Chapter 3: Possession by Power
The alley air was a cold slap after the sterile chill of the Quick-Mart. The blue can of energy drink lay dented near the dumpster, where Mordecai had crushed it in his fist after a single sip, his face a mask of profound betrayal. “A bitterness that screams,” he’d said, dropping it like a dead thing.
Now, he stood between Nevada and the weak light of the street, his frame blocking everything else. The hum from the store’s transformers deepened, synchronizing with the energy radiating from his skin.
“This world is a chorus of trapped lightning,” he murmured, not to her, but to the flickering bulb above them. It flared, then dimmed, painting his sharp features in alternating strokes of glare and shadow. “And you,” he said, his blue eyes finding hers, “are a wrong note in the symphony. A deliciously sour one.”
He moved then, not with the predatory stalk she expected, but with a sudden, inevitable proximity, like a tide coming in. Her back met the rough brick of the wall, cold seeping through her thin shirt. His hands, those ancient, clever hands, settled on her hips.
“You asked for love,” he said, his voice a low thrum she felt in her bones.“A simple wish. A mortal ache.”
A memory, sharp and unbidden, sliced through the panic: his laughter in the forest clearing, the warmth in his eyes as he’d shrugged off his tunic.
“No,” he had managed, straightening slowly. There was genuine warmth in his eyes now, something unguarded. “I am laughing because I expected conquest.Revenge. Immortality. You stand in the aftermath of tearing a veil between worlds and ask”—his mouth twitched again—“to be fucked.”
Heat had rushed up her neck.
“Well, excuse me for being honest.”
“It is… refreshing.”
“That’s one word for it.”
He studied her more carefully then, the amusement fading into something softer. “Love,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “In my time, that was rarely what mortals asked of me. Your request is simply too easy.”
She felt sickened by the statement. “If it’s so easy, then what are you waiting for?”
His blue eyes hardened, the flicker of the candles wavering on his face. “You should know that once I complete your call of invocation, I will return to the underworld free again. Are you sure you don’t wish for anything else?”
She swallowed, standing her ground. “I.Am. Sure.”
Mordecai shrugged, all too quickly tugging off his vest and tunic in a swift motion. She lightly gasped at his bare sculpted chest.
The memory dissolved, leaving her here, pinned in the present. His thumbs dug into the soft flesh of her hips. “A simple wish,” he repeated, his breath warm against her temple. “But the geometry of desire is never straight. Your spell was crooked. It didn’t ask for love. It demanded union. Consequence. It pulled me here by the root of that want.”
Before she could form a thought, his hand slid under her skirt, rough and hot on her thigh. He didn’t fumble. There was no awkward search. He knew the shape of her, the exact tension of the lace at her hips. A snap of his fingers—a tiny, soundless crackle of power—and the fabric of her panties disintegrated into nothing but a faint, scorched smell.
She gasped, the cold alley air a shocking intimacy against her naked skin.
“Te viscera tua mihi aperis,” he whispered, a Latin obscenity that wasn’t a charm but a fact. You open your guts for me.
Two of his fingers plunged into her, deep and without ceremony. She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the alley. She was wet—terrifyingly, confusingly wet—and his fingers moved with a cruel, knowing precision, curling inside her, finding a place that made her knees buckle. The streetlight above them throbbed in time with the thrust of his hand, the world reduced to the slick, filthy sound of his taking, the grit of the brick against her cheek, the overwhelming scent of him—oakmoss and cold stone and raw power.
“Is this the love you wanted, little witch?” His voice was gravel in her ear. His other hand gripped her jaw, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were no longer just blue; they were the heart of a gas flame, intense and humming. “This raw, fucking thing?”
He withdrew his fingers, glistening in the neon-touched dark, and brought them to his lips. His tongue swept the length of them, his gaze locked on hers. A shudder ran through her, part horror, part devastating need.
He unfastened his trousers, the sound of the buckle loud in the narrow space. He was already hard, his cock springing free, thick and ruddy in the pallid light. He didn’t guide himself to her. He simply hoisted her higher against the wall, her skirt rumbling around her waist, and with one brutal, upward thrust, he was inside her.
The fullness was a shock, a splitting ache that stole her breath. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a relentless, punishing rhythm, each drive slamming her body into the unyielding brick. It was nothing like the gentle, loving connection she’d fantasized about in her quiet apartment. This was a claiming, an excavation. His grunts were short, animal things, lost against the skin of her neck.
“You called for a god,” he snarled, his hips pistoning. “Now take one.”
Pain and pleasure fused into a single, white-hot wire. Her own cries were ragged, matching the tempo of his thrusts. She could feel the magic in it, not the clean lines from her grandmother’s book, but something older and darker, flowing from him into her with every deep, grinding stroke. The alley seemed to contract, the shadows from the dumpster reaching for them, the flickering light dying to a persistent, dim pulse that matched the beating of her blood.
His rhythm fractured. His breath hitched, a choked, ancient word against her collarbone. He drove into her one final, searing time, holding himself deep as he spilled inside her, a hot flood that felt less like an ending and more like a seal being set.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the distant whine of a semi-truck on the highway. He stayed inside her, his forehead damp against hers, his body a cage of heat and spent strength.
Slowly, he lowered her until her feet found the greasy pavement. The loss of him was immediate, a hollow, aching cold. Something warm and wet trickled down her inner thigh. He stepped back, fastening himself with an unsettling casualness, his expression unreadable in the half-light.
He looked at the damp smear on her thigh, then at her face. A different kind of knowledge passed between them.
The spell was complete. The invocation, in all its twisted, literal glory, was fulfilled.
He was free.
But as Nevada leaned against the brick, her body humming with a strange, stolen power, her skin tingling where the shadow-tendrils had brushed it, she understood with a cold, clear certainty that he wasn’t the only one who was no longer bound. Something had been transacted. Something had opened.
And it wasn’t going to close.
And it wasn’t going to close.
A shudder wracked Nevada’s body, part aftershock, part severance. The cold brick bit into her shoulder blades. Mordecai adjusted his trousers, the gesture mundane and obscene. He glanced at her, his blue eyes now like chips of winter sky, evaluating the results of a messy experiment.
The hollow ache between her legs was a raw, throbbing void. It screamed for the brutal fullness that had just been ripped away. Her own mind recoiled, a jumble of shame and shattered spellcraft, but her body was a traitor, pulsating with a deeper, hungrier truth.
The energy drink can rustled in a faint breeze by the dumpster.
“It is done,” Mordecai stated, dusting invisible lint from his sleeve. “The conduit is closed. The terms, met.” He took a step toward the alley’s mouth, toward the flat, electric light of the convenience store.
Panic, sharp and absolute, lanced through the fog in her head. It wasn’t about love anymore. It was about the consuming fire that had just forged her, and the chilling vacuum its absence left behind.
“Wait.”
He paused, not turning.
Her voice was a torn scrap of sound. “You can’t… you can’t just…”
He half-glanced back, one eyebrow arched in sterile inquiry. “The transaction is complete, Nevada Snow.You desired union. You received it. The geometry is satisfied.”
“It’s not.” The words were out before she could cage them, pushed from a place of pure, desperate instinct. She pushed herself off the wall, her legs trembling. The sensation of his release, now a slow leak down her thigh, fueled the embers inside her. “It’s not satisfied.”
This time he turned fully. His gaze was no longer amused. It was assessing, calculating the shift in pressure. “Explain.”
She couldn’t. There were no words for the yawning need. She took a shaky step forward, her hand reaching out not for him, but toward the space he occupied, as if pulling on the unseen threads of power that still connected them. Her grandmother’s book had been wrong. Love wasn’t a gentle merging. It was this—a possession so total it bordered on annihilation.
“You didn’t finish,” she whispered, the filthiness of the words sending a thrill through her core.
A slow smile, devoid of warmth, touched his lips. “I felt myself finish. Quite profoundly.”
“Not that.” She swallowed, her mouth dry. “You stopped. I didn’t… I didn’t get mine.”
The air in the alley seemed to thicken, to pull inward toward him. The flickering streetlight finally died, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the distant neon sign. His form became a silhouette of deeper black.
“Yours,” he echoed, the word a dark promise. “You presume a balance sheet. A reciprocity.” He moved then, not the swift assault of before, but a slow, predator’s advance. “The spell did not ask for your pleasure. It asked for a joining.My essence within you. That was the price for my freedom.”
He was close again. The scent of their coupling rose between them, salty and intimate. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“Then don’t be free,” she breathed, her mind unspooling. “Not yet.”
His hand shot out, curling around the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. It wasn’t gentle. It was ownership. “You bargain with currency you do not possess, witch. What could you possibly offer me now?”
“Myself.” The answer was primal, stripped of all pretense. “Again.Not for a spell. Just… because I want it.”
His stillness was absolute. She felt his power coil tighter, a serpent ready to strike. The magic in the alley, the old, hungry magic from the circle, was awake again, listening.
“You want it,” he repeated, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through his chest into her. “Define it. Be precise.”
She met his gaze in the dark, letting every shred of shame burn away. “I want your cock back inside me. I want you to fuck me until I can’t remember my own name. I want to come so hard I forget the spell, the forest, everything.” Her fingers fumbled for the waistband of his trousers, finding the hard line of him beneath the fabric. “Please.”
The ‘please’ hung in the air, a surrender.
With a grunt that was almost acknowledgement, he spun her around to face the wall. His body pressed against her back, pinning her. The rough brick scratched her cheek. One hand snaked around her waist, pulling her hips hard against him, while the other yanked her skirt up around her waist once more.
“This is no longer magic,” he growled into her ear, his breath hot. “This is biology. A desperate, animal rut. You understand?”
“Yes.” The sound was a sob.
He freed himself, his length sliding against the cleft of her ass, already slick from their first joining. He didn’t guide himself. He used the head of his cock to probe her, bumping against her swollen flesh, teasing the entrance that was still loose and wet from him.
“Say it,” he demanded, nipping her earlobe.
“I want you to fuck me,” she gasped.
“Louder.”
“Fuck me!” Her cry echoed off the alley walls, swallowed by the dumpster’s shadow.
He shoved into her in one deep, brutal stroke. She screamed, the sound torn from her throat. It was too much, too soon, a searing stretch that bordered on pain. He didn’t let her adjust. He set a furious, driving pace, each thrust slamming the breath from her lungs.
“This is what you begged for,” he grunted, his hips pounding a relentless rhythm against her. “This is the ‘more’. Take it.”
Her hands scrabbled against the brick. The world narrowed to the slap of skin, his guttural curses in a dead language, the overwhelming sensation of being filled, used, seen. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth where she’d bitten her lip.
A tight, hot coil was winding deep in her belly, tighter with every punishing drive. It was fused with the pain, inseparable from it. Her sounds became ragged, broken pleas for him not to stop, to go harder, to ruin her completely.
“Mordecai… gods, right there… don’t stop…”
He swore, a filthy, beautiful oath, and his hand slid from her waist, down over her belly, through the rough hair, and found her clit. His touch was ruthless, circling the sensitive nub with a rough, perfect pressure that synced with his thrusts.
It was too much. The coil snapped.
Her orgasm ripped through her with a violence that stole her vision. It was a silent, screaming thing that clenched around him, wave after wave of brutal, mind-numbing pleasure. She convulsed against the wall, her body seizing, her knees buckling.
He held her up, his rhythm faltering only slightly, riding out her contractions. As she pulsed around him, he let out a final, choked roar and slammed home, shuddering as he spilled his heat into her a second time.
They collapsed against the wall, a mess of sweat and spent breath. He remained buried inside her, his weight heavy on her back. The only sounds were their harsh panting and the buzz of the distant sign.
Slowly, he withdrew. The loss was physical, a chilling abandonment. He turned her to face him. His expression was unreadable in the dark, but his thumb swiped roughly across her wet, bruised lips.
“The conduit,” he said, his voice raw, “is now open. And you, little witch, have just volunteered to be its vessel.”