Page 23

Twenty-One

ALEC

What the fuck was that?

It’s the question plaguing me all the way down to the kitchen because, before retiring in my room for the day, I couldn’t not hear the way her stomach grumbled for food. I retrieve more of those bars she seems to enjoy, mentally noting to find something more substantial for her to eat soon.

I take the long way back to her room, and on arrival, open the door without knocking.

And stop.

And stare.

And feel .

She’s on the other side of the bed where I left her, wearing nothing but panties and a bra—both from the bag. It’s that damn black lace I fought like hell not to imagine her in.

She screeches, but the noise sounds no louder than an echo from downstairs for how my senses tune everything but her out. My hands tighten until the food crumbles while my cock twitches for the one woman I should never crave. My gums ache, my fangs demanding to come out and suck the vein between her thighs.

“Alec!”

She’s… yeah. I can’t even let my thoughts formulate, to admit what the rest of me knows.

Creamy skin that’s undoubtedly pure velvet to the touch is all I see. Splatterings of freckles cover her arms and legs, now freed from those hideous pyjamas. There’s a sudden desire to rip the lace from her and explore every curve, to trace the path of those little freckles.

“Alec! For fuck’s sake!”

Take.

That fucking inner voice urges me to break my old promises and determine exactly how loud I can make the witch scream.

Sinclair.

Witch.

Prey.

I recite everything she is to remind myself of everything she isn’t.

“Alec!”

This time, her screech successfully pulls me from my haze, but it doesn’t clear it. Suddenly, I’m by her side, tossing the granola bars to the side. Her hips fit my hands perfectly, and I spin her around and push her onto the mattress.

Her hands come up to cover her chest, which is an effort long overdue, because I’ve already seen everything she has. Nearly every tantalizing inch. “What the hell are you doing? Get out!”

“You forget whose room this is. Whose castle. But by all means, I’ll return you to the dungeons if you’d prefer.”

I’m pissing her off only to make the redness in her cheeks expand to the rest of her body, chasing it with my gaze. Imagining the same kind of redness from her blood coursing from her neck and between my lips, finally able to drink the flavour that’s teased my senses since day one.

“Alec,” she repeats, my name a growl in her throat. It’s cute, if not a little pathetic, how hard she tries to hold her ground. “Get out.”

Her heartbeat quickens, and I’m pleased. She can get a sense of what I felt when entering; the world tilting on its axis.

While I doubt this will be the thing to spark the buried emotion that’ll unlock her magick, everything must be tried and tested, right? I’d be doing her a disservice by backing away, by allowing her fear to subside.

“Why would I knock when this is the sight I’m greeted with?”

She pulls her bottom lip into her teeth to utterly torment me. I reach for her, pulling her lip free before she accidentally damages herself. A lifetime of control will unravel if she makes herself bleed.

When she speaks, her lips brush against my finger. It’s a sensation I can’t help but marvel at. “Because I’m related to the people who killed your sister. You can’t separate me from my ancestor to rationalize your actions, so this should be no different.”

She’s right, but it doesn’t stop me from leaning closer. From inhaling the sickle of apprehension. Her comment brings a smile to my face, this one unthreatening and genuine.

“You’re learning to twist facts to your benefit. That’s good. But you forget, vampires are inherently attracted to flesh.” I shift my hold to her wrists, and her pitiful mortal strength resists when I go to tug them away from her chest. I allow her the modesty and stop pulling, even if any effort on my part would break her hold.

“I, I…you hate me.”

Releasing her wrists, I shift towards where the bra straps rest on her shoulders, petting the skin towards the curves of her breasts. “That may be true, but I can still appreciate your beauty.”

My strokes continue over the curves of her arms, over her stomach—which she caves in as though to avoid. I follow the line to the edge of the very panties I envisioned her in, pausing when she sucks in another breath, wondering exactly how long it’ll take before she breaks it.

“Get off,” she whispers, catching my gaze once more. She swallows roughly, her plea caught between her fake bravado and fear. Another scent rises, this one sweeter than anything else. Like blood and sugar and everything dark.

Her desire.

“Make me,” I taunt, trying to use the conversation to keep me focused enough so my fingers don’t slip beneath the edge of lace and discover for myself what Miss Sinclair tries so hard to hide. “What’s that human saying? You got yourself into this, you can get yourself out.” I pause, fake considering my words. “Yeah, that’s it. If you want me off you, use your magick.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“So you tell me constantly.”

She drops her arms from her chest, only to push me away while angling herself upright. “I’ll repeat it ’til you agree with me.” She manages to duck beneath my arm, leaving me crouched alone on the bed, and I let her. She dips towards the floor and snatches a plain tee from her bag, scowling. “That’s all this was then? Your fucked-up way to somehow spark my powers into returning? Newsflash: If they haven’t come back during all the other hell you’ve put me through, or what happened earlier, they wouldn’t for whatever the fuck that was.”

I twist until I’m seated on the edge of the bed, crossing my arms while observing her yank on jeans, her movements uncoordinated and jerky. “Is that your way of saying you didn’t hate it?” The scent from between her legs answered that long before she opened her pretty little mouth.

“Leave. Sun’s up. Don’t you have a coffin to crawl into?”

“You know the answer to that. Didn’t realize you care about my sleep habits.”

With a glare, she throws her dirty shirt at my face, but I catch it. “The first chance I have, I’ll be watching you burn in the sun, so no, you’re confusing annoyance with concern.”

“In my world, they’re the same.”

Her pants come soaring through the air. “Go away. Die. Burn. Sleep and never wake up.”

With both articles of clothing in hand, I turn for the door, not because she’s demanding but because I never intended to stay as long as I have.

“Always pleasant chatting with you, Hellion.”

“Asshole,” is her final grumble before shutting the door. I linger for a moment, listening as she crosses into the bathroom before locking her in and heading to my own quarters.

Inside, I drape her clothes over a wingback chair that’s beside the shoe box, as well as the picture of Sinclair I stole from the mantle, before heading into my ensuite for a hot shower to wash off the lingering blood on my arms and chest I didn’t get to earlier.

The water does little to burn away the flames licking through my blood after that match with the witch. The need to return and finish what I started, first with my fangs buried in her neck and then my cock in her cunt. I might have only been fucking with her for my own entertainment and her torment, but it took centuries of control to keep myself intact.

It also does nothing to quell the other source of my rage—subjects disobeyed laws long laid about entering this castle uninvited and believed they could take her.

If I was a minute too late…

I’m toweling off when my nose picks up another intruder. This one is becoming familiar, which is concerning on its own.

Tightening the towel around my waist, I leave the bathroom and return to my room, barely sparing Freya a glance as I cross towards my walk-in closet.

“How did you get in here?”

“You truly have no idea how much I can do. I’d start listing the ways, but we’d be here all night. Although ”—she whistles—“I might make an exception if you don’t put on a shirt.”

“You’re not my type, witch.”

“Because I’m a witch or because my hair isn’t red?”

Ignoring the jab, I quickly dress and find Freya sprawled sideways across the wingback chair, her legs tossed over the armrest. Her hair’s different again, this time a shade of light purple that matches her eyes.

“You should pick a hair colour and stick to it. You’re exhausting to keep up with.”

“What’s life without whimsy?” She tugs on Harlow’s pyjamas hanging beside her. “This is disturbing, Alec. We should probably talk about your newest obsession.”

Her word choice hits a bit too close for my liking, especially after my recent conversation with the other witch. Harlow Sinclair will never be my obsession because I’ll never allow it. She’s passing entertainment while working toward a grander plan.

“Putting aside your invasion into my home, why have you come?” There have been too many uninvited guests today.

She gestures to the shoebox resting on the opposite seat. “Because the Goddess gave me permission to explain all this to you. So before you run around with your head cut off, chasing your tail and all that jazz, trying to figure this out, we’ll save you a step.”

“So you know what that is?” I nod to the box.

“Question is…” She kicks one leg over the other, propping it straight up into the air because…well, I’m learning Freya is weird as fuck. “Do you?”

I cross to the box, lifting the lid and retrieving both IDs and the wedding photo. “When Lorraine Sinclair birthed only one child—Harlow’s mother, Emily—I left them alone. Then Harlow was born. I’ve been following the Sinclairs close enough to know this”—I jab my finger into the wedding photo—“is not Emily. Never in history has a Sinclair witch been born with anything but red hair.”

Freya barely spares the photo a glance before she makes an unamused noise. “Recent generations of the Sinclairs have a grim history.”

“What does that mean?”

“Why, Alec? Sounds like you care.”

Fisting the IDs hard enough they bend under pressure but don’t crack, I state, “Anything to do with Harlow is my business. Who are these people?”

Freya swings her legs to the side to sit up and reaches for the IDs. Reluctantly, I hand them over. She glances at the names, her lips pursing, a seriousness settling over her that I didn’t realize her capable of.

“Witches are supposed to be there for one another. There are few things witches value above all: their coven and their magick. What Violet and Arthur Hartman did was a betrayal unlike anything our community has ever seen. They turned against the Highridge Coven, killed their own, and kidnapped that girl when she was only eight-years-old.”

“So they’re not her birth parents?”

Freya shakes her head and flicks the tip of one of the ID cards. “No,” she murmurs, “they’re not, but they raised her as such after murdering Emily and John, then stealing their identities before disappearing into the human world.”

Shit. I don’t know why I care…but I do. This is… fuck.

“Why doesn’t she know any of this?”

“They wiped her memory of everything before she was eight. That was right after binding her magick, something they continuously did over the years, to ensure she could never overpower them.”

A rage settles in the base of my stomach with the picture of my little witch as an even younger witch; a child, terrified of being taken from her real family and then forced to forget them entirely.

“She had her powers, though.” Enough to burn a house.

Freya smiles sadly, shaking her head. “Not all of them.”

I drop into the second chair. “Tell me everything.”

* * *

At the end of Freya’s story, everything makes fucking sense.

Everything.

Her confusion over the marks on her wrists. They did that.

The shoe box. All their hidden secrets.

Why Harlow doesn’t live with her coven; they never kicked her out.

The fact her “parents” weren’t able to save themselves from the fire. They were never the powerful Sinclairs they feigned being.

“They were earth witches.”

Freya blinks. “Yeah, how’d you guess?”

“Smelled it in their room. When Harlow told me what happened, I found it strange that two fire witches couldn’t put the blaze out.”

“You’re better than I guessed you’d be. Yeah, most trained witches can do other elemental magick outside of their own, but it’s typically weak. The Hartmans knew enough to keep the show up.”

My gaze returns to the shoe box. If Harlow knew all this, it’d kill her. Half her life was a lie. Her memories constantly stolen. The people she knew weren’t who they claimed. Her magick being forever weakened from her true state.

Her magick…

Again, I look at the box, but this time with different considerations. For her to learn the people she loved were the villains in her story, it’d make her angry. Viciously angry.

Angry enough to spark the match her magick needs.

Hell, I’m pissed.

For her. I’m pissed for my Hellion. That she was deceived and the people who called her their daughter and earned her affection when they didn’t deserve it. If they weren’t already dead, I’d rip them apart limb by limb myself. I’d burn them alive again. I’d allow her to throw the match and revel as she danced on their ashes, letting her take charge of her own story for once.

“Your fangs are peeking out,” Freya states in a sing-song voice. “So much emotion for the witch you hate. It’s interesting.”

“Your point?” I press into the chair, rubbing my tongue over my fangs until they ease the ache. “Surely this would spark a deep enough emotion to trigger her powers?”

Freya lifts a brow. “That’s a choice you need to make. Do you show her the evidence, knowing it’ll probably hurt her more than their deaths? Certainly anything more than you’ve done to her. All to trigger her magick, and thus the cure. Or do you save the pain, but possibly never gain the cure back?”

First one. Obviously.

I think.

Harlow will have to know, because the effect will be enough to meet my needs.

For Cora, I must.

But I don’t want to harm Sinclair that way.

There’s a strange notion of protection twisting me up, of wanting to keep her from this. It pulls on parts of me I didn’t know to exist. Parts that want to soothe and protect her from the pain, to save and comfort her and allow her to cling to the positive memories she has. The Hartmans are gone and she’s alive, and that’s all that matters. Regardless of which set of parents were her real ones, she’s living with the outcome, and her continuously drawing breath is all that matters to me. That she’s okay —as much as she can be.

Freya gets to her feet, slapping her thighs. “Anyway, I’m off. You really are a pain in my ass.”

“Wait.” I snatch her arm before she can pull her disappearing act. “You knew, even back then. Why didn’t you help her?”

She doesn’t meet my eyes when she replies, “Because fate sucks. I can’t interfere in witches’ lives when it happens for a reason. That past had to occur so the present can pass as it should.”

“What does that mean?”

By the time I finish my question, my hand is gripping air, the First Witch gone.