Lover Behind Enemy Lines

by Liv Olteano

  Chapter Eleven

  I BROUGHT us some food in my room, deciding against eating with the guys downstairs. The two of us ate together, laughing and feeding each other bits of this or that every now and then. When we were done, we left the dishes on the side table and leaned back on the bed to cuddle. We were silent for a while, the mood oddly comforting despite everything that was going on.

  “Do you guys have married couples?” he asked, playing with his fingertips along my chest.

  “In a way. If people want to be officially together, we have matings. It’s not about papers, as you can imagine. But it’s a way for the couple to make their relationship official among all other dreamcatchers, and it’s with the ancestors’ blessing. There’s a bond that’s forged during the ceremony, and it claims one as the other’s.”

  “And divorce?”

  “The bond can be broken, sure—but both partners have to want to break it. No kids while serving as dreamcatchers, though. That’s the rule. It would put them in grave danger.”

  “I understand that reasoning. We have ley bonding, which might be an equivalent. It ties the parties involved to each other and it can’t be dissolved unless both parties agree to it. It’s less about romance and more about making sure that your spouse won’t trade up if and when the opportunity arises.”

  “Interesting way of framing the matter.”

  He lifted his head and stared at me. “The basis of all interactions between witches is power: how much you have, how much your circle has, how much you can gain. A lot of what they do is one form or another of insuring that they don’t get screwed over. Though in some cases it happens anyway.”

  “You’re thinking about your sister,” I said as I ran a fingertip over his smooth lips.

  “And me,” he whispered. “I know my sister’s nature was that of a power thief. Or at least that’s what they said. But I can’t help but think that my mother hated having competition that so clearly outdid her. She drained my power too, after all—though it was with my consent. I needed that kind of help when I was a kid, maybe. But then after I grew up, I could have expelled it myself without her using it.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He looked away from me. “My mother’s climb in the ranks of her coven wasn’t based on her powers. I think you know that by now. She developed other ways of getting what she wanted, and manipulating a kid she’d raised was pretty easy to do. She could press my buttons and guilt-trip me into doing a lot of things I wouldn’t normally have felt okay with. Not anything, but some things.”

  “I’m sorry. It sounds like a tough childhood.”

  He shrugged a little. “It wasn’t all that bad; lonely, yes. But not terrible. I would love a new beginning, though. Among people who put others’ safety and best interests before their own; who follow a code, a set of rules that seems pretty fair and honorable as far as I know. I just worry that I might not have much to contribute with.”

  I ran the palm of my hand up and down his back in slow and tender caresses. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  “You see me in a way that nobody else did. I feel exposed around you, vulnerable. I normally tend to pull away when I feel that way. But it feels good to be vulnerable in front of you. I feel safe.”

  “I’m honored and delighted you feel that way.”

  “Do you feel that way about me?” he asked, glancing away.

  “I trust you, Nathan. I’m in love with you.”

  “Are you?” he asked, suddenly looking into my eyes so intensely that I felt my soul might be singed. “Are you sure it’s with me, and not the memory of the other life of my soul?”

  I ran my hand through his hair, loving the way it slid through my fingertips. “When I dream about making love, it’s your body in my arms and your lips that I kiss. When I touch myself in the shower, I’m thinking about the taste of your skin and how you moan when you’re pleasured. It’s you that I want, Nathan. No one else.”

  “I want you too, so, so bad,” he muttered against my lips. “What do you say we do something about it?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  He got up from beside me and crawled on all fours on the bed until he was kneeling between my spread legs. “Can I?” he asked as he reached for my crotch and rubbed his palm against my bulge.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. He slowly rubbed the palm of his hand against me, looking into my eyes and smiling a little. By the time he opened the fly of my jeans, I was just about ready to rip them off. But he took his precious sweet time freeing my hard-on. When it was finally out of the confines of my jeans and shorts, he leaned his mouth down ever so slowly.

  There was something challenging about his gaze, so I let him play his game. He got his mouth so tantalizingly near the head of my dick but still didn’t get on with it. I gritted my teeth and smiled back, allowing all of my hunger to radiate through my gaze. When he slowly opened up his lips around my head, the slippery hotness of his mouth enveloped me and suddenly what I felt was bliss. I moaned and reached down to run my hands through his hair, without pulling or pushing him to move in any other way.

  I simply sat back and looked at his beautiful mouth opening wide for me, taking me in with torturously slow motions. He coated my whole length with his saliva, licked me from base to tip and then back down again. By the time he got to work on licking and sucking each of my balls, I was just about ready to explode.

  “Relax,” he purred. “We’re in no hurry.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered, and moaned as he used both his mouth and hands on me.

  There was something so decadent about the way he touched me: unhurried, tender, meaning to provoke the hell out of me. It made my balls feel tingly. I needed a distraction so I wouldn’t end this moment too soon, so I took off my T-shirt, and his hands hooked in the pockets of my pants to pull them off. When I was finally free, the brush of his breath over my stomach and inner thighs felt amazing. He nipped along my inner thigh until he reached the apex, then went to work on the other thigh too. As he got closer to my groin, my sac tightened and squeezed my balls closer to my body.

  He stood on the bed and took off his clothes while looking into my eyes. After he dumped them on the floor, he got off the bed and opened a nightstand drawer from which he got a tube of lube.

  “I want you inside me,” he whispered.

  “Let me prepare you,” I said, trying to get up.

  He pushed a hand against my chest. “Stay there.”

  Then he got on the bed, typical sixty-nine-style. I grabbed the tube as I opened my mouth to swallow him inside. He went to work on me again, taking his sweet time as he’d done earlier. He moved his hips as he desired, to a slow pace like he was using on me. The feel of him sliding in and out of my mouth while I slid in and out of his was amazing.

  My heart thumped wildly and my body buzzed with energy. It was also his energy that made my skin rise in waves of goose bumps. The delicious hum of his power accompanied every move he made, intensifying everything. After I got lost in the pleasure of it for a couple minutes, I opened the tube of lube and coated a finger in the cool, slippery substance. His hole twitched as I massaged it, smearing lube around its tight walls. By the time he decided he was prepared enough, I had two fingers inside him as he fucked my mouth with faster and faster strokes.

  He got up and let go of my dick with a slick pop. “I want to cum with you inside me,” he said as he maneuvered himself to straddle my hips, still facing my feet.

  “Let me see your face,” I said as I ran the tips of my nails up and down his back.

  It made him shiver, and I loved it.

  He lowered himself on me. “You will.”

  “Oh, fuck,” I gritted out as he impaled himself on me.

  He was tight and determined to get as much of me inside as he could, and I loved every goddamn second of it. He moaned softly as he adjusted to my size, leaning back more and more and moving his hips slowly. I sat up and gripp
ed the hair at the back of his head to look into his eyes. He groaned every time he slid down my dick, the sounds feeding a nearly starving part of me. I pushed up into him. That made him open his lips and moan.

  When I wrapped my hand around his hard-on and stroked him to the tempo of me entering him, his body tensed. I moved all the faster. I pushed into him with almost punishing speed. I tightened my grip on his dick and rubbed its head until he was moaning loudly, totally lost in the moment. When I felt the hot spurt of his cum on my hand, I finally let go and came inside him with a hot explosion that had me seeing stars.

  He slipped off and cuddled into my arms while our chests heaved with our labored breaths.

  “Wow,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, wow,” I managed to reply.

  He squeezed his arm around me and I squeezed him back. “I’m in love with you,” he whispered so faintly I might not have heard right.

  “And I’m in love with you,” I replied.

  We fell asleep like that, limbs tangled together, bodies covered in sweat, cum, and lube. And I could think of nothing closer to perfection than this.

  WHEN I woke up, I was alone in the bed. I could hear the en suite shower running, so I got to my feet and followed the sound.

  “Hey,” he said when I opened the bathroom door.

  “Hey.”

  He grinned. “Want to join me?”

  “Yes, I do. Thanks.”

  When I stepped into the shower, the hot steam wafted up my body and I stretched a little, then wrapped my arms around him.

  He chuckled and turned to face me. “You’re getting me all dirty again.”

  “Sorry.” I stepped back.

  “No, no.” He closed his arms around my middle to keep me in place. “I didn’t mean that kind of dirty,” he whispered and rubbed his member against me.

  I hummed and lost myself in the pleasure of it all. The hot steam caressed our bodies, and pleasure soared and exploded as he got on his knees and sucked me off greedily this time, not torturing me with a slow tempo. When I came he swallowed me deeper inside and sucked me clean, making my hips buck and my balls throb. Then he got up, and I grabbed his arms to get close enough so I could kiss the breath out of him. He tasted of me and I plundered his mouth with as much greed as he had when sucking me off. When I reached for his dick, he pulled back a little and chuckled.

  “What?” I asked, feeling a little confused.

  “If you’re looking to reciprocate, that ship has sailed. I came when I sucked you off,” he whispered against my ear and nipped my earlobe. “The taste of you in my mouth made me cum so hard I thought my soul might leave my freaking body.” He chuckled.

  I grabbed him in my arms and squeezed maybe more than I had intended, the very notion of him leaving me in any way so devastating that it made my shudder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t say that again,” I whispered thickly.

  “That you made me cum?”

  “The part about your soul leaving your body,” I gritted out.

  “Sorry,” he said in a sheepish tone. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I sighed. “I know.”

  We held each other like that for a while, then washed each other’s bodies without hurrying. We could have all the time in the world, to some extent. And yet I felt as if we might not have anything beyond this very moment. It scared me in a way that shook my very core. The fear of losing Nathan climbed rapidly to the top of my all-time terrors. I wrapped my arms around him from behind after we’d rinsed the shower gel off.

  He patted my arms where they crossed in front of him. “Sorry. I totally ruined the moment. I suck.”

  “With magnificent skill,” I replied casually and relaxed when he chuckled.

  “You’re not bad at all either.” He turned around to wink at me. “Now, how about we get out of here, get dry, dressed, and call your guys into the dining room?”

  I frowned. “And why would we do that?”

  “Because I don’t want anyone to see you naked ever again unless it’s me.”

  “I feel the same. But I meant the calling my guys part.”

  “Before I make my final decision, I want to talk to you all together. While we’re a thing now, it’s not just about the two of us.”

  I kissed him. “I like how you think.”

  “Thanks.”

  We dried off and got our clothes back on. I called everyone to meet in the dining room via our secure chat app, and took Nathan’s hand.

  “Ready?”

  He smiled. “Ready.”

  We ran into Taka and Ginger on the way out of the room, while Drew and Angelo were already in the dining room as we entered.

  “Anybody else hungry?” Ginger asked.

  “So you guys have been working up an appetite, huh?” Drew quipped.

  Taka rolled his eyes, and Ginger grinned. That was a yes, then. Good thing they weren’t screamers like Drew and Angelo. We’d soundproofed their bedroom already, and we could still hear some stuff every now and then.

  “I’ll fix us all something real quick,” Taka said.

  Everyone else organized to set the table and got us all drinks. I stood there and looked around while a pang of fear shot through my heart. Would I lose my family? I knew that if Nathan decided not to join the team, then I’d follow him away from this life. After his sister was apprehended, he’d be safe either way. We were going to round up all her people and spell away their knowledge if they had no magic abilities, or commit them to the Asylum if they did. We couldn’t risk any of them spreading the ideas of her unique magic MO.

  Nathan caught me staring at him. He took me by the hand and squeezed it reassuringly, but I couldn’t read his gaze. He turned to look around, too, seeming to pay attention to every detail of my team members’ interactions. Was he measuring himself against them in some way? Or was he saying goodbye? The suspense was killing me, but I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to push him into making the decision that I liked best.

  I told myself that loving someone didn’t mean fitting them into your neat idea of what they should be or do—that was self-love, not love of your partner. What love meant to me was to see and not only accept, but fully and joyfully embrace the loved one as they were; to love how their little quirks drove you mad, and to enjoy how exasperated they got you every now and then. Because if you didn’t love and enjoy the not-so-fine moments of life together, then everything would be lost—it would only be a matter of time. And everything ended on this earth. Until that time came for us, I wanted him and me to live full and joyful lives—together.

  There was no way to know what the future held, even for me. Though I had a good idea of what I could expect from the afterlife. And precisely because of that, it was very important to live this last life fully; to love madly and lose myself in the beautiful dance of love.

  I hoped that the ancestors had brought my soul mate in my path now because this love was meant to be lived and be shared with the world, one way or another. I felt sure that everything, every single moment in time that had trickled through and over me, had been a tiny step in the direction I was walking in now. Even if I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d end up, that end of the line was also meant to be. There was comfort in that notion. It helped me not lose my cool while I waited for us all to settle down at the table and then finish eating.

  When it was finally time, Nathan cleared his throat, drank a bit of water, and looked around the table at each man.

  “I have a decision to make,” he said. “I don’t take it lightly, and it means a lot to me that I was offered this opportunity. But before I think about the pros and cons of joining this team, I’d like to talk to you guys about yours.”

  Taka sighed. “Is this where we talk about our feelings?”

  We all chuckled, including Nathan. Then he looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said: “Yes. This is where we talk about our feelings.”

  Chapter Twelve
r />   “I’D like to know if there’s been any further progress on looking into the locations I gave you,” Nathan said.

  Taka sighed. “You’re not part of this team unless you become a part of it. That’s need-to-know information.”

  “I see your point, but I’d like to know if what I gave you proved to be useful.”

  “Why does that matter?” asked Drew.

  “You are all being very nice to me because of Claw. I’m not an idiot, I get it. What I was hoping for was to prove myself to you. If there was anything useful about the locations I could give you, it could show you I’m here in good faith.”

  “Or that you planned to give us that impression.” Drew shrugged. “That’s not what’s important here, man. If you’re hiding something, Aashi will know when she meets you. And if your intentions aren’t good, she’ll wipe your memory of us and you’ll be out of here.”

  “And at the mercy of my sister, after she knows I’ve betrayed her.” Nathan leaned his head to the side. “You do realize that?”

  “You’ll be protected,” I cut in. “Whatever you decide.”

  “The way the issue was framed seems like a bit of blackmail, though,” Nathan said, patting the clenched fist I held in my lap.

  “That’s not what we mean,” Ginger cut in. “You want to know if we’re still iffy about you? We are. We probably will be for a while. Think about how you came to be here, and from what background. But we’re open to giving you a chance.”

  “Because of my relationship with Claw?” Nathan asked, looking carefully at everyone. “If that’s the real reason, I don’t think it’s a good idea. If you don’t feel you can trust me at all even after I’ve opened myself up to physical pain if and when I lie to Claw, then you could never feel like you can trust me. I don’t want to live like that, and I don’t want Claw to live like that either.”

  Taka gave him a curious look. “Your connection is different. Even stronger than before.”