by Mina Carter
Chapter Four
“It’s no longer any of your concern, Isskal. Forget the mortal woman and go about your duties. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll change my mind and put you back on the sex roster. Until then, well, you’ll just have to cope…”
Three days later Miknris’ dismissive words were still spinning around and around in Jacob’s head like an annoyed gnat he couldn’t get rid of. Each time his temper and frustration mounted a little more.
Stupid woman wouldn’t know a death-shade if one walked up and bit her on the ass, Jacob grumbled to himself as he mopped his hundredth floor that day. How many bloody floors were there in the world anyway? Was he going to have to mop every fucking one of them? At least it was better than cleaning toilets, Jacob’s absolute least favorite job.
Sloshing water on the tiles, he attacked them with the mop. He had to get back to Tori. There wasn’t anything else for it. If that shade got loose, Tori didn’t stand a chance, not with how large and powerful it was. It would suck the life right out of her, and condemn her to life as a Wraith. Without a collar to protect her soul from the ravages of the veil, it would wear out quickly and she’d become nothing more than an echo, a mere whisper of the vibrant woman she had been.
Jacob couldn’t… No, he wouldn’t let that happen. He didn’t know why, but somehow Tori had gotten under his skin. He cared what happened to her because a dead woman wasn’t going to say the words he needed to hear. Even as he thought it, though, a small part of Jacob’s mind protested the idea he was just interested in her as a way out of his slavery. He cared about her. He’d care about any woman with that thing hung over her like a sword of Damocles.
With cleaned tiles gleaming up at him, Jacob finished off and put the mop and bucket away. It was his last job at this place so he closed his eyes as the witching swept him away to his next. Like being on the sex roster it was one job after another. With this new role there was less time, really no time, to relax though. It was just pure physical hard work from one moment to the next.
Jacob opened his eyes on yet another living room and ignored the couple sitting on the couch. They ignored him in turn, something he was used to now. People just didn’t see domestic Wraiths, and Jacob only put enough effort into his physical form for them to see his outline. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed by any mortal, unless it was Tori.
He went about his work as fast as he could. Work, shift locations, work, shift again. In the back of his mind was a tiny thread of hope that he’d get picked up by Tori’s cleaning spell, but three days later he was beginning to face facts. With the amount of people who used cleaning Wraiths, he could work a lifetime and never be called to the same street again, never mind the same house.
Squirting polish at a glass dining table, Jacob rubbed at the marks on the surface.
She was probably dead by now. The more nightmares she had, the more that dream-catcher backed up behind the shade. From what he’d seen, all it needed was a couple more and the thing would break and release the shade. Then Tori would be dead, a Wraith like him.
Jacob allowed himself to consider that as he moved about the house. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad? He could shelter her, petition on her behalf for a collar so she wouldn’t fade away. They’d be together. Sure, his place wasn’t ideal, but they could make a life beyond the veil.
Images assaulted him: coming home from a hard day’s work to find Tori waiting for him, getting into bed beside her and knowing she would always be there, a nursery painted in pink. Other Wraiths, even those not natural-born, lived whole lives behind the veil. Normal lives. Happy lives. Why shouldn’t they?
Casting an experienced eye around the room, Jacob checked he’d cleaned everything that needed cleaning then packed up his duster and headed back down to the kitchen to put it away. As soon as the cupboard door shut on the cleaning supplies, the room around him started to fade, and he was whisked away again.
* * *
“Thnall terantis Isskath,
Heran juris gerath,
Ceris teranis anak,
Heran Koras go-gothian totalis.
Aranath gos…oh fuck it!”
Tori broke off as the incantation failed for the fourth time in a row. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The incantation worked just fine for the purpose it was intended for. Tori blew hair out of her face in frustration as she looked through the open door of her bedroom and into the rest of the apartment.
The ghostly forms of three Wraiths were just visible as they bustled around, cleaning, while in the corner, a fourth started to take shape. As soon as it fully formed, it moved to join the others in their cleaning fest.
Tori dropped the scroll back on the altar, and defeat curled in her chest. She’d have the cleanest house on the block. Scant comfort when all she wanted was the gorgeous hunk from last time.
Why hadn’t it worked?
It should have worked; she’d done and said exactly the same things…her brow furrowed…hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember, not after what had happened that night. Her memory of the exact words she’d used was a little bit fuzzy after the amazing sex.
Conceding that tonight was destined to be hunk-less, Tori stomped over to the bed.
“Knew I’d gotten it wrong,” she muttered as she stripped off her robe and dropped it to the floor. Sliding between the sheets she let out a sigh and tried to ignore the frustration swirling through her veins.
Eyes closed, she didn’t see the Wraith sidle into the room and pick the flimsy garment up, folding it neatly to place it on the chair next to the teddy bear, or hear when the dream-catcher above her head was silently removed.
* * *
Gently does it, Jacob told himself as he carried the dream-catcher from Tori’s bedroom in careful hands. He still couldn’t believe his luck being called back to Tori’s house after days of trying. It had taken him less than two minutes to dispatch the other Wraiths. An easy task when they were all a little bemused as to why they had all been called at the same time. Tori’s apartment wasn’t big enough to warrant the attention of three of their kind, let alone four.
The dream-catcher was feather-light in his hands, but Jacob could feel the weight of the shade contained within. It pressed against the edges of his mind, leaving an oily residue that made him want to scrub the inside of his skull out with bleach.
He strode purposefully to the table where he dropped his burden into the salt circle he’d drawn in the center. As soon as it touched the scattered salt across the wooden surface, the creature within began to thrash and scream.
Jacob’s jaw tightened as he fought to retain control of the circle. The magical glyphs he’d drawn in salt on the table around it glowed brightly as it battered at the circle. He couldn’t afford to lose control. If he did, if the shade got out, then it was going to go after the only living thing in the apartment.
Tori. Over his dead body—so to speak.
Jacob started to chant, his low voice filling the room as he began the banishment spell, which would dispel the shade, scattering its form so it no longer presented a danger to the living. It thrashed in its confinement, throwing itself at the boundaries that Jacob had set. His voice rose into the culmination of the spell. It might not have been intelligent or even sentient as such, but it sensed its own imminent demise.
“…Anak-kral! So mote it be,” Jacob finished, his voice echoing around the room on the last words. Time slowed, all the air in the room rushing toward the dream-catcher surrounded by salt on the table. Then, with a pop, the shade disappeared, its scream echoing into nothing.
Grimacing, Jacob stuck a finger in his ear and wriggled it about. “Damn, those things squeal more than an accountant with dodgy balance sheets.”
Still, he was glad that had gone well. He hadn’t cast a spell of that complexity since his death.
“Boy’s still got it,” he muttered, straightening his collar and posing in the mirror-like surface of the dining room window.
He hadn’t been
sure it would work, whether the barely visible collar around his neck would block his mortal abilities, but it seemed some things not even a Wraith control collar could block. Leaving everything on the table, Jacob headed for the door.
Now that little problem was taken care of, there was just one more thing…
* * *
Tori was asleep, floating in that wonderful, warm place between asleep and awake, when the bed dipped. A soft murmur left her lips as the covers shifted, and a warm body slid in next to her. On a normal day she’d have been out the other side of the bed in alarm and reaching for the baseball bat hidden between the bed and the dressing table, but this time she didn’t.
Warm arms wrapped around her to pull her against a solid body—a solid male body. Something about the presence was familiar to her and comforting. Even though Tori’s mind was still mostly asleep, her body wasn’t. A delicious, toe-curling shiver ran through her from her head right down to her feet. If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up anytime soon.
Eyelids closed, she pushed her ass back and wriggled it against the erection pressed there as consciousness returned by degrees. Soft lips nibbled along the sensitive arch of her neck, and she knew who held her in his arms; her Wraith lover from the other night. No one else had ever kissed her like that, with such tenderness combined with sheer sinfulness.
“I thought you’d never come back,” she admitted as she turned in his arms. The bedroom was dark, but she could just make him out in the moonlight filtering through the window.
He seemed far more solid than he had before, if solid was the right word to use.
He sure as hell felt solid—more than solid if the rigid cock pressing against her was any indication—but before she’d been able to see through him more clearly. He’d been so transparent that for most of it last time, she’d kept her eyes shut because being able to see your own arms through someone was very disconcerting. Kind of killed the mood.
Dead.
“I’m glad you came—” Her words were cut off as his lips crashed down onto hers. Tori squeaked in surprise. With a sweep of his tongue, he parted her lips and deepened the kiss, ravaging the soft recesses of her mouth with an aggression that stunned her. It was almost as if he’d been as desperate to get back to her as she had been to get him here. Which didn’t make sense.
Wraiths were constructs called from the witching when they were needed. They didn’t have needs or wants; they didn’t feel desperation or anything else for that matter.
Did they? Tori’s brow furrowed as she pondered the question. She didn’t get very far.
Her thoughts scattered as he began to strip her nightclothes from her with rough hands.
The cami-top was the first victim, pushed up past her nipples as his hungry mouth descended. Tori gasped with pleasure as his lips latched onto her nipple, drawing it into the warm cavern of his mouth and sucking hard. Her back arched as fire lanced from her nipple straight to her pussy.
He didn’t leave her other nipple unattended. Licking his fingertips, he rolled the hard bud between them as he drew lazy circles around the other with his tongue to leave a wet trail. Then he blew a cool breath across it, making the flesh of her breast pimple and pucker in reaction.
“Ahhhmmmmhhh…” was the most intelligent reaction Tori could muster as she drove her hands into his hair. Holding his head to her, she offered more of her naked breasts to his lips. She needed the touch of his mouth everywhere, over her breasts, every inch of her skin, her pussy.
A groan sounded in the back of her throat. Oh God, her pussy. Yeah, she definitely needed his mouth there. Heat blossomed in her core and radiated out through her body in waves. An ache formed between her legs, just above the entrance to her body, but he seemed quite content where he was, lavishing attention on her breasts.
Nice as that was, Tori wanted his attention—and his mouth—elsewhere. Should she just push him in the direction she wanted, or would that be considered crass? In the end, she didn’t have to put it to the test. His lips blazed a trail of kisses down her stomach.
She was ticklish as hell. Tori sucked her breath in hard, not sure if she wanted to laugh or moan in delight. Then he was at the lace edge of her thong. The hot, wet brush of his tongue along the edge of the lace made her jump, then laugh at herself.
“Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me. I didn’t expect—oh my…”
Her explanation cut off as he ran his tongue down the side of the thong, following the seam where her body met her thigh all the way down. Hot breath fanned out over her panties and her pussy tightened in reaction. He hovered there for a moment before placing a gentle kiss on the damp lace. Tori all but melted under him.
God, was this guy lethal or what? Pity he wasn’t real, she’d marry him in a heartbeat. Then keep him chained to the bed for a decade.
“Oh yes, please…” she begged as he planted nibbling little kisses over her lace-covered crotch. Under the fabric her clit pulsed in need. Just that little scrap of fabric was all that parted her from the warm heaven of his tongue. Licking over and over again, swirling around the tight bud until… Tori shuddered, ready to come just at the memory.
He chuckled, a soft sound of amusement, as though he sensed her thoughts.
“You can laugh!” she shot back as she reached above her head and held onto the headboard so she could arch her back and display her body for him. She wasn’t a stick insect by any stretch of the imagination; her figure was best described as curvy. Ample curves that she was proud of.
“Just get on with it, please?”
Great, she was back to begging again. She didn’t care though, not with this man, not if it got her what she needed. A shuddering sigh exploded from her as his fingers swept under the edging of her panties and pushed them out of the way to expose her.
Like before he spread her pussy lips with gentle fingers.
And stopped.
Tori closed her eyes, imagining what he would be seeing. She was already wet for him so her pussy would be flushed with arousal, just waiting for the first gentle brush of his tongue.
He wasn’t gentle. Rather than the soft brush she was expecting, or even the single gentle touch she’d gotten before, he attacked her clit with the desperation of a starving man. Using the blade of his tongue, he played with her clit, nibbling and sucking before pulling it into his mouth and suckling hard as though this were a race to see how quickly he could make her come.
Before Tori had been fairly vocal; soft moans, pleas and whimpers. This time though, there was nothing. His actions stole the breath from her lungs. Almost before she’d gotten over the shock of his mouth on her clit, he slid two fingers deep into her body. Finding her G-spot, he stroked it.
Pleasure exploded along the sensitive sheath. Tori’s eyes rolled back in her head as he worked both centers of sensation, playing her body like a master musician.
“Oh God! I’m almost there.” She tapped on his arm as it curled around her thigh, his hand splayed over her stomach to hold her in place whilst he ravaged her.
“No, not without you, not this time,” she begged softly, not sure where this need to have him inside her when she climaxed came from. All she knew was that she needed his arms around her and his powerful body driving that thick cock deep inside her until she came around him.
His tongue lapped over her in one last quick lick, and then he crawled back up over her. His handsome face was hard—a feral, possessive light in his eyes. Tori shivered, a frisson of fear wrapped up in the sensual excitement that raced through her veins. It was a look that said, had he seen her on the street, he’d have dragged her down into an alley and taken her hard up against any surface he could find.
“Fuck me,” she demanded as he gathered one of her legs over his hip and spread her legs. Tori’s pussy pulsed in response as he ran the broad head of his cock over her soft folds then fitted himself against her.
After the last time, Tori was expecting him to surge into her in a hard thrust and follo
w that with a quick and dirty fuck, but he didn’t. Holding her eyes with his he rotated his hips slowly, easing his cock into her in a slow corkscrew motion.
Tori’s eyes crossed. A moan escaped her lips and she forgot to breathe. The sensation was exquisite. Her head dropped back to the pillows. That was it, she was in love, definitely in love. Biting her lip she opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was still watching her, his eyes locked onto her face as if he was as fascinated by her as she was by him.
“I wish you were real.” Tori lifted her hand and drew gentle fingertips down his chiseled jaw. “I wish I could make sure I always got you, or there was some way I could keep you.”
His expression contorted; pain, frustration and loneliness crossing the handsome features for a second. Tori blinked in surprise. That was an emotional reaction if ever she saw one. It was over almost before she realized what she was looking at, and he blanked his expression, giving her a sad smile.
He rolled his hips, pulling out of her only to slide back into her in a long and sinfully sexy glide. At the end of each glide, he gave a small flick that ground his hips against her and set her clit to pulsing.
He did it again. Pleasure radiated out from the coil of tension between her legs as he filled her over and over, her body stretching around him, until she was almost mindless with need.
“Oh God…yes. Do that more,” she demanded. “I’m gonna come…”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his hard body.
“Then come.” His growl by her ear had Tori flinching in surprise but the tension in her body wouldn’t be denied.
“I want to feel you come all over my cock.”
His unexpected words were the final straw, and with a cry, Tori shattered in ecstasy.
Chapter Five
He’d spoken—said actual words—meant to say actual words rather than just lose control at the crux point. Jacob knew it was just a matter of time so he was determined to make it count. His own release was secondary to making sure Tori knew about him, about the Wraiths, about it all.