Page 88 of Blackwicket
“I knew what had happened. The Fiend had infected him with its curses. I panicked. I was afraid for him and ashamed of myself, so when my mother left to get help from Fiona, I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong. I tried to take the curses off him myself, to fix my mistakes. I was ignorant and egotistical.”
I pulled my hair in frustration, driven by all the regret still lodged in my heart.
“There were too many curses, and they were stronger than me and started to hoard my magic. I couldn’t handle them all.When they started picking pieces of me apart, I reacted. I tried to curse eat, but I’d never consumed curses directly from another person, and I did something worse than take his curses, Inspector. I took his magic.”
“You annulled him?” Disbelief replaced annoyance, as though he’d never imagined such depravity to be executed by a child.
“He was dead when my mother came back, and she told everyone it had been her mistake, her wrongdoing to bear. She was protecting me, but we all carried the weight of my stupidity.”
“You were a child.” The Inspector’s statement was terse, rejecting my confession.
“I was, am, and will always be a Curse Eater, Victor Harrow,” I bit off each word, punctuating them with a step forward, the foul misery of loss garroting me. Loss of family, of my identity, dignity, and home—even though it was one I hadn’t wanted. There was no way to continue from here alone. “So, annul me.. Deliver your justice. Do what you’ve been burning to since you arrested me in Devin. I’ve nothing left to guard, and maybe when I’m gone, the plague of this house and my family will die with me.”
My new proximity was intentional, allowing him to sense the curses I’d forged, and as I expected, tempted the Drudge in him to answer, and ensnare my power in its claws.
He regarded me with the interest of a hunter whose game has laid itself down at their feet.
“It’s all there, Victor,” I whispered. “My magic, my curses, take them.”
“Given the freedom, Ms. Blackwicket,” he intoned, leaning in with the promising menace I’d hoped to excite, “there are numerous things I’d like to do to you. Killing isn’t one of them.”
He took me by the throat, long fingers squeezing enough that my shocked intake of breath was cut short.
“You’ve told me the truth. I think it’s fair that I return the favor. But in case this is the last time I get to take you up on such a tempting offer, I’ll indulge.”
He nipped my bottom lip, then kissed me, the pain vivid and rousing, and I met his intensity with my own as his tongue delved into my mouth. I remembered his taste from the night he’d laid me across the piano, and when lust ignited, I let it blaze, my despair burning away.
But this was more than a kiss. The Inspector was taking from me exactly what I’d offered him, teasing the curses that sullied my magic free, urging them to rise. I anticipated the torturous tearing of a curse extracted, but it never came. It slid from me like velvet gliding across delicate skin. If Victor had caressed me between my thighs, it wouldn’t have induced such euphoria. I arched into him.
I didn’t need to wonder if he’d experienced the same stab of ecstasy, as he turned rigid against my belly. When he inhaled, the remaining curse ascended along with a thread of my magic, which he imbibed with the reverberation of a moan in his throat.
Instead of emptiness where magic had once been, my power replenished, no less like a handful of water being taken from the ocean. I’d never encountered this kind of Curse Eating. An exchange that elicited longing, not pain, fulfilling instead of taking. I exhaled a shaky breath.
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I could take it all,” he replied, running kisses along my jaw, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of my backside. “I’ve been aching to feed from you, feel your magic in my veins. You’ve become a vice of mine, and I’m finding it hard to let go.”
“Then don’t.”
He breathed me in, his roaming magic discovering a part of me that had never been stirred, and I almost whimpered.
“Are you asking me to fuck you, Curse Eater?”
The agony of my desire grew. I’d never grow tired of it.
“Yes.” It was a demand, a low growl as undone as the rest of me, and I caught his bottom lip in my teeth just enough to sting.
The result was immediate, his monstrous magic lunging to claim mine. I trembled as it held, throbbing with an energy that traveled to the damp horizon between my legs. In another vicious move, he tucked his hand into the collar of my blouse, popping the buttons to my sternum, exposing the cream silk brassiere. He wasted no time freeing my breast from it, running his thumb over the crest of my nipple, hardening it. Any sounds I might have made were caught in his mouth, as he encouraged another thread of magic from me.
He continued this rhythm, caressing and pinching, supping on me until I no longer knew where my magic ended and his began. I was at his mercy, quivering, my pleasure cresting, a wave ready to break upon the cliffs.
The waist of his trousers was already loose, the button missing from the violence of his transformation, and there was nothing to impede me when I trailed my fingers down the hard plane of his stomach, surveying a battlefield of scars, slipping beneath to take hold of his rigid erection. His groan encouraged me, and I freed it, running my palm along the magnificent length of him, wrapping my fingers around the girth while imagining the obscene, burning stretch I’d enjoy if he were sheathed in me.
“You’re courting trouble,” he warned, his limitations abused, strung too tight.
“I’m a Blackwicket,” I said, enjoying my temporary power. “Trouble and I know each other well.”
In response, his large hand enveloped mine, guiding the rhythm.
