Blood Enchantment

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  “I am in hiding, and as of now, if I do not reveal myself, it could only go to Greta. Billions.”

  Tallinn's eyebrows jerk at the sum of inheritance.

  My expression mirrors his. Lacing my fingers on my head, I walk the length of the stone basement. The unpleasant smell of seawater and decay fills my nose. I pace back and forth, putting a puzzle together in my mind. I can't force the narco-murder-relative-extortion angle to agree, but the potential of a billion-dollar inheritance fits.

  The promise of money moves humanity to vileness.

  “Does Greta know she is the sole heir?”

  Lisbeth nods. “She must. As far as Father led her to believe, everything was held in trust for her until she reaches age thirty.”

  “She is unaware of the bad intentions of this business partner?”

  “I think Father meant to explain things to her after our twenty-first birthdays—but he passed before he could.”

  “What's this jag-up's name?” Tallinn asks.

  “The minority shareholder?” Lisbeth asks.

  We nod.

  “Ole Aros.”

  Gooseflesh breaks out on my body. I know this is critical, but I haven’t figured out how everything fits together.

  Tallinn's uneasy glance finds me. “He's dead, though,” Tallinn clarifies, also mining for the entire story.

  “Yes,” Lisbeth replies, her gaze shifting to mine. “You've thought of something?”

  I nod. “Aros is dead. Is he survived by anyone?” My voice is sharp.

  “Yes, he has one son.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “He isn't involved in the business directly. He owns a small, elite textile company. It manufactures wardrobes essentials for the extreme outdoorsman.”

  I wave my hand at her words, and her full lips thin.

  “What if he still holds his father's minority shares? And Greta is unknowingly sitting on his slice of the pie?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “It's been two years since their death. He would have made a move by now if it was his intention.”

  “I don't think so. If he were smart, it would be all about timing. Perfect timing.”

  “But you don't fit, Paco. Your part doesn't make sense in this,” she says in clear frustration.

  Club Alpha. Or not?

  Tallinn delivers a knowing look in my direction.

  “I have been put here for a reason. I don't know the why yet—I can't connect all the dots, as the Americans say. But I won't leave it now. I have hours to fulfill the deed I was tasked with.”

  “My murder?” Lisbeth's lips curl.

  I chuckle, though nothing is funny. It's merely a release of nervous tension.

  “Yes. They've provided a doctor who will validate your death.”

  “Hmm. How long do we have?” she asks us both.

  Tallinn answers, “Almost a day before they begin to hurt Paco's people.”

  “We don't have much time, then.” She looks between the two of us. “Someone knows who I am and has gone to great lengths to compromise my identity.”

  I swiftly tell her about the break-in and her stolen photograph.

  She exhales in a hiss. “My anonymity is totally blown then.”

  “Maybe we can smuggle her into the hotel?”

  I laugh then sober, giving her critical eyes. “Maybe we can.”

  “We can't stay here,” Tallinn says, giving the room a look of clear distaste.

  “I accept,” Lisbeth says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Your help, though I have a place I can hide away that no one will think to find me.”

  She removes a phone that uses a pre-paid card. “Give me your number, and I'll text you for a meeting point.”

  We exchange numbers.

  “This cloak and dagger is chill and all, but this is real danger, Paco. I can't keep you safe if I don't even know what to look for.”

  Our gazes meet. “I understand. But this is bigger than me.”

  Lisbeth stares at me. “I feel as though I'm missing something.”

  I shake my head. The more complicated my involvement in this affair, the more I realize how little I understand what's happening. The woman I thought was the object of Club Alpha is not she.

  Greta is the one.

  My very bones thrum with the knowledge. She doesn't know what comes at her from all directions.

  I don't reply to Lisbeth's fishing comment as we move back through the snaking tunnels underneath the cottage. When we exit the steep stone staircase I take a deep, cleansing breath of the chilly air, relieved to be free from the cloying subterranean space.

  “Greta doesn't know she's in danger.”

  Lisbeth shakes her head. “We don't know she's in danger; we suspect it. But whoever was responsible for the deaths of my parents, and possibly Ole Aros, will be aware of Greta.”

  “We can't just bust in and freak her shit out.”

  I look at Tallinn, trying to silence him with my eyes.

  Lisbeth sighs. “I have been waiting my entire life to reunite with my sister. I don't want our first glimpse of each other to be ruined by circumstance.”

  “Sometimes we cannot choose what fate has ordained,” I say.

  She casts a speculative glance my way. “That's cryptic.”

  “He's that way,” Tallinn says. “What's Arosʼ son's name?”

  We're already parting in the alley where we first made our violent contact.

  Lisbeth turns, her face shadowed. “Tor Aros.” She walks away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lisbeth

  “Bury it,” I groan, loving the feel of all his brutal length stabbing deep inside me. His ownership.

  His deceit.

  My hands are zip-tied to the bed rails as Tor abuses my body, and I spread my legs to allow whatever he delivers.

  “You are so much more agreeable than your sister,” he comments softly, banging me so hard, my womb trembles at the intrusion, begging for the pounding to stop.

  It won't. Tor will not stop until his needs are satisfied, and my own deviant ones are sated.

  “Did the spic and nigger believe your tale?” he asks against my temple as he slams into me.

  I can't breathe as his hand wraps my throat, squeezing gently as he speeds his tempo, hurting me as he shoves so far, the bruising of injury radiates from my core to my extremities.

  Stars burst in my vision as my throbbing pussy builds to the shattering orgasm that hovers at the edge of an explosion. A release brought on by pain and oxygen depravation—those are my needs.

  Tor knows them intimately.

  My fingers curl around the metal bars of the headboard. The beat of the curving metal top against the wall vibrates my eardrums.

  His large hand squeezes harder.

  I manage a strangled yes as my answer.

  He spears his cock in a final thrust, and a gurgled choke of true pain escapes me. Tor smiles down at me, pinching my esophagus savagely, stealing my breath. Then he stiffens like a muscled plank above my body. Semen gushes like heated water, and he releases my throat as my own orgasm crashes into him like opposing waves meeting the same shore.

  “Ah!” I rasp in a hoarse shout of miserable ecstasy. My bulging eyes flutter shut, and a sigh of pure contentment eases out of my abused throat.

  Fantastic. As always.

  He cuts the tie that binds my hands with a blade from the nightstand. His hands slide down my body, and he flips me over, twisting my arms above me. His tongue is already at my entrance, lapping up his own cum and the juices of my quenched arousal.

  I quake from the aftershocks of his wet torture.

  Tor plunges the length of his wet tongue inside me, and I shudder. A post-coital tremble of tiny orgasms shiver along my inner walls, softly clenching around his hot, wet organ licking at my slickness and his sticky residue.

  “You taste so sweet with my seed, Lisbeth.”

  I plunge my fingertips in his hair, pressing his f
ace deeper into my heat.

  It is as though we were made for each other.

  We hate the same.

  We fuck the same.

  We are the same—two halves of one whole.

  *

  I press my forearm against my flat stomach. The steady heartbeat in my abdominal artery remains elevated, though our sex is long past.

  Tipping my head back, I purse my lips and softly push out a loose smoke ring

  “That will kill you one day,” Tor comments casually, running his fingertip the length of my torso. I tense when his ghostly touch passes against a sensitive rib.

  “Did that Spaniard damage you, my flower?” His voice is deadly, though his touch is tender.

  “No more than you damage me when we fuck, Tor Aros.”

  I stab the cigarette out in the heavy crystal ashtray sitting atop a seventeenth-century shaving table.

  Before my next breath, my chin is in the viselike grip of his large hand.

  Pale-green eyes blaze at me without the camouflage of his brown contacts. Anger that surfaces too easily swims in irises like luminescent emerald fire encased in ice.

  The tips of his fingers heat my flesh as his head cocks to the side, regarding me with cold features. “I give you every bit of what you ask for. I am the only one who knows what you need. That Spanish prick does not get to touch you—mar your skin.”

  His fingers release me suddenly as his finger stabs me deep within.

  I gasp at the suddenness of his digit’s intrusion. “This”—his finger swirls inside, hooking a tender and sensitive spot then dragging deliciously against it. I sigh—“is mine, Lisbeth. No other man shall fuck you.”

  My eyes flash at his. “Yet you fucked my slut sister.”

  His finger slides out of me, and he sucks on it as I lose myself in the swimming depths of his gaze. I watch in rapture as his finger plows in and out of those lips that just ate at me—a parody of our coupling.

  He releases the index finger from his mouth with a wet pop, so loud in the silent room.

  “She was no slut when we degraded her in every way we were able.”

  I smile. It pleases me when Tor rehearses the degradation of Greta, the unworthy bitch.

  He flips on top of me, easily caging me with his huge body. And for a man so big, he is nimble—and dangerous. Tor flicks his tongue along the seam of my barely closed lips, and they part.

  “You taste like the ashes of vengeance, Lisbeth.”

  I bite his lower lip, stopping just shy of breaking the skin.

  He growls.

  “And we are this close to having it all,” I reply in a low voice.

  The stubble on his chin is very red, unlike the subtle deep auburn of the hair of his head. He rubs the sharp hairs along my cheekbone.

  “I am aware.” Tor kisses the tip of my nose, and I hold my breath for more punishment, but he is too spent for his normal games.

  Playing the winsome white knight would be too much for most, but for a man of Tor's culpabilities, it is exhausting.

  He flops over on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  I look, as well, taking in the hand-painted watercolors from three hundred years ago—a time when such things were commissioned and took two years in the making. Plump cupids rest with arrows hocked, ready to slay their intended victims.

  My lips curl. If I could simply pierce Greta with my arrow… But I don't desire speed. I want a creative, tortuous end. It is the only finality to close the circle of my hate forever.

  Tor rises onto an elbow and plants his head in his palm, studying me. “You do not think it was unwise to show your hand with—”

  I vehemently shake my head. “Don't behave as though you're confused, Tor. Say their names.” My lips quirk.

  It is Tor's singular flaw: he thinks with all his white Danish glory that somehow he is superior. When in reality, the victor will resolve to be—whoever that might be, whatever race that winner might happen to belong to.

  Winning is dominated by only the best.

  “You're not perturbed I race name, are you? Because I would expect political correctness from anyone but you.”

  My brows come together, and I roll my eyes. “No. Castillo and his little slave friend, Tallinn, are inconsequential. What troubles me is this narco from his country.”

  “He is not a Spaniard. He is Mexican?” Tor says, though I know he is aware.

  “His ancestral people came from Spain, I presume.” I wave my hand. Who really cares? I find it tiresome that Tor does. “We'll swat them like flies. And Paco believes that I am the female I behave like.”

  Tor's hand smooths down my naked side, then his finger presses with sudden viciousness against the knot-like bruise I couldn't block Paco from delivering.

  I hiss, and he grins. “Does it hurt?” he asks softly.

  I glare at him. “You know it does.”

  “I will pull his legs and arms off like a gnat for touching what is not his.”

  I melt at his words, meeting his sea-green eyes, so vibrant resting within a face with dusky skin. “Don't let your size make you complacent, Tor.”

  “I am Danish. Size is our gift.” His voice is proud.

  A frustrated sigh escapes and I answer with a dangerous amount of sarcasm, “Yes, it is wonderful that you're two meters tall.”

  He makes a space between his index finger and thumb a hair apart to indicate he is actually a little taller.

  My slight frown deepens though I ignore his boasting. “Castillo is a threat. He held back with me—I could not have taken him.” I fold my arms, and my breasts jiggle with the suddenness of the movement.

  His gaze latches onto my nipple for a moment before he pinches it.

  Thoughts of the Spaniard vanish as my legs widen to accept whatever he offers.

  His eyes are hooded with desire, and the green of his irises darken to emeralds kissed by midnight.

  “So greedy for pain, Lisbeth.”

  My eyelids droop. “Yes,” I breathe.

  “I will kill this Paco slowly.” Tor twists my nipple in emphasis, and moisture floods the inner folds of my sex.

  I begin to pant, and he moves on top of me. The tip of him is already hard and eager for more punishment of everything that is now soft and tender between my legs from our last encounter only hours before.

  He fists my hair, holding my head.

  Tor punches his cock inside me, and I shout at the sensation of being filled too quickly with too much girth and length.

  “And then I shall rape your sister again before the life leaves his body, so that he may partake of her defilement.”

  He rocks out then savagely penetrates me again.

  I can't help it—I orgasm at his words as he rocks forward, hitting the mouth of my womb with such force that I give a choked half-scream with the weight of the pain and the pleasure of my coming around his cock and milking the sickness that is Tor.

  I will finally get all that I have always deserved.

  Money.

  Adoration. A man who was born to complete me.

  And my relation will get what she deserves—a fitting end to her position, which is beneath me.

  *

  “How was it left with Greta?” I ask.

  Tor swivels his head to look at me, cleaning his weapons in the nude.

  I never become tired of the sight of him. His long body sits perched above an array of knives and two guns. Biceps flex, and triceps bunch in ripples of muscled flesh as he uses a long slim pipe cleaner to get at every nook and cranny of the barrel of a gun. He sets aside each weapon as he finishes.

  Tor practices shooting almost daily. He handles knives slightly better than I do, and they're all custom-made for his hand, weighted for throwing.

  I ache between my legs, helpless to resist him. I have no self-preservation when it comes to Tor Aros. A sane woman would move heaven and earth to leave him.

  I know that my crazy is all that keeps me sane.

  “She
thinks I am her staunch defender.” He chuckles.

  I join in. “Perfect.”

  “I will meet with her again.” He looks up from beneath his ginger lashes as I gaze at him. “I have asked to court her.”

  The breath leaves my body. Rage infuses the very pores of my skin, leaking out of me like poisonous geysers of hate.

  He. Is. Mine.

  Tor's eyes roam my face, and he licks his lips as though catching residual delight from something he’s tasted. “So dangerous. If I did not know what you are inside”—he touches the spot of his muscular chest with the gun above where his heart is, leaving a spot of gun oil—“I would fear for my safety. For all my size, you would be a formidable opponent.”

  He speaks the truth.

  The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That is how Tor originally engineered our meeting—on the mat.

  We met as opponents and became lovers, of a sort. When he felt the time was right, he broached the subject of a union other than fucking and fighting, one steeped in vengeance and monetary glory.

  He thought to kill both Greta and me. Instead, I became his greatest ally.

  My dreams of torture, murder, and eventual riches matched Tor's so perfectly, we laugh at the coincidence of it all now.

  But there is no such thing as coincidence, only providence.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Greta

  “Oh my good Lord, ʻcourtingʼ?” Gia asks slowly.

  “I kid you not—verbatim.”

  “I don't know—”

  “Come on, Gi, this is the real deal. You've been pushing me to date-actually date—and Tor falls into my lap. He's warm; he knew my parents. He's Danish, so I'd be overcoming my issues with the Caucasian male…”

  “I wish I could meet him,” she states in a flat voice.

  I can tell, even with the thousands of miles that separate us, she's biting her nail. “But?”

  “I don't know; he seems too good to be true.”

  “Is this a psych thing? Or is this a woman thing?”

  “Women's intuition.” I hear the white-noise buzzing of our cells, international calling notwithstanding.

  Now it's my turn to bite my nail. I gaze up at the ceiling, lying on the cushy bed in my hotel room. I can still feel Tor's lips on my hand where they brushed my knuckles.