Kiss & Spell (4 page)

Chapter Six

Marissa ran out the back door of the pub. Holy shit. What did she just do?

Justin wasn't one of her entranced bed partners. He was fully aware
and completely capable of remembering every last dirty detail of their encounter.

Carrying her shoes, she jogged barefoot across the parking lot to her car. He'd touched her. He'd almost kissed her. That wasn't how it was supposed to happen. She’d planned to seduce him, show him her kinder, gentler side. Show him she could be loving and sweet. Isn't that what most men wanted?

The minute she'd felt his hard-on against her back, however, she'd thrown that plan out the window.

All she knew was hard, rough, and dirty.
Now that's all Justin thought she was.

God, he'd been so thick inside her.

Her pussy clenched at the memory.

Knowing that he'd found her attractive and desirable without any spell surprised her.

Sure, she’d considered herself attractive, but there was a lot more to her than a pretty face. An insatiable need to dominate her sex partners, being one of her many surprises.

God, he'd never talk to her again.

She knew what Justin and John thought of her. Before, it didn't matter what people thought. The kiss was her curse. She'd accepted that as her life. She’d never fall in love or be in love, and so she'd shut down that part of her. She’d made sex all about the physical act.

When Justin had looked her in the eye as she straddled him, his dick buried in her cunt, she saw something more
than a blank stare of enchantment. Emotions had passed between them. In the end, it had been less about the release and more about the connection.

She unlocked her car and sat inside it for a moment.

Once Justin had untied himself and had a chance to think it over, he'd see she was all wrong for him. Justin wasn't the type to be forced into sexual submission and like it. How many times had he begged to touch her?  Begged her to allow him take control?

She was the experiment gone wrong. A road he wouldn't want to go down again. She was sure of it.

* * *

Justin awoke with the mid-day sun bright in his eyes. He rubbed a hand over his face.

Shit.

Last night. Marissa.

He remembered everything. Every last hot, erotic detail.

Whatever she usually did to the men she slept with hadn't worked on him.

Other men
. That nailed him in the gut. No matter how much they'd shared last night, how deep they'd gone, the encounter hadn’t been special to her. Why did he let things get that far when he knew what kind of woman she was?

H
e knew the answer to that question, though. A man could only take so much teasing and touching before he really did think with his dick.

God, her touching had been electric.
He'd never experienced such intimate, intense sex.

He lifted the sheets and peered down at himself.
Clearly, one part of him was ready for a second round.

Fuck.

He rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. As he relieved himself, his cell rang out in the bedroom. He wondered if it was Marissa. His mind flashed to scenes of last night. Her body above his. Each curve perfectly formed. Maybe a little heavy in the hip, but he liked it a little heavier there. The animalistic power in her as she controlled his every move. He never thought that was something he would go for, but with Marissa it seemed right.

He thought of Jana, his ex. Pedestrian sex by comparison. He never knew it could be so intense. Where he lost all reason.

When he picked up his phone later, he saw that it hadn't been Marissa who’d called after all. The bar manager had left him a message about last night’s power problem. Since Justin lived in the same neighborhood, his boss wanted to know if the power had ever come back on.

Disappointment knifed through him.

He needed to talk to Marissa. Why was he different from all of her other conquests? Why did he remember everything?

He pulled on a pair of black jeans and a t-shirt. He had no idea where she lived, but he did know she liked that coffee house down from the pub where she'd bought him a cup of joe. He'd seen her in there before.

It was worth a shot.

* * *

The hot, bitter coffee complimented the sweet muffin perfectly. Although past noon, Marissa had only recently awakened. Living as a witch she had no need of a nine-to-five job. Important things like a house, food, and clothing could be produced in a matter of moments with a magical spell. The coffee never tasted this good, though, when she made it appear with magic.

As her cover story, she pretended to be in sales
, which allowed her to travel without question. She could be gone from the neighborhood for days at a time when ceremonies were in order or she needed to attend the rare coven meeting.

Witches preferred a solitary lifestyle. At least, that's what Marissa had been raised to believe by her mother
, and she'd stuck with that truth. She used her magical kiss for sexual satisfaction, like her mother had. In fact, her conception had been a very well-timed and pre-planned seduction with a prime male specimen. Poof! Nine months later, Marissa came into the world.

Not once did she remember her mother looking for more than a faceless sex partner.
Her mother had convinced her humans were good for a fuck every now and then, but not much else. Her mother took her satisfaction when necessary. For Marissa, the arrangement had grown less than satisfactory.

If witches were meant to be alone, then why did she feel the pull to find a more permanent relationship?

"Marissa," a familiar voice rumbled behind her.

What was Justin doing here? How did he find her? She held her breath. In a matter of moments he would come into view.
What emotions would she see in his expression? Disgust? Hatred? Butterflies mounted an attack on her insides. Since accepting the bet, this was the first time she regretted her decision. She gripped her coffee cup as if it were a life raft.

Justin slid into the seat across from her. The muscles rippled under his t-shirt as he reached for the sugar packets. "Is it okay if I join you?" He, too, had a cup of coffee, but he'd chosen a donut as a companion for it.

"I guess so." Where did her usual over-confidence go? Incredibly, the burn of a blush crept into her cheeks. She never blushed.

He shook two packets of sugar, tore them open, and dumped them into his coffee. "Why did you run away last night?"

Memories of riding his cock filled her brain. The hot, thick slide of him. She blinked and bit her lip. "What do you want me to say? It was nice."

He quirked a brow. "
It was nice?" He stretched and settled his arms on the back of the booth seat. "Yikes, you sure know how to bring a guy down." His gaze sought out hers. "I would say it was a little more than 'nice,' but what do I know? Clearly, I'm not the first guy you've done that to."

Lord, he just really laid it all out on the table, didn't he? Got right to the core of it. "I've never tied anyone down to a bar before, if that's what you're getting at."

He smiled, and his eyes grew dark. "That was a first for me, too." He cleared his throat. "Look, I know your game. John and I have been watching you for months. You take a different guy home every night. But the thing is, Marissa . . . ." He let out a breath. "The thing is, when I see those guys the next day or even the day after, they don't remember you. They act as if they've never seen you before. I don't know what you're doing to them . . . drugs, or something else . . . but why can I remember everything?" He ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth and waited for her answer.

Marissa flashed back to last ni
ght. An image of him with his tongue in her pussy filled her mind. He was right. He remembered it all, and here he was, not frightened of her, not afraid of what they'd done together. Instead, he was asking her why his experience had been different. Her shame at the demands she'd made of him came bubbling to the surface. Her fears of rejection. Her confusion about what loving someone really meant. It wasn't just sex, it was something more. But how did she move from great sex to a great relationship? She had no idea.

It would be easier to give up
and deal with what she understood. She could kiss Justin right here, right now and have him one last time before she'd have to give him up permanently. She could return to the solitary witch life she knew and avoid dealing with these complicated feelings and emotions.

"Do you want to know?" She leaned forward. "Do you really want to know why, Justin?" She tucked her knees under her so she could stretch farther across the table. She focused her gaze on his mouth. Kissing him would be so easy. So simple.

Justin's brow wrinkled, but he also leaned forward.

"A little closer." She could feel his warm breath on her face. "I want to tell you a secret."

"A secret?"

She closed her eyes, intending t
o kiss that sexy mouth of his and silence him. She should keep him in the dark like all the others. "I can't," she whispered and pulled back.

Justin caught her chin in his hands.
"Why won't you kiss me?"

"I can't." She blinked. "You don't understand." Tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

"Don't cry. Please don't." He moved to kiss her.

Marissa broke free of his grasp and reared back. This was no good. She had to get out of here before everything fell apart. She grabbed her purse and scooted out of the booth.

"Marissa, wait!"

She knew he was right behind her
and could catch up to her easily. She couldn't let that happen. She was too vulnerable right now. He might win her over, she might kiss him, and then he would be lost to her forever. She bolted out the door, ran down the street and darted down the first alleyway she saw.

"Marissa!"

Once out of his sight, she drew on her powers to turn herself invisible and crouched behind a dumpster. Until she could get her bearings and figure out how to move forward, she was saving them both from failure.

Justin appeared at the mouth of the a
lley. "Marissa, where are you? I just wanted to talk. Marissa?" The midday sun beat down on him from a cloudless sky.

She wanted to call out to him, reveal herself.
When his expression shifted from anxiousness to defeat, though, she knew it would be best to leave him alone. Instead of baby steps, she took one huge leap last night. It had been too much, too fast. In order to make him love her, there had to be more than sex. She couldn't just win him over with her body; she had to let him see her soul.

After a moment, Justin left.

Marissa sighed. She’d need to go back to square one, think up a plan, and stick to it.

Chapter Seven

"Marissa, there you are!" Her mother waited for her in the same recliner chair Demetria had occupied the other day.

"Shit.
" After doing the old disappearing act on Justin, she’d wanted to mope in her house for the rest of the day, maybe eat a pint of ice cream, and form a new plan of attack. The games she was used to playing with men were not going to win her the love she craved.

Astrid Glenn
got up, her back straight as a broom handle, and reached for her only child. "Come, give me a hug. It's been a long time, my darling."

Marissa stood her ground. "What are you doing here?" Mink rubbed against her legs and meowed a greeting. She
stroked him.

Astrid pouted. "Is that any way to greet you
r mother?" She dropped her arms, realizing there’d be no embrace.

"Since when did you want to be my mother?" Marissa picked up Mink and set her on her favorite spot on the sofa. "I seem to recall turning eighteen, showing up at our house after school, and finding you gone." Marissa had tried to banish that memory for years. "I took that as a hint you were done with all the mother crap. When did you change your mind?"

Her mother blew a strand of dark brown hair out of her eyes. "Oh, fine. I should've known I couldn't fool you." The straight back remained, but the singsong, motherly voice switched to the one Marissa remembered, crisp and commanding. "Why in heaven's name did you make that bet with Demetria?"

Oh Lord. The news was out.
Marissa had hoped the details of her bet might stay underground for a few more days. "I'm done with this, mother." She walked past her and dumped her purse on the barstool near the kitchen. She opened the freezer and pulled out the pint of ice cream she'd conjured there earlier. She needed the mint chocolate chip even more now.

"Done with what?"

"That curse you gave me." She dug a spoon out of a drawer and scooped out a chunk of ice cream. "I never wanted it. I don't know why you thought it would be a good gift."

"The kiss? You're giving away your magical kis
s?" With hands on her hips, Astrid marched over to her daughter and wagged a finger in her face. "Who said you could give that away? Who gave you the right? And to Demetria? You've got to be joking."

Marissa turned her back on her mother's angry face.
She didn’t give one whit about her mother’s long running feud with Demetria over magical spells and secrets. "I'm not like you, mother. I actually want to fall in love."

"
Want
to fall in love?" Astrid repeated, as if Marissa had just told her she wanted to plunge herself into a vat of boiling oil. "Who gave you that crazy notion?"

"No one." She took another spoonful of ice cream.
She definitely needed the whole pint. "This was my idea."

"So, you sought out Demetria and came up with the bet?"

"Well, no . . . ." Marissa's stomach dropped.

"How could you be so stupid? If you didn’t want your gift, why didn’t you come to me? I could’ve gotten rid of it for you.”

“What?” All along, all these years, and she could’ve been free of her kiss? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Astrid shrugged. “I never thought a daughter of mine would ever consider something so stupid. But it’s too late anyway. You’re caught up in this bet. My powers mean nothing now. How could you trust that witch with your gift?"

Marissa faced her mother. "My gift? It's a curse. You forced that potion on me when I was a child. I had no idea what it meant."

"That potion has run in our family for years. It's a thousand-year-old secret. You were privileged to
receive such a gift." Her mother clamped her lips together and narrowed her eyes. "Damn it, Marissa. What did you think you were doing?"

Marissa placed the half-empty ice cream carton on the counter. Nausea set in. "Living. For once in my life I decided to live."

"What do you call this?" Her mother gestured at the cozy cottage, at the nice furniture, the high-end television, the travertine tile on the kitchen floor. Her gesture was so forceful a jeweled bracelet flew from her arm and skittered across the floor. "You have more than most because of your powers. Dammit, where did my bracelet go?” She made a cursory check of the kitchen floor, but Marissa wouldn’t let her mother distract her from the topic at hand.

"I'm not giving up everything, mother, just this one thing. I'm not like you; I don't want to be alone."

"Witches always live alone." Astrid gave up her search and rested her elbows on the counter. "Except for the years I spent raising you, but that's expected. Witches aren't meant to be part of the human world. Not in a meaningful way. You want to find love with a regular human? Well, it just won't work."

Marissa thought of Justin with his ocean-blue eyes, his sinful body of hard muscle, and his quiet intelligence. She wanted him. She didn't care if it wasn't supposed to work. She had to have him. Every little conversation they'd had, each laugh they’d shared . . . she remembered them all. Secretly, she’d wanted to believe they could somehow have more than what she thought possible. The curse of her kiss had kept them apart.
She didn't want him to be another man under her spell who'd forget her quickly. No, she needed more. For some damned reason she needed more. "It’ll work. I love him."

"You love him?" Astrid scoffed and shook her head. "Oh my dear, you will soon see that love is impossible for witches. The best you could hope for is a daughter to love you. Why do you think I decided to bring you into this world?"

"I've been wondering that my whole life."

"It's too late to renege on the contract you signed with Demetria. I understand that. Heaven knows, if you'd only asked me for some advice on the mat
ter before you signed it."

"Yes, it’
s too late. So why are you here?" Marissa put the lid back on the ice cream and made it vanish back into the freezer. She blew away the sparkly dust that remained. The sparkly dust always made her sneeze.

"Why, my dear, I'm here to help you catch that man you have your eye on."

"What?"

"Well, isn't that the agreement? Win the bet and you keep your power?"

"And the man. I also get to keep the man."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, you keep the stupid human. Now, if you grow tired of him I think I ha
ve just the right potion . . ." Astrid conjured up her thick, black book of ancient family spells. It floated in the air between them. The pages flipped themselves.

"I won't grow tired of him."
Marissa hadn't thought past the 'falling in love' part. All of her focus was on winning him. "So you say you're here to help me?"

"Yes." Her mother made the book of spells disappear.

Marissa had been looking forward to the day her mother deemed her an advanced enough witch to share some of the secrets in the family spell book. It looked like today, however, would not be that day.

"Come," her mother said. "Sit with me in the living room, and I'll give you some advice on the matter."

"As if you know anything about getting a man to honestly, truly fall in love with you?"

Astrid took a seat in the recliner again. "I may have given you the magical kiss when you were a child, but my mother didn't gift me with it until my eighteenth birthday. So trust me, I know how to catch a man without the kiss."

This new bit of history interested Marissa. Her mother once had to work for a man's affections? Fascinating. She never thought she'd say the words, but suddenly they were coming out of her mouth. "Could you please help me, mother?"

* * *

After conjuring some tea, they got to work.

Astrid added milk to her cup. "See, the problem is, you went right to the sex."

Marissa blushed at the comment. "I thought men liked sex?"

"Oh, they do, but it's not the way to their hearts. You have to s
how that you are more than a body. Any woman can satisfy a man's baser needs, but you have to show him that you have a mind he finds attractive, too."

"Men care about my mind?" Never having had to work for men's attentions and knowing it wouldn't last beyond one night, she'd never bothered
to observe other couples and how they interacted. She'd always assumed there were mating rituals of one kind or another.

"The good ones do." Her mother stirred her coffee and tapped the spoon on the edge of the cup. "You need to ask him out on a date."

"What kind of date?"

"
Dinner, a movie, something that shows you’re interested in getting to know him. Didn't you say his fiancée dumped him not too long ago?"

Marissa repeated what John had told her. "She cheated on him with some other guy only a few months before their wedding. A friend of his, I think."
She couldn’t imagine any woman leaving Justin for another guy.

"So he's fragile."

She laughed. "He's not fragile." She remembered the way he'd strained at the ties, his arms tensed.

"Emotionally fragile. He needs to trust that your feelings for him are real
and that he won't get hurt again."

Marissa
thought of earlier today when he'd shown up at her favorite coffee place wanting to talk. Was that what he was trying to do? Feel her out to see where he stood with her? "Fuck."

"Excuse me?"

"I think I may have screwed up already." Her blood ran cold that she could have reminded Justin of his ex.

Her mother touched her hand. "You can do this, Marissa. No daughter of mine can lose a bet to Demetria."

Although her mother had her own reasons for giving her this help, Marissa was grateful for some guidance on a topic. Sex she had down pat. The rest of this courting stuff, however, was a mystery to her. By the time her mother had disappeared, she’d convinced Marissa she could win him over.