“Dear boy,” Abraham said, lifting Malcolm’s chin with eerie benevolence. “I will. Will you help me convince your friend? Of course you will.”
He looked up at Kelly, his eyes fiery. “I see why you like the boy. He is exquisite in his submission. The beast knows its place before a man with power, a man who will not be prey.”
“Why are you doing this?” Kelly whispered. She ran the back of her hand over her mouth. It took every ounce of effort to pull her teeth and claws back in.
“Come here, Kelly. Can you come closer without trying to kill me? Can you do it? Come to me,” he said, his deep tone like velvet.
Kelly took a step towards him, then another, each movement heavy on the ground because it wasn’t her moving her feet. She would have got even angrier at him for daring to control her, but then she came close enough to be drawn to him by nothing more than the beautiful smell of his blood and the flesh of man. Abraham released his shirt and held his robes open just as she folded the fabric of his shirt back herself. She curled her tongue in the air between them, tasting, and she whimpered.
She wasn’t helpless to the desire, not like Malcolm. She could say no. But God, he was inviting her, offering himself to her, and the memory of the sweetness of her last taste superseded her conscience begging her to resist that which he told her to take.
She ran her tongue over both wounds.
Abraham hissed. “I had forgotten how searing a werewolf mouth could be,” he said.
She barely heard him over her groan. She ripped the top half of his shirt open to give her better access as she lapped and sucked at the blood and the tantalising hints of the meat beneath.
Her teeth wanted to grow. She did what she’d told Malcolm to do instead and pushed it back so that her spine arched with temporary change. But when she tried to tear her mouth away from him, she couldn’t. Instead, she worked at the buttons of his jacket with her fingers, then his vest and the rest of his shirt, surprisingly deft for how impatient and distracted she was. She panted against the cuts, her tongue darting out now and then to taste the blood when she couldn’t hold herself back another second.
“What do you have planned, my dear?” Abraham asked. If she wasn’t mistaken, he sounded a little breathless.
“I think the question is what you have planned,” Kelly said against his skin, smearing the blood over her lips like lipstick and finally managing to get her appetite under control enough to raise her head. As soon as she could pull away, that made it easier to let go of Abraham’s clothing and retreat.
She almost tripped over Malcolm, who was still on the ground and staring up at Kelly and Abraham, the only two people in his world who could save him. He licked his lips when he saw what Kelly had on hers. He clenched his eyes shut against the overwhelming desire to hunt.
Kelly glared defiantly at Abraham. Then she fisted Malcolm’s hair and pulled him up higher on his knees so that she could kiss him, giving him a taste of Abraham’s blood. He would never forget it—he would never mistake it as anything but the blood of that man. He would know that scent and taste for as long as he lived.
Malcolm dug his fingers painfully into Kelly’s upper arms. After he had licked and sucked every last bit of Abraham’s blood from her lips, she opened her mouth to him. Leashed to her kiss and the lingering scent of blood on her mouth, he could do nothing but follow her as she led them inch by inch away from Abraham. When she thought they were far enough away if they needed to run, she yanked Malcolm back and pushed him behind her.
“You know, I usually have a good grasp on what people are like,” Kelly said to the man on the other side of the room, composed in spite of his open robes and his jacket, vest and shirt hanging loose. “But that’s because most people don’t know how to shut me out like you do, which doesn’t exactly make you trustworthy. These little games make you even less so. This man came to you for help. Instead, you torture him and me.”
“Strange, it didn’t feel like torture to me,” Abraham said. “Or for you. Besides, your friend wasn’t the one I was testing.”
“But you hurt him anyway,” Kelly snapped. “Quit with the fucking Wizard of Oz crap and just give him what he wants so we can go.”
“Funny you should say that,” Abraham said. He beckoned them with the crook of his finger. Their feet dragged over the wooden slats of the floor in a resistant shuffle. “Like you, I can’t see very far into your mind, but your friend’s mind is an open book. He wants many things, some of them more complicated than others. I can give him a fair number of them just tonight without removing his lycanthropy at all.”
Kelly shivered off his conjuring spell and reached behind her for Malcolm’s hands. Their fingers interlocked, but Malcolm’s head sagged against her shoulder. Then he pressed his lips against her neck.
The screen that blocked the bed suddenly snapped closed to rest against the wall. Kelly didn’t know whether Abraham had done it or her, but before she could determine the cause, her body seized.
She saw the Father from behind, fucking a woman. Kelly thought the woman might have been fae, but she honestly couldn’t see her that well because Abraham wore his robes, and they obscured most of the woman. There was no other way to describe what they were doing than fucking—passionate but inconsiderate, desperate but lacking anything approaching intimacy. He used her, and she let him.
When she received past knowledge like this, it usually didn’t hit her so hard. The magical traces he left behind were so much more potent than other people’s. She wondered whether she left a similarly strong trace and what Abraham might see if he walked her old haunts.
She shuddered back into the present as Malcolm brought the straps of her jumper down over her arms. She clutched at it, even though the corset-structured bodice kept it from falling down. How could he think about sex at a time like this, when Abraham had decided to make Malcolm as miserable as possible before he ‘cured’ him? Not to mention Abraham’s devoted mission to royally piss her off…
She caught a glimpse of Malcolm’s eyes when she turned to glare at him. They were glazed and not in an aroused way.
Kelly snarled, sending an uncontrolled burst of magic in Abraham’s direction. He shouted with surprise as he flew back, but he got a handle on himself before he fell in a heap on the floor. Kelly threw up what she hoped was a shield that would keep Abraham’s spells from passing through, but Kelly had never done anything like it before and it felt tenuous at best.
“I’m out of control,” Malcolm said. “I’m doing things I don’t want to do. Or I do want to do them, but…” The glaze over his eyes had fallen away, but he still looked lost, dazed, as though he had suffered a concussion.
Kelly guessed that being pulled hither and thither by the whims of a witch might have had something to do with it.
“If you run for it, do you think you could control yourself out there with all those people?” Kelly asked, stroking his hair.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how much I ate earlier. I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks, not after I smelt…” His entire body shuddered. “I can’t go out there.”
“Then would you object to me making you sleep?” Kelly asked. “It would be safer in the interim, and I think Mommy and Daddy need to have a talk, witch to witch.”
“I think he wants you. He wants you in his bed,” Malcolm said. “He wants me to help him.”
“I gathered that much,” Kelly said darkly, but even so, something even darker stirred in her abdomen.
“Are you going to?”
Kelly couldn’t tell him no, because sex could be power, even for a woman being taken. Their kind of elemental magic thrived under sexual conditions. If that was the battlefield he’d chosen, so be it.
And God help her, she still had the taste of him in her mouth, and as far as she could tell, there was no reason she couldn’t fuck someone she hated.
“I don’t know,” Kelly said.
“Are you safe?” Malcolm asked, concerned for
her now.
Abraham’s magic probed the weakness of her clumsy shield, and Kelly stumbled in Malcolm’s arms.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you be safer if I were out of the picture?” Malcolm asked helplessly.
Kelly bit her lip. She wished that she could tell him that it wasn’t true. But up until now, this entire encounter had been to the beat Abraham had set because he had used Malcolm to distract her. As things were, she had to protect Malcolm from Abraham, Abraham from Malcolm, herself from them and them from her. Abraham only had to protect himself while he pulled their strings.
“It’s okay,” Malcolm said, pressing his forehead to hers. “I know. I don’t like it, but I know. I wish I could take care of you, but God, I might as well be a child against him. Put me to sleep if you need to.”
She touched his cheek and gently pushed him down onto the armchair until he lay with his head drooping to the side, completely relaxed and completely vulnerable. A gash ripped through the muscle of her heart that he trusted her enough to be put under—and that he would rather be unconscious and at the mercy of the two of them than awake and running.
“There. He’s out of the equation. Will you leave him alone now?” Kelly asked, brushing her thumbs against Malcolm’s dark eyelashes.
“I’ll help the boy, but his company was getting tiresome,” Abraham said.
Kelly whipped around, her braid flying again. She moved her arm in an arc as though swinging it for a backhand blow in spite of the distance between them. Abraham stumbled to the side when the magic struck him, but he had been expecting the blow, and her use of magic broke through her own shield. When he regained his balance, he raised his hand to grasp her throat. She lifted off the ground and floated to him, fruitlessly kicking her legs. He made it harder to shake off this spell until she was right in front of him. He dropped her, and she landed on her feet like a cat.
“Come, my dear, even he knew that you were the one I really wanted to see,” Abraham said, chucking her under the chin.
“So you want to add a lycanthropic witch to your list of conquests?” Kelly said. She was quiet only from withholding the full measure of her fury, because it had begun to interweave with her magic. There were just too many potential casualties if things went wrong.
“I want to convince you to let me help you,” Abraham said.
“The way you helped all the other women in this room?”
Before he could respond, Kelly conjured the knife into her hand and slashed another line across his chest. She pulled Abraham to her by the open ends of his clothes until her mouth was on him again, drawing the new blood to the surface.
She had been less careful in her knife play than he—the blade had cut deeper into his skin. He hissed as her tongue and teeth pulled the flesh back so that she could reach deeper inside him. But he wrapped his arms around her to bring her closer, walking them back until he slammed against a wall. He pressed her head down, encouraging her now that he knew she could handle her own appetites.
Even if she couldn’t, she was sure he had an alternative.
He coaxed her up to kiss him, but she would have none of it. She lingered near the wound, taking her own sweet time, then slowly mouthed her way up his neck and over his chin before finally pressing against his lips. He couldn’t suppress a groan as their tongues met and battled for dominance. Neither gave ground. He tasted his blood on her. Although human, perhaps it tasted like conquest to him.
Magic pulled her dress down over her waist and hips. She pulled it back up, withdrawing.
“Don’t tell me you’re shy,” Abraham said.
“What is this even about?” Kelly snarled, shoving him back against the wall. She was holding her magic back, but she did nothing to restrain her werewolf strength. Abraham grunted. “I’m not some little girl gazing adoringly at the charming con man, attracted to his position, his power and the strength of his preaching. What do you want from me?”
Kelly glared at him, breathing heavily, her hand pressed against his chest to hold him to the wall. He didn’t answer, but his dark irises flared with fire. Within her rose a different hunger, something that had already been there, but all of a sudden it seemed to expand like a night-blooming flower to the glow of the moon. She whimpered as it electrified her body.
She brought her other hand to his chest and smoothed over the lightly furred planes. He had the body of an academic, lean but soft in places, and the hair on his chest was dotted with white, like the thick, slicked waves of hair on his head. She slowly spread open his upper clothing that she had undone, and he stepped forward so that she could push them down. They fell in a wrinkled clump on the floor.
“I want you to remove your clothing,” he murmured deliberately in her ear, bringing her braid forward to pull off the elastic band. He unwove her hair. His hands brushed against her breast as he worked. “I want you to love me.”
Kelly swayed into his hands. Her mind swam with heady fog, as though she had drunk too much wine. At this point, she wanted nothing more than to rid herself of her clothing, which suddenly constricted her with its conservative modesty. She unzipped the back of the dress and pulled it down so that she wore only her thick tights, black shoes and the long-sleeved shirt. Abraham combed through her wild honey hair and swept it behind her shoulders.
“I’ve had those starry-eyed girls before. They over-process their hair and paint their faces as though I can’t tell it is merely a carefully crafted mask. But you don’t mask anything, do you?” Abraham said, lightly stroking his fingertips over the pale lines of her eyebrows and the almost not there flutter of her eyelashes, down the short length of her nose, over her lips, soft from kissing him and stained at the edges with his blood.
“I’ve had men fall to my feet, begging to lick my boots if I will only make them powerful or take away what makes them less than a man. Sometimes I don’t even have to try. But sometimes, my dear, a person will make it a little harder. If I’m willing to put in the effort, though, you’ll find I’m quite…convincing.”
He drifted his feather-light fingers down her neck to the small, mother-of-pearl-like buttons of her blouse.
After the third button, Kelly’s head fell back. She stared sightlessly at the ceiling, in the grips of a flash of vision.
Abraham was working at one of the covered tables, an old writing desk converted into a makeshift altar with a chalice, a knife and an open book on its surface.
Before she had a chance to inspect it more closely, she snapped back to the room as he undressed her, his magical hold on her broken.
She didn’t yank herself away or strike Abraham with magic again, but she wrapped her hands around his wrists to stop him from undoing the rest of her buttons.
“There are few things I find less appealing than a man who takes away someone’s will,” Kelly said softly. She shook, practically vibrating.
“And there are few things I find more appealing than someone who is able to cast off my influence,” Abraham said. His voice dropped even lower, a devastating husky edge to it. The curve of his cock pushed out his trousers.
“I detest will-breaking, Abraham,” Kelly said.
“You’ve never given someone a little push?” Abraham asked. He released her shirt. The open collar fell to the sides of her filigree tattoo, which he eyed with interest before beginning to circle her. “Never made your young man over there do something for you?”
Her trembling grew stronger as he passed a hand over the small of her back. She wasn’t afraid, nor was she cold. She was simply awake, aware in a way that she had never been before. That awareness tunnelled through her, lighting her up from the inside out. Abraham had roused something within her that responded to him, only to him. It wasn’t his will-breaking magic, nor was it simply her anger.
“No,” Kelly said. “I don’t do that.”
“Can you?” he asked, as though he knew the answer and just wanted to hear her say it.
“I can. I don’t.” Kel
ly raised her eyes to him as he completed his circle around her. Although she was more clothed than he, his gaze had burned her through her clothing. “I don’t have to. I’ll play puppet master for someone’s safety, mine or theirs, but I don’t make them want to do something.”
“We were gifted with the ability to manipulate these people,” Abraham said. “Why should we not use what we were given?”
“Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to use it,” Kelly replied. “I don’t think anyone believes that if you have a gun, you should shoot your child in the head, or that if you have a dick, you should stick it into anything with an orifice. We have a responsibility. But it’s not only irresponsible to take someone’s will away just because you can. It’s sick.”
“So you would rather do it the old-fashioned way,” Abraham said. “Favours and bribery and sexual coercion.”
“What makes you think—?”
“I may not know you the way I know many of the people I bring to my room, but I see another man in your life before this boy. You kept a collar on him even though he was convinced he had his hooks in you,” Abraham said with a smile. He started undoing her buttons again and, because she didn’t sense any manipulation magic, she allowed it. Every inch of her he exposed, the more she could use.
“I’m not averse to using more conventional means,” Kelly said. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering.
“The ends are the same whether I use conventional or unconventional means.” Abraham shrugged with a nonchalance that was almost adolescent, yet strangely ageless on his older body. “What do the means matter?”
“I find that disgusting,” Kelly said. “And a little sad.”
“Do I seem sad to you?” Abraham asked, but it was clear that the question was rhetorical since he immediately followed it with a less rhetorical question. “What on earth have you done to yourself?” he asked with a sense of wonder as he stared at the canvas of her skin.
She just bent down to remove her shoes and peel off her tights.
“Pierced with a thousand needle pricks and still unable to keep the beast at bay, yet you refuse to let me help you.”
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