Chapter 15
Fifteen
Felix
He was stuck.
The little witch didn’t bother to use the bond to talk. “You’re joking.”
“Unfortunately, I am not.” It was painful to admit. He was a great climber—getting back down the tree, though, was another matter entirely.
A laugh escaped her throat. He was already embarrassed enough, and now she was laughing about it? “Keep laughing, witch, and I promise to make you regret it.”
She doubled over in stitches. “You’d,” she wheezed. “You’d have to get down here first.”
Yes, yes, a real fucking knee-slapper it was. A shifter of his caliber should not be stuck in a tree, but heights were still something he was grappling with. Sometimes he could descend just fine, other times not so much.
The tree started to laugh along with the witch, the branches shaking so hard that he clawed onto them for dear life so he didn’t fall.
“Shut up,” Felix hissed, although he wasn’t sure if he was speaking to the tree or her. Both. It was both.
After a minute of guffaw after guffaw, she finally managed to quieten herself, wiping tears at the edges of her eyes.
“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked.
He hated to admit he liked the sound of her name slipping off his tongue. He liked the feeling of her tongue in general. Stupid fucking bond. Stupid fucking tree.
“Just…guide me down. I can’t see where I’m going.”
He couldn’t shift when he was nervous. He looked at the ground for only a moment, and the forest floor swayed as if it would swallow him whole.
Heights usually didn’t bother him, but sometimes the little fear became a huge one.
He focused back on the witch instead, for some reason, even though she was technically on the ground, it was entirely less frightening.
She moved closer to the trunk, tilting her head back until she spotted him.
It was at least sixty feet off the ground—maybe more.
Either way, if he fell, he would get seriously injured.
His shadows could catch him, but sometimes they had a mind of their own.
“I can see you!” she shouted up, even though he could hear her perfectly fine with his sensitive hearing.
“Can you just…go back down the way you came?” she asked.
“Don’t you think I would have done that already if I could,” he hissed.
She decided to use the moment to her advantage. “I will only help you down if you promise to be nice to me for twenty-four hours.” She crossed her arms.
That little witch. He was about to spew profanities at her, metaphorically rip off her head for the audacity.
Felix wasn’t nice. There wasn’t a nice bone in his body.
His pride cracked in his chest, but he wouldn’t make it down without her; his depth perception was shit, the one drawback of being a cat.
He can’t believe he had to ask a witch for help. She had left him no choice.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Will you help me down?”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Now.”
She rolled her eyes. The tree started to shake, his grip loosening on the bark as his claws desperately clung to the branch. “I will turn you into logs, you stupid tree!”
She tapped her foot. The tree didn’t slow down.
“Okay! Okay, stop,” he pleaded.
The rustling of the trees came to a standstill. “Little witch, would you help me out of this tree?”
She smiled, smug. At least he hadn’t said please. He could keep that small bit of dignity for himself. The rest had been devoured like a pig on a spit roast.
Her voice softened ever so slightly. “I can do that.”
He hated everything about this. Hated relying on a witch. Hated that he was bound to one. Hated that he had to depend on the very thing he was trained to kill. He wanted to go back to a time before he had met her. And most especially before he had that kiss.
He shook the thought away, its gravity threatening to pull him back into the memory.
“To your left,” she instructed. “There’s a branch you can lower your paw onto.”
Felix started to lower his back paw, but he couldn’t reach it. He held the key in his mouth as he struggled to find a foothold.
“Just a bit lower!”
He didn’t want to trust her, but he did. He lowered his paw down enough to find the branch and climb down to it, his claws leaving marks on the bark on the way down.
“You’re doing great!”
“Don’t patronize me, witch.”
“Being nice, remember?” she said as if she were talking to a child, and indeed patronizing him even more. She held too much power.
He didn’t reply.
She continued to guide him down the tree, one branch at a time. But he made a fatal mistake. He looked down at the ground.
It was still high enough for his vision to swim.
Suddenly, everything went blurry, his head dizzying as the world around him tilted.
Up? Down? He couldn’t tell. Her instructions flew over his head as his grip started to slip.
He clawed back into the branches, but it wasn’t enough; his foot slipped, and he fell.
He was going to die.
And the last thing he had done was being nice to a witch. Although if it were any witch, he was glad it was this little one.
He fell, and fell, and fell, waiting for the ground to catch him.
Instead, he fell into a cloud of gentle arms. The little witch had caught him.
For a moment, they both stared into each other’s eyes, shock plastered on both of their faces. She had caught him, saved him.
Reality crashed over him like a wave. “Put me down,” he demanded.
She obeyed, dropping him with no warning. He landed on his feet, shifting as soon as he hit the ground.
“I told you not to touch me,” he hissed.
“What? I just saved you!” she said.
“Cats always land on their feet; there was no reason for it.” There was very much a reason for it. But he wouldn’t admit it. He would have been too high up. There was a very real chance that he would not land on his feet, at least without injury.
“Whatever,” she said, turning away from him. “Next time I’ll let your ungrateful ass splatter on a canvas and sell it to a modern art museum for millions.”
For once, he let himself smile. Truly smile.
“Thank you,” he said.
The little witch turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
“Ahh, young love,” the tree said.
“Shut up,” they said in unison.
Felix stretched out in the little witch’s bed, trying to ignore the scents of cinnamon that were all her. The key was cold in his palm as he studied it, the inscription catching the light. His brows furrowed. What the fuck?
A bright-eyed little witch moved from the chair, shutting her book and getting in his space. “What does it say?”
He groaned inwardly at the thought of saying it out loud. Why him? Why couldn’t the goddess have taken literally anyone else?
Exhaling forcefully, he read out the riddle on the key. “Twisted lovers surround her, circling an aching hole that has yet to be filled.”
He looked up at the little witch, whose skin was turning redder by the second. For the last line, he didn’t break eye contact, just to see what she would do. “If you want to find what you seek, open her legs and slip inside her waiting labyrinth.”
Her throat bobbed. “It’s so uh…lewd.”
“Mmhmm.” Interesting. Maybe the little witch wasn’t as innocent as he thought. She rubbed her temples, like she was churning the riddle over in her mind. He tried to do the same, but when he thought about an aching hole that was yet to be filled—fucking hell. She was corrupting his goddamn mind.
After a minute, she yawned, covering her mouth. “I need to shower and sleep. I can’t think about anything right now.” Her gaze dropped to where he’d sprawled across her mattress. “Can you get off?”
Felix raised his eyebrows.
“Gross, not like that.”
Regardless, he wasn’t moving. His neck hadn’t ached this much in years. “I am not sleeping on that thing again; my neck won’t recover.”
“If you sleep as a cat, what’s the difference?”
Felix looks to the chair, pointing, “Hard.” He pointed back to the bed beneath him. “Soft.”
She glared at him, unconvinced.
“Just because I can sleep as a cat doesn’t mean I don’t have standards. You try sleeping on the chair.”
She scoffed at him. “It’s my bed, shifter.”
“And you’re sharing it with me.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“It’s quite diculous, actually.”
“That’s not even a word!” she said, storming off into the bathroom.
She shut the door loud enough for the wall to rattle ever so slightly.
The corners of his mouth tilted up. He hadn’t smiled this much in years.
He was known to be stoic at home. His brothers would make it their daily mission to say something funny enough to actually get Felix to crack.
It never worked. But for some reason, the witch had been the one to do it.
The groan of the shower handles turning piqued his hearing. He tried not to imagine what she was doing in there—probably washing her hair, you idiot. Still, his cock jumped at the thought of her naked and rubbing her hands all over her body.
He shoved a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply and pulling at the damp strands to try to distract himself.
A few days. That was all it had been. A few days, and he was already falling apart.
His head hit the back of the bed, jaw grinding hard enough to crack teeth.
Sharp nails twitched at his hands and feet.
His shadows came out too, like they had a mind of their own and undulated around him.
Impatient, restless. He heard the little witch humming a tune in the shower, a reminder that she was in there, naked, wet—he didn’t like the wet part; he preferred making women wet.
That was all it took for his hand to drop, palming the hard line of his cock through his shadow pants.
He rubbed against the fabric, the friction already too fucking good.
He’d spent his entire life hunting them, ripping out their throats with his teeth.
But this one? This one he wanted to taste first, to lick the crook of her neck before sinking claws into her jugular.
The memory of the kiss pulled him back in, the taste of her.
He wanted more, he wanted so much fucking more.
Just pent up. Means nothing. The lie tasted bitter as he freed himself from his pants, biting back a groan at the first bare stroke. He was already leaking; days without release had him trembling at his own grip. He stroked slowly, savoring the feeling of his own hand. I wish it were hers.
His hand moved faster now, imagining it was her playing with his cock, breath ragged through clenched teeth. Part of him didn’t care if the witch saw him like this. Part of him wanted her too.
Close. So close, but before he could tip over the edge, the door opened.
He froze.