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She raised her hand, gradually closing her fingers to almost make a fist—and the magic grasping him tightened around his balls until it hurt. He grunted, forcing himself to stand still, lest he step back as if to flee the pain…or worse yet, step forward and demand she replace the grip of her powers with that of her hand.
“Understood?” Hazel raised a brow.
“Yes,” he hissed…and lost the fight against his baser instincts, shifting forward just enough so she would feel his erection against her ass.
CHAPTER 3
Hazel jolted, flicked her hand, and released him from her powers, swiftly stepping away from him.
His stinging disappointment mixed with grim satisfaction. He’d unsettled her. Good. Seeing her just as affected by him as he was by her smoothed some of his ruffled feathers.
“This magic,” she said, a slight tremble to her voice as she jerked her head at the body, “is tainted. Forbidden. It’s so evil we barely have records on it.” She swallowed. “If I’m seeing this right, this looks—and feels—like blood magic.”
“Like a sacrifice?”
She nodded. “Not all types of blood magic are forbidden. When a witch uses her own blood to enhance her spells, it’s within our laws. Sealing an oath with blood is not uncommon. But butchering another being, let alone a human, for power is sacrilege.” The lines of her face hardened. “Whoever did this is far beyond reason.”
Her gaze slammed into him, and he had to lock his muscles not to wince under her intense scrutiny. She’d always had that effect on him, since the moment he’d appeared on the Murrays’ doorstep pretending to be the fae who’d exchanged Rose for Basil all those years ago and Hazel had seen through his bullshit in the blink of an eye. Not only had she rooted him to the spot with a paralysis spell straight out of some torture book, but she’d also thrown a truth spell at him that had rattled his mind and pulled at his soul. He’d fought the aftereffects of that magic for quite some time, his first taste of how strong a witch she was.
And he’d be damned if he ever told her he’d gotten a fucking boner from it, too. Nope, not going there.
“You saw the witch?” Hazel asked, taking a step toward him, her eyes narrowed. “What did she look like?”
He raised his hands, palms facing outward. “I only saw her hightailing it out of here.”
“Could you identify her?”
“Didn’t see her face. Not even her hair—she wore a hat.” He shrugged. “Plus, some of you are kind of hard to tell apart at a glance, what with family resemblance and all.” He gestured at her and smothered a grin when she glowered at him for it.
It was true, though—witches within a family often took after their maternal relatives more than their paternal line, and even with the help of his stolen witch memories, Tallak sometimes had trouble recognizing who was who if he didn’t get a good look at the woman.
“I need to find her,” Hazel muttered, her focus on the blood-drenched scene once more. “Before she kills again.”
“What makes you think this wasn’t a one-time thing?”
She walked around the slaughtered human. “A gut feeling, mostly.”
Tallak choked out a laugh.
Hazel stopped. “What?”
He waved at the body and chuckled. “It’s just…his guts are all pulled out, and you said ‘gut feeling.’?”
Rubbing both hands over her face, she groaned. “Oh, for Powers’ sake.”
He shifted his weight, trying to accommodate his still uncomfortably hard cock—hearing her utter the kind of sound she’d made when he’d touched her that night in Faerie didn’t help him simmer down. At all.
It wasn’t getting better, was it? This unhealthy obsession with her, this unbidden, distracting desire for a witch who should be the definition of taboo. Because it wasn’t just that she was way too Goody Two-shoes and proper for the likes of him…although that fact made him gnash his teeth just as often as he itched to touch her. No, the reason he shouldn’t even think of messing with Hazel was the same reason he tried his damnedest to walk the straight and narrow these days—Basil.
If Hazel were any other female, even any other witch, Tallak would have already aggressively pursued her, if only to slake this ill-fated hunger and be able to move on. But having Basil in the equation made the entire thing complicated and messy from the start. Because there would be no moving on after getting down and dirty with Hazel—she’d still be in his life, would always be around as long as he and Basil had a relationship.
And he wouldn’t jeopardize that relationship for anything.
The risk of the already precarious status quo between him and Hazel deteriorating after an affair was too high…because what were the odds of them both being on okay terms after having had sex? Oh, and make that angry sex, since they growled at each other more often than not.
Yeah, no, not an option if he wanted to maintain a good father-son relationship with Basil.
So he forced himself to breathe past the need to close the distance to Hazel and press her up against the wall for a bruising kiss and instead focused on the conversation. What had they been talking about?
