In the Company of Witches

“I served him for five years, eleven months and three days. He’d enchanted a set of metal cuffs, a collar. He kept them on me so I could never leave him, and my magic had no impact on him. He was smart. Worked the enchantment so I couldn’t influence any of his other minions to hurt him. If I tried anything myself, it would rebound on me, three times as strong.”

“There’s a scar on your thigh. A knife wound.”

“Yes.” It did dangerous things to a woman when a man noticed things like that during sex. It meant he’d noticed her, not just what he wanted. “I didn’t care about living. I just wanted him dead. He liked to have sex with me when his thugs were in the room, liked the way they stared at me. Sometimes he’d tell them to jack off and let me feed off their energy. He got off on that, too. I tried to cut his femoral when he was in a compromising position, but I missed. When he threw me off him, I nearly bled out, but I survived. He changed the spell on the cuffs and collar after that, so I couldn’t cause harm to him at all, no matter what it did to me.”

“What happened to him?”

He had moved, without her noticing. He wasn’t touching her, but he was right behind her, his hand braced on the frame above her head. She glanced up into his face and was caught there. There was a dangerous stillness to Mikhael’s expression. She thought it might be the look his prey saw in their last moments. She didn’t flinch away from it. If anything, it raised a fierceness in her own breast.

“I killed him.” She looked back at the garden. She didn’t necessarily want to think about it anymore, but it replayed through her head at least once a day. More, when she was having a bad day. She wasn’t sure if that was because the nightmares came back when she was tired, or because she was remembering why even her worst day here was heaven compared to that time in her life.

“There came a day when I’d pretended long and hard. He occasionally believed he’d won a modicum of loyalty from me. Devotion.” Her lips lifted in a mirthless smile. “One of those momentary lapses in judgment, combined with his greed, gave me my chance. He liked playing human, liked their material things. He liked going into a store as a wealthy client and paying with money he’d ‘earned,’ rather than using magic to generate it or simply take what he wanted.”

She shook her head. “It sounds absurd, doesn’t it? I took lives for Elceus, innocent lives. If I didn’t, he would starve me until I couldn’t stop myself. He sent me after a target, a paid contract. A human one, and the best chance of taking the target out was when he was coming off an airplane. So I had to pass through airport security.”

She chuckled, a bitter sound this time. “The cuffs and collar were heavy metal. He took them off to avoid notice. When I’d done what he wanted done, I seduced Elceus, drank all his energy until he was just an empty skin.”

It had happened at their rendezvous, the hotel room where she was supposed to report that the job had been done. She’d asked for the collar and cuffs back, had told him she liked wearing them, liked feeling she belonged to him. His eyes had glowed, and she could see exactly what it meant to him. She was another form of wealth. The willing affection of a succubus, a weapon who wanted to be in his hands. He’d caressed the enchanted objects, sitting there on the hotel desk, told her to get on her knees.

Beg pretty for them, my love. Use your mouth.

She’d done that, but before he could put them back on her, her sexual energy had coiled around him. He’d taught her to be swift, and very, very good at what she did, after all.

“The best part wasn’t when he was completely at my mercy. It was the moment he realized that he was trapped, and I was going to kill him. That the sexual pleasure I’d forced upon him was the last thing he was going to feel. His fate was coming toward him and he was helpless to avoid it. It was the sweetest drug I’ve ever tasted.”

For the next six months, she threw up every day, no matter what she ingested. Fortunately, sexual energy was absorbed through the skin and bloodstream, not just the intestinal tract, and it had nourished her human side, somewhat.

The haunted, hollow-eyed look blended well with the urban teen runaway scene, and the clientele seeking her age group weren’t that picky, as long as she looked young and was cheap. She’d turned tricks to get her sustenance, and eventually found what she needed to rebuild herself from the ground up.

“So that’s it,” she said. “The whole story. Or at least as much as I can stomach and hold on to that brunch Matilda cooked. Ready to play cards for real?”

Now he did touch her. She’d changed into day clothes after brunch, her top a cashmere knit that buttoned from a point deep between her cleavage to her waist. The wide neckline, which showed the graceful line of collarbones, had slipped to the right, revealing her bra strap. His touch settled on it, stroking that silken strip. It wasn’t even his whole hand, just the four fingertips, the thumb pressing into a neck tendon. It wasn’t a gesture of comfort. It was a reminder that he was here. That he had possession of her now. She felt such an overwhelming comfort from that thought, however temporal, it was baffling. And troubling.

“That’s why you didn’t want to wear the collar.”

“It took me a while before I could even stand the touch of a necklace or bracelets.” A collar was out of the question… except when those dark cravings rose in her, and she desired them from the right Master. A fantasy. An illusion.

“So, obviously…” she said, and stopped. Taking a breath, she waited until she was sure her voice would be steady, smooth and sultry as it should be. “Motives aren’t usually all that complicated, right? Everyone here, I saw a certain something in them. I knew they would seize a chance to live a different life. I won’t claim I see that in Isaac. But I don’t know the point of no return for a soul. Maybe you do, but I don’t want that knowledge. I want to give him the chance to make something of himself, to turn it around. If he can’t, he can’t.”

“I’m not given that knowledge,” he said. “I’m not sure even Lucifer or the Goddess Herself knows the depth of the soul. It’s probably the most complex magic any of us possess.”

She turned then, looking up into his face. “It’s a miracle. You don’t know everything.”

He didn’t smile. When he traced a single finger down her face, she willed herself to stay as still as one of her garden statues. It was the only way she’d avoid shattering.

“Don’t use sarcasm on me, Raina. It just pisses me off, and you don’t want to do that needlessly.”

“I don’t like how you make me feel,” she said. “With you, I want certain things. Things that he did, but different.”

“I understand that.”

She did, too. Mikhael was everything she’d fantasized about, complete with a dangerous, unpredictable edge. “I don’t know anything about you, but I want to let you do those things to me. And I don’t like that. I really just want you gone.”

She had a whole arsenal of persuasive techniques to get a male to do what she wanted. Those techniques were pretty much infallible. So it said something that she was going with brutal honesty, as if she already knew none of that would work on him. In fact, as he’d just implied, it would probably make things worse.

“You don’t strike me as the type of person who runs, Raina. We’ve both seen Fate in action. There may be a reason I’m here, beyond Isaac.”

“If you go with Destiny sent me, I’m going to lose all respect for your seduction techniques.” No sarcasm now, proven by the smile she gave him, one she was painfully aware was a little tremulous at the edges. “I really need to do something else now. Let’s stop baring our souls and set some interesting stakes for our game.”

“All right. I choose strip poker.”

9

HE WASN’T KIDDING, AND THE FACT HE WASN’T MADE her laugh, lessening some of that hard knot in her gut, even as her heart oddly ached a little more.

“Thank goodness I changed into clothes after brunch. Otherwise I’d only have the robe.”

“I should have anticipated that and prevented you from changing. Damn.”

She pushed him away. “All right. But if I win, get you down to nothing, you let me tie you up, do as I wish. Those are my stakes.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

She wouldn’t let the shrewd knowledge in that gaze unsettle her. “You like to restrain your lovers, don’t you? Make them helpless to the pain and pleasure you offer?” She grazed him with her nails. “I’d like the same pleasure.”

“Can you restrain me so I can’t get loose?”

Her eyebrow lifted. “I don’t know. Can I?”

“If I say yes, I give you an advantage.”

“But now I won’t trust you if you say no.” At his look, she relented. “I don’t really know your scope and range, but I guess it’s possible, if you don’t defend yourself. If you submit willingly.”

He raised a brow at her taunt. “As your guest, I can accept those terms, but as a Dark Guardian, I have a job to do. You probably can’t bind me so I can’t get loose, but you could slow me down.”

“What if you have my word that any binding will be to take shameless sexual advantage of you? Not for anything connected to Isaac or your role as Dark Guardian. Will you trust me that much?”

“Considering I don’t think you’re going to win, yes. But let’s integrate it into the game. Bondage strip poker.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“We mix and match. A winning hand gets the choice of an item of clothing or a restraint. Tying one wrist, an ankle, et cetera. And other assorted parts. Then if there’s nothing left to tie or take off, you’re at the mercy of the person who’s won.”

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