The Tortuous Spell Ch. 01

"If one of us is guilty of witchcraft it is you." She said, her voice unrecognizably breathy to her. He grinned at her in response and she found it wasn't hard at all to move her mouth to meet his. She was scared at just how easy it was for her to do. His lips parted slightly but didn't move like before, he was making her take the lead. She imitated what he had done before, moving her lips against his. She curiously moved her tongue out of her own mouth and hesitantly explored his, grazing his teeth quickly then retreating. It was enough to coax him into kissing her deeply again. His hands moved down from her waist to her posterior, he shocked her by pulling her up from there, then took advantage of her widened mouth to deepen the kiss further. Her legs instinctively parted around his waist with the layers of her dress between them. She was high enough to release her cuffed hands from the hook and brought them down around John's head to balance herself.

Even through the layers of their clothing her mound rubbed against him and caused her to moan into his open mouth. His hips thrust into her in reaction and her eyes opened wide to see his heavy lidded firefly eyes looking back at her. She pulled her mouth free quickly with no resistance from him this time. She quickly brought her legs down from around his waist and moved her hands from around his neck. He placed her back on the ground gently, still looking at her intensely. She was completely bewildered and at a loss of what to say, or what to think. All she could do was blink and try to catch her breath. She moved as far from him as the cell would allow, just short of leaning on the filthy moist wall.

She was supposed to be on trial for witchcraft, with her life in very real danger, and she was soaked with arousal for her jailor who from the beginning had shown, what should have been, a concerning amount of interest in her as a woman. She deserved to burn as Mr. Bishop had said. What kind of woman did such a thing? The guilt that she had been wearing these past few weeks returned in full force. Elizabeth hadn't realized it had been gone until it was back. Something about John made her feel completely different from what she was used to. She wasn't sure if she liked it or not, but she was sure that it couldn't be a good thing for her. He was supposed to be convicting her as a witch. Although it didn't seem like that task was on his mind in the least. She frowned at that thought.

"What do you want?" She asked him, her expression completely serious.

He laughed darkly. "I would have thought that that would have been very evident when you had your legs wrapped around me."

Her lip pulled away from her teeth in disgust. "Do you want to convict me of witchcraft? Is that why you, and your uncle, are here? Because it seems as if that has been the furthest thing from your thoughts from the start." She accused him.

He sighed heavily, then answered slowly and carefully, as he seemed to do when he was trying to keep himself from telling a lie. "My uncle and I came to Salem to do a job, and we will."

"Have you done this kind of job before? Interrogating witches?" She clarified, he seemed to have a knack for lying by omission and she tried to use wording that would prevent that.

He looked at her for a moment, thinking about his answer. "No, we haven't". He finally said.

"So you are fraudulent?"

He shrugged. "We never made the claims that we were experienced witchfinders, your minister inferred that. We simply did not correct him."

"You're an imposter!" She exclaimed.

"Are you a witch?" He asked in response.

"No! I have already said as much!" She answered exasperated.

"Then I am no more an imposter playing the witchfinder, than you are playing the witch, am I?"

"You are deceitful."

"That is not very nice. And just when I thought we were becoming friends." He grinned at her teasingly.

"What is your plan?" She ignored his flirtations. The situation she found herself in was beyond out of control.

He moved closer, she was effectively cornered. "Well, I had planned on torturing a confession out of a witch, starting with a night of sleep deprivation. But when I saw how deliciously beautiful you were, I have to admit, methods of depriving a woman of sleep that were a bit more alluring came to my mind." By the end of his sentence he was again directly in front of her, speaking slowly while he looked down at her with his glowing green eyes cast in shadow.

"I am coming to the conclusion that your mind is a very filthy place indeed." She hissed in aggravation at his constant attacks on her willpower to resist him.

"And I have come to the conclusion that I am not the only one here for whom that rings true." His tongue darted out across the small split in his lip that her bite had caused. Her eyes could not move from the trajectory of the tip of his tongue as it moved slowly over the wound she'd inflicted upon him. She felt like electricity was coursing constantly from the edges of her body to her core, coalescing into a crescendo of sensation. She could not deny his accusations of her, her mind was also filled with unclean thoughts and desires since the moment he touched her hands while restraining her. He moved his large hands up to her coif and pulled the pins free that held it to her secured hair. She didn't try to stop him, she was sufficiently entranced. He was quickly able to release her hair from its complicated pinned braid and she felt it fall down her back as it unravelled from his exploring fingers over her scalp. He brought it over her shoulders woven between his fingers like black ribbon. Watching him look at her hair gave her a feminine confidence she had never felt before. He had said she was beautiful, it wasn't something that Henry had said often, if ever, that she could recall.

The thought of her late husband brought back with it a spell-breaking guilt. "Please, don't. This isn't right. I am a recently widowed woman, it isn't appropriate."

He arched an eyebrow in question. "Is that why you're fighting, my witch?" His tone was disbelieving of her excuse.

"What is the best scenario to come of this? I become an adultress and then tomorrow I am tortured to confess myself a witch and hang? I'm sorry but that does not appeal to me." Her tone was harsh and accusatory.

He took a deep breath and sighed while nodding reluctantly. "I do not wish that fate for you. I will do everything in my power to prevent that."

"Why would you do that?" she asked softly, surprised by his appearance of genuine concern for her.

"Because you are my witch." He shrugged.

"You don't even know me."

"I know enough." He looked serious, lacking his characteristic smirk.

She wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he seemingly had the ability to see into her psyche and pull her from the barrier in her mind that she usually used to hide from the world. She decided it would be more comfortable for her to change the subject to more practical matters. "How am I going to get out of this? What happens next?"

"Though the jail seems abandoned, I assure you it is not. We will not simply walk out unencumbered. I need to come up with a plan."

"You mean you do not have one!" She exclaimed, beginning to pace in the small space that she had been backed into.

"The plan, previously, had been to just do the job and interrogate witches. Now, luckily for you, I find I am having second thoughts." He arched an eyebrow.

"What methods of interrogation did you plan to use?" She tried to hide her anxiety but her voice caught on the question, she cleared her throat and looked down to try and cover the tell.

He looked at her until she met his gaze with her own. He had that serious look on his face again, heightening her anxiety. "Come, sit." He reached out and pulled her by the shoulders and walked behind her until they reached the chairs, she sat. He walked to the other side of the table and sat in the opposing chair. He told her slowly everything that laid in store for her, looking more serious and sympathetic than he had all night. She managed to keep her fear from her face and controlled her blank expression, but her hands trembled under the table clasped together tightly in her lap. When he was done he encouraged her to sleep for a little while to gain what strength she could. She didn't have the ability to protest, exhausted from the strength required to prevent her panic from showing all over her face as he talked. He lifted her up to the top of the table to lay down, the cleanest area in the filthy cell. He moved his chair near the door of the cell, she turned so he was facing her back and finally allowed a single tear to fall. She found she wasn't able to sleep, but tried hard to clear her mind as the hours passed.