Love on the Dark Side Read online

  ‘Oh, those traps.’ Lilith smiled slightly. Those traps were amusing. But also annoying if Blake wasn’t going to give her what she wanted because he was scared of falling into one. She sat down on the beige sofa. ‘It really isn’t one of those traps. The whole point of the operation tonight was to find a guy who didn’t know I was a witch, but not so I could trap him – just so I could have a good time.’

  ‘Don’t witches always have a good time?’

  ‘No! Why does no one get this? Look, when did you know I was a witch?’

  ‘About ten seconds after you started talking to me.’

  ‘And if I hadn’t been a witch would you still have come home with me?’

  Blake looked a little puzzled by the question. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you sure? As soon as you knew I was a witch, you knew you had to come home with me if I wanted you to, right?’

  ‘Um, well, I guess.’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. I don’t want you to be here because you know I’m a witch. I want you to be here because you want to be.’

  ‘What? I swear I want to be here. I’m not trying to leave, am I?’

  ‘Yeah, in case I eviscerate you.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to … Uh, you’re not going to eviscerate me, are you?’

  Lilith shrugged. Blake looked pale. Lilith said, ‘See, that’s the problem too. I can’t go two minutes without making you afraid of me and if you’re afraid of me you’re hardly going to put me over your knee and spank me, are you?’

  Blake’s throat moved as he swallowed hard. ‘You want me to spank you? You’re a witch!’

  Lilith sighed. There was something so appealing about this taut conundrum of a guy, who was wearing a suit that flowed over his body like it was in love with him and yet appeared not to have brushed his over-exuberant hair for a fortnight. ‘What do you do with the werewolves?’ she said. ‘Do you always kill them or do you ever capture them and keep them?’

  ‘Rarely. Well, I do sometimes capture and keep them, but I’m not meant to. It’s not policy.’

  ‘What do you do with the ones you capture?’

  Blake’s face went cold, like the shutters had come down. ‘Extract information.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘Various methods. And I know where you’re going with this, but they’re werewolves. Outside full moon they’re no more powerful that the average pissed-off human. But it’s different with you, Miss Witch. One false move, you’ll flay me.’

  ‘Oh, please try not to think like that,’ Lilith said. ‘So, do you tie them up?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The werewolves.’

  Blake narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you serious? You want me to tie you up?’

  Lilith nodded vigorously.

  ‘But, what’d be the point? You’re a witch. It’s not like I could make you actually helpless. If that was what I wanted. If that wasn’t a ridiculously stupid thing to try and do. Even,’ he added with heavy emphasis, ‘if the witch claims she wants you to.’

  Lilith wet her lips. She’d seen a little chink then. A little bit of something that said he was warming to the idea. But it was only the tiniest thing. She knew she still had a long way to go. She sighed. ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I want a man to be all, I don’t know, mannish with me and the minute he finds out I’m a witch …’

  ‘Well, OK, I rumbled you, but you won’t be so unlucky next time. Try again. Find someone else who doesn’t know how powerful you really are.’

  Lilith stamped her foot. ‘I don’t want to try again. I chose you. I want you. I want you to overpower me and fuck me hard. Right now.’

  ‘Overpower … ? What? Bend you over the table and rip your knickers down?’

  ‘Yes! Damn it, yes. Forget about my powers. We’ll pretend I don’t have them.’

  Blake was breathing a little more heavily now. He was still standing in the middle of the room, squarely facing the sofa where Lilith sat. Lilith’s eyes flickered to his crotch.

  ‘But what if I get it wrong?’ Blake said, with every part of his voice sounding like resignation. ‘What if I bend you over and rip your knickers off and spank you and pull you hair and fuck you hard and one of those things is the wrong thing and you turn around and go all black-eyes and uber-powered and give me sodding small pox or something? Witches aren’t exactly known for their restraint.’

  ‘I could mind-wipe you,’ Lilith said suddenly. ‘Make you forget I’m a witch.’

  ‘Won’t work. You didn’t tell me you were a witch, I worked it out. Take away that knowledge and I’ll just work it out again.’

  ‘Unless …’

  Blake interrupted. ‘Well, unless you take away all my knowledge of the paranormal, which would leave me unable to do my job.’

  Lilith shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, but it might just be the only option.’

  Blake raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Great …’ he said, tailing off as if words failed him. ‘Well, that’s just great.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Lilith said, ‘I have another idea. How about this? What if I remove my powers – temporarily – and place them in a suitable receptacle? Would that make you feel safe enough to bend me over backwards?’

  Blake frowned. ‘Can witches do that?’

  ‘Witches can do anything. That’s kind of the point of witches. I can make the dead walk and the seas boil. I can alter the fabric of the universe. I think I can put my magical powers in that vase without too much trouble.’ She pointed at a cheery little pink pot stuffed with white roses.

  Blake glanced over his shoulder at the vase and then looked back at her. His eyes were inscrutable. ‘How would you get your powers back? With no magic to do the spell?’

  Lilith shrugged. ‘Break the vase.’

  ‘What if you come after me then? When you’re all powered up again.’

  ‘What are you thinking of doing to me?’ Lilith laughed. ‘I won’t. You know I won’t. You know I want this. All you’re scared of is my temper. The heat of the moment. But this way I won’t be able to smite you in anger and, afterwards, when I restore my powers, you know I’m going to be thanking you. Are you really telling me that a man like you – a werewolf hunter, no less – is going to pass up this opportunity to fuck a witch harder than any other mortal man has ever dared to? And then have her thank him for it afterwards?’

  One corner of Blake’s mouth twitched into a half-smile for a moment. Just up and then down again. But it was enough for Lilith to know she’d cracked it. ‘Well, in that case …’ he said, crossing the room and straddling Lilith’s tailored lap. He leant in and kissed her.

  When he pulled back from the kiss, he shook his head lightly. ‘I don’t know quite what it is, baby,’ he whispered. ‘I still think this is a scary, hair-raisingly-dumb idea, but something about you must appeal to my better nature. You’re getting to me. But I think you’d better do your magic trick before you get to me much more and I jump the gun and screw you while you’re still a fucking powderkeg.’

  Lilith felt herself actually shiver with delight. She slipped out from underneath Blake and went over to the small table where the vase sat. She emptied it of flowers (manually) and water (magically) and then used a little more concentration and care to perform the second, far more complex, magical procedure.

  Once it was done she looked over at Blake. ‘Gosh, that feels really weird. I’m so empty.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  Lilith swayed a little and clutched at the edge of the small table. ‘I think I’d better sit down.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better lie down.’

  ‘Bedroom’s through …’ The end of Lilith’s sentence disappeared as her legs gently melted away underneath her. But Blake was already zipping across the room to catch her in his strong arms.

  Blake threw her down on the bed amongst a patchwork bedspread and heart-shaped pillows. As Lilith woozily took in the froufrou around her, she wondered what her subconscio
us mind must have been thinking when she created this as her seduction den for a macho brute of a man.

  But she stopped caring about that pretty quickly when she looked up at Blake, already on top of her in his dark-blue suit, caging her with his strong wiry body. He pushed his messy dark hair out of the way with one hand as he moved in and kissed her hard, hard and demandingly down into the mattress.

  His mouth was hot on hers and devouring. His erection was rubbing against her thigh. She could feel every part of his firm body, heavier, stronger, harder than hers. And the taste of him in her mouth – the cigarettes and whisky from the bar, the last shreds of his fear, the overwhelming swirl of his arrogance. He took her wrists and pinned them up above her head. Then he made it clear that he was kissing her at his pace, for his pleasure – if what he was doing was also turning her into a breathless, writhing mess, trapped underneath him, that was just coincidence.

  Then his mouth found her ear. ‘Is this what you wanted, witch? Like this? To know how it feels to have a man controlling you? Using you? Needing you? To feel his hard dick pressing against you and to know that he is going to use your body to get himself off, no matter what you think about it.’

  Lilith moaned out loud.

  Blake released Lilith’s hands and sat up and back, still straddling her. He started to remove his jacket. She watched him idly, boneless with lust. He dropped the jacket on the floor and started on his tie.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘didn’t we have an idea about tying you up? I really don’t want you to get any ideas about slipping away from me and smashing that vase if I do anything you don’t like. I could just pin you down all evening, but I think this would make things more straightforward. And a lot more fun.’

  With his tie in his hand, he leant forwards in his shirt sleeves and fastened Lilith’s wrists together neatly. Then he hitched them – up and over her head – to the swirly wrought-iron bed-head.

  ‘Something tells me you’re not a bondage novice,’ Lilith said, twisting her wrists in the slick cool fabric.

  ‘Werewolves, witches, I guess roping up one humanoid paranormal is the same as another.’ He dipped his head and ran the tip of his tongue across her cheek. The move ended in a kiss. If it hadn’t, Lilith might have said something about witches being actual humans not humanoids. But her mouth was suddenly full of the delicious deviant taste of Blake and she didn’t – couldn’t – say a word.

  When Blake stopped kissing her and moved to nip at her ear, she still didn’t get the chance to speak – not that there was much she wanted to say beyond ‘yes’ and ‘more’ and ‘please’ – because Blake slipped a hand over her mouth before he hissed into her ear, ‘I know you’ll have left yourself another way into your power base, witch.’

  Blake raised his head a little and Lilith looked at him with wide eyes.

  ‘I know you’ll have left yourself a way to break that vase without getting off the bed. Thing is,’ he added with a low nasty tone, ‘I’m almost certain that what you’ve left yourself is a word, a verbal command, and that’s pretty useless if you can’t talk.’

  With a muffled protest, Lilith tried to pull her head away from the hand over her mouth, but he was too strong, far too strong, even stronger than she had estimated. He clamped his hand more tightly, squeezing the bottom half of her face hard. Leaning down, he licked her cheek just on the edge of where it wasn’t covered by his hand, then he ran his tongue down in the crack between two of his fingers and managed to lick her top lip. Lilith moaned.

  ‘Magic words, safe words, whatever you call them, neither is a lot of use to you now are they, witch?’

  This added layer of helplessness just made the burn between Lilith’s legs intensify. She bucked her hips against Blake and he reached down with his free hand and slid her skirt up her body. Its silky lining skated frictionless against the slick of her stockings. It was up around her waist in moments. Then she was just knickers and lace stocking-tops under his sober suit trousers. Blake clearly liked her dishevelled because he smiled and started to unbutton her shirt one-handed, while she panted against his other palm which was still stopping her mouth.

  When her shirt was open so wide she might as well not be wearing it, he started alternating between biting the angles of her neck and shoulder, and sitting back and stroking the skin that covered the top of her breasts. He laughed when he bit her so hard she screamed into his fingers.

  Eventually, he said, ‘You know, witch, I really can’t keep this up. I’m going to have to stop your mouth with something else.’

  Lilith squirmed. Blake knelt up astride her and – in a last bit of one-handed expertise – had his trousers and underpants down in moments. Lilith saw his cock jutting out from under the hem of his shirt – bold and hard – as he moved towards her. And then the hand on her mouth was gone and she had enough of a moment to take one big breath before he grabbed a handful of her hair and forced his cock deep into her mouth.

  Lilith gasped and struggled again, pulling at the tie holding her wrists, trying not to choke.

  ‘Take it,’ Blake grunted. ‘Come on, witch, suck my dick.’ His voice seemed to crack a little with the words.

  Lilith looked up at him looming over her. He grinned down and let go of her hair for a moment to yank his shirt off over his head.

  Lilith saw his upper body for the first time then, compact, muscled and hard. There was something nasty about his physique. Something brutal.

  ‘Maybe after I come in your mouth I could find something else to gag you with,’ Blake panted as he thrust mercilessly into her throat, bracing himself against the wall behind the headboard. ‘Your fancy underwear maybe? Then you’d really be helpless. Powerless. I could leave you here for as long as I wanted then. Days. How would you like that? Imagine what they’d say at work if I told them I had a witch for a prisoner, tied to the bed, just aching for another chance to suck my dick.’

  Lilith moaned around the taut flesh filling her mouth. Blake tasted like oceans and dark places, like basements and fear. Blake tasted like a man who had stared at things that even a witch might turn away from. Masculine pride and arrogance, slugs and snails and puppy dog tails.

  He sneered down at her. ‘I could just take your old magic vase of powers somewhere safe, witch. Far away. Make sure it never got broken. Put it in a vault somewhere.’

  Lilith gasped and, in that moment, as she broke the vacuum seal around his cock, he withdrew, and whispered, ‘Going to fuck you now, witch.’

  He slid down her body, slipped her damp knickers out of the way and drove into her, coasting on her wetness. His hands were gripping her taut bound arms. His mouth now the thing keeping her quiet.

  When he began to move – to fuck her as promised – it was hard and nasty. Harder than any man who valued his entrails should ever fuck a witch. Lilith squirmed under him. Desperate.

  ‘God,’ Blake said, breaking the kiss, ‘you are so fucking wet for me. You love this, don’t you? You love me inside you?’

  ‘Uh, yes.’

  ‘Fucking say it, witch.’

  ‘I love you inside me.’

  Blake moved his face closer and sneered. ‘You love me in control. Say it.’

  ‘I love you in control.’

  ‘You love my hard dick,’ he panted.

  ‘I love your hard dick,’ Lilith managed, panting so hard now she could barely speak at all. Blake moved down to kiss her again. She wanted more. She wanted to come. Like this. Tied up. With him on her, driving into her, holding her and owning her and making her confess her darkest desires. She moaned into Blake’s mouth.

  Blake moved his head back and looked at her, still thrusting. ‘You going to come for me, witch?’

  Lilith nodded.

  Blake’s right hand was moving then, down, down between their bodies and into place. One expertly crooked finger giving her exactly what she needed.

  Another thrust, and another. She was so close. Then Blake said, ‘Come on, witch, now. For me. Give it to me
.’ And she was there. Coming up to meet him.

  Blake was winding his way lazily back into his clothes. Shirt, trousers, jacket. His tie was still tight around Lilith’s wrists. Lilith knew she was post-orgasm and kind of loved-up hazy, but she couldn’t stop staring at his body as he dressed. He really was magnificent on his own small scale.

  ‘Are you going to untie me now?’ she said.

  Blake stared at her. He was fully dressed now and he let his eyes glide over her stockings and wide-open shirt.

  ‘Blake?’

  Blake started. ‘Yeah, I guess.’ But he didn’t move.

  ‘Well, come on, then.’

  Blake walked over and took hold of her bindings, then stopped and swallowed hard. ‘OK, now you promise that as soon as you’ve got your powers back you’re not going to eviscerate me, or anything, right?’

  ‘Course not. You know, all that vengeful, knee-jerk over-the-top stuff is really out of fashion, anyway. Who really eviscerates people these days? If I wanted to make you miserable, Blake, if I had any reason to, you’d never even know for sure if it was me that had done it.’

  ‘But you don’t have any reason to, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  Blake still didn’t move.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Lilith said.

  Lilith cast three spells at once. One to whisk the tie from her wrists to around Blake’s neck, one to dress herself and one to put the kettle on. Then she looked at Blake.

  Blake looked back at her, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lilith, ‘yeah, about that thing I told you about putting my powers in the vase. Well, I didn’t actually do that. It would have been stupid, anyway. And dangerous. I’ve only just met you.’

  Blake was staring at her, his mouth hanging open a little. He closed it. ‘You tricked me,’ he said.

  ‘Kind of, except I also did just exactly what you told me to do. I just found myself someone who didn’t know how powerful I really was. Turned out I didn’t really have all that far to look.’

  Lilith, Blake and Cate also appear in Mathilde Madden’s Silver Werewolf trilogy: The Silver Collar, The Silver Crown and The Silver Cage. For more details please visit www.mathildemadden.co.uk