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“First put on some clothes,” I told him. I had a strange feeling that if I touched him, the lust I was feeling would overcomeme and I might try to jump his demonic bones. I needed some barriers between us so that couldn’t happen.
He sighed again.
“Very well. But not the suit I wore in the painting—it’s horribly uncomfortable and I was wearing it forcenturies.”
“I thought you were asleep,” I said suspiciously.
“I was dozing,” he said. “I didn’t fully awaken until you touched me. And gave me your blood and turned my portrait towards the North, fulfilling the first part of the spell and allowing me to leave my prison of glass.”
“But I never…” I trailed off, remembering how I had cut my finger on the broken glass and left a smear of blood on the portrait. And apparently turning his picture towards the wall had been turning it towards the North. Damn it, I needed to invest in a compass or at least be more careful around strange magic!
“Here—what about this?” He snapped his fingers and suddenly he was wearing a different kind of suit. It was an expensive tailored one that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a billionaire on the cover of a romance novel. It was black with a crisp white Egyptian cotton shirt and a maroon tie. Diamond cufflinks glinted at his wrists and the scent of expensive cologne, mixed with his aroma of smoke and spice, filled my senses.
What is it about a man in a suit? My mind was suddenly filled with fantasies of calling him “Sir” and having him bend me over his knee to “punish” me with a spanking because I had been a “bad girl.”
I shook my head, trying to drive the illicit images away. I just hoped he couldn’t read my mind when we weren’t touching. But I couldn’t stop staring at him.
“Wow,”I murmured, rendered temporarily speechless—or at least monosyllabic.
“Thank you.” He flashed me a gleaming grin. “That’s a most gratifying reaction. Now, will you allow me to show you the fate of your ancestress all those many years ago?”
He held out his hand again and this time, reluctantly, I took it.
“Good—thank you for trusting me.” Malik smiled and entwined our fingers, his much larger hand swallowing my own. “Now hold on tight—you might get dizzy.”
“Dizzy? Why?” I asked.
But before the words fully left my mouth, the room started spinning around me in a colorful, kaleidoscope swirl and then the world around me disappeared…
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Oh my God!” I gasped. Malik was right—I was intensely dizzy!
“It’s all right—I’ve got you.” Strong arms wrapped around me and suddenly he was pulling me into his lap.
I wanted to fight and struggle but the world was still spinning and I was afraid if he let go of me I’d go flying off into the black void that had suddenly appeared around us. So instead of flinging myself away from him, I shrank back against his big body.
He really was huge—even bigger than I’d imagined when I looked at his portrait, I thought distractedly. Being a curvy girl, it takes a lot to make me feel petite but Malik managed it. He held me securely in his lap making me feel safe even though I still didn’t know him very well.
At last the swirling stopped and I found myself in the middle of a kitchen. At least, Ithoughtit was a kitchen. There was no refrigerator or sink or any other modern appliances like a microwave or a dishwasher. There was, however, a large fireplace—a “hearth” to use the old-fashioned word, which was the only one that seemed to fit. A low fire was burning in thegrate and some kind of animal—maybe a rabbit—was spitted over it.
There was a rough wooden table in the middle of the room that looked handmade and straw scattered over the hard packed dirt floor. A woman wearing a plain gray dress with a white collar and a white cap was leaning over the table, chopping some kind of squash with a crude metal knife. She was humming softly to herself and though I couldn’t see her face because of the cap, I knew at once that this was Hester, my many times great grandmother.
“There she is,” Malik murmured in my ear. “Poor little Hester. She had a dreary life, I fear. But then, so did all Puritan women. They were owned by their husbands, you know and unfortunately many of the men didn’t treat their wives very well.”
As if the Demon’s words had called to him, the door of the wooden house banged open and a tall man in a plain black suit and a wide white collar came in. He was wearing one of those tall hats with a buckle on it that you always see on people playing Pilgrims at Thanksgiving but he took it off when he came in the house.
“Hester!” he snapped, frowning at the woman at the table. “Why is my dinner not ready? A man works hard all day—the least he can expect is to have dinner to warm his belly when the long day is finally done!”
“Forgive me, John!” Hester looked up and now I could see that she had eyes the same color of blue as my own. There was a frightened, resentful look on her face but she didn’t drop her eyes when her husband scowled at her. “The rabbit is nearly done and the corn pudding is finished too,” she went on. “I was just going to add a bit of squash and butter to a pot?—”
“Forget the squash—I’m hungrynow,”he snarled. “Hurry up and serve me, woman!”
Grabbing a rickety looking wooden chair from against the wall, he sat down at the table and looked up at her expectantly.
Hester looked like she wanted to say something but didn’t quite dare. Instead she went about serving him silently. She sliced some meat off the roasting rabbit and scooped what I assumed must be the corn pudding—it looked like mush—onto the pewter plate beside it. Despite its simplicity, the food smelled delicious—not surprising considering that Hester was a Kitchen Witch, I thought.
She put the plate down in front of him but her husband wasn’t satisfied.
