by Cate Corvin
With the euphoria tilting everything sideways, I could’ve been floating in an abyssal void, no stars or light to show me where I was. Only their hands kept me tethered to earth.
A soft scuff reached my ears and the hook silently rose, until I was standing on the bed ankle-deep in the sheets.
Locke’s hands danced over my legs, wrapping soft cuffs around my ankles, and when he was done buckling them, I realized they weren’t just cuffs. I couldn’t close my legs, leaving my slick center exposed to them.
“The bar will keep you open for us,” Dom whispered in my ear, and heat tore through me at the masculine gruffness of his voice.
His lips brushed my jaw, all the way down the column of my neck to my breasts. I made a stifled sound when his teeth grazed a nipple, biting down just hard enough to send a zing through my nerves.
Powerful hands gripped the outside of my calves and I shuddered pleasurably when soft lips found the inside of my legs, kissing upwards in a slow trail as Dom traced the contours of my breasts, scraping gently over each pebbled peak.
When a tongue lapped the juncture of my thighs, finding my swollen clit and lashing it, my knees started quivering uncontrollably. Nothing could’ve held back my breathy cries no matter how hard I bit my lip against them, but Dom gripped my jaw and kissed me, growling in my ear. “Don’t you dare keep quiet.”
But it felt so intense it was almost overwhelming, with the euphoria singing through me and heightening everything.
Locke’s fangs skimmed over my shoulder, his weight dimpling the mattress behind me. I shivered and gasped when those fangs pierced my shoulder next to the mate-marks the twins had left, the pain gone with another heavenly flood of euphoria.
But that hot, wet mouth kept devouring me, the sensations so bright and intense my pussy was tingling, as Locke closed the bite and Dom laved my breasts.
I wasn’t alone with them anymore.
“Shane? Roman?” I gasped, my words coming out in a slur.
One of them growled between my legs, the mate-mark on my left shoulder flooding me with possessive hunger. Shane. He suckled my clit between his teeth, the reverberation of his growl trembling through me.
A gasp ripped out of me again as the extra dose of euphoria filled my cells. Every sweep of Shane’s tongue, the smoothness of Dom and Locke’s teeth, felt like it pounded through me.
I tried in vain to close my ankles, overwhelmed, but the bar kept my legs apart.
“You’re not done until you come for us,” Locke murmured. He ran his hands over my taut shoulder blades and the small of my back, sliding under my ass to cup my wetness and push into the cleft of my ass.
The sensation of fingers rubbing against me sent me over the edge. Shane groaned when I spasmed with a scream, desire rising into an uncontrollable crest.
My veins were still scintillating when he ran his tongue over my aching clit and sent a fresh wave of pleasure through me. Locke had flooded me with so much venom I could come a hundred times and still be ready for more.
I took a hoarse, shaky breath, a cry escaping me. “Lower her,” Roman commanded gruffly, and a second later the rope went slack. Several hands guided me down, which I was grateful for with the shakiness of my legs.
The bar still held my ankles apart, and my knees hit the mattress, pushing up against something warm and hard.
Roman let out a long, satisfied groan from between my legs. They’d lowered me so I was straddling his face, his mouth pushing against my pussy to eat me.
Someone unhooked me and carefully lowered my arms, forcing me to lean forward. Roman’s arms encircled my hips and gripped my ass, keeping my wetness firmly planted against his hungry mouth.
My body was spasming from the over-sensitive aftershocks of the orgasm each time he licked my clit, so good it was almost painful.
“I can’t,” I gasped, my thighs trembling and heart racing. My nipples were so hard and swollen each lap of Dom’s tongue was devastating.
“You can,” Locke whispered. His cock was pulsing, pushed against my ass as he readied me.
Roman growled and plunged deeper, his tongue delving as far as he could go.
I moaned and writhed, the pleasure and desire crashing over me, flooding my mind. Roman ground against my clit and I came again, my hips bucking against his mouth.
I almost blacked out. When I came back, still behind the darkness of the blindfold, all I heard was the rasp of breath, felt hands shifting me, stroking, caressing.
I was knee-walked over a hard body until a cock slid against my slickness. Whoever it was, his hips pushed up, driving his hard thickness into my pussy and stretching me apart.
Hands parted my ass, and there was a moment of pressure before a cock slid into my tightness, moving inch by slow inch.
It felt so good, the desire driving through me so fiercely I couldn’t even speak. All I could do was moan when they moved in me. Hard slickness touched my lips and I opened my mouth, wrapping around the head of a pulsing cock.
The third orgasm was so powerful I almost cried, ravaging every fiber of my body. Locke’s teeth found my other shoulder, sending a third dose of venom next to Shane’s mate-mark.
My pussy clenched when he moaned against me, driving into my ass while he bit me. His hips sped up, pumping into me until I felt him stiffen and pulse, filling me with his seed.
He withdrew slowly, my nerve endings sizzling, and Roman withdrew from my mouth. He pushed into my ass next, a little less gentle than Locke, thrusting into me so hard my breasts bounced and sent another wave of scorching sparkles through my veins.
The man under me groaned, palming my breasts, and I realized I’d been riding Dom, so lost in the euphoria I no longer knew who was where, just that the hands all over me were torturing me deliciously.
I pushed down harder, grinding my tender clit against him until another orgasm rocketed through me. My pussy tightened around him and he thrust upwards with a gasp, releasing into me.
I couldn’t take anymore. My center ached for more and more, but every sensation was a blur, blending one feeling into another.
Roman wrapped his arms around me, still buried to the hilt as he lifted me up, and Shane was suddenly in front of me, his cock sliding up into my slick core.
Between being the twins was like being in the ocean, rocked between untamable forces that bent me to their pleasure, pounding into me until I was screaming.
The climax wouldn’t stop, raw and molten-hot with each of the twins’ thrusts. I was going to explode, sucked into a dark vacuum where there was only the glitter of euphoria and endless, pleasurable pain.
They both came when I tightened around them, the euphoria and never-ending orgasm ripping through me, and lowered my quivering body to the bed.
Someone gripped the bar between my ankles, carefully pushing it so my knees were bent towards my chest, leaving all of me open and exposed.
A thick cock pushed into my dripping pussy and surged forward to fill me. A gentle thumb ran over my clit, teasing the hyper-sensitive flesh with each brush, forcing the orgasm out of me as my core throbbed into a painful crescendo.
“Wildfire!” I gasped, barely able to form coherent words, let alone my safe word, and the fingers were gone in an instant, Dom’s thickness sliding out of me.
I was still quivering from the aftershocks of peaking so many times as Locke untied the ropes around my wrists and Roman unbuckled the ankle straps of the bar.
Gentle fingers peeled the blindfold off and I blinked, looking up into Dom’s eyes. “Was it too much?” he asked, cupping my face.
I shook my head, nodded, shook my head again. “I just came eighty times,” I said, my voice throaty from screaming. “I can’t anymore. I just can’t. It feels so good it hurts.”
He shifted me so I was sprawled over the bed, and the other three joined us. Sweat shone on Shane and Roman’s skin in a fine sheen, and Locke looked radiant from the thrall-blood he’d drunk, but their warm hands on me felt soothing ins
tead of overwhelming now.
The last of the trembling finally faded. Whenever someone touched me, which was almost constantly, a hand kneading my wrists, massaging my ankles and calves, a deep, languorous glow seeped through me.
“You told them the safe word,” I finally said. I felt Dom at my back, the steady rise and fall of his breathing and how easily he curved around me.
“Of course I did,” he said, my hair rustling under his breath. “I had you choose one for a reason. It applies to all of us.”
“We weren’t going to do this without knowing it,” Shane said. He was sprawled next to me, and Locke was somewhere near my feet. If this was going to be a normal part of my future, and I very much hoped it was, I was going to need to find a bigger bed.
“I hope I didn’t take it too far, sunlight.” Locke’s amber eyes glowed in the dark.
“Hell no, you didn’t,” I blurted out. Roman came back a moment later and handed me a bottle of water.
“Drink it all,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “And make room.”
I ended up chugging the bottle, thirsty from the sheer amount of venom coursing through me, and tried not to think too hard about how the euphoria made drinking water feel like one of the most interesting sensations I’d ever felt.
It was slowly dissipating, at least, like it’d been used up after putting my body and nerve endings through the wringer.
“I love you all so much,” I said with a sigh.
“Are you still high on venom?” Roman asked.
“Very much so,” Locke said. “‘High as a kite’, I believe is the modern term.” I nodded in agreement, making the room spin around us.
“We love you too, Bambi,” Shane growled, pushing forward to kiss me, and holding back for a butterfly-light kiss at the last moment. Even that tiny sexual touch was enough to send a ripple of pleasant waves through me.
“How did you guys get in here?” Somewhere between Locke tying the blindfold over my eyes and strapping my legs apart with the bar, the twins had sneaked in. The onslaught of fresh euphoria had tipped everything into a dizzying whirlwind. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Silencing charm,” Roman said with a smirk. “Comes in handy for sneak-attack orgies.”
“You absolute perv,” I murmured.
“I’m your perv, though,” he said, nibbling the soft rise of my hip and making me squirm.
For several long minutes, or maybe a few eternities, I just luxuriated in their embraces, soaking up their warmth and every inch of skin I could touch. At that moment, surrounded by the four most ferocious protectors and lovers I’d ever met, I almost couldn’t believe my luck.
The universe has aligned perfectly to put me here and give me everything I could’ve wanted. Everything we could’ve wanted. Shane and Roman would have their coven of freedom, Dom could choose to keep teaching or remain a Warden, his mission fulfilled… and I had a home surrounded by those who loved me.
Before I fell asleep, I kissed each one of them, putting as much of my love into as I could, letting each one of them know how much they meant to me. My heart was made of four equal pieces, bonded to them so close that nothing could come between us.
They were mine, and I was theirs forever.
Chapter 21
Shane
A shivering hum rippled through the air as the waystone came to life. The sigils brightened until the hot, blue-white glare was too vivid to look at directly.
Lu was almost vibrating with excitement. As soon as Holly Cold materialized on the waystone’s surface she flung herself at the new arrival, holding her so tightly Holly groaned.
“Lu, I can’t breathe.” Our mate’s grip loosened fractionally and Holly drew a deep breath. “Or should I say covenmistress?”
A tiny smile touched her heart-shaped face. The last time we’d seen Holly, she’d been drawn, introverted, always wan. Now, for the first time since we’d met her, she looked well-rested, stood up straighter, and wasn’t clutching a sketchbook to her chest like a shield.
She’d changed a Seen future. I would be the first one to say that it wasn’t impossible… just highly unlikely.
“Definitely not covenmistress. It just sounds so important and… matronly. Is Covenmaster White coming?”
Holly shook her head and stepped from the waystone. Her eyes landed on Dom, sitting on the sole remaining marble bench and checking his watch periodically. Even for a Warden, the guy seemed strung tighter than usual.
She blanched when she took in his missing arm and the fresh scars covering everyone who’d made it out of Cimmerian’s abyss, but shook her head. “No. He’s been busy deciphering his brother’s journals and experiments since the funeral. I’ve been helping most days.”
Several days after we’d escaped, when Steele had still been teetering on that thin border between Life and Death, tended by Covenmaster White, Lu had stormed out of the infirmary in a helpless fury. She’d gone down to the slowly-withering pile of vines and brambles left by Ivy and ripped through them until she’d found the remainders of Professor White’s remains, almost reduced entirely to ash.
She’d poured what she could into an urn, scavenged the remains of his bones, and given it to Covenmaster White. The dead professor was the first body of many to be returned to their rightful family.
Holly and Lu linked arms and strolled towards a room Lu had repurposed into a modernized tea parlor, a refuge where she disappeared when the endless monotony of identifying bodies and writing to their covens became too much to bear.
Daphne was waiting for them. Lu had convinced her to apologize to Holly and start over, which the Vega witch was skeptical of, but Cimmerian’s latest covenmistress had a talent for compelling people to mend bridges and do things for the good of the coven. Sometimes I wondered if she was part vampire and had a touch of true Compulsion about her.
I settled next to Steele. “They’ll be here when they’re here.”
Holly wasn’t just visiting because Lu missed her. She was here because the creation of a new coven required witnesses.
The Tribunal had responded to Lu’s message with a curt reply of their own: they’d arrive in the afternoon with an untouched grimoire for her new coven, and an archivist to handle the Giltglass grimoire, which would be extinct once she renounced her allegiance to them. With Ivy Bloom, their only living blood relative, dead and burned, Lu was the only Gilt left.
Lu had been a bundle of nerves since the reply, which was why I’d conspired with Steele to send a message to Holly requesting her presence. Daphne and Beck had already volunteered to stand as witnesses.
“They’re not who I’m waiting for.” There was just a touch of curtness to his tone.
I stared at the waystone with him. After everything we’d been through, everything we’d done, Steele had proved himself loyal.
When we’d gone down into the tunnels together, sure we were going to die and willing to try anyways, I’d been mad with rage. My coherent thoughts had flown away from me like birds released into a stormy sky, and I’d meant every word when I’d told him to save her or die trying.
I hadn’t expected it to come so close. When I saw Lu wake up, alive against all odds and safe with Roman, I’d known that if Steele died on our watch she’d be destroyed.
He’d given everything he could. What rage was left in me from his betrayal had been satisfied that night. Now, our tentative relationship, bonded by Lu, was becoming a brotherhood.
“Who are you waiting for, then?”
As soon as I spoke, the world tilted around me and I was looking at a new day, a rainy afternoon somewhere in our future.
A black-haired girl, lanky with young adolescence, glared at an older teenage boy on the waystone. Her jaw jutted out just like Roman’s when he was being stubborn, his daughter down to her stance.
The boy’s dark hair was plastered to head from the rain, but his hazel eyes were brilliant, the same as the man sitting next to me. “You can’t come, Sidonie, sorry.
Mastery training is no place for a kid.”
For all her posturing, Sidonie’s lower lip trembled. “But you’re leaving me alone here, and I’m not a kid anymore. Besides, the new ‘thropes are taking all Mom’s time.”
The boy’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. With a wildfire mastery- which makes me the coolest big brother ever, right?” He held out his arms.
She gave him a watery smile. “I love you, Simon. You’re the coolest big brother ever no matter what.”
Sidonie took a breath and shivered, leaving her clothes behind in a pile. A tiny, rainbow-bright bird darted from the cloth and zipped to his cheek. Simon cradled the hummingbird and planted a kiss on her tiny head. “I love you too. Be good for our parents, Sid, and stay out of the sugar jar, okay? You’re gonna get stuck in that thing someday.”
She buzzed around his head and fled to an approaching figure: Roman, his face a touch older, with tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. Demonseed, rounder in the middle and touched with patches of white fur, trotted at his feet.
“Make us proud, Simon.” He cradled his hummingbird daughter to his chest.
Steele was right behind him and gave his son a one-armed hug. He’d collected many more scars in the years that had passed, and had a touch of frost at his temples.
Simon’s biological father whispered something in his ear, and when he stepped back, Simon raised his hand in a salute, giving them a wry smile that was all Lu.
“Behave yourself for Lord Ember,” Steele said. Sidonie perched on his shoulder like a living, breathing emerald. “Come home safe and whole. We love you.”
“Sure thing, Dads, I love you too. And tell Mom not to worry. I’ll be back before she knows I’m gone.” The waystone flashed in a blinding light and when I blinked, the rain was gone, and I was sitting on a marble bench next to Steele while the afternoon sun beat down on our heads.
Steele eyed me.
“Aren’t you curious?” I asked.
Not everyone wanted to know their future. He rubbed the stump of his missing arm absent-mindedly. Since he’d bonded with Locke as the vampire’s thrall, the two had become almost as close as Roman and I, literal blood-brothers. “Will we be happy?”