Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (22 page)

He brushed his fingers sensually across her forehead. “Good girl,” he purred, stretching his body back. And then he patiently began to tutor her, as it became very obvious that she had no idea what she was doing. He didn’t speak, merely would move her hands, direct her head, and said encouraging things, moaning.

Even she
was enjoying it. He was making her feel like a virile sex goddess, even though she was such an amateur. He was treating her and moaning like no one had given him so much pleasure.

He was in the throes, she suddenly realized when he pressed down on her head. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, good girl,” he told her, rather—begged her.

Her stomach clenched with guilt.

Her mind also churned with the need of nectar, churned with the fear of not having it again.

She warred with herself.
Collect… Collect… It’s time.

With a whimper, she allowed her needle-like fingers to protrude from behind her front teeth, lowering down until they pricked into his cock, and bit into him.

She heard him gasp.

After the bite, a mortal man was supposed to simply fall asleep afterwards with a happy smile on his face.

Moriarty, however, sat up like a rocket and shoved her off of him violently, tossing her through the air and off the foot of the bed.

The world around her was swimming—as if the air was turning into molasses. “Ugh,” she chirped, her eyes filled with fear. “Uh!”

He nearly knocked the lamp over as he clicked it on. She could hear him making sharp pants, incredulous, no doubt, to find her small fang marks lodged into his member. But then he jumped over the bed and knelt down next to where she was sprawled on the floor. “Alice!” she heard his voice shout with concern.

It felt like it was impossible to breathe deeply. Her head throbbed, pulsing. The world went black.

*
*
*

Moriarty tried to hold up Alice’s head, but her whole body went as limp as a ragdoll’s. “Fuck!” Moriarty shouted, unable to contemplate what just happened. He looked back down at his cock and rubbed over the small holes that were as small as a needle’s.

“Alice? Alice, come on, darling…” he fretted, tapping her cheek, wondering if he broke her neck. He checked her pulse—pulse was there. Her breathing was fine. What…

He watched her fingernails turn white. He narrowed his eyebrows and then, saying to himself how impossible it was, lifted up her eyelid. The once green eyes were now going white.

She was going into honey
shock. She was a goddamned honey nymph. And she had tried to pollinate him.

A virginal honey nymph? He had never heard of it. He and Ashcroft used to constantly fight the honey nymph hives a few centuries ago, when their numbers were growing out of control, and they were all wanton sluts—even when they were fighting for their lives
T
hey were one of the most brutal races
, all born warrioresses, but
there was something unduly slutty underneath their blood-thirsty fierceness.

And he was seconds away from just paying for chef school for her. Paying for an apartment for her. Paying anything and everything just to give her happiness, to keep other men from using her like he had. And all along, she was setting him up to pollinate him, to render his manhood useless.

Serves her right
, he thought to himself callously. And then sat back on the ground, pressing his back against the bed, feeling uncomfortably sober considering the amount of drinking he had done.

He stared at her. Damn it, if she wasn’t so beautiful. His heart ached as he looked at her. He had been so comfortable with her last night, she had been so sweet. Even her voice was innocent, like a breeze.

He moved to a position so he could move her silky blonde hair away from her angelic face. “You tried to tell me, didn’t you? I didn’t let you leave…”
He
knew she couldn’t hear him, but he was fretting out loud, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair.

She must have been a recent release from the hive. But she couldn’t have been trained as a collector—collectors came into the bedroom for the first time like they were Amazonian warriors stepping onto the field of battle. Not like a nervous little bride who didn’t know how to even suck him off properly.

Pornography should have taught her more than that!

No wonder she seemed so traumatized by losing her virginity. Was her hive punishing her? For what? What could she have done?

Either way, she was in honey
shock. Many nymphs could die from drinking from an immortal’s blood. Vampires could also die in such a way. They would immediately go down, just like this. Lifeless. And they would simply wither away without help.

Maybe she was a honey nymph, maybe she had tried to pollinate him, but she didn’t deserve this. It was the nectar addiction—it did things to their mind. It made them treacherous. It made
them do whatever their Queen demanded…

He wasn’t going to just leave her to die. And he wasn’t taking her back to any Queen that would let an innocent collect for the hive, either.

Damn
conscience
. Damn feelings. Damn concern!  What was happening to him?

“God damn it! This is all I need,” he groaned, getting up and quickly getting dressed. He threw on his jacket and then wrapped her up in a blanket to protect her from the cold air and the snow falling from the sky outside. “Hopefully
,
for your sake
,
Charlotte has smoothed things over by now with
my
master,” he told Alice, picking her easily up into his arms.

He carried Alice down the hallway and quickly out the hotel, past the sleeping footman and the desk clerk playing on her smart phone with such enthusiasm that she didn’t even notice the limp girl in his arms. 

He placed her gently into the backseat of his car. “You’re not going to like me at all,
My Dear
,” he told her. “But I’m going to sever you from your hive whether you let me or not. When the nectar’s out of your system, only the sweet, pretty girl will be left behind, and you’ll be free.” He grumbled
,
“But you’re not free yet.”

She was his now. All his. And he liked that prospect maybe too much.

*
*
*

Morning light was just flooding the sky when Moriarty found himself trudging through the heavily falling
, very early-season
snow with Alice still limp in his arms. The snow was falling thickly enough that it began to sting his eyes. He looked down at Alice’s face.

She was just so damn beautiful looking at her felt like a punch to his chest. He had to
convince
Ashcroft to work up a honey
shock elixir for her, and soon. Hopefully the man didn’t still want to kill him.

He shifted her in his arms and then tried to get open the heavy oak door, when it opened for him, to his surprise, revealing Charlotte who, at seven in the morning, was already awake and ready for the day… And she looked healthy, which was just as surprising. “Moriarty!” she said, opening the door wide. “Who is she, and what’s wrong with her?” she quickly asked as he came into the foyer.

“Where’s Ashcroft?” he demanded, looking around.

“He left about a half-hour ago, looking for you!” she explained, incredulous. “He was going to apologize to you and everything… I think. Or at least grumble and offer a raise.”

Although the prospect of either an apology or a raise from Ashcroft was appealing, Moriarty couldn’t care less at the moment. His heart simply raced at her response. “
When do you suppose he’ll return when he doesn’t find me?
” Moriarty asked, sweeping past her and moving quickly up the stairs. If she said anything other than ‘any second’, he was going to put Alice down and go hunt him down.

Charlotte was right behind him. “What’s wrong?”

“I need honey
shock elixir,” he told her, kicking in the door to his room already. “I need Ashcroft to make it.”

She gasped and swept to his side. “She’s a honey
nymph?” Again, she was surprising him with her concept of Otherworldly creatures. “How long as she been in honey
shock? Did she try to bite you?”

“Try? She did bite me
! Not
t
wo
hours ago. I left the hotel right after,” Moriarty quickly responded, becoming more and more amazed by her knowledge. Surely, Ashcroft hadn’t told her about the honey nymphs—they hadn’t dealt with them at all for more than a century. “I need to go get Ashcroft…”

“We don’t even know where he is. I can make the elixir,” she assured, but looked nervous, faltering back on her heels.

He narrowed his eyebrows. “You can?” Certainly, she wasn’t the same stupid, worthless Charlotte he’d come to know and tolerate. “Go, do, please!” he waved her off.

“I have questions when I get back,” she assured, sweeping up towards Alice and putting her hand to the side of her face, staring deeply into her. Then just as quick, she visibly snapped out of it and said, “Ashcroft isn’t going to like this at all, you know. He won’t want one in the house.”

“Charlotte, please,” Moriarty said, this time softer, allowing his desperation to show.

Her lips pressed together and she sighed. “Get this wet blanket off of her, and get her warm.” She gestured to his wet coat, still covered in melting snowflakes. “You too, okay?”

He happily obliged as soon as Charlotte left the room, thanking the heavens that she seemed confident enough to know what she was doing. He hadn’t been looking forward to desperately arguing with Ashcroft, because Charlotte was right—Ashcroft was not going to like this at all. He knew all too we’ll the dangers of bringing a honey nymph away from her hive.

He shucked the blanket and the damp pajamas off of Alice, trying not to revel too much
of
her body, and then he placed her under the covers and lit a fire. He was just finishing putting dry clothes on himself when Charlotte scampered back into the room without knocking, holding a large mug of a steamy, citrusy
smelling liquid, and chirping, “You know the honey nymph elixir and the potion that puts women into labor is practically the same recipe? Off by a single lemon!” She sat down on the side of the bed and motioned to Alice with her chin. “I need you to hold her mouth open for me,” she instructed.

“Since when did you become a witch?” he asked, incredulous by the way Charlotte was suddenly appearing—like a confident young enchantress with the training of someone far beyond her years. He smoothed the side of Alice’s cheeks with his hands and slowly opened her mouth up. “How long will this take to work?” he asked, before Charlotte responded to his last question.

“A few hours,” Charlotte replied with s shrug. She stuck her finger in the drink as if checking it for warmth, looked indecisive for a moment, but then slowly eased some of the liquid into Alice’s open mouth. As she was pouring the liquid, Alice’s fangs slowly started to lower from behind her teeth. Charlotte, looking amazed for a moment, put down the mug onto the bed stand and then put her small fingers around the fangs and barely tugged. The fangs fell completely into her fingers. “These will never grow back, you know. Which means she can’t collect for her hive. The Queen will most likely just have her killed for being a collector who can’t collect.” She dropped the needle
like fangs to the side of the desk.

“I don’t want her to go back to her hive, anyway,” Moriarty assured firmly.

Charlotte glanced at him, looking amused, and then pushed herself off the bed and walked into the bathroom to wash her hands. When she came back, she said, “So,
this
is a story I’ve got to be told.”

His eyebrows narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” she retorted, incredulous. “How the hell you fell for a honey nymph! Don’t you know what they’re like? They’re as nutty as fruitcakes, and mean as hell!”

“This one isn’t,” Moriarty assured.

“Look, she’s going to start going through nectar sickness, and you don’t want to be here when she does. It’s not gonna be pretty at all,” she advised.

“What do you expect me to do? Even if she did have fangs, I wasn’t going to let her go back to her hive!” Moriarty barked aggressively.

Charlotte merely responded by raising her eyebrows and putting her hands on her hips. With a puff of air, Moriarty explained… Everything. As embarrassing as most of it was. And Charlotte’s expression didn’t change through the whole time—she just continued to look entertained, as if he was telling her some sort of bedtime story.

Charlotte finally laughed by the end of Moriarty’s story, when he was describing the bite. With a playful bounce, she hopped over to Alice and tried to peel open her eyelids to look at eyes that were no longer whitening—they were very obviously clearing up back to
their natural
green color.

Moriarty was amazed that Charlotte had done something right—and fast!