Entwined Enemies (3 page)

Fancy drives away, kicking up gravel and dust as she goes.

Mason, what did they do to you?

The assault I just endured was disturbing, but it doesn’t feel real yet. Like I wasn’t really here for any of it. My thoughts are elsewhere. I need to know what they did to Mason.

I haul myself off the ground and make my way upstairs. My lungs feel like they’re filled with razor blades, making every breath an effort. I walk through the front door of my loft, which has also been left open.

The place is trashed. There was a scuffle, which means Mason must have fought back. I can see grooved scratch marks in the walls, and splatters of blood. A trail of it leads to the bedroom.

I follow the trail, forcing one foot in front of the other. I don’t know what to expect. It feels like I’m stuck in an unnaturally long, drawn-out nightmare. As if I’m walking through a thick morass that is pushing against me.

Each baby step requires more effort than the one before. I’m fighting with myself, dreading what I’m about to see. What I don’t want to see. What I need to see.

I round the corner and look inside. Then up. I have to see Mason.

He’s been crucified to the wall through his hands.

Baldy and Cropped Hair took their time, found the wall studs, and drove two silver spikes into each one of his palms. Mason is just dangling there, bloody and beaten. Limply unconscious. His naked body is covered in deep cuts that are still bleeding.

That’s when I see the most amazing sight I could hope for in this moment. That’s when I see the impossible.

His chest heaves weakly. Mason is breathing. He’s alive.

Suddenly I’m not tired anymore. I vault onto the bed, grab the end of one spike, and pull on it with all my strength. It doesn’t move. It’s been driven into the wood and metal with the strength of a werewolf.

I put my entire body into it, propping one foot on the wall while pushing against it with my leg. Then the other. Nothing is holding me up now except for my grip on the silver spike. I keep pulling. Straining every muscle, refusing to let go.

My body betrays me as both hands moisten with sweat and slip off the spike. I fall onto the bed beneath me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the physical strength.

Candice and Saffron would know what to do. They’d have a spell for this problem, just like always. Candice has repaired so many of my broken possessions lately. The doors, the couch, the kitchen table. She would know what to cast in this situation. They haven’t taught me enough spells.

I know some divination and enticement spells, protection magic too. I can even heal myself in a simplistic way, just like I can kill somebody in a simplistic way. Expensive spells that are easy to cast and intended only for emergencies.

Well, this is an emergency, but I don’t know any spells that can heal somebody else. I was going to learn those next. That’s why Candice and Saffron sent me to all those industrial first-aid courses. To learn the mundane way of doing things before the magical one.

I stand on the bed, next to Mason on the wall. He’s alive, but not for much longer—not unless I do something to help him.

I have the training, but there’s nothing I can do. He’s not a person, he’s a werewolf. The silver spikes through his hands must be preventing him from healing the way he normally would. They’re making it impossible for him to recover on his own, like he probably would have already, but I don’t have the strength to remove them.

I can’t believe how useless I feel. Despite everything that I know about medicine and magic, none of it can help me now. Every spell I was taught serves me alone. They preserve Jess and nobody else.

I’m the Maiden to the Mother and Crone. My purpose is seduction. I’ve been okay with that for a long time, but that ends now. I want something else, the ability to help people other than myself.

Please don’t die, Mason. Not after we found each other. Not after we’ve come this far. It’s been a short courtship, but also my first. I’ve never been in a relationship with a man before. Not in sixty-nine years. I didn’t know what was missing until you came along. Please don’t die.

I’m crying uncontrollably. I can’t stop the tears draining out of my eyes. I lift his unconscious head in my hands and do the only thing I can do. The only thing in my power to do, because if this is my last moment with this man, I need him to know how I feel. I need him to hear it.

“I love you, Mason.”

Then I kiss him.

I’m not a fully trained witch. I’m only a Maiden. Candice has been a Maiden and is now a Mother. Saffron has been every kind of witch. Maiden, Mother, and Crone. They could help Mason. They would know what to do in this situation.

I may have been at this for over five decades, but I’m still new at this. Nothing I say can or will make a difference here. The Latin words are hollow without knowing the spell intonation behind them.

Even the quicksilver pool can tell how eagerly I want to help Mason. It’s wide open to me, reaching across the ether with multiple tendrils. My body warms at their invisible touch, caressing me, encouraging me. The magic wants to be cast, to break the laws of physics, but I haven’t been taught what to do.

Preserve the Lust uses my body as the conduit and leeches stamina from Mason into the quicksilver pool. Lust is objective. The fuel I drain from his body.

Lust.

I stop kissing Mason for a moment. A thought springs into my mind. It’s ridiculous. He’s bleeding from so many cuts on his body. I certainly don’t want to make them worse, but what have I got to lose? I can either watch him die or give what I’m thinking a try.

I can’t believe I’m even contemplating it. Are there any better options available to me? If there are, I can’t come up with any. It’s this or nothing.

The surface of my skin tingles with the quicksilver tendrils, which sense my intentions. They want to help in any way possible, even when I don’t know what that might be exactly.

This is reckless. He’s still unconscious, but I’ll risk it all for him. I’ve stolen so much of his stamina, so much of Mason’s lust for the quicksilver pool. Now it’s time to give some back. I have to at least make the attempt.

The tendrils attach to my body, using my body to bridge the gap, but in reverse this time. I steal one last kiss from Mason’s lips. I want him to feel how much I love him and want to keep him in my life. He moans, but I can’t tell if that’s from pain or pleasure. There’s no time to find out.

I fall onto my knees on the bed in front of Mason and gently take him into my mouth. There’s no response at first, but I don’t stop. I’m not going to give up, not when this is the only option that comes to mind. Not while he’s still drawing breath.

I stroke his undercarriage with a light touch. I savor him with my tongue, even if he hasn’t completely risen to the occasion. I grip the base of his root a little harder. Restrict the blood in his head, all the while passing my lips over him lovingly.

I look up for a reaction, but his eyes are still closed, so I stroke this side of his face.

That’s when the worm turns. Blood starts to pump, filling his length and engorging his width. Despite all the pain that Mason must be in, I can always count on him to make my touch the priority to his body. I’m depending on that now.

He angles upward like a pike being readied against a charge, the onslaught of what I have planned for him. I really hope this works. I leave as much saliva on him as I can before standing up in front of him, pushing my cut-offs down to my ankles and kicking them off. There’s no time to remove my sneakers, which is fine. I’m going to need the traction.

Mason is just high enough on the wall for me to pull this off, dangling from the wall by his hands, thanks to the bed. Even so, I’ll need to suspend my own weight. I can’t lean up against him at all. I don’t want to put pressure on any of his open wounds. He’s already in enough pain.

That means there’s really only one position available to me. I turn around, spread myself open with one hand, brace myself with the other, and envelop him.

I start slow at first, teasing his tip, before I fully accept him inside. I left enough spittle on him to make it possible. If Mason could only see me now. I have to engage every stomach muscle I have to hold this awkward position.

It burns, but not in a bad way. It actually engages the muscles between my legs more than usual. This must be why some women get addicted to core exercises.

Mason groans, which is a sound I recognize. Not pain. He’s enjoying this on some level, but his eyes are still closed, so I keep going. There’s no time to lose now. I’m committed to making this work.

I take his rigidity in its entirety, surrounding and warming Mason between my legs. He doesn’t have to do anything. I’m going to do it all. Oh gods. The pain in my core. Balancing in this position is so hard without something to push off against, but none of that matters.

I stop caring about the pain, blotting it out of my mind, and ride Mason like a cowgirl rides a horse.

“Jess…?” Mason says weakly.

I look back at him over my shoulder. Mason is in rough shape. His eyes are barely open, not really looking at me.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “Everything will be all right. Stay with me, Mason.”

A wave of heat travels up my spine and into my limbs. It spreads through my body like a second wind. Suddenly the pain of holding myself in this position isn’t so hard to endure anymore.

My body fights the fatigue. I can do this. I’m not going to collapse. I can finish what I started. Mason is another question. His consciousness is fading.

“Don’t you dare slip away on me!”

“Jess… can’t… I can’t…”

“Shhhhh. You don’t have to do anything. Stay with me, Mason.”

I lean forward and brace both hands on my knees. Milk him with my ass in the air. Mason gets to see it all if he wants. My secret garden laid bare and then some. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. Nothing he won’t see again if this works. Except this time I’ll be giving back.

I drive the length of him up against the back of my cavern, to that little explosive node, which sends shocks of ecstasy into my body.

I’m not holding back now, despite his open wounds. I don’t know how long Mason can keep going. I only need to get myself there to establish a connection. The only change is that I’m not being taken. I’m doing all the work.

It’s really no different than pleasuring myself at the moment. So I let my mind drift, remembering the times Mason had his way with me. Every time he took me as a half-man, half-wolf. I draw on those memories now, flipping through them in my mind. His wild, frenetic abandon.

I can sense the tipping point coming as the pressure builds inside me. I’m almost there, the chasm of release that awaits me, getting closer with each second. I’m pushing us toward that precipice. Pain and pleasure and exhaustion. Indistinguishable from each other.

I’m heading to the place where they meet, taking us there, hopefully not for the last time.

The thought of Mason turning his car around and driving through the night to be with me again, in the Mustang he named Fancy, gives me the strength to keep going now. I improvised a spell then as well.

The summoning I cast then wouldn’t have worked quite so well if Mason didn’t want to be with me, like I wanted to be with him. Closing a distance that shouldn’t have been widened.

We can’t get enough of each other. It’s a hunger I’ve never felt before. I would do anything for Mason, give any part of myself to him. Every part, all my secrets, for him alone.

The man I love.

The dam holding back my orgasm breaks, releasing a torrent that pours out of me. A sudden, uncontrollable deluge that splashes Mason, drenching him with my lovemaking. And then, finally, as it often does, the vision arrives.

I see them. I can actually see them with my eyes, the tendrils I’ve only ever sensed in the past. They’re more than just a feeling now. Gossamer extremities that reach out to me from the quicksilver pool. I’m not just tapped into the pool right now. I am the pool and the pool is me.

The tendrils are wrapped around my body, so beautiful, so delicate. Not one or two, but scores of them, each one spider-web thin and glowing. They are attached to every part of my body, pulsing in time with my breath, matching the beat of my heart. That’s when I realize they are awaiting my commands.

Give back
, I urge them as the orgasm continues.
Give Mason a taste of what I have repeatedly taken from him. The lust of a werewolf turned into the fuel of our spellcasting pool.

Fortunately, the quicksilver wants to escape. It’s always looking for a way to drain out of the pool. Now I’m letting it, giving the quicksilver a place to go, a clear destination. The source from which it was drawn in the first place.

I’ve never done anything like this before, never reversed the flow. I’m infusing instead of siphoning. This is brand-new territory. I really don’t know what’s going to happen next. The alternative is letting Mason die, which isn’t an option, so I keep going.

The backlash is immediate. Mason’s eyes bolt open. He isn’t struggling for alertness anymore. He’s wide awake. His entire body inflates. Every muscle flexed, every vein is brought to the surface. I gasp at the sudden fullness of him.

It’s still Mason; the size of him inside me is more like half-man, half-wolf werewolf proportions. I’m the conduit making it possible, but his member has turned into a lightning rod, conducting the quicksilver back into his body.

Mason is no longer dangling from the silver spikes. He’s holding himself up, both hands still impaled. If I had to guess, I’d say every sinew in his body is being flexed at the same time. That can’t feel good.

That’s when I sense a conflict in the ritual. It’s almost like Mason’s body is trying to change, to become the wolf, but he can’t complete the transformation. What am I doing wrong? I’ve siphoned the lust from Mason into the quicksilver pool. Why won’t it go back again?

Most of the times I drained him, he was a half-man, half-wolf at the time.

Yes, that must be it! The quicksilver I’m returning to Mason wants him to assume that form again, albeit forcibly. The silver spikes in his hand, however, must be preventing him from doing that.