No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2)

by Mercedes Jade

  He pulled her in for another kiss, this one deeper, longer as her body slowly settled from the climax it had nearly reached.

  He finally released her lips, taking his hand off of her back and unravelling his fist from her hair.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered.

  He left the bed and opened the door to their room, dragging in something heavy and shutting the door again.

  She didn’t really care if the whole inn saw her ass right now. She was in misery already.

  He was back at her side, going down to his knees and slipping her panties the rest of the way off, his hand sliding up her bare thigh until he felt the warmth and wet from his play, a few inches before he reached her pussy.

  He didn’t push her further, keeping his fingers away from her aroused flesh.

  “Stand up and turn around,” he said, still on his knees.

  Her triangle of dark brown curls faced him until she covered herself up with her hands.

  He licked her fingers.

  “I’m going to taste you from on my knees, like this, one of these times,” he promised.

  He stood up slowly, making his way up her body until he was at his full height, just a few inches above her, their faces almost lined up to kiss.

  “I’ve got a nice hot cloth ready to soothe you,” Victor said, his eyes eating up her blush. “I’ll apply it using water magic that will keep it warm for as long as you need it, so I won’t use my hands or look,” he told her. “Open your legs,” he ordered.

  Jill did as he asked, gasping as the hot cloth pressed against her so intimately. It was such a complete contrast to earlier, but he was right, it was more soothing than stimulating, unlike the ice play had been. He didn’t move it around, just pressed the cloth firmly against her.

  “I know I told you the claim was open for consideration once the punishment is over but I’ve changed my mind,” Victor said.

  “You don’t want me?” Jill asked, wide-eyed and embarrassed.

  She looked down. He had called her beautiful, seemed to want her body as much as he made her want him.

  Was this the real punishment, had he just pretended to want her so he could humiliate her like this?

  “Eyes up,” Victor ordered.

  She met his gaze, blinking back tears furiously.

  She gave him her obedience. Did he want to see what things would be like if she took back the control?

  “Jill, it is very obvious that I want you. Whatever you are thinking is wrong,” Victor warned. “I just don’t want to risk taking you downstairs to meet your grandfather without my claim on your skin,” he said.

  Victor grabbed her into his embrace roughly, seizing her shoulders and pulling her up onto her toes to meet his mouth, kissing her until she forgot every little worry for a few moments.

  “Please,” she begged as he pulled away, her arousal a terrible ache.

  “No, Jill,” he said. “You make me want to lose control much too easily. Right now, you may not realize it, but you need me to stay strong for both of us. Trust me to take care of you, including this punishment. I already told you, if you cooperate, it will go easier on you,” Victor said, taking a step back.

  Jill didn’t want to face her grandfather without the security of Victor’s claim, either.

  “Mark me,” she said, standing before him with more confidence than earlier.

  He had said she made want to him lose control. She could work with that.

  Victor pulled an ink pot and capped pen from a sachet he had left on the bed when he’d grabbed the large bucket of hot water from the hallway.

  “Close your eyes,” Victor told her.

  She shut herself into darkness, trusting him.

  Warm water massaged its way up her body, from her ankles and up, not sexual but giving her a good rub and scrub to clean her.

  The warmth was as relaxing as a bath in a jetted tub, pushing with the right pressure to work out her kinks.

  He pricked her shoulder, some time between the massage of her lower back and under her breasts, a barely noticeable, brief pain.

  The feel of his fire magic tangling with hers felt so different from William’s earth.

  She kept her eyes closed while Victor washed her hair, scrubbing with a lemon-scented shampoo and detangling the thick, wet strands with his water magic alone, then braiding it down her back.

  The control over his magic astonished her.

  Other than with her sister, she wasn’t used to seeing magic used for such intricate tasks.

  “Arms up,” whispered Victor, closer to her ear then she had expected.

  She opened her eyes and lifted her arms in time for Victor to slip the dress over her head, using his hands for this task.

  She looked down, but the tattoo was hidden.

  “I’ll buy you more appropriate clothing tomorrow,” Victor promised.

  Jill touched the soft, sensual material of her dress. “I don’t mind. We both know it’s there.”

  “You’re mine now, Jill,” he said. He kissed her again, possessively thumbing the silky neckline over her new tattoo.

  She kissed him back, nibbling his lower lip until he growled at her. She pulled away and he let her, not missing her mischievous look.

  “You’re mine now, too,” she told him.

  Just who had caught who remained to be seen.

  Come Undone

  Victoria

  Victor owed her.

  This went beyond sisterly duty. Entertaining, or better said distracting General Ansulf and the two soldiers he had brought with him, required more than a pretty smile and a few sociable stories that Victoria would tell to entertain ladies at tea.

  She had to field interrogation questions thrown at her between sips of ale and bites of steak pie.

  At least, she had been able to convince the general that whiskey was really too strong a drink for her delicate constitution.

  “When will my granddaughter be down?” Torsten asked, for the third time.

  Victoria sipped her ale. It was already more than half drained. Her brother was really taking his sweet time.

  It would serve him right if Victoria told Torsten that her brother was helping Jill to change and bathe right now, up the stairs and the third room to the left.

  Instead, she faked not hearing the query. The noise from the pub was loud enough to support her unspoken pretension of deafness.

  “I’m sure Jill is weary after such a surprising battle,” the youngest one, Alexander Kenilworth, spoke up.

  Victoria fought back the temptation to correct him. Jill was the energizer bunny and that had hardly been a warm up.

  Jill had already rendered unconscious and assaulted a prince, committed grand theft motorcycle, and waved a sword nearly as tall as her and likely half as heavy around, all before she got within a dozen feet of said dragon fight.

  Kissing Victor had made her late to the battle and all Jill had gotten was one good swipe that had been mostly blocked by all the rock these guys had thrown around.

  If Victoria had to make a guess, she bet Jill was blowing off some steam before she came down and tried to make nice with her grandfather.

  “It has been a long time since I’ve talked to Jill . . . To see her surrounded by danger like that without her mother,” Torsten paused to take a deep breath. “I just need to assure myself of her safety. Where is her mother?”

  Victoria drank more ale. Jill hadn’t recognized the old man. How long was a really long time? Kaila never mentioned him. He was fishing and she knew fake bait when she sniffed it.

  “Prince Victor said he would be escorting Victoria,” Alexander reminded them. “We had no idea it was you and your brother, Princess Victoria,” he stage whispered.

  Victoria smiled weakly. With a jealous dragon on the rampage that claimed to be her gaisa, now was not the time for a new crush.

  “Stop answering for her, nitwit, and let the princess speak,” Jaeson said.

  He wasn’t a man of many word
s and that sentence had been the most he’d spoken since he had said ‘hello’ and his first name.

  She supposed Jaeson belonged to the same clan as Jill, but when family lineages of magic meant everything in Maeren, it still niggled at her to place him.

  He wasn’t a simple soldier and miner. That boulder he had pulled out of the ground had taken serious mojo, especially when he managed to bring it up without causing a chasm or an earthquake.

  “I appreciate your concern, Jaeson, but there is really nothing more to tell,” Victoria said, deliberately using his first name since he didn’t see fit to provide his lineage. “You saw everything.”

  She finished off her ale. Maybe she should have agreed to the whiskey.

  “Would you like some tea?” asked Torsten, noting her empty mug.

  Suddenly, she really would like tea. The Norwoods had gotten her into the habit of drinking tea. Maybe Kaila had gotten the habit from her father, kind of like her stubborn attitude and her bullshit meter.

  “Yes, with cream, if they have it,” Victoria answered.

  Torsten rang a little bell.

  She pushed her empty mug to the end of the table for the staff to clear it.

  Torsten had gotten rooms at the inn earlier and had commanded a private dining room for them, which was handy for the kind of questions they were asking.

  Victoria didn’t know how Jill would feel about staying under the same roof as her estranged family.

  “How did you make the dragon disappear?” asked Alexander.

  Victoria looked over to him in surprise. He flat out asked what she was sure all the rest of them had been thinking.

  “It was a modified transportation spell,” she said in a dismissive tone.

  Where was that tea? She grabbed her fork and picked at her steak pie.

  “Did you use an amplification circle for this little spell?” Torsten asked.

  He looked over to the staff bringing a hot pot of tea and enough mugs for everyone, instead of looking at her, as if her answer didn’t really matter.

  Victoria thought about prevaricating, but the level of magic she had used had been palpable.

  “I used amplification,” she admitted.

  “You drew a regular circle,” Jaeson commented. Not a lot to say but all of it important.

  “I prepared the amplification circle earlier, as well as most of the transportation spell,” Victoria said, not ready to explain how she had done so to a bunch of rock throwers.

  It would be too complicated for them to understand and she said so, but more politely, adding cream to her cup before tea.

  “I may have seen an amplification circle a time or two as an earth general,” Torsten chided.

  Victoria fought a blush.

  She was so used to doing high-level spells with the amplification circle as the base, she forgot that every earth thrower was taught them to use as military fodder for physical strength.

  If there was a wall in your way, you threw rocks at it until it fell or the earth soldiers collapsed. There were always more earth soldiers to replace them.

  She remembered that George used to complain about the way earth magic was treated in the army, when they were all much younger.

  “Well, just like that,” Victoria said, still refusing to explain, but now because she had a feeling Torsten was prodding her for something else he wanted.

  “I saw an amplification circle recently in a field close to here,” Torsten said. “It was just out of town, the opposite direction of the portal.”

  Victoria’s cup clattered as she put it down without taking a sip.

  “I didn’t use it,” she honestly said.

  “Seems a dragon attacked over there. The whole town has been talking about it,” Torsten added. He sipped his whiskey, ignoring the teapot.

  “Fascinating, it seems the dragons are having a comeback,” Victoria responded.

  “It was pretty classic for a dragon attack,” Alexander said.

  Like he had ever seen a live dragon before today. He was barely out of his training pants.

  Victoria tried to sip her tea again while Alexander detailed some rather gruesome evidence of a dragon attack, and not all of it from Daemon and Elizabeth’s familiars.

  She choked on her first sip of tea as Alexander talked about discovering a dismembered arm, but it wasn’t from the gory description—really the boy ought to write fiction for a living—but because Victoria had finally tasted her tea.

  The damned old man had ordered it made with whiskey. It was a big pot of tea and none of the males were helping to drink it.

  “Wrong pipe,” Victoria excused, hitting herself with a dainty fist to her upper chest.

  The burn of betrayal and strong liquor didn’t clear that quickly.

  “Drink some more tea, it will help it go down easier,” Torsten suggested.

  Victoria was not going to be bullied. She picked her teacup up, frosting the outside in her hands to quickly cool it down enough to tip to her lips and gulp down its potent contents.

  The males all watched her very, very quietly.

  She hiccupped, once.

  “Do you want some more tea?” Alexander asked.

  “Order her water,” Jaeson said, smacking Alexander’s hand from the pot so he could ring for water.

  “I usually get a hot toddy, I think the inn staff misunderstood,” explained Torsten, looking ashamed.

  She hiccupped, again.

  “It’s not sake, but it’s got a nice warmth to it,” Victoria said, her voice less frosty than she’d originally intended.

  An innocent mistake was possible.

  “Makes the medicine go down,” Torsten said.

  Victoria looked at the pot with new horror.

  Had they dosed her with something more than alcohol? Maybe some truth-telling earth potion?

  “I think she’s going to faint,” Jaeson said, getting up out of the booth to come to her side.

  The three of them had crowded together on one side, so she could have a polite amount of space from males she didn’t know well.

  “Nonsense,” Torsten said. “The princess wouldn’t faint even if a fire-breathing dragon called her his gaisa and threatened to kidnap her.”

  Victoria shot Torsten a dirty look. She could have rolled with too drunk to hold a conversation and gotten out of this torture if he had been fooled.

  Jaeson sat down beside her and pushed over a tall glass of ice water when it arrived. He told her to drink before anyone asked her more questions.

  “I’m pretty sure poisoning a princess is a crime,” Victoria croaked at them.

  Only Alexander looked concerned. “I don’t think drunk qualifies as poisoning.”

  Victoria made sure she glared at him, too.

  “Don’t you know that princesses have delicate constitutions. Princess and the pea? A sip of whiskey could put me in a coma, for all you know!”

  Alexander looked at her blankly. Oh, right, that was a human tale.

  The Norwoods were rubbing off on her.

  “Thankfully, you seem to be in the same temper as when we met, so I’m sure you’re okay,” Jaeson said, pushing the glass of water at her again.

  “Where is Jill?” Torsten asked. This was the fourth, or was it the fifth time?

  “My brother missed her,” Victoria said. She hiccupped.

  Maybe the men could all go upstairs and bother her tardy brother instead. She had more than done her part already.

  “Are they formally bonded?” asked Torsten.

  The ice in her cup cracked, startling her. Had there been a hint of anger in the otherwise calm, even tones of Torsten’s voice?

  “Nope,” Victoria answered. “Of course, he offered, after Jill ended it with Phil and Will,” Victoria added, purposely rhyming her brothers’ names, in case it wasn’t obvious she was saying they had her, together.

  More ice cracked in her glass. She eyed the earth lords suspiciously, refreezing her ice with her magic. Somebody was
messing with her.

  “Eat your food, princess,” Torsten said, directing Victoria’s attention to her barely touched steak pie. “It will help with the alcohol,” he added, not unkindly.

  She ate another forkful.

  “Prince William came to see me,” Torsten said as she chewed.

  Victoria choked on her mouthful. Jill’s grandfather really was going to kill her.

  Someone pushed the glass towards her again, not bothering to use his hand, driving the little cubes of ice to one side of her glass using magic, condensation slicking the path so the glass didn’t tip over.

  She had felt the magic stronger this time as he used a longer pulse, but it still didn’t feel like water magic.

  “How?” she asked after taking a big gulp of water.

  “It’s earth magic,” Torsten said, taking a sip of his whiskey. He could definitely hold his liquor.

  “It’s ice,” Victoria said, voice a little frostier. She wasn’t stupid.

  “Your ice is dirty,” Jaeson said. She suspected it had been him. He seemed sneaky enough.

  “Rain falls onto earth and is absorbed into the ground before it gets to your cup, picking up enough particles for earth magic to grab, although it only works in solid forms like ice, otherwise, the dirt particles just pull and leave the water behind,” said Alexander.

  He smiled at her, obviously proud of the trick. Maybe it had been him.

  She ignored Jaeson and Alexander, looking over at Torsten. It wasn’t him. He seemed too straightforward for such nonsense and they had been talking.

  “Will has no claim on Jill any longer,” she told Torsten. “If you’ve been looking for Jill as a favour to him, however, I suggest you keep his visit to yourself. Vic already challenged Will for her bond,” Victoria said, then ate more pie. She had been hungry.

  “I told Prince William that I would let my daughter know that he was worried about Jill and hoped for her safe return,” Torsten said.

  Victoria didn’t choke this time. She cut a healthy piece of pie and shoved it in her mouth, making the others wait while she chewed and swallowed.

  Earth witches were said to never forget a wrong, a part of their stubborn nature, and apparently, earth vampires were the same.