Page 39 of The Mating Fire
Serena rattled off the password and Harper plugged it into her phone. She found her email and beamed. “It works!”
“Of course it does. Silly.”
Harper tried the yucca. Delish. “If you’re one of his failed conquests, why do you work for him and conceal your true identity? Revenge?”
“No, I already had my revenge. You might call it a guilty conscience. I’m here to coax destiny along, into making it work out.”
“In that outfit?”
Serena laughed. “No, this is not what I usually wear. Jared thinks my name is Jallu, one of the women who lives in the village closest to the castle. I come here once a week through the secret entranceway to clean and cook for him. I think he gets bored and enjoys the company. I tell him about the tourists my grandchildren have seen visiting Machu Picchu. They aren’t really my grandchildren. The real Jallu is visiting family in Colombia and has been for the past year. I paid her well to assume her place and her family has come to enjoy my company because they want for nothing.”
Harper found it hard to believe this woman with her elegant looks and powers could fool Jared.
“What secret entranceway?” Perhaps she could find a way out of here, and leave.
Serena looked sly. “One you will have to find on your own. But it exists, if you truly wish to leave Jared.”
Go where? Maybe to the village, hitchhike to an airport.
Don’t you want to see what kind of powers you really have?
The thought of leaving faded. First, she had to test her newfound powers, discover a way to protect herself from the demon Jared mentioned.
If the demon really existed. Yet she knew he did, for the terrifying phantom she’d glimpsed back at the volcano had made her blood run cold and her heart race in pure panic. It stamped itself on her mind as surely as a victim could never quite forget being buried by an earthquake.
Harper turned her attention to Serena, who knew more about Jared than she did.
“What’s he really like? Does he seduce women at night all the time?”
Serena folded and unfolded an extra linen napkin. “He once did, as a nightly pleasure. He’s quite handsome and charming and irresistible to women.
“Jared thought nothing of entering a woman’s mind, culling out her darkest and most secret fantasies and then using them to seduce her. Then he would discard her like day-old trash. It’s what made him both nasty and bitter. I decided to teach him a lesson by cursing him. He hasn’t had sex since the day I placed the curse on him.”
Fascinated, she set down the teacup. “An incubus who hasn’t had sex in nearly one hundred years?”
Serena nodded. “I believe so, except for self-pleasuring. He used to get magazines in town before the internet came into being. I guess even an incubus needs a little visual stimulation now and then.”
She couldn’t help but ask. “How did he seduce you, if you’re such a powerful witch?”
Her voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “He didn’t. But a word of caution, he may try to seduce you. Do you have fantasies he could use to his advantage?”
Against her better judgement, she found herself daydreaming. Maybe even being dominated so she could no longer control how the sex would play out. Jared calling the shots, and she submitting to them…
Her imagination strayed to an image of a muscular Jared sprawled in a large chair, naked by the fire, his legs splayed open, his heavy sex dangling.
He crooked a long finger at her. Unsmiling, awaiting her as if she were obedient to all his commands.
“You know what I want,” his deep voice purred. “Surrender all your inhibitions to me, Harper. Let me be your master in bed as you lie beneath me, and my cock will give you pleasure such as you have never known.”
Unable to form words, she could only nod. Jared pointed downward. “On your knees.”
Waiting for her as she dropped to her knees before him like a subject before a king and bowed her head, her mouth encasing him and feeling the turgid flesh between his legs turn hard and ready to plunge deep inside her…
She opened her eyes, embarrassed to find herself wet with arousal, her nipples aching and hard. Serena gave a knowing smile.
“It’s perfectly natural to daydream of sex being around an incubus as powerful as Jared. Even the castle walls vibrate with his power.”
Serena winked at her. “Maybe I should have brought you a vibrator instead of dinner.”
