Just in time to showcase the new covers of the Lakeland Witches Trilogy, I’m very happy to offer the seventh instalment of  Demon Interrupted, a new story from the Elemental Coven that will be unfolding in its entirety right here on A Hopeful Romantic over the next few months.

The Lakeland Witches Trilogy left so many stories untold and so many fun places in the lives of the Elemental Coven yet to be explored, that a serial seemed like the ideal way to share more of the coven’s adventure. With a coven that specialises in sex magic, it’s not only exciting to revisit my witches at Elemental Cottage, but it’s sizzling hot. Here are the links to the previous episodes in case you missed them:

Chapter 1 Demon Interrupted: Perchance to Dream.

Chapter 2 Demon Interrupted: A Chat with a Demon

Chapter 3 Demon Interrupted: Enter the Shadows

Chapter 4 Demon Interrupted: Dark Chrysalis

Chapter 5 Demon Interrupted: The Empty Spaces in Between

Chapter 6 Beneath the Weight of Shadow

Enjoy Chapter Seven, and thanks for joining the fun with this Work in Progress.  If you want to know more about the Elemental Coven’s sexy adventures, check out the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy: Body Temperature and Rising, Riding the Ether and Elemental Fire. Enjoy! And do kookie the new covers! 

Chapter 7 Demon Interrupted

Possessions

Back at Elemental Cottage the coven ate Swedish pancakes, an experience that Elaine seemed to relish. Ferris took as much pleasure from her enjoyment as he did from Fiori’s wonderful cooking. When, after much cajoling and threatening, Lucia still hadn’t returned, Tara ordered an exhausted Ferris off to bed. Strange that he should be exhausted. He so seldom felt any physical distress, and the need for sleep was something he had long-forgotten.

He turned his attention back to the coven leader as she spoke. ‘There’s nothing you can do in the state you’re in, and you’ll be more helpful rested. Elaine, if you wish to remain corporeal and sleep, Fiori will show you to you room or if you would prefer or you can go with Ferris. There was no doubt as to the ghost’s wishes as she slid her arm through Ferris’s, a thing that he took far more pleasure in than he would have expected.

Tara nodded. ‘Very well then. The rest of us will do some research in the library and see what we can learn while we wait for the bloody demon to grace us with her company. Ferris,’ she said as he turned to go. ‘I wonder, is it that you really can’t dream or that you choose not to?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Until Lucia freed me of my responsibilities, I was unable to dream, and I had no need of sleep. Back then I could barely remember my day-to-day existence. And now, as far as I can tell, my dreams haven’t returned to me, though there have been … instances,’ he nodded to Fiori, who nodded back. ‘Instances when I wasn’t really sure if what I experienced was a dream or not.’

Tara studied him for a moment then bit her lip. ‘I would suggest that you make no attempt to enter the Dream World until we can either talk to Lucia or find more information in the library. It might be safer for you under the circumstances. Then, I’m thinking we may very well need to perform some dream magic.’

She didn’t have to tell him that he would be the central dreamer in said dream magic. He shivered at the thought and drew Elaine closer to him. Just before Deacon was destroyed, he had seen the result of nightmares in Elemental Cottage. He had seen how the demon had played on everyone’s fears through their nightmares. He was still seeing the after-effects months after Deacon was gone. And what lie in his dreamscape that was so horrible that Lucia had thought it wise to block him from the Dream World altogether, he was pretty sure he would prefer not to know.

‘Get some sleep, both of you,’ Tara said. ‘We’ll wake you if there’s anything urgent.’

Ferris took Elaine’s hand and led her through Elemental Cottage and up the oak staircase, then down the long hall that led into the annex where his suite overlooked the fells. Inside, he closed the door behind them. Then he moved to turn down the duvet of the four-poster bed, marvelling again at the luxury and comfort that he had revelled in since his arrival at Elemental Cottage. As he unbuttoned his shirt, she stood unmoving by the door, her sapphire eyes wide. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as though breathing had become difficult. One hand lay against her breasts while the other gripped into a tight fists at her side.

He stopped his efforts and moved to take her hand. She was trembling. ‘I’m sorry. I assumed that you wished to share more than my bed. Forgive me for being so presumptuous. I hadn’t though that perhaps you simply didn’t want to be alone.’

‘I’ve never been with anyone but Patrick, not in the way men and women are together.’ She lowered her eyes down to where his fingers curled around hers. ‘And being with him convinced me that I never wanted to be with a man. But being with you is different. You wear his flesh, but you’re not like him. I wanted to be bold. I wanted to come to you and let you have … me. But now here I stand terrified because it’s his body I see, and yet I feel all these things inside me, Ferris. I want … I want things … things I never wanted before.’ A blush began in the valley between her breasts and worked its way up over the bruises at her throat to tint her pale cheeks deep rose. She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘You’re so much stronger than he was. I know you could hurt me, you could hurt me as he did only so much worse.’

‘But I won’t, Elaine.’ He pulled her into his embrace and stroked her soft dark hair, felt her arms reluctantly circle his waist. ‘I would never hurt you, and I would gladly give you all that you want. I would do all that’s in my power to convince you that the pleasures that lovers share are exquisite when shared in respect and kindness.’ He lifted her chin and brushed a kiss across her full lips. When she didn’t pull away, he kissed her again, feeling his penis respond to the press of her in his arms. His hand slid between them to cup her breast, brushing a thumb across her nipple. Her eyelids fluttered and she inhaled the breath she didn’t need. ‘You never let me return the favour for what you did for me last night.’ He moved a thigh so that it pressed against the juncture between her legs. Her knees went weak and she trembled. He shifted to support her weight then lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed.

Carefully he removed the delicate slippers from her feet then caressed his way up the inside of her ankle, then her calf, nudging her knees apart, kissing the inside of each. She squirmed beneath him, shoving at him. ‘No. Please don’t.’ Her hands rested on the top of his head in an effort to push him away. ‘You shouldn’t.’ She struggled for words. ‘If you want to … mount me, then I’m ready, but … down there is so …’

‘So intimate, yes I know, and so exquisitely beautiful.’ Before she could protest further he snaked his hand up to press against her bare pussy, and she bucked and inhaled a sharp breath. ‘Down there is the source of more power and magic than you can possibly imagine, my darling. Trust me, you have no idea how much it’ll delight me to touch you there, to kiss you there, to taste you there. And –’ he eased two fingers up to part her labia causing her to writhe beneath his touch ‘—you’re not yet ready for me.’ With a thumb, he gave the swell of her clitoris a gentle stroke and her hand fell away from his head and curled in the duvet as she arched her back against his touch. ‘There, you see,’ he sighed. ‘I promise by the time you are ready for my cock, you’re body will know it and want it and beg for it in ways that will delight you.’

Her response was little more than a whimper, but he could see that her hand curled in the duvet was a tight, white knuckled fist. He would ease her fears. He would show her how it should be. ‘Don’t be afraid, Elaine. Just let me make you feel good, just take your pleasure from me.’ When the grip of her fingers loosened slightly as her wetness grew from his stroking, he gently scrunched up the skirt of her gown. ‘I want to see you, Elaine. I want to look at the place that pleasured me so deliciously, the place that will offer you so much pleasure. Don’t be frightened, just let me look at you, let me touch you there where you need to be touched.’

She offered a little sob and her legs fell open giving him a view of the soft dark curls of her mound and the thickening moist folds of her pussy, splayed for his fingers, gripping and tensing against his scissoring and thrusting. While she watched, he pulled his slippery fingers from her warm depths, brought them to his lips and tasted them, and she blushed and turned her head into the pillow.

‘Don’t be shy, dear Elaine, don’t be shy about the response of your lovely body to what it knows it wants, what I’ll give it in good time. The more brazen and demanding you are, the more I’ll desire to push up inside of you.’ He uncurled her fingers from the duvet and guided them to rest against the aching bulge he had not yet released from his trousers. ‘I want to be inside you, Elaine. I want you to ride me and own me and take my cock as your slave.’ He gave her only a moment to contemplate before he buried his face against her splayed pussy and raked the flat of his tongue from her perineum all the way up the slit of her to end in a tightened suck of his lips against her hardened clitoris. The beginning of her protest died in her throat and was reborn as a deep catlike growl. This time when her fingers curled in his hair it was to hold him to her as he suckled and kissed and licked.

As she bucked and writhed beneath him, he nipped her clit and pulled back just slightly so that his breath blew across her apex. ‘What do you want, Elaine? Tell me what you want from me. Demand it of me, use me.’

‘I want … I want …’ She shivered and curled her fingers tighter in his hair as though she would drag him all the way up her body in such a grip.

‘Tell me,’ he gasped. ‘Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.’

‘I want … I want … I want you inside me.’ She groaned.

With his face still buried between her legs, he undid his fly and hissed between his teeth as he released his distended cock. Then he withdrew, wiping his wet face on the sleeve of his shirt as he slid up her body. When he could look down into the depths of her bright eyes, he cupped her bare bottom and shifted and maneuvered her so that she was open and ready. Then he lifted her legs around his waste, rose onto his knees and positioned himself. ‘I’m going to make love to you now, Elaine, and it’ll be good, so good.’ His words were lost in a thrust and a groan of pleasure that was near pain as he pushed inside her, feeling her tightness clenching anxiously at his cock as he slid home, and to his surprise, it felt very much like home.

With trembling hands, she shoved his open shirt off his shoulders and scored his back with her nails. ‘Ferris,’ she growled against his ear. ‘Dear god, Ferris. You’re nothing like him. Nothing like him at all.’

And this time he felt it happen as he had not felt it before. This time he knew when the whole of him rose from the body he possessed, shoving it aside as though it were nothing more important than his discarded shirt. Beneath him he heard her little yelp of surprise, saw in the dilated pupils of her sapphire eyes a tiny flash of fear that burned bright, then passed with a growl of desire. ‘It’s you,’ she gasped. ‘It’s you I want. It’s you I need to fill me.’ She wrapped her legs tighter around his hips, hips that were suddenly more muscled, and she ran her hands over his back that was now broader and longer. She thrust up to meet him powerful, hungry, much stronger than the frightened woman he had met only yesterday. ‘You fill me, Ferris, as I’ve never been filled. You fill me the way I need to be filled.’
Together they came in wrenching, shattering convulsions – Ferris, who had come more times than he could count since his arrival at Elemental Cottage, and this woman, this beautiful ghost, who had never known the pleasure of orgasm until now. As they trembled against each other, the flesh that had been the only flesh he had known for as long as he had memory lay next to them as though it only slept waiting for his return.

When they caught their breath, he could tell that it disturbed her, the body on the bed next to them, the flesh that had somehow housed the monster that was her husband before it housed him. ‘No harm has come to it,’ he said, kissing her ear. ‘It only awaits my return.’

She buried her face in his shoulder and shivered. ‘I would wish it harm.’ Her voice was a thick, angry rasp. ‘I would wish it a thousand deaths. I would wish it suffering that never ends. I would wish it anguish beyond anguish, I would wish all that and more but that it has been redeemed by you.’ She clenched Ferris to her and studied the inanimate flesh of her husband.

‘If its presence disturbs you, I’ll take you to the room that Tara has assigned to you, and we’ll leave it here until I again have need of it.’

‘Can you do that?’ She whispered.

‘Yes. Yes I can.’ Strange he had never realised before that he could leave the flesh he wore, but he was now as certain of it as he was of the fact that the body now sleeping next to them was nothing more an a means to an end. It was a temporary home for him, and he had had lots of temporary homes in his long existence. He stood and lifted her into his arms. ‘We shall leave the flesh here, then, until I have need of it again.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘But my need at this moment is a different kind of need, a very powerful need, Elaine, and I feel that your need is no less so. Shall we adjourn to your room then?’

Once he had eased her down onto the bed in the room that had been assigned to her, he removed what remained of their clothing and buried his cock once again in her depths. He thought for the tiniest of moments how strange it was — the situation in which he found himself. That he possessed Farringdon’s body was abundantly clear. That he had possessed other flesh in the past was equally clear. As he felt Elaine’s delicious tightness around his erection, he rolled and settled her atop him so that he could enjoy the dance and sway of her breasts, so that he could fondle and caress and pleasure them. As he cupped her fullness he couldn’t keep from wondering if he could take solid form, and indeed a much more desirable form than that Farringdon provided, why did he need Farringdon’s weak flesh at all?