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Cheeks pinkened, she turned to face away from him, embarrassed that he would have to see her back this way, see how she could never stand up to her father.
With delicate fingers, he unfastened the back of her dress, button by button, and pulled the fabric down to her waist.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “I’ll kill him for this. I’ll use the coven’s darker spells.”
Her father may not have belonged to a coven, but he had dark spells of his own, ones that could rival any other witch.
“It’s all right.”
“I’m going to have to touch the wounds.” His digits pressed to the crook of her neck gently, sending a new warmer sensation coursing through her.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she nodded and held back a wince as he trailed his fingers down each gash, chanting healing words quietly.
The ache dissipated, and Harlow felt as if she could breathe again, her lungs loosening. “Thank you.” She leaned back against his chest and grabbed his hands, wrapping them around her waist. “We can talk later. I want you to make me forget about today, so I only think about your touch.”
“I can do that, my sweet nightmare. I can make you feel good, wondrous,” he purred in her ear.
Harlow arched into him as he kissed her throat, flicked his exquisite tongue just below her ear, and his warm hands glided up her skin, leaving heated flames behind when he cupped her breasts. She lifted the skirt of her dress, drawing it up farther for him. One of his hands skimmed back down, dipping between her thighs to cup her mound.
He groaned to find she had no undergarments beneath her dress, but they would’ve only gotten in the way. His fingers deliciously moved against her, circling, stroking, before two digits slipped into her heat, making her moan.
Then Jasper’s hands and body were off her, a deep grunt tearing from his throat.
Harlow whirled around to find her father’s tall and wide form behind Jasper, a rope around his neck.
“Stop, Papa!” she shouted.
“Put your clothing back on, whore,” her father seethed.
Harlow slid her hands into the sleeves of her dress, pulling the fabric up, but left the rest undone. “Please, don’t hurt him,” she begged. “I promise to never see him again.” If that was what it took to save his life—she would do it, would do anything. And as much as it would hurt, she would let her father betroth her to anyone else.
“No,” her father spat. “He dies tonight.”
Jasper’s face was turning red and blue beneath the moonlight. Her father chanted words so that Jasper couldn’t speak any spells.
Harlow studied the dagger at her father’s hip, and she needed to risk it or her beloved would die. She darted forward, shoving them back, but not enough to topple them to the ground, yet just enough for her to grab the blade. The rope slackened, allowing Jasper to elbow her father in the ribs. A groan came from her father, and she hurled herself forward again, slamming the knife into his throat harder than she would’ve brought an axe down across a log of wood.
Blood poured from his throat as he gurgled, attempting to chant, but Jasper was speaking before he could, her father’s mouth appearing sewn shut with string.
Her father’s movements ceased, his body still, and she couldn’t bring herself to cry, not in relief, not in grief, not in anger. Nothing as her gaze fell on the man who had been a monster in her home since before she was even born.
She ran to Jasper, crushing herself into him. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”
“No. It’s mine,” he rasped, his arms folded around her. “I put you in danger and should’ve heard him approaching.”
And then another voice rang through the woods. “Harlow! Harlow!”
She and Jasper spun around to find Ada running toward them in her nightgown. “Father isn’t in the house.”
“He’s here,” Harlow said. “I killed him. He tried to murder Jasper.”
Her sister’s eyes widened as they fell upon their father, blood pooling from his wound. “This is good. This is bad. But more good than bad. We need to bury him, and then we’ll tell the town he left us and never returned.” She covered her mouth. “Let me get us shovels.”
Harlow was too numb to offer to go with her, and she knew her father wouldn’t come back to life, but she wanted to remain watching him, to make sure death stayed with him.
Jasper held her close, and she peered up at his welted neck. “You’re hurt!”
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ll talk to my parents, and then they will get the coven to help you and Ada.”
