Carnal Magic

by Christine McKay

  God, she wished she’d taken time to peel off her clothes. The thought barely crossed her mind when she felt her breasts press, skin to skin, to his chest.

  “What the…?” She glanced around. No clothes were in sight. He’d made them vanish. “That’s not fair!” She liked those jeans. That thought fled when his head dipped to a bared breast.

  Seizing her wrists in one hand, he clamped them above her head. “You didn’t answer me. Are you ticklish?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not the least bit.”

  “Little liar,” he whispered. He trailed his fingertips up her side and she convulsed in laughter.

  “Quit it!”

  His eyes had gone storm gray again. “Do you give up?”

  She writhed in his grip. “I like your privates a lot, but I won’t hesitate to take them hostage.” Her knee came up in slow warning.

  He quickly moved to her side.

  “Let. Me. Go.”

  “As you wish.” There was a click of sound, the brush of metal against stone, then he released her wrists and sat back.

  She tried to sit up. Her hands seemed to be connected to the floor. She craned her head back and glimpsed metal and fur. Oh, dear Lord, he’d handcuffed her to the floor. The traitorously soft fur had hidden a set of recessed cuffs. Or maybe he’d just conjured them up. “Absolutely not.”

  “I’m going to show you what passion is about, Ms. Feller, and I don’t want your hands interfering.”

  “I never agreed to bondage. Just three nights.” God, why couldn’t it have been a week or maybe a fortnight?

  “Here there is no day. Just infinite night.”

  The blood froze in her veins. He couldn’t mean to keep her here indefinitely. As much as the thought scared her, she felt her vagina do a happy dance. She clenched her teeth until the delicious tremor passed. “I have a life.”

  “Do you?” There was a ragged edge to his words. “I think you quit trying a long time ago.”

  Her throat was tight. Damn it, why did he always have to be right? “Keeping me tied up here won’t help either of us.”

  He made a noncommittal noise.

  “I mean it.”

  Picking up her foot, he cradled it in his lap. His hands traced its contours, kneading her instep.

  “Azrael?”

  He studied her foot, finger traveling over the curves of her toes. He lingered on her little toe, bent funny from repeated unrepaired breaks. One had been with Tom on his motorcycle. Blame dead-end jobs and a failed health system for its current asymmetrical status. Taking the toe, he wiggled it.

  “Azrael, come back to me.”

  “I’m jealous of him.” He didn’t meet her gaze. His hand slid a bit farther, massaging her calf, teasing the tender skin behind her knee.

  She didn’t need him to say Tom’s name. “Right now, there’s just you and me.”

  The firelight clung to his form, draping him in an aura of reds and oranges. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers. He couldn’t stop touching her and she wouldn’t give voice to the words to make him stop.

  It was as if he was a sculptor and she, his masterpiece. Only, flesh and bone couldn’t remain stone-still beneath his scalding touch. He was on his knees now, her legs parted to tacitly accept his invasion. Hands stroked her thighs, tickling the long taut muscle running from hip to knee.

  “You can’t keep me here.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” He placed a kiss on her mons, nose sliding lower to nudge aside her labial folds. His tongue flicked over her clitoris. Arching her back, she whimpered.

  He raised his head. “But I can make you dream of me.”

  His fingers parted her folds and he licked a long slow path up the length of her labia and down the other side. She throbbed. God, if he wouldn’t touch her there, she would take matters into her own hands. She jerked on the cuffs. Damning him might be redundant but she did, anyway.

  A tongue traced wet circles on her clitoris. Fingers found her vulva.

  He lifted his head. “You’re wet,” he whispered. His lips glistened with her moisture.

  Two fingers plunged inside her.

  She gasped.

  His fingers rubbed her tunnel’s slick interior. She clenched around them, trying to keep them prisoner, but he only chuckled and deliberately withdrew them. Then just as achingly slow, he slid them back in. His tongue and lips returned to her throbbing bud.

  “Let me go! I want to touch you.”

  He ignored her plea. A third finger joined its comrades. All her blood whooshed from her head to that tiny pulse of tissue. His tongue swirled around it, then drew it into his mouth. Her vagina contracted in unison with his mouth’s sucking.

  Her hands closed into fists. “Azrael, please!”

  The sucking increased. She arched her back, toes curling. The tension built until she thought something might snap. Then the orgasm washed through her, wringing a long moan from her throat.

  He gave her no moment of peace. Sitting up, he straddled her, knees trapping her hips. Catching her legs, he yanked her to him, her knees resting on his shoulders. He replaced his fingers with his cock, driving himself into her. Stomach muscles rippled and danced.

  Had her hands not been bound, she would have bolted upright. Instead, she whimpered and swore.

  Her vagina eagerly gobbled his shaft, a long pulsing clench that sent aftershocks shivering through her. He stretched her to her limits, fingers playing around the rim of her oversensitive vagina. His thumb found her clitoris. Her eyes glazed.

  His control shredded. He drove himself into her, over and over. No sweet caution. No teasing strokes. Like steel bands, his arms pinned her thighs to the sides of his chest. Sweat glistened on his pecs. She wanted to lick the salt from his muscles, savor the taste of him. She struggled against her restraints.

  The next orgasm descended, crushing everything in its path. It attacked her nerves like a wind-driven firestorm, stealing the air from her lungs. Her blood pooled in the lower half of her body, molten hot. When the after tremors struck, they drove the lava through her veins, searing her flesh from the inside out. Her back arched. A scream tore from her throat, primal and victorious.

  God help her. She was dying.

  He exploded inside her, his arms gripping her legs. His nails dug into her calves. And still her hips moved. She didn’t know how they possessed any verve yet. Her brain certainly wasn’t giving any encouragement. Her greedy vagina wanted more, sucking the last drop of fluid from his cock. Her clit rubbed against his softening shaft, stoking the remnants of the blaze to life.

  She cried out. She couldn’t endure another full-out assault.

  The spasm rolled through her like a lazy cat stretching. Toes curled, calves clenched. Thighs trembled. Her stomach muscles contracted, nipples tightened to dagger points. His hands crept to her breasts, tracing their sensitive undersides, then he rolled her nipples between thumbs and fingers.

  She walked the fine line between insanity and mind-numbing pleasure. Her heart tumbled into the orgasmic fray. If this wasn’t passion, she had no idea what was.

  She dimly felt the cuffs loosen their grip on her wrists. He pressed his lips to the fluttering pulse at her throat.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered against her skin.

  “For what?”

  He sat back, silent.

  Too deliciously sated to do much of anything else, she opened one eye. “Azrael?”

  His gaze was tortured. “I’m sorry. I have to kill you if you still wish to be joined with your Tom.”

  Chapter Five

  What the fuck? She didn’t want to die. She wanted Tom back. That thought scored a second to her fear of dying. Didn’t she want Tom back?

  What exactly did she want?

  To be loved. To be touched. To be treasured.

  They were in the cemetery again, dressed as they were earlier in the evening. Damn it, how did he manage to do that? She eyed Tom’s grave and thought traitorous thoughts.

/>   “You tricked me.”

  Azrael sighed. “I did nothing of the kind. I agreed to take you to Tom. I did not mention animating a corpse or dragging a soul back.”

  She was too angry for tears. “What good will being dead do me?”

  He shrugged. “It is you who agreed to the bargain without specifying the terms.”

  Her hands balled into fists. She pummeled his chest. “I hate you!”

  Catching her wrists, he kissed each of her fists. “Good. Hate is better than apathy.”

  She jerked herself free. “You had no right to mess in my life.”

  “May I remind you that you called me? I had no previous inclination to bother you.”

  “I screwed up.”

  “If it is any consolation, Victoria Ramlin’s soul is forfeit because of the matter.”

  She froze. “What?”

  “I took her soul.” His face was a mask.

  She remembered the skeletal hands she saw on her first night and shuddered. “When? Here? You can’t just kill people!”

  His lips twitched, but remained in a flat line. “It is my job.”

  “But it wasn’t her time. Was it?”

  He seized Elaine’s chin, fingers cold. “Someone’s soul was needed to offset the balance. You offered yours when you bungled. I was more selective.”

  “Please don’t,” she whispered.

  He dropped his hand and turned away. “It’s already done.”

  She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God.”

  “I am not God. What I can and cannot offer is bound by ironclad rules.”

  “So you baited me with a chance to see Tom. What you really meant to do was take my soul.” Instead, she’d changed his mind and he’d taken Victoria’s.

  “Yes.”

  “No apologies? No regrets?”

  His eyes held pain. “I offered you what I could. Be thankful.”

  Where was the man who’d waltzed her around a ballroom? Who owned a fondue pot? Who made her body clench and buck? “Justify it however you need to.”

  He remained silent.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Fine! You win. You made me feel again. Happy? Tom isn’t the only one who can make my heart race and my circuits fry.”

  He didn’t move.

  She turned her back to him. “You heard me. You win. Now go away and leave me to my new misery.”

  He blew out a breath, watching it coalesce on the air. “There is another option.”

  She didn’t dare move. “Oh?”

  “I could stay.”

  Hope surged. She savagely stuffed it back down. “At what price?”

  Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her to his chest. His chin rested on her shoulder. She kept her back stiff. “Someone volunteered to take my post. It’s not a bad job. Good fringe benefits. Travel. Work magic. Master foreign languages. Dawdle with novice witches in cemeteries.”

  “Who’d want a job like that?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  A familiar shape freed itself from the shadow of the willow branches.

  “Tom,” she breathed.

  He still possessed his comfortable bad boy look, the one that’d drawn her to him. The tattoo on his neck peeked over the collar of his beat-up leather jacket, his diamond stud winking in the moonlight. A chain ran from his belt to his keys. No one but her knew that he’d been attending night classes for a criminal justice degree.

  He’d make one kick-ass Angel of Death.

  A wash of emotions wiped away all trace of conscious thought. She ran toward him and he swept her off her feet, crushing her in an embrace. God, he even smelled the same. Oil and gas fumes, not exactly pleasant, but so much a part of him it made her heart ache all over again.

  “Laine,” he whispered. He gently extricated himself, holding her at arm’s length. The smile on his face was close-lipped, minimal. He’d broken a tooth in a bar brawl as a teenager and was self-conscious. “Are you crying?”

  “No.”

  His smile widened, a white flash of teeth. “The Laine I knew never cried.”

  “I’ve had practice.”

  The smile dimmed a bit. “Let’s hope you don’t have to put it to use for a while.”

  Something about the way he looked at her made her shiver. “You won’t stay, will you?” All her delirious happy thoughts fled.

  He met her angry gaze head-on, unruffled. That had always infuriated her more, his calm rationalization in the face of her meltdowns. “There’s rules, Laine, and we’re skating the line.”

  “I don’t care!”

  “Listen.” He gave her a shake. “I don’t belong here anymore. I crossed over.” He hesitated, torn between what to say and what not. “Someday you’ll understand, but for now, realize that people can’t come back from the dead. At least, not without disrupting the balance.”

  “I’ll pay any price—”

  He put a finger on her lips. “No, you won’t.” His knuckles slid up her jaw, fingers tangling in her hair. “I won’t pick apart what we had—have,” he corrected. “But we were young. Love like that flashes and burns—it’s too much, too intense. I love my bike, but riding it in winter’s plain stupid. You’re asking for trouble.”

  She bit her lip to keep from swearing or, worse, crying.

  Pain flashed across his face. “I asked to come back to say goodbye, not hurt you.”

  “Bastard.”

  He ignored her comment. “It’s time for you to move on. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Her hands balled into fists. Tom was smarter than Azrael and kept a hold on her arms. “It should have been with you.”

  “Things don’t always work out the way you plan.” He glanced over her shoulder, at Azrael. “Sometimes, though, you get a second chance. I want you to have that. Grab it and hold on tight. I’m sure it’ll be one helluva ride.” He paused, collecting himself. “You deserve it, Laine.”

  When had he become the more articulate one in their relationship? She wanted to rail against the unfairness of it all, and yet, how many people got the chance they had? One more touch. One more word. One more look. Sighing, she cupped his cheek, her anger extinguished by regret. “Don’t do this for me.”

  His gaze was fierce. “I’m not.” Pulling her close, he buried his face in her hair. “God, Laine, I thought I had a lot more to say to you. I don’t know where the words went.”

  “Me, too,” she breathed. “You idiot. Why did you have to die?”

  Laughter burbled from his chest. “I love you, too,” he muttered.

  She clung to him a long time, breathing in his scent and memorizing the feel of his arms wrapped around her.

  He broke their embrace again. “I gotta get going. So do you.”

  Nodding, she tried to stem the tide of tears. Blinded, she pressed her hand over her mouth to trap the accompanying sob. She heard him walk away—he’d never been comfortable with the touchy-feely side of emotions—and she couldn’t make herself run after him. He was right. She’d changed. Both of them needed to move on. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped her arms around herself.

  Her tears spattered the snow.

  “You take care of her,” Tom said, hands balled into fists, jaw stiff. His eyes sparked with unshed tears.

  “With all my heart,” Azrael promised.

  Tom looked away and when he looked back, his gaze was sheepish. “Jeez, I’d never have picked a pretty boy like you for her.”

  Azrael’s lips quirked. “Looks are deceiving. I’ve learned a trick or two during my post.”

  “She’s cried enough for a lifetime. If you don’t keep her happy, I’ll come for you.” Tom held out his hand.

  Azrael took it and more than simple understanding passed between the two.

  She thought she felt lips pressed to the top of her head before the wind waltzed a cluster of dead leaves over the crusty snow. She knew Tom’d left.

  Azrael’s shoes stepped into her line of sight
. “He’s gone.” She sighed raggedly. Raising her head, she stared at the man in front of her. “And he’s at peace.” The words came slow. “I should be happy for him. I am.” A bit of wonder accompanied those words. She glanced at Azrael through her lashes, suddenly shy. Having spent all her waking moments and much of her sleeping ones the past two years obsessing over what couldn’t be, she’d forgotten what it was like to live. “I haven’t had a lot of practice living my own life.” She suspected Azrael was in the same camp.

  He offered her his hand. “We have a lifetime to learn.”

  Taking it, she stood and wiped the tears away with the backs of her hands. “Did you have a name before you became Azrael, Angel of Death?”

  He frowned. “Yes, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it. You’ll have to rename me.”

  Her lips quirked. “How about Bob?”

  Wincing, he said, “If that is what you desire.”

  “What I desire,” she murmured, standing on tiptoe to touch her lips to his, “has no place in a cemetery.”

  His arms wrapped around her waist. “Then let’s get out of here.” Scooping her up, he carried her through the gates.

  Hungry for more? Spice Briefs to suit every taste are available now at www.spicebriefs.com, including these other paranormal stories:

  RAVEN by Alison Paige

  HELL’S ANGEL by Cathryn Fox

  HOTTER THAN HELL by Cathryn Fox

  WILD by Crystal Jordan

  DARK MOON GATHERING by Alison Paige

  MEDUSA’S FOLLY by Alison Paige

  For something a little longer, visit www.spice-books.com or stop by your local bookstore for stories that will ignite your senses!

  Think you’d like to write a Spice Brief? Submissions are always welcome at spicebriefs@harlequin.ca

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4177-4

  Carnal Magic

  Copyright © 2009 by Christine Kocourek

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.