“Maybe you should consider that history is always written by the victor. I find it very hard to believe that Susannah is okay with you sharing history and implying that perhaps you got the better end of the deal that was struck between the devil and Charlotte Hecate,” Willow said, her brow rising in challenge.
“Perhaps, but I’ve given her no reason to take issue with my method of teaching. I stick to the facts and do not embellish. It is better for all of us involved that way. Allows witches like Susannah to continue to think herself the victor, while my kind know how to be patient,” I said, approaching my desk. I leaned my ass against it, reaching down to grasp the edge as Willow’s gaze dropped to my revealed forearms.
That lip twitched, and I suspected this one had nothing to do with how to unravel a mystery and everything to do with how to get what she wanted.
“You don’t seem particularly patient to me,” she said, tipping her head to the side as she approached my desk. None of my other students would have dared to come so close, and her friends at the door exchanged a quick look and scampered off accordingly. She stepped between my spread legs, reaching up and adjusting my tie with a casual ease that shouldn’t have been there.
“A witch’s life is a blip compared to mine. I have watched countless of your kind wither and die. When this generation of witches I’m teaching is dead and gone, I will still be here,” I said, grasping her wrist and slowly pulling her hand away from my tie.
“Not all witches die,” she said with a shrug, not fighting to loosen herself from my grip. I held her carefully, cautiously. I didn’t want to hurt her, even if the idea of seeing her skin covered in bites and bruises from more pleasurable endeavors did fill me with an odd warmth.
“I hardly think we can consider the Covenant alive,” I argued, staring at the way her mouth parted slightly when she smiled. The strong bow of her lips was enticing, drawing my gaze down to the pink of them every time they moved.
“I wasn’t talking about them,” she murmured, biting her lip as if she could feel the heat of my stare.
Disbelief flooded my veins, forcing me to turn my attention back to those strange, mismatched eyes. “What was your mother doing teaching you about Charlotte Hecate?”
The witch who had first struck the bargain with the devil had been granted immortality to oversee her Coven, to rule over them, but she hadn’t wanted the authority. She’d given her leadership role to the Covenant, raising them from the grave as they had been her mentors in life.
A mistake that had cost her greatly when they tore the flesh from her bones and buried it. Somewhere in the gardens, her flesh had been buried—unable to rot because of the immortality that had been granted to her.
Her spirit, and her magic, lived on in the bones that had been passed down to her descendants. It was why the keeper of the bones, the chosen of the Hecate line, guarded them with her life. Why her relatives had done everything in their power to protect her, where other houses were embroiled in competition.
“She did not die,” she said, and the solemnity in her voice told me that she knew that had not been a blessing. That she’d spent an eternity unable to heal herself; her body separated and scattered. The finger bones that remained in the pouch the Hecate line had carried with them were but a fragment of her, and even those bones could not allow her to be with her family in death.
It was cruel, perhaps the most heinous of acts committed by the Covenant in their thirst for power.
“You are not Charlotte Hecate, Witchling,” I said.
The warning hung between us, unspoken. There was no point in reminding her that she should not endeavor to be like the witch who had suffered endlessly.
“No,” she said, leaning forward.
I gripped her wrist harder, feeling her fingers flex beneath the strength of my grip as she pushed it to the side and bent her head back, staring up at me. I leaned toward her, meeting her halfway, drawn in by the mischievous glimmer in that stare. Her tongue ran over her bottom teeth lightly as she paused with her mouth just a breath from mine.
“But I am brazen enough to make a deal with the devil like she did.”
Her words sent a chill through me, understanding that the young thing didn’t have the first clue what she was dealing with. What kind of horror those words and that promise could bring upon her life. I held very still as she brushed her lips against mine, huffing a slight laugh as her scent filled my lungs.
“You’re very easy to seduce for someone who has such patience,” she said, and my eyes drifted closed as the hum she emitted seemed to sink inside me.
Like a siren calling me to the sea, there was something unnatural in that noise. In the voice that was more of a song than spoken words.
“Patience has nothing to do with us.”
She raised her hand at the same moment I did, touching the side of my neck with her open palm. The heat of her skin was like a brand, thriving and alive in ways that my Vessel had never been.
It had been an eternity since I’d felt that warmth inside of me, since the warmth of any bedmate seemed to penetrate the cold of my flesh.
Yet one touch from her and my eyes drifted closed.
She pursed her lips against mine, the lightest kiss I thought I’d ever received. I felt the touch down to my toes, as if she could breathe life into me, when the one who’d formed this body had been in charge of the dead.
If Charlotte Hecate was death itself, Willow Madizza felt like life.
She pulled back just enough, her point made when it felt like she’d turned me to Jell-O in her hands. My eyes fluttered open slowly, staring down into her eyes that I had the distinct feeling she’d never bothered to close.
“There is no us,” she said, her voice the softest of murmurs. Something cruel lived in that whisper, the harsh edges hinting at the rejection I’d given her earlier.
I thrust my hand into her hair, gripping it and tugging her head back as I bared my fangs at the sudden change in her expression.
“This feels like there is,” I growled, grinding forward until she could feel my cock straining against my slacks.
She shuddered, a ragged breath leaving her as she glared up at me.
“I am not a toy. Why would I settle for the scraps of your attention when I could have another on his knees and ready to give me anything I asked for with nothing more than a word?” she asked, but her body swayed forward, pushing into my touch rather than moving away from it.
“Then why are you here?” I asked, tugging her head to the side so that I could lean forward, dragging my lips over the side of her throat. She shuddered, and I smiled against the skin, letting her feel the press of my fangs.
“To show you exactly what he’ll have that you won’t. So that when you next come into my room while I’m sleeping, you might at least hesitate before you decide to pretend you do not want me the next day,” she said.
Every bone in my body stilled.