She was nothing like he’d originally thought, months ago in Las Vegas. And yet she was. It was as if he was watching her shed the trappings of her buttoned-up life in the real world and let herself become who she really was, here in safety among the witches.
She was his addiction and his cure, all rolled up into one irresistible package.
She leaned in close and asked, “What’s wrong? You look distracted.”
“Nothing,” he lied. “I guess I won’t ever get used to being the lone mortal in the room.”
“Don’t worry,” she said into his ear, barely audible over the music. “They’ll get over it.”
“I don’t belong here,” he said.
“I’ll decide that. You belong here as long as I’m protecting you.”
He bristled at the thought, but said nothing. He had his male pride, but he knew better than to go around puffing it up in front of a woman like Lauren. The truth was, he wanted to be protecting her, not the other way around. He wanted to kill any bastard that would dare harm her, but he didn’t exactly feel equipped yet to navigate the world of witches and witch hunters effectively.
After all, it was a world he hadn’t even known existed most of his life.
But the fact remained that he would do anything he could to keep Lauren safe. He would learn all about her world if it meant he could somehow help her.
He placed his hands possessively on Lauren’s hips as she danced, and he let his mind drift to more base thoughts. Of their bodies moving together not here on the dance floor, but somewhere more private. Somewhere free of these goddamn stifling clothes.
She pressed herself against him and felt his erection. Her gaze dropped for a moment to his crotch, then traveled up again to meet his. “You want to get out of here?”
“We just got here.”
“It’s hot as hell in here,” she said. “Come with me. I know someplace we can cool off.”
Five minutes later, they were away from the deafening dance music and the stifling crowd of witches. They’d gone up four flights of stairs, through a door marked Employees Only, and out onto a rooftop deck with an utterly amazing view of the city.
“Wow,” Carson said as he took in the lights, the night sky and the Hollywood sign on the distant hillside.
“Yeah. Welcome to my favorite place in Hollywood. Sebastian doesn’t tell anyone about it. It’s his own place to escape from all his responsibilities.”
“Will he mind us being here?”
“No, I’m one of the few people he’ll let come up here any time. Besides, he’s busy with the club tonight. He won’t even know we’re here.”
Carson surveyed the deck. Right in the middle of it was an outdoor fireplace, and a bed with an outdoor canopy over it. “I guess we know what goes on up here, huh?”
Lauren shrugged and headed for the fireplace, which was a minimalist glass cube with a small fire pit in bottom. A flick of a switch brought flames to life. Instant fire.
“Cool,” he said.
“I doubt Sebastian brings women up here,” she said. “But he does sleep up here sometimes. He likes the outdoor air.”
“What? Your cousin’s celibate or something?”
“No, but he’s very private, and he doesn’t let many people get close to him. It’s part of his way of protecting the witch clan. To be a protector, he has to be inaccessible, I guess.”
“To make sure the wrong person doesn’t get too close to him?”
“Something like that.”
“Have any of those witch hunter guys ever infiltrated this place?”
“Yes,” she said, but he heard some hesitation in her voice.
“What happened?”
“They were found out,” she answered, and he had a sense that he shouldn’t ask any more questions about the subject.
He came up behind Lauren and pushed the thick curtain of her dark hair aside, then kissed the tattoo on her neck. “Does this mean something?” he asked, tracing the design with his finger.
“It’s Celtic. I can’t tell you what it means, but it represents the essence of my power, if that makes any sense.”
“It doesn’t, but I’ll take your word for it,” he teased, then kissed her there again, this time letting his lips linger.
His hands found their way up her rib cage to the heavy curves of her breasts, and he massaged them slowly, his cock aching as he felt her nipples harden.
His addiction to her was growing by the day, by the hour, by the minute, and he was helpless to control it. When he thought of living a day without making love to Lauren, his stomach went sour.
In the firelight, her tattoo looked especially luminous, as if it were somehow alive separate from her. He thought of the raven tattoo on Sebastian’s arm, and he didn’t doubt for a moment their supernatural powers.
“What happens if a mortal falls in love with a witch?” he asked.
Lauren turned to him, gazing at him with dark, unfathomable eyes. Even the firelight didn’t lighten them. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Is it like selling your soul to the devil?”
“Witches aren’t evil,” she said.
“I know that, I just meant—”
“None of the stereotypes you’ve ever heard are true. We’re not the brides of Satan. We don’t ride broomsticks or wear pointy hats, and we don’t go around stirring cauldrons or casting spells.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“It’s okay. I get touchy about the subject.”
“Where do you think all those stereotypes came from?”
“I’m sure some of my ancestors did some of that stuff. I mean, people used to cook in cauldrons. And both witches and nonwitches alike attempt to practice black magic. It doesn’t have anything to do with being a witch, though.”
“So all the myths were invented by people who were afraid of witches.”
“Perhaps. Over the centuries, The Order had plenty to do with demonizing witches and making the public afraid of us.”
“Why?”
“Like you said before, it’s a form of racism, just like Hitler attempting to eradicate the Jews or the Turks massacring the Armenians or the KKK trying to scare blacks out of the South.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“Our battle is a lot more ancient than that. It’s been going on since before recorded history, as far as we know.”
“Amazing that it’s been kept secret all this time.”
“It hasn’t always been. There were times in history when witch hunting was more acknowledged by the public, the Salem Witch Trials being the most recent example. But The Order has managed to keep themselves mostly a secret from the world. That’s their talent—even better than us—that they know how to stay hidden.”
“Maybe the key to stopping them is finding a way to make their actions public.”
“But that would mean making ourselves public, as well. It’s a tricky thing. We have to choose our time.”
“You seem to have some idea when that time is.”
“Not exactly, but I know someday that things will change for the better. Maybe not when I’m around to witness it, but someday.”
A chill went up Carson’s spine at her words. “Of course you’ll be around to witness it. Don’t sound so doom and gloom.”
He cupped her chin in his hand and tilted it up so she had to look him in the eye, but she said nothing. She simply stared at him, her gaze still unknowable to him, filled with something like sadness.
“What is it? Have you had some vision about yourself?”
Her lips parted as if to speak, but she said nothing.
“You have, haven’t you?”
She smiled, but it looked forced. “What I’m having a vision of right now is you and me on that bed, naked. Think you can accommodate me?”
“Are you trying to bewitch me to distract me from the subject?”
“Call me wicked,” she said, smiling still. “I won’t deny it.�
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She slid her hand down his belly, and her fingers traced the head of his cock through his pants. He expelled a gush of air as she gripped him and massaged gently.
“You’re wicked,” he said. “And I love it.”
She unzipped his fly and pushed him until he was at the edge of the bed, then sitting on it. She took his dick out of his boxers and knelt between his legs. He was aching as he watched her long, delicate fingers encircle him.
Then she dipped her head and took him into her mouth, and he felt a jolt of satisfaction as real as if he’d just taken a hit of the world’s most powerful drug. Perhaps he had.
She ran her tongue up and down the length of him as he watched her, disarmed by her beauty and her skill with his body. He didn’t think, for as long as she was in his life, he’d ever stop being amazed at what it was like to be with her. Perhaps that was the addiction talking, but one thing he knew about this addiction—the pleasure was the most real thing he could imagine.
There was nothing artificial about it.
She took him all the way into her mouth again, and he moaned at the sensation of it, closing his eyes and letting the whole experience become about the feel of her mouth on his dick. As she worked his body, he felt the pressure building within himself, and he had to find the willpower to stop her. But she knew his body too well—right before he reached the edge of orgasm, she stopped and smiled sinfully up at him.
“You didn’t think I’d let you have all your fun now, did you?” she whispered, barely audible above the street sounds and the distant bass of the club music below.
“I was going to stop you,” he said, smiling, but he wasn’t sure he could have summoned the strength.
He tugged her up from the deck, found a condom in his wallet and put it on as she crawled onto the bed next to him.
Then she was kissing him with an eroticism that almost took him back to that edge. She straddled him, her dress bunched up around her waist, and the sight and feel of her pussy on him was too much pleasure to bear. He lay back, gasping raggedly, as she began riding him. His hands on her waist, he didn’t even have the strength to guide her.
He was simply helpless under her spell.
LAUREN WAS BEGINNING to suspect there was no such thing as a single orgasm with Carson. She’d already come once, only minutes after they’d started making love. She hadn’t exactly intended to, but the sensation of his body inside her, along with the night air, and the firelight, pushed her over the sensory edge into a realm of pleasure she couldn’t control.
But now he was lying on top of her, his weight a delicious pressure and he moved inside her, and she felt herself building toward orgasm again. It was rare that she could come in the good old missionary position, but Carson’s cock fit her so perfectly, he rubbed all the right places.
“That’s it,” she gasped into his ear, and then he covered her mouth in a long, desperate kiss.
He was getting close, too. She could feel the tension in his body building, as the thrusting of his hips grew more urgent, and all she could do was wrap her legs around him and hold on. She stared up at the stark white canopy above them, and she imagined she could see stars.
Except there were rarely stars of the celestial variety visible in Hollywood. The smog was too thick, and the city lights too intense. Rather, what she saw was the way Carson made some kind of magic with her body, a magic she wasn’t capable of on her own.
She grasped his wide, firm shoulders as he braced himself on his elbows, and with a final few thrusts, he spilled into her, just as her body contracted around his cock in a second orgasm that was more intense than her first. She cried out at the delicious sensation of it, gasping as he gasped.
When she opened her eyes again after the rush had passed, she saw him staring at her, his brow damp with sweat, his gaze softened from pleasure.
He eased himself down and kissed her again, this time slowly, tenderly, his tongue brushing lightly against hers.
“You,” he murmured against her lips.
“What about me?” she said when he pulled back.
“I want to stay in this bed forever with you. Think your cousin will mind?”
She smiled. “Likely he will mind. In fact, we’d better get out of here before too long or he’ll come up here and find us.”
“And then there’ll be hell to pay.”
“If it were just me, no, but with you, he’s a bit touchy.”
“I’m not used to being so thoroughly hated.”
“Don’t take it personally. It’s not really about you, anyway.”
“He couldn’t possibly like the thought of you sleeping with a mortal.”
Carson slid off her, pulled off his condom and dropped it over the edge of the bed into a wastebasket next to the nightstand. Then he returned to her side and pulled her tight against him.
“Don’t worry about what he would or wouldn’t like. My life is my own, and I decide who I do or don’t sleep with.”
“Do you think he’d do anything violent to enforce that no sex with mortals rule?”
Lauren gazed at his chest, in love with the firm curves of it, the flat brown nipples, the smooth skin. She didn’t want to answer his question, but maybe shielding him from the truth wasn’t exactly fair.
“Sebastian has changed since I knew him as a kid. He scares me now. I don’t think he’d harm me, but—”
He sat up. “But you think he’ll harm me.”
“Don’t overreact. I’m probably being paranoid. It’s sort of an unspoken thing that some of us break the sex with mortals rule and don’t talk about it. Because of my history, the consequences could be harsher.”
“Isn’t death kind of a harsh punishment?”
“It’s a stupid, archaic rule, and that’s why I don’t abide by it. It has its value, at least as far as protecting mortals from addiction and protecting us from any negative consequences of such an addiction. But as far as mating goes, it’s wrong to keep us so limited.”
He didn’t look satisfied.
“Look,” she said, “I’m a scientist. I know there isn’t any permanent physical harm that can come from us sleeping together. Genetically, at least, if we were going to produce offspring, we’d actually be giving them a strong advantage. So at least in theory it’s a good practice.”
“Then why do you look worried?”
“I’m not worried,” she lied. “The elders are superstitious and old-fashioned. Modern science doesn’t mean much to them in the face of ancient traditions and rules.”
“Lauren, I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you because of me.” His expression had gone deadly serious, and she could see he was speaking from the heart.
“I feel the same about you,” she said, but his words kicked her in the stomach.
She thought of her vision, of the two of them on the beach, in danger. He would survive, and she would not. How would he live with that? Maybe she needed to tell him the whole truth.
It was wrong to keep hiding it from him.
Lauren sat up and grabbed her dress from the side of the bed, then tugged it on. When she was covered, she sat on her knees and regarded him seriously.
“Listen, there’s something I should tell you. This might sound awful, but I know how my life ends.”
He blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve had a vision of my own death. It’s common to those of us with the gift of prescience. Some gift, huh?”
He shook his head. “Why are you telling me this? Are you saying it happens soon or something?”
She didn’t usually talk about her vision. It was, at the very least, a downer, and at worst, a major conversation-killer even among witches. Besides, she didn’t like to think about it.
“I’m telling you because you’re there when it happens.”
“Hell no,” he said, scowling now. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you die. Are you crazy? Your vision must be wrong.”
She held up
a hand to silence him. “Please,” she said. “Just listen.”
“But…” He was shaking his head in disbelief.
“I know it sounds really shitty, but you have to remember that there are some things in life we have no control over. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you this. It seems almost too cruel to bring up.”
“Then why? Your vision must be wrong. Don’t you have wrong ones sometimes?”
“Not like this. It’s a recurrent vision, and it never changes.”
“What happens?” For a moment, he stopped looking and sounding like the brave, strong man he was, and she caught a glimpse of the scared little boy he once might have been.
She looked away, appalled at herself for doing this to him. It wasn’t information that anyone deserved to have. The way he looked, it was as if he really cared about her, as if he were here because of something much stronger than an addiction.
It was wrong and cruel for her to hope for that, or encourage it. It would only lead to more pain for him, if he really cared about her.
She looked back at him, and she realized at that moment exactly how big a wall she’d built around herself. She’d tried to keep herself from caring about him because she could never trust that he was with her for anything more than his next fix. And maybe that’s really all it was. But the stricken look on his face made her consider that he did actually care about her. Or could care. And maybe she wanted him to.
No, scratch that. She did want him to care. There was no doubt.
He’d scaled her wall, and she had no idea how to get him out of her heart now.
“I shouldn’t say any more. I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Lauren said and tried to climb off the bed, but Carson grabbed her arm and held her there.
“You can’t just drop a bomb like that on me and not give me any details. I need to know what you saw so we can stop it from happening.”
“There’s something I’ve learned from having visions,” she said. “Fate is strange. There are some elements of it we can change easily, and there are other parts of our fate that no matter how much we try to avoid them, our destiny twists back around and happens anyway.”
“That’s bullshit. Tell me what’s supposed to happen.”’
Call Me Wicked Page 11