Page 78 of The Warlock's Kiss

“You don’t need to lie to me, Adalynn.”

Adalynn lifted her head and met his eyes, careful to keep her thoughts from affecting her expression. She smiled softly and brushed her lips over his. “I’m happy. The happiest I’ve ever been. I want to know more about you. About your past, about why you live in this big old house all by yourself, and how you got this.” She lifted a hand and lightly traced the scar from his forehead down to his cheek.

Merrick eased back on the sofa, letting out a soft sigh. “My past is long and largely uneventful. Survival in a hostile world necessitated as much—keeping suspicions to a minimum was vital. I was born in what was at the time called Mercia, though the name ceased to mean anything not long after my birth. It is part of central England in modern times, though I suppose those names may well change again, given the current state of the world.

“I was young during a time of unrest. The king was considered ineffective and was despised by many. The Danes were fighting the Saxons, power was shifting…it was a messy era, and my perspective during that period was that of a child with a very limited world view. Few humans ventured more than a few miles from the towns of their birth, in those days. My parents were careful with their magic, but anything outside of what people considered wholly natural in those days—even the use of natural remedies to cure ailments—was often a target of suspicion.

“They were dragged out of our home when I was eleven or twelve and lashed to a stake to be burned. Being a child, I had little understanding of what was going on apart from there being an angry mob seeking to harm my parents. I’d not grown into my magic yet, but even if I had, I know now there was nothing I could’ve done. This”—he touched his fingertip to the top of the scar and slashed downward along its path—“is what I received when I tried to help them. The mob spared me because they deemed me yet innocent, but the owner of the dagger I lunged for was unappreciative of my attempt to take his weapon. I was able to pull back before I lost my eye, but I wasn’t fast enough to avoid his blade completely.”

Adalynn’s eyes widened. She’d learned about the witch trials in school—though they’d occurred several centuries after his childhood, with him being over a thousand years old—had seen movies, read books, but she’d only understood the cruelty with which those people had been treated as a distant thing. It was something that she’d never thought could’ve happened in the modern world; it was something by which she’d never be affected. But such thingshadaffected Merrick. That had been hislife.

“Did you have siblings?” she asked. “Did they…”

“Two. A pair of older brothers. They’d been sent off on an errand—I can’t remember what—and arrived only after the fire had burned down to embers and there was nothing left. They dragged me away from the pile of ashes, and we fled that evening. My kind is far more resilient than yours, but we are by no means invulnerable, and there was no magic at our disposal that could’ve saved my parents from that fate.”

Icy horror spread through Adalynn; even having seen the aftermath of the accident that took her parents, she couldn’t imagine how traumatizing it must’ve been for Merrick to watch his parents burned alive. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be. It was a very long time ago, as I said, and you were not one of the people who took part in it. My brothers and I traveled for a time afterward, taking work where we could to keep from going hungry. With my magic not yet unlocked, and without having reached my point of immortality, I was essentially human. My brothers, though in possession of their magic, had not yet reached that immortal state either.

“It was a difficult existence. Most people were distrustful of outsiders, but we managed as best we could. Within two years, both my brothers were dead. Killed in a scuffle over food.” His hold on her tightened a little, and she could sense the discordance in the song of his soul. “Perhaps they’d been overconfident in their blossoming power, or perhaps it was merely desperation to keep our bellies from feeling so hollow. I’ve been alone since then.”

“How did you survive?” Adalynn laid her cheek on his chest and grasped the fabric of his open vest.

“I just…did. In that case, I was just young enough that men saw it as beneath them to kill me. If there had been a war raging, it would’ve been different, of course…but a lone child was easier for folks to trust, and I worked hard enough to earn my meals. In some ways…it waseasier, on my own. No one had to worry about me, and I didn’t have to worry about anyone else.

“That’s how it was for centuries. I pressed forward, interacting with mortals only as much as was necessary—though, unfortunately, that necessity only increased as time marched on. The world around me changed, the people changed, but I stayed the same…so I took to moving around every decade or so to avoid questions and suspicions. I learned new trades, I learned new languages, and, eventually, I began to discover bits of information about what I was and what I could do. I’d learned so little from my parents because I’d not been able to use my power before their deaths.”

Merrick extended his free arm and held it with his palm up and fingers slightly curled. A small blue orb coalesced in the air just over his hand, pulsing and swirling. “This seemed so difficult back then. Nearly impossible. It took me years to build up to being able to produce something like this. After the Sundering, it’s as effortless as breathing.”

Adalynn reached for the orb. Touching it was like touching one of those plasma balls that were always sold in novelty shops; it produced a thrum that flowed through her fingertips and up her arm, tickling rather than painful. The tiny hairs on her forearms stood on end.

“Amassing wealth over the centuries has been both simple and increasingly complicated. I’d grown into my immortality some time during my thirties. My magic felt fuller, and my need for food and drink dwindled. That made it easier to survive, easier to save what I earned. I started scouring the world for anything I could find that would grant me insight into my magic, gathering a massive collection of texts with bits and pieces of information from around the world—some of them containing what I might callspells. That collection is in my study currently.”

“Did you ever find anyone else like you?” She turned her hand over, trailing her fingers across the orb before lowering her hand onto his palm.

The magical sphere vanished. Merrick laced his fingers with hers and lifted her hand to brush his lips over her knuckles. “A few. But the need for discretion and secrecy has only amplified with the passage of time, so my interactions with them were brief. It seems most of us who were left have survived as loners and had grown distrustful even of each other.”

“Is that why you never…had a relationship?”Ugh, why was she torturing herself by asking this question?

“I’ve never had a relationship because the only draw I’ve felt to anyone was superficial. The few times I’ve forced myself out into human society, I’ve hadrelationswith women, but nothing came of it other than fleeting mutual pleasure.”

Adalynn’s jealousy reared within her and roared. It was furious; it was consuming. Her brow furrowed as she glared at the dancing fire. She’d known even when she’d brought up the subject earlier today that she had no right to be jealous, butdamn it, shewas. She hated every single faceless woman who’d ever touched him, who’d been touchedbyhim, who’d experienced even a fraction of the pleasure Adalynn experienced when she was with him.

Merrick’s chuckle was deep, rumbling, and rich; Adalynn felt it as much as she heard it.

“Is my little Adalynnjealous?” He slid his hand from her arm to her hip, trailing it up her side until his fingers brushed the underside of her breast. “No one hasevermade me feel like you do.”

Her hold on his hand tightened involuntarily, and her breath hitched. The raging flame inside her intensified and became a different kind of heat—a heat fueled by her desire, a heat that stoked her need to a feverish degree.

He leaned his head toward her until his mouth was near her ear and whispered, “If I’ve not made it clear by my words, I suppose I’ll have to show you.” Dipping his head farther, he pressed his lips to the place where her shoulder and neck met. The light scrape of his teeth against her skin sent a thrill directly to her core.

He released her hand to settle his on her right breast, cupping it through her shirt. His fingertips brushed over her nipple briefly before he moved both his hands down, over her stomach and to the waistband of her pants.

Her breath quickened. “Merrick…”

“You are the first to bemine, Adalynn,” he rasped. “Theonly.”

That thrumming, tingly sensation spread across her entire body as he unbuttoned her jeans.

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