Wicked Hexes Read online

  Magic rippled through the room, and I gasped as Braydon appeared where the wolf sat. It kind of deflated the irony of being puppy chow when a naked Viking with perfectly blunt teeth hovered over me.

  “Hellhound?” he asked, as his eyes lowered to the nasty wound on my shoulder.

  “It seemed perfectly reasonable considering you were licking me?” I said, somehow forming the answer as a question. “You!” I hissed weakly. “You fucking bit me. You pussy, you missed my artery.”

  “So I did, little witch,” he agreed. “Now, it seems I have to give you the serum to save you.”

  “I’m okay with dying,” I lied. “I’ve said my prayers and everything. I’m ready.”

  “You said them wrong,” he countered as he settled between my thighs, pushing them apart. “You’re really horrible at praying.”

  “I’m a pagan,” I shrugged and then winced as pain shot through me. “You know that when you’re not near me, I don’t feel pain, right?”

  “You’re dying,” he announced.

  “I know,” I returned weakly. “By your hand or teeth, per se. Fitting, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I have no intention of letting you die, little witch.”

  “Stop calling me that. My name is Laura.”

  “I will need you to be a good girl for me and don’t fight me on this. I will tie you to the bed and do whatever it takes to save you.”

  “I don’t want your serum,” I spat out hoarsely.

  “Yes, you do, because right now everything inside of you is screaming to survive. Everything you are and everything that created you demands you fight to live. You’re a born witch, from the first line of witches, Laura. You may not be afraid of death, but you want the cure so you can live, and I have it right here. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me to walk out that door and let you die.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, to say the words that would send him away, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to die. I had to live, and he was right, everything inside of me screamed to let him help me. The problem was, it meant allowing him to have me, and by doing so, I’d be mated to his wolf.

  “Drink,” he said, holding up a vial of blue liquid. When I just stared at it, he continued. “You’re about to be fucked five ways from Sunday, and you’re rather tiny and weak, witch. You want to survive it, drink the fucking potion.”

  “What’s in it? And I’m not that tiny, ya know? You have fucked me far worse than you could ever imagine. You remember nothing in berserker form, and I assure you, it’s much rougher than your wolf can ever hope to accomplish. You’ve bruised my womb before, jerk.”

  He smirked. “I’ll bruise it again, promise,” he said huskily. “Drink the fucking poison; it’s a pain reliever and concoction that will help you through the bonding of souls.”

  “I don’t particularly even like you, let alone your soul right now.” His eyes smiled as he watched me tip up the vile and sniff the liquid. “It smells like ass.”

  “It probably tastes like it too, bottoms up,” he growled, sitting back as he watched me. “You’re in heat, woman,” he grumbled, scrubbing his hand down his face.

  “I’ve been in heat since the moment my mother activated the curse, jerk. I am perpetually held in my greatest time of need without the ability to get off. It was my mother’s greatest achievement to leave me in a state of need that could never be fulfilled until you came back. It is how you find me, by the scent of my need.” I tipped the vail up, drinking it. He reached out for it, and our fingers touched, sending sparks shooting up my arm.

  “How did you meet me, Laura?” he asked, his eyes guarded as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the story. As if once he heard it, he could not forget it.

  “My mother sent me out to eradicate a ship of Vikings that had come ashore in England and met with foul play. You had been mortal and yet bitten by werewolves and left to die. I was dispatched to end you. When I reached you, you were tending to the children who had been attacked. I could have whispered a spell and ended you easily, but something about you stopped me. You cared for the weak, this immense Viking warrior who was covered in battle scars, tending to these dying little whelps. It was unheard of back then, especially for the monsters of the North. You knew I watched you, and yet you didn’t fear me. You challenged me every night, standing at the shore, protecting the children from the monster who watched you from the shadows. One night I slipped from the woods and made my way to where you stood, and you smiled at me. I was one of the most powerful witches of my time, and here was this brave Viking who just smiled at me as if he knew a secret I wasn’t privy to. Monsters had cowered in my presence, praying to their gods for mercy, but not you. You smiled, and when I asked you to close your pretty blue eyes so I could end your life, you told me no. You told me that if I was going to kill you, I had to have the balls to look into your eyes as I took your life,” I recalled, telling it to him through what I remembered.

  “But you didn’t kill me,” he pointed out.

  “No, you kissed me,” I whispered as the memories replayed in my mind. I laughed as silent tears slipped from my eyes. “You kissed me and told me I was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen before. I slapped you, for I’d never been kissed before, and yet I kissed you back. To you, it was hilarious, but for me, it was confusing. I’d felt nothing like it, and as a pure-born witch, I wasn’t allowed to consort with men. So I left you on the beach to watch you from the woods once more. I was there naked for a blessing to gain the strength to do what I was sent to do when you came into the forest. Your boldness startled me, but then I peered into your Nordic eyes, and everything changed. I drowned within their endless depths, and instead of freezing in their icy fjords, I felt warmth. You pushed me up against a tree and promised to be gentle with me, which you weren’t. We were happy together and married in secrecy.”

  Braydon watched me through wary eyes. “You don’t need all the details of how we fell in love, I guess. You fucked me and told me I was yours forever. I went home to tell my mother that I had finished the job after hiding you and your people from mine. They accosted me the moment the lie left my lips. I was beaten, tortured, and then my mother told me they had found you. They brought you into the room, bloodied and broken. They sealed us in, and I was told what would happen by my mother. That because I was a whore for you, I would know little else from you other than lust and pain. You were born a berserker then bitten by a wolf. They used a spell to make it the same, fueled by blind madness once the trigger is pulled by our bond as soulmates. Once the madness takes you, you become purely berserker and nothing else. Your target was always me, to take me until my death, or until I killed you. It mattered little to them, which came first as long as we suffered. So my mother watched you fuck me, brutally.

  “You weren’t you, but to me, it was as if they’d changed my gentle warrior into my worst nightmare. You left no part of me untouched. For weeks you attacked me, sleeping wasn’t something you did. I begged you, pleading with you to stop. I hurt so fucking bad that my body refused to work. I was nothing to you, not human, not the woman you claimed to love. I was an enemy, a battle your berserker had to win. So when I struggled against you and put my arms up to hold you off, you broke them. When I used my legs to keep you at a distance, you broke them too. When I lay there defenseless, taking what you did to me, knowing it would never stop, I whispered a spell to end your life, so igniting the curse upon us both. Weeks, weeks of me being brutalized, having whispered every spell I knew to undo the curse, knowing that the moment I took your life, I’d wish for death myself, I did what they had known I would. I killed the one man I have ever given my heart to. I had healed from you breaking my limbs, which my mother hadn’t noticed as she’d watched you night after night, fucking me. So when she came into the cage where we were held, I ripped her fucking heart out because that is what it had felt like when I had killed you
. I cursed her soul to Hades, to drown in the River Styx for all eternity. That way, she knew what I felt like without you. So, Braydon, I can withstand being savaged by you because it is all I have ever known.”

  “That’s not a pretty story,” he uttered, rubbing his fingers over my thigh.

  “No, but it’s ours.”

  Chapter 9

  Braydon paced at the foot of the bed like a caged beast waiting to be set free. His body was a wealth of sinewy muscles that clenched with every move he made. My eyes feasted on him, lost in the graceful, raw beauty of his body. My hands absently lowered to my thighs as I sat on the bed, staring at him with my hair free of the braids the healer had undone as she’d bathed me. My shoulder ached, burning for him, and he paused as if he felt my discomfort.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked absently, more to myself than to him. He was like a starving beast, and yet he waited for something to happen. The concoction he’d had me drink renewed my strength and my mind. No longer hazy or on death’s door because of the potion I’d swallowed, I watched him pacing.

  A foreboding filled me as those sinfully blue eyes turned, trailing over my body with a liquid fire that threatened to consume me. A shiver of unease slid through me as heat pooled to my apex. Swallowing hard, I opened my mouth to speak, but only a soft moan escaped past my dry lips.

  “What exactly was in that potion?” I questioned as heat rolled through my body, and my nipples pebbled to hard peaks. His gaze lowered to them, slowly drifting down to my naked flesh.

  “Something to lessen the pain of our mating, witch. It also gave you the strength to participate,” he growled huskily. “I’m about to fuck you, hard. I’ve dreamed of this moment since the first time my dick got hard as a youth. Every pussy I’ve savaged was yours, every mouth I’ve tasted paled in comparison to yours. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is? I would eat a pussy and find it bland, wanting what yours promised to be. I’d fuck a maiden only to call out your name instead of hers in the throes of passion. Your pretty eyes haunt my every dream, and I’m about to fuck you out of my system. I may mate you because the wolf within me demands it, but that doesn’t mean you will be mine, understand?”

  “You say the sweetest shit, puppy,” I groaned as heat fanned my flesh. “Climb on, then, let’s get it over with, shall we?” I asked, slowly slipping my fingers to my sex, watching his icy stare following it with a predator’s glint.

  I was already wet, swollen with the need to come. My back arched into my touch, even though I felt nothing and wouldn’t unless he was touching me. My other hand lifted, cradling my small breasts, which he said he found lacking, and yet his tongue traced his full bottom lip with hunger.

  “Come on, wolf boy, show me what you got,” I taunted, watching his intense stare as it lifted, locking with mine in a silent battle.

  “Soon,” he grumbled, scrubbing his hand down his face.

  I leaned back, letting my legs drop open to his steely gaze. He smirked, watching me carefully as my hands trembled with the concoction running through me. I was bolder than I’d been in the past, never having taunted this warrior to bed, and yet I wanted him to ravish me. I needed it as I needed the air that filled my lungs. A fire was kindling within me, and I had a feeling that his potion had more than just a pain reliever in it.

  “Do you know how wolves mate, Laura?” he asked softly as he moved toward the bed, grabbing my ankles to brush his thumbs over them.

  “You’ve never asked me that before or told me. You’ve never even shown me your wolf. I’m not a wolf, in the case that it has slipped your mind,” I replied carefully. I gasped as he yanked me to the edge of the bed, kneeling between my legs.

  “Good, I prefer the element of surprise,” he chuckled wickedly, letting his tongue dance over the inside of one thigh before doing it to the other. A shiver of lust rushed through me while his eyes held mine. His sinful tongue lavished my flesh without touching the one place I needed it the most. “Give me your hands, woman,” he growled.

  “No,” I whispered breathlessly. My nipples were painfully erect, and my sex dripped with arousal for him.

  “No?” he returned as a lethal smile crossed his mouth.

  “I didn’t stutter, did I?” I hissed.

  One minute he was before me, and the next I was flat on my stomach with my hands held behind my back. I could feel the leather of his belt he’d grabbed from his dresser as he used it to bind them together. Once he’d finished, he didn’t let me up. His hand cradled the globe of my ass, slowly working the flesh with his hand. When he lifted it away from me, I exhaled only to cry out as his hand slapped against my ass cheek. He rubbed it gently after the assault, which turned the pain to pleasure. I held my breath, knowing more was to come. I wasn’t wrong. His hand landed harder, and I moaned the moment he began to massage my stinging flesh. Fingers pushed against my opening, and I squirmed against the bed. His husky laugh sent a fresh wave of need shooting to my molten center.

  “Bad girls get spanked, Laura. Are you a good girl or a bad girl?” His tone was dark, filled with gravel that made it sound like sex dripping from his lips. His finger pushed into my body, and I whimpered, pushing back against it to take more. “You’re fucking soaked, little witch,” he growled. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you enjoy being spanked.”

  He slapped my ass again, watching me squirm against his hold, which only sent his finger deeper into my core. Another pushed into my body, and I teetered on the edge of a storm. My body tightened, clenching against the fingers that fucked me slowly, unhurriedly. My legs spread apart; turning my head, I stared up at him where he watched the pink spreading across my ass cheek. I lifted to my knees, giving him full access to my most private parts.

  Wintery eyes locked with mine in a silent battle before a slow smile spread over his sinful lips. He pushed the dark blonde hair away from his face and sat back on his haunches, staring at me as if I was a gift he didn’t know how to accept.

  “You’re tiny,” he said irritably.

  I glared at him, hating that he thought me delicate. So what if I was barely over five feet tall, or weighed less than the women I’d seen around here? My curves weren’t generous, and I’d come to terms with my rather lacking attributes, but then I’d had several lifetimes to do so.

  “You know, you could just finish yourself off as you did before, pushing your come into my body without ever having to fuck my less than average pussy. I wouldn’t want you to have to strain yourself by fucking me when you find me and my tiny tits so unappealing. Untie me, now,” I whispered through trembling lips. “Untie me!” I screamed as I rolled away from him and sat on the edge of the bed, breathing through the anger that burned through me. “Just do it without me, and we will figure it out.”

  “No, it doesn’t work like that, Laura.”

  “Make it!” I hissed venomously. “You don’t want me, that much is apparently clear. So do whatever it is you need to do and get the fuck out. Go back to running in the woods or whatever it is you were doing.”

  “I have to mate with you, or the bite on your shoulder and neck will kill you,” he snapped.

  “And?” I laughed emotionlessly.

  “And I won’t have your blood on my hands.”

  “Another wolf can do this. I’ve heard it doesn’t have to be the one who bit the female. Bring in someone else,” I whispered thickly. “Anyone else,” I suggested coldly. So his insult to my self-esteem had cut a little deeper than I’d thought, but this was my Braydon. The man I’d endured the curse to be with, even if only for the short time before it played out, and this time, he found me utterly pathetic and lacking.

  His hand touched my shoulder, and I jerked away, standing up to face him. He watched my chest rise and fall with my labored breathing. He stood up slowly, stalking me until my back slammed against the wall, and I turned,
only for him to push me against it.

  “If you think I’m calling in anyone else to fuck your tight cunt, you’re wrong, witch. You are mine; do you hear me? Not mine until I decide otherwise or to throw you away, mine to protect and care for. I do fucking hate your tiny tits. I hate the way they get hard the moment I look at them. I hate the way they feel in my mouth and against my tongue, and I really fucking hate the fact that I crave them to be there. I hate that you’re fucking tiny when all I want to do is savagely bend you over and fuck you until my knot is buried so deeply within you I can’t get it out, and I don’t think I’d fucking even want to. I hate the way your scent drives my wolf wild and makes me crave to taste you. You’re perpetually in fucking heat, which means from the moment I captured you, I’ve wanted nothing else but to fuck you. Lacking, no. Tiny, yes,” he snapped harshly. “I want to push you down and force my cock into that dirty mouth of yours, but it won’t fit. I want to use you in the worst fucking way, and I know that if I do, I will hurt you.”

  His hand threaded through my hair as his mouth skimmed against the back of my neck, slowly kissing it as his legs spread mine apart. His engorged erection touched against my spine, and I moaned at the silken length that I craved more than air.

  “You won’t break me, Viking. Hurt me, yes. You forget I like it rough,” I groaned as he kissed the base of my spine, slowly working his way down until his breath fanned my arousal-soaked core.

  He chuckled before his tongue dragged through the wetness, and a groan escaped his lips. “You taste like sin, woman.” His mouth ravished my core hungrily, like he couldn’t get enough. I cried out as he used my hair to turn me around in a swift move that had me pinned against the wall so his mouth could suckle one breast and then the other. His fingers once against found my apex and slowly rubbed the sensitive flesh until I was gyrating against him as my body sang with need. “Fucking hell, woman,” he groaned as he found my mouth, claiming it with fervor while his tongue demanded entrance. I moaned from the pleasure of his fingers that skimmed over my swollen flesh as he dominated the kiss.