by Viv Daniels
“Trust me,” she breathed, running her hands down his torso, over old scars and rippling muscles. She dropped to her knees.
Some great, guttural cry of need escaped from Archer as she wrapped her hands around his cock. He reached for her head, then whipped his hands away. “Please,” he rasped, frenzied, “You don’t know.”
“Trust me,” she murmured against the head of his cock. Gently, she pulled his foreskin back, and kissed the tip, laving her tongue around the rim. Archer groaned, and she felt his hands brush her hair, then vanish again.
“It’s okay,” she murmured, trailing kisses up and down his length. “Grab me if you like.”
“Don’t say that,” he begged, his words barely human, “unless you mean it.”
“Archer-mine,” she cooed against his twitching flesh. “I mean it.” Then she opened her mouth and took him in.
His fingers wove into her hair, fingertips against her temple, her cheek, her throat, so he could feel the muscles shift as she moved along his length. He tasted salty and dark, like the deepness of the forest, and she felt him growing even harder and longer in her mouth, as she gripped the base of his cock in her hands and pumped it in time to the movement of her mouth, sliding his foreskin forward and back with her lips.
His hands tightened and released on her head in subtle echoes of her own movements, guiding her to the depth and rhythm he liked best. “That’s it, Ivy. Suck me…” and then language seemed to abandon him, and all she heard were gasps and growls.
You are mine, Archer. She weighed his balls in her hands, and squeezed the base of his cock as she took him deep. I will never let you go.
They couldn’t cast the spell on the barrier without her help, and she would never give it. Ivy belonged to Archer and he to her, and neither the town nor the forest nor the darkest magic in the world was ever going to part them again.
She sucked and licked him, feeling his hips flex into her face, his stomach muscles tremble and his balls grow tight.
“Ivy!” he cried, and grabbed her by the shoulders, dragging her up his chest. She kept hold of his cock, slick now with her saliva, and he thrust into her hands, burying his face into the crook of her neck, covering her hands with his own. “Yes, please, oh, Ivy, Ivy, Ivy-mine…”
He shifted his hips to the side and she felt him jerk against her, coming at last with a long and keening cry. Something dripped, warm and stinging, over her hand and she pulled away even as he tightened his arms around her in a giant bear hug.
“Ivy.” It wasn’t a word. It was barely a sound, but she felt it in her bones. “Ivy.”
“I’m here,” she replied, stroking his hair with her clean hand. “I’m yours.”
He lifted his head and smiled at her, a real smile, an Archer smile, full of charm and laughter and light. And then he kissed her, full-lipped and free. She searched his eyes and saw nothing but green, and she pressed her cheek to his chest to listen to his heart beating, steady and true.
He dropped his lips to her hair, murmuring words she couldn’t quite make out. Her eyes drifted closed and she breathed him in.
Firelight, bright and cozy. A warm and willing woman in my arms.
This time, I must make it last.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ivy must have stiffened slightly, as Archer’s arms grew firm around her and he captured her mouth with his.
“What—”
“Your turn,” he smiled against her mouth, then scooped her up in his arms and carried her across the room, to where the stove fire warmed the sofa, and lay her back against the cushions, planting a hand on her chest as he knelt between her legs and tilted her hips up to meet his mouth.
All thoughts fled under the onslaught of his full lips and insistent tongue. Her desire already honed to a fine point by their earlier activities, it wasn’t long before she was writhing on the couch, reaching for him. His hand on her chest had her trapped though, and she rested her feet on his shoulder blades, clawing at the cushions of the couch in sweet agony.
The very moment that she came, crying out his name in ecstasy, he rose up before her, covering her body with his own and sliding inside her to the hilt.
“See what you do to me,” he rasped into her ear. “I’m ready for you again.” And then he began to thrust, and Ivy couldn’t form words.
It was impossible, but he was bringing her there again, a cascade of orgasms that shuddered through her one after the other. She could barely move, just lie there and feel as he drove into her, over and over. Archer held her head in his hands, cradling her carefully as he whispered half-heard oaths in her ears, rutting against her with quick urgent, movements.
The light from the fire flickered behind her eyelids like it was midsummer, and they lay in the leaves of the forest with drums all around them and lust in the air. And with every thrust, she heard his thoughts, echoing inside her like they were her own.
You’re mine, Ivy Potter. Tonight, you are mine. No matter what happens, I have this moment.
Ivy struggled to turn her face to his, but the way he was lying, crushing her into the sofa, she could only see his temple, the curls of his wild hair. She moved her lips against his ear.
“I love you, Archer.”
Hear me. I love you.
All at once, Archer went rigid against her, and everything crashed, tumbling, endless, and she clung to him like they were the single, bright spot in a universe gone dark.
I love you, Ivy. I love you love you love you…
As the throbbing of their orgasms subsided, Archer slumped against her, panting. She caressed his shoulders and back, lost in her dreamy pleasure state.
Until suddenly he pulled away. Sprang away, really, like some frightened creature.
Ivy sat up, confused, cold, and missing his touch. Archer stood, naked, staring at her in abject horror.
She grabbed a throw blanket to cover her nakedness and looked up at him. “Archer?”
He gave a small, nearly imperceptible shake of his head. “No. Oh please, no.”
“What’s wrong?” She reached for him, and that’s when she saw it. Her left hand. Two of her fingers, thumb, and wrist were riddled with dark veins like winter twigs, branching outward as if ready to pop through her skin.
She gasped and held her hand away from her. “What is it? What do I do?”
“Sweet Ivy.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I didn’t know.”
She ran for the sink and turned the taps to scalding, but all the scrubbing in the world didn’t make the marks vanish. Her hand seemed to tingle beneath her touch, pulsing with her heartbeat, and the markings grew thicker, a pressure building up beneath her fingertips. The veins were traveling up her arm now, nearly to her elbow.
The bramble tree rose up in her mind’s eye, its pulsing, terrible shapes. “Get it off, get it off,” she begged, and washed harder.
A hand clamped down on her shoulder and whirled her around. Archer was wearing pants again, and his forest boots, but his eyes were intent on her arm. He ran his fingers over the markings, muttering under his breath.
“No choice…” He gripped her hard.
Ice seemed to flow through her veins, stopping her heart, freezing her thoughts. She stood as if frozen as Archer concentrated on her arm, his body quaking. After a moment, he doubled over with pain, gasping, and let her go. She recoiled, slumped against the counter, and stared at him.
He turned away.
Her tongue seemed too full for her mouth and she focused on moving air into her lungs. In. Out. In. Out. “Archer.”
He straightened, and walked toward the door.
She followed. “Wait. Tell me, what was that?”
He said nothing as he grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. By the time he hit the porch, he was running.
“Stop!” she cried, and held out her hand—her flawless, creamy hand.
He looked back at her once, his black eyes awash in pain, then lifted his arms.
A hedge of brambles explo
ded from her floorboards, blocking her in.
“No!” she screamed, and ran back inside. The windows…
But Archer was too quick, and vines and twigs bloomed over every window, blocking out the sight of the snow, the street, and the pale figure of her lover, disappearing into the night.
***
It was the sound of chainsaws that woke her, long after the wood stove had gone cherry-dim, long after she’d cried her insides out and gone to sleep in her darkened, wood-encased shop.
She blinked, and drew her blanket close around her. She was still naked, still scented with sex, her hair wild about her shoulders, and there was a buzz of electricity and the whine of metal teeth biting through brambles just beyond the door.
She jumped to her feet, looking around the shop.
“Help!” she said, though what she thought was, Wait!
“Ivy Potter!” It was the voice of Ernest Beemer. “Are you all right?”
She ran to her room and grabbed her bathrobe, wrapping it tight around her and tying the knot. The movements seemed so simple, her hands almost automatic, and she blinked down at them in wonder. They shouldn’t be able to do that. To just work, like human hands. Like normal hands.
These hands, that had driven Archer away.
She checked her reflection in the mirror quickly, but found nothing amiss. Her eyes were the same color as always, her hair just hair, not brambles or violets or fire.
Her eyes burned and her chest squeezed and Archer, damn it all, had run away from her again.
“I’m here,” she called, through the lump in her throat. “I’m fine. What… what happened?” she added weakly, as if playing innocent might fly.
“It looks like your house was attacked in the night,” came the reply through the hedge of thorns. The chainsaw started up again.
It looked like she had some time. Trapper was lying on the towels, watching her with careful eyes. Some time, during the long, desperate night, she’d given him more pain medication and changed his bandages, spreading out some newspaper next to his bed, in case he needed it. The dog still seemed out of it, probably wondering where he was and why it hurt to move.
Ivy knew the feeling.
In the bathroom, she ran a cloth under the taps and washed, shivering at the ice-cold water but not wanting to take the time to wait until it heated up. A quick brush with a comb and she grabbed a fresh set of long underwear and a bra, shoved her legs into slacks and her arms into her last clean sweater. Socks, boots, hat. Check. Costumed in normalcy, she headed out to the front, just in time to see the first rays of light break through the brambles that blocked her front door.
Soon enough, there was a person-sized hole carved into the hedge, and hands reaching for her to help her out into the morning sunlight.
It was later than she’d thought, locked away inside the nest of thorns. Mid-morning sunlight washed over the street, turning the snow into a field of glittering diamonds. Her house was half-encased in browning vines, stiff and dying against the windows and doors. When she looked back at the biggest hedge, there before her front door, it too, seemed to be dying, crumbling and rotting before their eyes.
“Whatever this was, it doesn’t have much staying power,” said Beemer, pulling at one of the branches. It broke off in his hand. “It’s dead. Just like in the greenhouse.”
“The greenhouse?” Ivy turned to look at the men around her in turn but no one seemed in the mood to answer her questions, and her patience had run out.
She headed around the back of the shop herself, and as soon as the dome came into view, she broke into a run.
The windows and metal veins were black, crusted over with some strange residue. The broken-in door lay open, the wrought iron gate torn away and thrown aside. But the brambles that had so recently blocked the door were gone, and the floor and walls were coated in char and ash. Ivy approached the threshold, heart in her throat.
The black trails ran along the floor inside, coating every pane of glass with smears of ash, but every trace of the bramble-tree was gone. She walked the paths of the greenhouse floor, half fearing, and half already sure of what she’d see.
The redbell patch came into view— or rather, what had once been redbell. The square of ground was picked clean, and the tree that had sprung up in the spot was burned to the root, a twisting, hulking chunk of crumbling charcoal. Archer’s effect on this place had been burned away, and the redbells he’d come for were long gone.
So Archer must be, too.
Ivy dropped to her knees in the dirt, surveying the destruction around her. How much dark magic must it have taken to destroy the bramble bush here, if removing the marks on her hand had been enough to turn his eyes black last night? And if he’d been coursing with so much darkness, how had he ever gotten the flowers back into the forest unharmed?
Unless, caught in the thrall of so much evil magic, he’d destroyed them, too.
These days, I go quickly to curses.
She bowed her head over her knees and let out a quaking breath. There had been moments last night that she’d thought she’d been close. But he’d warned her, hadn’t he?
The magic… it’s broken something inside me.
And looking around the wreck of her greenhouse, Ivy realized that whatever was broken, it might not be something she could fix.
Dimly, she became aware of footsteps behind her, and she scraped the back of her hand across her eyes and sniffed. Keep it together, Ivy, or everyone will know you aren’t just crying over a few panes of glass.
“It is a relief, is it not, that the enchantments were short-lived?” The voice of Deacon Ryder wafted through the chilled air. “Even if you now have this mess to deal with.”
“A bit of soap and water,” she said, keeping her tone even. “We’ll be fine.”
“Really?” the deacon toed a shredded redbell stalk. “But what of your customers and the headaches they claim to have? When the bells start to ring again, they’ll be wanting their redbell tea.”
She took a sharp breath. Claim? Those headaches had nearly killed her. And now that she understood fully what part her father had in creating the barrier, she understood that it wasn’t only love driving his obsession to develop the redbell tea for her and their neighbors—it was guilt.
Though she still wasn’t sure if she believed the deacon’s story. Everything he said was so twisted. Didn’t she know her father better than that? He’d been wary of Archer, but that was because he hadn’t wanted Ivy to be hurt, same as he’d been hurt when her mother had left them.
Although, maybe she hadn’t known her father as well as she thought. Perhaps he was far more heartbroken than her child’s sensibilities had ever been able to comprehend. Those long hours she’d spent last night, trapped away in her house after Archer had left—that had been her father’s whole life. He’d never let her know, protecting her own, distant relationship with her mother, her own fantasy about her parents.
And then, when she and Archer had fallen in love, George Potter had let his fear and heartbreak ruin everything. What a wretched kind of love, to be so soaked in fear. A fear that could kill forests and children, that could divide people from each other and themselves.
Ivy would never love like that. And she’d never live like that again.
“And I suppose,” the deacon was saying now, though Ivy was only listening with half an ear, “that you now see the need for us to protect ourselves. This attack on your home is proof enough that the forest knows how important you are to our cause.”
She stood, dusting her hands off. Enough was enough. There was a reason Archer had locked her in her house last night—he knew that if she came after him, he wouldn’t be able to stop her. Ivy had a job to do, and it was in the forest.
She turned sharply on her heel and strode to the door, and the deacon, taken aback, followed behind her.
“Ivy, you must not let all your father’s work be in vain. We need you to help us resurrect the barrier.”
&
nbsp; At the door she turned to look at him. “Are you kidding? No. I will not lift a finger to help you with the bells. They have been a source of constant torture to me for the past three years. They killed my father and my mother.”
He blinked at her. “Your forest folk mother? How do you know that? Ivy, have you been in contact with the forest folk? What do you know of the barrier’s destruction—” He reached for her hand, but she shook him off and walked on, mentally preparing a checklist in her mind. She’d need food. A heavy coat. Water. Probably a hunting knife, just to be safe. Her father’s pack should be in his closet…
“Listen, young lady,” Deacon Ryder said, scurrying behind her as she headed up the front porch. “You’re too young to fully understand the implications of your decision. This town is in grave danger. You are in grave danger.”
The hedge was crumbling away before their eyes now, rotting like old wood. “This doesn’t look dangerous to me. This looks like some half-hearted effort to trap me inside my house. My father did the exact same thing to me on the night the bells began, only he used a metal lock.”
And Ivy wasn’t a child anymore. She shook her head and slipped inside. Pack. Water. Food.
The deacon scrambled in behind her, uninvited. “Your father was trying to protect you!”
Archer was trying to protect her, too. From himself. But what her father and Archer didn’t realize was that their efforts only isolated her. For three years, she’d believed in her father’s choices. She’d stayed in her little shop, brewing her little teas, and not taking any chances. She’d trusted that others knew better than she what it was she needed.
No longer.
She filled a canteen with water and grabbed some nuts from the pantry.
“What are you doing?”
She brushed by him and retrieved her father’s old hiking backpack from his room, stuffing some spare clothes, water, food and other necessities inside. She zipped up her coat, hoisted the pack on her shoulders, and clipped the waistband.