by Jenica Saren
The speed of his thrusts increased with the rise and fall of my climax, threatening to drive me over again.
When I sensed that he was close, I tightened myself around him, on purpose, until he threw his head back in ecstasy, groaned, and thrust harder into me, making the bed quake beneath us and sending me spiralling down into another heavenly orgasm that made my toes curl and teeth clench as I screamed.
"Eliam!" I cried as I felt his final, impossibly deep thrusts inside of me, my eyes rolling back as I collapsed into a limp heap underneath his weight.
I was panting like a dog in heat and body was shuddering almost convulsively from my orgasm double whammy that all but knocked me on my ass. Eliam wasn't far off, his breathing laboured as he lay atop me and nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck.
"That was..." He whispered, his breath tickling me.
"Amazing," I breathed. "Can we do that again?"
I felt rather than heard his laugh. "Almost certainly."
"Now?" I asked hopefully, my core coiling up in anticipation of a round two.
He chuckled then, audibly. "Later," he replied, kissing my neck.
Oh. A girl could get used to this.
"When did you stop feeling it? The pain?" He asked suddenly.
Taken aback, I tried to stop and think, but I couldn't seem to pinpoint the moment. It was all a pretty big blur of both pain and pleasure. "I don't remember," I admitted, my brow furrowing as I tried to recall.
"When you stopped thinking about it, maybe?" He suggested.
I thought about it for a couple of seconds. "I don't think so," I said absently. "I think it had more to do with how much I wanted it?" It came out more of a question, since I wasn't exactly sure whether that was the case or not, but the response felt right.
Propping himself up on his elbow and looking at me, Eliam seemed to deliberate my answer. "So, what are you thinking, then?" He inquired. It was strange to be talking to him and not feel like I was being judged or belittled. He simply seemed as curious as I was.
"I was thinking about it earlier, just off-hand," I said thoughtfully, staring up at the ceiling. "I don't think I need to be more powerful in magic than my inner self, I think it's my will that has to be stronger."
Eliam didn't say anything, so I continued.
"She seemed like she acted out of some sort of jealousy, which is arguably a very weak-willed emotion."
He coughed out a laugh at that. "Don't tell Kel that."
I laughed as well and opened my mouth again to hopefully say something sweet or romantic, when a loud sound carried from the first floor, followed closely by shouting.
Somewhere between amusement and panic, my head snapped up to stare at Eliam, the question clear in my eyes: what do we do?
Sighing, he moved off of me and started shimmying into his boxers and pants. How guys managed to pull on both at the same time without any wiggling was beyond me.
The shouting got louder and I grew concerned, hopping off the bed far too quickly for my jelly-like legs. I nearly stumbled and grasped Eliam's arm for support before searching almost frantically for my own clothes.
Before I could find them, Eliam grasped my shoulders and spun me around, handing me his shirt. I took it gratefully and dashed to his adjoined bathroom to clean up before I made my mad dash downstairs to see what the ruckus was all about.
When I was done, Eliam was already gone, but the shouting still continued, so I rushed downstairs, taking care not to trip and break my face.
I followed the increasingly loud sound of the other guys' voices into the living room, where Eliam and I had only just vacated, it seemed, and came to a skidding halt.
In the middle of the living room, five guys were standing around with faces red from shouting... And varying styles of eyeliner around their eyes.
Too stunned to speak, all I could do was stare on with my mouth agape. I located Eliam, standing by the fireplace, and scootched over to him, practically hugging the wall to stay out of sight until I figured out what the hell was going on.
"What the actual fuck is happening right now?" I whispered to him out of the corner of my mouth.
His face was carefully blank, but his eyes gave him away as they cut over to me. "I believe," he said in a low voice. "They took your little comment about eyeliner on men to heart."
3...
2...
1...
What he was saying finally clicked like a gear sliding into place. "Oh, my fucking fuck." I couldn't think of anything more elaborate to say on the subject. "Is this a joke?"
His mouth turned up in a sly smirk and he averted his eyes. "Evidently not."
Fine, I'll admit it: I actually adored this new, friendlier Eliam. If he kept it up, he would be my new best friend - not counting Drea, because I'd claimed her as my forever friend.
"Mine is easily a hundred times better than yours!" Beck shouted at Gatlin.
"Who the fuck do you think you're kidding?" Gatlin yelled back. "You look like a racoon that had too many shots and passed out in a landfill!"
"At least I don't look like an amateur Kiss reject!"
"I still think my smoky eye is superior in this case," Rafe interrupted smugly. To be fair, his smoky eye was on point.
"You look like you got punched in the face, bro," Beck snapped.
Gray was examining his reflection in the glass surface of the coffee table and poking at his face. "The lady at the store said this was a cat eye, but I don't look like a cat at all," he remarked, sulking.
"The lady at the store screwed you, dude. Your wings are totally crooked," Rafe pointed out.
Gray frowned at his reflection. "I don't have wings, Rafe, I have a cat eye. Weren't you listening?"
"I did mine myself," Kellan interjected gruffly. His eyeliner was... Well, he wasn't winning any cute awards.
"Dude, I don't even know where to begin with what you did to your face. You look like you got wrapped up by a kelpie," Beck snickered. I'd have to ask about that later.
Kellan glared at him, but said nothing more, opting for crossing his arms over his chest and brooding as normal.
At this point, I was pretty sure that if I didn't intervene, there were going to be some casualties. The challenge was doing it... Tactfully.
"Uh, guys?" I called.
Every single one of them turned as one to face me. It was actually pretty fucking creepy and reminded me of every zombie movie ever. With any luck, my brains and I weren't about to be anybody's dinner. Not that I ever had any luck, but I had faith in my Sins.
"You all know that I was joking... Right?" I asked them.
They all looked at each other for a few seconds before turning back to me, mostly looking confused.
"You don't think eyeliner is hot on guys?" Gray asked curiously. Oh my, his wings were certainly a little crooked, but they were still really good.
I put my hands up in front of me defensively. "No, I definitely do," I admitted. "But I think all of you are pretty damn fine as you are."
"Then who's cuter now?" Beck demanded, pushing his way past his brothers and getting all up in my apparently non-existent personal space.
Coughing nervously, I turned to Eliam for help, but he only flattened his mouth into a line that I knew was just about ready to burst open with laughter.
He wants to play that way, does he?
"Eliam and I had sex!" I blurted.
Five faces went blank and Eliam turned to me with a glare that was half amusement, half intended murder. Whatever happened after, it was totally worth it.
Tag, you're it! I thought, projecting the words to Eliam before faking a yawn and stretching my arms over my head, accidentally flashing all of the guys my naked lady cave.
"Well, I'm off to bed. Goodnight, you guys!" Before anyone could say a word, I bolted for the stairs and dashed to my bedroom, locking the door behind me. That wouldn't keep them out if they wanted it, but whatever. It made me feel better.
In my room, alone for th
e first time that night, I let my mind run over everything that had been said between Eliam and I. Every single question and answered played on repeat in my head until it was almost all I could hear aside from the blood pounding in my ears from my mad dash up the stairs.
It looks to me like you're doing a lot of looking back.
He was right. I knew he was. If I wanted to get over it all and start looking forward instead of feeling chained by my past, I needed to start moving past it all. The trauma, the terror, the sadness, the betrayal. I had to learn to let it go, even if it was just letting it go enough to sink to the ocean floor like an anchor.
Moving to my bedside table, I pulled out my cell phone and plugged it in.
It was just a phone, not a snake coming to bite me. And whatever was on it, I could deal with in the morning.
18 Ria
When I woke up the next morning, the sun was high in the sky, meaning I'd slept in. Granted, I hadn't even known what time I'd finally gone to sleep.
The guys had stayed relatively quiet for most of the night after I'd taken off to my bedroom, which made me the tiniest bit suspicious. Everyone knew that Gatlin and I had slept together, I assumed they knew that Rafe and I had almost slept together, so they probably weren't upset with me about sleeping with Eliam, right?
Right?
Once upon a time, I'd been a relationship ho, now I was just a regular ho. Wasn't that exciting? My ovaries didn't seem to care that, for all intents and purposes, I was sleeping around with brothers almost interchangeably.
On the flip side of that coin, there wasn't a rule that said I couldn't. I would have assumed that if everyone knew that Gatlin and I had done the dirty deed, Rafe probably wouldn't have been so willing to try to get in pants. Same goes for Eliam, the one who, above all else, only wanted to keep his family intact.
Did that make them like my unofficial harem?
And why did that word sound so dirty? I was officially setting myself on a mission to make it a non-dirty word, even if I had to say it in every sentence until it became more annoying than naughty. Actually, that wasn't a half bad idea...
Tucking that half-cocked plan away for later, I sat up in bed and stretched, feeling my body wake up a little bit more. I felt surprisingly refreshed. Surprising because I normally felt groggy or pretty damn close to it when the sun was beaming down into my personal space.
I flung back my covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed. As I was standing up, I noticed my phone on my bedside table with a little piece of paper tucked under it. Then, I looked to my bedroom door and noted that the little knob that locked my door was turned to the unlocked position. So much for privacy.
Picking up and unfolding the paper, I couldn't help the little smile I felt creeping over my face. Written on the paper were the phone numbers of all the guys, Drea, and Clove. I also noted that it was Kellan's handwriting, the one person I'd told about not charging my phone.
That was what I called an opportunist.
I pushed the power button on my phone and waited for it to turn on. It seemed like the better these phones got, the longer they took to boot up. As soon as my lock screen popped up, my phone started making that annoying jingle at rapid-fire speed.
All I could do was stare at the phone until some five to ten minutes later, the notifications finally stopped. When they did, I picked up the phone as though it might bite me and unlocked it. I went to the first thing I could think of: my text messages.
And what a mistake that was.
Seeing the hundreds - and I do mean hundreds - of messages under the contact Cardboard Eyes, I skipped right past them and went first to the messages from my former landlord letting me know that my belongings were remaining in the house until they found a new tenant. How sweet was that? I shot her a quick message back to let her know that I would send movers to pick up most of my belongings and that they could keep the majority of the furnishings.
Next, I moved on to messages from various former co-workers and just tapped through them. None of them were really any consequence to me. After that, I viewed the messages from former clients who had apparently sent me money in hopes I'd come back.
Sucks to suck.
Briefly, I browsed through the twenty or so messages from Rory, but most were just much of the same. All hoping I was doing well and wishing that I would come back. And gossip, of course. I spent a little bit more time reading over those, which brightened my mood exponentially.
Then, before arriving at my final destination, I clicked on the messages from Mercedes. Initially, she had sent me a lot of apologetic text messages, but they gradually became more hateful and aggressive. The biggest jump in tone, I noticed, must have been around the time that I first travelled. She even resorted to sleeping with my clients and taking photos, as if that was going to hurt my feelings at all.
Unfortunately for her, I happened to know a couple of those customers had sexually transmitted diseases. Karma really was a bitch, it seemed.
After happily moving on from my former best friend's messages, it hit me one more time that there was only one box of messages left and it may as well have been Pandora's box. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that whatever lie in that inbox was nothing short of demons and evil - and I knew demons and evil. Intimately.
Steeling myself, I tapped my finger on his name and watched as the message window loaded up. It took me a good, long while to scroll all the way to the top. I skipped the messages I'd read the last time I had my phone open and went straight to the new ones. They were all much of the same back and forth.
I love you.
I miss you.
Please come home.
Fuck you.
Your friend was better anyway.
Mostly, I rolled my eyes as I scrolled through. He was immature, mediocre in bed, and clingy as hell; I didn't miss him at all as I read over the messages, mostly skimming them out of boredom.
However, I stopped cold when a series of messages started getting very... Aggressive. Several messages consisted of him detailing what he would do to me if he found me. More following were made up of vivid imagery around just how deep his hatred for me went. The final messaged, received just this morning was the one that caused a horrible chill to creep into my bones.
Ria, my love. I will be coming to get you soon. I'll bring you home and we can be a family together. You'll never leave me again. I love you, baby. You will be mine.
Shaking my head, I closed out the app and set my phone down on the bed, trying to keep my hands from trembling. Something was so, so wrong with him. What kind of person sent messages like that?
Anger rose hot in my chest then, chasing away any lingering chill that Lex's threatening message had left me with. Purposefully, I picked the phone back up, opened his messages and typed out my reply:
Suck it, creep. If you come anywhere near me, you'll be leaving with missing limbs. My friends will make sure of it. Don't message me EVER again.
I hit send and huffed. I'd show the guys the message. That way, if he had any bite at all, I'd be okay. I wasn't one of those stupid girls in movies that kept their threatening messages and shit a secret - that's how women got hurt.
As I rose and went to throw on my robe over my shorts and tank top I'd worn to bed, my phone chimed. Going back to the bed and picking it up, I seethed as I noted Lex's name at the top. Apparently, he was annoying and stupid. I didn't bother to open it since it was short enough that it fit in the preview.
The message opened with a laughing emoji and then read: You will be mine.
That was it, the extent of his message. Sure, I could just blow it off at that point and not look like the obnoxious damsel in distress, but there was no way in hell I was taking that chance. Especially when I could have one of the guys dispatch him. Maybe Rafe would just take away his greed. That's what led to obsession, right? Or was that Envy? Or Gluttony?
Hell, you'd think I would have had all of that figured out after almost a month.
When I reached the foyer, the first thing I noticed was that there were no breakfast smells. Weird. The second thing I noticed was how quiet it was in the house. There was no chatter coming from the kitchen, but I headed in that direction anyway as my stomach sassed me and let its presence be known.
In the kitchen, the dining table was clean and the entire room was empty. That was straight up unheard of. I even tried counting on my fingers how many times I'd come down to an empty, breakfast-free kitchen but came up blank.
"Guys?" I called out. The silence was making me nervous. I cupped my hands over my mouth and tried again. "Guys!"
Nothing but silence answered me.
"Harem of mine!" I shouted, walking from the kitchen to the living room. It was empty as well.
My options were limited to either freaking out or waiting patiently for something to happen. Seeing as they were immortal and could literally be gone forever, my brain seemed to settle for panic.
An idea striking me, I went back up to my bedroom and picked up the discarded paper. I went through quickly and saved them before I forgot, then I dialled Beck's number, thinking he'd be the most likely to answer my call.
He answered on the third ring - called it. Pun intended. "Hey sleepy head," he greeted as he answered the phone.
"I'm not even going to ask how you knew it was me."
"Lucky guess." I could hear his grin through the phone. "You're finally up."
I would bet that he had somehow snagged my phone number when we'd only just met. "Yeah, I am," I replied in annoyance. "And you guys are gone."
He snickered over the phone and I could have sworn I heard an echoing laugh, meaning Rafe was with him. "We had to get out of the house before you knocked us all unconscious in the middle of a brainstorming operation," he explained.
Walking back downstairs, I tried not to groan. "I was leaking again?" I asked.
"Big time!" I heard Rafe shout from the background. "Knocked Kel out in twenty minutes flat!"