Elements of Ruin (Hijinks Harem Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  “You wanted to talk? Talk.” I blocked access to the room with my arms folded under my breasts. I was dressed for bed in a pair of purple boy shorts with Lavish printed across the ass, and a tight scoop-necked tank. It was no accident that folding my arms pushed up my cleavage, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t pleased to see his gaze quickly duck down to check out the girls.

  “You're really going to just make me stand here in the hallway like some sort of goat on a spaceship?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes. I had no idea what a goat on a spaceship looked like, but I was more than used to Max—I mean Warden—and his strange cursing.

  “I can't imagine you have much to say. After all, no one has heard from you in ten years despite being your soulmates.” I cocked an eyebrow at him in challenge. “Oh wait. That's not true, is it? You deliberately sought out Dustin, and became secret friends with my bestie—”

  “Ahem!” Britt coughed from behind me.

  “—with my other bestie, knowing full well how much that would hurt me. And for what, Warden? To get back at me for leaving you? Sue me, I was fucking scared. You said you loved me!” Fucking hell, this was a bad idea. Hashing this all out was about to make me cry almost as much as I did when Shannon Noll came second in Australian Idol.

  “Exactly!” he roared back at me. “I said I loved you. My best fucking friend in the world, and you took off in the night like I was some stage five clinger you'd picked up after too many tequilas! Do you have any idea what that did to me? So yeah, I sought out Dusty. You have no idea what it's like to live apart from your bonded mates. No idea how much pain I live with just to try and forget you.”

  “So it's now okay for you to come back into my life because all of a sudden Dusty needs you? Well what about me?! This isn't fair. I've had enough, now I want my share!” I yelled the words at him and there was a long pause while he squinted at me.

  “Babe,” Britt said tentatively from behind me.

  “What!?” I snapped, whirling around to face her.

  “Did you just quote lyrics from Shannon Noll?” Her tone was slightly disgusted. Britt hated Australian country music, and I often made her listen to it on long car trips. Just for fun.

  “No …” I shook my head then paused. Had I?

  “Pretty sure you just quoted What About Me, by that dude who came second on Aussie Idol …” Warden nodded, agreeing with Britt and my temper flared hot again.

  “He was robbed. Guy Sebastian never should have won that season!” I gripped the door and made as if to close it. “I think we're done here, Warden.”

  “We are nowhere near done, Smokey,” he growled, pushing back on the door so I couldn't shut it in his face. Strong bastard. Was it wrong that as he fought against me, my gaze was drawn to his bulging biceps and strong forearms? One of the guys must have given him some clothes to borrow because he was wearing a Professional Pokémon Trainer t-shirt that was about two sizes too small for his muscled chest and fit him like a wet-suit.

  “You know what?” Britt announced, hopping up from the bed we were meant to share, “I think I might pop out and see Aldrich. Leave you two to sort things out …”

  “Britt, no, don't go!” I panicked. Her presence was one of the only things keeping me from ripping that stupid T-shirt clean off Warden's body and licking him all over.

  “Uh ah, I'm not staying to witness whatever is about to happen here … hot as it is … I'm going to go get some nine inch wolf meat in me. Ciao, bitch! Don't kill each other before you fuck!” She slid between us and smacked a kiss on my cheek, then one on Warden's before sashaying her perky butt down the hall.

  Her abrupt departure left me a little stunned, and I relaxed my hold on the door. Warden seized the opportunity, pushing me back a step with his body and slamming the door shut. With him on the inside.

  Fuck.

  “Warden …” I warned, backing up a couple more steps as his intense, furious gaze held mine. “Warden, we're done. You made it perfectly clear you're only here for Dusty. So we have nothing further to discuss.”

  He paused and sighed, letting his muscular shoulders sag for a moment as he looked down at the floor. His pants were like, way too low slung, that gorgeous Adonis belt of muscles showing and making my mouth fill with drool. If I wasn't careful, it was liable to start leaking down the side of my face.

  “All these years, I've wondered if I did something wrong that night. Like, was it my fault you bailed? Made like a tree and fucked off?”

  “Make like a tree and leave is the expression,” I mumbled, but just to be contrary because I knew that I was the one in the fucking wrong here. I hadn't bailed for any real reason in particular, just fear. That was it, plain and simple.

  I was a fucking coward.

  “But now that I'm here,” he continued, lifting his head up and sucking in a long, deep breath. His hazel eyes locked down on mine, and I had to swallow three times just to get my throat to open up enough to breathe. “At least I can hear it from your own lips, that that's not true. I didn't do shit.” He pointed at himself with a single finger and raised his dark brows up. “Not a goddamn thing except fall in love with you.”

  I put my palms up to my ears as Warden ran his fingers through his spiky black hair, mussing up the single red streak as he closed his eyes again. He was pissed at me … but he was also turned on. I could see the hard bulge of his cock inside his sweats. And I could feel my own body answering that call, my skin getting tight, my tongue running across my lower lip, my nipples hardening.

  But … could I have sex with him? Should I have sex with him?

  “You want to fuck me, don't you?” I said and he just laughed, moving over to sit down on the edge of my bed.

  “If I do, will you disappear?” he asked me, picking at the lint on the leg of his borrowed sweats. “Will I wake up and find your side of the bed rumpled and think you've just gone for coffee? Will I have to see that look on Britt's face, that … anguished, twisted look while she apologizes for something you did?”

  “Warden,” I said, because if I kept calling him Max, I'd never be able to move on from that moment. I sat down beside him, but I couldn't make myself reach out and put a hand on his knee. If I did that, I knew the circuit between us would close and the electricity in the room (pun intended) would shock us both. “Every time I get excited or … you know, excited lightning bolts appear out of nowhere. Last time, they incinerated an expensive pair of underwear …”

  “I'll buy you some new ones,” he told me, still not looking in my direction. “Since it's my fault you have this magic in the first place. I wouldn't have slept with you at all if I'd known you were an elemental.” The corner of Warden's mouth twitched a little and he turned to me, the soft golden lamplight falling across his face. I was hit so hard with déjà vu that I almost choked. We'd definitely been here, done this before. “How did you hide it from everyone?”

  “I didn't hide it,” I told him, wondering where Gram was and who she was spying on tonight. I was still a little irked at her for taking down the wards, but at least she'd saved our asses in the end. “My grandmother did.” I paused and licked my lips, glancing away when Warden tried to meet my gaze. “She's a bitch.”

  Oops.

  “Arizona Morgan Smoke!” I heard her growl out from the corner.

  “Witch!” I corrected, but the Freudian slip was over with and my true feelings were sort of dangling in the air like saggy old lady boobs. “She's a witch; she spelled me so nobody would know what I was.”

  “After meeting your biological parents,” he said on the end of a long sigh, “I can see why.”

  A long, awkward pause followed as I tried and failed to use obscene hand gestures to get my grandmother the fuck out of the room.

  “I guess I'll mark you now,” Warden said, like fucking me was some shitty chore he could barely even comprehend the thought of going through with. “I already talked to the guys and they agreed to it—but just this one time.” He sniffled. “Otherwise, Shane was
pretty clear he'd count it as cheating …”

  “Are you … fucking kidding me right now?!” I asked, standing up from the edge of the bed. “You guess you'll mark me?! And you already talked to the boys?! Fuck you, Warden!” I yelled. “I have a say in this, too! And my say is the most important goddamn say.”

  “You don't want to be marked?” he asked, standing up and spinning to face me, poking a single finger against my chest. He came awfully close to my nipple when he did that, but I kind of didn't mind all that much. “Fine! Enjoy getting your new husbands' dicks lit up with stray lightning bolts. Shane's is so big it may as well be a damn lightning rod …” he added under his breath, moving away and walking right through Gram to the bedroom door.

  I grabbed his arm while Gram sat down half-in, and half-out of a nearby chair to watch, folding her legs delicately at the knee and wrapping her fingers around them. She really was a bitch, huh?

  I hadn't exactly planned out what to say to him, so when he spun on me and got in my face, his breath feathering against my lips, I completely lost my shit.

  “What?” Warden growled out, but just barely because I was crushing my lips to his, and he was wrapping his arms around my waist, jerking me so close my tits squashed up against the front of his chest and his dick, well, that kinda squashed up against me, too.

  Warden's tongue slicked across my own, drawing an embarrassingly needy groan from my throat. I sounded like a cat in heat, like literally. A yowling, screeching cat with its bum up in the air, begging to be fucked.

  Yikes.

  I needed to learn how to up my sexy game.

  Warden lifted me up just enough that my feet cleared the floor, tossing me onto the bed and climbing on top of me, my hands shoving their way under his shirt, nails scraping across his back.

  A lightning bolt crashed into the chair Gram was sitting in and made her scream.

  If she hadn't been dead already she would, you know, probably be dead now.

  “Well, I never,” she huffed and popped away before the real fun could start.

  “I've hated you for, like, years,” Warden snarled against my mouth, biting my lower lip hard enough that it almost hurt. And I liked it, too. I almost wanted more. “Fucking despised you.”

  “Ditto,” I whispered, because after I'd run away that night, I had come to my senses and tried to find Warden again, tell him I was sorry, ask him for a second chance … He was the idiot that'd disappeared off the face of the earth. He didn't even have a frigging Facebook page! Like who doesn't have a Facebook in this day and age?!

  I jerked the tight t-shirt over his head and let my hands explore the muscles of the first man I'd ever loved, that I still loved, despite everything. I mean, I hated him, too, but love/hate is the best kind, right?

  Warden kissed his way down my neck and then pushed my shirt up and over my tits, exposing them to the warm air of the bedroom. His mouth closed over one and then the other, like he couldn't decide which nipple he'd rather suck. My fingers tangled in his hair and pushed him lower, encouraging him to put his mouth on my panties.

  When he tugged them down and yanked them off my ankle, I saw his brows go up.

  “Whoa, that's hardcore as fuck. Like a Bengal,” he said with a low whistle, admiring my clit piercing. I was pretty sure he meant like a boss, but whatever. Bengal cats were cool, too. “But I'm definitely not going down on you right now,” he added, looking up at me with a challenging little glare. I wanted to kick it right off his face. “Nah, I'm just gonna fuck you and then I'm gonna leave. How does that sound? Fair?”

  “Shut the hell up before I change my mind,” I snarled, reaching up and curling my fingers around his shoulders, yanking him close and crushing our mouths together again. Warden's right hand cupped my breast with a crushing grip, squeezing hard as he ground his hips into mine.

  Another lightning bolt struck the poor tree in the backyard, but I didn't pay much attention to it. How could I when Warden was shoving his sweats down and freeing his cock. My pelvis lifted up toward him, desperate for more, hungry for an asshole that I knew for a freaking fact was going to leave as soon as we found this Dustin guy.

  Why was I doing this to myself anyway?!

  I tried to pretend it was all magically motivated and crap, but that wasn't true. I think I was more tangled up in heartstrings and feelings. Gross.

  He guided himself to my opening, broke our kiss, and met my eyes.

  And then he thrust me into with a hard, angry surge of his hips.

  “Bat on a butt cheek,” he growled which was probably the weirdest fucking slang I'd ever heard in my life. But then he was moving inside of me, raking his cock along the tight walls of my pussy, stroking pleasure from me with each movement of his body.

  My fingers yanked the hair on the back of his head until he grunted in pain, fighting against my grip to close the distance between our mouths. Our bodies writhed together, just two sweaty, hot pelvises grinding against one another. My shirt wasn't off, just scrunched up over my tits, and he was still wearing his sweats around his knees.

  Didn't matter.

  My fingernails gouged long lines down his back as our mouths clashed together with violent flicks of tongue, drawing apart just long enough to take panting breaths. Warden fucked me like he was out for vengeance, and I didn't care. It ate it up with a spoon, tangling my legs around him and not even caring that when he grabbed my arms and shoved them over my head, that he was holding me too hard, bruising me with his fingertips.

  Sweat poured down both our bodies, making our joining slick and frenzied and wet. It made his muscles shimmer as he moved his hips as hard and fast as he could, ramming into me and making the bed squeak and shake with the movements.

  When he pulled out and flipped me over, taking hold of my hair in one fist and sliding into me from behind, I found myself in violent fucking ecstasy. I came then, with his balls slapping my clit, the pressure on my scalp just this side of too much. I felt him tense up, like he was about ready to climax, too, but he didn't. Instead, he pulled back and sat on his heels, watching me with his pulse thundering, mouth parted as he took long panting breaths.

  I turned back over and nestled into the pillows, watching him.

  “God, I hate you,” he whispered and I bit my lower lip. His voice was rife with anger, but that hate sounded an awful lot like it should be love.

  “I can't stand you,” I growled, and then he moved forward and hovered his body over mine again, biting my lower lip and taking it between his teeth almost hard enough to draw blood. He teased my folds with his shaft, making me whimper and thrust my hips before finally entering me again.

  We fucked and fucked and fucked until finally he seemed to remember what exactly it was he was supposed to be doing there.

  “I forgot the chalice,” he breathed, panting against the side of my neck. “And the athame. Shit, I'm supposed to mark you.”

  We both just lay there staring at one another for a long, quiet moment.

  “If I don't get it, we'll have to do this again,” he said and although he tried to scowl while he talked, he ended up smirking stupidly instead. A tiny bolt of lightning hit the lamp on the side table and plunged us into darkness.

  For another minute, we lay there joined together, and then Warden started to move, these deep, undulating movements of his hips that completely undid me.

  We weren't, uh, fucking so much anymore as … My hands curled around his neck, our kisses slowing, growing more languorous. My ankles crossed together behind his back, pulled him close. He smelled like bubblegum and soda pop, like my past, like … well I think he'd also borrowed some of Gram's old lady shampoo, but it was sort of sexy on him anyway.

  My second climax was slow and messy, but Warden was patient. He finished me off before coming with a slow, sexy groan that almost got me all worked up again.

  When he rolled off to lie next to me, I found myself staring up at the dark shadows on the ceiling with my heart pounding and my stomach twis
ting into knots.

  “Are you really gonna leave?” I whispered, but he didn't respond for a long, long time.

  And then …

  “Not tonight.”

  Before I could figure out how to reply to that, I heard the sound of Warden's garbled snoring.

  It was just about the happiest sound I'd ever heard in my life.

  Britt looked constipated she was having so much trouble holding back. Her face was all squinched up and she kept giggling like a three year old baby with a lollipop.

  “You guys made love,” she said, hunching her shoulders up to her ears and snickering. Reg just happened to be standing nearby and raised his eyebrows.

  “You guys said it was okay,” was my mumbled response as I splashed coffee all over countertops that hadn't been replaced since like 1972. They were the color of avocados and kind of, uh, gross looking. I readjusted the coffee pot and managed to get some in my cup as my cheeks flamed red. Like, the ones on my face. “For me to … you know.”

  “Yeah, no, I'm not mad,” Reg said, stirring his drink and looking at me like he was trying to hold back a smile. “I was never really mad at Warden in the first place. Honestly, I don't see why we can't just drop this nonsense and move the fuck on. I'd rather have him back, to tell ya the truth.”

  “So seeing as you guys made love,” Britt teased again, “instead of the whole marking ceremony, aren't you gonna need to fuck again?”

  “Yes,” Reg answered for me, with a sly smile on his face. “Maybe next time I should join you guys, just in case you forget the ritual again?”

  Before I could respond with what was intended to be a snappy comeback—but probably would have come out as holy shit, hell yes, let's fucking go—the devil himself strode into my kitchen wearing nothing but a tiny towel wrapped around his hips.

  “Fuck Warden, I didn't even know I owned towels that small,” I muttered, pointedly looking at his face and not his practically naked body which was slick with water from the shower.