Текст книги "Bewitched"

Автор книги: Laura Thalassa

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER 34

As soon as we return to my room, I grab a pen and snatch up my notebook.

There are several things I need to remember. I rush to write them all down, starting with the Sarmatian command words I’ll need to invoke to open and close the doorway, then ending with damnatio memoriae and the Law of Three.

Ever since Memnon uttered these last two concepts, he’s been in a peculiar mood—half-broody, half-contemplative.

The idea that I’m some washed-up ex-lover who went to all this trouble…it’s the sort of story you spin to make some ridiculous worldview make sense.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look into it.

I put my pen down and turn to the man himself. Memnon’s taken a seat at the chair by my bedside, and he’s studying the dozens of notebooks I’ve shelved on my bookcase.

I don’t know why he hasn’t left me yet. I expected him to. What I wasn’t expecting was to enjoy his company. He’s weird and edgy and just…a lot all at once, but I don’t really want to part ways with him.

His attention moves from the notebooks to the sticky notes that pepper my belongings—they’re on the covers of my textbooks, one is on my lampshade, another on my desk, and still another on the back of my door. I know that last one is a reminder to check that I’ve packed my notebook for the day.

Memnon taps on the chair’s armrest and jiggles his leg impatiently.

“Stop it,” I say.

Memnon’s gaze flicks to me. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s a question in his eyes.

“You look like you’re trying to figure something out.” He looks like he’s trying to figure me out. I rub my arms. “It’s making me nervous.”

His fingers cease tapping; his leg stops jiggling. Not that it does any good. Memnon caged his restlessness, but I can see it still prowling in his eyes.

I move over to my bed and sit on the mattress, so close to Memnon, my knee brushes his.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Beyond Memnon the Cursed.”

At my words, the sorcerer seems to tear himself away from his own thoughts. “I was never Memnon the Cursed. I was Memnon the Indomitable. I presume you gave me the new title when you buried me.”

I bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him on that point. “What else?” I say instead.

He tilts his head a little, considering my question. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

“I don’t know—anything, everything.”

He stares at me for a long time, those enigmatic eyes seeming to plumb my depths. He inhales, then begins.

“I was born Uvagukis Memnon, son of Uvagukis Tamara, queen of the Sarmatians, and Ilyapa Khuno, sorcerer king of the Moche.”

“They ruled different nations?”

“Est amage, they ruled different landmasses. My father was from the area you know as Peru. The only reason he met my mother is because he knew how to manipulate ley lines.”

Ley lines are magical roads that lie like a net across the world. They’re areas where space and time wrinkles. If one knows how to navigate them correctly, they can cross entire oceans in minutes. Hell, they can travel to other realms in minutes—the Otherworld and the Underworld share these same ley lines with earth.

I don’t know much more than that about them.

“You’re telling me that two thousand years ago, your dad left South America to visit a continent across the world?”

Because that would upend the entire history nonmagical humans have established about the moment the East met the West. But then, it would also explain why I discovered Memnon himself, a man who lived in Eurasia, asleep in a crypt somewhere in northern Peru.

“He did more traveling than just that,” Memnon says. “But yes.”

I’d like to linger on this, but the truth is I’m not particularly interested in Memnon’s dad. I’m interested in Memnon himself.

I search his face. “What else?”

The corners of his eyes crinkle, like I’m amusing him—or maybe he’s simply pleased to have captured my attention.

“I learned to ride a horse at the same time I learned to walk, and I killed my first opponent at thirteen,” he says. “But perhaps most importantly, my power first awoke when you called to it.”

Normally, supernaturals drink a concoction called bittersweet to Awaken their powers. To hear that this didn’t happen to Memnon, that instead, a person—Roxilana, I assume—awoke it…

“How?”

Memnon gives me a heavy look. “Trauma. When you were a child, a Roman legion attacked your village and killed your family. In your fear, you called out to me through our bond.”

I’m barely breathing. I don’t bother correcting him on the fact this is not me he’s speaking of.

“I was confused for many moons about the fearful voice in my head. I didn’t know who you were or where you lived—or even that you lived. I thought you were a spirit, one who spoke a language I didn’t initially know. And you couldn’t hear me, not for a long while.

“But once you did”—Memnon smiles—“things got very fun.

“We spoke to each other all the time—sometimes when we didn’t even mean to. I remember being in the middle of battle when I heard you curse at yourself for breaking a bowl.”

I stare at Memnon, hanging on every word.

“I started searching for you when I was thirteen, but it was only once I was crowned king that I was able to lead my horde west, into the Roman Empire, and find you.”

The sorcerer falls silent.

There’s an ache in me, a very real ache, at his story. I don’t know why. Maybe because it sounds romantic—kings, and hordes, and a search for a woman he was connected to but could not find.

“What else?” I ask.

Memnon’s eyes linger on me. For a moment, they are so incredibly desolate. Then his mouth curves into a sly smile, and that calculating gleam reenters his expression. “Curious, Empress?”

My own eyes fall to his lips. “Why do you call me that? ‘Empress’?”

He settles back into his seat, and now his mouth curves into a sinful smirk. “Because the Romans subjugated you, and I quite like paying homage to your power in their language. It gives me a petty little thrill. You liked it even more.”

“Roxilana,” I whisper. “This all happened to Roxilana.”

Memnon’s eyes are like embers; I can’t look away from him. I sense so many pent-up feelings behind that face.

“Yes,” he agrees, “it happened to my Roxilana.”

This moment feels as though it’s balanced on a tightrope. At any second, one of us could fall.

“What do you want?” I say softly.

“Everything,” he says. “My empire, my riches, my palace, my adoring subjects. But most of all—I want you.”

I don’t know who moves first, him or me, only that we come together, and it feels inescapable. There is my rational, orderly mind, and then there is this. Instinct.

Memnon’s mouth finds mine, and he ravages it, kissing me with all the intensity one would expect from a warrior-king. I gasp in a breath when suddenly his tongue is there, sweeping through.

My body awakens at the contact, feverish for more of this, whatever this is. I delve my fingers into his hair.

Memnon groans into my mouth, then hoists me into his arms, wrapping my legs around him and cradling my ass.

“My queen, my queen,” he murmurs. “I need you to remember.”

“Shut up about that,” I murmur back. Memnon’s cute little delusions could ruin a perfectly good make-out session.

If I thought the sorcerer would be offended at my rudeness, I thought wrong. He smiles against my lips, then nips my lower one.

I moan.

“That is no way to talk to your king.”

On second thought, I could totally get behind role-playing this. “I’ll talk to you the way I want.”

At my words, Memnon growls, squeezing my ass, his smile searing against my lips. He maneuvers us onto my bed. My back bounces a little as it hits the mattress.

My fingers run over his scar, and he lets out a jagged exhale.

He pulls away, his breathing heavy. “Time to tell me to leave.”

Time to leave? I feel as though we’ve only gotten started.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I find out just how sweet that pussy of yours really is, and I don’t stop until I feel you come on my tongue.”

Memnon has teased me plenty about intimacy with him, but he’s offering the real thing to me now.

I find that I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a long while.

I stare at him for several seconds, and I stroke his cheek again. “Stay.”

His jaw clenches beneath my touch, and the heat in his eyes grows.

He leans back in and kisses me again, only this one is full of carnal promise. “As you command, est amage,” he whispers.

Memnon grinds his hips against my pelvis, and I gasp into his mouth, the sound eliciting a grin from him.

His hands move to my body then, stroking up and down my sides. Eventually, they find the hem of my shirt. He fingers it, the action reminding me of when we first laid eyes on each other in his tomb. He played with my clothes then too. Only, we never had a chance to take it any further.

Memnon tugs the shirt up, unpeeling it from my body inch by inch.

“So beautiful,” he says as he takes in my exposed flesh, the look in his eyes searing. He saw my skin not even twenty-four hours ago, but concern shadowed his gaze then. Right now, he has no such restraint.

I’m still wearing a bra, and his fingers glide over one of the straps. A lock of dark hair slips over his eye as he studies the undergarment, grazing his thumb over the lace cup. I realize then that the sorcerer may have never seen a bra before. I don’t know what they wore during Memnon’s time, but it probably wasn’t this.

I sit up, forcing the sorcerer back to his knees. Then I take his hand. “You undo it from the back.” I guide his arm behind me to where my bra hooks together.

Memnon watches my face the entire time, more fascinated with my features than he is with the workings of my lingerie. Still, his hand closes on the clasp.

“This feels like something I would greatly enjoy breaking, Selene,” he admits.

Despite his words, his other hand comes up, and after a few probing touches, he deftly unhooks the bra. He slides the thing off and casts it aside.

“These breasts…” He bends and takes one into his mouth.

I gasp at the intense and unexpected contact, my fingers delving into his hair. Memnon sucks on my nipple, the sensation going right to my core. I gasp again, my grip on his hair tightening as the rest of me goes boneless.

Memnon cradles my back, holding me in place. “Sweet woman, you feel better than memory serves.” His lips move away from my nipple, trailing kisses along my skin until he gets to the other breast, which he then promptly takes into his mouth.

“Goddess,” I breathe, holding him like I’ll fall if I let go.

He rolls my nipple between his teeth before releasing it. “Don’t praise your goddess—praise me, your king,” he says, his breath fanning against my skin.

“You want me to call you my king?” I mean, I really could get into this role-playing.

“Yes,” he breathes.

Using the fingers threaded through his hair, I turn his head and lean in to his ear. “Would you like me to say it in English or Sarmatian, est xsaya?” My king.

A shudder works its way through his body.

He shakes his head and flashes me an intense look. “You don’t know what that does to me, hearing you say those words in our language.” he murmurs, his gaze fixed on my skin.

And then his mouth is back on my flesh, and he’s kissing down, down, down my torso.

I grab the back of his shirt, tugging it up. Memnon, after all, is not the only one who wants a glimpse of bare flesh.

The sorcerer pauses. “Does my queen want me to remove my shirt?” he asks in Sarmatian.

Before I even have a chance to answer, he pulls the garment off, then tosses it aside.

I get a sick little thrill at the thought of his clothes casually littering my room. I find I want them to decorate my space just as much as my Post-it notes do.

The sight of his exposed torso has me drawing in a sharp breath. I already knew his body is a work of art, but seeing it up close is an entire experience.

I reach out and run my hands over his thick coiled muscles. Beneath my touch, Memnon’s skin pebbles. I can feel those smoky-brown eyes of his watching me as I explore him.

There are lines of scars all over the place, mapping out the violence this man was once exposed to. My hands stop roving when I get to his tattoos.

“Will you tell me what these mean at some point?” I ask. He’s already said a little about them, but I’m curious about the rest.

Memnon cups my face, and the look he’s giving me makes me feel beloved. I like it far, far too much for my own good.

“At some point, I won’t need to,” he says cryptically.

He releases me but only so his hands can move to the seam of my pants. In a couple of deft movements, he undoes the top button and zipper.

“Lie back, little witch,” Memnon commands.

My pulse is racing, but there’s something about this sorcerer that also makes me feel so very…safe.

Maybe it’s simply the fact he actually did save my life.

I lower myself back to the bed just as Memnon’s hands hook over the top of my pants and my underwear. He pulls them down, his eyes fixed to my flesh.

The sorcerer tugs them off and then skims his palm up my calf and smooths over my thigh. His gaze scours my body, drinking it in for so long that a little bit of nervous magic sifts from my palms.

Memnon’s eyes slowly drift up to mine. “You hold me in your thrall, little witch,” he says, his voice husky. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen you this way.”

Role-playing—we’re just role-playing.

“Does my king like what he sees?” I ask in Sarmatian. It’s supposed to be an easy, playful response. Only after it leaves my lips do I realize I’ve opened myself up for rejection.

A wry smile graces his mouth at the endearment. “Every inch of you is sheer perfection, my queen. Api fashioned the most flawless woman when he made you.”

I swallow, unsure how to respond to that. It isn’t a rejection, but it feels equally hard to accept, for some reason.

Memnon lowers himself between my thighs. “Now, soul mate, let’s see this pretty pussy of yours.”

Soul mate?

Oh no, no, no.

I press my fingers to Memnon’s lips and shake my head. “You can call me your queen and your empress and your witch, but—not that.”

I’m only willing to role-play so far.

Memnon arches a brow. Gently, he pries my hand away from his mouth, pausing to give each fingertip a kiss. It’s oddly…affectionate.

“All right…Selene,” he agrees.

He returns his attention to my core. The way he’s looking at it makes me want to shift. Memnon moves first one of my legs, then the other, over his shoulder.

Then he spreads my outer lips apart and stares at my vagina like he’s trying to divine the future from it.

“How I have missed this too.”

Memnon leans in and peppers kisses along those outer lips. His mouth is so light and reverent, I jolt a little when his tongue finally strokes up my seam, the touch so much bolder than what came before it.

He groans. “Ah, the taste of you, Empress!” His hold on me tightens. “All the liquor in the world cannot intoxicate me the way you can.”

I shift under him, digging my heels into his back as my nerves ratchet up.

His fingers knead a little into my hips. “I can feel how tense you are,” he says. “Relax, I’m going to take care of you.”

I hadn’t realized I tensed up, but I am fairly rigid. I force my muscles to loosen.

“That’s it,” he coaxes. “Beautiful Empress, you have nothing to worry about in my arms. I have longed to have you right here.”

He begins kissing my pussy again, scraping his teeth against the soft folds of skin. He takes various sections of flesh into his mouth, laving them with his tongue. My hips move of their own accord, finding a rhythm to Memnon’s attentions.

As soon as the sorcerer’s lips find my clit, I cry out, “Est xsaya!” My king!

I…didn’t actually mean to say that.

Memnon stills, and it’s as though he knows it too.

I feel his grin against my flesh, and his hands tighten where they grip my hips.

I like how your pretty voice makes those words sound. Memnon speaks directly into my mind. The stroke of his mouth turns fevered, demanding. He sucks on my clit, earning moan after moan from me.

This feels light-years better than anything that’s come before Memnon. Like comparing water to wine.

I dig my heels into the sorcerer’s back again, and that only seems to spur him on more. Memnon moves lower, toward my core. Once he gets there, he slips his tongue inside me, and I cry out once more, tightening my grip on his hair as I press myself into his face.

“Feels so good, Memnon,” I murmur. “So, so good.”

Grind against me more, est amage. He’s still speaking in my mind. I want you to coat my face by the time I’m done with you.

I’m too far gone to be shocked by his words.

One of Memnon’s fingers slips inside me, and I gasp a little at the sensation.

“Call me your king again,” he says against my flesh, “and I’ll add another.”

Closing my eyes, I shake my head and smile. “Est xsaya, uvut vakosgub sanpuvusavak pes I’navkap.”

My king, I may die if you don’t.

He laughs lightly against me. “It is you who will be the death of me.”

Another finger joins the first, spreading me wider.

I make a small breathy sound at the sensation. I can hear the wet noises of those digits as he works me.

Memnon’s mouth returns to my clit, and now he does something to it with his tongue, something that makes my hips jerk and a cry rip from my throat.

I release his hair so I can prop myself up and stare at him wide-eyed. “What was that?”

The sorcerer pauses to glance up at me.

“Don’t look so surprised, est amage,” he says, his gaze flicking over me. “I have spent years memorizing your body. I know what it likes.”

His words prickle my skin. Perhaps for the first time, I feel truly worried by them, because I did like that move of his, even though I didn’t know I would. The truth is, I don’t know my body well enough to understand what tricks can bring me to orgasm quickly. But Memnon apparently does, and that’s…alarming.

“Now, return your hands to my hair, Empress,” he says, “and grind that pussy against me once more. I like feeling what I do to you.”

Without waiting for me to comply, he returns to kissing and tonguing me. And I do thread my fingers back into his wavy locks, and I do grind against him. I can’t seem to stop myself. Everything he’s doing is unraveling me bit by bit.

While his fingers pump into me, the sorcerer does that thing again with his tongue—I think he’s circling my clit. And again my hips jerk against him.

I gasp. “Memnon.”

He repeats it again. And again. And again.

I’m writhing against him as he plays me like an instrument, dragging me closer and closer to that precarious edge.

I can feel you getting close, he whispers in my head, never stopping his ministrations.

I don’t bother responding. He’s right after all.

Call me your soul mate, he continues, and I’ll let you come.

I’m sorry, what?

I let out a disbelieving laugh.

I thought we went over this. I thought he agreed to drop the term.

And if I don’t? I say silently to him.

Memnon stops kissing me, stops fingering me; he goes utterly still.

“Then I won’t give you your release,” he says, staring up my body.

I meet his gaze. “You bastard.”

His fingers begin moving again.

“Close,” he says, “but that’s still the wrong word. Try again, soul mate.”

I grimace at that word, but then Memnon’s mouth is on my pussy, doing that same damn thing with his mouth. He’s not even being creative at this point. He knows it’s what does it for me. And damn it, it’s enough for me to get sucked under all over again.

“Feels so good, Memnon,” I admit. I’m panting, moving my hips against him.

Still not the right word, little witch, he chastises.

I moan instead of replying, my body tightening in anticipation of—

The sorcerer backs off my clit, moving to a far-less-stimulating area near my outer lips.

I cry out in frustration.

Say it, he commands.

I don’t. But if I thought my resistance would make him stop eating me out altogether, I thought wrong. No, Memnon seems happy enough to continue running his lips and his teeth and his tongue over other sensitive portions of my pussy. He even eventually returns to my clit, working me into a frenzy once more.

But just as I’m again about to tip over the edge, he backs off.

“Memnon.” I practically growl his name.

I can do this all day, Empress, he says in my head.

I blow out an agitated breath. I’m being edged by a fucking monster who knows exactly what he’s doing to my body.

Say it. Now it’s him who’s pleading with me.

Apparently, promised orgasms make me weak because I silently say to him, It won’t mean anything.

Perhaps not to you, he responds. But it will mean something to him.

He begins working me again, and I let out another annoyed sound because it feels so terribly, exquisitely good, but I know it’s going to stop the moment I get close to climaxing.

I could just say it.

It’s only a single word. What’s a bit more role-playing? It really won’t mean anything.

Decision made, I draw a fortifying breath.

“Make me come…soul mate,” I say.

Memnon smiles against me.

And then he does.

He sucks on my clit for mere seconds before the wave of my orgasm crashes through me.

“Memnon!” I cry, digging my heels into him as the pleasure stretches on and on. And still Memnon teases me with his hand and his lips, only letting up once the vestiges of my climax have ebbed away.

I’m left breathless, staring at the ceiling as Memnon’s fingers slip out of me. He props himself up on his forearms in front of my pussy, then licks those fingers clean, making a satisfied noise, as though I taste like candy and not, you know, a woman.

“I missed the way you taste,” he admits. “I fantasized about it many, many times over the centuries. My mind is a mighty thing, but even it forgot just how sweet your pussy really is.”

“Memnon.” I press a hand to my temple. “You shouldn’t talk like that.”

He presses a kiss to one of my inner thighs. “Why not?” he says, moving to give the other thigh equal treatment. “It is the truth, whether you believe it or not.”

I decide to let the whole thing go. Memnon gave me the most explosive orgasm, and I want the rest of this day with him to be easy, fun.

I reach for him, and he seems all too eager to pull himself up my body and into my arms. I can feel his cock straining against his pants, but he pays it no mind. Instead, his hands come to cradle my face.

“Est amage,” he murmurs, stroking my skin with his thumb. “Est amage, est amage, est amage.” My queen, my queen, my queen. His gaze searches my face, a pleased smile curving the corners of his lips. “You make me excited about the future.”

“Est xsaya,” I say, just to see the way Memnon’s eyes spark at the term, “has anyone told you that you are really fucking intense?”

He laughs then, gazing down at me like I’m the most endearing thing he’s ever seen. “You have. Many times.”

Okay, I walked myself into that one.

I wind a leg around his and move my hands to the top button of his pants. The sorcerer is still wearing clothes, and that’s a problem because now I want to be the one tasting him.

At my touch, Memnon tenses.

“Relax,” I tease, using his earlier words against him as I undo the button. “I’m going to take care of you.”

But the sorcerer’s hand lands on mine, stilling my movements. “Not today, little witch,” he says.

My brows draw together. “Why not?”

“I’m afraid if I let you wrap that pretty mouth or pussy around my cock, that will be the end of us both.”

I give him a perplexed look, because seriously, why does he have to be so intense about this?

But already he’s extricating himself from me.

“So godsdamned pretty,” he says, almost to himself as he gets off the bed, his eyes lingering on me. “Two thousand years, and I still burn for you.”

He looks like he wants to say something else, but he bites it back at the last moment. Instead, Memnon grabs his discarded shirt, and I don’t like that.

“You’re leaving?” I say, sitting up. I don’t bother covering myself; he’s already seen everything.

Memnon must hear the rejected note of my voice because he says, “I have no intention of staying away. But yes, I do have to leave.”

I frown, and the action causes him to cross back over to the bed.

He grabs my jaw and presses a kiss to my lips. “I will see you again soon, little witch,” he promises, releasing my face and heading for the door once more. “Until then—sweet dreams.”

“Sweet dreams?”

Hasn’t he said that before? Why on earth…?

I suck in a breath. “Are you sending me those dreams?”

Immediately, I regret asking the question—if Memnon isn’t responsible for them, then I’m going to have to lie through my teeth that I meant something innocent and not, you know, the vivid sexual encounters I’ve been having with this man in my sleep.

Memnon’s mouth curves wickedly. “Have you enjoyed them, est amage?”

He has been responsible for the dreams!

I’m so shocked that I barely have time for my irritation to rise.

“Stop sending them to me,” I demand.

His expression only turns more conniving. “Now that I know they’re getting under your skin? Unlikely.”

And with that parting line, he leaves.

Late that evening, my phone pings. When I grab it, I see a notification from one of my banking apps.

You received money.

What?

I click on the notification and the app opens.

I put a hand over my mouth when I see the latest deposit to my account: $5,000.

Beneath the transaction is a note.

For Nero and you, soul mate.

-Memnon

I cry then, in earnest, the hot tears dripping down my cheeks and over my hands. I won’t go into debt or have to take on any shady gigs to feed Nero this month.

I glance at the amount again, and a choked laugh slips out. The thought that this ancient dude has any money at all is absurd—let alone five thousand dollars to throw my way.

But he did throw it my way, all because he caught a glimpse of my bank account and my worry. And I’m not going to question the hows and whys of his financial situation right now.

I wipe away my tears and take a deep breath. Once again, Memnon is being nice to me. That’s on top of giving me the best orgasm I’ve had…maybe ever. Great sex aside, I know better than to believe he’s being kind for the sake of kindness.

All this will come back to haunt me sooner or later.

But you know what?

Tonight, I don’t really give a shit.

Tonight, I’m simply grateful.

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