The magic refracted off the glass and a rainbow of light arched through the room.
Lola smiled.
Thorin looked her in the eyes as his glowed. “I vow to uphold our bond until Death sees fit to sever it,” he said.
A plume of light surrounded them. The floor shook and the glass rattled as the magic turned into a frenzied hurricane of wind.
Thorin’s eyes turned molten as he leaned over her and said, “I am the luckiest man alive.”
And then he pressed his lips to hers and warmth flooded her chest and beat by beat, the pain ebbed until it was gone entirely. “I love you beyond measure,” he said. “My brilliant, gorgeous best friend. My caeli.”
She curled her toes in her boots and stretched out her limbs.
Thorin helped her sit up and then she yanked him back in between her legs.
She had to crane her neck to look up at him. “I love you too,” she said. “Forever and always.”
“Every part?” he challenged.
She knew what he was asking. Did she accept the sins of his past?
She would help him do better. She would help him repay the debt he owed.
With a grin, she grabbed his groin and put a bit of pressure on him. “Every. Single. Part.” His cock immediately answered and Lola thrilled at the realization that he was hers, all of him, forever. She could wake up beside him in bed. She could tangle herself in his arms and know that she was loved and cared for.
Because unlike her father, she knew Thorin would never abandon her. Thorin had revealed all of his flaws to her and yet he kept standing before her. Truth and honesty mattered more to him than pride and pleasure.
Thorin had never been afraid to do the hard work of love.
And that was why she trusted him with her life.
The room exploded in vibrant gold and silver light as Thorin hooked his arms beneath her legs and lifted her off the table.
“A binding is not a marriage,” he said, “but I consider you my wife. To love, honor, and cherish. And as my wife, how would you feel about a honeymoon?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck as his cock pressed at the warmth between her legs.
“I would like a honeymoon very, very much,” she said.
The air crackled as she hungrily kissed him, her tongue flicking out.
He met her with equal fervor as lightning danced along their skin.
With a snap, the world opened up and carried them away.
Epilogue
THORIN
When Thorin left Blackwell House, he’d barely given his destination any thought so he was not surprised to find he’d stolen Lola away to the castle in the Black Forest.
He immediately took her upstairs to his room in the turret and made love to her the way a husband should.
He marveled at the ecstasy on her face. The way her teeth raked over her bottom lip when she was just about to come.
He loved feeling her inner walls clench around him as her orgasm stuttered through her.
But most of all, he loved the way she looked naked wearing nothing but early morning light.
It felt like they’d been in bed for a month. His cell phone told him it’d only been a week.
Now that she was caeli-bound, Lo didn’t need the same amount of sleep as most mortals, but he’d been demanding of her body the last few days and she’d been dozing in and out while the sun rose.
With a sleepy moan, she turned into him and opened her eyes. “How long was I out?”
“Not long.” He brushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She nuzzled into the crook of his neck and inhaled before planting a trail of kisses down his jaw.
“How did we get so lucky?” she said.
“I’m the lucky one,” he countered.
“Well, I won’t disagree with you.” She smiled up at him, her finger trailing along his chest.
His arousal became apparent through the thin cotton sheet and he was about to drag her over him again when his cell phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Though his brothers could have easily found him after he’d left, they’d given him the distance he and Lola had needed.
So while he was irritated at the buzzing cell phone, he was aware that if his brothers were calling, it was likely with something important.
He grabbed his phone and opened the message.
It was from Dae.
Cassie is here. She offered to do a reading of you to help figure out your lineage.
Thorin snorted and typed back, Why won’t Red just tell me?
Honestly, Dae said, I don’t think he knows. Or if he does, he’s in denial. Cassie will help confirm.
Where is Red? Thorin asked. He’s really going to allow this? I thought they couldn’t see each other.
He’s hiding in his rooms until she leaves.
“What is it?” Lola asked.
He showed her the text.
“Are you going to do it?”
“Why should I give them the satisfaction? Maybe I like keeping the mystery.”
“Yeah, but…” Lola climbed from the bed and Thorin immediately missed her warmth by his side. He did not, however, dislike the swell of her nipples when she hit the cooler air. “Knowing might help you better understand your power. And isn’t that what the rage was all those years? Unchecked power?”
There was no better explanation for it.
Once he’d accepted himself and no longer struggled against it, it was like the power was allowed to flow into every part of him, to expand to its natural state instead of boiling and festering behind the walls he’d tried to build.
But perhaps he did need to dig deeper to truly understand it.
He didn’t want a repeat of Walwick.
“Will you come back with me?” he asked.
“Of course. I miss Ashley anyway. We can only stay in this fantasyland for so long.”
“If you ask me, it hasn’t been long enough.”
Still naked, Lola waved a hand at her body and said, “May I have some clothes?”
“I’d rather you not.”
She rolled her eyes.
He snapped his fingers and a see-through nightie appeared on her body.
“Not what I had in mind,” she said.
“At least let me see.” He propped himself up on an elbow as she fake-modeled for him.
She was beautiful.
A goddess if ever he saw one. Her long blonde hair hung in kinky, bed-head waves around her face. The sunlight turned strands of her hair golden and made the wetness of her lips glisten.
“You still owe me a portrait,” he reminded her. “And I think I’ve found my preferred outfit.”
“Will we be in matching outfits?”
He slid from the bed and stalked toward her. “If that’s what you wish.”
She laughed. “Your dedication might just get you into trouble some day.”
In front of her now, he slowly walked her back until she came up against the wall. “I’m okay with trouble as long as it’s with you.”
“Mmmmhmmm.” Her hand found his cock and stroked him gently. “We should really be going.”
“We can be late.”
“The fate of our future is at stake here.”
He gasped as Lola stroked harder and then— “That’s all you get. We need to go.”
“What?” A growl sounded in the back of his throat. “You’ve perfected the art of torturing me, woman.”
She winked. “But just think of how great the release will be later.”
With a groan, he snapped his fingers and summoned himself some clothes. He had to readjust himself as the throbbing need for her pounded through him.
“My turn,” she said.
He snapped his fingers again and manifested a pair of her favorite overalls.
“Ready?” he asked.
She hooked her arm through his. “Ready.”
When they popped up at Blackwell House, they found everyone in the front parlor.
She was beautiful, too, in this wild, innocent way. She reminded Thorin of the forest nymphs he used to read about as a kid. Big, wide eyes. Plump lips. Freckled nose.
She smiled when she looked at him and revealed perfect, white teeth. But more than that, the smile echoed in her eyes with an open warmth and generosity it was getting harder and harder to find in this world.
Red didn’t deserve her.
“Hi Thorin,” she said and stood. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m so glad you came.”
As he crossed the room, his brothers watched him with cool wariness like he was a fish who had suddenly sprouted claws.
They had yet to discuss what had happened at the Conclave trial.
Thorin wasn’t sure where that conversation should begin and he was even more unsure of where it would end.
Everything had changed.
Everything.
Thorin and Lola sat on the matching sofa across from Cassie.
“So how does this work?” he asked.
“Hopefully it’s an easy, quick read, but I’m still new to this so there is a level of just-winging-it that needs to be accounted for.”
Mad hovered by the barren fireplace. Dae and Poe lingered on the room’s periphery.
Ashley came to sit beside Lola.
Cassie came around the coffee table and sat on its top in front of Thorin. “Take my hand.”
Thorin hesitated.
Did he want to know his true lineage?
What if it was worse than what he currently knew? What if he was some hellish monster from the Underworld? He wasn’t sure if that was possible, but he was willing to bet given enough motivation and ambition, anything was.
Gods, Mother, why did you do this to me?
Lola squeezed his leg to reassure him.
He knew she would accept him no matter what and that knowing helped him take the leap.
With a breath, he slipped his hand into Cassie’s.
She immediately sucked in a sharp breath. Her grip on him tightened. The tendons in her neck jutted out from beneath her skin as she clenched her teeth.
“Is this supposed to happen?” Poe asked.
Cassie’s eyes rolled back in her head.
“Bloody hell.” Dae surged forward.
Thorin tried to yank his hand back, but Cassie’s grip was like a vise for such a tiny mortal.
“Let her go!” Mad yelled.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” Thorin yelled back.
“Red’s going to kill us,” Poe said.
Cassie began to convulse and Thorin stood up to catch her with his other arm, but his brothers beat him to it. Dae and Poe took each of her arms while Mad pried her fingers from Thorin’s hand.
As soon as their touch was severed, Cassie’s eyed snapped open.
Thorin’s brothers righted her and she quickly got her feet beneath her.
“I’m okay,” she said. When Dae and Poe and Mad stepped back, she smoothed down the front of her dress. “That was…intense.” She laughed nervously. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Sweat shone on her forehead.
“What did you see?” Thorin asked.
“Water,” she said.
Dae snapped his fingers and produced her an ice cold glass. She sucked down half of it thirstily.
“Your lineage is your name,” she said as she set the glass down.
“You’ll have to be more specific, darling,” Poe said.
“You were named after your father. I don’t know the language I saw, but it’s old. Like…older than the world maybe? The suffix –IN translates to two. Or second.”
Thorin’s entire body went numb.
This wasn’t right.
This wasn’t his truth.
The hair on his arms rose as his magic surged to his fingertips in a crackle of lightning.
His brothers stepped back.
Lola took his hand in hers and the magic flowed back into its chasm and went still.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We face this together.”
Was it true?
Fuck.
Poe said, “The second? You can’t be—are you saying—”
“I think she is,” Dae said.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Cassie brought her gaze to Thorin’s. She almost looked sad to spell it out for him. This was bigger than anything. Anything they’d faced. Anything they could have dreamed up.
He knew what she was going to say before she said it and his stomach dropped in anticipation.
“Thorin. Thor the Second.”
Son of the old God.
The power blistered through him. Where before he’d succumbed to the rage, now he reveled in the power.
No wonder he’d never felt right in his own skin.
He vaded and reappeared in Red’s private room. A place he never would have dared enter uninvited or unannounced.
Fuck an invitation.
Red turned away from the open balcony doors.
Thorin closed the distance between them, grabbed Red around the throat and slammed him against the wall.
“All these years,” Thorin spit out, “I thought you were disgusted by me. I thought you were ashamed of who I was and so you kept me away, always at arm’s length.” He tightened his grip. The air crackled. A phantom wind wended through the room. All of the blood drained from Red’s face. “But it wasn’t disgust was it? No, you weren’t ashamed of me, you were afraid.”
Red shifted from pale to blue as his air supply grew short, but still he did not fight.
With a muttered curse, Thorin let go of his grandfather and let him gulp down air.
When he’d regained his composure, Red straightened and rubbed his raw throat. “For every powerful man, there is always one more powerful than he.”
“Fuck you. I am done bowing to you!”
Thorin tightened his hands into fists and lightning snapped around his knuckles.
“Good,” Red said. “The son of a God should bow to no one.”
Red would never admit to being less than another. He would never admit to fearing someone else. But this was as close as he’d ever come to it and they both knew it.
And just like that, all of the decades of his pent up shame and anger dissipated and Thorin finally let go.
He was ready to be who he always had been, no longer the youngest brother, the black sheep of the family, the dangerous, uncontrollable monster.
Thorin was no longer the disreputable Blackwell.
He was the most powerful one.
Epilogue II
MAD
As his brothers and the girls reeled from the news of Thorin’s identity, Mad tried to quietly slip from the room.
He’d known Thorin was something other than djinn—Red had revealed as much decades ago. But Mad had never been in the business of revealing secrets that weren’t his to reveal.
Thorin would likely hate him for it. Maybe Dae and Poe would too. But Mad was in the business of taking the brunt of his brothers’ ire and he’d long ago accepted that fact. It came with being the eldest.
It was his duty.
His entire life he’d tried to shield his family from the brutality of the world.
But now he had his own shit to attend to.
His own festering past.
As he made his way to the stairs, he heard footsteps behind him.
He could smell it was Cassie before he turned around. She had a distinctive scent that Mad could only describe as sugared autumn. Sweet and crisp and woodsy.
“Mad, wait,” she called.
For a minute, he considered running.
He considered running for the hills and never coming back.
Whatever Cassie wanted to tell him, it w
ouldn’t be good.
But he was also not in the business of denying a lady. Especially not Red’s.
“Yes?” he said when he turned around to meet her.
She came to an abrupt stop in front of him and blinked up at him. He was a foot taller than her and easily twice her size. When he was an army general, his men used to call him Leo, which was Latin for lion.
“Twice our size and first to charge into the fray,” they had said.
Now he was a coward running from the shit that was starting to pile around him.
The modern world had made him weak.
“There’s something I’ve been seeing about you,” Cassie said shyly. “It’s…ummm…” She looked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone. “It’s a rather personal matter.”
He inhaled and tried to ignore the sudden uptick in his heart rate and the numbness spreading through his limbs.
Should he stop her from saying it?
If no one else gave breath to his secret, then perhaps it would remain as such.
Once another party knew—really knew—he would fear it spreading for the rest of his life.
Cassie leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Lydia Beaumont is coming here to Blackwell House.”
Mad’s stomach knotted. Fucking hell.
He tried to act unfazed. “Oddie’s mother?”
Cassie nodded. She licked her lips and her eyes pinched tightly at the corners as if she sensed how powerful this secret was and what it would mean for him once it was out. “Lydia knows somehow. She knows about you and Oddie.”
And there it was.
Spoken aloud.
Free of the cage he’d locked it in.
He was numb and cold and hot all over.
He, Mad Blackwell, eldest Blackwell djinn, was in love with Oddie Beaumont, sacra familia to the Blackwell family.
The only woman he was forbidden from having.
The only woman he loved.
Thank you so much for continuing on this journey with me and the Blackwell men! There is still more Blackwell Djinn to come.
Look for Mad and Oddie’s book in 2020!
Three Wishes: Blackwell Djinn #1
One Mark: Steamy Friends to Lovers Paranormal Romance (Blackwell Djinn) Page 21