Wicked Game (16 page)

Before she could probe any further a wave of darkness rushed in, and a ferocious echoed around her, quickening her heart.

How long did you think you’d be able to stay here undetected, little witch?

It was Kaden’s voice, filled with a sharp, ice-cold fury, and before she knew it she was forced violently out, hurled from his mind and dumped back into her own body. When she opened her eyes she saw the smoke had evaporated
and she was knelt on the ground, covered in a sheen of sweat, breathing rapidly, her bones throbbing. She leapt up from the floor in a flash, hastily blowing out the offending candles and scrambling to pack away any remaining spell ingredients, trying to dispose of all evidence for the spell. She could feel something coming, like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, something furious, something deadly…

She scrubbed at the pentagram on the floor until her fingers bled. There was no removing the stain. Instead she covered it with
the dusty rug. It was the best she could do for now. Her mother might not know what she had done but Kaden would. She should have known, should have realised that the mind of a demon was that much different to a human’s, that much more intricate, that he would know if it was being infiltrated.

As she was standing up, dirty, bloody rag dangling from her hand, the basement door crashed open, slamming into the wall with a clash like thunder that vibrated throughout the house. Hazelle jumped and dropped the rag, staring fearfully up at the dark figure in the doorway, his black eyes glinting mercilessly. She swallowed nervously, and opened her mouth to apologise.
The words died in her throat.

“
You…”

He took a step down.

“Silly…”

Another.

“Little…”

And another.

“Witch,” he hissed, his voice lethal and unforgiving.

She retreated from him, though he still hadn’t reached the bottom of the staircase and he was blocking the way out. The urge to run rose in her, hot and strong, but there was no other exit.

“I…I…I didn’t…” she stammered, trembling under his dark gaze.

“
You didn’t
what?”
he sneered, “You thought you could meddle with my mind, that I wouldn’t notice? You’re way out of your league here, little witch. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, what I’ve done for you, what I could do to you…”

She opened her mouth to admit that she had seen his memories, his past relations with other women, how he had used them, how he had murdered some of them in the throes of passion and hot blood. Before she could he rushed at her, a rippling blur of raw masculinity, and he grasped her shoulders, shoving her
hard against the wall. She let out a small cry.

“
I wanted to see…to know…”

“
The real me? Well here he is. Take a long, hard look. You’ve awoken the beast in me Hazelle, the one who has been dormant in your company until now, and it won’t so easily be put back in its cage this time.”

Kaden’s claws pricked her breast in demonstration. She winced,
though she didn’t bleed.

“
No, I wanted to see…I wanted to know…” she gasped, tears stinging her eyes. It seemed so stupid now, so foolish, she had been an idiot to think she could make him understand, that she could begin to understand him.

“
Yes?” he asked acidly, cocking his head to one side, a macabre smile on his face that revealed his serrated teeth. 

“
To know how you truly feel about me!” she shouted savagely at him, and then regretted it as the smile slipped from his face.

To her great surprise he released her, retreating into the shadows. She sank to the
cold stone floor, suddenly so weak, struggling to catch her breath, convinced she had been about to die like so many others before her.

“
How I feel about you,” Kaden muttered, clenching his hands into fists, his claws cutting into his palms, “To know how I feel…about you.”

She nodded desperately, unable to speak, and drew in a shuddering breath as tears
trickled down her cheeks. All she had succeeded in doing tonight was pissing Kaden off and proving to herself that he felt nothing for her, that she was nothing to him. Just another female. Just another conquest. Just another free fuck.

“
How can I answer that when I don’t even know the answer myself?” he asked quietly, the anger she had heard earlier absent from his voice. She glanced up, confused.

He unfurled his fists and looked down at his own bloody hands, his blood dripping into the pentagram too, mingling with her blood and tears. There was something in him that looked almost…defeated. Lost. His shoulders were hunched; his eyes were downcast, as if he was afraid to meet her gaze now. But Kaden had never been afraid of anything; she had seen that
much in his memories. Everyone else was afraid of him, and she was no exception.

He took a step towards her. She recoiled from him, pressing herself into a corner, cowering there like the coward she was. He hesitated, the muscles around his jaw tightening with restraint. Tact was not his forte.

“Instead of resorting to the black arts couldn’t you have just asked?”

She shook her head. “You said it yourself, you don’t know the answer.”

He took another step towards her, slowly, cautiously, trying to show her he was calm and in control, that he was no threat. She wouldn’t fall for his deceit again.

“
I don’t know the answer. You fascinate me, captivate me…even enchant me like some sort of sorceress. I have never met a woman who denied me, who infuriated me the way you do, who made me want them as much as you do.”

When he reached her he crouched down to her level, his eyes different, some of the beast
lingering in them but enough of his human disguise retained to almost make her believe he was docile. Almost.

He reached out with a clawed hand to stroke her face. She flinched away, scared his talons might slice her skin and leave her scarred. This didn’t deter him. He gave her a stern look and tried again, this time slowly, more gently, gauging her reaction, his thumb gliding over her lips.

“It won’t work,” she told him, her voice quivering, “I won’t have sex with you.”

“
I’m not trying to seduce you right now, Hazelle. I’m trying to…to make a truce with you. There is something in you, like a delicate flame, a strength that can be formidable but extinguished so easily…and I’d hate to be the one to blow it out,” he added ominously.

That she could believe. She had seen more of him than anyone else ever had, more than his skin, or his sex, or his sin. She had seen into his mind, she had seen how he saw her, how he admired her, despite all her human weaknesses. If anything it proved to him how strong she was when she overcame them. Perhaps something worthwhile had come from tonight and put them on more equal footing.

When he pressed his lips to hers she didn’t recoil. Instead she let his soft lips warm hers, massage them, his tongue slipping into her mouth subtly and sweeping against hers. He was careful not to cut her with his teeth, taking time and consideration, something she knew he had never done before with a woman, or at least, not like this. Had she managed to tame the beast, or at least put him back in his box for now?

She didn’t know, all she knew was that familiar ache deep down inside, stronger now than ever. Her body was betraying her,
beseeching her to let him take her. She was the one who took the bold move of deepening the kiss. He reacted by grasping her shoulders, drawing her closer to him, pressing her against him as they collapsed against the wall. He broke the kiss and held her to his chest. She could hear his heart beating, so much faster than any human’s, so much stronger than any mortal.

“
So…truce?” he asked, his chest vibrating beneath her ear as he spoke.

She nodded breathlessly, though this time not from fear. She felt giddy from the
new-found sense of discovery and when he kissed her again she didn’t hesitate. She was lost to him, drowning in him, kissing him as zealously as he kissed her, almost missing the sound of the phone ringing from upstairs.

She broke the kiss this time, sucking on her bottom lip, still tasting him. He growled, irritated at the interruption, but didn’t make a remark as she leapt up,
jogging up the stairs and snatching up the phone from the counter. It was almost midnight. Who would be calling at this hour?

“
Hello?” she answered suspiciously.

“
Hazelle? It’s Sophie.”

“
Sophie,” Hazelle repeated, relaxing. With Sophie it was never too late for a social call, especially if there was some hot office gossip.

An arm weaved around Hazelle, corded with muscle, and pressed her against a firm,
lean, finely contoured male body. She hadn’t even heard Kaden come up the stairs, though that was hardly surprising. He was a master of stealth.

He kissed her neck, trying to distract her.

“What’s the matter, Sophie?”

“
I was looking in the paper for my cousin’s engagement announcement when a name on the page caught my attention.”

“
Oh?”

“
That Chris…you did mention that his last name was Jefferson, didn’t you?”

“
Yes,” Hazelle said slowly, something whispering to her conscience. She tensed in Kaden’s arms and he must have sensed it, for he stopped kissing her throat.

“
I read his name in the obituaries. He’s dead, Hazelle.”

Chapter Ten

Hazelle stood beneath the limited shelter of the oak and chestnut trees, rain splashing on her black umbrella, sunlight shining insipidly through the foliage and gleaming on the polished mahogany coffin. The mourners dressed in dark colours were gathered around the gravesite, not many of them, but enough to intimidate Hazelle and make her keep her distance. She had met a couple of his family members on occasion, the weeping mother three times, and she didn’t want to be recognised.

She didn’t know why Kaden had agreed to accompany her, though she was glad that he had. He was dressed in a cleanly pressed black suit, all prim and proper instead of his usual lazy, arrogant, effortlessly alluring self. Not that she wasn’t attracted to him still, even if funeral clothes were not the sexiest of attire. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since they'd stepped out of the car, and she had avoided his dark, penetrating gaze, not knowing how to explain the importance of her being here.

Her gut squirmed with guilt every time she looked at the coffin, knowing Chris was inside, knowing that she had put him there. She’d read the obituary herself, several times over, the fact that he had died on the very same night she had cast the curse failing to sink in the first few times. The official theory from the coroner was that a stroke had killed him, very rare in someone of his age and level of fitness, but not impossible. It had been caused by a blood blockage in the brain and she had known then, beyond all doubt, that she had been the one responsible for his untimely death.

She was so conflicted. She’d wanted Chris gone from her life yet she hadn’t meant to kill him. She loathed him with a fiery, all-consuming hatred, and while ordinarily she wouldn’t be upset by his demise, say for example if he had been hit by a bus while crossing the street, she could feel the guilt stewing in her stomach, haunting her night and day, giving her horrendous nightmares which Kaden had to shake her awake from. He held her afterwards as she trembled from a combination of cold and dread, still feeling Chris hands on her skin, his finger probing her most private place.

Kaden touched her shoulder
then, a gentle, non-threatening gesture that made her jump all the same. She relaxed when she remembered that she and Kaden had agreed on a truce, that if she had questions, that if she wanted to know the truth of him she had only to ask and not resort to magics that allowed her to trespass in his mind. She had learnt her lesson there, much more so after Chris’s death, and another spell of any sort was the last thing on her mind.

“
Did this mortal mean something to you?” Kaden asked, gesturing towards the coffin as they began lowering it into the grave. If he was jealous or suspicious he didn’t show it.

“
He might have done, one day, but he was too far gone in the end.”

She didn’t elaborate. Kaden frowned and didn’t ask her any more questions. Hazelle watched as the priest said last rites over the coffin,
signing the cross, Chris’s mother and sister throwing handfuls of wet earth onto the coffin.

Ashes to ashes.

Dust to dust.

I killed someone.

Hazelle made herself stand and watch it all, not looking away once, as much as she wanted to, as much as she wanted to hurt herself for being so selfish, so foolish. She had to see this. Because of her a son and a brother, an uncle and a nephew had died before his time, because of her a family was distraught, devastated, maybe even destroyed. She couldn’t mourn Chris, she
couldn't
, but she could mourn another piece of her lost innocence and pity the people her curse had inadvertently affected too.

As the mourners began to disperse Hazelle turned away, darting behind an angel monument as they passed, unable to face them. Kaden gave her a queer look, raising one eyebrow. Nobody paid him much attention, apart from the married sister who gave him a long, lingering look of lust, her eyes brightening when she noticed how lush and golden his skin was, how his damp hair shone like blood stained gold in the sunlight. Then they were gone and Hazelle was free to face the consequences of her actions. 

She edged towards the grave, Kaden following her at a distance. She stood on the brink of the hole, too afraid to look in and see his name on the coffin plaque, the name of her unwitting victim, to know, without an absolute doubt, that Chris was dead and gone, that she had murdered another human being. Kaden couldn’t know that she was responsible, she’d never given him any indication of having cast the memory spell before and he hadn’t been interested enough to read the obituary himself. If he had he might have been suspicious of Hazelle, he might have put two and two together and realised she was to blame for this, though she doubted he would understand how she was feeling, a mix of relief and utter self-loathing. Kaden had killed people countless times over the centuries, men and women, jealous husbands and lecherous whores, out of duty, and honour and for pleasure. She had killed accidentally, anonymously, from afar, and she didn’t know how to handle these feelings of mind numbing, soul crushing guilt.

She forced herself to look down at the coffin, to realise the horror of what she’d done, to know that she would never do it again. The shiny mahogany veneer was sprinkled with clots of mud and crushed white lilies, Chris’s name and date of birth inscribed on the gold plague that reflected her and the dark figure looming over her shoulder. Beneath that was his date of death, the day she had damned herself forever.

She began to cry quietly, her shoulders shaking as tears dripped down her cheeks and fell onto the coffin like rain drops. She wondered if Chris had ever expected her to cry over his coffin. As a young man in the prime of his life he couldn’t have thought much about his own death. Had he known how much she hated him? How much she feared him? How much she missed what he should have been and reviled what he became instead?

They’d had a good, steady relationship at first. He’d been polite, courteous and caring, taking her on dates like any decent gentleman, almost like a boyfriend. But things had turned all too sour all too quickly. He’d become possessive, controlling and manipulative, following her, forbidding her to talk to other men, preventing her from going out with female friends if he wasn’t there, keeping an eye on her and holding her hand the entire time so she couldn’t
escape from him. He’d turned violent, pushing her, shoving her, verbally abusing and shouting at her, bullying and blackmailing her, insisting that she would never be able to do any better than him.

She’d only been able to take so much. The police had been little help as there was no proof and Chris’s family were well respected in the community.
The advice from a charity had been to flee, to quit her job, change her number, move house and cut off all contact with him. And that was exactly what she'd done, her mother following her, forgetting their old life. Mom had sacrificed a lot for her and Hazelle had repaid her by murdering another human being and cursing herself in the process.

Kaden’s arms came around her and she turned, sinking into his warm embrace, her tears soaking his shirt. She was glad he wasn’t brooding still, or envious of Chris.
He had no reason to be at all, but she couldn’t convey that. He held her as she sobbed, for Chris, for herself, for the unfairness of it all. She had dragged Kaden into one hell of a mess. She had summoned him from the bowels of hell and condemned him to this mortal coil by her prudence, by her reluctance to give him what he had come here for.

She had inflicted a curse upon one man, and she wasn’t about to do the same to another.

“Kaden?” she said quietly, looking up at him, her eyesight shimmering with tears clinging to her eyelashes.

“
Yes, Hazelle?”

“
Tonight. I want to do it tonight.”

*~*~*

It was a strange thing, to know exactly when, where and with who she was going to lose her virginity. She knew she was a late bloomer, and most young people lost their virtue in the throes of a drunken fumble in highschool or college. Hazelle had always been too shy around men to approach them in nightclubs, too cautious to speak to strangers at parties. She wasn’t ashamed of being a virgin, but it wasn’t something she was proud of either.

Kaden had been hesitant to agree at first, much to her surprise he had admitted that he didn’t want to take advantage of her while she was upset, insisting it was under the unspoken terms of their new truce. That, and the fact that he wasn’t used to fucking crying women, as he so bluntly put it. No matter how much Kaden was changing; no matter how civilised he could act sometimes she never forgot what he was on the inside, what his memories had shown her, what she knew in her heart. He was a vicious, violent, vivacious fucking animal.

She assured him that he wouldn’t be taking advantage of her, that it was what she wanted. Death had made her feel the need to live as much as she could and have a connection, to feel one of the most basic, primal human needs. Life was birth, death, taxes…and sex. Was she ever going to get a better offer than Kaden, a golden skinned, ripped, perfectly masculine god who wanted to pleasure her every which way?

Now that she had murdered Chris she doubted it. Who would want a girl that could kill them with witchcraft? She might have killed Kaden too, had she delved any deeper into his mind.

The truth was that she couldn’t stand to have Kaden around her anymore; knowing that he couldn’t stay indefinitely, knowing that, despite his claims of fidelity to her in his drunken state, such noble intentions couldn’t last. He was a sex demon, an incubus, a nymphomaniac. He thrived on intimate contact with females and she was weakening him every day by denying him his nourishment. She’d come to the conclusion that the quicker she made the cut then the shallower the wound would be.

She was reserved for the rest of the day, more so than she had been over the past few days while waiting for the funeral, contemplating what she could have done differently, blaming herself. Kaden didn’t pry, which she was grateful for. He was silent and distant, his face expressionless, as much a mystery to her as he had been before she had invaded his mind. Despite thriving on intimate connections he was quite a solitary creature, often detached from the world and everyone in it, including her. Would he be there with her when they embraced at last, or would he be somewhere else, thinking of someone else?

That thought alone was enough to bring on the tears again. She hid them from Kaden and busied herself making lunch, trying not to dwell on the dark thoughts that that could drown her in misery. Her life had changed so much since summoning Kaden,  she barely recognised it anymore, not only had she unveiled a world that had been discredited by modern civilisation at large but she had dabbled in something unholy, something unnatural, something unforgivable. Demons came from the devil, spawned from hell, and Kaden was going back there after tonight. Because of what she had done to Chris she knew she would join him there one day, amongst the fire and brimstone and eternal torment of sinners. Would he look at her the same? Treat her the same? Even remember her name amongst the scores of women and whores he bedded?

Dinner was a drab affair that night. Hazelle ate alone. Kaden had gone out somewhere without telling her and mom was at David’s house. Hazelle had told her she was going to a funeral,
though had neglected to tell her whose. She wouldn’t have been able to bear her mother gripping about Chris, cursing his name and insulting him when Hazelle had been the one to put him in his coffin, when he was lying cold in the ground beside of her negligence. Mom would probably find out about his death one day, but not from Hazelle.

Kaden returned not long after dinner. It was already dark outside and Hazelle began to worry he wasn’t coming back at all, so when he walked through the back door she was filled with a mixture of relief, excitement, and dread. She had just finished drying the dishes and putting them away. Kaden was holding a
plain plastic black bag, and she was anxious to know what was inside. Had he gone out to get previsions for the night ahead? She didn’t know the procedure for having sex with a demon.

“
Are you still sure about this?” he asked soberly, his voice deep and dark with desire. The familiar warmth crept through her lions. He must know how alluring that voice was or he wouldn’t use it while trying to seduce her.

She bit down on her bottom lip, blushing fiercely, and nodded. To her astonishment and delight he threw the black bag down on the counter and lunged at her, sweeping her up in his strong arms, pressing his lips to hers in a passionate, possessive, persuasive kiss. She followed his lead, opening up her mouth to him, giving him permission to deepen the kiss. He did just that, taking advantage of the rare opportunity she gave him to touch her, stroking her tongue with his, his mouth hot on hers, drawing her deeper and deeper into his desire as she discovered her own.

“What’s in the bag?” she gasped between kisses, breathless and burning.

He gave a
mischievous smirk.

“
A little surprise for my little witch,” he teased, making her toes curl with another kiss. She didn’t much like being called ‘little witch’, not after what had happened with Chris, but she let it slide for once, too lost to lust, to the longing between her legs.

Kaden was kissing her again, exploring every inch of her mouth with his tongue. She was so breathless, starting to feel dizzy, and thought she might faint. She pressed her palms against his chest, feeling the heat of his skin
blazing through the shirt, trying to gently coax him away without offending him. He looked disappointed.