The Tortuous Spell

Shorter chapter this time, but i like where it ended ;)

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Surprisingly they both slept soundly, jolted from their slumber by the unlatching of the heavy cell door. John tensed his arm around her and relaxed when Gerald came into the cell, closing the door behind him. He arched an eyebrow in their direction but didn't speak of them lying together indecently. Elizabeth sat up and scooted to the edge of the table quickly, her legs dangling down over the edge. John sighed in annoyance at the interruption as he got up off the table slowly, feeling very stiff from the cramped sleeping position. At the loss of John's body heat she noticed that the temperature had dropped drastically overnight, the heat wave finally having passed. She pulled the thin blanket, still warm from their body heat, around her shoulders.

"I hate to bear bad news, lass, but today we go swimming." Gerald snarled in disgust at the suggestion that had clearly been the minister's.

"What does that entail?" She asked as John clenched his jaw and went still.

"It is believed by some, including the sadistic bastard of a minister, that a witch is unable to be submerged in water as the devil will prevent his servants from the rites of baptism." Gerald spat his words out in anger.

"If I sink in the water, I am proven innocent?" Elizabeth asked hopefully.

"Somehow, I think he still will choose not to be convinced." John growled.

"It will require you to be under the water for a period of time, lass." Gerald explained slowly. "He will believe a witch can force herself down for a while at least, using trickery. And it will require you to be tied." He added gently.

She gasped when she realized he wasn't talking about simply being dunked in water. She looked over to John who looked infuriated, adding to her fear and comfort in an odd mixture. "But, you'll be with me?" she asked softly.

His eyes softened when he looked at her and nodded. "Always."

She smiled softly and nodded slowly in resignation. "When?"

"I'm sorry, lass," Gerald answered, "now."

She nodded slowly and slid off the edge of the table to stand, leaving the blanket behind. She had a premonition that being cold was going to be a theme of her day. John walked towards her with the rope he had restrained her hands with before, she put them out in front of her, already becoming accustomed to being tied up and led around.

He stood close and leaned down to kiss her forehead gently. "So brave, my sweet. Remember, I will be with you?" She nodded, accepting any comfort he had to offer to salve the anxiety she felt. She most assuredly did not feel brave, but knowing he would be with her for this helped her tremendously. If not bravery, she had acquired something related to it in the small time she had known him, some reliance she hadn't known she possessed. He tied her hands tightly with the rope. "You understand that I will not be able to show you kindness in front of them?" a darkness crossed his expression and he looked almost ashamed. She nodded gently.

"I know it will not feel natural, lass, but you should avoid taking a deep breath as it will cause you to float. Try and release the breath from your body as you go under. Do you understand?" Gerald asked. She nodded, unable to form words at his suggestions, making the entire ordeal seem much more upon her. "I'm sorry I have to say this now, as it causes you distress, but you understand we will be interrogators out there, where people are watching."

"It's alright, I understand." She answered softly. They walked out of the cell together, Gerald leading with Elizabeth following and John closely behind her, holding the rope that bound her hands. Her feet were bare against the cold stone of the jail floor and she wasn't surprised to see frost crusting the tips of the grass as they exited the building. It was just after dawn and fog laid close to the ground. Elizabeth involuntarily shivered as they walked along the path, joining the minister and a group of men that waited, including the blustery Mr. Bishop. Thankfully no one spoke at the moment, as they all walked down the path that would lead to the river. She clenched her toes against the cold packed dirt of the path when they started to go numb from the cold. Most of the men wore layers of clothing and coats, except John who was still in the same shirt and breeches he'd worn last night. She was only in a thin shift and dress, no shoes, no coat, no stockings. They walked into the woods along the path, which were shrouded in darkness at this time of morning. Between the shadows, fog, and frost, the setting matched perfectly with her inner turmoil and anxiety.

It didn't take the group long to approach the river that bisected the tall trees. Her feet slipped repeatedly on the increasingly slick path that was covered in frosty decaying leaves overlapping a thick and cloying mud. John pulled the rope up, as she nearly fell, but did not help her. She understood that he would have to keep up the facade of witch hunter, but she couldn't deny that even the appearance of his indifference hurt. They walked along the river bank until they reached a wide area where the water was black and looked deep. Elizabeth clenched her jaw and resolved that she would not cry or tremble with fear in front of these men, who would take pleasure in that. She looked back towards John as he came around to her with a length of rope, she wasn't sure where it had come from.

"Remove her clothing first." The minister demanded. "It is not beyond a witch to sew heavy items into the fabric to assist her in this trial. They are masters of deception." He spoke loudly for the small crowd of men that stood behind him, nodding in agreement.

John's jaw clenched and his eyes darkened, filled with hate. She saw the struggle he endured to control his rage, she saw his restraint nearly break, before Gerald spoke, strategically diverting attention away from his nephew.

"Yes, of course, minister." Gerald laughed. "Johnathan, surely would not be much troubled in the task, yes my boy?"

She looked up at him fearfully, but knew that he wasn't able to deny the request. His face was once again shielded into an impassive expression. She looked down towards the dirt in shame as he quickly unbuttoned the simple dress and unlaced the shift and roughly pulled them down her body, exposing her pale skin, still covered in healing scratches. She crossed her arms across her chest as much as possible with tied hands, and tilted her hips away from the small crowd of men to shield her naked pelvis. Her eyes teared from the overwhelming sense of shame that vied for her attention against her equally unbearable fear and anxiety. Her skin was covered in gooseflesh from the cold and she began to shiver.

John pulled her wrists down roughly to her sides and looped the rope around her upper arms, pulling it tightly each time it circled her. He crouched and tied her legs together tightly as well, bringing her exponentially more embarrassment at the sudden vicinity his face had to her naked womanhood. There was no trace of the amiable teasing man she had quickly learned to trust. He looked at her like he felt nothing but fury and disgust, she turned her face away to hide from his stare. She knew it was an act, he had told her that he would need to act this way, but hearing it and seeing the hate in his magical green eyes were two very different things. He seemed much larger to her now as he stood before her tightly pulling the ropes around her to bite into her abused skin. She realized that she had never been adequately afraid of him, despite his large, intimidating frame, and she realized the foolishness in that as she felt the strength from his large hands firsthand. She was not able to bite back her whimper as he secured the knot tightly and pulled the restraints roughly to test them. The rope was tight enough that it would leave deep indentations in her frozen skin when it was removed, if it was removed.

She looked up into his face once again and frowned at his dark and ominous expression. He looked down at her like she was the scum that surrounded the river bank and she felt humiliation spread in her chest tinged with a surprise at how much he affected her. Elizabeth halfway expected there to be some ceremony associated with this trial, but John simply removed his shoes and pulled her suddenly into the freezing water as the crowd of observing men stayed silent. She gasped at the shock of the water against her exposed skin. He didn't give her time to acclimate; he just pulled her deeper into the river. She slipped on an especially slimy stone under the water and fell onto her restrained knees, the water instantly rising above her shoulders. She yelped at both the pain from the impact of the rock and from the intense jolt of the frigid waters. John was already up to his waist in the river and pulled her up by the ropes tying her hands together. She cried out at the unexpected intensified pain in her wrists, which had been repeatedly irritated from various restraints over the past two days. John stopped once she was next to him and loosened his grip on her restraints. Every inch of her skin that she felt had been finally numb to the cold during the walk, had been reawakened as she was pulled out into the much colder water. Her feet, especially, throbbed in excruciating pain.

"Don't hold your breath." She barely heard him speak in his low tone under his breath. This was the only indication that she had before he picked her up and threw her away from him into the water quickly. She hadn't had time to interpret his words before her head was already down. She went under the water immediately and realized, after the shock of the cold, that there was a steep drop-off in the water where John had been standing. Luckily she had been too unaware to even accidentally take a breath in preparation at being submerged. She panicked as she sank lower and lower into the blackness of the water, the ropes keeping her limbs firmly attached to her core. She opened her eyes but there was nothing to see, only faint shadows which made everything worse. She clenched her eyes closed as she realized John was not next to her anymore. He told her that he would be with her, but he wasn't, he was way above her on the quickly receding surface. It was naive of her to have expected him to be able to save her from this fate. After everything that she had experienced, she should have been prepared to be alone in this as she had been in every previous trial she'd encountered in her young life thus far. She finally hit the cold stone of the river floor with her naked posterior.

She hadn't been ready to go underwater, she knew that was part of the plan, but her expectations didn't quite match her experience. Too quickly, her lungs burned with air hunger. It didn't take long at all for that pain to become prioritized over the pain in every other area of her thoroughly abused body. It was a strange sensation as the pains in her feet, skin, and from the cold all melted away when her body decided that those were unimportant compared to her impending death from drowning. Every nerve focused on her needy lungs, her body begged her for air with a persistence she had never known to be possible.

She couldn't move, she knew if she could she would push herself up from the river floor. In the back of her mind, she realized John had known this when he was tying her up and had made the ropes especially tight. As the seconds passed, her mind was frantic with the need to breathe, urging her to take a deep breath of the certain death that surrounded her. Surely a breath full of water would be better than no breath at all. She exhaled the little air that had been left in her lungs, opening her eyes to watch the air bubbles taunt her as they raced to the surface to join the excessive amounts of oxygen available above her. So close, yet so out of reach to her. She was going to die down here and she suddenly felt as if that's what she must have deserved all along.

She suddenly thought back to telling John that she was a bad person. He hadn't reacted as she thought he would, or should. She heard his voice in her head as if he were right next to her again.

He was a damn lucky man to have you, but he is gone, and you are not.

Was she truly deserving of all of the guilt that she'd inflicted upon herself? She accepted that she hadn't loved her husband, but she had been a good and faithful wife. She suddenly felt the guilt that she had been carrying drift away as quickly as the bubbles from her final breath. Her eyes remained opened underwater and had adjusted slightly to the small amount of light that made it to the bottom of the deep river. As the edges of her vision faded she heard John's voice in her mind again and was soothed.

You said you trusted me, trust me.

She vaguely felt something pull her upwards, but did not have the energy or the will to care about it. It was interrupting the peace John's voice had given her, the one gift from this entire ordeal that offered her comfort. The pull was insistent and even painful now as she felt herself rising. She was gradually pulled from her daze when something hard slammed between her shoulder blades repeatedly. Pain once again took precedence over her attempt to slip into the trance of death. Her lungs contracted, pulling water up and out of her mouth, burning her insides like acid along the way. She choked violently as her back continued to be slapped by what she now recognized as John's hand. She was finally able to stop choking long enough to take in a semblance of a breath, though it then caused the coughing to intensify. In between fits of violent coughing she was able to take a deeper life saving breath and the hitting subsided. She was out of the water and in John's arms completely, his chest offered some warmth which was more torture than comfort as it only thawed the numbness from her skin to leave the pain of the deep cold that penetrated her body.

"She sinks." John yelled out loudly, looking at the men on the shore of the river with very thinly veiled distaste. He walked out of the river carrying her still restrained body in his arms. She continued to cough up liquid spontaneously. Before Elizabeth realized what was happening Gerald had cut the ropes around her with a small knife. Her arms tingled back to life with pain as John quickly pulled the shift over her and wrapped her body in a blanket, ignoring the onlookers as he walked away with her on the path back to the jail. Gerald stayed behind and spoke with the minister and his group.

"Just breathe, Elizabeth" John said as soon as they were out of earshot, he looked down at her with concern, the harsh look from the river had melted completely.

"Will they believe me now?" Her voice came out as a barely perceptive croak, it burned her throat to speak. She sincerely hoped that nearly drowning would be worth something to this corrupt town she'd found herself in.

"I'm not certain." He answered sadly.

She nuzzled her head into his broad chest, closing her eyes, as he quickly walked her back to her cell. When she opened her eyes she realized she'd dozed off in his arms. They were in a cell, but it wasn't the original one that they'd spent the night in. This one had a fireplace and it was blazing high as John fed it. Her whole body, which she'd been sure would never be warm again, finally began to thaw as she sat on his lap in front of the fire. He took the damp, cold blanket from her shoulders and pulled the edge of the saturated shift to remove it from her body. She lifted her hips from his lap to help him get it out from underneath her. She felt the hardness in his lap when she once again settled her hips there and smirked at him as his eyes darkened with desire.

Over the past two days her entire body had been in more physical pain than she'd experienced before, yet feeling him against her and knowing that she pulled a response from his body caused pleasure to shoot through her, easing her pain slightly. She felt the heat from the roaring fireplace warm and dry the pale frozen skin of her back. He was just as soaked as she was and she wasn't sure he realized he was shivering. She pulled her fingers up to unlace the front of his shirt and pull it up from his waist. Her fingers were clumsy and felt swollen but she was eventually able to pull it above his head to throw it to land with her shift in a puddle on the floor. The muscles of his chest and stomach were as hard as the rocks that she had laid against on the river floor. They were also nearly as cold. She moved her hands up and down the outsides of his arms, attempting to create friction to offer him what heat she could create from her body.

He lifted her up in his lap and scooted them closer to the fireplace, laying her on a dry blanket that he had laid there on the floor. He stood and pulled his wet breeches off, depositing them with the other soaking garments. She watched his lithe muscular body in admiration and lust as he walked back over to join her on the blanket. He laid down and pulled one of the warm blankets from the pile over top of them both. He pulled her against him so her back was to his front, his semi-hard member nestling between the cheeks of her bottom. His skin was cold nearly everywhere but there, there he was hot and she ground into it reveling in that sweet heat. He groaned deeply in his throat, moving his strong fingers to her hip to hold her still.

"Elizabeth," he said her name as a warning, "be still, get warm."

"Please John, I need you." her voice was unfamiliarly raspy with desire mixed with the strain her throat had taken by nearly drowning. All the fear she had experienced had turned into elation that she had survived. Here in this moment she didn't have to be a lonely woman being interrogated for witchcraft, she could be a young woman learning everything about her new lover. Here, with him, she was safe.

He groaned and nipped her earlobe, pulling it with his teeth gently. "I'm trying to be a gentleman, my sweet witch." His whisper sent a shiver up her spine, and she suddenly felt much warmer.

"Mmh, I don't need a gentleman." She nearly hissed as he continued to bite down the tendon of her neck. His hand grazed the skin of her stomach, warming her along the way. He moved up to her breast, pinching her already erect nipple and sending a jolt of sensation through her body. She rolled her hips instinctually searching for him. He groaned and met her backwards thrust with his own forward one, pressing himself fully between her legs now.

"Yes," she moaned out slowly as he slid against her slick folds repeatedly, perfectly hitting every sensitized nerve ending along the way. His hands were everywhere bringing chills to the surface of her rapidly heating skin. He pulled back again, she thought to teasingly slide through her once more, but he adjusted his angle and roughly thrust into her. They both groaned with the intensity of the sensation. His fingers gripped tightly onto her hip as he pulled back and slammed into her again. She met him thrust for thrust, pushing back greedily searching for the rough impact of his sweet invasion. Her body coiled tighter and tighter and her movements became more and more frantic and disorganized. He stilled her with his hand on her hip as he quickened his pace, sending her over the edge and following closely behind. She felt every torrent of hot seed that he emptied into her body and she tightened around him, instinctively pulling him deeper into herself. She reveled in the groan her actions produced from him. It was the most primal and intense experience of her life. The muscles in her legs shook in the aftermath.

"I didn't know," she paused still trying to fully catch her breath, "I didn't know you could do that in that manner." Her cheeks flamed in embarrassment.