Chapter 8: The Witch's Claim
The quiet in the room was absolute, the kind of deep peace that settles only in the small, held hours before dawn. Alistair lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, his mind pleasantly blank, humming with the low-frequency contentment of shared warmth and satisfied flesh. Rosalinda was a soft weight against his side, her breath a steady tide on his chest.
Then the thought, clinical and jarring, pierced the haze.
He sat up abruptly, the twilight quilt pooling at his waist. The cool air hit his sweat-damp skin. “We didn’t use protection,” he blurted out, his own voice too loud in the sleeping stillness.
Rosalinda stirred. She blinked up at him, moonlight from the window tracing the elegant silver paths of her collarbones, the dip of her navel, the curve of her hip where it met the sheet. Her crystal blue eyes were hazy, unfocused.
“Mmm?” She reached for him, her hand finding his thigh, her fingers warm and claiming. “I did a cleansing ritual. In the bath. Drains everything. Sperm included. Stops anything from taking root.” She murmured it like a fact of nature, like noting that rain was wet, and tugged gently to pull him back down beside her.
He resisted, the scholar in him latching onto the loophole. “But that’s not—what if it’s not one hundred percent? What if the magic is more… symbolic? My understanding of fertility rituals in proto-Celtic cultures suggests that—”
“If it happens, it happens.” Her voice was thick with sleep and a deep, satiated satisfaction. She cut him off, her eyes now fully open and fixed on his face in the dim light. There was no teasing in them now, only a calm, terrifying certainty. “I’ve decided to keep you.”
The statement landed like a physical blow, knocking the breath and the protest from his lungs. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a plea. It was a declaration, as solid and factual as the cottage walls around them. His mind, usually a whirlwind of cross-references and hypotheticals, went perfectly, profoundly still.
He must have looked shocked, because she gave him a slow, predatory smile. She moved then, fluid as mercury, rolling up onto her knees beside him. She slid her hands into his hair, cupping the back of his skull, and pulled his mouth to hers.
His protest died as she kissed him. It wasn’t soft. It was possessive. Her teeth caught his lower lip, a sharp, sweet sting that sent a jolt straight to his groin. She released it, sucking gently before pulling back just enough to speak, her lips brushing his with each word.
“You’re my key,” she whispered, the sound a vibration he felt in his own teeth. “And the way you make love to me is anything but clinical.”
A low, hungry heat rose up in him, burning away the last of his analytical dread. It wasn’t just desire; it was a need to match her certainty, to shed his own careful skin and meet her in that raw, declared place.
She pushed him back down onto the mattress, her hands firm on his shoulders. He went willingly, his head sinking into the pillow that smelled of her. She swung a leg over his hips, straddling him, her knees pinning his sides. The sheet was gone. She was fully revealed in the fragmented moonlight, her silver hair a tangled curtain over her shoulders, her eyes blazing down at him. The soft glow from her staff in the corner painted one side of her body in molten gold.
“How about we have sex for real,” she said, her voice dropping to a rough, candid register he hadn’t heard before. “Just us. No veil. No magic. No fucking grimoire giving us homework. Just this.” She ground her hips down against him, and he was already hard, the length of him pressed against her slick heat through no intermediary but their own skin. The sensation was brutally direct.
He looked up at her, at the wild, beautiful witch laying claim to him, and the last of his restraint shattered. “Yes,” he said, the word scraping from his throat. “Definitely yes.”
“Good.” Her grin was fierce. “’Cause I’m sick of you being gentle.”
She didn’t wait. She reached between them, her hand wrapping around his cock, guiding him. Then she sank down onto him in one smooth, unbroken motion.
He cried out, a ragged, choked sound. She was so wet, so tight, so impossibly hot. She took him to the hilt, sheathing him completely inside her, and paused there, her inner muscles fluttering around him in a sudden, involuntary clamp of pure sensation. Her head fell back, a sharp gasp escaping her.
“Fuck,” she breathed, the word full of awe and pure filth.
Then she began to move.
This was nothing like before. There was no ritual slowness, no exploratory grace. This was a fuck. She rose up, almost drawing him completely out, then slammed back down, her hips driving with a ruthless, demanding rhythm. The sound of their joining was obscenely loud in the quiet room—a wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed ropes protesting.
Alistair’s hands flew to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there, trying to guide, to match her pace. But she was in control. She rode him like she was wrestling something into submission, her body a bow of tension and release. He could only hold on, his gaze locked on the sight of her: the sway of her breasts, the furious concentration on her face, the way her hair stuck to her sweaty temples.
“Is this—” he grunted, trying to thrust up to meet her, “—clinical enough for you?”
She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, not breaking her pace. Her eyes gleamed. “Don’t talk,” she panted. “Just fucking feel it. Come on. Let go. Give it to me. All of it.”
Her words unspooled him.He surrendered. He let his hips pist upwards, driving into her with a force that knocked a broken moan from her lips. The bed rocked violently. He bucked beneath her, meeting each of her downward strokes with a savage upward thrust, their bodies colliding in a frantic, escalating race.
One of her hands left his chest, snaking between them. He saw her fingers work, rubbing quick, desperate circles over her clit. Her rhythm became erratic, frantic. Her breaths were sobbing gasps.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice shattered. “Oh, god, Alistair, I’m gonna—”
He felt her clench around him, a series of violent, gripping spasms that milked his cock. The sight of her, the feel of her, the raw, unfiltered sound of her climax—it was too much. His own control snapped.
With a roar that was pure release, he thrust up into her one last, deep time and held there as his orgasm tore through him. It felt endless, wracking, a torrent of heat flooding into her. He shook with it, his vision blurring at the edges, every muscle locked rigid.
She collapsed onto his chest, a boneless, sweaty weight. They were both slick, breathing in ragged, discordant unison. The room slowly came back into focus—the humming vines on the wall, the slow pulse of the staff’s light, the smell of sex and sleep and her skin.
For a long time, neither spoke. His heart hammered against her ear.
Finally, she lifted her head. She was smiling, a real, dazed, fucked-out smile. She brushed his damp hair from his forehead. “See?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “That’s what I wanted. No magic. Just that.”
He laughed, a breathless, incredulous sound. “I think you broke the bed.”
“It’s a sturdy bed. It’s seen things.” She shifted, wincing slightly as he slipped out of her. She curled into his side, one leg thrown possessively over his.“So. Tomorrow. We plan the trip.”
The shift was so abrupt, so perfectly her, that he laughed again. The reality of it settled over him—the journey, the dangers, the ingredients listed in that demanding book. But the anxiety was muted now, blunted by the deep, animal satisfaction in his veins and the weight of her leg across his.
“Star-fallen iron,” he said, staring at the ceiling where the moonlight was beginning to fade toward dawn. “Tears of a dryad. We’ll need maps. Or something resembling maps.”
“I have notions,” she murmured, already sounding half-asleep again. “The Echo Wolds. The Whispering Tarn. Places where the world is thin. We’ll need supplies. Proper boots. And you,” she poked him in the ribs, “need to learn how to hold a staff without looking like you’re trying to measure it for a journal article.”
“I’ll practice my menacing glower.”
“Good.” She snuggled closer. “And maybe we should pack some of those cleansing salts. Just in case.”
He turned his head, looking at the profile of her face against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her long silver lashes dark against her skin. “You’re really not worried? About any of it?”
One eye opened, a sliver of crystalline blue. “About the impossible journey, or the potential consequence of our completely unprotected, absolutely phenomenal fuck?”
“Either.”
She closed her eye again. “The journey is necessary. So we’ll do it.” A pause. “The other… I told you. I’ve decided. I’m keeping you. The rest is just details.”
Before he could formulate a response to that, a new sound filtered into the room. Not from the grimoire. From outside.
It was a scratching. Delicate, persistent. Against the windowpane.
Rosalinda went still. Then she sat up, the sheet falling away. All sleepiness was gone, replaced by a sharp, listening tension.
Alistair followed her gaze. On the other side of the old, wavy glass, something was moving.Small. Dark. It wasn’t a branch.
It was a bird. A crow, or a raven. It tapped its beak against the glass once, twice—a sound like a tiny stone striking.
Then it paused, cocked its head, and fixed one gleaming, intelligent eye directly on Rosalinda.
It opened its beak.
No sound came through the glass, but they both saw the shape the word formed, clear and unmistakable in the greying light.
Now.