Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
“What do you mean, do I have more information?” Eleonore demanded into the phone. “Isn’t it your job to find that?”
On the other end of the line, the private investigator let out a weary sigh Eleonore didn’t think was merited. “So far,” the investigator said, “the only things you’ve told me about this witch are that she wears a hooded cloak, has pale skin and dark hair, likes Star Trek , and lives in an isolated house in the woods. You haven’t even given me a street address.”
“Of course I haven’t,” Eleonore said. “There are no streets in the forest.”
She drummed her fingers on Ben’s kitchen counter, which she was sitting on. A few feet away, Ben was preparing grilled cheese sandwiches. He gave her a sympathetic look as he closed the portable griddle on the first sandwich.
Her eyes skated down his frame, landing on his ass. A very fine posterior, the werewolf had. Round enough to sink her fingers into—which she had, happily, during their absolutely delightful shower the previous night.
It was hard to stay irritated when Ben was so big and handsome and grilling sandwiches, so Eleonore forced herself to look away from him so she could properly intimidate the investigator.
“Look, lady—”
“I am not nobility,” Eleonore said crisply, “and my knives have drunk too much blood over the centuries for me to lay claim to any such genteel titles.”
“Christ,” the investigator muttered. “I hate having immortals as clients. Everything’s always so vague and weird and threatening.”
“I’m not technically—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, cutting Eleonore off, which was a sure way to learn what actual threatening behavior was. “You’re not technically immortal, you were mystically entrapped hundreds of years ago by a witch who wears a cloak and lives in an unknown forest somewhere in the world.”
“She’s lived in several forests over the centuries,” Eleonore said, biting down on the urge to threaten his spleen with a good chomping. “Which, as I said, is why she goes by the Witch in the Woods.” Honestly, had he even been listening? “The most recent one she lived in resembles those in the Pacific Northwest and the crystal was shipped domestically, so that narrows down the location.”
Ben had taken her on a drive into the forest surrounding Glimmer Falls a week ago. The winding road had led up wooded hills dotted with hot springs. They’d stopped at a lookout point that provided an unobstructed view of Glimmer Falls and the undulating green land and sharp, snowcapped peaks beyond, and she’d marveled at how beautiful this slice of nature was.
It had also been oddly familiar. The precise shades of green, the height and breadth of the trees, the moss hanging like fairy chandeliers from branches in the dampest depths of the woods…it had reminded her of the forest where the Witch in the Woods had taken up residence during the past century, which had given her hope that perhaps the witch was somewhere nearby.
“I guess it’s something,” the investigator said glumly. “But I still need more information to go on.”
Eleonore opened her mouth, ready to hiss, but the most delectable smell was coming from the griddle. She sniffed the air, then let out an appreciative sigh—Ben had included onions and thin slices of turkey in the sandwiches. He didn’t look her way, but his lips quirked in a half smile.
Eleonore narrowed her eyes, realizing she was being managed. “Tricky wolf,” she said with no true ire. “You know I can’t be angry when faced with grilled cheese.”
Recently, his sandwich-making had mysteriously begun to coincide with her particularly cranky moods. This lunch was earlier than normal, but she wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he hadn’t begun prep work the moment she’d announced she was going to call the private investigator to see if the previous day’s labors had yielded any fruit. A professional ought to be able to provide some information after nearly twenty-four hours.
“What?” The confused question came from the phone.
“I’m talking to my werewolf paramour, not you,” she informed the investigator.
He sighed again. “Of course you are.”
“But really, how many nigh-immortal-life witches can there be?” Eleonore asked, returning to the issue at hand. For whatever reason, witchcraft blossomed only among mortals who were human or had human ancestry—it didn’t manifest in other species or true immortals. But each witch or warlock had areas of spellcraft they had a natural affinity for, and a very few could manipulate life itself, prolonging it to extremes. The Witch in the Woods had managed to extend her life span to at least six centuries by draining mortals of life and adding it to her own.
“You’d be surprised.” The investigator heaved yet another heavy sigh—he certainly did that a lot. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to return the fee for this one. You need someone with more of a magical specialty to find this witch.”
“You’re quitting?” Eleonore asked, dumbfounded.
Ben shoved a sandwich into her hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him. Then she sank her fangs into the cheesy interior of the sandwich in lieu of biting the phone in half.
God’s ovaries, that was delicious.
“I’m sorry,” the man repeated. “Being imprisoned in a rock for six hundred years sounds like it sucks.”
“It was a sequence of rocks culminating in a plastic embarrassment,” Eleonore said. “And no, I do not recommend it.”
“But it wouldn’t be right to waste your money and time on something I can’t help with,” the investigator continued. “I’m deadly with a Google search and some moderate stalking, but you need someone with magical expertise. Maybe try asking around some ritual ingredient shops? Or see if Diantha Spark has any recommendations—she’s as good a witch as Cynthia Cunnington and loves giving advice.”
Diantha Spark—Mariel’s mother—was a terror if rumors were to be believed. She was also Cynthia Cunnington’s frienemesis, according to Themmie—a word Eleonore had never heard before that apparently meant a nemesis one pretended to like for unknown reasons.
Perhaps the Witch in the Woods considered Eleonore a frienemesis. She’d often said nonsensical things like You’re my best friend or You’re like a daughter to me , but what kind of person imprisoned someone they cared for?
“I’ll ask,” she said. And then, because this man hadn’t done anything truly terrible and because the first bite of grilled cheese was settling in her stomach, she softened her tone. “Thank you for being honest.”
“It’s a dirty business, but you gotta preserve your honor somehow, right?”
“Right,” Eleonore repeated, feeling like that, at least, she could understand.
Once she hung up the phone, Eleonore turned her attention fully to the sandwich. She was still frustrated and angry in a way that felt like there was a bubbling hot cauldron between the base of her breastbone and her stomach, so she forced herself to eat methodically and slowly, giving her irritation room to settle.
She’d always been quick to anger, but it had only gotten worse over the centuries with the witch. The internet had taught her fight or flight was the term for a person’s primal instinct when faced with trauma, but Eleonore had never been able to flee. Instead, she’d put all her resources into fighting however she could, even if it was with nothing but her words and her rage.
Now that she wasn’t living under the constant threat of being forced to murder someone—or forced to spend time drifting through an unpleasant haze inside the crystal—her reactions were out of proportion to her new existence. She recognized this. But knowing the cause of the behavior and changing said behavior were two different things.
Still, she was trying to work on it—partially because whenever she succumbed to those bursts of temper she felt like a monster in comparison to even-tempered Ben. He made her want to be a better person—an impulse she hadn’t felt in so long, she’d forgotten what it was like.
Thus: chewing slowly.
Very, very slowly.
“Thank you again,” she said when the sandwich was finally done and the urge to shriek had faded. “Food calms me down.”
He smiled, showing those adorable eye crinkles. “My mother taught me that trick growing up. Gigi gets hangry, too.”
“Hangry?”
“Angry because you’re hungry,” he clarified.
“Ah.” This was another word like frienemesis , smashed together out of two separate concepts. “Well, I am no longer hangry, even if it’s disappointing the investigator can’t help.”
Ben held out his arms, and Eleonore only hesitated briefly before walking into them and burrowing her face against his broad chest. He smelled so nice.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll ask the gang for any other leads tonight.”
They were going to a barbecue at Mariel and Oz’s house, which was the first group social event not involving Gigi’s mayoral campaign that Eleonore would attend. She wasn’t sure if she was excited or nervous at the prospect of socializing. “All right,” she said, voice muffled.
The word frienemesis was still pinging around her head. Ben probably didn’t have one of those. No, he had a collection of friends who did normal things like host barbecues and who had probably never once considered kidnapping or imprisoning one another.
She didn’t like thinking about the witch, much less talking about her, but she felt the sudden urge to unburden herself.
“The witch pretended to be my friend,” she said.
Ben had been rubbing her back, but he stilled at that. She could almost hear his brain whirring as he tried to follow her thought process. “How so?” he asked—not understanding the origin of the thought, perhaps, but willing to see where it led.
Eleonore didn’t want to be restrained while talking about this, so she pulled out of his embrace and paced to the window. She crossed her arms, looking out at Ben’s lawn and the flowers blooming by the sidewalk. “Whenever she summoned me, she seemed excited to see me. She sometimes gave me gifts—a trinket, a new knife, a Star Trek bobblehead.” Eleonore swallowed, no longer seeing Ben’s yard but a cascade of memories. “She’d say she missed me or that I was her only friend. Once she said I was like a daughter to her.”
Ben made a low noise. “That’s bullshit.”
He didn’t swear as frequently as others in this time, she’d noticed. She liked that he would swear for her. “Yes, but it bothered me. Given a single moment of freedom, I would have ripped her throat out, but she thought I was her friend .” The witch had seemed so certain in their bond that Eleonore had sometimes wondered if the witch was the mad one or if she was.
“Was she saying it to manipulate you?”
Eleonore shrugged, ill at ease. “Maybe. She was also insane. But if she really believed we were friends…”
“What?” Ben asked after she trailed off.
“I don’t know.” Every time she tried to think about it, her head hurt and she felt sick to her stomach. How was she supposed to feel about a person who hurt her with one hand and offered gifts with the other?
“If I can speak plainly,” Ben said, “I don’t think it matters if she believed you were friends or not. That doesn’t change what she did to you.”
“I know,” Eleonore said, turning to face him again. Ben’s forehead was furrowed, and she could read both anger and pity in his expression. The pity made her want to snap her teeth. “I’m not saying it changes anything or that I won’t rip her throat out. I look forward to ripping her throat out.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know why I started talking about this.”
Ben cocked his head, eyes trained on her like he was looking under her skin and into her brain. He was the one with the complicated thoughts and reasoned words; maybe he could pull some meaning out of her jumbled confession. “You can talk about whatever you want,” he said. “It’s good to let things like that out rather than stewing on them.”
Eleonore wasn’t a stewer by nature. Perhaps that was why she struggled to pull apart these tangled threads of fury, grief, and discomfort. Her waking hours over the centuries had been spent in rage and violence, with occasional odd lulls for Star Trek or confusing gifts from the witch. Her time in the crystal had been a hazy sleep of half-formed dreams and memories. Now she was awake and alive in a peaceful time with no immediate target for her rage, and she had too much time to think.
“I don’t like ruminating,” she declared.
Ben exhaled at that. “I don’t either, but it’s what I spend most of my time doing.”
“That means you’re good at it.”
He blinked a few times. “You know, I never thought about it that way.” There was a pause, and then he shook his head. “Now you’re going to have me ruminating about what it means to be good at anxiety.”
There was too much ruminating in this room in general. Eleonore clapped her hands. “Let’s do something.”
Ben took her abrupt announcement in stride. “Hmm,” he said, rubbing his bearded chin. “How about online shopping for a target dummy to throw knives at?”
Eleonore wanted a target dummy, but scrolling the internet wasn’t physical enough to get her out of her head. “Something more active than that.”
His smile turned naughty. “How about an orgasm?”
Oooh. Clever wolf. “Yours or mine?” she asked, bouncing on her toes.
He chuckled. “I was thinking yours.”
It would be nice to have his hands on her, but if there was one thing that would put her in an excellent mood, it was feeding off the delicious energy of his orgasm. “I would prefer to suck your pe—I mean, blow your dick.” She waved a hand. “Whatever the act is called.”
Eleonore could sense Ben’s veins dilating as his heart pumped blood to both his blushing cheeks and his penis. A werewolf who blushed while erect; how charming. If she hadn’t drunk his blood a few nights ago, she would have asked to sink her fangs into him. Thank goodness a succubus could never be too “full” of sexual energy.
“You would rather suck my dick than have me go down on you?” Ben asked.
Well, when he put it like that…
“I have an idea.”
Five minutes later they were entwined naked on his bed, kissing passionately. Since they were saving penetrative sex for after the curse was broken, she got to be as creative and thorough as she liked with her hands and mouth, and Eleonore couldn’t wait to express the full range of her creativity all over that brawny body.
Eleonore obviously hadn’t invented the position she had in mind, but it was a good one. She repositioned herself, turning in a half circle until her hips hovered over Ben’s face and her mouth was within striking distance of his dick. Kissing distance, she corrected herself, because though she’d love to taste blood directly from the throbbing vein winding up his shaft, that was the sort of thing that ought to be negotiated ahead of time.
He gripped her hips and tugged her against his face, and she jolted and slapped a hand against the mattress. “Oh,” she gasped as his tongue started stroking over her. No hesitation here.
Ben was good at oral, direct and thorough in his approach, and she suspected it was because he genuinely liked doing it. He mixed licks with deep groans, and that primal delight couldn’t be faked. When he flicked his tongue against her clit, she was tempted to abandon her plans and just ride his face straight toward the orgasm he’d been so eager to give her.
This was supposed to be an equal exchange, though, so Eleonore leaned forward to suck his dick. Or tried, anyway. He was eight inches taller than her, and she hadn’t calculated the physics of aligning their mouths and crotches in this manner. She licked a circle around the head of his cock, but when she shifted forward to suck him deep, her pussy lifted away from Ben’s face. He tugged her back onto his mouth instantly, preventing her from getting the right angle.
“I can’t suck you properly like this,” she complained.
His response was a chuckle that vibrated against her clit. Eleonore whimpered, grinding against his face for a moment before forcing herself to return to her mission. Vampire speed gave her an advantage, and she managed to take him to the back of her throat before he’d realized she’d moved.
“Oh, fuck ,” he shouted, fingers digging hard into her hips.
She would have smiled if her mouth hadn’t been better occupied. Ben was so proper that when he let loose, it felt like an event . She bobbed her head, enjoying the stretch of her lips around his thick shaft and the feel of him plunging deep in her mouth. He tasted divine, musky and sweet with his natural flavor, with the spice of blood beneath his skin teasing her nostrils.
Moments like this were why she was happy with the gifts of her heritage. Other people tasted their partners, but not like she did. They didn’t feel the humming psychic energy of arousal, neon and saturated in her mind’s eye, nor could they smell the sultry cocktail of hidden blood and pheromones. They couldn’t nourish themselves on their partners’ bodies and would never know the deep joy of being offered that nourishment.
Ben tried to shift her back onto his face a few more times, but once she put her hands to work cupping his testicles and stroking the spit-slick base of his shaft, he gave up with a ragged cry. Eleonore bobbed her head faster, working her tongue over the prominent vein. Then she squeezed and twisted lightly at the base of his cock while the fingers of her other hand pressed the sensitive skin behind his testicles, and he exploded with a shout.
Eleonore drank him down, savoring the flavor. Energy hummed through her from his release, making her head spin and her skin flush with excitement. She was crackling with energy, as if a lightning storm had swept through her body and struck every pleasurable nerve on its way.
She swallowed the last drops, then looked over her shoulder with a smirk. Ben’s hair was mussed, his face was red, and with his glasses deposited on the nightstand, there was nothing disguising the dazed look in his eyes.
His grin was drunken. “You look so smug.”
She tossed her hair as she shifted to face him. “That’s because I am.”
“As you should be.” He lay for a few moments before sitting up with a groan. “All right, time to turn the tables.” Then his arms seemed to give out, and he flopped back to the pillow. He let out a breathy laugh, then tapped his lips. “You’ll need to hop on, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, no,” Eleonore said dryly as she scooted forward and straddled his face. “What a terrible fate.” Then she grabbed his hair in one hand, slapped her other against the wall, and began to rock over his generous, gifted mouth.
Ben hummed happily and gripped her hips and ass, fingers digging in as he helped her ride. His beard rubbed her inner thighs as he kissed her pussy with open-mouthed enthusiasm. Eleonore often liked a finger or two inside her during oral, but she was so keyed up from tasting his orgasm—both physically and psychically—that she wasn’t going to last long enough to escalate past grinding. Her fingers curled against the wall as tension built low in her belly. It peaked sharply and she cried out, hips jerking as the orgasm blew through her in hot, clenching waves.
Ben was still lapping at her when she felt sane enough to move. She lifted off his face, thighs trembling, then collapsed next to him.
Ben slid an arm under her so she could rest her head in the juncture between his chest and shoulder. He was looking at her with such obvious pride that Eleonore cackled.
Ben raised his brows in silent inquiry.
“You look so smug,” she said, mirroring his words from earlier.
He gently tapped her nose. “If you could see your face right now, you’d feel smug, too.”
She could imagine. Her cheeks felt tight from how widely she was grinning, and she was undoubtedly bright red. Her werewolf was a gifted lover.
“Well,” she said, nestling deeper into his hold, “you deserve to feel as smug as you like.”
He chuckled, and warmth filled Eleonore’s chest. It felt like a bubble of happiness was filling behind her breastbone, iridescent and shimmering.
Happiness was a trap. She knew the truth of that somewhere in her brain; the voice of caution was impossible to silence even if the orgasm and sandwich had muted it. Pain was inevitable in this life, and it only hurt worse when joy had preceded it. A reasonable woman would guard her heart, knowing nothing this pure and good could last.
But Eleonore had never been reasonable. So she closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of Ben’s skin. “That was a good idea, werewolf.”