“For this to work…” I lowered my gaze as I exhaled, slowly lifting it back to watch him as I spoke. “You have to be the strongest male in this realm. They could challenge you for me if you’re not, and the cost would be your life.”
“I am, and they won’t.” He didn’t hesitate before assuring me he was the strongest, most dominant creature in town.
“You’ll feel me on a deeper level than you probably are willing to.” I paused, tilting my head as I considered what it would mean. If I touched myself, he’d feel my need. If anyone else touched me without gaining his permission, he could claim their life in payment. I would literally be his property until it wore off. “Why are you helping me?”
“It’s not by choice. As I have said before, someone very powerful wants you alive. If it was up to me, I would just take what I wanted and snap your pretty fucking neck and remove the problem. You are a problem. I fix problems.”
“Okay.” Swallowing hard, I watched as the female glared at me before moving closer.
Regina grabbed my arm, holding it out so she could smell my wrist. Her sharp silverish-blue eyes narrowed as her soft black hair fell over my arm, seconds before her tongue slipped over my flesh then she pulled back, staring down at me with intrigue in her icy stare.
“You’re right. She smells different. Almost like roses, or some other delicate flower.” Her tone softened for him, and I relaxed until her hands lifted, grabbing the dress I wore and ripping it apart at the bodice. “Remove it, or I will.”
“Fine,” I growled, hating that I was about to be half-naked and exposed to the people in the room. I was magically muted, alone, and naked. What could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 17
I stood up, wishing I’d worn anything other than the sundress I’d taken from Amara’s room. Letting it slide down my body, I covered my breasts and sat back down, fully aware of how exposed and vulnerable I was. I needed my magic, needed it to fight off anything that tried to harm me. Here, in his house, I was vulnerable around him without my magic to protect me.
“She’s very beautiful. Why spare her? The men would leave such lovely marks on her delicate flesh for me to heal.”
“Do your fucking job, Regina.”
My eyes remained on the floor, unwilling to look up and see either heat or disgust in Knox’s eyes at my too skinny body, or revulsion at the scars covering my ribs where my mother had tried to catch me in the water to drown me by weakening me with her blade covered in poisonous hemlock.
“What are these from?” Regina asked coldly.
“Knives,” I answered, knowing what she meant without having to see where her eyes looked. I sucked my lip between my teeth and worried it as I swallowed down the memories of how I’d gotten them.
“You’re a witch. Why didn’t they heal correctly?”
“It was a blade covered in hemlock.” The cuts had mostly healed, leaving tiny silver-colored scars long after the wounds had sealed. Aurora had spent weeks healing them to save my life, casting spell after spell to draw out the infection that tried to take me to the grave.
Hemlock was poison to witches like wolfsbane was to werewolves. It weakened us, targeting the blood until infection grabbed hold of the victim and fought hard to end their lives, even in immortals.
“She meant to end your life,” she whistled, grabbing my arms, which caused my gaze to flutter to hers. “I need to see all of them.”
I let her hold my arms out, turning my head to stare at the gargoyles’ backs that ignored us as if we didn’t exist. Her eyes took in my breasts, noting the three deeper marks below the rib cage on the left side, where Freya had barely missed ending my life as a child. Once she’d examined them, she stepped back, letting her gaze drop to my stomach and lower yet.
“Do you want me to check everywhere, my love?” she asked, and my head turned, watching Knox, who stared at my breasts before I covered them up, praying silently that he said no.
“Is she strong enough?” he countered.
“She’s strong enough, but her scent… I cannot place it. It is as you said, she is unknown. Her scars are minimal, and while disfigured, it doesn’t take from her genetic makeup. She’s strong enough to survive your blood and the marking you will place.”
“Good, get out,” he snapped gutturally. “You as well, creatures. Go guard the entrances. No one gets into this room tonight, no one.”
I frowned, turning to look at Lacey, who had yet to speak or flap her lips. Her eyes had remained vacant. Knox even spoke to her, yet her eyes remained empty even though she replied. Knox whispered in a foreign language, and she moved, grabbing a bowl. He moved a table with candles on it, along with onyx crystals placed in a pattern I didn’t recognize right offhand. He produced a dagger as the candles ignited, and silently I watched as he slit his wrist wide open.
Knox didn’t flinch or acknowledge the pain even though it had to have hurt. Next, he held his wrist over the bowl, lifting his heated stare to mine as Lacey chanted, causing the candles to leap higher with her spell.
The crystals hummed with power, and my arms dropped from where they protected my naked breasts. I watched it with curiosity as erotic magic filled the air until it was suffocating.
I’d done thousands of spells, but never with the amount of blood he was using, and never in foreign words such as the ones coming out of Lacey’s lips. Power dripped from her words, and it slithered over me, making my eyes grow heavy as I watched her lips moving. A sliver of fear rushed down my spine, but I ignored it as my nipples hardened, and my throat became tight with a moan fighting to escape.
Magic exploded into the room as she finished chanting. It wasn’t light or dark magic, it was something else entirely. It felt ancient and caused my pulse to race as my insides burned with the call to join them in the spell.
My mouth opened to moan, but the heat from Knox’s gaze and the sinful curve of his lips stopped it, forcing the moan back down into my lungs. I shook my head, trying to dispel the lust and power that rushed through me. My body fell backward, and my hands dropped, revealing hardened nipples, to hold onto the chair as I arched my spine, even as I fought it. It was raw, untainted magic that begged to be tasted and touched. It drugged me without permission, filling the entire room with a dark, erotic state that I couldn’t escape.
I was still lying on the chair lost in the magic when Knox touched me, causing my hypersensitive skin to tremble before goosebumps spread over it. He chuckled, fully aware that I was in a magic-drugged state.
Knox studied the way my body moved through heated eyes, the way I arched my spine as the magic continued to slither through me as if it was within me and slowly touching me in the most deliciously sinful way it could. He missed nothing as I rocked to the magic, needing release more than I needed to be saved right now.
“It’s powerful, isn’t it?” he rasped, moving his fingertips over the thin scars on my ribcage. My flesh begged for his touch, even though my mind struggled to remember who I was and who I was with. His fingers continued to leisurely explore as I realized where he touched me. The dark, black ravens that sat beneath or beside each slash. The unkindness. “You hide them well,” he stated, pulling up a chair while my head turned to watch him.