by Laura Marie
“Come back here Arturo. You are an Unrivaled. You need the fire and the warmth. And you need to keep your strength. If it pains you so much, I will never speak of this subject again. I am content to be your companion in protecting the Book of The Unrivaled and will never ask to be anything more. I promise.”
The herbarium came back into focus and as Rebecca looked down at Arthur his eyes opened.
“Love of my life. Do not despair.” He said stretching out his hand and drawing his long fingers along the side of his face.
“I will never understand why he pushes her away, when clearly he is as attracted to her as she is to him. But obviously you do so, tell me Arthur. Please do tell me.”
“In good time sweetheart, all in good time.” He said to her soothingly and pulled her to his side.
Chapter 19
Rebecca went without any resistance as Arturo pushed her down on her back so that she was lying next to him. Then he rose up on his elbow, securing her into his side and looking down into her eyes.
Rebecca was wearing a short blue summer dress and its hem gathered around her waist as she lay next to him.
“Are you comfortable? Is the ground too hard?” Arthur asked. He drew his fingers through her hair with one hand and pushed the other up over the side of her thigh.
“This place is …magical.” Rebecca said smiling up at him and the world just felt brighter to him. Arthur cupped her face with his palm and bent down to kiss her. His lips were warm and soft and Rebecca closed her eyes and just let herself drift into their blissful claim.
Slowly Arthur drew his other hand over the inside of her thigh and stroked the soft flesh there. Suddenly Rebecca opened her eyes and stopped his hand with hers. Arthur looked up at her in confusion while she pulled out his hand from between her legs and held it up in front of her face his palm facing her. The skin on his hand was burnt and though the wound seemed dry the scar looked ugly and painful.
“What happened?” she asked looking up at him in concern. Arthur smiled affectionately freeing his hand from her grip.
“Nothing that’s not going to heal.” He said starting to work on the buttons on the front of her dress.
“Arthur…” Rebecca protested in concern.
“Shhhh…not now.” He said as he pushed her dress down over her shoulders. His eyes roved over her body with reverence and Rebecca had the feeling that perhaps he was not real at all. A man who loved her with such sincerity and admiration could only be a fragment of her imagination.
While she watched him with fascination, Arthur drew back and sitting next to her on his knees he quickly undressed himself. As he pushed away his boxers Rebecca could not take her eyes away from him. She marveled at the sheer size of him and let out a choppy breath.
“You are not real, are you?” she tried to ask but her voice was slurred and her vision blurring. Arthur had freed her of her dress completely and was pushing his fingers slowly up between her legs. Rebecca arched against him and as she did he caught one pink nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.
A deep throaty moan escaped her lips as he dipped his fingers deeper into her core all the while circling her sensitive nub. As the tension built inside her Rebecca squirmed against his chest. Arthur caught the side of her ear lightly between his teeth and pulled on it while he held her close with one hand and pleasured her with the other.
“Does this feel real?” he whispered as he curled his fingers inside her and drew them out deliberately. Her insides went taught then something exploded. Waves of delightful pleasure swamped over her and Rebecca gasped to draw her breath. Arthur smiled down at her triumphantly.
Then even before she had had the chance to recover, he pushed apart her knees and drove into her with one quick thrust. He stayed there for a few seconds watching her, then he drew out slowly watching her vision blur with the pleasure. Before he was completely out he thrust back in again, this time he did not stop, instead he kept a steady pace going.
Then without any warning he pushed her knees up over her chest and drove deeper into her core. Rebecca whimpered as she held onto his shoulders for leverage. Pain and pleasure spiraled inside her like a volcano as her body cried out for release. Arthur drove into her mindlessly and with complete abandon. She cried out his name on a shuddering wail as the tension shattered inside her and she climaxed.
She looked up into his eyes at that moment and felt them turn a darker shade of blue. Then they went all glassy as he let go of all that he was holding back and poured into her.
They lay there for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, floating in and out of inebriated senselessness. They had made love twice again and neither had the strength to move or speak.
“What do you say we take this someplace else and continue?” he muttered into her ear.
“I need to go.” Rebecca said making no attempt to move. He pulled her closer then whispered.
“Stay! Darcy and Andrea are anyways going to sulk in silence. They will make you miserable.”
“They are both my friends and I need to be there when they need me.”
“I need you too.” He complained.
“You have had enough of me.” Rebecca admonished.
“Not quite enough.” He grumbled.
“Where have you been the last five days Arthur?”
“Paris.”
“Doing what?”
“Attending a conference.”
“Medical?” Rebecca asked arching her brow up at him. It was challenging to interrogate him when he was caressing her hip in feather-light circles with his long sensual fingers.
“Wizarding!”
“What kind of conference?” Rebecca was alert now and she sat up next to him. Stark naked looking down at him. He lay flat on his back, not attempting to hide his nakedness from her, looking up at her in disapproval.
“The kind attended by dangerous men.”
“Why did you have to go?”
“It was a council meeting. Of the Unrivaled.” Arthur nodded as he got up and started dressing.
“You have a council?” Rebecca was starting to draw her dress over her head when Arthur stopped her.
“Stay.” He said again closing his fingers over her wrist.
“As in stay here with me please Rebecca or just stay naked?” she asked him, the beginning of her sentence delivered in sweet flirtation and the remaining in an angry growl.
“Stay here with me tonight.” Arthur said, her wrist still clutched in his grip. “Please…” he added in afterthought.
“Am I allowed to put on my clothes?” she asked and his smile widened.
“I would prefer not. But if that is going to make you stay, let’s cut a deal. There’s a pair of pajama shorts for you on my bed upstairs.”
“You got me a gift?” she asked surprised and crazily happy like a little girl. Arthur gave an ear to ear smile.
“Yup.”
“From Paris?” she asked thrilled.
“From JFK. My flight to Helena was late. I had an hour and a half to kill.” She looked at him in disgust then said. “They better be of decent length Arthur McDonald or I will hex you so bad, you will be sorry you ever thought of shopping for me.”
“If they were to be of decent length. Why would I buy them for you in the first place?” he called after her as she disappeared up the stairs.
Chapter 20
There are others like you? Rebecca asked incredulously, taking a sip from her glass of chardonnay. She sat at the kitchen table looking at Arthur’s back.
“Seventeen. And believe me when I tell you that they are the world’s most invincible, most dangerous men.”
Arthur came towards her and just as she was lowering her glass from her lips he bent down and kissed them, lightly sucking at the taste of wine from them.
“Is that why you always stayed away from her? Because you are dangerous?” she asked forlornly. Arthur had turned his back on her once again after his kiss. Her question made him stop in his tracks
and he visibly stiffened.
“Rebecca! Don’t weep for her.” He said his back still to her. “Yes, I never touched her. Not even when we were betrothed, towards the end. But it was all for a reason.”
“You know I feel what she feels when you show me those visions, don’t you?” Rebecca asked him pitifully.
“Yess!” Arthur sighed dejectedly. He placed his hands on the kitchen top, leaned over them and hung his head.
“It breaks her heart every time you turn her down.” Rebecca continued in a trembling voice. Arthur hissed and whirled on to her.
“She was the love of my life. Do you think it was easy for me to keep her at a distance? I would have died for her.” Arthur said from between barred teeth looking down at Rebecca.
“You did.” Rebecca looked up at him boldly. He may be one of the most lethal men on the planet. But she was not afraid of him.
“I loved her. More than life itself.” he whispered.
“And yet you never gave her the one thing that she had wanted the most.”
“It would have killed her.” He raised his voice a few notches.
“Something got her killed anyway.” Rebecca countered. Arthur glowered at her for a minute. Then sat down across from her with a sigh.
My, that is, Arturo’s grandfather was an Unrivaled. It is rare to have two of a kind in the same family with such little gap in generations. But it did happen. When I was fifteen and Andrea a couple of years younger, he was found dead in the woods behind our house. He had been blinded, gutted and left for the Ravens to feast upon. Andrea and I were the ones to find him.
“But you said he was an Unrivaled. Then he must have been invincible. How could anyone kill him?”
“That was what we asked each other.” Arthur said looking at her with an enigmatic smile.
“Unless, the killer was also an Unrivaled. The Dark Prince is an Unrivaled” Rebecca exclaimed, her eyes growing round with the discovery and Arthur nodded his consent slowly.
Out parents were nonmagical people and they worked their piece of the field all day long. Our grandfather used to train us in the craft. The day we found him, we were actually out looking for him. He had not come home for days.”
“It must have been difficult for you.” Rebecca said covering his hand with hers, over the table. Arthur nodded as he looked out into the darkness from the kitchen window.
“He left behind in our custody, his amulet and the Book of The Unrivaled that he had written. A compilation of magical spells and practices, Magical ingredients and where to find them, history of magic and its regulations and lives and deeds of great wizards.”
“Was that how you became an Unrivaled? His amulet being passed on to you?” Rebecca asked and Arthur smiled derisively.
“No. It wasn’t that easy. Believe me you don’t really want to know how I became an Unrivaled. My grandfather must have anticipated his untimely death. In case of his demise, he entrusted me with the task of taking the Ledger and his amulet back to the council where it belonged.”
“That was where you were headed when we saw you in the vision that day. It was your grandpa’s amulet that Andrea was handing over to you.”
“ Yes, she had put it around a leather thong so that I could wear it around my neck. That night, hidden in a cave, several miles away from home, I saw my village been burnt to ashes. I determined then and there that I would never come back to the place again. Once I had delivered the book, I would beg and plead the council of the Unrivaled, the brave men my grandfather always told us about, to give me a job with them.”
“Did they? Give you a job I mean?” Rebecca asked.
“Oh no, they didn’t. But what they gave me changed my life forever.” Arthur said once again looking out of the window. Rebecca was dying to ask him what he meant. But she reckoned he needed a little time to recovered.
At last Arthur drew out of his reverie and smiled at her sadly. “They took away my childhood, all my innocent dreams, all my hopes and aspirations and gave me a life that was a long unending nightmare.” He said and Rebecca thought his eyes were moist.
“It was not easy finding them.” Arthur said to her out of nowhere. “It took me nearly a year to locate the council. That year was the longest and hardest one in my education as a wizard. It surprises me sometimes that I even survived it.”
“You found no help?”
“No, not until I met Tobias. Rebecca’s father. When I met him, he told me that he would take me to them, that the council had been waiting for my arrival for months. I was furious. Why had they been waiting for me to fight all the odds and come to them? Why had they not come to help me? After all I was protecting and delivering what was theirs.”
Rebecca was about to say something when Arthur’s phone rang. From the sound of it, it was from the hospital. He plunged into a long series of very careful instructions as he stepped out onto the porch. By the time he came back in Rebecca had cleared the table, and put away the leftovers.
“Go. I will finish up the dishes then I will lock up.” She said as he came back in. Arthur smiled at her with deep affection then pulled her to him for a quick kiss.
“Wait for me. As Soon as I am done I will come for you.” He said. Rebecca nodded and he grabbed his car keys from the mantle and stepped out of the backdoor.
Chapter 21
The funeral for Sheriff Weylin was held two days later in the wooded area behind the Herbal pharmacy. By then Rebecca was so tired of Darcy’s scathing remarks to Zack about Andrea, her deliberate silence when the girl was around, her unending insinuations about Arthur, and Andrea’s pathetic attempts to make things right that she nearly begged a headache and stayed home. But then she thought of Weylin, the boy she had grown up with but had not had the opportunity to see growing old. She thought of his sunny disposition and his loyal friendship and she decided to brave Darcy’s foul mood and go.
It was a simple ceremony. Weylin had been an orphan and had left behind instructions in his will that his body be cremated. Zack had brought back the ashes to the small brook behind the pharmacy. He opened the urn, then emptied it into the flowing water while the girls watched. Once that was done they all sat around on the side of the brook watching the water flow merrily.
“The son of a bitch didn’t even show up.” Suddenly Darcy swore and Andrea and Rebecca lifted their heads. They knew exactly whom she was talking about.
“He is at the hospital since yesterday afternoon, Darce. There has been an outbreak of some kiddie fever at the school.” Zack tried to explain.
“Didn’t even have the courtesy to come pay his respects to the one he killed.” Darcy continued as if she had not heard him.
“Darce, Arthur didn’t kill Weylin. It was Weylin’s idea to go for a picnic and he was the one who incited you to use magic.” Zack continued.
“You are blaming Weylin for what happened when you know well enough that it was Arthur who did all this and got Weylin killed?” Darcy asked Zack incredulously.
“Enough!” Rebecca said as she stood up and stalked over to stand in front of Darcy.
“Arthur did not kill Weylin. If anything, he put his life in danger to save the rest of us.” She hissed at her friend.
“Of course, you will say that. You are sleeping with the bastard.” Darcy spat out as she too rose and stood to glare at Rebecca.
“You know what. I think this was not such a good idea after all. And I think if anyone here is defiling the memory of Weylin, it’s you. I understand your grief. But I refuse to stand here and listen to you while you insult and defile an honorable man.” Rebecca nearly shouted and Andrea stepped forward to stop her.
“Rebecca why don’t you come with me? Come and rest for a while. It has been very hard on all of us.”
“Us? Who’s Us?” Darcy screamed at Andrea. “There is no us! You will never be one of us. You will never feel Weylin’s death the way we do. We were all friends since we were children. You are a stranger, and so is your brother.” Darcy s
obbed.
“Really Darcy! You disgust me.” Rebecca said and stomped off towards the pharmacy followed by Andrea. Darcy whirled on to Zack who sat quietly looking into the spring.
“Why don’t you follow the new witch too, Zack? We all know, that the only thing you want is to get…”
“Darcy!” Zack said coming to her and holding her face in his palms.
“Don’t do this to yourself. Everyone is just trying to help. Let them help you. None of this is your fault. As for me, I will never leave you alone. Never! Except for now. I think you need to deal with your grief, and you need to be alone for a while to do that.” Zack said clutching her shoulder with one hand and nodding at her with a sad smile.
Darcy shrugged her shoulder off, away from his grip and took a couple of steps back.
“You are just like Bec, Zack. All you care about is yourself. You want to impress the new witch in town. You are so blinded by lust that you don’t care that your best buddy from childhood is dead because of her and her brother.” She snarled.
“Take care Darce. Don’t be out too late. I will wait for you at the pharmacy.” Zack said and strode off in the direction where Rebecca and Andrea had gone.
“You don’t need to wait for me nowhere. I can take care of myself. At least I have not sold my soul to the dark.” Darcy shouted after Zack. But he didn’t hear anything as he was already out of earshot.
“Well how about selling it now if you haven’t done so already?” a voice said and Darcy turned to see the Dark Prince standing in front of her smiling at her wickedly.
“You? How dare you come here and talk to me like that?” Darcy screamed at him and whirled upon him with all her power. The Dark Prince was taken by surprise and he was thrown on his back just next to the brook. He hit the ground hard and lay there splayed against the ground.
There was a fire in his eyes as he put his hands straight in front of him to retaliate. But Darcy was faster and she threw a ball of fire that went straight for the wizard’s chest and exploded there into a hundred shards of fiery embers.