The COMPLETE Witching Pen Series, Boxed Set: The Witching Pen, The Sands Of Time, The Demon Bride, The Last Dragon and Wilted

by Dianna Hardy

  “I think he’s more like hot tar,” said red-head number two – Cindy her name was.

  Cindy and Cynthia. They were twins! And while turning down any one woman was damn near impossible, turning down two would have been so unmannerly of him. He’d always prided himself on his manners, even when he’d been disembowelling some poor sod – he’d always said sorry before he got stuck in with the killing and the burning in Hell.

  Cindy sucked on his fingers while Cynthia continued the path up to his chest, stopping at his left nipple to tease it to a point.

  He sighed in satisfaction and pushed his head deeper into the pillow, finding a slightly more comfortable position on the bed.

  How did God think he’d made humans wrong? Women, at least, were perfect in all their varying shapes and sizes. These two swelled at their breasts and thighs, and were beautifully rounded at their hips and posterior. When he brought them to orgasm, they heaved their lust, their weighty breasts swaying … yeah: perfect.

  Cynthia released his erect nipple with a pop and eyed the pearlescent drop embedded in his skin above his heart.

  He caught her arm before she could reach it. “I told you earlier – that’s not for touching.”

  She relinquished with a small pout. “What is it? Some kind of jewel, like a body piercing, or something?”

  “It was a gift. Far more precious than a jewel.”

  “Oh.”

  She eyed it for a second longer, then seemed to decide it wasn’t all that interesting and resumed her exploration of his skin.

  Cindy sat up, her hazel eyes bright with mischief. “Want to see what I taste like?”

  He grinned, although the very fact that his attention had been drawn to Ymari’s teardrop had the little, shiny thing feeling heavier on his chest than he’d like right this second.

  He knew what was coming.

  He knew what most didn’t, and it was because of that single tear.

  There was a reason he sank himself into every blissful pleasure he could find: his time was limited, and having been subjected to pain for so long, he yearned to know pleasure before he faded from existence.

  “Oh, baby, if you taste anything like your sister, that’s an affirmative. Hop on, gorgeous.”

  She happily complied, straddling his face as his tongue found her sex already drenched and plump.

  Divine… and kinda minty.

  He remembered his manners once again and brought his focus fully to the task at hand.

  He felt Cynthia shift her weight and pull herself up across his hips, her slippery centre sitting astride his already stiff penis.

  “Wow,” her voice came out husky and tinged with awe, “you’re hard again?”

  He mumbled a ‘yes’, the vibration of the word against Cindy’s pussy enticing a little moan from her. The moan grew longer and louder when he groaned against her clit as Cynthia impaled herself on his thick shaft and started riding it with abandon.

  Both his nipples were grabbed and pulled, rushing more blood into his cock in an instant, yet he also remained vigilant, ready to strike if that teardrop was so much as nudged. He might have manners, but he expected the same courtesy in return. He was not averse to breaking fingers if he had to, even if they belonged to pretty red-heads.

  “Ooooh, God, yes…” That was the twin on his tongue, and he had to admit that he shared her sentiment at this moment, because her sister wasn’t taking any prisoners with her very rough performance – just how he liked it. Ooooh, God, yes, you did do well with the X chromosome…

  The clit above his tongue grew and tightened until it was a large bud on the edge of bursting; the mint-cream lips around it swelled… “Yes! Yes!”

  Abaddon grabbed her large hips, bringing her further down onto him so she’d feel every last millisecond of her climax, his own orgasm spiralling upwards from the base of his erection.

  He shouted his explosive release into Cindy’s frenzied one, as Cynthia’s own rolled out of her as she violently rocked onto him.

  OH. FUCKING. YEEEEESSS.

  They collapsed on him in a mass of pants and grunts.

  He gave Cindy’s arse a slap and she lazily moved off his face, planting a kiss on his lips, maybe as a thank you, maybe to lap her own juices off him … who knew – these two bitches were kinky as fuck.

  He didn’t sense her right away, so immersed was he in … yeah, well…

  When he did finally recognise the hint of that magical dust in the air, he stilled. Shit.

  He wouldn’t have cared had it been anyone else – anyone else. But her… She had been there at the very beginning, had been an ally, a curious friend, but a distant friend, and he had been quietly in wonderment of her, wishing to get closer, but somehow sensing that closeness would ruin her – that he would somehow taint her in a way she didn’t deserve.

  Like he was doing now.

  Gritting his teeth he turned his head towards the door and there stood Morgan le Fey as regal as ever, despite her inevitable demise. Her eyes shone with both hurt and … Jesus Christ – lust – as she took in the scene in front of her.

  Lucifer stood by her side, void of all expression but a little smirk on his face that Abaddon would gladly punch away at the first opportunity he got. He wondered if the angel had picked his timing on purpose for Morgana’s sake. Probably – he likes to watch pain and pleasure collide, slippery fucker.

  “Off,” he said to the twins, and it was a command spoken with a harsh authority that left no room for compromise.

  His kinky companions took in the new visitors, read the thick emotions in the air accurately and promptly got off him. They scurried for their clothes, throwing him curious glances.

  “I’ll see you both soon, cupcakes.” He managed a smile which seemed to steady their nerves.

  They returned his smile before gingerly darting past Morgana and Lucifer, and towards the open door; Cynthia throwing Lucifer an appreciative glance as she walked by.

  The fairy queen avoided their gazes – avoided anyone’s gaze – and, instead, took in the décor of the hotel room he had somehow found himself in.

  The anguish in her eyes at what she’d just witnessed twisted his gut, but he pushed it away with an internal sigh. He didn’t need extra confusion right now – none of them did.

  He sat up, reached out behind him and fluffed up his pillows, then propped them up and leaned on them, not bothering to hide his nudity. He’d never been the shy type.

  Lucifer spoke first. “Two girls, Abaddon? Feeling a little greedy?”

  He returned Lucifer’s earlier smirk with one of his own. “‘Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.’ Ecclesiastes 4:9.”

  Lucifer snorted. “Trust you to interpret biblical teachings in an entirely unique way.”

  “It’s the only way to learn. So … two visits in twenty-four hours…” His gaze left the angel and landed on the beautiful fairy. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, your Highness?”

  She cleared her throat and he had to hand it to her – whatever she might be feeling on the inside, she did not allow it to belittle her supremacy. No trace of distress shaded her tone. “It appears that this great apocalypse we have all been waiting on … is for us. We are dying, Abaddon.”

  The teardrop on his chest throbbed.

  “I know.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The chairs were comfy and that was pretty much it. Nothing else about this place was good.

  It might have something to do with the fact that they’d walked in on Abaddon while he was… She pushed the image of his ecstasy out of her mind, and then pushed away the painful jealousy that rose sharply with it. Her cheeks burned hot; her skin flushed all over.

  “A Tequila Sunrise – try it. After that little performance we were treated to, I feel that sobriety is highly overrated.” Lucifer placed her drink down on the table, and then sat opposite her, both of them waiting for Abaddon to come and join them in the hotel bar
.

  It made Morgana want to scream, and inside, she did: Look at us both sitting here like mortals!

  Abaddon had refused to be questioned further on what he knew before freshening up.

  She picked up her ice cool glass and stared at Lucifer. Had he known they would find him the way they had? She was still seething at her long-time adviser for keeping everything else he knew from her, and now she discovered that Abaddon had known about their extinction as well.

  Their deceit bore at her, uncompromising, like some object drilling its way to its final destination. Around her, human emotions swam in and out of her aura as people passed by, some of them sad and lonely, looking for a mate for the night or for longer; some of them enjoying the night with their friends or lovers; some of them fearing over the state of the world…

  She was tired.

  She hadn’t realised it, but she’d been tired for a long time, and the failure to win her home back now brought that exhaustion to her door on the tail of defeat.

  Her lips reluctantly met the tang of the alcoholic concoction and she wrinkled her nose in a grimace – as a fairy, she had zero tolerance to alcohol.

  Abaddon entered the room with the presence he mastered so perfectly, without even trying, so it seemed. Freshly showered and adorning clean, rather swish-looking clothes, all eyes turned to him, some fleetingly, but no one missed his entrance and for a moment, Morgana forgot her own woes and her heart went out to him in a strange wave of compassion she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before.

  He was truly brilliant – commanding, striking and imposing – and it wasn’t fair that he should pass away into oblivion with the rest of them after everything he had been through. He had survived so much, been faultlessly loyal to God’s wishes of him, and to fade away like some echo that would soon be forgotten… What a travesty. In this second, she understood with unparalleled clarity that if she could save him, she would.

  She came out of her thoughts to find his eyes locked with hers, a softness and … gratitude to them, as if somehow he knew her mind.

  Her skin flushed hot again, although this time for slightly different reasons. A warmth accompanied the flush instead of the harsh anguish that had been there before.

  Abaddon brought over a chair from a nearby, unoccupied table and sat down opposite her and to the right of Lucifer. He cut straight to the chase. “I share the Dragon’s emotions. Some of those emotions translate into thought forms and I am able to understand what it is thinking.”

  Lucifer frowned at him – it was pretty close to a scowl – as Morgana gasped in surprise. Even she couldn’t feel the Dragon and she had been bitterly disappointed, believing that she would; that her connection to the beast would have been the same as when dragons first flew the skies. She had been their home, their safe haven, and they had been her guardians. “How?”

  With an unreadable expression, he undid the top three buttons on this shirt – and it was a nice shirt, pleated near the cuffs – and opened the lapels, leaving his chest bare for her gaze.

  “Ymari’s tear,” she said, softly.

  “Yes. It remains my only connection to her, our blood connection gone when she and Gwain merged. You were there when she cried for me – I know you were there. I always know when you’re there.”

  His tone was heavy as if conveying a deeper meaning.

  She searched his face, but it remained passive.

  Without thinking about it, she reached out with her hand to touch the pearly drop, then stopped before reaching it, knowing, somehow, that it was too personal an act.

  He caught her hand before it fell, and she stared in wonderment as he brought it up to his chest, resting it right against the tear. It was cool against his hot skin.

  “Give me strength,” mumbled Lucifer. “Look, this is all very cosy, but we came here for—”

  “Leave.”

  He rose his eyebrows at her stony command. “My queen, we—”

  “Leave, Lucifer,” she repeated, her bite back full force; the earlier sense of worthlessness she’d felt, gone. “You lied to me – told me nothing when you should have told me everything. I don’t trust you; I don’t know your aim in all of this and if you’re not reliable, then you’re not helpful. Leave.”

  Both pairs of eyes turned on him, hers hard, as he had taught her to be, and Abaddon’s practically gleeful.

  Lucifer stood from his chair. “Fine,” he conceded, “but I do have a game plan.”

  “You always have, I have no doubt of that – your own agenda to suit your own needs. Well, your needs are not mine.”

  “Clearly,” he spat out, looking from her to Abaddon and then back again. “I took you to have a stronger will, your majesty; a tougher backbone. I guess we all misread each other, don’t we? Nevermind. I shall see you at the very end.”

  And with that, he promptly disappeared, leaving her uneasy. Lucifer had always been a tricky one, but he had been by her side, her counsellor, for so long. Without him…

  She gulped the uneasiness away and looked up at Abaddon who still held her hand against the tear over his heart: his atonement.

  “She redeemed you,” Morgana stated.

  “Yes, in a way.”

  “Lucifer will get no such redemption.” It was a fact that, strangely, grieved her.

  “I don’t know if it’s redemption he seeks. Redemption needs to be both desired and earned, and he was once bright, Morgana. Remember? The brightest spark in Heaven there ever was. I remember his fall. God was bereft. A light went out when he disappeared; Heaven grew a shade darker.”

  “Yes, I recall. I found him where he fell; healed him…”

  “You healed him from everything except himself.”

  “He never told me the reason for his fall. All this time, and he never once … he’s never once told me anything of himself. There is only what I see. It’s not enough – not enough to trust him.”

  “He has never told anyone why he fell, remaining elusive, and perhaps more dangerous for the mystery… Do you think he plans to kill the Dragon?”

  “I don’t know.” Her palm against his chest was growing far too warm. With a wiggle, she pulled it away and out of his grip. If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it.

  “Do you plan to kill the Dragon?” he asked her.

  She let out a slow sigh, exhaling the whole damn world she’d tried so hard to save. “And then what? What if, beyond all odds, I kill the Dragon and then live? I would still exist in this human world, with human feelings clawing at me, only there would be no humans in it. I would be alone, and by the Fates, I don’t think loneliness is yet another emotion I care to feel. How they go on day after day with all the pain they carry around is beyond me – I am all but broken because of it.”

  “You will never break, Morgana – never.”

  She wasn’t so sure. “The fay are…” Her words dropped to a whisper. “I can feel them disappearing. It is happening, just as the Malattal have said, and I’m not sure how much longer I have left.”

  They sat in silence, each in their own thoughts.

  “Do you think it will hurt?” she voiced, quietly, after a while.

  “Hurt?”

  “Dying. Fading away into nothing. Do you think it will hurt?”

  His smile was both wry, yet with a steady assurance. “No more than existing, my love. No more than existing.”

  ~*~

  Katherine wasn’t surprised when Lucifer appeared in her bedroom for the third time that night, his energy frazzled, his soul seeking recognition.

  Because she had been expecting him, she had unlocked her bedroom’s veranda doors leading out into the east-facing balcony and that’s where she now stood. She didn’t want to be closed in with him again. As much as a part of her already craved his touch, had become tuned to it so damn quickly – frighteningly quickly – it was a road paved with desperation; a road she had fought for too long to get off.

  Addiction came in many forms, and Lucifer’s would carr
y her where angels feared to tread. She had been fearful once. Never again.

  “Is the cold pleasing to you, Katherine?” he said, as he joined her outside.

  She didn’t look at him, feeling for his mood with her senses instead. “In some ways it’s been my companion for so long. The cold will always feel like an unwelcome comfort… Are you going to kill Karl?” Might as well get this over with.

  “If I see him before Elena does, then yes.”

  Katherine sucked in a breath. “My daughter is my priority.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t want the Dragon dead, but if I have to fight you to earn her more time to save him…”

  “I know, Katherine.”

  And for the first time in a long time, the cold air suddenly felt too cold. “I’m surprised you’re willing to die for humans. I would have thought watching us all stumble around in some Dark Age – providing we survive – would be too great a chance to pass up.”

  He didn’t reply, his soft breathing the only thing sounding between them.

  She did turn then, to take him in.

  His expression was distant, as if longing for some haven that was out of his reach. His voice came out rough. “Why do you say that?”

  “You know why.”

  He remained silent.

  “I was stripped piece by piece by hands that nurtured violation instead of love – stripped so completely that I didn’t know who I was when those same hands put me back together again. I was moulded into a vessel that thirsted for humiliation in order to find fulfilment – I know what it’s like to crave ruination and you, Lucifer, are predisposed to the decortication that torment brings; I feel it every time you touch me; every time you look at me… You yearn for debasement, thriving on how the dark desires of others expose them to their own eyes and yours. I don’t know what made you that way, but I should imagine that a world in which the human soul faces its own darkness every day would be something akin to a drug den for you.”

  She almost wished she hadn’t said a word, the wound on his countenance wide open for once … hell, her own wounds had seeped open at her little speech. But saying nothing, when one should say everything, only led to further pain – she’d learnt that the hard way.