by Lyra Winters
“You’re perfect.”
Her breath hitched. “I’m nervous.”
“Don’t be.” Her back arched as I pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her center, and a soft moan escaped her. My tongue dipped inside her and her honey taste exploded in my mouth. “You taste fucking divine.”
I sat up on my knees, pulling her dress over her head, and started another trail of kisses from her stomach up to her perfect breasts, with my fingers gliding up with me. I took my time as I licked and sucked on her small, pink nipples, and watched her petite body convulse under me.
Electricity coursed through me as she grabbed my face and pulled my lips up to hers. Every kiss had a raw intensity - breaths rapid, heart rates increased, tongues entwined, and then I reached down and pushed a couple of fingers inside of her. She was tight as fuck but wet enough they slid in without any trouble.
She moaned as I worked my fingers, pumping inside of her—wishing with everything they were my dick. I couldn’t seem to get enough of her. She was my everything and the way she molded against me was invigorating. She cried out as she writhed beneath me, and I swore time stood still.
Her breasts heaved as she caught her breath, and her skin flushed. “Xav,” she whimpered. “I’ve never… felt that before.”
“It’s because we’re mates. What you feel with me is different than anything you’ve experienced before. Everything is amplified.”
“I wouldn’t know the difference.” Her trembling fingers grazed the skin of my jaw. “That’s the first time I’ve…” She bit her lip.
“The first time you’ve come undone for someone?” I smirked. Thank fuck. Pride swelled in my chest.
“The first time I’ve come ever.”
I choked on my breath and coughed. “You’ve never played with yourself?”
“Oh my gosh.” She groaned, dropping her hand. “This is so embarrassing!”
I chuckled, nuzzling into her neck and planting a sloppy kiss. “I’m your mate, little witch. Sex should be second nature for us. You can talk to me about it.”
My dick was straining against the sweats, and it fucking hurt. I wanted nothing more than to sink into her. But this wasn’t about me, it was about her. I wanted to show her exactly what she meant to me.
Whether she believed me or not, I was in love with her.
“I’ve… touched myself. But I’ve never let myself come.”
“And why not?” I pushed my dick against her throbbing pussy, wishing the fabric would disappear.
She let out a soft whine. “I don’t know.”
“Saving your pleasure for me maybe?” I pulled my head up and kissed her lips.
She kissed me back teasingly before pulling away. “Maybe.”
“I’m in love with you, Harlow. I wasn’t kidding about mates being the love-at-first-sight romance.” I stroked her hair out of her face. “My feelings for you are so much more than I thought possible.”
“More than her?” Her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I shook my head. “After falling in love with you, I question if I was really in love with her at all.”
She managed a small smile before her eyes fluttered closed. “I don’t know if what I feel for you is love yet, but it’s closer than I’ve ever been before.”
With her naked body beneath me, she fell asleep. And I was left with a raging hard-on and a heart full of love again.
THIRTEEN
Harlow
“What the fuck is that, Harlow?” Xavier’s deadly voice pierced through me as his eyes darkened.
My heart clogged my throat as I took him in. He looked like Ares, God of War, ready to take me down as if I’d committed one of the worst atrocities.
“Nothing to say?” He sneered.
“Xav, it’s not—”
“Do not Xav me!” His voice boomed, rattling the walls of the cottage. “You betrayed me in the worst possible way. How could you do this to me?”
I flinched, burying my face in my hands. Xavier was furious. He was fighting his shift as his body kept transforming mid-way before he’d come back to normal. It was terrifying to face his wrath head-on. “I can’t lie to you. You’re the one that told me that.”
“You tricked me.” Pain laced his words as if it physically hurt him to say them. “No wonder everything I felt for you was so much more than what I felt for Olivia. Because everything with you was fake. You amplified it.”
A spear might as well have been shoved through my heart at his accusation. “No! Don’t say that.” Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Nothing between us is fake. You said you loved me.”
“Because you planted this bond!” His voice wavered. “You played me in the worst possible way.”
This was all a huge misunderstanding, but his words were destroying me. He jumped to conclusions without even consulting me. I was vulnerable with him the past few days, and we’d grown closer.
I’d just walked through the door from checking in with Deb and found Xavier with that damn spell jar.
How could he think so little of me to believe I would be capable of faking a bond? With a werewolf of all beings?
I glanced up, swallowing the fear, and locked my gaze with him. The tension was so dense the air between us crackled. “It’s a spell to cure loneliness, but it’s not a spell to fake a matebond with a werewolf. I was tired of living on my own, so I cast a spell to attract a familiar. I didn’t even want to find love before you.”
“How can I trust you?” The small glass jar of ingredients for the spell shook in his hand before he chucked it toward me.
My hands shot out, and I caught it. “Because I’m your mate, and I…” I swallowed the doubt. I knew how I felt for him. He’d been so gentle, so patient with me. “I love you.”
His eyes widened, and his jaw ticked. “But how can I believe that?”
My feet started moving, and before I realized it I stood beside my bookshelf and pulled my family’s grimoire out. I flipped it open to the spell for attracting a familiar and sat it on the table with the jar. “There’s the spell I used. All those ingredients in that jar are listed here. You can check my grimoire. There is no love spell inside, let alone a spell to fake a matebond.”
He stepped over and read the page with the spell and inspected the jar. Then, he flipped through each page of the thick book painfully slow. Sure enough, he found my words to be true but his reaction was not what I was expecting.
He staggered back cursing under his breath. “I’m sorry, Harlow.”
My hand trailed down the open page of my spellbook before shutting it. “You have to trust me if you want this to work. You should know me better than that by now. Your accusation hurt me.”
He didn’t seem to be listening to me as he shifted and bolted from the cottage without saying anything else.
Fear gripped me and rooted me to my spot as I stared at the place he had shifted, sweatpants tore to shreds on the floor.
No. What was he doing? Where was he going? He couldn't leave. We had to talk about this.
I shook off the paralysis before taking off after him. I called on the spirits of the forest to guide me to him, and they showed me the path he had taken. But he was faster than I was.
My bare feet smacked against the forest floor, the soft bottoms of my feet colliding with dirt, rocks, sticks, and leaves. After almost an hour of chasing him, the spirits stopped guiding me.
Sweet witch, this is too much. You must rest.
“I can’t!” I cried out, my knees collapsing under my weight. “I can’t lose him.”
Harlow, evil lurks close. Be on your guard.
Ice spilled throughout my veins as I pressed my palms into the ground. I didn’t have time to waste on my feelings. “Thank you, Spirits of the Forest. You’ve done well. May I ask for your assistance just a little longer?”
Of course.
I sucked the magical energy from around me and
focused on the evil presence running rapidly in my direction.
I could sense them; three beings moving fast with murderous intent. Their urge to kill was sweeping through the forest at a rate I hadn’t seen before. Strange enough, their energy was familiar to me.
They came to an abrupt halt in front of me, twigs snapping underneath their weight. The sounds of bones popping sent another chill down my spine.
Werewolves.
“This woman reeks of the rogue,” a male voice said.
A few sniffs to the air sounded out before two more murmurs of agreement rang out.
“What should we do with her?”
“Could use her as bait.”
“Bet you she’s his mate.”
“Second mate, you mean?” One laughed.
My eyes opened, and I could feel magic blazing through my fingertips.
There were three ripped men, stark ass naked, standing in front of me. They were average in appearances. Black hair, dark eyes, so dull. The only thing that made them different was the strange energy they gave off along with their intent to kill.
“Oh, shit! Look at her eyes!”
I smirked. My eyes turned silver when I was full of magical energy. It was when I was the most dangerous. “I’m Harlow. I reside in the forest with the spirits. What business do you have here?”
The guys chuckled, giving each other a knowing look. The one in the middle let his eyes wander over me in a way that made my skin crawl. “A witch, huh? You’re pretty young for a witch.”
“And hot.”
“Dude, we can’t just kill her. Can we keep her?”
“Not all witches are old hags.” I raised myself off the ground and levitated a few inches in the air to make me taller than them and give me an advantage point. “I’m also not anyone’s to kill or keep. I’ll ask you one more time.” I raised my arms and pointed my heated hands toward them. “What is your business here?”
“She’s kind of scary—“
Whack.
“Shut up.” The one on the left hit the one in the middle before stepping forward. “We have one purpose. And that’s to serve Alpha Lockhart. We are looking for a rogue wolf. He used to be Beta of the Maxwell pack. Goes by the name Xavier. Brown wolf, kinda scruffy.”
I pressed my lips together. Alpha Lockhart. The werewolf pack filled with violence who killed his own sister, Xavier’s mate. What a terrible—
My body stiffened. That energy was so distinct. Being so close to them, it all made sense. I knew exactly why it was so familiar.
Flames licked against my palms. “Do you know anything about the murder of the Oak witch and her husband in Hollows Coven?”
Confusion wafted off of them, but it only made the flames grow stronger. “Answer me!”
They flinched.
“No, lady. We don’t know anything about any witch. Never met one before.”
Liar.
“You’re lying. I’m an empath. I can tell.”
“Okay, fine. So we’ve met one!” The one on the left stepped forward. “But we haven’t heard of an Oak witch or any witch being killed in Hollows Coven.”
Just because they didn’t know, didn’t mean anything. That energy of the Lockhart pack was the same energy that was all over my parent’s corpses.
“Shut the fuck up!” The one in the middle jerked the other guy back by his shoulder. “We don’t owe this witch anything. Fuck being bait. Let’s kill her like our brother killed his first mate. Bet that’ll really piss him off.”
Without warning, that one shifted into a blur of black and launched himself upward toward me, biting my calf and jerking his head, shredding the flesh before I could blink.
A scream of agonizing pain left my mouth as I summoned a blazing ball of fire and shot it at him, knocking him off.
He yelped but got back to his feet as the other two shifted into wolf form and flanked him. He smiled with a piece of my skin in his teeth, and my stomach churned.
“You’re disgusting.” I summoned more flames and they heated my entire body.
The two wolves in the back glanced at each other but the one in the middle growled, making them stand their ground.
All three jumped at me, and I levitated higher, but the one on the left managed to grab my foot in his teeth, skinning it as he slid off and hit the ground.
My scream boomed around the forest as I shot a stream of blue fire at him, lighting his whole body on fire. He moved about, trying to shake the flames off, but it was no use. He shifted back into human form and dropped dead on the forest ground.
Blood dripped from me to the ground below as the fury within remained. Their pack was responsible. Their pack took away a teenage girl's whole life.
They killed my parents!
I held my hands out and lit the other two wolves on fire before they could attack again. They tried shifting too, and one had been able to stop, drop, and roll until the fire was put out. But the other dropped dead just like the first.
I lowered myself to the ground and winced. The pain was excruciating as I hobbled toward the dying wolf and stood over him. “Why are you such monsters?”
The bastard had the audacity to smirk up at me. “We follow our Alpha. Dying following his orders is all we could ever want.” He coughed up dark blood as he laughed.
He was sick, twisted. I hated that scum like him existed. Blindlessly following nefarious orders was worse than the one giving the orders.
I lifted my hand and blasted a hole through his skull as I harnessed the wind. The sound of cranium cracking echoed through the surrounding trees as he took his last breath.
His brains dropped like water on the ground below him in a rhythm.
Drip, drip, drip.
My eyelids were heavy and fell over my eyes as I swayed back and forth. I exhausted all of my magical energy. I’d never used so much before.
He is coming. You did well.
The spirit’s voice whispered through the air right before my body collapsed, and I lost consciousness knowing Xavier would find me.
FOURTEEN
Xavier
Okay, I probably overreacted. Scratch that. I majorly overreacted, but when I saw that jar with the note scribbled beside it that said spell to cure loneliness I flipped. All my common sense left, and I jumped to conclusions thinking she’d betrayed me.
Everything between us was so fucking good. Too fucking good. She had me spellbound whether she cast a spell on me or not. But if she had, it would make sense that I felt more for her than I ever did for Liv.
Instead, I was so fucking wrong my head spun. I’d hurt Harlow because I was an asshole again. I owed her the biggest apology in the universe. She’d admitted she loved me and all I could do was walk out on her. I mean, what the fuck? Those were the three words I’d been waiting to hear and when I finally heard them, I fucked it up big time.
I froze as I caught a whiff of burnt corpses and blood. I inhaled deep. Mixed with the blood was Harlow’s scent. I growled, baring my teeth.
Fuck. It was her blood.
I sprinted toward the smell as fast as I could without slamming into a tree. The forest was so dense with these damn trees. My paws gripped the soil and propelled me faster than I’d gone my entire fucking life. Fear was in the backseat to my adrenaline. Her pain came through the matebond, and I felt like the monster she thought I was when we first met.
I’d closed the matebond off because I was pissed. What a fucking jackass. If I had kept it open, I would’ve felt her emotions and pain. If something happened to her, I would’ve never forgiven myself.
I jumped through a bush and halted. My legs were trembling. Where was she? Between several trees were two burnt up humans. I sniffed. Not humans, but wolves. Lockhart’s wolves. The worst part of it was they were after me.
I turned my head and spotted her passed out next to another one of Lockhart’s warriors with his brain spilling out. My mouth dropped.
My mate was a badass. She could handle herself more t
han I thought.
I blinked, coming back to my senses. She killed three of Lockhart’s warriors but why was her blood in the air and why the fuck was she unconscious? I shifted into human form and assessed her.
Her calf was shredded with tendons peeking out, and her foot was missing half its skin. Her blood was seeping into the ground, and she was completely unconscious from who knew what.
Static filled my ears as shards of glass rattled in my heart with every beat. The pain of seeing Harlow like that was worse than anything I’d experienced before.
I scooped her limp form up and ran back to the cottage as fast as my human form would allow.
Busting open the door, I laid her down on the bed and rummaged through the cabinets until I found gauze.
I rushed over and sat on the bed, careful not to jostle her. I picked her leg up gently, wrapping it tight enough to stop the bleeding. I did the same for her foot on the opposite leg.
Once her wounds were taken care of, I watched as her chest rose up and deflated rhythmically.
I didn’t know how to care for the injured, but seeing her hurt, hell, seeing her blood destroyed me in ways I didn’t think were possible. I thought I was broken when Liv was killed, but seeing Harlow on the ground bleeding broke me worse.
But I couldn’t break. She needed me, and I had to be there for her. Lockhart would pay for hurting her and for killing his sister.
“Xav,” Harlow croaked.
I jumped, leaning over her and kissing her forehead. “Harlow, Thank the Fates. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m a total jackass of a mate. If I hadn’t run off you wouldn’t be hurt.”
She shook her head and pointed toward the water in the pitcher on the counter. I got up and poured her a glass before coming back.
Grabbing the glass, she drank the water in gulps until it was empty and handed it back. “It’s okay. I forgive you, but don’t do it again or I’ll hex you.”
I let out a breath of relief before smiling at her. “I don’t deserve you.”
“The Lockhart pack killed my parents.”