His truth was wedged between the cleft of her buttocks, pulsing in time with the beating of his heart. Nick shifted his weight until she was facedown on the mattress once more. He grabbed a handful of her hair and wound it around his wrist, effectively pinning her cheek against the smooth coverlet even as his forearm snaked under her hips and pulled her up to her knees.
The sound of his belt buckle clinking and his zipper opening flooded Moira with another anticipatory rush.
Moira could not stifle her gasp as his smooth, hard length glided through her folds, coating himself in her moisture before he buried himself without preamble.
And when he was inside her, Moira knew she had never in her life been fucked before. The fierceness of their joining tore from her a cry of violent wonder. At his strength. His precision. At the beauty of his savage need to possess not just her body, but her mind, her soul, her thoughts, and her will.
How the feeble, sweaty pumping of men without number, even those whose bodies she found attractive were obliterated the second Nick’s cock rooted itself in her body.
One hand tightened in her hair, one clutching her hip, Nick halted where he was, his breath tickling her back as he held her still.
Still enough that she could feel his wild pulse within her.
Still enough that the beating of her own heart searched for and syncopated itself with his rhythm, the throb of their separate life forces coming into alignment here at the beginning of all things.
Nick’s hand left her hip to plant itself on her lower back. He withdrew from her, inch by glorious inch before moving into her again. Deeper this time. Slower. The precise opposite of what she had expected their encounter to be. Empty of the blind, bruising force she had been shoring herself up against.
No.
Nick’s every stroke was a primeval exploration. And only when he knew her, knew where her most secret places dipped and bowed, did the real conquest begin.
Using muscles Moira didn’t even know a man could own, Nick’s hips moved in rhythmic eddies and currents, pushing himself not just inside her, but like a tide within her. Filling her to his hilt and then beyond it until their bodies joined at every possible angle, deeper, more elemental than the soft earth yielding and molding around a tree’s insistent root.
Nick made her an extension of his own body. Angling his hips, angling hers, using the maximum attenuation of his broad back to build leverage each time he returned his cock to her in full, leaving her to mourn its absence each time he retreated.
They moved this way for hours, it seemed. Perhaps days. Time, like language, was just another casualty to their coupling. Moira found herself incapable of speaking in anything other than ecstatic cries, guttural moans, inarticulate pleas and demands. Nick spoke to her in languages she had never heard and yet somehow understood, using the same tongue to lick the sweat from her spine when it pooled there.
Somewhere between her first climax and her twentieth, Moira understood.
Were her life not slated to end before this side of the world saw the sun, Nicholas Kingswood would forever own her. This is what he had meant. Not that he would simply call her his.
He would make her his.
Would explore her and pleasure her so thoroughly that no man, mortal or otherwise, could even hope to compare. He would claim her by the elemental fusion by which worlds are made and unmade. Just as he made and unmade her now.
She would surrender not because he’d forced her to, but because giving herself over to him was as effortless and involuntary as breathing.
****
Nick couldn’t stop.
In all his long years, he had fucked and been fucked by mortal women, goddesses, nymphs, and every manner of whore, courtesan, and paid lay this world could offer. He shoveled them like coal into the eternally burning furnace of his lust. His need for conquest in all arenas. His never-ending, damnable need for domination.
But never had he been so enrapt, so possessed, so…bewitched by any creature in this realm or any other.
He had intended to fuck Moira good and hard, to make her come until she begged, sate his own need, then deliver his end of the bargain.
And at every turn, she had thwarted him.
Moira had pulled him down, down to pleasures deeper and more incendiary than the volcanic lava erupting from the Earth’s core into the ocean’s darkest fissures.
Surprise was an irksome, inconvenient emotion Nick thought he had long ago done away with. Tonight, Moira had taught him differently.
With her, there would be no satiation. He could fuck her for a thousand years and it would never be enough. He had no idea how long they’d been here. Had lost count of how many times they’d come in synchronization. Her ability to replenish fluids and his bottomless appetite left them endlessly devouring each other again and again.
Witch or no, she occupied a human body, did not have the benefit of the immortal strength and stamina that had won him many a battle. And yet this water witch proved equally insatiable. This he hadn’t counted on. This he hadn’t planned for.
For as long as she had lived, she had used her body to heal those in need, never taking for herself the pleasure he had derived from his every encounter. Now, with the prospect of her life coming to an end, she was not only taking from him all she had ever missed, but also all she might yet have enjoyed.
Sitting astride him, her head thrown back and her breasts swaying in time with the bucking and rolling of her hips, Moira fucked him like a woman desperate to compress a lifetime of pleasure into one heated night.
Damned if Nick didn’t want to give it to her.
But he knew things she did not. Knew that the Devil had set her sights on Moira’s soul. Knew their time was short, and if he was to help her without making her a meat sacrifice to Satan, he had to stop.
They had to stop.
Before the consequences of their rapture included the world’s end.
Just once more.
Gods be damned, but he needed to feel her come for him, around him, just once more. He needed to render in his long memory the rapturous pleasure on her beautiful face, a look of bliss and contentment that he had put there.
He rolled her over onto her back, taking in the pink flush from her breasts to her cheeks, the sweat-dampened hair forming Botticelliesque curls around her face. He looked at the lips he’d swollen with kisses, the reddening patches marking her body like a map of where he’d been. Her aquamarine eyes had darkened with carnal knowledge he alone had imparted. Her face slackened by pleasure—pleasure she had finally taken for herself.
She had not needed to speak the words. Her body had surrendered to him again and again.
Fierce pride swelled in his heart…and cock.
He fit the backs of her knees into the crooks of his elbows and planted them back by her shoulders. From this vantage he could reach her mouth and breasts while fucking her at an angle that would have them visiting constellations in short order.
Moira’s lazy smile loosened into an open-mouthed gasp of pleasure—a sound Nick found more heavenly than any angelic choir. The friction building between them was a close second and about as near to heaven as he was likely to get.
Her nails scored his back, working all the way down to his buttocks, which she grabbed, pulling him toward her at an even more rapid pace. Surprise number two.
Number three arrived seconds after in the form of a directive given in that honeyed drawl.
“Don’t you hold back, Nicholas Kingswood.” She rose from the pillow and nipped his earlobe. “Not this time.”
He drove into her hard, almost losing himself within her when she folded forward to bite the swell of his trapezius muscle to muffle her moan. Tasting the sweat of his neck. Clinging to him, arms binding him to her with a power no incantation could hope to match.
“Take me,” she whispered, coupling the demand with a sharp tug of the fingers threaded through his hair. “Take everything I have left.”
Never
in his life had Nickolas Kingswood been given an order.
Never in his life had he wanted to obey.
Until now.
And with that, the last fraying thread of his carefully-guarded control broke altogether.
Vicious need took him then, and her with it. He fucked her with the mindless abandon of the animal his title implied. The Horseman. Conquest. The blood, and battle, and speed, and brutality all unleashed upon the body of this water witch, his sworn enemy, bringer of the End of Days.
All hers to command.
“Nick,” she panted. “Oh, Nick, please. Harder.”
Harder he could do. He held fast to her hips, his cock the weapon of her choosing, giving her the thousand deaths she’d wished for since she recognized her capacity for destruction.
Faster too, he gifted her, delving into her at the pace of Magnus, his warhorse, adopted when the scent of blood flared his nostrils.
The first twinges of her orgasm quickened around him. Her muscles fired in random jolts like an electrical grid tasked with unmasking the divine.
His own release raced to meet hers as if summoned like a mate through the darkness.
How gloriously she came apart before him. Her eyes jeweled like the sea at the sun’s rising, her body melting into his, her going liquid as currents of pleasure broke over her in wave after wave.
Nick was lost at the sight of her. Growling her name in a primitive prayer. His seed poured into her as together they broke open the sky, the cosmos spilling out for them alone.
For that moment, the Apocalypse was only the ashes of a word scattered on the wind, and Moira was no more than his lover, and Nick was no Horseman, no assassin.
Because gods help him, he no longer knew if when the time came, he could let his arrow fly.
Chapter Nine
“Hey! I’s wondering where these got to.” Moira was tempted to slingshot the lacy red thong hanging from her index finger at Nick, but wasn’t sure he’d return it if she did. “You want to tell me exactly how in the hell you have a pair of my underpants in your possession?”
Nick sauntered toward her, fresh from the shower, clad in naught but a luxury cotton towel. “The same way I have a pair of your cut-offs and tank top in the bottom drawer there. I took them.”
Moira held her own towel to her chest, her wet hair raining droplets onto the Persian rug beneath Nick’s antique armoire. Sure enough. She recognized her worn cut-offs and her threadbare Hoo-Doo Shack tank top folded neatly among Nick’s boxer briefs.
“I’ll be damned,” she said. “I’d assumed Tierra had thrown them out sometime after I moved in. She isn’t a fan of my sartorial leanings, you might say.”
“The outfit you wore when we first met on the plane,” Nick offered in explanation. “I like souvenirs.” He indicated the lighted trophy cases containing the weapons she had stared at for hours on end earlier.
“I didn’t figure you for the sentimental kind,” Moira teased.
“If by ‘sentimental,’ you mean, considered killing everyone on the airplane so I could fuck you right there in your first class seat, then yeah, I was feeling sentimental as hell.” Nick took a step toward her and brushed her dripping hair from the back of her neck. “When you live as long as I have, you choose the moments worthy of remembering.”
“I get you. Believe me, there are plenty of memories I’d rather not have. Like the time Skeeter Robicheau got caught behind the Piggly Wiggly tryin’ to have his way with a loaf of day-old French bread. I mean, I know it was probably nice and warm from being in the dumpster in August, but—”
Nick held up a hand. “I’d rather not add that visual to my collection, if you don’t mind.”
Moira let her towel drop to the floor and stepped into her panties, a peace offering in lieu of the image she’d just foisted on him. “What I want to know is how you got into the house to raid my drawers. We have wards in place.”
“The only question I am equipped to answer with your body on display like that is whether I want you to sit on my face before or after I take you from behind.” Threads of glowing gold were returning to his eyes as they fixed on her breasts, his arousal beginning to tent his towel.
“Don’t you start that stuff, Mister,” Moira warned. “You yourself said we didn’t have much time on account of that evil bitch wanting to eat my soul and all.”
“But it’s not your soul I’m interested in eating.” Nick hooked a finger in the strap of her panties and tugged downward, but she slapped his hand away.
“It’s cute that you can be all playful and not an asshole after a first-class fuck-a-thon, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get this over with.” Moira shrugged into her tank top and shimmied into her cut-offs while Nick retreated to his walk-in closet to don his usual attire of slacks and button-up shirt.
“No need to dress up on my account,” she said. “The funeral won’t be for a few days after my body is found. If my body is found. And I’m pretty sure murder ain’t a tie-wearing kind of occasion.”
“Depends on the murderer.” Nick flashed her his knee-weakening, wicked grin.
Moira had to look away before she took him up on his offer of one last hurrah.
“Where the hell are my sandals?” she asked, going to her hands and knees to search under the bed.
“I think the selfsame consumer of souls might have borrowed them.”
“It’s not enough the bitch wants my soul. She’s got to take my shoes too?” Moira used the bedpost to pull herself to her feet, only to have them swept out from under her.
Nick had scooped her into his arms as if she didn’t weigh any more than a half-empty sack of potatoes.
“Guess I’ll have to carry you then. The gravel in the driveway is sharp. Wouldn’t want you to cut your feet.”
“I’m not fixin’ to be princess carried to my own martyrdom,” Moira insisted.
“I wouldn’t have to carry you anywhere if you didn’t insist on being taken to Siren’s Cry. I could shoot you right here and save us time. In fact, we might be able to get in a couple more fucks before—”
Moira punched him as hard as she could in the solar plexus, gratified by the sudden whoosh of air exiting his lungs. “Are you really suggesting that you kill me here just so you can get your rocks off a couple more times?”
“And yours.” Nick managed to shrug even with Moira in his arms. “We get to fuck more. You still die. Makes excellent sense, if you ask me.”
“You really are a bastard,” she said, unable to keep the wonder from her voice.
“Have I ever claimed to be anything else?”
“Listen here, you toad scrotum-suckin’—”
“Shhh,” Nick urged. “Think you can keep that smart mouth shut for the length of time it takes to walk from here to the front door?”
Moira smiled, and tweaked his nipple as hard as she could through his shirt.
“Fuck!” Nick growled.
“Shhhh!” Moira lifted her finger to her lips in an exaggerated gesture of censure.
Nick’s eyebrows lowered like storm clouds as he paused with his ear to the door, listening—Moira supposed—for some sign of War or Pestilence. After a moment, he silently turned the door handle using the same arm braced under the backs of her knees.
All right, so this wasn’t exactly the heroic march Moira had pictured herself making, but she had to admit it wasn’t altogether unpleasant, being carried by Nicholas Kingswood. His muscled forearms deliciously brushed her calves, his heart beat against her shoulder, his warm body was a living cradle for her tired limbs.
Nick inched the door open and they were down the hall, across the living room, and out the front door with a speed and grace that superseded anything in Moira’s experience.
Moira pulled the heady scent of velvet night into her lungs, the signature mix of salt air and damp, mossy verdant life she’d grown to love in Port Townsend. It settled on her skin, moist and cool where her body didn’t touch Nick’s. Far away, t
he ocean’s lullaby called to her, every spent wave whispering hush as it foamed onto the sand.
Only the sound of Nick’s shoes crunching on the gravel and the beating of her own heart within her ears interrupted the heavy silence.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when Nick had walked them far beyond the driveway and out to a dirt road.
“Her Royal Darkness set up a witch-proof perimeter, but I can get you out, but doing so requires that we be mounted to pass over the boundary. Also, escaping works better if She-Devil isn’t in the immediate proximity.”
“No wonder none of my sisters showed up,” Moira said, a tightness in her chest loosening with the revelation. “And what do you mean by mounted? I thought that’s what we were doing all afternoon.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to goad me into fucking you on this forest floor so you can get your soul devoured by Satan. I don’t know how long she’ll be gone, Moira. I know only that she’s not in the vicinity for the moment, and if you really want to go through with this, we need to move now.”
Her body bounced in time with his long-legged strides.
“How do you know that ol’ Serpent isn’t here?” she asked.
“Because the soul-sucking maggot queen of the infernal realms has a pretty unmistakable astral resonance,” he answered. “Also, I don’t smell the blood of virgins.”
“But you didn’t seem to mind planting your flag between her demon thighs, according to her.”
“I didn’t know what she was then. None of us did. Well, except for Julian. He always was the brains of the operation. Refusing her landed him the curse of never being able to touch a single living creature without destroying it.”
“’Cept for Aerin,” Moira pointed out.
My sisters. All at once her heart filled with an ache large enough to split her chest wide open. Images unwound through her mind like an old-fashioned film reel. Tierra jangling into the room, all scarves and swaying fabric, smelling of herbs and earth and all things clean and good. Claire slouching at the kitchen table in her leathers, warming Moira with her easy smile and cinnamon-scented kisses on the cheek.
Which Witch is Wicked? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 2) Page 33