Page 44 of Witch Unexpected
“It’s me…”
“Jasper?”
“Need you.”
My pulse sped up as cool air brushed my cheek.
“Give me your energy. Please.”
He’d never said please before. He’d never asked me for anything, always demanding or manipulating. But now he was asking…
No. Don’t read into it. This is Jasper we’re talking about.
“Cora… please…”
I hardened my heart. “Why? Couldn’t find any humans to siphon off?”
“Too weak… slipping…please…”
He’d said please three times. My skin prickled. This was wrong. He sounded wrong, like… Like he was dying. No, he was already dead. He was a malevolent entity. He couldn’t die… Could he?
The fact I knew so little about him was a thorn in my psyche. Fuck. The amulet gave me control. It prevented him from being sexually intimate with me, but it allowed me to offer him energy if I wanted to. I just needed to be willing.
I’d never wanted to give him anything… Not until now. Now, my gut told me to help.
Dammit. “Take a little. Just enough to recharge.”
The amulet glowed with my words. A long beat passed, and my breath hitched, and the world grew hazy. There was a tug in my solar plexus, a familiar sensation, the kind that accompanied his feeding during sex. It was strange to feel it now, without him being inside me.
Fucking hell. Don’t think about that.
Pressure wrapped around my throat. Jasper’s long, powerful fingers. His ethereal and wickedly beautiful face materialized inches from mine.
I waited for his lips to lift in his signature smug smile, waited for triumph to light up his green eyes, but none of that happened. Instead, his gaze swirled with deep darkness then bloomed with an emotion that made no sense.
My pulse fluttered in my throat like a hummingbird.
“Cora…” My name was a whispered breath on his lips. The fingers of his free hand stroked my cheek. “I thought I’d lost you.”
My heart lurched. What? What did he say? The heat of yearning trickled through my veins.
“Take it off, and we can be together,” he said. “Take it off, and let me in.”
The heat of his previous words was doused in ice by his demand.
Motherfucker. “No.” I pulled away from him. “Enough!”
The amulet flared, and a blast of energy propelled him away from me.
I dropped my chin, chest heaving as I regained my equilibrium. What the fuck was that? That feeling? That look?
A lie, that’s what.
A manipulation.
Anger tightened my lungs.
I raised my head to look at him. “It’s just like you, isn’t it? Take, take, take. I help you out, and you try totakeadvantage.”
