This bonus scene takes place during the events of book 3, To Stir a Fae’s Passion, when Hazel and Tallak trekked through Faerie to find Rose and Basil.
***
Tallak fucking hated Faerie.
Every inch of this cursed land annoyed the ever-loving shit out of him, from the stupid little fairies buzzing around and making him wish for a flyswatter—preferably one that zapped them with electricity—to the irritating bloody will-o’-the-wisps that seemed to mock him with their intermittent lighting. When he’d left this stupid, fucking nightmare of an irrational realm the other night, he’d sworn he’d never return.
And yet, here he was, trudging along a dark path in the woods of Faerie, swatting at a tiny flying fae creature that kept flitting around his head. With a flick of his hand, he sent the little dipshit hurtling against the nearest tree. The resulting thwack and squeak made him smile for the first time since he’d set foot in this damned territory again.
But the worst thing about hiking through fae-infested forests? The ornery witch who was his “travel companion.”
They hadn’t spoken beyond absolute necessities and some bickering since setting out on their journey, but she was generally capable and well-organized—down to having a compartment for every little thing in her backpack—and could have made an okay hiking partner. However, something about Hazel Murray made him clench his teeth, irritation a constant buzz underneath his skin. Everything about her annoyed him. The way she breathed, how she moved, her tantalizing scent, the way her high ponytail would swing with her steps, that little throaty sigh she made when she sat down after a long session of hiking.
The way her throat muscles worked underneath her creamy skin when she drank from her water bottle.
He found his eyes drawn to her more than he watched their surroundings, which was dangerous as fuck. He needed to be on his guard in this cursed realm, but she caught his gaze again and again. Because she was so irritating. That was it. Like a sore spot in his mouth he couldn’t stop touching with his tongue.
Not that he wanted to touch her with his tongue.
Anywhere.
Definitely not on her throat.
His eyes tracked to her hips as she walked in front of him. The black pants she wore molded to her ass in a way that made his mouth water.
Ignoring the insistent throb in his aggravatingly hard cock, he adjusted himself and trudged on.
He was just starved for sex, that was all. Twenty-six years isolated in a dungeon would make any male hard-up for some carnal pleasure with a female.
And yet, he’d met other women after his escape from Faerie, and they hadn’t incited this violent a reaction. In the human realm, while asking around where to find the Murrays, he’d come across several demon and shifter females, but—while nice to look at—they hadn’t made his blood boil or sparked the compelling need to lick them inch by inch and then fuck them into oblivion.
Only the aggravating witch in front of him did that.
The witch who’d apparently raised his son, who’d had the privilege of seeing him grow up while Tallak was shackled in a pool of his own filth, and who’d claimed with maddening bluster that Basil—what a fucking stupid name—was her son.
Deep down, something dark and cold clenched in fear at her words.
He breathed past that chilling fire in his gut and focused on the path again. This was the third night they were traveling through these damn woods that seemingly went on forever. Who knew Faerie was so fucking big and boring? Back when he’d lived here with Roana, they’d mostly stayed at the royal court, which was a neat palace with all sorts of amenities and—unfortunately—filled to the brim with bloody fae. The one good thing about these woods? They were largely free of fairy folk of the bigger variety.
He and Hazel had also taken care not to travel on the main roads during the day, when his demon powers were muted and he couldn’t draw on his species’ ability to change shape, or to mimic a fae’s aura. Courtesy of his still recent kills in the throne room and beyond, he had an abundance of fae auras, magic, and memories at his disposal. Whenever they crossed paths with a fae on the main road at night, Tallak could shift his appearance and energy to trick the fae into thinking he was one of them.
If any of those pointy-eared bastards caught a demon in their midst, there’d be hell to pay.
During the day, he and Hazel didn’t rest much, instead opting to travel along smaller roads or through the wilderness, so as to avoid detection. Time was of the essence if they wanted to catch up to Basil. Which was why they’d only slept for a few hours in the last two days, and the sleep deprivation added to his general irritation of being back in Faerie and having to deal with this unbidden attraction to the annoying witch.
Unerringly, his eyes traced back to the sure stride of her as she walked in front of him. Her longs legs moved with supple grace even as her breathing was overly loud in the silence of the forest. She was out of shape. He could hear it in her elevated pulse, in the rasp of her breath.
It annoyed him. Annoyed him so much he wanted to catch those panting breaths with his mouth while he fucked her into the moss-covered ground and gave her a real reason to be gasping for air.
Dammit. He couldn’t fucking focus with her parading that ass in front of him.
With a growl, he sped up and passed her on the road. “Keep up!” he barked back at her.
He didn’t even feel it coming. The spell hit him straight in the back, and his face hit the ground.
***
That. Was. It.
Hazel had had enough of this surly demon and his grumpy growling. For three blasted nights and two torturous days she’d had to put up with his cantankerous attitude while she had to endure more strenuous physical activity than ever before in her life. Her muscles burned, her lungs ached, her limbs felt weighed down by lead, her heart and mind were spinning out of control with worry about Basil and Rose, and she was so darned tired from lack of sleep and the exhaustion of their hike that she was almost starting to hallucinate.
And then this irritating demon came along and barked at her like some drill instructor at his unlucky trainees. As if she wasn’t already doing her best to keep up this brutal pace through the woods, biting her tongue and not letting on how much her lower back hurt or that her left calf muscle had started occasionally spasming a few miles back. This trek might not be a problem for Tallak and his demon physique, but she was human in terms of strength, and even for occasional marathon runners, a three-day walk at a clipped pace through uneven terrain with little sleep in between would be taxing.
And she’d never trained to run a marathon in her entire life.
All her fuses had been burned by exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and the growing aggravation of having to put up with Tallak’s ill temper. She had no patience or grace left to be diplomatic.
So when he sniped at her with his condescending comment? She snapped.
With a flick of her hand, she hurled a blast of power at his back to make him eat dirt. The sound of his face hitting the ground and his deep “oomph” were the sweetest symphony, gratifying in a way that felt sinfully good.
Her breath still coming heavily, she speed-walked past him just as he scrambled back to his feet.
“Keep up,” she called out sweetly over her shoulder.
His answering snarl made her smile.
That smile slipped, however, when he yanked her to a stop with one hand on her arm. Her magic fired up in response, buzzed over her skin and into a quick shot of power to dislodge his grasp. He let her go with a low curse as if he’d burned his hand, but the next second, he whirled her around in a maneuver that made her backpack fly to the ground, somehow blocking her attempt at using her magic on him.
She found herself pressed against a tree, the bark digging into her back, Tallak’s body flush against her front as he held her wrists tight above her head.
How the heck did that just happen?
His face was inches from hers, his breathing now as ragged and fast as her own. Power vibrated around him, active magic sparking in the air—canceling out hers. How?
“That,” he growled, his amber eyes flickering with flames, “was very naughty.”
The press of his hard body against her curves did things to her. Wicked things. Every single, laid-bare nerve ending of hers flared up with an overload of sensation at his nearness, and the irritating, unwelcome attraction she’d been feeling for this unpleasant male roared to new life. Her pulse beat low between her legs, insistent, demanding, humiliatingly strong.
This couldn’t be happening. Not with him.
She bared her teeth. “Let me go.”
His eyes glittered as he leaned in until their noses almost touched. “Make me.”
Blast it, that shouldn’t sound as sexy as it did! He had no business making her lady parts tingle with only a dominant gesture and a targeted challenge.
She curled her lip. “Do you want to eat dirt again? Because I can absolutely make that happen if you don’t let me go right now.”
She was bluffing. Truth be told, she wasn’t quite certain she could shake him off. Not with her magic weakened by her exhaustion and with him packing the power of the dozens of fae he’d recently killed. If it weren’t for that stolen magic brimming underneath his skin, she could easily take him, but until it faded, he was way more powerful than her. At least at night.
A shiver coursed over her skin, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was from fear.
Her pulse still throbbed aggravatingly between her legs, and she clenched her thighs hard and squirmed in his grasp.
He grinned as if reading her mind, the ill-mannered brute. “Come on,” he murmured. “Fight me.”
All right, then. She might not be able to blast him off her, but she could well let him feel her claws.
Narrowing her eyes, she gathered her magic and sent it out with surgical precision…to clasp around his balls and squeeze.
He made a choked sound, his eyes widening ever so slightly.
One side of her mouth tipped up in a sly smile. How’d you like that, huh?
With a strangled groan, he jerked forward, and then his mouth crashed down on hers.
The world screeched to a halt.
Desire licked along her spine, all the way down to the aching spot between her thighs, as if the press of his lips against hers had lit a fuse that caused a chain reaction of explosions in her system. As if the feel of his big body shoving her against that tree, his heat and power seeping into her, reawakened parts of her that had been languishing in a pitiful sleep for far too long.
With a gasp, she opened her mouth as he licked at her, bit her lip, and he dove straight in. When his tongue met hers, she was done for. All thoughts fled, nothing remained but the pleasure of his touch, the maddening need to give, to take, to lose herself in this impossible kiss.
He plundered her mouth with a roughness that bordered on brutality, underlaid with anger and a primal kind of urgency. Like he wanted to punish her by kissing her so excruciatingly well that she’d shatter right then and there. Like he’d stuffed two decades of sensual deprivation and a whole lot of sexual frustration into this oral attack.
Like he wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to kiss her.
She damn well knew what that felt like.
And she gave as good as she got. All her anger, all her irritation, her worry about this entire situation, her anxiety and despair, it all exploded into near-aggressive passion that burned so hot and quick that it razed all common sense and any objections. She licked and bit at him as much as he did at her, the meeting of their mouths a thing of lust-filled snarls and irritated, helpless groans.
She lifted one leg and wrapped it around his hips. Without missing a beat, he thrust against her, and even through several layers of clothing, she felt his hard length at the junction of her thighs. That pressure, the explicit erotic demand of it, made her moan into his mouth while her core pulsed with mounting arousal.
Undulating against him, she rubbed over his cock, her nipples hard underneath her shirt and begging to be touched. He let go of her wrists in favor of sliding his hands down, tunneling one through her hair and gripping it hard, the other clasping her breast. She gave a small cry of pleasure at his touch, arching her back and pushing into his hand. His answering groan was accompanied by a thrust of his hips, and when the steel of his cock rubbed over her clit, she came apart.
She clutched his shoulders, her head falling back against the tree as her orgasm fired through her like a sneak attack of pleasure. By the Powers. She’d never come so fast, or so hard.
Her limbs trembling in aftershock, she barely noticed how he made a little room between them, his hand working the button on her pants open.
“What—” she breathed.
His eyes burned like hot coals in the dark of the night as he caught her gaze. “The next time you come, it will be with my fingers in your pussy. I want to feel how fucking wet you are. How hard you’ll clench around my fingers.”
Oh my gods. This shouldn’t be such a freaking turn-on, and yet, she felt the damning evidence of her own arousal drench her panties with new wetness at his crude words.
He slid his hand inside her pants, straight down to where her intimate flesh still pulsed with the lingering heat of her climax. A breathy moan escaped her as his fingers crested over her clit and continued on to her slick entrance.
His groan made her shiver. “Fuck, you’re so wet.”
His power vibrated darkly around him, his aura fluctuating with red-hot lust. He buried his head in the crook of her neck and nipped at her skin just as he pushed two fingers inside her. She jerked at the erotic intrusion, her hips pushing against his hand, seeking more.
His tongue left a hot trail on her neck as he started thrusting his fingers in and out, driving her arousal impossibly higher. She’d just come, but apparently she was ready for another round just like that. Her body burned, her skin too tight, too sensitive, needing pressure and sensation, craving touch and heat and the rasp of something hard while she took her pleasure without thinking, without reasoning. No responsibilities, no duties, no endless pondering, no worries in her head. Only this, the feel of him, his warmth, his lust, his single-minded focus of getting her off so he could feel her juices coat his hand.
That image drove her over.
She came with a throaty moan, spasming around his hand while she clutched on to his shoulders, his back. He continued fucking her with his hand through her orgasm, until the last quakes of her climax subsided, and only then did he withdraw his fingers.
Slowly, his glowing eyes trained on hers, he brought his hand up toward his face. The faint light of a faraway will-o’-the-wisp glistened on the evidence of her lust on his fingers. His nostrils flared, his features drawing tight as he opened his mouth and—
He froze, his entire body becoming utterly still and tense. Tilting his head just the tiniest bit, he looked to the side.
“What—”
He cut her off with a sharp gesture. “We’ve got company,” he said quietly and stepped back.
She shivered at the sudden loss of his heat but made quick work of righting her clothes. When she looked back at him, he’d changed shape into a fae male with pale skin and red hair, his aura now glowing with the unmistakable light of the fair folk.
As always when he shifted like this, it jarred her. To all her senses—dull as they were except her ability to read auras—he wasn’t Tallak anymore. The abruptness of the change, the completeness of it, never failed to make her stagger.
Faintly, the sound of hooves beating on packed dirt echoed down the road. His demon hearing had picked it up much earlier.
She nodded at him as she grabbed her backpack, returning to walk along the edge of the road. He fell into step behind her.
Seconds later, a rider atop a brown horse tore down the path, barely sparing them a glance as she passed.
Hazel released the breath she’d been holding. She’d been prepared to repeat their story about her traveling with her companion to visit a fae she’d made a deal with, the tale having proved enough to satisfy the curiosity of others who’d crossed their paths in the past few nights.
But apparently, this rider had more pressing matters than to ask a witch why she was wandering along a road in Faerie.
As soon as the fae had disappeared beyond the faraway bend in the road, Hazel rounded on Tallak.
“That thing that happened back there,” she said through clenched teeth, her face hot with shame, “we will never speak of it again.”
Her stomach churned with nausea. Now that she was free of whatever spell of mad lust she’d been caught in, humiliation reared its ugly head. How could she have let herself go like this? On a public road? And with him?
They were on a mission to find her lost children and make sure nothing bad had happened to them, and here she was, getting all hot’n’heavy with probably the one guy in the entire world whom she should stay the fudge away from. He was not just a demon of questionable morals and with a bloody past, he was also the biological father of Basil and would likely remain a fixture in his life—if Basil wanted it so—which meant having any sort of lurid affair that was based more on combustive angry attraction than anything else would be a stupidly bad idea.
Not to mention that he was a rude jerk who snarled at her more than he talked.
“What happened in Faerie,” she gritted out, pointing at him with a finger, “stays in Faerie. You will keep your mouth shut about this, or so help me the gods, I will curse you with an incurable crotch itch.”
His eyes glittered as he bared his teeth at her. “What? Like I’d want to tell anyone about touching you? You aren’t that special, witch.”
Her mouth fell open at his insult, his words stinging despite her best intentions not to let them. “And you,” she hissed, “are the worst hookup I’ve ever had.”
Not a lie per se. She’d never had a hookup, so he was simultaneously the best and the worst.
He leaned in, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “The two orgasms I gave you say different.”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself! Like you did that much work.” She scoffed in what she hoped was a haughty-enough way to mask the fact she was lying through her teeth. “And besides, we should be going. This is a rescue mission, in case you’ve forgotten. Keep your mouth and your hands to yourself from now on and don’t ever mention this again.”
“Fine,” he barked. With a disgusted look, he pulled out his water bottle and proceeded to wash the hand that had intimately touched her just moments earlier.
Something soured in her stomach at the sight of it, an unwelcome feeling of twisting acidity. Huffing out a breath, she turned to storm off down the road.
***
Tallak shook his hand dry and followed the most irritating witch as she stalked off int0 the night.
Shitfuckingdammit.
This should never have happened.
He’d lost all fucking control, had given in to his base desires and the siren pull that female had on him, and look at him now—a persistent boner in his pants, accompanied by painful fucking blue balls, even more frustration than he’d suffered before, and a taste of what had been a storm of passion in the form of an ice-cold witch who’d suddenly sizzled with lust under his touch.
He still smelled her juices on him, for fuck’s sake!
His sad attempt to wash the scent of her arousal off his fingers to stop it from teasing his nose with the reminder of how fucking hot she’d burned for him hadn’t even been successful. He could still smell her, and it made his mouth water and his cock jump eagerly.
Which only soured his mood all the more, considering there wouldn’t ever be a reprisal, let alone an exploration of more. Not just because she’d likely scratch his eyes out if he even tried, but more so because he’d do fucking well to remember she was as off-limits as can be. As Basil’s adoptive mother, she wasn’t to be fucked with. Literally.
He needed to focus on what was the real goal for him here—find his son and hopefully manage to build a relationship with him so he could make up for twenty-six lost years.
Screwing the witch who’d raised Basil would be a complication that could derail everything, and no way would he risk that.
Which was why he was only too happy to agree to her suggestion to keep this between them and pretend like it never happened.
Because it sure as fuck would never happen again.
***
I hope you enjoyed reading the bonus scene for Tallak and Hazel’s story! If you haven’t read To Tempt a Witch to Sin yet, you can find all the links to get the book here: To Tempt a Witch to Sin
