Hexes and Exes Page 21

  As the spots dancing before my eyes cleared, the light before me became clearer. The Red affinity inside him swelled and pulsed inside his core, stretching to fill the confines of his body. His magic thrived and danced. Mine had shriveled up and decided to hide behind my vital organs. I could tell it was there, but it definitely didn’t want to come out to play.

  Thatch held on to me, head ducked down. Sweat dripped from his face, droplets falling onto the wood of the table. With the last surge of pain, I’d curled onto my side into a fetal position on his desk, every muscle rigid with anticipation. I forced myself to relax. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but he didn’t notice.

  “The bottle,” I said. “You’re letting the tears go to waste.”

  I tried to wiggle free of his grasp, but he held on too tightly.

  “Thatch!” I said. He didn’t respond. “Felix Thatch, get the bottle.” I nudged him with my foot.

  He released me and shoved the bottle at me. It wasn’t easy collecting my own tears, especially without a mirror, but I had plenty to spare. Thatch was turned away, his arms wrapped around himself as he shivered.

  That’s how I felt, cold and empty when he’d stopped touching me.

  I sat up on the desk, angling my face this way and that to catch the tears. “Could I get a little help here?”

  As Thatch turned back to me, I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were solid black, the pupil expanding into the iris and whites. He looked like the Raven Queen or one of her emissaries. A chill prickled up my spine.

  He licked his lips. “I want more,” he said.

  “You need to focus,” I said in my stern teacher voice, the same tone he used with me when I allowed my affinity to get out of control. “You need to collect my tears.” I shoved the bottle at him.

  He stared at the vial blankly. He looked to my face, to the bottle, and back to me.

  I waved a hand at my face. “I can’t see what I’m doing to collect them. That means you need to get a grip on yourself and help me.”

  He nodded, slowly, understanding coming back to him. He held the bottle to my cheek. One hand reached up behind my neck, tangling in my hair. He drew me closer so I had to lean away from the desk toward him. His fingers caressed my scalp. The motion was calming, reassuring. Even with his eyes all black, he grew infinitely less creepy. The more he touched my face and stroked my hair, the more beautiful and mysterious he grew.

  I wasn’t sure what moment he stopped collecting tears and stoppered the vial. Only, I was aware of both his hands on me now, one looped around my waist, the other in my hair. He stood, pulling me close enough to feel his chest expanding as he breathed. The pounding of his heart against his chest nearly drowned out the rhythm of my own. A knowing little smile laced his lips.

  “This is nice,” I said. My affinity relaxed inside me, red light growing and gaining strength.

  “I know. It doesn’t take much with you.” His mouth inched closer to mine. “Tell me what you want.”

  “You.” I lifted my chin to kiss him, but he had ahold of my hair and wouldn’t let me.

  He purred into my ear. “Tell me you want me to hurt you.”

  I was relaxed, but not enough to agree to that. “Ha! No, I want you to kiss me.”

  His breath whispered across my cheek. “I’ll kiss you . . . if you tell me you want me to hurt you.”

  His lips grazed my jaw and sent a shiver down my spine, into my core, and awakened desire inside me. I wanted him so badly, I might have agreed to his bargain, but I didn’t want this moment to stop. I wanted to draw out the pleasure of his touch for as long as I could.

  “I want to feel your pain flare up and flow into me,” he said. “I want to feel the heat of your affinity filling me. I’ll make you cry out in pleasure and pain all night long.”

  “Sounds kinky,” I said.

  He drew me closer, his erection pressing against me. “It will be. I just ask you give me this one little thing. Say yes. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  I giggled, drunk on his words, giddy from his touch. I tried to shake my head, but I couldn’t. It hurt just enough to ground me. I suddenly wondered what the heck I was thinking. Thatch had gotten a hard-on torturing me with pain. And now he was trying to get me to consent to more. I didn’t like pain. He liked pain.

  He yanked my hair harder, moaning against my neck.

  I pushed him back. “I want you to stop.”

  He pulled away, his inky eyes staring into mine. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or through me.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked. “I don’t like this, and I don’t want to do this. You’re creeping me out.”

  He frowned, looking more like himself. “Creeping you out.” He repeated the words, his voice husky and rough.

  I had a feeling the words still weren’t sinking in. I squirmed back. He dropped his arms, letting them fall limp on the desk on either side of me. His brow furrowed. He looked absolutely lost.

  He wet his lips. His gaze flickered from my face to my breasts to my lap.

  “Slap me,” he said. “I need you to awaken me.”

  I hesitated, uncertain about this. I didn’t like the idea of hurting him, but I suspected he knew better than I did as far as his affinity was concerned. I struck him across the cheek, my movement tentative.

  He gritted his teeth. “Harder.”

  I swallowed and steadied myself. I hit hard enough to leave a pink mark on his cheek.

  He took in a sharp intake of breath. “Again.”

  I slapped him again. He crouched over the desk and moaned. I couldn’t tell if that was a moan of pleasure or pain. Or both. I suspected he liked this too much, and he was trying to get off on masochism now. He leaned his arms against the desk beside me, resting his head on top of his arms.

  “More,” he said lazily.

  This wasn’t working at all.

  I sighed, not knowing what to do with him. “I thought you said you needed me to wake you up? This isn’t waking you up. It’s making you . . . I don’t know.”

  “More aroused? I know. I lied.” He chuckled.

  I scooted myself off the edge of the desk, straightened my skirt and walked to the door.

  “It’s locked,” he said. “I’ll let you leave if you hit me harder.” His smile was absolutely wicked.

  The arrogance in his expression fueled my fury. This was exactly the kind of underhanded thing he would do. Now I wanted to slap him.

  He stood, his eyes hungry as he stalked closer.

  I forced myself to think things through. I considered how our affinities worked. Touch magic aroused me. Gentle caresses made me relaxed and complacent. When a man I liked touched me, it brought out sexual energies from my magic. Pain crippled it—unless I was masking it and changing it into a more palatable energy.

  With Thatch, everything worked the opposite way. He gained pleasure and power from his own pain and that of others. Pain magic increased his affinity. It didn’t seem like pleasure hurt him in the way pain hurt me, but I’d never really thought about it. I’d always considered him too perfect to have a kryptonite, but he had to have some kind of weakness. And then I had it.

  “Do you have any rope?” I asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fighting Fire with Fire

  If I had intended to lose myself in kinky bondage with him, I could have just as easily done so two minutes before while he’d been begging to hurt me. But I didn’t intend to lose myself. I would be in control. That’s what I told myself.

  Thatch’s weakness was love and kindness. The tenderness and pleasure I needed for my magic was his Achilles heel.

  If he knew I was about to expose him to his kryptonite, he would most likely refuse. He would reject me and push me away the moment he knew what I was about, which was why I had to trick him. I had to make him endure his weakness until he returned to himself.

  His eyes didn’t leave mine as he untied his cravat. There was more fabric there than I’d realized, mo
re than a necktie.

  “You are going to do exactly what I tell you,” I said sternly.

  He turned his head away, hiding his smile. He looked so pleased with himself. He thought he’d caught me in his trap, and I was about to make his pain fantasies come true. He had another think coming.

  “Place your hands behind your back.” I moved behind him and tied his hands against the back of the chair. After years of magic tricks and tying ropes into knots, I’d gotten pretty good at tying and untying.

  He tried to gaze over his shoulder to see what I was doing, but I pushed his head back so he stared straight forward again. “Nope. You sit still. No spells, understand?” I didn’t want him to be able to easily undo what I was doing.

  He complied as readily as I would have had I been drunk on my own affinity. He was easy to trick. I liked the feeling that for once I was the smarter one.

  I came around the chair and scooched his knees closer together so there was room to straddle his legs. A moment of doubt plagued my conscience. If I went through with this, it would change things between us. I had feelings for him, yes, but everything in me told me it wasn’t a good idea to do anything about those feelings. Did I want to cross that line?

  He stared beseechingly at me.

  Yep, I was going to cross that line. For his own good.

  I climbed onto his lap, straddling him. He leaned his head against the headrest. “I am your helpless captive, madam.”

  I nodded. “Good. For once, you are going to listen to me, whether you want to or not. Agreed?” I tried not to allow any tremor into my voice that might belie my nervousness.

  He said nothing. I slapped him across the face. “Do you agree?”

  He sucked in a quivering breath. “Indeed, I’ll do anything you ask.”

  A thrill went through me. I had never known this was what power felt like. A small part of me wondered if I was turning evil. He would probably say I was before I had finished with him.

  I leaned in and kissed him. His lips tasted like black magic and sin, desire and delicious yearning, and a thousand other things I’d thought I understood, but had never truly known.

  Magic fluttered inside me, but I pushed it down, not wanting it to distract me from my mission. His lips parted mine, and a mild electrical pulse grazed my mouth. After another moment, I unbuttoned his vest and then his shirt, kissing my way across his naked skin just above his T-shirt. Pale lines decorated his creamy skin in intricate patterns of Celtic knotwork. These must have been the tattoos he’d designed. The white ink was almost invisible against his flesh.

  “Stop being such a tease. When are you going to hit me again?” he asked.

  I pressed a finger to his lips. “No talking.”

  The black of his eyes no longer filled all the white space, but they were still unnaturally large, like horse eyes. I kissed him again. He tilted his pelvis, grinding against me. It felt nice enough I wanted to sink into the rhythm with him, but if I did, I might forget what I was doing. I slid a few centimeters back.

  I kissed him again. He moaned into my mouth. He tried to pull away, but I held his face in place.

  “You need to unlock the door,” I said. “Can you do that with magic?”

  “If I tell you the truth, are you going to leave?”

  “Not yet.” That was true.

  “I can use all the magic you want, but it won’t make a difference.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I didn’t lock the door. It’s been unlocked this entire time.”

  That lying asshole! I had to laugh. I never knew when to believe him. He chuckled along with me. The black of his eyes shrank more, but they still weren’t his usual stormy gray.

  As I leaned in to kiss him again, he turned his face away from me. “Clarissa, I know what you’re doing. You can stop now, before you lose control.”

  I kissed him along the edge of his square jaw. “I’m not going to lose control.” I felt more in control than ever. The power of my affinity grew inside me and filled me with strength.

  The gray of his irises were still covered by black, but he’d already stopped being so complacent. If only my eyes got all creepy and black to warn the world when I was about to go over to the dark side. Then again, maybe they did, and I just didn’t know it.

  “If you go any further, you aren’t going to be able to undo what you’ve done,” he said. “I’m warning you. You’re being an idiot.”

  I grabbed his lips between my fingers. “You know, you make a lousy student. You never stop talking.”

  He jerked his head away. “You’re being cruel and selfish. I don’t want you to use your affinity against me. And you wouldn’t either if you thought it through.”

  “I’ll stop when you’re the crabby Felix Thatch I know.” I kissed him one last time. Or I thought it would be one last time. It turned into two kisses. Then another. It would have been easier to quit cold-turkey if he hadn’t kissed me back.

  Who was I kidding? I had no intention of stopping. My affinity swelled inside me, pushing up against my diaphragm and expanding into my chest. I ground up against him.

  The air smelled like ozone and lavender. Thatch spoke, his words unintelligible against my lips. Something snapped, the sound as loud as a rubber band. He stood up, his arms closing around me.

  He slipped his hands under my skirt and hooked his thumbs under the edge of my striped leggings and underwear. He shimmied them down to my knees. I groped for his belt, encountered his erection, and squeezed. He groaned into my hair and lifted me onto his desk. His papers and quill scattered to the floor. Magic throbbed in my veins, and my affinity felt as though it would explode. He fumbled with his pants, leaning against me.

  I was so ready for this moment. Being able to call unicorns was highly overrated.

  He eased me onto the desk. His breathing was ragged as he pushed back my skirt. The gray of his eyes reminded me of an Oregon sky.

  “Mr. Thatch?” someone said from outside the door.

  The knob turned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Problem with Sirens

  All that sex energy bouncing around inside me shriveled up and died the moment I heard a student’s voice.

  What the hell was I doing? I was about to have sex with another teacher in an unlocked office? Crapity crap. Stupid stupid!

  The door creaked open an inch. Thatch raised his hand and pushed the door closed with a force of kinetic energy. A lock bolted into place.

  “Mr. Thatch?” a small voice said. “It’s an emergency. Maddy is missing.”

  Ugh. Not Maddy again. I discreetly tried to pull up my underwear.

  “Merlin’s fucking balls,” Thatch said.

  He pulled away from me and waved a hand over himself. His shirt and vest buttoned, and his hair fell into place. His eyes were stormy gray, his expression crabbier than Crab Fest at the beach. He snatched up his wand from his desk, waved it over himself two more times and his erection diminished. I was sure most sixteen-year-old boys would have given anything for that spell during presentations in front of the class.

  Thatch grabbed me by my arm, extracting me from his desk. He opened a door off to the side of his office and thrust me through. With my leggings around my knees, I tripped into a wall. He closed the door behind me. I was in the hallway that led to his room. A sconce lit the way to a solid oak door. The other direction was cloaked in shadows.

  “What do you want?” Thatch asked, sounding scarier than usual.

  I pulled up my pants while I listened at the door.

  “It’s Maddy and Hailey! They’ve been gone for hours.” The voice sounded like Imani. “Grandmother Bluehorse and Mrs. Frost went to look for them in Lachlan Falls, but I don’t think they’re there. I think they went the other direction into the forest.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I heard them talking about unicorns earlier.”

  “Bollocks.”

  Why would they want to go see unicorn
s? Bart was such a jerk to Maddy. This didn’t make any sense. But when we’d last talked, Maddy had mentioned the unicorns.

  “Do unicorns grant wishes? Balthasar said they do, and Maddy has this big wish she wants,” Imani said.

  I was pretty sure I knew what she wished. She wanted to make her siren magic go away, but I didn’t think a unicorn was going to be able to help her with that one.

  Thatch’s voice rose above Imani’s. “Do they have any idea how dangerous it is going into the forest at night on a full moon? Haven’t they heard of werewolves?”

  The night he’d taken me into the forest, chimeras had almost barbequed me as their dinner. My heart raced with fear, thinking of what Maddy and Hailey might encounter. Add werewolves to the mix, and I didn’t know if they would survive the night.

  Thatch and Imani’s voices quieted. I couldn’t tell if they were whispering or had left.

  I tried the door, but it was locked. Thatch probably wanted me to stay quiet and hidden, so I wouldn’t draw Imani’s attention, but I pounded on the wood anyway. I needed to help my students.

  No one came to let me out. Maybe Thatch had left. The hallway beyond his office was dark on one side. The other direction was bright and inviting. I took that path toward the door to his room. I tried the handle, but this was locked too. It was the only door I could see besides the office.

  I stepped into the darkness, feeling the wall for other doors. I didn’t have a wand with me, nor my cell phone. I tried my flashlight spell. Apparently I was overflowing with magic because I created a giant fireball that singed my eyebrows. It took all my effort to tone it back.

  Eventually the passage turned to the right. I kept following it. I ascended a flight of stairs, thinking I had found Thatch’s passage up to my classroom. Instead, it led me down another hallway, but it stopped at a dead end. I doubled back. A tapestry hung on the wall. Wind whistled from behind it. I peeled back one edge of the fabric, shining my light within. This might be a worse option than following the corridor back, but it also might be my only way out.