The Jezebel (Taskill Witches 3)

ss, sheer animal lust spilling from him as he arrogantly stated his intention. His comment teased, as if he were touching her all over, making every part of her tingle with awareness, and deep between her thighs she grew hot and slick. Nevertheless, Maisie was overwhelmed by his basic, arrogant ways, and even while her body responded to his advances, she trembled.

His eyes glinted, and she knew that he had felt her shiver in his arms.

Maisie swallowed. She did not want to annoy him in any way. Would he find her gaucheness unappealing?

It seemed to have the opposite effect. A wry smile lit his expression. He put one hand around the back of her head. Grasping a fistful of her hair, he looped it around his fingers and used it to draw her head back. With his other hand on her waist, he held her tightly against him.

Seduction was his aim, and she wanted that. The nervousness she felt subsided somewhat but did not ebb away entirely.

“Do not look so afeared, Maisie from Scotland,” he said with a chuckle. “I will use you well, but I will not break you. You have my word on that.” He sealed the promise with a kiss, his hard mouth on hers relentless.

Instinctively, Maisie put her hands to his chest to push him away. Then his mouth moved and the sensual brush of his lips took the strength from her entire body, melting her. Moments later, she found that instead of pushing him away, her hands clutched at his strange oily cloak and her lips parted under his. So sensual, so arousing... Maisie had never experienced anything like it. When his tongue touched hers and thrust into the heat of her mouth, her groin flooded with sensation again, arousal swamping her.

Unbidden, a low moan rose inside her, escaping into sound as the kiss broke. Instantly, she was aware of what her deflowering would bring to her magic, for her spirit flared within.

When he freed her mouth, the captain still held her by the skein of hair looped in his hand. It didn’t hurt, but his grip was tight enough to show that he meant to master her. Why did that make her legs falter? Maisie could scarcely breathe. The layers of clothing between them did nothing to hide his intention, for his hips were pressed firmly against her and the hard rod of his erection was all too apparent.

“Rest now,” he murmured gruffly, “for you will get little rest later, when I return for my reward.” His brows lifted, humor flashing in his eyes. “I mean to ride you until dawn, Maisie from Scotland, by which time you will be so thoroughly used and sated that you will beg me for respite.”

With that provocative pronouncement, he let her go.

Maisie wilted, staggering backward until a chair halted her. Grasping at it with both hands, she held herself upright. Her entire body was hot and unsteady, a fever of nerves and longing assailing her as she thought on his words.

She remained in that place for several long moments after he had gone, staring across at the door he had tugged closed behind him. Captain Cameron was a force of nature, no doubt about it. Her passage into womanhood at his hands would be memorable, she was sure. The kiss he had bestowed on her had left her feeling quite exalted, but there was no telling how events might unfold.

Hastening to the bedside, she set her velvet bundle on the floor, close by. It contained her most prized possessions, and items she needed to ready herself for the moment. Alongside her training in the knowledge of witchcraft, she had been preparing for her initiation into full carnal congress for several years. It had to be done right, and it was crucial that the man who had nurtured and hidden her as a young witch did not claim her for himself now. Maisie still wasn’t sure that choosing a lover by chance would free her of her obligation to her master, but she had to do everything she could to break away from him.

Perching on the edge of the bed, she was grateful for the moment to herself.

Everything had happened so quickly. Inside the turn of one day she had learned the full truth of her situation, and had taken flight. Now she was on her way to her true home in Scotland. So often she had dreamed of returning, but it was hard to break with the life she had become used to. In many ways it had been a good one, and she had felt protected and valued for several long years.

That was no longer the case.

But she had broken free, and now—as she recalled the image of the captain in the lamplight, and her body still vibrated from his touch—she found the anticipation helped to quell any doubts she might have about her actions. Captain Roderick Cameron had given her his word he would not break her. It had been a lucky encounter, she knew, when the manner of selecting him for the task had been so random and fraught with untold dangers. He would make a fine lover, she decided, one who would make no claim on her when the deed was done. It would be a simple exchange, and when she left his ship she would easily be able to make the onward journey alone because of it.

For a moment she reflected on how resourceful she’d been, buying her voyage with her virginity. Escaping from London as soon as she could had been essential, but so, too, was the small matter of ridding herself of that prize that was so valued by her master—for he wanted to be the one to have her.

The strange echo suddenly came over her again—drifting around the cabin like a forgotten memory, or a tale as yet untold—and it stimulated a question. Were her siblings even alive? Resting her head in her hands, Maisie faced her deepest fear. Now that she was going back to the land where her mother had been put to death, she had to acknowledge it. The heady rush that accompanied her escape dimmed momentarily as she thought of the reality that had haunted her kind for so long: persecution and death.

She lay down on the bed, as her emotions dipped and churned like the waves beneath the ship. The uncertainty of her journey was quickly overtaken by the imminent unleashing of her most powerful magic. Hope fluttered inside her.

I will find a path home to my kind. I will forge it.

For years she hadn’t wanted to return to Dundee, after witnessing the horror of her own mother’s death. Nevertheless, Scotland called to her—called to the purest part of her soul, reminding her that she could be free and whole in the far north of the Highlands.

The journey had begun. Exhaling, she felt the tension in her body begin to unravel.

She would seek out her kin—her twin sister, Jessie, and her beloved brother, Lennox. Homeward bound, she was on her way. As she drifted into sleep, she thought of them as she’d known them years before, children running barefoot in the forest, picking flowers and herbs for their mother, who used those gifts to teach them her craft, rooting the ancient ways in them. Maisie pictured Lennox as a wily, rebellious lad who cared for his sisters nonetheless. And her fey twin, who was wilder even than she. Had they thought of her as she had of them?

Let them be safe and free in our birthplace, she wished as she drifted toward sleep, hoping that she would find them there. So many years had passed since they’d been torn apart. Too long. Pain twisted inside her as she remembered the day.

* * *

On the day her mother was put to death on a charge of witchcraft, Cyrus Lafayette and his wife, Beth, claimed Maisie Taskill.

Maisie and her sister had been forced to watch their mother stoned until she was close to death, before the villagers forced her upright to stagger to the gallows, where she could see her own funeral pyre as the rope went around her neck. The villagers decided the lad, Lennox, was too far under the devil’s influence to be saved. They said he should be destroyed.

Maisie heard every word they spoke about her and her kin, and a deep part of her became locked in a prison of fear and horror in response.