Flames of Chaos Read online

  “I don’t need to like you to fuck you. It’s better for you if I don’t.”

  “Knox,” I whispered, licking my lips to wet them. “I’m a witch, remember?”

  “I’m not planning to fuck you.” He watched as my legs buckled, and I slammed down on the chair ungracefully. “Do not fucking move. I mean it, Aria. You move, and they’ll smell you. They smell you, and I’ll bend you over and breed your cunt myself, woman. You get me?” he snapped harshly. “I’ll take you first, but they won’t care as long as they can have whatever scraps are left of you when I am finished taking what I want.”

  “Understood.” I swallowed hard, folding my hands in my lap as I sucked my lip between my teeth and waited. Staring up at him, I watched his eyes narrowing as his nostrils flared, even while his tongue slipped over his bottom lip seductively.

  “So, you can listen,” he snorted, taking a step away from me. “Good girl.”

  I watched his eyes darkening before he turned, taking long, angry strides toward the wall that opened up and expanded a moment before he would have walked into it. His footsteps receded down the hallway, and I watched as he turned back, looking at me over his shoulder, smirking before he spoke softly.

  “Do not let anyone get near her unless she moves. Do not hurt my men if they come, just stop them from reaching her, understood?”

  My eyes lifted and my jaw dropped open as the gargoyles I’d assumed were statues crafted by an artist moved, watching me as they grew in size and dropped from the perch they’d been sitting on to stand around me, one resting gray eyes on me as he took in my naked legs.

  “Are we still beautiful, mistress?” he asked, his tone eerie and foreign, and yet he spoke English flawlessly, as if he’d been doing it his entire life.

  “Very,” I whispered through the dryness of my throat. Gargoyles were freaking extinct, and yet here they were, hiding and very much alive in Knox’s freaking library! “So very beautiful,” I swallowed thickly.

  “Move for me, little one.” He watched me with a wicked grin as he shivered, inhaling deeply.

  “No,” I countered. “Where are you from?”

  “Not here, nor will I spill his secrets to his enemies.”

  “I’m not his enemy.”

  “You most assuredly are, as you are the granddaughter of Hecate.” He stood up taller, his wings unfurling but no longer stone. He was all man and sexually charged with enough power that it slithered over my flesh. “You are pretty and clean. You are not pure witch, are you?”

  “No, my father was other, but it is unknown.”

  He leaned closer, sniffing me, which almost caused me to retreat, but growling sounded, and they cleared out quickly. My gaze moved to Knox walking with Lacey and another woman. Lacey looked different, her eyes were vacant, and there were marks over her flesh, including red handprints on her throat. I studied her before moving my stare to the new lady who marched beside Knox with her hand touching him. The man had women falling all over him, and I found it pathetic.

  “Examine her, Regina.”

  “Hell no,” I stated.

  “Option A, or option B, Aria?” His face tightened, and his eyes slanted as he smiled coldly. He looked like he was hoping I would choose option B. Option B was violent, it was apparent in the way he’d spoken of it.

  “Tell me what option A is.”

  “I will put blood into a vial and add ink into it, mixing the two together. Then I’m going to use the ink to place my personal runes on your flesh as well as my name, at which time every male will know you are mine. Ovulation isn’t a one day process, and the mark should outlast it.”

  “How long will your name be on me?” I asked carefully, knowing that what he was planning to do was something men did to their untouched brides in the Nine Realms. It was taught to every child in the academy we’d attended. It was also the only way to prevent my scent from luring men to me in mass, but there was more to it, a lot more to it.

  “Three weeks, since my blood is pure, and my scent is rather potent.”

  “For this to work…” I lowered my gaze as I exhaled, slowly lifting it back to watch him as I spoke. “You have to be the strongest male in this realm. They could challenge you for me if you’re not, and the cost would be your life.”

  “I am, and they won’t.” He didn’t hesitate before assuring me he was the strongest, most dominant creature in town.

  “You’ll feel me on a deeper level than you probably are willing to.” I paused, tilting my head as I considered what it would mean. If I touched myself, he’d feel my need. If anyone else touched me without gaining his permission, he could claim their life in payment. I would literally be his property until it wore off. “Why are you helping me?”

  “It’s not by choice. As I have said before, someone very powerful wants you alive. If it was up to me, I would just take what I wanted and snap your pretty fucking neck and remove the problem. You are a problem. I fix problems.”

  “Okay.” Swallowing hard, I watched as the female glared at me before moving closer.

  Regina grabbed my arm, holding it out so she could smell my wrist. Her sharp silverish-blue eyes narrowed as her soft black hair fell over my arm, seconds before her tongue slipped over my flesh then she pulled back, staring down at me with intrigue in her icy stare.

  “You’re right. She smells different. Almost like roses, or some other delicate flower.” Her tone softened for him, and I relaxed until her hands lifted, grabbing the dress I wore and ripping it apart at the bodice. “Remove it, or I will.”

  “Fine,” I growled, hating that I was about to be half-naked and exposed to the people in the room. I was magically muted, alone, and naked. What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 17

  I stood up, wishing I’d worn anything other than the sundress I’d taken from Amara’s room. Letting it slide down my body, I covered my breasts and sat back down, fully aware of how exposed and vulnerable I was. I needed my magic, needed it to fight off anything that tried to harm me. Here, in his house, I was vulnerable around him without my magic to protect me.

  “She’s very beautiful. Why spare her? The men would leave such lovely marks on her delicate flesh for me to heal.”

  “Do your fucking job, Regina.”

  My eyes remained on the floor, unwilling to look up and see either heat or disgust in Knox’s eyes at my too skinny body, or revulsion at the scars covering my ribs where my mother had tried to catch me in the water to drown me by weakening me with her blade covered in poisonous hemlock.

  “What are these from?” Regina asked coldly.

  “Knives,” I answered, knowing what she meant without having to see where her eyes looked. I sucked my lip between my teeth and worried it as I swallowed down the memories of how I’d gotten them.

  “You’re a witch. Why didn’t they heal correctly?”

  “It was a blade covered in hemlock.” The cuts had mostly healed, leaving tiny silver-colored scars long after the wounds had sealed. Aurora had spent weeks healing them to save my life, casting spell after spell to draw out the infection that tried to take me to the grave.

  Hemlock was poison to witches like wolfsbane was to werewolves. It weakened us, targeting the blood until infection grabbed hold of the victim and fought hard to end their lives, even in immortals.

  “She meant to end your life,” she whistled, grabbing my arms, which caused my gaze to flutter to hers. “I need to see all of them.”

  I let her hold my arms out, turning my head to stare at the gargoyles’ backs that ignored us as if we didn’t exist. Her eyes took in my breasts, noting the three deeper marks below the rib cage on the left side, where Freya had barely missed ending my life as a child. Once she’d examined them, she stepped back, letting her gaze drop to my stomach and lower yet.

  “Do you want me to check everywhere, my love?” she asked, and my head turned, watching Knox, who stared at my breasts before I covered them up, praying silently that he said no.

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nbsp; “Is she strong enough?” he countered.

  “She’s strong enough, but her scent… I cannot place it. It is as you said, she is unknown. Her scars are minimal, and while disfigured, it doesn’t take from her genetic makeup. She’s strong enough to survive your blood and the marking you will place.”

  “Good, get out,” he snapped gutturally. “You as well, creatures. Go guard the entrances. No one gets into this room tonight, no one.”

  I frowned, turning to look at Lacey, who had yet to speak or flap her lips. Her eyes had remained vacant. Knox even spoke to her, yet her eyes remained empty even though she replied. Knox whispered in a foreign language, and she moved, grabbing a bowl. He moved a table with candles on it, along with onyx crystals placed in a pattern I didn’t recognize right offhand. He produced a dagger as the candles ignited, and silently I watched as he slit his wrist wide open.

  Knox didn’t flinch or acknowledge the pain even though it had to have hurt. Next, he held his wrist over the bowl, lifting his heated stare to mine as Lacey chanted, causing the candles to leap higher with her spell.

  The crystals hummed with power, and my arms dropped from where they protected my naked breasts. I watched it with curiosity as erotic magic filled the air until it was suffocating.

  I’d done thousands of spells, but never with the amount of blood he was using, and never in foreign words such as the ones coming out of Lacey’s lips. Power dripped from her words, and it slithered over me, making my eyes grow heavy as I watched her lips moving. A sliver of fear rushed down my spine, but I ignored it as my nipples hardened, and my throat became tight with a moan fighting to escape.

  Magic exploded into the room as she finished chanting. It wasn’t light or dark magic, it was something else entirely. It felt ancient and caused my pulse to race as my insides burned with the call to join them in the spell.

  My mouth opened to moan, but the heat from Knox’s gaze and the sinful curve of his lips stopped it, forcing the moan back down into my lungs. I shook my head, trying to dispel the lust and power that rushed through me. My body fell backward, and my hands dropped, revealing hardened nipples, to hold onto the chair as I arched my spine, even as I fought it. It was raw, untainted magic that begged to be tasted and touched. It drugged me without permission, filling the entire room with a dark, erotic state that I couldn’t escape.

  I was still lying on the chair lost in the magic when Knox touched me, causing my hypersensitive skin to tremble before goosebumps spread over it. He chuckled, fully aware that I was in a magic-drugged state.

  Knox studied the way my body moved through heated eyes, the way I arched my spine as the magic continued to slither through me as if it was within me and slowly touching me in the most deliciously sinful way it could. He missed nothing as I rocked to the magic, needing release more than I needed to be saved right now.

  “It’s powerful, isn’t it?” he rasped, moving his fingertips over the thin scars on my ribcage. My flesh begged for his touch, even though my mind struggled to remember who I was and who I was with. His fingers continued to leisurely explore as I realized where he touched me. The dark, black ravens that sat beneath or beside each slash. The unkindness. “You hide them well,” he stated, pulling up a chair while my head turned to watch him.

  “Where are you putting it?” I asked huskily.

  “I was going to place it on your pretty naked cunt,” he stated crudely. “But I decided the inside of your thigh, right here,” he said, touching me where my leg met my covered flesh. “Every time you self-soothe, you’ll remember me there,” he chuckled darkly.

  “You’re a dick.”

  “I am okay with that,” he announced, pushing my legs apart, staring between them as his nostrils flared, and the tick in his jaw began hammering slowly.

  I leaned up, watching him where he’d moved the chair to sit between my thighs, and he rearranged me until I was spread-eagle, with him at my most vulnerable position. His mouth lowered, and I shivered as his heated breath fanned the flesh on my thigh.

  His tongue snaked out, dragging over the flesh where he said he planned to place the ink, and my eyes widened as pleasure ripped through me, unfurling something within me that rattled while I watched him. Ocean-blue eyes locked to the turquoise of mine, and I smiled seductively, uncertain why I smiled like an idiot, and yet I was.

  He pulled away, and I fought the urge to demand he continue, to demand he go with option B, but that terrified me. My head dropped back, and my hands covered my naked breast, fear rushing back to the front of my mind as he chuckled before pain ripped through my leg, pushing deeper as a humming noise began.

  “Ouch.”

  “It’s a sensitive spot. Since I’m saving your ass, you’ll fucking deal with it. I’m not immune to your need, either. I have to suffer right beside you, ignoring every male instinct inside of me that wants to push that sweet flesh apart and bury my cock balls deep in that tight cunt, Aria. You’ll learn to like the pain I intend to give you, at least for now. Either that, or we go back to option B, and I enjoy every fucking moment of it.”

  “This is fine, pain is good.”

  My gaze moved around the room, searching for Lacey and then going back to the pain of the tattoo I was getting in the worst possible location… Okay, so there were a few more tender spots, but this one still was high up there. His thumb grazed my flesh, and I moaned, lifting my head to glare at him.

  “Suffer,” he snapped. “You’re not the only one in pain here,” he announced. It took almost an hour of the gun’s painful bite, mixed with Knox’s fingers touching or skimming my flesh. At the same time, I was seconds away from coming undone before the pain was finally bearable. He chuckled darkly, and his head lowered, sniffing the area where his knuckles continued skimming over.

  I watched him carefully as he set the tattoo gun aside and stared at me. “What are you doing?” I whispered through heavy lust that dripped with every word I uttered.

  Before I could stop him, Knox pushed my panties aside and trailed his tongue through the mess he’d made before his tongue slid in a circle over my clit and sucked softly. I moaned loudly as I arched into his mouth, grasping the edge of the chair as everything within me sprang to life. One simple lick and he lifted his dark head, smiling wolfishly as he licked his lips clean.

  “What the hell, why would you do that?” My breathing caught in my throat as I shivered from the heat of his mouth. My entire body was taut, ready to unfurl explosively.

  “Now I have your scent and your taste, Aria. You run, I’ll follow you. You fuck me, I’ll destroy you. You taste sweet, almost like a pineapple.”

  “You’re fucking disturbed.” The magic was still making my head spin, but I was slowly starting to feel somewhat normal, or I had been until he’d tasted me.

  “Yeah, but you fucking felt me, didn’t you?” His voice was raspy, filled with lust that rocketed through my system violently. Knox smiled, but he was all predator, watching me as I shivered against the feel of him against my sex.

  “That matters little, Knox. You seem to forget that I don’t like you, and it may not matter to you, but it does to me,” I said, observing him as he began to move from his chair.

  He stood up, staring down at his work before I struggled to sit up. I stared down at the long-ass word that went from the front of my leg to the back in the crease of my junction. On the bright side, no one else would see it, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t his name.

  “You do know how to spell your name, right?”

  His brow lifted, and then a dark smile played on his lips. “It’s my last name, in my language, Aria.”

  “Which is?” I asked pointedly.

  “You can figure that out on your own. Go to sleep. Until the ink is sunk into your flesh and we’re certain it worked, you sleep here.”

  I looked beyond him, finding a bed with silver sheets and soft white pillows. I stood slowly, frowning. “Isn’t it like…? Noon, didn’t we just have breakfast?”

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sp; “It took twelve hours to place my name on you deeply enough that it stuck. Trust me, you’re exhausted. The spell makes you think otherwise. Go to fucking bed, woman.”

  I slipped from the chair and winced as I walked to the bed, feeling the exhaustion hit me the moment I was upright. The aching throb between my thighs wasn’t helping me. I still felt his touch. The sight of him chewing the pineapple couldn’t even remove the need to reach between my legs and finish myself off. I turned, intending to thank him, but he was gone. Muscles ached in places I didn’t even know they could hurt.

  “Thanks, dick,” I grumbled, sitting on the bed to stare at his name. I dropped back into the softest bed I’d ever lain on and groaned in bliss. My body twisted with the tension between my thighs still aching from pent up need.

  Sitting up, I peered around the room with a narrowed gaze before pulling the covers over my head. I pushed my hand between my legs and gasping at how swollen it was from a single touch of his traitorous tongue. Remembering the feel of it on me, I stroked the flames he had ignited, and the pleasure he’d given me by tasting where no man had tasted me before. Two strokes and I held my hand over my mouth, stifling the scream that built in my throat as my body jerked and color danced behind my eyes. Ocean-blue eyes filled my mind, and I paused, frowning as I sat up, pushing the covers off to sit up.

  Knox was standing by the fireplace, which had once again returned to the room, staring right at me with heat filling his eyes. “You’re welcome. You call me more dirty names tonight, and you’ll do it choking on my cock to get the names out of your throat. Now, stop touching your pussy and go to sleep. You’re loud, even if you think you’re not. I’m trying to read,” he growled, turning until his bulge was visible in the gray sweatpants he wore.

  I leaned back, pulling the blankets up past my neck as I listened to the crackling fire along with the page-turning in the book he read, drifting into the phase right before dreams took hold of your mind. The man wasn’t safe, not when he made my brain turn to mush, and all sense flew out the door.