“You didn’t argue about the name.”
“Did you expect me to?” Middy asked.
“Kind of, yeah. I mean, you argued about marrying me to start with.” Dred picked up the bottle, then seemed to think better of it and put it back down.
“I’ll take care of all of that for you. Middy, I’ll have your new IDs, credit cards, and registrations delivered here tonight,” Aradia said helpfully.
“I can’t believe this is really happening.”
“I can’t believe that for all the magick we use everyday, someone didn’t invent a spell, a charm, or something to eliminate paperwork,” Dred added.
“It’s universal, I think. Even the Powers That Be have paperwork issues,” Middy said.
“Rather than try to demure, I’m going to duck out honestly. I’m sure you want to shag like mad now that it’s official.” Aradia grinned. “I know when to make an exit. And, Dred?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Midnight is correct. I know my friends all have naked pictures of you, and that’s fine since you get your looks from me. It’s actually quite flattering. I even know that you and Midnight have intercourse. You’re a grown man. I accept that. I’d just rather not hear about what exactly that entails, m’kay?”
“You’re the one who said you were leaving so we could,” Dred replied casually.
“Don’t underestimate what a mother will do to secure grandchildren,” Aradia tossed on the way out the door.
Middy noticed that Aradia always got the last word.
Suddenly, she was very aware that she was alone with Dred. That shouldn’t have been anything new or intimidat-ing. But now, they were married.
She was his wife.
He was her husband.
They were a “they.”
It did little to reassure her that he seemed uncomfortable, too. Where were they going to live? Were they going to live together? She hadn’t even checked out the bathroom in this place to see if there was a spot for her toothbrushing charms.
Would she have to change her Witchberry account?
So much banality was crashing in on her idyll with Dred.
All she’d wanted was to lose her virginity. Instead, she was going to spend the rest of her life with this warlock. How had that happened? Well, she knew how it had happened, but it still didn’t seem real.
“I didn’t know about the ring,” Dred offered, breaking the heavy silence.
“I know.” Middy bit her lip before she spoke again. “This is stupid. We’ve been talking about doing this for real anyway. We’ve been living together, basically. So why is everything suddenly so awkward?”
“I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not. You deserve better than me, Middy. I know that.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“It’s true. If I can own it, you can, too. I’ll be a good husband to you though.”
“As good as duty and country will allow, I guess.”
“We don’t have to have it all figured out today, you know. We can keep on as we have been,” he suggested.
“Does your mother think I’m a spy, too?”
“I honestly have no idea what goes on in that woman’s brain.”
Middy looked up at Dred’s profile and found she wanted to touch him. So she did. She pushed her fingers through his hair and smiled. “Is this okay?”
“The package is all yours now. Do what you want with it.” He raised a brow in invitation.
With a single touch, Middy had shoved him back into a territory that was comfortable for him. She didn’t like to see the uncertainty on his face. She wanted him to know that even if he didn’t love her, he was a good man and she didn’t feel cheated.
Middy didn’t think he knew that. Perhaps in his younger days, all he’d had to offer the world was his pretty face, but he was so much more mow. Maybe that was why he couldn’t love her, because for all of his show, he didn’t love himself.
He’d dived headfirst into a free fall from a perfectly sound broom to save her. Underneath his cynicism, Dred Shadowins had a pure heart. The love she felt for him surged and blossomed with a warmth that spread through her like a kiss from the sun.
Middy pushed her hands up beneath his black T-shirt and scored her nails lightly down his sides.
“I’ve been in charge enough for a while, I think.”
“What if I’ve decided I like you in charge?” Dred asked as he bent his head to kiss her.
“I think you’ll like this better.” Middy tilted her face up to meet his kiss and melted against him like many a witch before her. Yet, unlike the witches before her, Middy held the key to his fantasy and she knew it.
She loved the way he kissed. It was so real. Middy supposed that was a stupid thought to have, but after so much fantasy, knowing him, knowing his touch, the reality of his wants and desires fed her own.
His touch was visceral. It cut her in the softest places, but it healed her somehow, too. She wondered if he felt the same sensations as she did. Middy hoped so. It would be a sad thing to experience this wonder alone.
“Middy, you know I’m a warlock, right?” Dred said against the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, yes. Definitely.” She nipped at his bottom lip.
“Then you know I’m not a witch and don’t need to talk about every feeling we have.” Dred laughed as he kissed her again.
He’d said “we!” Middy was elated.
“So what is it that I’ll like better than you telling me how you want it?” Dred refocused her attention.
“Me on this floor, in all my pink. Isn’t that what you wanted, isn’t that what you showed me?” Middy slipped her cotton dress off her shoulders and let it fall into a pool at her feet.
Dred snapped his fingers and a fire crackled to life in the great room and bedroom fireplaces; the cold, dark marble of the floor warmed instantly.
“As much as I love the visual, I’d rather have you on the chimerean fur duvet on my bed,” Dred said as he swung her up into his arms with ease.
Middy enjoyed the feel of her nakedness against the soft cotton of his shirt, how small she felt wrapped up in his arms. She especially liked feeling his muscles move under her fingers as he carried her to the bedroom.
He smelled of leather and pine; there were undercurrents of another scent that was just him. She breathed him in, trembled with anticipation.
Dred deposited her on the duvet, the fur supple and lush against her bare skin. He watched her for a moment, taking her in. She still blushed under his gaze.
He knelt at the foot of the bed and pressed his lips to the inside of her ankle and moved up to the tender place just at the inside of her knee. He touched his mouth there as well.
He kissed farther up her leg to the alabaster smooth skin of her thigh.
Middy’s breath caught in her throat and she relaxed her legs to allow him better access. She kept waiting for his mouth to descend to her slit, but it didn’t. He kissed the plane of her hip and moved to her belly. Her nipples tightened with desire and expectation. Dred’s mouth closed over one rosebud peak, his tongue hot and insistent.
She wanted to touch him, to pleasure him as he pleasured her, but he gripped her wrists and held her hands above her head.
“No, Midnight.”
“Why not? Don’t you like my touch?” Middy taunted.
“What is it you like to say? Be silent and objectified?”
“Are you objectifying me?”
“Be silent and find out,” he said before taking her other nipple into his mouth.
“Make me,” Middy dared him.
He released her nipple with a sigh. “I’ve figured out why you’re not a multi-orgasmic witch.”
“And why is that, Oh, Great Sex God?” Middy smirked back at him.
“Because you won’t be quiet long enough to have more than one orgasm. The banter has to stop sometime.”
“Why? Isn’t that what sex is? It’s what comes after the witty exchange,
but it’s still a give and take. Just with other body parts.”
She thought she had something else to say, but Dred kissed her. Middy knew why that always silenced heroines in the books. She couldn’t keep a coherent thought in her head with Dred’s lips anywhere near hers.
Middy hadn’t been sure what to think about their first kiss. It had been so raw, but now his mouth was new and familiar at the same time. She wondered if it would always be like that.
She met his kiss and proved that she was as hot for him with all of her chattering as she would be without it. Perhaps even more so because the man could think even while his brain’s blood supply was otherwise engaged.
That thought alone made her slit clench and sent a small tremor through her. It also made her wonder what she’d have to do to make him lose control. He was always so in command of himself, of his body and hers. What would it take to make him give in to her?
She whispered a quick spell that reversed their positions.
He was flat on his back, naked, and she was holding his hands above his head.
“Oh, yeah?” Dred’s mouth curled in a satisfied smirk.
“Yeah,” Middy said as she let go of his wrists and scored her nails down his chest.
He kept his hands above his head. “Let’s see what you’ve got, sweetheart.”
Middy straddled his hips and rose up on her knees. She guided her breast back to his mouth and moved the tight nipple against his lips. He took the rosebud peak and sucked it into the hot cavern of his mouth.
When she felt his hand knead her other breast, she pulled back. It was divine, but she wanted to pleasure him. Middy took his hand from her breast and placed a chaste kiss on the tip of his index finger. She lingered there and kissed the tip again, but much more slowly and with deliberate intent.
His gaze burned her with its intensity and when her pink tongue darted out to swirl over the tip where her lips had been, his cock jerked against her slit, seeking her wet channel.
Middy wondered what he would do if she licked the length. She ran her tongue from the base of his finger to the top before taking the whole of it into her mouth.
She was startled when she felt the effects of the sensation herself and her eyes fluttered closed for a moment as her clit throbbed. She wondered if it would always be like this, if this link was forever.
Still, he was in perfect control of his body.
She caught a flash of an image. It was her. She loved that it was always her now. Dred was fantasizing about what it would be like, the contrast of her pink lips after he’d come for her mouth.
Middy was getting to that.
She moved down his body and grasped the base of his cock in her hand and touched her lips to the head just as she’d done with his finger. Middy said a silent prayer of thanks to Tally and her lessons with the banana when he groaned.
“Midnight—” he said as he tangled his hands in her hair.
She leaned away from her task. “Hands back where they were, please.”
“Wicked witch,” he said lightly as he obeyed her.
Rather than offering a response, she took the tip of his cock into her mouth. She enjoyed the texture much more than she had the banana. That had made her feel stupid and inadequate, but this, it made her feel powerful and beautiful. Dred’s complete attention was on her; she knew she occupied his every thought. She felt like the most feminine of witches and she was pleasuring her warlock in a way that no other witch could.
Middy knew that he was very visual so her every movement wasn’t just about the sensation. It was also about what he could see her doing. It was about the show. He was focused on her pink parts. Anything that was pink, her lips, her tongue, her nipples . . .
She wanted him inside of her now, but she kept licking and sucking, stroking her hand up the base of his shaft.
Pearlized fluid welled at the tip and she used her tongue to move it over the head. It was salty and sweet at the same time. Middy wanted more of it.
Dred’s cock surged as he felt her wonder, and she doubled her efforts.
“Midnight, you have to stop. I’m going to come.”
She wanted him to come this way; she wanted to fulfill his fantasies as he’d done for her. Middy kept the images she’d seen in his desire in the forefront of her mind and she moved her mouth and fingers over his cock faster and with more pressure.
He bucked his hips and his hands were in a white-knuckled grip on the duvet, but he was still watching her. His lips were parted and his breath was coming faster. She could see that the corded muscles in his neck were standing out with the exertion.
The throbbing in her body kept time with her ministra-tions to Dred’s cock. When she suckled the head, she felt it in her clit.
Just as he came, an orgasm shook her and she had to fight to keep her attention on him, but she licked the remnants of his seed from her lips as he cried out. The aftershocks of their orgasms were still rocking her body.
When Middy lay down beside him, he pushed her damp curls from her brow and kissed her. They tasted each other on her lips and Dred drew her legs up around his waist.
She was still slick, but his entry was gentle until she’d stretched to accommodate him. His thumb ghosted over her clitoris, so light a touch, but it was so sensitive that just that brush of contact made her burn.
Dred was up on his knees now and he used his other hand to guide her legs straight so that they were resting on his shoulders. With that first thrust, he was so deep inside of her that she was sure she was going to shatter.
But she didn’t, though every stroke into her was a mad sort of bliss. He ground his body into her with a fierce need, one that she met with her hips. Her fingers were digging into his thighs and she felt the magick gather between them.
A sudden wave of euphoria hit her and she heard screaming that she realized was her own as Dred continued to drill into her. Stars exploded behind her eyes and she could sense nothing but radiating waves of pleasure, liquid gold that began deep inside of her and moved from her belly throughout her limbs, then to her clit and finally back into that place deep in her body that she’d never sensed before.
Dred relaxed against her, his weight pushing her down into the plush duvet, though he supported most of it on his elbows. He dropped a tender kiss to her forehead and studied her for a moment before he rolled to her side.
Middy expected that he’d drop off to sleep like a stone.
He didn’t seem like the “afterglow” kind and that was okay; she figured she had enough afterglow for both of them.
He tucked her into his side, with his arm around her and his fingers tangled in her hair.
Even if he never loved her, Middy decided that this would be a good life. Being married to a warlock who could win a gold medal in the Sex Olympics, who looked like he could kick a Greek god’s ass, was filthy rich, and a good man to boot? Not a bad deal at all. She could have done a hell of a lot worse.
Middy had hope though. She didn’t want to change Dred, but she believed in him and believed that he had room for her in his heart. She just had to be patient.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Brawl at the Banshee’s Bawl
“What the fuck?” Dred demanded from the sledgehammer of a fist that had hammered into his chis-eled jaw in triplicate.
“You know what the fuck!” a dark-haired man insisted.
Correction. Three dark-haired men insisted in unison.
Guy must have one hell of a right hook that he was seeing and feeling things three times over. He’d buy him a beer or three, once he figured out why the guy had punched him. Maybe there really were three. Middy had triplet brothers. . . . These behemoths were almost as large as Dred himself. There was no way that these Cro-Magnons were related to his sweet Midnight.
“What? Did I fuck your mother, your wife, or your sister?”
Another crack to the jaw. Good thing it was made of solid stuff, or he’d be lying flat on his back wondering why six of thes
e clones were kicking his ass.
“No, really. Just tell me and we can have a few beers, it’ll all be good. I’m married now. Nothing to worry about.”
“He doesn’t even try to deny it,” one said and reared back to clobber him again.
Dred was ready for him. He caught the sledgehammer, er, fist in his own and squeezed. Too bad he didn’t have another set of arms; then he could have blocked the one that was suddenly behind him and crushing his windpipe like an empty soda can.
“Where’s our sister?”
“Which one was your sister?” Dred used his last breath to answer and decided for sure that this must be the Trifecta of Doom.
“That’s it, calendar boy. You’re carrion bait!” One of them picked up his feet.
Dred was fairly certain that if he used any of his more powerful magicks on the Trifecta, Middy would frown. He wasn’t sure yet if frowning included the loss of bedroom privileges, but he wasn’t willing to take that chance.
“He’s turning blue,” the one who seemed to be in charge said and peered in close to his face.
Dred decided that while he shouldn’t throw hexes at her brothers, he wasn’t averse to the idea of biting one. He had the right to defend himself after all. Barring that, he’d play the pity card. Dred was sure he had a split lip. He’d appeal to her softer tendencies if Midnight got angry that he’d bitten one.
With the next gut punch, Dred had given up the idea of placating Middy, and it was, as they say, on like Donkey Kong.
Dred opened his mouth and closed his chompers on the wrist that was holding him, or rather crushing the life from him like an undesirable bug. His foot shot out and connected with an ear of the one who seemed to be in charge.
Dred still had hold of the third guy’s fist. When he relaxed his grip for a moment, the warlock tried to free his limb, so Dred helped him along and forced it back into the other man’s nose.
A great shot if he did say so himself.
Of course, they promptly dropped him like he was on fire. He was not pleased with the beating his ass was taking lately. First, he landed on it in Loudun after an insane freefall and now this. Good thing he hadn’t hit midlife yet, when Middle-Aged Man Spread was all too common. With his solid Viking and English heritage, his was already as plentiful as it needed to be.
How to Marry a Warlock in 10 Days Page 21