Warmongers and Wands

by Dunbar, Debra

  Sheesh. I was such an idiot. No wonder I was a virgin at thirty-one.

  He shot me a puzzled look and started to dry me off. “What are you talking about?”

  I felt my face grow even hotter—like ready-to-explode hot. “That.” I gestured to the crotch of his pants. “With my hands…or mouth.”

  He tilted his head, then smiled and bent down to kiss the tip of my nose. “I’m yours, Bronwyn. You don’t need to do that. There is no need for you to pleasure me. My job is to serve you.”

  Okay, the sex-slave thing had been intriguingly sexy at first, but it was quickly losing its appeal.

  “No. That’s not how this is going to work,” I told him. “Getting you off makes me feel sexy; it makes me want you more. It brings me just as much pleasure to make you orgasm as it does to have one myself. Well, probably not, but you get the idea. This needs to be mutually beneficial, or it won’t work long term.”

  It still might not work long term, but I’ll be damned if I was going to go into my first sexual relationship with this one-sided crap. And to show him that, I reached out and cupped him through his pants.

  He hissed and froze, then jerked his hips forward. I rubbed, shifting so I could bring my other hand up to unzip his pants.

  “This should wait until your leg heals,” he protested as I eased him from his pants. Commando. I liked that in a man…or demon.

  “I’m not waiting.” I wrapped my hand around him at the base and stroked him to the tip. “Scoot forward a few feet, will you? I can’t do this all twisted over on my hip.”

  He obliged and I sighed in relief once both my ass cheeks were back on the towel. I caressed and stroked him, feeling him harden further. A bead of white swelled at the end of his cock and emboldened by his enthusiastic response, I licked the pearlescent drop. His hips rocked forward and I found him in my mouth.

  Huh. That was easier than I’d expected. Imagining myself quite the temptress, I lost myself in the feel of him, in the taste of him. And when he came, I felt more powerful and sexy than I ever had before in my life.

  “You need another bath, my witch.”

  He reached down to trace a finger along my chin, my neck, the top of my breasts. Sticky. I’d not timed things quite right and he’d ended up coming outside of my mouth. It looked sexy in the porn movies, but in reality, it was a bit like being coated in fast-drying hair gel.

  “I’ll just clean up with a basin of water—” Before I could finish my sentence, he was wiping me up with a warm, wet washcloth.

  “Rest,” he instructed, scooping me up and placing me back into the bed. “I’ll get dinner started. And if you need anything in the future—assistance, food, water, you are to ask me, please. Don’t risk hurting your leg further. I will help you.”

  He turned to go and I reached out and grabbed his hand. I was tired. I did need to sleep. But there was one more thing I wanted.

  “Can dinner wait?” I murmured. “I’d really like you to lay here beside me. I want to fall asleep next to you, with your arms around me.”

  He smiled, and his eyes shown with a golden glow in the light brown irises. “I would like that too, my witch. I would very much like that.”

  Chapter 7

  Bronwyn

  I slept. I slept a lot. I don’t know whether it was the hot bath, the orgasm, or just general exhaustion, but I pretty much slept the day away, waking up for dinner and more hot tea, then promptly going right back to sleep.

  The next morning, I felt good enough that I made use of a much-needed toothbrush and ultra-whitening toothpaste. Then I hobbled outside with Hadur’s assistance and the help of two crutches he’d put together for me while I was sleeping.

  And can I just say, Thank God that raccoon brought toilet paper from one of his late-night supply runs.

  He’d also brought a carton of fake eggs with chopped up peppers in it, so we ate omelets for breakfast along with some bread that Hadur fried in a pan. After breakfast, I read Tiger Beat and a five-year-old edition of Cosmopolitan, then dozed a bit while Hadur snuggled up against me.

  Sleeping with him was the most amazing thing ever. Well, I’m sure sex with him was going to be more amazing then sleeping, but for now the snoozy cuddles were top of my list. Having the security of his solid form behind me, his arm gently around his waist, his warm breath in my hair was pretty darn close to heaven. It wasn’t confining; it was comforting. It made me want this private time in his cabin to never end—well, except for the broken leg part.

  When I awoke from my nap, Hadur was up and about, another steaming trough of water in the middle of the room, cheese and a selection of crackers on a plate next to my bed. Diebin was nowhere to be found, so I assumed he was out on another run, or off doing whatever raccoons did to entertain themselves. I ate some cheese, drank the tea Hadur had been practically force-feeding me since my arrival, took care of some business out by a tree, and let Hadur help me into the tub.

  “You never did tell me how you managed to get this hot water going so quickly.” I was fully aware that Hadur was watching me soap up my body. It made everything south of my waist tingle a bit.

  “I’m a demon. I can heat water without fire.”

  “Inside a summoning circle? Because Lucien can’t do much of anything inside the town wards beyond show some pretty wings, beat the snot out of werewolves, and juice up Cassie’s spells. You’re dealing with the effect of the same wards combined with the summoning circle. I’m surprised you can do anything demon-magical at all.”

  He blinked, shifting his gaze from my boobs to my face. “Lucien?”

  “He’s my sister Cassie’s main squeeze. Do you know him? He’s a demon. Says he’s Satan’s son, but who knows if that’s true or not.”

  “I know Lucien. Why is he here?”

  I shrugged, wondering if I could manage to wash my hair or not. Actually, it wasn’t the washing I was worried about; it was the conditioning and the combing. My hair was in a short bob, but super fine, and washing it with a bar of rose-scented soap would probably turn it into twelve inches of knotted mess. Hmm. I wonder if Diebin could steal me some dry shampoo from the Walmart?

  “I think he told Cassie he was here on vacation. Charon dropped him off or something. He was a bit surprised about the wards around the town. And all the supernatural beings who live here. And the witches.”

  “Charon brought him.” Hadur scowled.

  I paused my scrubbing to eye him. “Does that have something to do with you? You said you had no idea who had summoned you or why.”

  “Most likely not. I was summoned so long ago. And demons cannot summon one another. It was a witch who summoned me.”

  “And Charon would have no reason to pay a witch to summon you, get you out of his hair or something?” I asked. “Do you demons get into fights? Have feuds?”

  He shot me a sideways smile. “I’m a war demon. I get into fights and have feuds all the time. But not with Charon that I remember. He’s simply the ferryman. He brings demons into and out of hell that are not summoned.”

  I nodded, remembering Cassie telling me the dude was like Uber for demons. “But you were summoned. Two hundred years ago, you were summoned. And no witch ever showed up to make a request. Why go to all the bother, and I assume it’s a big ass bother of a ritual, to summon a demon and not show up to close the deal?”

  “I have never known of this happening before,” Hadur said. “Never. That is why I was so certain that Adelaide had been the one who summoned me. She was right here at the edge of the circle when I appeared.”

  “Could she have done it by accident?” I envisioned a witch skipping along, singing some song she’d read in a spell book while just happening to trace the appropriate symbols in the air. The odds of that happening were probably a gazillion to one. And I couldn’t see any witch being so stupid as to sing a spell without knowing it might stick. That would be like lighting your drapes on fire then being shocked when they went up in a blaze.

  “No. B
ut there might have been another witch nearby.”

  “You can’t tell one witch energy from another?” I asked. Sheesh. Did we really all look alike to demons?

  “I can, but families have similar energy. Covens have similar energy.” He reached out to touch my shoulder. “When I sensed you, I thought you were Adelaide. Your energy is nearly identical to how I remember hers being.”

  “We Perkins women,” I joked. “Strong family resemblance, I guess.” It did make me think of something, though. “Maybe it wasn’t Adelaide, but some other member of her family. If it had been a sister of hers, or her mother or an aunt, then you might not have noticed the additional energy and just attributed it all to Adelaide.”

  He nodded. “Yes, but then why would this other witch not reveal herself, give me my task, and release me from the summoning circle?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe this witch wasn’t supposed to be summoning demons and didn’t want Adelaide to find out? Maybe by the time it was safe for them to come back and give you the task and release you, they’d been struck down with the plague or something?”

  The whole thing began to give me a bad feeling. He was a war demon. He stirred up strife and violence and discord. He probably would do that murder-for-hire thing. I was pretty sure demons didn’t bat a leathery wing when it came to being summoned to kill. Had one of Adelaide’s relatives decided to do away with a few family members or some powerful supernatural residents?

  But how would that have worked with the wards around the town? Lucien could do pretty much nothing inside the town limits. Would a war demon have any power at all in the town? Although I guess lopping off someone’s head wouldn’t take too much demon power.

  The wards. They hadn’t always included Heartbreak Mountain. They’d been expanded over the centuries to allow for supernatural residents who didn’t want to live in the town proper, and to include what had become the werewolf compound. Maybe at the time of Hadur’s summoning, this part of the mountain hadn’t been inside the wards. Maybe a witch two hundred years ago had been desperate enough to take care of some threat that she’d turned to demonic help.

  But this would remain a mystery until I could get back to town, back to our family home, and back to all the journals and spell books that kept our family, and the town’s, history. I needed to find out who Adelaide was, what was going on in the town during that time, and exactly where the wards began and ended during that time period.

  “What powers do you have right now? Besides heating water for baths and making a raccoon your familiar?” I noted that demon-heated water didn’t seem to ever grow cold. Now that was a trick I could get behind.

  “I have my full powers inside this summoning circle. There has been some degradation over the last century, so I believe some of my power may go past the circle’s edge.”

  “But if so, why wouldn’t we have sensed it?” I asked. My sisters and I maintained the wards. I was particularly sensitive to any weaknesses or breaks. How the hell could a magical space have existed smack in the middle of our area and us—me—not notice it?

  “I don’t know, my witch.”

  I shivered at the “my witch” thing and gripped the edges of the trough, preparing myself to exit the bath.

  “Do not try to get out without my assistance,” Hadur warned. Then he spread a fluffy pink towel across the floor, stacking two lime-green ones by the side. I made a mental note about Diebin’s interesting choice in colors, then braced myself for the pain of being lifted from the tub.

  It wasn’t as painful as I’d imagined, probably because Hadur’s warm hands on my wet, slick body were sending me back into erotic fantasy land. He held me upright until I got my balance and was able to lean on a nearby chair. Then he picked up the towels and got to work.

  Being naked and gently dried off by a gorgeous man ranked up there in my top five life experiences. Top three, actually. No, actually this was my top life experience, although I was hoping that the towel-drying moment would soon be knocked out of the top spot by something more orgasmic. As in an orgasm that wasn’t self-induced, or self-induced with the aid of a battery-operated device.

  Once I was dry, Hadur carried me to the bed, covered me up with the cozy pelts, then got to work putting clean and dry strips of fabric on my wooden splint. That pretty much ended any sexy-times impulses on my part. By the time he was done, all I wanted to do was lay very still and hope the pain went away. Or at the very least, diminished to a more tolerable level.

  “You think Diebin could pick up some more Tylenol next time he makes a Walmart run?” I asked. “Or possibly get behind the pharmacy counter?”

  “I will ask him, but communication isn’t always clear with Diebin. He often returns with something completely different from what I asked him to bring.”

  Hence the Tiger Beat magazines, no doubt. “I’ll take my chances,” I told him, wishing I’d been the sort of woman who’d kept pain relievers in her purse. I really didn’t have much of anything in my purse, or much of a purse at all. I tended towards the minimalist when it came to accessories, probably because most of my day was spent in front of a forge. Half the time I left my purse at home and ended up with just my phone and a wallet hastily shoved into the side door pocket of my truck.

  “We don’t have much in the way of choice for dinner.” Hadur headed over to the shelves beside the fireplace. “No animals came into my circle today, so there is no fresh meat. Diebin was supposed to bring some back this morning, but I believe he ate it before he returned.”

  Damn that raccoon. “So, what did he bring instead?”

  “This, and this.” Hadur held up a scented candle and a pack of playing cards. “Oh, and this.”

  Ugh. Another Tiger Beat magazine. “So, what are our dinner choices?”

  He set down the candle, cards, and magazine and looked at a line of cans on the shelf. “We have chili, tuna, tomato soup, or something called chicken a la king.”

  “You’re joking.” Call me weird, but I had a secret addiction to that horrible, disgusting chicken a la king. “Do you have any more bread from breakfast? Can you make more toast? Because I would kill for some chicken a la king on toast right now.”

  He gave me the side-eye, then pulled a can off the shelf. “I live to serve, my witch.”

  “Keep talking like that, and I’ll be putting more than chicken a la king in my mouth.” I grinned and leaned back against the pillows, the ache in my leg nearly forgotten.

  It was oddly domestic, me half-dozing on the bed in the cozy cabin while an incredibly hot guy cooked me dinner. Diebin came back, dragging a plastic shopping bag full of who-knows-what just as Hadur was pouring the chicken a la king over my toast. The raccoon dropped the bag, bounding excitedly over to the plate.

  “This is not for you,” Hadur scolded in a tone that made me shiver a bit. “You ate all of our bacon this morning, so you have to eat cat food tonight instead.” The demon turned back to the plate, mumbling something about how cat food probably tasted better than this stuff.

  He brought the plates over, lit the pumpkin spice candle which still had its clearance sticker on the side, and we ate. Hadur may have preferred cat food, but I thought dinner was amazing and settled back with a contented sigh to watch the demon clean up the dishes and pans. A girl could get used to this. All I needed was a glass of wine. And maybe a not-broken leg.

  “Let’s see what Diebin brought us tonight,” Hadur said, picking up the plastic bag.

  I came to attention, crossing my fingers and hoping for bacon. Or Tylenol. Or maybe bacon and Tylenol.

  The bag held a travel-sized Yahtzee game, a spatula, the salt half of a blue ceramic salt and pepper shaker, and something from the cosmetics section.

  “Nail polish?” Hadur held up the bottle of bright pink polish.

  My eyebrows shot up. “How the hell do you know what nail polish is?”

  Oh, yeah. That incredibly old Cosmopolitan magazine.

  He shrugged. “Diebin brought me an
In Style magazine a few months ago. I know all the spring colors and fashion trends and can assure you that Meghan Markle did indeed wear that Dior dress better.”

  Yikes, the man was more in touch with the feminine than I was. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not really a makeup kinda girl. This shopping trip was a big miss, Diebin. Hope you do better next time.”

  “When you’ve been confined to a summoning circle for over two hundred years, no shopping trip is a miss,” Hadur announced. “Everything is an opportunity to learn and enjoy, to expand your horizons just a bit.”

  That had to have been the weirdest speech ever, especially since it came from a war demon. “So, you’re going to paint your toenails? Or Diebin’s?”

  “From what I could glean out of the In Style and GQ magazines, men do not paint their toenails.” He waved the bottle. “So, I am going to paint yours. And while they are drying, we will play this game.”

  I went to protest, only to shut my mouth, forcing a hopefully authentic-looking smile on my lips instead. This guy had saved my life, splinted my broken leg, fed me, helped me pee, got me a hot bath. He was waiting on me hand and foot, pledging to serve me forever—which hopefully included some sexy-times stuff once I wasn’t in so much pain. Outside of the broken leg, this was pretty close to a fantasy experience. If the guy wanted to paint my toenails and play Yahtzee, then I wasn’t going to say “no.”

  But first, I had an idea. “Do you think if I wrote a note to my sisters, Diebin could deliver it?”

  Hadur frowned in thought. “I doubt he’d know who your sisters were in town, but he could take the note to somebody, leave it on their doorstep, perhaps. Diebin doesn’t like approaching strange humans or anyone else. He had a bad experience fifty-three years ago and would not like to risk being shot again.”

  I winced, wondering if he’d just been nicked by the bullet, or whether his deal with Hadur got him some sort of immortality in the bargain. Clearly if the raccoon was a few hundred years old, he’d been given some life-extending benefits, but I didn’t know if that made him bulletproof, or an immortal raccoon, or what.