Page 1 of Cursed Lifeline (Eternal Love)
1692 | Salem, Massachusetts
“Spellbinding Storybooks closes in one hour,” her father calls out, as the ladies quietly sneak out the backdoor of their cottage, “be home before your mother realizes you're gone.”
“Yes, Father,” the girls whisper in fits of schoolgirl giggles as they hurry along the path leading from the back of their house to the main road toward town.
I follow them closely. My feet glide through the air, ghosting over the earth, rocks, twigs, and pooling puddles of rain. The storm from earlier continues to lightly bathe us in a foretelling downpour that warns I’d be smart to pay better attention to its dire, relentless drizzle.
But I can’t. Not with my eyes and heart set on her.
The taller of the two girl's eyes glance back over her shoulder, sensing my presence. When her emerald irises meet mine, all reason I’ve wrestled with for weeks, months, and years now fly away with a strong gale from the overhead squall.
Smirking, the woman’s gaze leaves mine as she focuses back forward. She knew I’d be here. She knew I couldn’t stay away. Even after she tried to push us both to listen to reason a few nights ago.
Knowing so, I quicken my pace as the girls grip the hoods of their pointed capes, tighten their hold around their collars to ward off the storm, and hurry to their destination.
Spellbinding Storybooks.
A hidden bookstore operating as a front for the Divine Raven Coven of Witches mystical supplies. The coven is a community of sorceresses, enchantresses, mages, wizards and warlocks in Starlight Hallow. A subdivision in Salem where the infamous twins, Ember and Drusilla Darkmore, have just come of age. Their rise to maturity signals an unfortunate prophecy that has pricked and trailed its panicked touch across every immortal’s heart for centuries as its raspy,whisper relentlessly haunted, “ Foul deeds will rise through all the earth .”
When they reach town, the duo duck into a dark alleyway and wind their way down a cobblestone path before stealthily maneuvering behind a seemingly dead-end wall covered in dark foliage, which helps to mask the enchanted entrance to another world.
As the girls slip inside the bookstore, I mist through the walls and stay hidden behind a shelf, offering me a small window to watch them through two tragic volumes of literature.
Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, a lethal combination that threatens to be everyone’s downfall if they’re not careful.
One of the girls slides her hood off her head, turns to her twin, and teases, “To think, in a fortnight, you’ll no longer be by my side, sneaking off in the night to gather secret ingredients for forbidden spells.”
Rainwater ripples down the ebony fabric of her cape as she unties it at the nape of her neck and shakes excess water from her dark hair. But she’s not the one who has garnered every second of my attention since I set eyes on her. My heart aches as her sister’s right hand rises and gently pulls at the pointed hood above her head. Her veil falls to her shoulders, and I suck in a thirsty breath, then silently groan from the fragrance of her damp skin drifting towards me on an enthralling breeze.
“I’d rather spend my life putting my time and effort towards an obtainable reality, sister, than dabbling in forbidden fantasies that may or may not come true,” she smiles.The smaller of the two sisters pouts and opens her mouth to speak, but she’s cut off, “especially if it means meddling where fate and destiny are clear they don’t want you.”
“Casting spells is what we were born to do,” the smaller of the two girls argues.
Besides their slight height difference, the girls' features are almost identical. Raven black hair. Emerald eyes. Their high cheekbones are made more breathtaking by their ghostly white skin decorated only by an adorable dusting of freckles across their nose that lead a tempting path to full, ruby-red lips. Though they are young, their bodies are mature, mouth-watering, and filled out in all the right places males are so eager to explore, touch, and taste once young boys start to feel the calling on their souls to turn into men who claim.
“Perhaps,” the taller of the two taunts playfully, bringing my attention back to why we’re here, and the spell they’re secretly shopping for. She slides her cape off her shoulders and gracefully places it across her forearm. “But playing in the land of the forbidden never ends well, even when you have magic on your side.”
She moves past her sister towards the back of the shop as the smaller of the two girls rolls her eyes and starts to peruse the shelves for ingredients.
“What are we looking for again?” she calls out, as I mirror the taller girls' movements step for step on the other side of the bookshelf. Her eyes meet mine through pages littered with words that will become classics someday.
Tension builds as we walk toward the end of the line of storybooks.
“Rose quartz, tourmaline, hawthorn berries, rose petals…” her sister’s voice drones on in a muffled tone as we eagerly move simultaneously towards the crystals tucked away in the back of the shop.
Illuminated by moonlight cascading in through a stained glass window, I watch from the shadows as the woman’s fingertips lightly graze across moonstone, amethyst, and tiger’s eye, before falling on black obsidian.
She picks up the stone and studies it sadly in her small palm. Known as a root chakra to help keep one grounded, obsidian is also popular for protection, particularly when warding off my kind.
Blood thirsty demons that stalk their prey in the night.
“Embracing a new future so quickly,” I growl, emerging through the iridescent gleam of the full moon overhead.
Smiling down at the rock in her hand, she taunts, “Overcome by a jealous, bitter rage, I see,” she glances at me over her shoulder. A tempting mischief hangs in her eyes as she raises a challenging brow. “Like I told you the other night, who says my future was ever meant to be yours.”
In a flash, I have her pinned up against the nearest wall. My right hand grips her throat, my left clutches her wrist where the crystal rests protectively in her palm.
My lips hover above hers and I harshly whisper, “You don’t get to decide the future of us .”
“I didn’t decide,” she seethes as my grip loosens around her neck, and anger and resentment fill her eyes. Authoritatively, I shake her wrist at her side. She eventually drops the crystal to our feet. “Fate, however, is a cruel mistress.”
“Is that so,” I grin, as my lips fall to the crook of her neck. Our craving for one another gets the better of her, and her hips lift off the wall and hungrily grind against my pelvis. “If that were true, destiny wouldn’t have made you my paramour.”
My mouth slowly savors a path across her porcelain skin, and a delicate moan escapes her lips. She desperately pulls me closer as her sister's voice trails to us from the front of the shop, warning we’re not alone, but neither of us cares as she grabs my neck with both hands and raises my face to meet hers. Our heated breaths intertwine as I grip under her thighs and raise her to sit on a small shelf chiseled into the base of the window on the brick wall behind her.
Words evade us as we give into carnal instinct.
Her legs part eagerly as I step between them and raise her skirt up her thick thighs.
She’s bare underneath.
I suck in a thirsty breath as her eyes sadly lock on mine.
“ I must be cruel if only to be kind ,” she softly cries. Refusing to listen to her cryptic prophecy, my hands roam the soft, milky skin of her thighs before rising to forbidden curves under her skirt. “If I don’t, as fate would have it, I will lose you. In time, what we have will be a cursed memory.”
“Never going to happen.”
My fingertips gently brush across her velvet lips as we stare into each other’s eyes in the haunting moonlight. After a moment filled with an ache we’re desperate to relieve, I trace the outside curve of her slick pussy, and lick my lips with need. She sucks in a wanton breath. “How can you be so sure?”
As I lightly brush a promising touch up her slick center, I growl, “Because, even if it means I die, I’ll go to whatever extent I need to, to ensure you’ll one day be mine.”
“Yours,” she breathes out desperately before releasing a shaky breath as I slowly enter a finger inside her, “Oh, Draven, as fate was foretold by the elders, I will never be yours.”
“Fuck the elders,” I groan, as she grips my forearms and grinds her pelvis against my palm. “Besides, your body tells me otherwise.”
“That’s different,” she pants, as I match the rhythm of her greed with the thrust of my fingers. “What I want, and what fate would allow…”
“Are in my hands now.”
She looks at me warily as I sternly hold her gaze and gently place another finger in her warmth. Her mouth falls open as I rock them skillfully inside her. After a moment, her head falls back, and her breathing quickens. Her small whimpers of ecstasy grow. As her orgasm builds and her groans of satisfaction rise, I cover her mouth with my other palm and let her ride out her high until my hand is covered in her sins.
Her head falls back forward and her eyes meet mine just as I release her lips.
I slip my hand from under her dress and hold it between us. Her sweet nectar drips down my fingers as I growl, “You made a mess.”
She eyes my hand as it glistens in the glow of moonlight. Raising it to her mouth, I wipe her lips with her transgressions.“Clean. It. Up.”
Without pause, she sucks my fingers clean and releases a low feral groan that has me clutching her throat in warning as her sister’s footsteps draw close. When her sister’s approach veers down another aisle and quickly fades away, I release my grip, and she warns, “ She won’t let you go without a fight.”
Leaning forward, my lips hover above hers. Breathing in, her erotic scent pulls me close as I close the distance between us and harshly whisper, “Then if we lose, I’m trusting you to bring me back from the afterlife.”