Jodi Redford - The Seven Year Witch

Clarissa panted, undulating on his mouth. The tension in her body hinted how close she hovered near climax, and the liquid heat of anticipation that gripped him at the promise of her breaking apart on his tongue ripped a moan from his chest. She stiffened, her thighs going taut beneath his hands. And finally it came—the pulsing of her clit and the keening cry of her release. He continued devouring her through the storm of it, prolonging her pleasure for as long as he could, but eventually she slid from his face. Rather than slump into a boneless heap as he had moments ago, she wiggled down his length and fisted his cock. Her breaths ragged and wispy, she stared at him. “Condom?”

“Front pocket.”

She scrambled for his jeans and dug out the protection. Thank the gods she was quick about sheathing him, because if he’d been deprived one more second of her pussy, he feared he would have bawled worse than an infant. She impaled herself on his shaft, her slick, inner muscles squeezing him tight enough to make him see shooting stars. Arching her back, she began riding him slowly, her hips rolling as she took him deep. He encircled her waist, luxuriating in the sinuous flex of her pale, silken skin. Coasting north, he kneaded her breasts, the pads of his thumbs grazing through the light sheen of oil that coated her nipples, causing her to shiver.

An undeniable truth clanged in his head and heart.

There would never be another woman who made him feel this way. Never be another woman he belonged to like the vibrant goddess astride him. “Do it, baby. Ride that cock like you know you fuckin’ own it.”

Her breath stuttered in her throat, but she tried to break their linked gazes. He wasn’t gonna have that. Scooching into a sitting position, he wrapped one arm around her lower back while his other hand tunneled into her hair, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You know it’s true, Rissa. You’re the queen of my everything. You have me. All of me. Heart, body and soul.”

She got that panicky look, and he kissed her, his pelvis rocking upward.

“No,” she whispered, even as her pussy fluttered around him.

“Yes.” He thrust again, and her nails dug into his shoulders. Her head fell back, exposing the graceful line of her throat. Splaying his fingers on the curve of her tailbone, he buried his face in her neck, her scent drenching him in intoxicating waves. Her pulse beat against his lips and around his cock, a heady siren song to the wolf within him. His vision hazed, his incisors tingling. The mating call was so strong and fierce, it nearly cramped his insides. It would be so easy to claim her in that moment, with beast dominating his senses and her tender flesh unguarded.

He couldn’t do it. No matter how much he hungered to. Taking what she didn’t freely offer would destroy the fragile balance of their relationship. She would belong to him, but she would hate him for it.

Her pussy vised around his cock, sucking him deeper into her channel and milking the come from him, even that essence of him blocked by the barrier of the condom. He was left with the only thing he had left to share—his heart.

It was hers. Always.

“Sweet Clarissa.”

The familiar, sibilant voice called to her in the murky recesses between the waking and dream world. She opened her eyes. A vaporous mist swirled around her, thick with a strange, briny scent. It cleared enough to reveal the rocky outcropping she stood upon. She stepped forward, but a heavy weight buckled her legs. She fell on her hands and knees, the impact jarring. Her pained yelp didn’t quite cover the metallic clank that reverberated throughout the rock. Twisting, she spied the chained manacles banded around her ankles.

Seven’s form disengaged from the fog, the ends of the chains wrapped around the creature’s fists. “Four days, and you will be mine. Ours .” Movement disturbed the mist, revealing the six remaining personalities that flanked her khaki-and-polo-clad captor.

She stared into each matching set of those cold, reptilian eyes, shuddering in the face of their magnetic draw. “I know what you are. What you’re all about.”

Their mouths fell open, the evil, mocking laughs that rolled free one and the same. “You comprehend only a miniscule piece of the puzzle of what I am. You humans and your simple little brains are incapable of grasping the fullest extent of my glory. Even that moron, Dante, barely scratched the surface of my mystery.” The voice rumbling between the lips of each personified sin that towered in front of her was not familiar. For that reason, along with the obvious sneering contempt in that sibilant tone, she hazarded to guess that she was speaking with the dominant creature that comprised Seven. The head kahuna, for lack of a better title.

“And yet that doesn’t stop you from preying on us, does it, you sick, demented psycho.” The loose grit of silica dug into her feet as she struggled to stand.

The wielder of her chains suddenly yanked her forward, leaving her no time to wonder at the oddness of having sand where there was no beach. “Do not test me. My fondness for you is not in league with Envy’s. I would not think twice about condemning your soul to the pit of fire.”

She digested the creature’s words, her mind spinning. Her average-Joe, stalkerish captor was Envy ? She stared at the figure still clutching her chains, its covetous eyes practically devouring her. A shiver coursed through her limbs. What could this… thing …possibly be envious for in regards to her?

Another chilling laugh boomed from the septet of personalities. “Your inept brain betrays you. It’s not only what Envy hungers for in you, it’s that which you seek for in it. We’ve seen the way you gaze upon those who so selfishly hoard everything that you desperately want but cannot possess. Love and trust. A family that will cause you no pain. It slowly eats away at your very core, this envious desire to be more like them.”

The last three words of that damning condemnation hammered into her with blunt force. She wanted to deny their validity. Proclaim that she was above such pettiness.

But it would be a lie.

Suffocating shame swamped her as she recalled the countless times during her childhood when she would sneak off to Forsyth Park and watch the many parents laughing and playing with their children, while her own mother and father were passed out drunk in their bed.

Those were the years the insidious yearning had begun to spread, its diseased compulsion threatening to consume her. The crushing weight of her bitter longing had grown to the point of almost becoming the entire scope of her existence. Until the moment came, many years later, when her obsessive pilgrimage had blown up in her face, delivering the most devastating and painful of blows. The vicious betrayal that’d ripped her apart that fateful day had nearly decimated her. In the aftermath, she’d caged the ugly beast of her envy, locking it behind the bars of complacency.

She’d stripped the meat of her wanting from the bone, convinced she couldn’t be hurt anymore. But there were days still when she would creep toward that padlocked cage and stare wistfully at its contents. The painful truth of it surged within her, making her nauseous.

“We can make it all go away, sweet Clarissa. This endless cycle of wanting. Here you will have everything you’ve dreamed of. We will be the family you’ve always longed for.”

Another blast of that odd, saline-marinated breeze swooshed through, scattering the remaining mist. She blinked as the enormous cavern surrounding her was unveiled.

A massive lake ebbed hundreds of feet below the outcropping where she and Seven’s corporation of personalities stood. The black, oily water seethed with a sick vitality, as if it were alive and ravenously seeking whatever food source fed its evil power. Now and then, thick clusters of fireballs erupted from the waves, their red-hot glare sending off massive amounts of heat. Along the nearby shore, she noticed the condemned souls being herded toward the lake’s edge by six of the sins. She whirled, her gaze colliding with Envy’s.