, but he keeps it tightly clasped, unwilling to allow me to see more than he wants me to see.
“Ask me about door number two, Harper,” he repeats.
I hear his breath catching between his words. The sound of his labored breath reluctantly pulls my eyes to his. Their dark blue shade paints his desires. The way he unconsciously licks his lips coaxes me closer. I want to taste his mouth again. I want to feel that tongue in my own mouth, on my neck, and lower. Every little dirty secret I have kept locked away from this man is pounding through their cage, timing their beats with that of my pounding heart.
He doesn’t resist, or pull away, when I push myself against him. His hands are as hungry as mine to feel the hot skin of the other. Our mouths are starving, dining off what we can as clothes are discarded with no care to their stitched seams. He is everywhere, and nowhere, at the same time making whimpering sounds escape my throat with a need I have no name for.
Walking us further into the room, I still follow him, refusing to allow his body to be too far from mine, and when I can no longer handle the few steps which seem to be becoming miles, I lift myself onto him, wrapping my legs around his waist to be carried.
He settles us onto the couch. I waste no time. He slides easily inside me, stretching me to the point I cry out with so much more than just pleasure. There’s a razor’s edge of pain as he fills me, rocking my hips with a need of his own. It’s perfect, pulling moans from both of us, but for me, I’m pulling something else, as well. I’m pulling from the ghosts with their secret agendas who are riding me as hard as I am riding Jedrek.
His tongue is hot, trailing along my neck, paving a path for his lips. He’s sampling every curve, every nook of my neck, exploring the spaces thoroughly.
“Your turn,” he says, huskily, holding a tone in his voice men can only find in the depths of passion.
I’m confused, not sure of what he’s teasing me. Until his hands slip from my hips, slowing our frenzied pace. It’s my turn, because for once, this isn’t about him.
His speed was frantic. Mine is slow, deep and rhythmic. Where he rocked, I now roll. Leaning my forehead to his, we stare into each other’s eyes knowing what is building deep inside each of us. Our breathing becomes entwined, panting, with our bodies begging for release.
“Let it out,” he whispers to my lips. “Let it all go. Take me instead.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but my magic does. Whatever he invoked, stirred with his demand, answers his request. It’s slow, inching up my body with a heat that tilts my head back. I wait for it. Cry out for it, but it’s not fast enough for Jedrek.
Latching onto my arched breast, he pulls the tender flesh into his mouth, surrounding it was a different fire. A fire he tosses more heat to when the tip of his finger reaches down to dance, push and roll along my most sensitive parts. He pushes me deeper into the inferno consuming us both. The slow, deliberate rhythm I started with is gone. Destroyed but this hunger to be consumed by all the different fires lapping at me from so many directions I fight against the screams wanting to be released.
“Let it out,” he commands between taking turns tormenting each of my breasts. “Let them out and take me, Harper.”
I’m bucking, fighting to keep a pattern as the magic surrounds me, filling the room with a green hue. My skin is glowing as if there are lights randomly flashing inside of me. There is nothing I can do now but scream. Scream with the eruption of pleasure and scream with the suffocation of the magic.
“Take me, Harper!” Jedrek shouts with his own orgasm. “Take me instead!”
Fed by the magic and his commands, lost in the moment, my hands travel his chest, dipping into the concaves of his ribs before sliding back to cup his face. Some ancient part of me, bred from years of knowledge, does as he asks.
Sliding impossibly deeper upon him, I coax the last of his orgasm. I feed upon the energy of it, taking it inside of me, pulling it into the core of me where scream after scream
of his is stored. His back is arched, lifting, almost bowing his spine and I still take more. When there is nothing left, not even the slightest pulse of power, only then does my hands travel to run my fingers through his damp hair.
I’m breathing just as heavy. My skin is just as damp, but it’s my skin again. My head is clear, tired, confused by what just happened, but clear.
“You will be the death of me, my littlest witch,” Jedrek manages to say between heavy breaths.
I giggle. I legit giggle before I can stop myself. Rolling my eyes, I climb away from his lap, as the feelings of shame creep in, as they always do after I have sex.
“What was door number one?” I ask him with my back turned to play the game of ‘where did I leave my bra’.
I can hear the couch protest his departure and I still jump when his fingers reach to help me fasten the clasps of my bra. He grazes the path of my spin, lightly coming to rest on my shoulders before he tours where his tongue had made a playground. I know he’s inhaling the scent of my curls. I picture his eyes closed, hiding for a paused moment in the red waves. It causes me to shiver.
“Let’s always stick to door number two.” The heat of Jedrek’s words calls forth goose bumps, tickling me from my neck to my toes.
“Fuck buddies with a cause?” I ask, trying to deflect the situation, and my questionable feelings, with sarcasm.
He laughs. It’s a short sound and completely male, tugging on the part of me which is completely female.
“As strong as I am, I’m not sure I can do that often. We will need to teach you how to better protect yourself. Besides,” he says with his normal voice and I know the tender moment is gone. “no one would believe it, anyway.”
I’m glad for the exit plan. Not only are the endorphins wearing off, letting my body remind me it’s been a long time since my last escapade, but also, I was willing to dive through the closed window if he had started to talk about feelings or a relationship.
Slipping back into what somehow feels like the least romantic lingerie ever invented, I ask him, calling him on his comment, “Why wouldn’t they?”
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 13
