Chapter 49
BISHOP
She was made for me. She took everything I offered her and demanded more. All through the night, we feasted on one another in ways that simply weren’t to be believed.
Each time I thought I’d had my fill, she’d reach for me—or I for her.
The sun came and went as we slept in little snatches. Even in dreams, I fucked her and found myself slipping inside of her half-awake.
Each time she welcomed me.
Reached for me, begged me to come inside of her.
Alarm bells of warning should have at least had me pulling out of her, but I found that I wanted my essence inside of her.
That something between us demanded it.
I was destined to walk this world eternally, but I was still a man though my body was knitted together with…
The thought flitted away under the onslaught of her mouth.
It was important.
But not as important as the pleasure riding me right now as she climbed on top of me one more time to sit astride me and take me deep. Her head flung back as she was caught in the web of…
Distantly, I tried to grasp onto the word web.
It felt like that’s what we were lost in.
A web of something stronger than lust.
There was a knock on the door. She barely paused, already lost to the pleasure she drew out of me.
“No, no, no,” she chanted while her hips canted. “Go away!”
I laughed.
“Housekeeping!”
“Go away!” She snarled, her fingers digging into my belly as she slid down my cock again.
I hissed as the lust notched into something darker. Her eyes were blind to it.
“Sloan,” I said gently.
Her hair was a sweaty mess around her shoulders, her skin raw from the punishing gymnastics we’d put one another through.
She lowered to close her mouth over mine, but I turned my head. Something inside of me broke free of the haze for a moment.
It wasn’t pleasure, it was desperation in her eyes. She nipped at my neck, at my ear. “Don’t you want me anymore?”
“Yes.” I groaned as her pussy squeezed around my cock and I fought not to let her draw me back into the silky perfection of what we’d spun together.
“Then kiss me. I need you.”
I growled as she pistoned her hips, taking me harder. Making my brain go offline for a moment. The want wasn’t natural.
And I only saw it because she was obviously in pain. The groans were whimpers.
“Sloan,” I said and rolled us so I could pin her down. We were still joined and I had to fight every instinct not to lose myself in her again.
She lifted her head to get to my mouth.
Somehow, I knew that was a mistake.
The longer I stayed away from those bee-stung lips, the clearer my head became. She shifted her hips under me, and I shut my eyes, gritting against the need to let go once more.
She drew her fingers down my back to my flank, digging her fingers into my skin. The sting told me she may have even drawn blood.
“Sloan!” My voice was authoritative.
She just chuckled, the laugh dark and creeping into terrifying.
I grabbed her hand with one of mine and pinned it over her head, the movement driving me deeper into her.
She groaned. “Yes, like that.” She cupped my face and tried to get to my mouth.
I turned my cheek, even though I wanted to give her everything.
I managed to get her other hand over her head, braceleting both wrists as I held her down.
“Oh, kinky. Do you want me to get the little ties from my sweater?”
Her face was pale even as she tried to seduce me.
“Under better circumstances, I’d be intrigued by the offer.”
“Better?” Her eyes went as dark as burned caramel. “Didn’t you just fuck me into oblivion, Bishop?” She spat out my name.
I lowered my mouth to kiss her neck. “Yes, but I’m hurting you. I cannot abide by hurting you.”
She whimpered. “You’re hurting me if you stop.”
I shut my eyes and rested my face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. “I’m hurting you if I don’t stop, love.”
The word came out before I could think better of it.
I didn’t have time to figure out where the hell that came from. Not when she was writhing under me like Sigourney Weaver preparing for Gozer for fuck’s sake.
I’d vowed to do no harm. My service to this world was to help. Never to harm.
With each moment, my mind cleared more.
“What have I done?” I whispered against her skin.
I slipped out of her and she cried out. “No, no, no.”
“Sloan, please. I’m doing this for you.”
“No, I’ll die if you stop.”
“No, you won’t.” I moved off her but kept her hands above her head so she couldn’t twine around me again.
She rolled her hips so she could hook a leg over my hip to try to pull me back over her. “Don’t be like that, Bishop.” She tried desperately to bring her voice down from panic to cajoling. “You want inside of me. I know it. You know it. Our bodies certainly know it.”
“There’s no denying we fit in every way but look down at yourself.”
She glanced down at her breasts scratched up from my beard, bruised from where I couldn’t stop marking her.
My chest tightened.
Love marks were one thing, but this was beyond that.
She restlessly moved her hips. “What’s a few marks?”
“Sloan, we’ve been having sex for over eleven hours with only a few breaks.”
“Honeymoon phase. Haven’t you ever had a fuck-a-thon Bishop? I thought you were ancient.” Her tone was dry and just a whisper away from scathing.
“Sure you didn’t have anything to do with this, witch?”
“No.”
“Think about it. Why are you so wild for me? I’m a stranger.”
“Because I like it. I like feeling this way.”
“Do you?” I could feel her pulse thrumming under my hand. “Then why is your heart racing?”
“I don’t know.” Finally, there was a new flicker of worry. “Why am I so hot?”
I lifted my hand to her cheek. She wasn’t just flushed from being so wound up, she was burning up.
“What was in that drink?”
She licked her lips. “Pomegranate, of course.” She tipped her head back, trying to concentrate. “Star anise, cinnamon, bitters…” She nibbled on her lower lip. “I can still taste it.”
“We shouldn’t be able to taste it,” I growled. “Not this many hours later.”
“Don’t you want more of it?”
“Yes–No.” I shook my head. I hadn’t actually had the drink, only the second hand of whatever was on her tongue and finger. And still I wanted more of it. Because the high of it and mixed with her was like nothing I’d ever known.
She’d actually had most of the glass. No wonder she was still trying to come down from it. Like it was a fucking drug.
I was going to kill that bartender.
What if it hadn’t been me? What if it was some other mere human who used and abused her. I coasted my palm down her hip and she turned to me as if to get me to stroke between her thighs.
I drew my hand away from her, not trusting myself again.
“I’m so hot.”
“I know. Can you lay here and behave?”
She grinned. “No. I don’t want to behave.” She rubbed her breasts against my arm. “You don’t really want me to either.”
“Fuck.” I sat up, keeping my one hand clamped around her wrists. My freaking jeans were on the floor at the foot of the bed.
But her sweater was on the floor. I dragged it over with my foot and shook the wool belt free from the loops, then wrapped it around her wrists and through the headboard.
She tugged at her hands. “Not fair.” She widened her legs. “Come on, Bishop. If you’re going to tie me up, at least use me.”
“You’re killing me.”
She grinned up at me. “That’s the idea. Just come play with me.”
I rolled off the bed and walked into the bathroom. I splashed water over my face and gasped at my face in the mirror. I’d already been depleted because of the child I’d healed in Nova Scotia, but now I looked positively gaunt.
The spell must have weakened both of us.
I yanked a pair of boxers out of my bag and pulled them on, hissing at the chaffed skin from an all-night marathon. Hell, all morning, too.
Insatiable wasn’t even the word.
I ran a cloth under the cool water and brought it back in with me. I laid it on her forehead and wiped it down her burning hot face. Now that the spell had broken for me, I looked around the room.
Candles were guttered all around the room. Distantly, I remembered them burning wild thanks to our lovemaking. I wasn’t even sure I could call it that. It was pure, primal fucking for most of the time.
In between, there’d been slices of comfort. Lying in her arms all night had been the most right I’d felt in centuries.
I didn’t have time to think about that.
I still wasn’t sure if it was her or the bartender who had done this to us. Could she have done a spell and it backfired?
I pulled the sheet up over her and she kicked it away. “Hot.”
“I know.” I went back to the bathroom to cool off the cloth again and laid it over her chest.
She gasped but seemed to calm for a moment. I hurried over to where her bag was. I quickly flipped the do not disturb sign around so the maid service wouldn’t come around again.
This would not look good.
I locked the door and brought her bag over and dumped out the contents at the bottom of the bed.
“Hey!”
Ignoring her, I pawed through the little baggies. They were meticulously labeled. They were fairly benign ingredients. I was a healer, so I recognized most of them.
“Are you a healer too?”
She lifted a shoulder, still too out of it.
“Why do you have Damiana?”
She sighed. “I carry a lot of things. It works with helping women in perimenopause. Since there’s never any real studies on it.” She kicked out her foot in temper. “As if you’d know anything about that.”
“It’s also an aphrodisiac.”
“Please. The most it would do is give you a little focus.”
“Or a lot,” I muttered. She had a singular focus on what she wanted and it was me at her mercy. And I’d been more than happy to do so for most of the last twelve hours.
I gathered up the packets, pausing over a few of the ingredients. Maybe I could counteract some of the symptoms she was showing.
I grabbed my leather journal out of my satchel and flipped through the pages for some of my personal recipes. I didn’t have all my own usual supplies, but I could make do with what she had.
“Those are mine you know,” she called out when I went back into the bathroom to make them into a tea.
At most it would calm her into maybe getting some rest. Maybe she could sleep this off. It would steep better with a kettle of course, but the hot tap water would have to do.
“It won’t taste great but open up.”
She shook her head and turned away from me.
I sat on the bed. “C’mon. I promise this will help.”
“No.”
I sighed. “If you take it, I’ll make you come.”
She turned over, her arms still pinned. “You will?”
“I’ll just take the edge off.”
She quickly nodded and opened her mouth. “Do you want to fuck my mouth first?”
“No.”
Yes.
Hell, she was going to be the death of me. All the memories of the positively debauched things we did were transposed with my guilt for using her like that. God, was she not in her right mind enough to even—
“Get that thought out of your head.”
“Do you read minds, witch?”
“No. But I can see your mind whirling over there. I wanted this. Still want this.”
“It might be the spell.”
“Didn’t make me want you less, Bishop. Just made me act on it without overthinking things.”
I sighed and moved closer. “Drink.”
She wrinkled her nose adorably as she tasted it.
“I know. Drink it anyway.”
She coughed and lifted her head to take more. “Quickly. I don’t want to freaking savor it.”
I laughed, but she finished the whole damn thing. I pushed her sweaty hair out of her face. “Can you lay back and rest?”
“You have to give me part two of my medicine.”
“Nope.” I got off the bed.
“Hey! It was a deal.”
“Deal is to get you back to yourself.”
“It will get me back, dammit. I can’t even think. I can’t stop thinking about it. About wanting. About needing it. You can’t leave me like this.”
Her voice rose on the edge of hysteria.
“Hey.” I hurried back over to her and sat on one side of her. I pulled up the blankets. “Sloan, I can’t.”
“Please. Just a little touch.” She rolled toward me. “Just a little,” she whispered. “Just take the edge off, please.”
I wasn’t sure what to do. I got up and she whimpered.
“Just let me get the cloth cooled again. Okay?”
She sighed. “Okay.”
I splashed my own face, the fatigue smacking into me like a damn sledgehammer. Now that the spell had dissipated for me, the aftermath of the all-nighter was dragging me down.
I grabbed a hand towel this time and wet it to bring it out to her.
I sat beside her on the bed and drew it slowly over her shoulders, up her arms and then down her chest. She shivered and sighed with each pass, her nipples tightening in reaction.
Her body was still strung tight with adrenaline and need.
I wasn’t sure if I should touch her with my mouth. What if her skin was still giving off the side effects through her skin?
I lightly traced around her nipple, watching it tighten to an insanely tight peak. She panted, “Don’t stop.”
I lowered the cloth to her belly and between her legs. She opened them for me. And, God, I wanted to taste her again. It still lingered in my memory. Honeyed and rich.
I almost dipped my head but stopped at the last minute.
She groaned. “Please, Bishop.”
Her eyes were dreamy now. The tea starting to work. Maybe she’d just fall asleep if I kept up the light strokes.
But the tears that fell from the corners of her eyes ended me. “Ah, love. Don’t do that.”
“I can’t think. I’m so wound up.”
I kissed her tears away and slipped my fingers between her thighs. She was soaking wet and I steeled myself against all I wanted to do to her. Was it the spell still lighting my veins?
Or was she sharing it with me again?
I was no empath, but I could swear I felt what she did right then. Aching. Restless. And I could give her at least this.
I strummed her clit lightly, she shuddered and like a tripwire, she went over so fast I could barely hold myself back. My name, a guttural groan on her lips.
She arched off the bed, her body clenched all the way to her toes before she finally released, her breath little more than a sigh as she slipped under in sleep.
The tea, orgasm, and exhaustion all coalesced into a deep slumber.
I strode into the bathroom and climbed into the shower, cranking the temperature to cold.
She was so damn beautiful. And even knowing I shouldn’t have touched her, I did it anyway.
I was a piece of garbage. I scrubbed my skin, punishing myself for what I’d done until my skin was just as pink and raw as hers. I drew on clothes, then untied her and put one of my oversized shirts on her.
She wasn’t a small woman but seeing her in my clothes piled on the guilt. So small and helpless.
I’d vowed no harm.
After all the centuries, I’d studied to make up for who and what I was. What my family blood was… I ruined it all in one night.
Not only had I caused harm, but I’d also caused it to an actual witch.
Oh, the irony.
I checked my phone and swore at the time.
I really was a Parrish after all. I climbed onto the bed, over the covers and leaned on the headboard to watch over her.
The new moon was due at 11:43 p.m. The binding spell had to be done before the new moon.
I couldn’t leave her. Not after what I’d done.