He places his free hand against my chest. “I felt you through the link.”
My heart rate picks up, slamming against his palm.
He rubs his lips together, the link purring again. “You’re going to have to be able to deal with Brody’s death too, because even after we get darkness out of you, the guilt is going to eat away at you if you can’t figure out a way to forgive yourself. And sometimes guilt can be more dangerous than darkness.”
“You act as if you’re speaking from experience.”
“Maybe I am.”
We stare at each other as the wind picks up and darkness swarms from the trees like shadowy arms.
“We need to go,” he murmurs as he peers around at the wisps of darkness. “I think darkness has almost taken over your body, and if we don’t get it out soon, it’s going to take over your mind and I won’t be able to help you.” He wiggles his hand from mine but only to slip his arm around my waist. “I’m going to tether my soul to yours now, okay?”
Oh my God, this is really happening.
But what is even about to happen?
I nervously bite at my bottom lip. “How does soul tethering work exactly?”
He rubs his lips together, his eyes flooding with hungry desire again. “You’re going to feel more connected to me.”
I swallow hard, my heart thudding deafeningly in my chest. “Will it hurt?”
He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip so forcefully I swear he probably draws blood. “No… It’s going to feel fucking good, honey.” He slowly tugs me toward him, his gaze searing into mine. “Hold perfectly still, and whatever you do, don’t pull away from me.”
I take another gulp, struggling to breathe evenly. Whatever’s about to happen has the link bursting with excitement and has me wanting to flee for the trees, just like he implied. Somehow, though, I manage to keep my feet planted to the ground as he dips his head, as if he’s going to kiss me. Panic seizes me, not only because of the guilt I’m starting to feel, but because kissing me could very well kill him.
Just like it did Brody.
My pulse skyrockets and he holds tighter onto my waist.
“Relax,” he whispers, his eyes darkening to a deep violet. “I said I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I breathe out shakily, gripping onto the bottom of his shirt. “I’m worried you’re going to kiss me and it’s going to kill you.”
With a slight smirk, he dips his lips toward my ear. “I’m technically already dead, so your kiss can’t kill me. Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to kiss you… It’ll be much better than that.” He sniffs my hair and my already puzzled mind cracks with even more confusion.
He gives me zero time to ask questions, though, as he lowers his head and presses his lips to my throat. My insides quiver as the strangest sensations coil through me. Fear. Lust. Confusion. Want. Panic. Longing. Fear. Fear. Fear—
His teeth sink into my neck, piercing through my flesh and entering my veins. Suddenly, I realize what kind of undead creature Porter probably is.
“You’re a vampire,” I breathe out.
A vampire, just like how I saw Hunter in my dream.
His teeth briefly leave my neck as he chuckles, his entire body shaking. “Nope. Although, if I was, I’d recommend you run away right now.”
“So vampires are bad?” I ask breathlessly.
“Pure vampires are,” he replies, brushing his lips across my neck with a groan. “Lucky for you, I’m not one.”
My breath falters from my lips. I feel as if I’m going mad from all the unknown things hovering between us. “What are you? Please just tell me.”
His hand presses against the small of my back, urging my body forward. Then he guides my head back until I’m staring up at the star kissed sky and leaving more of my neck exposed to him.
“I already told you that right now isn’t the best time to explain that.” He lets out a husky groan.
I clutch onto his shoulders as my knees start to buckle, trying to figure out how in the hell this is my life now. “Considering you just bit my neck, I think you owe me an explanation.”
“Mmm…” He sniffs my neck, brushing his nose along my skin. “Maybe I do.” He grazes his teeth against my neck again, then pulls back slightly. “What I am… I guess you can say my kind are sort of like vampires, but instead of drinking blood, we feed off power and souls.”
My fingernails dig into his shoulders. “What?”
He tenses, his fingers stiffening on my back. “You need to calm down… I’m already having a hard time not devouring you as it is.”
My audible gulp echoes across the night. “I’m trying to but with what you’re saying…that you feed off power and souls… What sort of creature feeds off power and souls?”
I’m trying not to panic. I really am. But the more I think about all the possibilities of what he could be, the more worked up I get.
“I’ll answer your questions later,” he murmurs, but I can feel his lie through the link. He gives me no time to react, though, his lips returning to my neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispers then his teeth pierce into my neck again, this time all the way to my vein.
Sparks of lightning crackle across my skin as warmth and coldness simultaneously sweep through my veins. He must've bitten some hidden pressure point on my body that is releasing my power. Either that or he has some sort of ability to unleash my powers. Whatever the heck he’s doing causes lightning to hum across my flesh. My power of wind pours out of me next, causing a breeze to circle around us—in us. A whimper escapes my lips as the sensation becomes too much and I struggle to breathe evenly. His hold on me tightens, his teeth sinking in deeper, as if he’s desperate to dig out all of my powers. And somehow he does, ice glazing across my flesh and wrapping me in coldness. But then fire surfaces, blazing over the chill and sending heat scorching through me.
Porter groans as rain pours down on us. A shudder rolls through me as he pulls me closer and devours more power from my neck. All of the five elements collide, bursting through my body at once and I cry out in…
Pleasure?
Pain?
Fear?
I’m honestly not sure. All I know is that it’s too much. I feel like I’m going to combust from the wonderful, out of control sensations exploding through me.
“Hang on,” Porter breathes into my ear.
“Please,” I plead, although I’m not even sure what I’m begging for.
He groans, clutching onto me, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Just stay with me for a little bit longer, okay?”
I grasp onto him tighter, trying to do what he said, but the sensations become too much. Dizziness swirls around me. A slam of a heartbeat later, darkness takes me over again.
Skylin
When it comes to sexual experiences, I’m absolutely clueless, which is probably pretty obvious seeing as how a kiss from me could kill anyone other than an elemental enchanter. But Nina loved telling me about her sex life, even if I didn’t necessarily want to hear about it, and I’ve heard enough of her stories to know that occasionally after she had sex, especially when she didn’t know the guy very well, there was an awkward moment where she wasn’t sure what to say or do afterward. She also told me about a couple of times where she walked out of a room after hooking up with some guy at a party and the people nearby gave her these knowing looks, like they knew what just happened. And while Nina is pretty confident, she said it made her feel kind of uncomfortable.
But anyway, my point is, when I wake up after passing out from Porter feeding off my powers, I wonder if maybe I’m experiencing that uncomfortable feeling Nina talked about. Not that Porter and I had sex or anything, but some of the stuff I felt when he fed off my power…
I shudder as the lingering sensations coil through my body
But yeah, anyway…
Blinking a few times, I take in my surroundings, trying to push past my discomfort and figure out where I am.
What if they’re all aware of what Porter just did to me and how it made me feel? Not that I think it’s the same as having sex, but I did moan a few times… And now that I think about it, I may have even begged for more right before I passed out…
Oh my god! I want to crawl into a hole and hide!
“Are you okay?” Foster’s voice yanks me from my mortification. He crouches down in front of me, his lightning blue gaze inspecting me over and leaving trails of heat along my skin.
“Yeah, I think so.” I rub the heels of my hands against my eyes. “Wait, am I awake?” Part of me hopes that I’m not, that this is all a dream. That what happened with Porter was just a dream. And while we’re at it, I wish that finding out I killed Brody was just a dream too.
Foster nods, observing me closely as I lower my hands from my eyes. “You’re awake.” He reaches for me but then pulls back. “How do you feel?”
My mind immediately snaps to Porter, but my eyes stay focused on Foster. “A little bit lightheaded.” And completely and utterly mortified. “But other than that, I think I feel okay.” I lift my arms up then breathe in relief. “Darkness isn’t in me anymore.”
Smashing his lips together, Foster nods, then takes my hand and pulls me up so I’m sitting. The room spins like a cracked out merry-go-round, but a couple of blinks forces the dizziness from my head.
“How long was I out?” I peer around at the stone fireplace where a fire is crackling then at the windowless, branch-like walls. “And why does it look like we’re inside a big ass tree?”
That gets a couple of the Portersons to chuckle.
“We’re in a room in a hotel located in the Fey world.” Foster sweeps a strand of my hair out of my eyes. “And it looks like we’re in a big ass tree because we are.” His hand falls to his side. “Most faeries live in trees.”
“But I don’t understand how. I mean, I thought we had to stay in Enchantment?” Again, confusion is my middle name.
“When darkness took you over, we had to make a choice,” Foster explains. “We could either let it completely consume you, which is something that can happen with elemental enchanters if they unleash their power of darkness. Or, we could risk taking you out of Enchantment so Porter could temporarily get darkness out of you. But it’s not a permanent solution.”
I mull over what he said. “So when we went through the portal to the fey world, everything was fine? The god of darkness didn’t try to get me?”
Foster exchanges a look with Easton then returns his attention to me.
“He did show up when we were going through the portal,” Foster says in a quiet tone. “And he tried to get you, but for some reason, he couldn’t.” His throat muscles work as he swallows hard. “When one of his tendrils of darkness tried to touch you, it was like you burnt it and it withered away.”
I shake my head in confusion. “But that doesn’t make sense. At the school, he almost got a hold of me.”
“Almost,” Foster stresses. “But if you think about it, none of his tendrils, which are his power, were able to touch you. And it was weird that I was able to simply smack them away when they got close. He’s a god—that shouldn’t have been able to happen. I think I was just too distracted with everything else going on that I didn’t think about it as much as I probably should’ve.”
In typical Foster form, he’s probably blaming himself.
“This isn’t your fault,” I try to assure him. “None of this is.”
He doesn’t answer, but I can tell through the link that he doesn’t agree with me. I make a mental note to talk to him privately so I can convince him otherwise. Sure, he didn’t tell me about the kiss with Brody, but other than that everything that happened was because of me.
“Is it because I’m a power source?” I ask. “Is that why the god of darkness can’t touch me?”
“We honestly have no idea. It could be, but since we know very little about power sources, it’s hard to say for sure.” Foster places a hand against my cheek, his palm warm against my skin. “It might take some time, but I promise we’ll find out more. My parents and some of the more trustworthy creatures working for the agency are looking into it and hopefully they’ll find out something soon.”
I nod, but worry ravels through me. There’s so much we still need to find out about me, so much unknown things. “What do we do until we find out more? Are we going to go back to Enchantment?”
“I want to say yes because I like it there—plus it’s safe—but it was sort of a freak accident we ended up there at all, so I’m not even sure we could even get back to it even if we tried. Eventually, though, we probably should attempt to since it’s our world and when we’re there, the world grows.”
“I completely agree.” Although, I don’t actually want to be trapped in the world again.
It sometimes made me feel claustrophobic and I constantly worried I’d never get to leave, that I’d spend the rest of my life there. Not that it’d be an awful place to permanently live, but I want to travel and have adventures like I’d planned with Nina and Gage, and then with Foster after I found out I was an elemental enchanter and probably couldn’t do stuff like that with my friends.
But now that I’m a power source is any of that possible anymore? Even if we manage to stop the god of darkness from getting ahold of me, what happens to me after that? Foster mentioned that I might be able to rebuild the shrinking world of Elemental, but what does that require? That I stay there like I did in Enchantment?
“You need to relax,” Foster says. “Whatever has you worried, just tell me and I’ll try to fix it.”
“It’s nothing,” I reply with a dismissive shrug. “I was just thinking about where my life is going to go now that I know I’m a power source. Am I going to be able to travel? And what about my mom? No one knows where she is and if it stays that way eventually, I want to go look for her.”
He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “No matter what happens, I promise we’ll find your mom.”
“That’s a really big promise to make,” I point out. “Especially when no one even knows where the hell she is.”
His hand falls to his side. “That’s actually not true.”
I perk up a bit. “Did someone find something out about her?”
He shakes his head. “No, but Scott and Marla might know where she is, since she gave you to them. My mom’s been working on getting information from them, but so far they’ve been withholding unless they get paid. And while my parents have a lot of money, the price they’re asking for is extremely out of our price range.”
I grimace. “This is just like them. They’re so money hungry. They even sold me once just so that they could afford drinks for the night. Then again, they also let the elemental god of darkness and the hunters pay them to leave my life and leave me vulnerable so…” I stop talking.
Why the hell am I babbling about this right now?
Foster’s eyes widen in horror, his lips parting, but East speaks first.
“What the fuck do you mean they sold you for drinks?” His voice trembles with rage and his hands are balled at his sides.
“It wasn’t like anything sexual,” I quickly add. “I just had to clean this guy’s house in short shorts and Marla and Scott pocketed the money, which I know is fucked up, but that’s just how they were. I’m honestly glad they’re not my real parents because they’re straight up selfish assholes.” I shrug, trying to play it cool, but deep down, every time I think about all the times Marla and Scott sold me out for cash, the final time putting me in a lot of danger, it hurts like a bitch. What makes it a bit easier to deal with is knowing I have a real mother out there, but for all I know she could be just as bad as Scott and Marla.
Foster swallows hard while Max looks at me sympathetically and East shakes his head with i
rritation. I don’t look at Porter, too afraid I’ll feel that connection to him, but I can sense that he pities me.
With another shake of his head, East nudges Foster out of the way then crouches down in front of me. He starts to reach for me but then pulls back. “Sky, I want you to listen to me.” It’s weird hearing him use my real name, but I nod and he lets out an unsteady exhale. “Never, ever is it okay for anyone to sell you for anything and if it ever happens again, you kick the asshole who did it out of your life, okay?”
“Well, it’s not like Marla and Scott are going to be in my life anymore,” I remind him. “They…” I trail off as he places a finger to my lips, shushing me.
“Just promise me, okay? That no matter who it is or what the reason is, you’ll never let anyone exchange you for something.” His intense eyes dew with water as he waits for me to respond.
Honestly, he looks as if he’s crying, but I’m fairly certain the water is from his powers. At least I think so. But then agony blazes down the link and I have to wonder if perhaps he is struggling not to cry.
He blinks, his eyes drying. Then his brow arches. “Well?”
“Yeah, I promise I won’t let anyone do that to me anymore,” I assure him, searching his eyes for an answer to what the hell I just felt, but the link has lulled into a content state.
“Good.” He offers me one of his infamous lazy smiles then moves to stand up, but not before he pinches my thigh.
I flinch then narrow my eyes at him. “What the heck was that for?”
“Payback for that tickling shit you pulled back at the cabin.” A devious smirk plays at his lips. “But we’re not even close to being even yet, lightning eyes.”
I carry his gaze. “Game on, raindrop.”
His forehead creases. “Raindrop?”
I smirk. “Yep, it’s my new nickname for you.”
He shakes his head. “No way…” He holds up his hands. “You know what? Call me whatever you want. I can handle it.”
I grin. “Sure you can, raindrop.”
Iridescent Chaos: (Enchanted Chaos, Book 3) Page 8