by Chrissy Jaye
Without a word, he pulled my leggings down over my hips as he returned his lips to mine again, distracting me from the well of panic that broke through my need.
“Aria, we can stop,” he said suddenly, backing away slightly to look at my face. A line of concern marred his perfect brow.
My God, he was being so sweet.
I shook my head at him, reclaiming my hold around his neck, dragging him back down to me. I really didn’t want to stop.
Nothing could have prepared me for his touch on my mound over my underwear. He trailed his fingers over me, feather light, making me whimper. His fingers trailed back and forth a few more times before he caught the edge of my panties and edged them to the side.
Dimly, I heard the door open, but I was so far gone, lost in my need and the feel of Cole all around me to care.
When his fingers finally met my flesh, sliding easily between my seam to find the bundle of nerves, my hips bucked off the bed, into his touch. I expected him to move quickly, to bring me over the edge in a crash, but he didn’t. Instead, he applied pressure and languidly rubbed back and forth, creating the most delicious feeling. Even though he took his time, my release built quickly, my walls already contracting.
“So close,” I breathed turning my face away from him to get more air. His lips traveled to my neck again, pressing sweet kisses along my jaw before he bit down gently on my neck. It was all I needed to push me over. A guttural moan forced itself from my mouth. My body shattered apart in exquisite ways, forcing my toes to curl and my nails to dig into his shoulders. My climax bore down on me, making spots dance before my eyes as my cries of pleasure echoed off the walls.
“So beautiful,” Cole whispered. He gazed down at me as I lay there dazed and completely sated. The waves of my release had my body trembling all over even as I came back to reality. I felt myself blush, realizing he’d watched my face the entire time. It was the sexiest and sweetest thing.
My ecstasy was short lived though when someone by the door coughed, making both of us turn our heads. Bastian casually leaned against the closed door, his eyes locked on me. I could see the barely controlled heat in his eyes, though I didn’t know if it was from anger or want.
Dread flooded into me, drowning everything else out. I was beyond embarrassed and terrified. The sweetness of my moment with Cole was buried under a mountain of shame and anguish.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute after letting us know he was there. Cole didn’t seem bothered by his presence at all, but I was freaking out until he spoke, his voice so calm, “The others are back.”
Chapter Twenty
I stood outside the informal library where the others had gathered, refusing to go in. I couldn’t face any of them. I could hear someone inside pacing back and forth while they all exchanged hushed words they probably thought I couldn’t hear.
“No, I’m glad it was you, Cole, but we have to be careful here,” Ford said.
“I know. She was just wound so tightly with worry.”
“I just don’t want her to feel pressured,” Ford replied.
Cole scoffed. “I think I’m a better judge of her than you right now.” His voice was tinged with anger.
“Ford’s right, Cole. She’s confused and has a lot on her plate. We can’t have her thinking later that you took advantage of her when she was vulnerable,” Asher said.
“That isn’t what he did. I was there, and she was fine. I would have stepped in, otherwise,” Bastian said, coming to his brothers defense. “Besides, I think the entire thing served a dual purpose.”
“What does that mean?” Cole asked.
I leaned closer to the opening of the door. Their voices were getting quieter, probably as they moved further into the room. Sound didn’t carry very well.
“I mean that Bea took advantage of the situation and called me in,” Bastian replied. “The woman is devious, nothing at all like Aria.”
I’d heard enough. If what he said was true, then I had yet one more thing to add to my Fuck you, Bea list. It was one thing for her to protect me and such, but something entirely different for her to ruin something so private. And that’s just counting how uncomfortable it was for me. I couldn’t imagine how awkward it had been for Bastian.
“What are you doing out here,” Esper sang, popping into existence in cloud of glitter. I let out a shriek and fell over, landing hard on my ass against the wood floor. Feet pounded toward the door before all four of my guys spilled out to see me sprawled out on the floor, my skin doing a great imitation of Esper’s eyes.
Cole’s eyes narrowed on me before he leaned over to Bastian. “Did you know she was there?”
“No,” he replied quietly.
Cole’s lips thinned into a grim line that made me want to shrink inside myself.
Asher shook his head and then held out a hand to help me up. “It doesn’t matter. We were discussing her. I’d be curious too.”
“Um, it does matter,” Esper sang, the sound ringing through the hallway. Everyone’s eyes turned to her. “She was shade walking.” Her face broke out into a huge grin while the guys greeted her statement with dumbstruck looks.
“What’s that,” I blurted. It didn’t sound like something I wanted to be doing. At all.
Ford opened his mouth to answer but clutched at his throat instead. The veins in his neck stood out with the strain.
“I’m sorry, I forgot!” I cried out, realizing it was one of those things they couldn’t tell me. It was too late though. Cole reached out and slapped him on the back, his palm doing that weird glowing thing which I equated with magic. Ford sucked in a shuddering breath before muttering a thank you to Cole.
This spell fucking sucked. When I got my hands on the woman who’d put it on me, I was going to punch her. Just as soon as I figured out how to hit people without feeling uncomfortable.
An awkward silence filled the air as we stood in the hall. Esper, ever in charge of things, broke the quiet. “Let’s see what we’ve found, shall we?” she said, ushering us all into the library.
We all gathered around the table that sat in the center of the room. It was littered with notes and open books. Some of them were wrapped in covers that looked like skin while others were protected by something that resembled fish scales. The real interest, however, was the bell jar sitting in the middle of the table. It looked like something you would store jam in, except it shimmered slightly and looked like it had been spun by hand. The glass ballooned in places while other spots looked so thin, a good hard shake might have shattered the thing. Inside it, was a collection of tiny winged bugs in different shades of blue and purple.
“What is it?” I asked, staring at it, trying to figure out how the insects were able to breathe. There were no holes to let air filter in on the lid which looked like hewn iron.
“That,” Bastian said, skirting me with a look, “is an anima globe.” I stared at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I looked around at the others, wanting someone to elaborate. No one seemed willing to comment further. Or they couldn’t.
I narrowed my eyes at the jar and blew out a burst of air. The more I looked at it, the more of it I seemed to see. The shimmer I’d noted before moved minutely, like a sort of shield. It glimmered over the glass, moving in all directions, but if you only glanced at it, you wouldn’t notice. There was something else about it too, like a whisper in the back of my mind.
An arm snaked around me, quick as lightning, halting me mid-step— a movement I hadn’t noticed. The mixed scent of nutmeg and ink filtered into my nose at the same moment my body jolted. Not in surprise, but as if I’d been physically struck. I turned my head to see who’d grabbed me, keeping me from the jar I’d unintentionally been reaching for to meet emerald green eyes and dark hair. Except it wasn’t Cole. It was like looking at Cole in a mirror.
Bastian brought his other arm up, the one not wrapped tightly around my waist and swiped away a single tear that had welled up an
d spilled from the corner of my eye. I didn’t know why I was crying but I was. I felt this intense sense of relief from an agony I hadn’t know was there.
The moment, however, was interrupted when a shrieking sound filled the air and ripped through me. The sound seemed to shake the whole house – which was a lot of house, by the way – before a crash sounded from downstairs.
“Shit,” Ford yelled.
“The circle,” Asher yelled back as he sprang forward and grabbed my hand, ripping me out of Bastian’s arms, and trailing me behind him as he ran from the room. Everyone followed us, making a mad dash to the stairwell as another tremor rocked through the house. And I had the sickening feeling that I knew why.
Fae ran everywhere, everyone heading toward the bottom floor. Garrold, the blue fairy met us on the second-floor landing, his hand latching onto Esper’s before they disappeared in a rain of glitter that fizzled out around us. Other Fae brushed past us, some of them knocking me into Asher’s back. It was a free-for-all stampede the whole way down. Only my guys surrounding me, kept me on my feet. At one point, Ford swooped in when I took a hard stumble and gathered me to his chest, not stopping until we reached the bottom.
In the main room, Esper stood shouting directions as Fae moved furniture out of the way and others started chanting.
The source making the house shudder became apparent immediately. The front door shook in its frame, making the last of my hope that I would be wrong slip away. All the while, that awful shrieking sound filled the air, pressuring us with panic we didn’t need. It was probably the point of it.
Ford set me on my feet but didn’t release me. Instead, he dragged me to the circle to the spot they had told me was mine before he took his. The others gathered in around us, linking hands. Esper pressed a kiss to Garrold’s cheek before stepping into the last space.
My eyes narrowed on her. If I found out the spell was her fault the whole time, I would murder her. She threw me a quick smile and shook her head, already knowing what I was thinking.
When she linked hands with us, the coil of electricity sprang to life, slipping around and through us. All of them closed their eyes and started chanting in a language that sounded like Latin but wasn’t. I closed my eyes to join them, opening them again when the banging increased, suddenly terrified out of my mind.
Focus, Aria. I heard her clear as day in my mind. I didn’t have time to wonder at that new connection before Bea gave me her instructions with quick flashes, telling me what to say, how to say it, and what each word meant. It was a prayer of protection. I chanted the words blindly, all the while thinking in the back of my mind that we would need more than protection if that thing got in.
Heat started building low in my stomach as we chanted together, slowly building upward and outward, filling each of my limbs. It was that strange sensation from before, the last time I’d had to see that thing. When it had tried to drag Asher back through the portal. I’d fought it then, unsure of what to do with it or how to direct it. But Bea knew. She helped me relax enough for the energy to flow through me into the others, just as they poured theirs into me.
I don’t know how long we chanted. It could have been minutes or hours. It all blurred together in an endless moment. I knew only seconds before it happened that whatever we’d been building toward was about to explode. Something latched on to the energy and pulled at it. Behind my closed eyes, a light blazed, searing the backs of my eyelids. I almost expected to be knocked backward by some type of blast, but it never came.
An unearthly scream of rage reached my ears before someone’s arms wrapped around me, pulling me out of the way. Asher and I ended up sprawled against the fireplace as the scream continued. I was still slightly blind from the explosion of light, but when I opened my eyes, I saw her—them. Two female figures stood in the center of the circle. One of them was drawing strange symbols into the air faster than my eye could follow. She lobbed each one toward the open doorway where the shadow from my nightmares loomed, purple eyes blazing in the darkness. Each symbol that hit it made it stagger before it tried to force its way forward again.
The other woman started moving forward, something silver flashed in her hands as more symbols flew by. Her wild curls fanned out behind her as she advanced toward it, bringing up a sword in a wide arc before spinning mid strike and then cleaved the shadow in the shoulder, her swing following through until the being was cut in half at an angle. It hung there, almost comically for a second before the shadows around it fizzled out and it crumpled to the ground. It was nothing but a gray corpse seeping black blood onto the snow-covered steps.
The woman swung her sword out, slinging the inky blood off the blade as it went, before it disappeared from her hand and she spun around to face the us. Her green eyes swept the room before she finally settled her gaze on me.
I think I’d known since that moment when the guys had combed my memories that it was her. Finding out I was right didn’t make it any easier though. I hadn’t prepared myself for it in any way. It had just been a suspicion, lurking in the back of my mind with all the other small puzzle pieces, waiting to click together.
I didn’t even think as I stood up and ran toward her. I wrapped Mia in the tightest hug I could, trying to squeeze the life out of her. No emotion except relief mattered just then. Her arms came up around me as we both started crying. I don’t know when my relief morphed into something else, something more feral and unquenchable. One moment, I was hugging my sister and best friend and the next I was punching and tearing at her with my nails. It took one of the guys, I wasn’t sure which one, to pull me off her. It was probably better that I didn’t know.
Through my rage, I saw Bunni rush to Mia, her usually vibrantly purple hair limp and dirty with a look of anguish on her face as she examined the scratches I’d left across one cheek. Mia didn’t react at all. She just stood there crying. She hadn’t even struck me back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Three days passed before I calmed down enough to see Mia. My time was spent hidden in a room on the fourth floor, all the way on the other side of the house from Mia’s bedroom door. The guys took shifts to sit with me, bringing me books to read or just hanging out to chat with me. We didn’t talk about anything serious.
With Cole, there was lots of cuddling while I sorted my head out and in between, some serious kissing. During Ford’s turn, he sat with me in the window talking about nothing and for once, really getting to know each other while watching the snow fall. It had finally turned from a light snow to a complete whiteout that wouldn’t let up anytime soon. Bastian and I read together, perfectly content to sit in silence that was only awkward when I remembered how he’d witnessed my first orgasm from a man. His brother, no less. Asher liked to play with my hair and spent his time doing it up in elaborate braids that made Esper extremely pleased.
Bunni came a few times, but I didn’t want to see her yet. In truth, I didn’t know her all that well and while I liked her, she was too close to Mia. That had been apparent from the look on her face when I’d attacked my sister.
Mia didn’t come at all. I knew she was respecting my space, but I honestly hadn’t thought her capable of restraint. She’d never respected hard limits with me before, and now knowing that she was a part of this, it made sense.
“I’m ready,” I said to Asher who sat behind me on the bed while he braided my hair for the hundredth time. I just stared out the window and enjoyed the sensation of being adored.
“You sure? There’s no rush.”
“Yeah,” I replied after giving a hard moment to think about it. I couldn’t hide in here forever. I’d eventually have to see her and besides, there were some open ends that needed to be fixed and a million questions to be answered.
Without having to call, Esper popped into existence in front of me. The cloud of glitter never got old, though I was thankful it didn’t stick to anything. It just disappeared on its own. Real glitter stuck to everything and was a bitch to clean out of ha
ir.
“I’ve got a lovely dress. I double checked with Cole and he says you’ll love it. I promise, this time.” She’d said that every day since Mia came home, although she alternated which of the guys agreed with her. It didn’t matter, I never seemed to like them. The dresses were nice; just not something I wanted to wear just wandering around the house.
I pushed up off the bed, trying to muster a placating smile and failed. “It doesn’t have to be the dress,” she said quickly, her flowers drooping.
“We can summon Ford and let him dress you?” She forced her voice into a bright air that was far too bubbly for my current mood.
It was defeat by the way. Complete and utter defeat.
Before I could respond, she snapped her fingers and Ford appeared out of thin air in the process of stuffing his mouth with a strange pastry adorned with a leaf and a brown buttery paste. I had no idea what it was and told myself to never find out. His eyes bulged when he saw me before he turned to Esper.
“Stalp dohing thath!”
“Do you always eat like that?” I asked, going for a joke to ease the moment, but failed when I burst out laughing. Asher followed behind me, his rich voice joining in chorus with mine. It quickly devolved into a fit of giggles, the two of us hunched over gasping for breath as Ford glared at us, still chewing his breakfast.
It was the first time I’d laughed in days.
Without a word, he thrust his palm out toward me, which had bits of brown paste on them, and wrapped his magic around me, changing my pajamas into a red leather miniskirt and a black tube top that bared my stomach.
My giggles immediately broke off as I glared at him. “Don’t you dare. I know where you sleep!” He chuckled at me for a second before changing my clothes again into something more comfortable; a pair of green cotton leggings and a long knit yellow sweater. “Much better. No Nair for you tonight.” I wasn’t sure if Nair would work on Fae or even where I would find some but I was not above trying.