“She handled all their costumes and image. They lived a jet set human life. They didn’t want Emily to become a witch,” Dad said.
“What happened to them?”
“I’m—not sure. They were always difficult to contact. They ended up retiring to some remote place in Australia where I guess her—husbands? Whatever you call them…could run around if they wanted. Whatever werewolves like doing when they’re in the human world, how should I know?”
“That’s where Samuel Caruthers was killed. Oh my gosh. We should have been more honest with each other before…”
“What does all of this really tell us?” Dad put his head in his hands. “We can’t go to Australia. I don’t even know where they live. I don’t know where your mom is. I don’t know anything, so I really hoped you’d figure it all out. I don’t like the sound of this. How do I know the same thing isn’t going to happen to you that happened to your mom? If the dean isn’t giving you answers, you can find them.”
Dad was right. He still knew me better than anyone. I looked at Firian and I felt like he read my mind, which was pretty cool in this case. “We’re going to figure it out,” he said. “We’re going to summon the spirit of Samuel Caruthers and ask him.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Is that safe?” Dad asked.
“It’s safer than being lied to,” I said. At least…I think.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Charlotte
When I shut the door to my bedroom, Firian was already in there, lounging on my pillows. “Hey, you just—you were out there! Stop doing that!”
He stood up, giving me a wicked smile. “Your dad thinks I’m at the cabin. But he doesn’t know it’s already rented out tonight. Anyway, I belong here.”
“Are you seducing me in my nerdy bedroom?” I said, glancing over the array of posters.
“Maybe.” He kissed my forehead. “Merry Christmas, Charlotte. Do you know how many years I’ve spent looking in at the lights of your tree? When everyone else went to sleep, your dad would put out the leftovers for me.”
“Oh, Firian…that’s a sad story.”
“I was happy because you were happy,” he said. “But it’s nice to be on the inside.”
“Were you really happy?”
His brows furrowed. “Well, maybe not. Still, it doesn’t sound right to say I was unhappy either. And it was three years ago today that your dad bought you a year’s subscription to Fortune’s Favor for Christmas.”
“Oh, yeah! That is when we met…”
“That was fun. But this…this is everything,” he said, putting his hands around my waist.
“You’re a frisky fox,” I said, tensing as I thought about making out with Firian while sharing a house with Dad, Grandma, Montague and Alec.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re just not as…alone as usual.”
He took a deep breath.
“You know I would date you like a normal person if I could.”
“Of course I know. I just want…so much…to be human with you.” He kept his arms wrapped around me but gave me a very soft kiss on the temple and then released his grip. I realized how cold the room was when he moved away. He turned into a fox and curled up at the foot of my bed.
I sighed. He walked to the covers, bit them, and pulled them back for me. “You’re right,” he said. “Santa comes tonight, right? And he knows if you’ve been evil.”
“That’s an aggressive interpretation. Look at the wall. I’m going to change into pajamas.”
“I don’t think your nude body will be a surprise to me,” he said.
“Just look at the wall! And I’m wearing underwear, so I won’t be nude.”
“Even more reason not to be shy.”
“Just look at the wall!” I yanked off my jeans and pulled on my pajama pants, then climbed in bed. He put the covers over me. I smoothed his soft fur. “You’re like a pet/boyfriend combo. I don’t know how witches don’t get tempted by their familiars more often.”
“Some familiars turn into snakes and spiders,” he said. “But maybe I’m just unusually charming.”
I snorted. “Hey…Santa’s not real though, right?”
He paused. “That’s a complicated question.”
I sighed and slipped easily into my dreams.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel a hand brush my breast. “Hey…” Alec’s low voice was in my ear.
I glanced at the foot of the bed. No Firian.
“This is a dream, isn’t it?” I whispered.
I was aware, this time. I was calm. The world was vivid but not quite there. The physical feelings were extremely potent, like they were all that mattered.
“Charlotte…”
I looked back at him and he was shirtless and drenched in sweat. He didn’t look very well, but he still managed to be so sexy that I wanted to lick the sweat off him. And ‘licking sweat’ had never been on my list of attractive activities, but Alec was eternally lickable. “Alec, you look…sickly,” I said. “Is it all the Christmas lights?”
“There is a lot going on out there,” he said.
“You’re groping my boob,” I said, but it didn’t come out very upset.
He still drew back the hand. “This is what happens to me,” he said. “When I’m vulnerable, my body screams for something to satisfy me. But it’s never been this bad before. Resisting you is a sport with its own league…”
“You can’t touch me, anyway,” I said, but we already knew there was a lot of ground left to cover. His hand was proving that right now as he began a more focused teasing of my nipple, plucking the nub between his fingers through the sheet as a pang of pure desire shot through me.
This was probably a bad time to recall that my grandmother was, even to this day apparently, living with an entire rock band of men. Holy crap.
“How many wolves are in a pack of wolves?” I said, arching back into him until, through the covers, my ass found the hard length of the Incubuster.
Alec chuckled close to my ear. “Depends whether they’re a straight up rock pack of wolves with your classic guitar, drum, bass, or a prog rock pack of wolves with two synth players and a flautist.”
“Ohhh, I need to tell you to go,” I said.
He groaned with plain anguish and rolled away from me. “Yes.”
“Wait,” I said. “I mean—is there something I can do to heal you?” When he didn’t answer right away, I turned to him. He was laying back on my bed, one hand kneading his forehead, the other limp at his side, and between those tattooed arms was just a gorgeous shelf of man muscle. My eyes trailed to his navel, then the line of dark fine hair that led to his black sweatpants and…his very obvious arousal.
“That is one hell of a tent. I could camp in there,” I said.
“I wish you could…,” he groaned. “You need to send me away.” His eyes almost had a low glow in the shadows as they lifted to me. “Teenage girls are usually more intimidated by me than this.”
“Don’t say ‘teen’,” I said. “It makes it sound like you’re not a teen. And almost nineteen is like, hardly teen anymore. I bet most of the teenage girls you’ve known in the past didn’t spend as much time on Deviant Art as I have either. Looking for…stuff. Stuff like you.” I smirked. “The only thing is…I just…I haven’t been very open with the three of you.” That slipped out on accident.
“You like Harris?” Alec asked. “Wait—you mean—you mean Firian.“
“I—“
“It’s okay,” he said. “You know, it’s more common than people think.”
“You mean familiars…?”
He nodded. “My familiar has…helped me control myself, on rare occasions,” he said. “Don’t ever tell anyone that. But it could be a lot worse if they hadn’t. It feels so good here with you, but this is really a curse.”
“Oh, Alec…I understand,” I said. “I’m…glad you told me that, actually. Everyone has been acting like it’s so
wrong. But Firian doesn’t seem that different from you and Montague to me…” I bit my lip. “Alec, I really do like you too. I like all of you. That’s why I’m so confused. Maybe a Roller Slut was born that day after all.”
He grinned. “For the record…I’d be a member of your wolf pack.” He started to shift like he was going to get out of bed, and instead I grabbed him and kissed him. I just barely had time to taste his lips before the magic shoved us apart.
“Is there something I can do?” I asked again.
“My magic is fed by you coming,” he said. “For me.”
Heat flooded me. Every inch of my skin screamed for him to touch me.
“I…don’t want Firian to hear me.”
“You probably won’t make any noise in real life if you don’t make noise in the dream,” he said. “So…how quiet can you be for me?”
“For you? I’m not so sure…”
“I hope you’re not entirely quiet.”
I see such a different side of Alec in these dreams, I thought. But it feels just as much like the real Alec as the quieter artist side of him…
He pulled my sheet up to my neck, but threw the quilt off my body, and reached between my legs.
“I know you try to hide this part of you when you’re awake, Alec…”
“Hush,” he commanded, his warm breath brushing my ear.
His fingers slowly worked their way over my thigh, and then down the midpoint of my body—from navel to my hot center. Only a flannel sheet stood between his hand and my skin. I could feel his heat through the cotton fibers. I spread my legs a little, encouraging him to take what he needed.
To give me what I needed.
I could feel his strong body just behind me, his cock throbbing against my tailbone as his fingers felt around my folds.
Admittedly, this would have been better if the sheet wasn’t in the way. Especially since the sheets had bunnies on them.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “I can see you thinking too hard. Just feel this and only this. Just me…and only me.”
“Mm…” I only let out a tiny sound as he got fully acquainted with the makeup of my lady bits through the sheet, and then went in for the kill. His fingers found my clit with such perfect precision. Even I wasn’t this good at finding it, I thought. “Nnn…how do you…oh…”
“God, this feels so fucking good,” he said, my little sounds seeming to encourage him to stroke harder. “Incubi must have a lot more fun than warlocks. Your power, Charlotte…you’re so beautiful and whenever I see you I just want to fuck you dry. It’s torture…but incubi have a pretty high tolerance for torture like that. As long as we get what we want eventually…”
In the last dream, I freaked out when I realized he was drawing power from me, but this time I wasn’t surprised. I wanted Alec to enjoy the holiday here with the Christmas lights and microwaves. And it didn’t hurt that this was like every adolescent girl’s best sex dream. I had a hot, shirtless demon with a ripped bod in my bed telling me I was gorgeous while he pleasured me and only me. I could feel his cock throbbing and grinding more urgently against me but I couldn’t touch him so I didn’t have to do anything except enjoy myself.
I felt myself coming way too fast. I was falling into his hand, the way he stroked me with insane precision. Like when I tried to pleasure myself, my sweet spot always seemed to be moving around like, “Ha, ha, you thought I was here? No, I’m over here!” Alec’s fingers had a homing device built in. Up, down, sideways, swirl, flick, hard rub—whatever my body wanted, he did. Instantly.
“Oh nooo…”
I actually lunged forward a little, as if in panic, as the feeling swamped me. I was afraid I would scream and everyone would hear me. I was also afraid I might have a heart attack because my chest was pounding. But mostly, I was afraid because I knew the dream would end and Alec would disappear and I would go back to the real non-dream world where guys couldn’t just crawl into bed and pleasure me.
“That was…everything, Charlotte. Just sleep peacefully,” he said.
I woke up.
The room was dark. No Alec. Just Firian. Still asleep. Oh, thank god for that.
But…
I felt like a pool of melted goo. Deliciously tired. But not…exactly satisfied. I mean…that was way too tame.
But you just let Alec give you your first boy-to-girl orgasm, I thought. In your dreams. While your fox familiar who loves you sleeps at the foot of the bed and Alec’s air mattress is right next to his vampire best friend that you kissed at the ball.
That was a little weird, right?
I had been trying my best to be up front with these guys, but this dream space was where it got really tricky. I don’t know how much the dream was considered reality. It was a shared dream, so it wasn’t just a dream. But in the dream, I didn’t quite act like myself, and he didn’t either. The guards of the real world were gone. We acted on instinct more than sense. How much was I capable of resisting him? And how much was he capable of avoiding me when my house made him sick?
Well, I thought. No one has to know.
But I sure wish I could ask my other grandmother a few questions about her love life…
Chapter Forty
Charlotte
On Christmas morning, Alec looked very healthy and I was groggy, but not really in a bad way. Still, it was awkward when our eyes met over my grandmother’s cinnamon buns at the kitchen island. Some Christmas parade was blasting over the TV and Grandma was loudly apologizing for not having presents for the boys.
“I got my present,” Alec said in a low voice to me. “Thanks for last night. I hope you don’t have regrets.”
“I—um—no.”
“I’m in the race,” he said. “I want more.”
“The race?”
“For you,” he said. “Firian, Montague…and, like it or not…I think Harris too. We all want you.”
My eyes widened. “I must be better at glamour spells than I thought.”
“Or maybe you’re just that fun and sexy.”
I coped the only way I knew how at that point, by shoving a cinnamon bun in my face and scurrying to the table.
“These’r th’ bes’ yet,” I said around their doughiness as Firian lounged into a chair beside me, with his unearthly grace.
“They taste like the faeries made them,” he agreed, delicately licking a little frosting off his knuckles.
“Oh, well, thank you! Faeries! You’re funny.” Grandma smacked his shoulder. “Where did you find this one? It sounds like something your mother would have said.”
“Do you remember my mother very well?” I asked, very surprised to hear Grandma mention her. She glanced at my dad.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s gotten a little easier to talk about Emily.”
“She loved fairy tales and things like that,” Grandma said. “She had funny little superstitions about the faeries! She used to make little offerings for them when we had extra food. When you were born you already had teeth. She used to call you her little goblin. She said goblins are born—“
“Little goblin!?” I cried.
“Not as an insult or anything! It was cute!”
“Oh—uh—right…that is cute, actually.” Little goblin? Was it a coincidence? The demon who attacked Royce and Ronan…
Firian raised his brows at me. I knew he was thinking the same thing.
But I couldn’t even find the time to talk about it. We had breakfast to eat, and presents to open. “Good thing I forgot to mail these on time because I’m a terrible father,” Dad said, bringing out a bunch for me. “Merry Christmas.” We had Christmas movies to watch, while Grandma started frying up some chicken.
After dinner, Dad and Grandma both fell asleep in their chairs so we packed up the leftovers to sneak them to Ron and Dwayne. While we were huffing up the mountain—okay, while I was huffing up the mountain—I said, “Is my mom…a demon? Like…not just a sinistral…but a scary wolf-demon thing?”
; “That would explain how she got past the school wards,” Montague said. “Your blood tie called the demon in.”
My hands clutched tight around the Pyrex casserole dish. “But—I mean—she’s not, right? She’s not a monster. She just…left us to—become a badass dark witch.”
Firian stopped and retraced a few steps down the steep path to stand in front of me. “It is possible…that wasn’t quite it.”
“You know something.”
He had this expression like he was far away. Like something had broken him inside.
“You’ve known something all along, Firian…haven’t you?” I cried.
“I don’t know much,” he said. “I really don’t know much. Just…familiars know each other. And familiars are born with more knowing than humans. I was only a year old when your mom turned to the sinistral realm, but I could already talk. So I remember a little bit. Your mom’s familiar told me that your mother made a deal with the Withered Lord. He is a powerful high demon who used to have control of your grandfathers. The werewolves. They got free of him, but he was furious. He doesn’t like when his wards get free of his clutches. He knows how to prey on people and the things they want. Your mother was raised as a human, but she was half witch and half werewolf. She didn’t really belong in the human world, and she had some resentment of being ‘held back’ from her power. He probably tempted her with power. I don’t know anything more than that.”
“My mom…” I swallowed.
“It’s really not that different from what you already know.”
“I didn’t know she was a monster. I didn’t know she would show up at my school and try to kill people!”
Alec took my Pyrex dish. I guess I looked like I was going to drop it.
“I’m fine!” I declared, not that anyone had asked.
“I wouldn’t expect you to be entirely fine,” Montague said.
“Sinistrals aren’t nice,” Alec said. “That’s why they’re Sinistrals. The truth is, Monty and I are both somewhat Sinistral ourselves. So we understand the potential. The…temptations.”
A Witch Among Warlocks: The Complete Series Box Set Page 21