The Witchs Incubus

Contents

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. About the Author

Chapter 1

The Summoning

The blood moon rose over Blackpine Hollow like a wound opening in the sky, and Vesper Marlowe walked into her dying grove with a knife in one hand and a demon's true name in her mouth.

She had practiced the name for weeks, the way one practices the taste of a thing they have decided to swallow. Kaine. Spoken flat, it was only sound. Spoken three times, in blood, inside a circle of salt at the full rising of the moon, it was a summons — an invitation a demon prince could not refuse, or so the grimoire said. The book was three hundred years old and stank of iron gall and lies, but it had never lied about this. She hoped.

The grove was where she had buried her mother's ashes and her grandmother's, where the rowan trees stood in a ring older than the town's church. Or had stood. The blight had taken the leaves first, grey at the edges like burnt paper, then the bark, which split and wept a sap that smelled of rot. Vesper had poured moonlight and blood into the roots for three moons and it had only slowed the dying, not stopped it.

She laid the circle first. Salt in a thick unbroken line, poured from a bowl her grandmother had glazed. A demon could not cross it unless invited, and she would be the one doing the inviting — on her terms, on her ground, under her moon.

Then the sigil, drawn in the damp center of the circle with her own finger dipped in candle-black and crushed nightshade: the summoning mark, nine spokes for the nine courts. Then the candles, black as tar, set at the four quarters, lit with a struck match because she wanted at least one honest flame in the night. They burned steady. No wind. The air was too still, holding its breath.

Vesper knelt at the heart of the sigil. The moon cleared the ridge and poured red light across the grove, and she lifted the knife.

She had cut herself a hundred times for magic. The pain was an old friend. She drew the blade across the meat of her palm, deep enough to bleed well, and pressed her hand flat to the center of the sigil, and her blood welled between her fingers and stained the black mark dark.

"Kaine," she said to the night.

Nothing moved.

"Kaine," she said, louder, and pushed her will into the name with the whole weight of her wanting.

The third time she whispered it, like a secret — "Kaine" — and the world exhaled.

The shadows between the rowan trees deepened and stood up. The candle flames leaned inward, all four at once, as though bowing. The salt line hissed faintly. And in the middle of her sigil stood a man.

Tall — taller than any man had a right to be, so that Vesper's neck bent looking up at him from her knees. Black hair falling past his shoulders. Eyes like banked coals, ember-gold, and when he looked down at her the gold flared brighter, the way coals flare when you breathe on them. He wore black, fine and strange, cut like nothing sold in Blackpine Hollow, and behind him two curved horns rose from his hair like a crown, dark and polished as obsidian. He looked at the salt circle, and at the candles, and at the witch kneeling in her own blood, and he smiled.

"Well," said the demon. "This is ambitious."

His voice was low and rough at the edges, the kind of voice that did indecent things to the inside of a woman's thighs. Vesper lifted her chin.

"I summoned you," she said. "By your true name, three times spoken. The rite binds you to hear my bargain."

"Oh, I heard it." Kaine stepped forward, slow, and the toe of his boot stopped a hair's breadth from the salt line. He did not cross it. He looked down at her hand, still pressed to the sigil, her blood dripping steady onto the moss. "You bled for me, little witch. That was courteous. Most summoners don't bleed until the screaming starts."

"I'm not most summoners."

"No," he agreed, and his ember eyes traveled over her — her face, her throat, her mouth, the press of her dress against her breasts where her breathing had gone ragged, lower, slower, lingering — and the look was a hand laid on her skin, warm and heavy. "You're not."

Heat crawled up her spine. His lust-aura rolled off him in waves, thick and sweet, and where it touched her, her body answered — her nipples tightening, a slow ache blooming low in her belly. She knew what it was. The grimoire had been plain: an incubus's aura only ever fed what was already willing. It could not make a woman want; it could only take the wanting she already carried and turn it up like a flame under oil. And Vesper had carried wanting for this night for weeks.

"You want a bargain," Kaine said. "Speak it, then. What does the witch of the dying grove ask of a prince of the Ninth Hunger?"

Vesper swallowed. She had rehearsed this too. "My grove is dying of a blight no magic of mine can cure. I offer you a trade. My body, and my devotion, freely given, in exchange for your power to save it. Take what you want of me tonight and burn the blight from my trees."

The demon was silent. The candle flames straightened. Then he laughed, low and dark, and the sound moved through her like a hand down her spine.

"You offer me your body like a merchant lays coin on a table," he said. "I am not a merchant, Vesper Marlowe."

"I don't bargain for flesh," Kaine said. "Flesh comes to me. It always comes." He crouched then, outside the circle, so that his face was level with hers, close enough that she could see the gold swirl in his eyes like smoke in firelight. "But I will make you an offer of my own. Invite me across the salt. And I will not take your body for a night, witch. I will claim it. All of it. Your pleasure, your wanting, your surrender — mine, to give and to take as I please. Tonight, in this circle, on the moss of your grove. And in return the blight burns, your trees breathe, and you will belong to something stronger than your own small magic."

Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was not the bargain. This was more, and less, and far more dangerous. The grimoire had warned: what is claimed by a demon prince is kept. But her grove was dying, and her blood was already on the sigil, and her body — treacherous, honest body — was already wet for him, already leaning toward the heat of him through the salt line.

"And if I refuse?" she whispered.

"Then I go back to Hell," Kaine said simply, "and your trees finish dying. The choice is yours. It is always yours. That is the one law even Hell keeps." His eyes held hers. "But we both know what you want."

She did. Gods help her, she did. She had wanted it since the first night she whispered his name alone in her cottage, her hand between her thighs, imagining exactly this — a dark prince who would not ask her to be gentle or good or careful, who would take her the way the storm took the pines.

Vesper lifted her hand from the sigil. Blood ran down her wrist. She reached across the salt line and took his hand, and pulled.

"Then come in," she said. "And claim me."

The salt line broke where her blood crossed it — hissed, blackened, split — and Kaine stepped over it like a king stepping onto his own ground. The candles flared, all four, and went out at once. The only light was the blood moon, red through the ruined leaves, and the ember-gold of his eyes.

He stood over her, and she knelt before him, and the air between them was thick with his aura and her wanting and the iron smell of her blood.

"On your feet," he said.

It was not a request. Vesper rose, her knees shaking, moss clinging to her skirt. He was so close she could feel the heat coming off him — not human heat, deeper, a furnace banked behind his skin.

"Look at me." She did. "Good. Now listen, because I will say this once. In this circle you are mine. You do not move unless I tell you. You do not speak unless I ask it. Your body is mine to use, your pleasure is mine to give, and you will take everything I give you and thank me for it. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she breathed.

"Yes, what?"

Her throat closed. Then opened. "Yes — my prince."

Something flared in his eyes, hot and pleased. "Oh," he murmured, "you learn fast." He reached out and took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up, his thumb pressing into her lower lip until her mouth opened for him. "Then let's begin."

He kissed her like a conflagration. There was no gentleness in it — his mouth claimed hers, his tongue pushed past her lips and took, and she moaned into him and tasted smoke and honey and something darker, something that made her knees go weak. His hand slid into her hair, fisted it, angled her head where he wanted it. She had dreamed of being handled like this, held like this, and the reality was hotter than the dream because his other hand was already on her body, cupping her breast through her dress, thumb finding her nipple and rolling it hard enough to make her gasp against his mouth.

"Please," she whispered, when he let her breathe.

"Please what?" His voice was a growl against her throat, where his teeth grazed her skin and made her shudder.

"I don't know. Please — more. Please don't stop."

He laughed against her skin, low. "Begging already. Good girl." The praise went through her like sunlight through water. "Take off the dress."

Her fingers fumbled at the laces. He watched — ember eyes on her hands, on the skin she bared inch by inch — and did not help her, and that was worse, hotter, being unwrapped under that gaze. The dress pooled at her feet. She stood in her shift and her skin prickled in the night air, her nipples hard points against the thin cloth, and she could feel how wet she was, could feel it on her thighs.

"The shift too."

She pulled it over her head and dropped it. Naked, in the red moonlight, in the center of the salt circle, her blood still drying on her palm. Kaine looked at her — a slow, thorough look — and the look was a touch, a claim, a brand.

"Beautiful," he said, and it sounded almost reverent, and then his mouth was on her throat and his hands were on her body and reverence was gone.

He learned her with his hands — quickly, and with intent. One hand cupped her breast, kneading, thumb circling her nipple until she whimpered; the other slid down her belly and between her thighs. He found her wet and open and he groaned against her throat.

"So ready for me," he murmured. "So wet. You were wet before I ever touched you, weren't you?"

"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, my prince, since you — since you looked at me —"

"Good." Two fingers pushed inside her, deep, and her whole body clenched around them. "Tight. Perfect." He worked her slowly, curling his fingers, finding the spot inside that made her cry out, while his thumb circled her clit with maddening patience. "You're going to come for me, Vesper. Not yet. But soon. And when I tell you to, you will come so hard the trees feel it."

She was already close — shamefully close, embarrassingly close, after so little — and she dug her nails into his shoulders and held on. He kissed her again, swallowing her moans, his fingers driving her higher, and just as the pleasure crested, just as she was about to break, he stopped. Withdrew his hand. Stepped back.

She whimpered, bereft, her body pulsing with unspent need.

"Patience," Kaine said, and there was amusement in it, and command. "Kneel."

She knelt on the moss. He stood before her and unfastened his trousers, and her breath caught. He was magnificent — long and thick, flushed dark at the head, already leaking. Vesper's mouth watered. She had never wanted anything the way she wanted him in her mouth.

"Look at you," he said softly. "Hungry little witch." He took himself in hand and guided the head of his cock to her lips, smearing the wetness across her mouth. "Open."

She opened. He pushed inside, slow, filling her mouth, and she moaned around him, the sound vibrating through him. He groaned — a real groan, torn out of him — and his hand fisted in her hair again, holding her head steady.

"That's it. Take me. Deeper." He pushed further, and she relaxed her throat the way she had taught herself alone in the dark, dreaming of this, and took him deep, her nose nearly to his belly. "Fuck," he breathed. "Just like that. Worship me with that mouth."

She did. She worshipped him — sucked him hard, swirled her tongue around the head when he pulled back, took him deep again, her hands on his thighs. He let her serve him, his breathing roughening, his grip tightening in her hair, and she felt powerful in her surrender, drunk on the taste of him. When his thighs tensed she knew he was close, and she hollowed her cheeks and took him as deep as she could, and he came with a snarl, hot and thick down her throat, and she swallowed every drop, shuddering with her own untouched need.

He pulled back, breathing hard, and looked down at her — her mouth wet, her eyes glazed, kneeling in the moss — and something in his face changed, went hotter and darker and more possessive.

"Up," he said. "Turn around. Hands on the oak."

Vesper pressed her palms to it, bent at the waist, and felt him behind her — his heat, his hands on her hips. He ran the head of his cock through her wetness, up and down, teasing, and she pushed back against him, shameless.

"Please," she begged. "Please, my prince, I need you inside me, please —"

"Ask properly."

"Please claim me," she gasped. "Please take me, I'm yours, I'm yours —"

He drove into her in one hard stroke, and she screamed. He was so big, so deep, stretching her, filling her to the point of pain and past it into something transcendent. He held himself buried in her, letting her body learn him, and then he began to move — slow at first, deep rolling thrusts that dragged against every nerve inside her, then harder, faster, his hips slapping against her ass, the oak bark rough under her palms.

"Mine," he growled, each thrust punctuating the word. "Say it."

"Yours!" she cried. "I'm yours, I'm yours —"

"Louder. Let the grove hear it."

"I'm yours!" she screamed into the red night, and the sound echoed off the dying trees, and he fucked her harder, one hand sliding around to her clit, rubbing hard in time with his thrusts, and the pleasure built and built, a wave rising and rising —

"Come for me," he commanded. "Now."

She shattered. The orgasm tore through her like hellfire, white-hot, endless — her whole body convulsing around him, her scream breaking into sobs, wave after wave of it, and he kept thrusting through it, driving her higher, groaning her name like a prayer and a curse. When it finally ebbed, he pulled out of her — she whimpered at ...