by Hettie Ivers
“You came.”
“Of course I came. Are you kidding me? Hey, thanks for inviting me.” I offered her my fist to bump. “I wouldn’t miss your dream adventures for anything.”
Her little pink lips tilted up. It was barely perceptible. And then it was gone.
“Hey, don’t leave me hanging,” I said, my eyes dropping meaningfully to my outstretched fist.
She still didn’t bump it. It was outside her fireball. She stared longingly down at it. “There’s no way out for me.”
“Sure there is. C’mon, just try and bump it. The fire can’t hold you forever.”
She shook her head. Wisps of her long raven hair blew across her cheek. “I think it can, Raul.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “I think it already has.”
It was in moments like this, when I stared into little Sloane’s wise violet eyes, that I’d swear she remembered me—remembered everything. It was as if she was Maribel again looking back at me. The same Maribel who had come to me in my own dreams years ago, when I’d been just as lost. When I’d felt hopeless. The same seemingly omniscient being who’d taken me under her wing and given me courage; helped me to shape my purpose.
But most of the time Sloane looked so much like her mom it was easy to pretend that she’d never been Maribel, that she was a fresh, untainted soul who didn’t harbor the burden of guilt that came from killing and harvesting other souls for sustenance for a century in the ether.
“There is a way out, Sloane. We just have to find it. It’s like a puzzle. A maze. There’s a secret trap door somewhere. A cool hidden tunnel.”
An unknown trigger point I needed to flip to help her let go and move on.
“I wasn’t supposed to be born. It was a mistake.” She said this the way she always did—as if stating facts. Facts that couldn’t be altered or dismissed. “I can only do bad things … like before.”
“No way was it a mistake. You and me”—I gestured between us with my thumb—“we’re old pals. Remember? You helped me before. Saved me. You came back to hang with me. And now I’m here to help you.”
I knew that she didn’t remember, didn’t recall anything of her former life as Maribel. Yet she clung to the certainty that she’d done bad things for which she could never be forgiven. She was right about the first part. I refused to accept the latter. Even though I had no authority to know such a thing.
“It’s too late. I can’t have friends. I can only do bad things now,” she said, repeating the words that had become her familiar script. “The voices know. I was supposed to take the voices with me and stay dead.” She paused; her forehead wrinkled. “You hear them, too, don’t you? You must know.”
I did hear them. They were all annoying bastards, those voices.
“They” were the angry, bitter accretion of bloodthirsty spirits. The dark, vengeful energy of greedy Salvatella ancestors attached to the faulty black heart that had once fueled Joaquin Salvatella’s legendary blood curse. They lived on in symbiotic existence within the curse that was now a part of Sloane.
A curse Sloane had willingly sought and taken on when she’d been Maribel.
“Once I extract the black heart of the curse from your sister, Raul, I will bear the burden of keeping its darkness locked within what’s left of my own damaged soul—for all eternity.”
Maribel had absolutely known the danger. And Sloane was right: Maribel had definitely planned to drag “the voices”—the dark energy she’d absorbed within her soul—to the other side and remain dead.
Just because it hadn’t worked out that way didn’t make it a mistake.
But it did mean that I had to find a way to help Sloane manage those bastard voices she could now never escape. For in their symbiotic existence, “they” hoped to worm their way back into power through Sloane.
Using her.
“Yeah. I hear ’em.” I scowled through the flames and billowing black smoke surrounding us at the continuous stream of disembodied, unwelcome editorializing. The judgments. The whispers and the hisses. The taunts. “And I’m gonna open a big can of shut-the-hell-up on them if they don’t stop feeding you ridiculous lies.”
She didn’t crack a smile; not even a hint. “I was supposed to die, Raul. I was supposed to take the voices with me and stay dead. It was a mistake when I was born.”
“Uh-uh. There are no mistakes, my friend. Tough times? Yeah. Dark moments? Sure. They can feel like mistakes when we’re in them—feel like we made a wrong turn somewhere and got lost. But remember what we say?”
She stared stoically back at me before giving me a slow blink, followed by a delayed eye-roll. And I outright belly-laughed.
This was a good sign. A great fucking sign, in fact, as to how far Sloane had come in a short window of time.
I raised my “Aunt Cely” pointer finger at her, a shit-eating grin on my face that I refused to quell as I repeated the line Maribel used to say to me in my darker moments. “No one ever found daybreak by avoiding night, Sloane. Only by passing through it.”
She exhaled—much like a normal ten-year-old might who was tired and grouchy and felt that an adult was asking something of her that required more effort than she cared to expend. Another positive sign.
“The darkness is your instrument, Sloane. It’s your conduit to shepherd.” Make it your bitch, I wanted to say to her, but I didn’t think Avery would appreciate me teaching her daughter that.
“We’re going to figure out a way to fist-bump our way through this together, ’kay? You and me.”
We might not figure it out this time, in this dream, but I wasn’t giving up.
Not because Sloane had been born the Rogue of rogues, prophesied to be an unstoppable supernatural powerhouse destined to alter our world forever. Or because of the loyalty and connection I’d once shared with her when I’d known her as Maribel. Or even because Sloane had taken on this curse (as Maribel) from my own sister—saving Miles from a burden of darkness that might’ve otherwise destroyed her over time.
I wasn’t giving up because I liked her. Something in me related to her—both now as Sloane and before as Maribel.
I needed to see her figure this out. To see Sloane rise above the pull of darkness within herself and prove the whole world wrong meant more to me than I could ever express.
And I couldn’t let it go. Wouldn’t give up on her.
Maybe a part of me thought that if Maribel could be saved—if she could redeem herself as Sloane—that meant there was still hope for me.
That there was hope for all of us.
21
Raul
I returned to the plane to find Tiago standing watch outside Bethy’s suite. He immediately tried to brief me on every detail that had happened with her during my absence, and while I appreciated his diligence, I’d no time for that. I only wanted highlights.
I didn’t want to waste another minute away from my mate.
Though I’d been gone for less than two hours, I was beside myself with the need to see her. Smell her. Confirm that she was all right.
And that all of this was finally real.
She looked like a mirage lying passed out on my king-sized bed, sprawled overtop the covers rather than beneath them. Her hair, still damp from her shower, fanned out like spun gold against the black silk pillowcase beneath it, and she was wearing a little pink striped robe—one of her own that we’d packed from her apartment. It was short and clingy, leaving her long, sinewy tanned legs on display—and very little else to the imagination.
Yet imagine I did.
My mouth watered. My cock strained against the confines of my clothing.
And my hand reached out of its own volition to touch her, needing to confirm that she was real, that she was flesh and bone within my grasp.
After so many years of imagining and fantasizing about a moment like this, I almost feared she’d vanish like mist when my fingertips brushed against her thigh.
But she didn’t.
She was real.
&nb
sp; And I was a greedy, desperate bastard for her.
I reached for the belt of her robe, pulling the knot free and parting the material wrapped loosely around her. I told myself I just wanted a quick peek at her—to check her marks before I tucked her beneath the covers, where she’d be warmer and more comfortable.
But soon I was fingering those marks. Then my head bent to lick the ones I hadn’t healed well enough that morning. She moaned my name in her sleep, and that was all it took to fully awaken the beast in me.
I was already painfully hard, so when her hand lifted off the mattress and fell between her thighs, it took all my willpower not to pin it above her head and slam my cock into her in its place.
Fuck it. I’d never claimed to be a saint. I definitely hadn’t gotten where I was in life by always playing fair.
I vanished my clothing and climbed overtop her on the bed.
“Wake up, Bethy.” I nudged her legs farther apart with my knees as I moved between them. She didn’t stir.
Even in sleep, she was making those breathy noises I loved so much as her fingers groped clumsily between her wet folds. Her skin was flushed, her nipples diamond hard.
My canines extended and my eyes shifted as I scented how aroused she was. My inner wolf was clawing at me—demanding to fuck her.
As I watched her touch herself, I was close to losing it—overwhelmed with the need to take her.
But ramming into her like an animal would ruin my game. And Bethy was a prize worth any torture. I reminded myself that this was nothing compared to what I’d already endured for the past decade.
“Put them inside you, baby,” I whispered, taking hold of her hand and control of her fingers, directing two of them inside her. They were so slim, and her pussy so soaked, that they glided in easily. “There you go.”
I pumped them in and out, making sure the heel of her hand rubbed against her clit as I did so, working her up to a steady rhythm that had her panting and moaning continuously before I nudged her thighs wider apart and added a third finger.
Ignoring the fact I was leaking precum like a faucet and my balls felt so tight and heavy they might fall off, I focused on Bethy’s breathing, on the cadence of her moans, and on the staccato of her heartbeat, as I spurred her to the brink of orgasm—and then stopped short, halting her hand.
She made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat and grumbled something about “bullshit dream sex.” Despite the agonizing pain in my balls, I found myself biting my lip to stifle laughter. If there’d been any remaining doubt, that was the moment I knew for certain I was irreversibly in love with Bethany Garrett.
Dipping my head, I kissed her cheek and murmured, “You need me inside you, angel. Say it. You have to tell me to fuck you if you want to come.”
I wanted to hear her panting, “Fuck me, Raul,” over and over, like she’d done in the club last night. God, I’d all but lost my mind when she’d done that.
After two more whispered prompts, she said it. And I rewarded her by sucking her nipples and using her fingers to bring her to the brink of orgasm once more. Then I stopped and got her to say it again.
I did this two more times, until the scent of her disappointment nearly eclipsed that of her arousal, and the pattern of her breathing indicated she was finally waking up, while mindlessly, she still chanted, “Fuck me, Raul.”
Quickly, I let go of her hand that was playing with her pussy and shifted into position, stretching out on my back on the side of the bed next to her free hand, which I then wrapped around my erection.
And, like a true gentleman, I pretended to be out cold as Bethany awoke to find that she’d been simultaneously fingering herself and stroking my dick in her sleep.
22
Bethany
I was dreaming about sex with Raul again. And talking in my sleep. So much that I awoke to my own panted chant of “Fuck me, Raul.”
I blinked my eyes open. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar. As was the humming noise of the plane engine in the background.
And the sound of Raul groaning in pain beside me.
“Don’t,” he grunted. “Fuck … please, don’t stop … need you so bad, Bethy …”
Huh?
“Bethy … what are you doing to me? Fuck, that feels so good …”
Oh, shit—what was I doing?
I glance down at my body, then over at Raul’s next to me. I’d been masturbating in my sleep—while giving a sleeping Raul a handjob!
I froze.
Oh, wow. His cock was enormous in my hand—wet from his precum and pointing straight to the ceiling.
I had three fingers buried between my thighs, and they were soaking wet. My clit felt hard and swollen with the need to come as I rolled my thumb over it. Jesus, how long had I been masturbating?
Raul groaned again. I was still gripping his dick. I flexed my fingers experimentally.
He shifted, his hips lifting off the bed, causing my hand to slide down to the base of his erection. When he lowered his hips back to the mattress, my hand slid up his dick again. He groaned my name and repeated the action, rocking his hips up and down, fucking my hand in his sleep.
I tried to remember how mad I was at him—to remind myself that he was a scary werewolf creature who’d kidnapped me—but a rush of fluid coated the fingers between my thighs at the sight of Raul’s powerful, naked body undulating next to me, his beautiful hard penis desperately seeking the touch of my hand wrapped around it.
Before I knew it, I was helping him—gliding my hand up and down his thick shaft while he continued to groan and say my name.
It made me feel powerful—knowing how much Raul wanted me. Needed me.
Mesmerized by the sight of him, of the sounds of him grunting and groaning and begging for more of my touch, I rolled onto my side, then shifted upon my knees, careful not to disturb his aroused slumber as I gained a closer view and a better grip on his dick while continuing to touch myself with my other hand.
“Yesss,” he sighed. “Ah, please, Bethy … yesss … in your mouth, baby … please.”
Like a woman possessed, somehow I found my head lowering over his midsection, my lips parting, my tongue extending to swirl over his salty, bulbous head, before taking him fully into my mouth. As soon as I tasted him—and heard his hiss of pleasure—I was lost.
I began sucking him in earnest while working what wasn’t in my mouth with my hand. His hand fell atop my head, pressing down gently at first, then more forcefully, as he grunted and raised his hips, his cock seeking the back of my throat.
I didn’t deny him.
“Ahhh, Bethy, feels so good … you’re so beautiful … feels so perfect … fantasized about you for so long ...”
His words were like crack. And I was an addict.
I ate his praise up like candy, along with his cock, until my clit was painfully swollen and my pussy throbbing—beyond dripping wet with the need to be filled.
So when Raul began mumbling, “Straddle me, Bethy” and “Ride my cock” in his sleep, I couldn’t resist temptation.
I bobbed my head up and down twice more before pulling my mouth from him, shrugging my robe from my shoulders, and straddling his hips.
Taking him in hand, slowly I lowered myself onto his rock-hard length.
Drenched as I was, my insides felt swollen and tender as they stretched to accept his uncompromising girth. Not surprising—given how aggressively we’d gone at it the night before. Raul had been insatiable. And I’d been right there with him.
Yet after everything we’d done the night before, what I was doing now felt even more devious. Dirty. The fear that he might awaken at any moment to catch me fucking him in his sleep was a tremendous turn-on.
My head rolled back and I released a moan at the sensation of his thick head pushing its way so deeply within me as I sank my weight onto him.
Fuck but he felt good—so perfect inside me.
I told myself I deserved to get off after everything I’d been thro
ugh as I began to move over him, lifting and lowering myself, angling my body back and forth in order to catch all the right spots—my hips circling and rolling to the music of Raul’s grunts and groans as his pelvis jerked and lifted beneath me.
I needed this.
He’d drugged me, the bastard.
He’d kidnapped me.
He’d left me alone aboard a private plane to South America with a gang of big horny monsters masquerading as the hottest male nannies on the planet.
My hips rolled faster the angrier I got, my movements more bold, the knot in my lower belly tightening, the pressure building.
“That’s it—fuck me, baby,” he directed in his sleep. “Faster. More. Want to feel you clenching around me … soaking my cock …”
He was suspiciously articulate for a guy who was sleeping.
But I was too close to the edge to analyze the obvious signs.
And then I was cartwheeling over it.
Holding my breath, I bit down on my lip to withhold the carnal, shamelessly unrefined noises threatening to escape as I did clench and gush all over him.
Spots were beginning to form in my vision from lack of oxygen as the tremors rolled through me. The metallic taste of blood seeped into my mouth from where I’d bitten my lip. And then my heart nearly burst from my chest when Raul’s eyes abruptly opened, flashing feral yellow through the dimly lit bedroom to catch me in the act.
His hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around my throat.
23
Bethany
I knew a moment of sheer unadulterated panic—fearing I’d awakened his angry inner beast rather than the man within. But his grip was careful as he pulled me down toward him, his upper body rising off the bed to meet me halfway as his mouth crashed into mine.
My lips parted for him, desperate for air, and his tongue slipped inside. Gentle. Exploring. Sweet.
Then consuming.
Oxygen was overrated.