by Scott, Helen
"Flip over," I said. It wasn't quite an order since we hadn't established any boundary lines or hard limits yet, but it wasn't quite a suggestion either.
Whatever I was worried about vanished as Marcella rolled and thrust that gorgeous plump butt in the air. I widened her knees until her entrance was sitting just in front of me, and I thrust in with one, smooth motion that made her yell out. I held for a moment, letting her adjust to my cock at this angle, and only when she seemed to have caught her breath, did I continue.
My hands sat on either side of her hips, holding her in place, while the force of my thrusts jiggled the flesh there. I wanted to grab it by the handful and squeeze, to spank her until that pale, pursang skin turned a warm pink, but I couldn't do any of that yet. For now, I'd settle for giving her another orgasm. I wanted to feel her come on my cock, those muscular walls repeating the motion I'd felt around my fingers earlier, before I let go.
I leaned down and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her up so she was leaning against me as I moved inside her. One arm braced around her shoulders, while the other traveled down to that sweet pussy and began circling her clit once more. Her walls were trembling around me within moments, and when I nipped at her neck at the same time, it pushed her over the edge that I hadn't realized was so close.
Her release took me by surprise, her core clenching around my cock, while her whole body shook and twitched. The breathy screams and moans of her pleasure seemed to last forever, and that, along with the ferocity with which her orgasm moved through her body, had me thrusting into her harder than I'd intended. The sound of our flesh meeting over and over again, of my balls smacking against her clit as I pounded into her, and her soft sighs of her pleasure, brought me up to the cliff of my own orgasm and threw me over.
My fingers dug into her hips as I held her there, as I felt my cock pulsing and jerking within her. My powers unfurled through my body, and all I could do to relax and not try and stop what was happening. I didn’t have the energy to be concerned with it, not after that orgasm.
Bliss.
That's what it was.
I was in the best post-orgasmic haze of my life.
Recharging had never been so easy or so satisfying, and when I felt the bond snap into being between us, it only made it that much better. Everything felt like it had fallen into place just as it was supposed to.
The power, the unstoppable force that was nature, swept through me, through my bond with Marcella, and through her and out to the other guys as well. It flowed through me like the rush of a great waterfall or the power of a cheetah going after its prey, and it filled each of us up to bursting. It was nature saying thank you for consummating such an incredible bond in its presence.
I pulled out and flopped onto the ground. Marcella followed suit, snuggling into me like a cat. We both stared up at the stars, while the crickets began to chirp and the fireflies began to light up around us. Joy washed through the bond from Marcella like sparkling water or a cool breeze on a hot summer day, and I wanted to relish it, to bask in the completeness that it provided. I sent my joy and tender emotions down the bond to her as best as I could. I knew when it worked because I felt her smile against my chest.
23
Keiran
For a male who walked through dreams on a nightly basis, I rarely experienced my own.
It wasn’t abnormal.
We were creatures of the night, but we used our talents to reconnoiter others. If we dreamed, then there was a reason for it, and that reason rarely boded well.
Except, as I dreamed something that reflected on my life, on my own current situation, I couldn’t find it in me to fret. There was nothing to fear, not when the dream itself revealed nothing frightening.
As I monitored what was happening, I watched Gideon tattooing Marcella, and a curious sensation spread through my chest. Warmth. Love. Affection. They weren’t alien emotions. I’d felt them at some point in my life before now, but they were centered around this one female who brought so much to my world. So much richness and hope, that it was enough to scare me because we’d been taught not to feel. Had been raised to distrust these gentle emotions, but with her? I could no more ignore what she brought to life in me than I could ignore the sight of her beautiful features.
As I peered over the proceedings, I saw he was inking her fingers specifically.
When I saw with what, my lips curved. It figured that her pursang would want permanent etchings on her skin where we were concerned. I’d already discerned how possessive she was yesterday in the van on the way to the pawnshop. I’d never experienced sex like that, and while that fit considering we were her mates, and that sex between a Sixth and her brothers had always been reported as being epic, what had hit me more than anything was the connection that had thrummed to life when Gideon had sealed the bond with her last night.
I’d been sensing his growing discomposure of late. Had felt how drained he’d been, and only when he’d recharged, had I discerned how he’d been leaving himself dangerously short—it explained why he’d been relying on more blood than usual though.
“You like the pain,” Gideon accused, and I tilted my head to the side, wondering what Marcella would say.
“You’re covered in tats. You’re telling me you don’t get a buzz on it.”
While his left eye twitched, he just pursed his lips. “My ink is a tool.”
“Bullshit. It’s more than that.”
He shrugged. “I’d be covered in ink if I wasn’t a druid, sure, but the process is different.”
“How so?”
“This ink will only stain your skin because my blood is in it.”
I watched her shiver. “Ooh, I like the idea of that.”
Gideon laughed. “You’re a kinky little thing, aren’t you?”
She winked. “You love me like that.”
He grabbed her free hand and raised it to his mouth to nip at her fingertips. “I won’t lie. I do.” Within a flash, he was back to concentrating though, his head hovering just above her hand and as I looked, I realized why: the detail was immense. Tiny leaves, each etched with veins so minute, that only his blood and her heritage would preserve the delicacy of the detailing. They were attached to a branch scored with lines, and I realized it was a branch from an olive tree.
“What is it?” she asked, surprising me that she hadn’t picked up on its meaning.
“Do you know what your name means?”
She frowned. “Not exactly.”
He grinned at her frown. “It means warlike.”
“It does?” A huff escaped her. “That bodes well.”
“This is an olive branch,” he soothed her. “With my blood to preserve it, as well as to charge it—”
“What do you mean? ‘Charge’ it?”
“I’m hoping that, with time, you’ll be able to leapfrog off my powers as you do with Keiran and Raven.”
Her brow puckered. “Do we want that?”
“It’s a tool. In our fight, we need all the tools we can get.”
She pondered that. “What fight? In particular, I mean.”
A sigh escaped him. “Against the criminal underbelly, sweets. We’re dealing with situations that are a thousand times worse than what the human cops have to deal with. I’d shield you from it if I could, but I know that isn’t your purpose.”
“I have a feeling Darius won’t agree with you.”
I cocked a brow, surprised that she didn’t sound pissed by the notion. If anything, she sounded like she was purring—perhaps that was why they were called pursangs. I’d never heard anyone purr so much in my damn life. Not that I was complaining.
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Dealing with the worst crimes our people are capable of is going to be our way forward, Marcella. You know that, right?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I guess I was so focused on just getting out of Westbrook that I never really thought about anything other than that, you know?”
“Makes sense.�
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“And then when we were out of that shithole, it was all about evading the council. About making sure they didn’t catch me. Didn’t punish you.” She swallowed, the memory of her fear enough to make my body tighten with rage. “But it doesn’t displease me. That’s, like you said, my purpose. It feels right. Like that’s what I should do.”
“I’m glad. You trained too long and well to let those talents go to waste.” Gideon ran his thumb over her ring finger and I saw the tattoo was complete. “I’ll do mine now. Rub it with that oil to clean it.”
“I thought you needed Bepanthen.”
“Humans do,” he corrected. “We have to care for ours differently. We have to stop your body from healing what it considers a wound.”
The lull of the buzzing tattoo gun seemed to settle both Marcella and I, relaxing us as we sat back and watched as Gideon’s ‘ring’ came to life. It wasn’t as fancy as hers, nor as big.
Marcella’s ran around her finger several times in a pattern that I knew would make sense to Gideon. It would hold some meaning. He had a habit of doing things that followed nature’s pattern which, often enough, revolved around the Fibonacci sequence. It soared from the base of her ring finger, up past her largest knuckle, and halfway toward the next. His had no decoration and was a solid black line. Thick enough to stand out amid the myriad tats on his hands and arms. The lack of decoration was a statement in and of itself—he was claimed.
As he tended to his tattoo, the dream shifted, and I was saddened to see it go. Saddened because the gentle rapport between my brother and my mate disappeared. Sorrowful because I’d felt a peace surge to life as we sat there, quietly comfortable with each other’s silence.
Now?
The living room of the house Darius had rented for us merged into the foyer of an old bank. It was covered in an amber marble that was beyond beautiful and spoke of a different time, another age that lingered in my memories. When minimalism and efficiency hadn’t been the watchwords of every company’s bottom line.
As I stared at the unfolding scene, I tried to picture it, tried to make sense of what was happening.
Even in sleep, I didn’t lose functionality. I remembered that armed bank robberies were the reason we were in Vegas, and that my dream had taken me from that heartwarming scene and connected me to this? Disturbed me in more ways than one.
I could feel my heart pick up in my chest, even if that chest was disjointed to the one currently viewing the bank.
There were about thirty people on the ground. Hands covering their ears or arms shielding their heads, as they tried to stay low, to stay out of the way of the armed men. But what shocked me most was how the robbers were behaving.
Humans had a certain way of maneuvering when they were high on adrenaline. They were edgy, their movements jerky, even if they were accustomed to high-pressure situations. Some, trained and highly experienced soldiers for example, could move as though they were dancing, but it was nothing like how supes behaved. We moved like poetry as we controlled scenarios such as this one.
A bank robbery committed by supernaturals would never include accidental shootings. There’d be no stray bullets that hurt an unsuspecting member of the public. We were aware of everything we monitored. From heartbeats to the change of pace in someone’s breathing.
Certain supes, like Raven, were perfect in bank robberies. They could control someone’s mind, suggest that they open doors for us. Could ensure alarms were never sounded, that no one, not even the police, were aware of a robbery going down.
That meant we were cool and calm in a crisis. Just as these men here were. There was no edginess to their movements, their bodies flowed as they controlled the situation, not that there was much of a situation to control.
There was no alarm blaring, ratcheting up tension. The only thing they had to harness were the staff and the bank’s clients, who’d been unfortunate enough to be on the premises at the wrong place and the wrong time.
The sound of a lock clicking was overly loud in the quiet space, and a woman crossed the threshold and said, “Come on. I opened the safe.”
So it was an inside job.
That fit.
But what didn’t fit was how calm this scene was. The President’s grandson had died from a stray bullet in a similar robbery as this, and that had been believable. Utterly believable. Things like that happened in tense situations. Robbers, under intense strain, had itchy trigger fingers and people were unwittingly caught in the crossfire.
Unease swirled inside me.
The President’s grandson would only have been shot if he’d caused a ruckus, and the way the people on the ground were behaving? One of the robbers, or several of them, was a supe controlling them.
Whatever the hell was going on here, if it was the same set of robbers, their MO was different than what had been reported.
There was the sudden sound of glass shattering, and I turned, and saw that the doors had been barricaded until Cade had tossed something through one of the windows. Only supe strength broke through the reinforced glass.
Within seconds, my Brotherhood and the Enforcer were there. They moved so fast they were blurs, and in the passage of time it took to blink, they’d contained the gunmen, had the weapons with little to no fuss.
That fit if the armed men were humans.
But they weren’t.
I began to feel sick.
In both the dream and in reality.
Had we been lured here?
But why?
That didn’t make sense.
Maker, so much didn’t make sense.
The scene before me, in comparison to my roiling guts, was so calm, it was nuts. How could an armed robbery that had been stopped in its tracks be so quiet?
And then, out of nowhere, someone screamed.
One of my brothers.
I turned, searching through the fog that had suddenly appeared in the dream, the fog that spoke of change coming, and sought my fallen brother. But as I did, the harder I searched, the more I looked, the more aware I became.
I sucked down a sharp breath when I realized I was awake. My skin was wet, the sheets beneath me drenched in sweat.
Running a hand through my hair, I tried to shove away thoughts that this was a premonition. I had them. Rarely. So rarely the last time had been when I’d been a boy and I’d witnessed my uncle’s murder.
I’d reacted like this then. Like I was on the brink of a panic attack.
My heart raced and it pulsed to a thick beat in my ears. Before I could do much more than claw at the sheets to get away from them, the door slammed open and Marcella was there.
“Keiran? What is it? What’s wrong?”
How had she known something was wrong?
I swallowed thickly. “You need a tattoo, Marcella.”
She shoved on the brakes as she approached me, then as she processed what I said, she carried on, not stopping until she was by my side. Her passage through the house had caused a ruckus. I heard doors opening, heard footsteps and grunts and grumbles about being awakened from my brothers.
They followed Marcella’s scent to my room and I didn’t mind. They’d seen me in worse states than this one, but what freaked me the fuck out was how wrecked Darius looked.
“You saw it too?” I whispered.
Marcella snickered, thinking I was speaking to her when my attention was on the disheveled Enforcer hovering in the doorway to my room. “Saw what? That I need a tattoo?” she teased.
“No. I had a premonition.” I could confirm that now that I saw how exhausted Darius looked, how tired he was—he’d shared his abilities with Sight, so I knew I wasn’t talking bullshit. “Darius did too.”
“You need a tattoo,” Darius confirmed, “and, somewhere, we have a leak we need to plug.”
24
Darius
As soon as Cade threw the stone from a nearby decorative flowerbed, through the front door of the bank, I knew we were screwed. This was the premonit
ion I'd had. My gaze darted over to Keiran who was looking a little green around the gills and I knew he recognized it as well. One of my Brotherhood, or possibly even me, was going to get injured in the next few moments and I was fairly sure there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Cade and Raven were the first ones in, with Keir and Gid following behind. Barclay was attached like glue to Marcella's side as they went ahead of me, and I was the last one in. I wanted nothing more than to protect my mate to the best of my ability, but I knew whatever was coming was going to hurt her, and I hated it.
As soon as we were in I watched as the Brotherhood took over. They were barely visible to the human eye with how fast they were moving. It was only because I knew what to look for that I was able to track them. My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for the vision to come to fruition.
Cade grabbed one with a gun that was seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him, making him yelp in surprise, which got all the others to pay attention. Within moments, it was a full on pursang and salsang battle. Us versus them. Just when I thought I couldn't get any more tense, Marcella jumped into the battle.
My mate was lithe and strong, and faster than she had any right to be as she moved through the crowd. I could sense her powers working, but I couldn't see what she was doing. My heart was like a rock in my chest as I began to move toward her. My priority was keeping her safe, and right now she was anything but, since she was so far away from me.
As I wove through the crowd I saw Barclay and Raven were ushering people out through the doors, even though they seemed disinclined to leave the area. Keir and Gideon were handling the other two gunmen, who were a little more difficult to contain now that they knew what we were up to. Within a blink they were subdued, their guns on the floor, and the men on their knees. The only one that was still a threat was the one hiding behind the vault door.
They might be pursang, but they were young. Young enough to do something idiotic like rob a bank, and just old enough to think they could get away with it. I reached Marcella as quickly as I could, and as soon as I was within what I considered a comfortable distance, the little minx grinned at me before gesturing with her hands, and turning the whole place dark.