Page 41 of Hell Hath No Fury
“Leave?” he echoed. His voice was low… Gravelly. And his gaze moved with devastating slowness down my body.
I was wearing leather. For the time since I’d been here, I wasn’t wearing soft linens and silks, garnished with multiple chains and belts. My pants molded to my every curve, and a strap high on my thigh held my Athame. The vest I wore laced at the front, pressing my more than ample assets together to create excellent cleavage.
Cleavage that was actually fucking heaving by the time Max’s stormy gaze made it back to my eyes.
I nodded once, struggling to regain my composure. “Yes, you’re alive enough to be on your merry way.”
He folded his huge arms in front of him, his gaze falling purposefully to his leg and the crutch resting to his left.
I sighed dramatically, sending forth my power to knit the remaining bone and ligament together.
His body jerked as if I’d struck him, all color disappearing from his face. Mortals who tasted magick suffered somethingakin to seasickness when they weren’t prepared or when they didn’t know of its existence at all.
“What the fuck?” he managed to spit out, his weight initially shifting gingerly to his injured leg then more surely once he felt no pain.
“Right,” I exclaimed, clapping my hands together. “You are right as rain now, so you don’t need my protection any longer.”
Despite the fact that he’d just encountered a magick that he didn’t know existed, the shock of that wore off instantaneously.
“I don’t need your protection,” he growled.
“Ah the male ego,” I blew out a breath. “Always alive and well despite what this world throws at them. Honey, we both know that without my protection, you would’ve been dead on the side of the road. I’ve done my good deed. Now it is time for you to go and do … whatever deeds you do.”
He had rounded the counter, gait now powerful and sure. His muscles rippled with the movement, and my eyes flickered up and down his body.
My heart started thrumming in my chest.
“What are you?” he asked, repeating the question he’d uttered that night in the rain. His tone was even. There was no edge of hysteria to his voice. Not even fear. Just a blank curiosity.
“A witch,” I replied, effort needed to keep my tone even. I had encountered prejudice, anger, confusion, denial and violence when mortals—especially mortal men—learned what I was.
He blinked slowly at my words, and I waited…
Waited for him to laugh, to decide I was insane, dangerous, deluded.
But none of that came.
He just nodded. “So you are.”
He had accepted magick for what it was within seconds, without an internal power struggle over what was real and what wasn’t.
I couldn’t be entirely responsible for what happened next. Part of it was the sweatpants… The muscles. The simmering attraction and connection that had existed between us since the second I plucked him from the side of the road.
And it wasn’t just me. If you tried to pinpoint who moved first, you wouldn’t be able to, even if you could stop time itself.
All that I knew was that our mouths crashed together, then our bodies. One of his hands tore into my hair while the other palmed my ass.
When he let out a low growl in the back of his throat, my skin sang.
His lips found my neck, teeth grazing the delicate skin there while his hand moved from my hair to the laces at the front of my vest. I cried out as he exposed one of my breasts, hissing before his mouth fastened around my nipple.
Now it was time for my hands to tear into his hair, yanking in pleasure at the inky strands. I leaned heavily into him, his body the only thing holding me up.
“I need you,” he grunted in a feral voice as he detached himself from my nipple. “Need to claim every fucking inch of you.”
I opened my mouth. I wasn’t sure whether to agree that that’s exactly what he needed to do or argue against the misogynistic sentiment. I didn’t get the chance to choose because his mouth covered mine once more. He kissed me hard, quick and brutal before lifting me into his arms.
My legs immediately wrapped around his waist, and I moaned into his mouth as my leather-covered center ground into his hard cock, cloaked only by thin sweatpants.
