Order of the Akasha: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Complete Series)

by E. M. Moore

  I got up, and we switched positions. Travis got on the stool and I stood behind him, working my fingers into his tired, aching bones. He moaned every time I hit a good spot, so I stayed there working out the kinks until they subsided and I moved on to another part. We were due to have more interviews today but not until a little later. Business was slow for a Monday. We’d only rang up four sales by the time the afternoon hit. Within the next half an hour, Travis would be switching out with Liam, so he could go to his class.

  My hands drifted lower onto Travis’s back. He stood up straight, giving me ample ground to work with. My fingers curled around his hips and he let out a soft groan. This was different from the others. This wasn’t like a painful one he knew would feel good as soon as I sank my fingers into his skin, this one started out feeling good from the start. A smile quirked my lips as my fingers dug in harder, inching closer around his hips to the front. From the side, I saw the muscle working in his jaw as he clamped his mouth shut. He turned, giving me a wry look, but I took it another step further like I usually did. I moved my hands down the v of his hips and out over his thighs.

  “Norah,” he ground out.

  “Yes?” I asked innocently.

  “You know what you’re doing.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re in your shop. A customer could come in.”

  “I know,” I said, my heart trilling a little. “But we’re hidden behind the counter.”

  His legs started to drop open, and I inched closer, almost to the goal spot I had in mind. Travis stiffened, and I caught my lip between my teeth. Unfortunately, the bell rang above the door just then. With a gasp, I pulled my hands back, my heart in my throat.

  Travis let out a sigh, his face about twenty different shades of red, but when we saw who’d come in, we were all business. “Dean?”

  The ever posh, rich witch strode into the store as if he owned the place. He wore a turquoise colored polo shirt over khaki shorts with a pair of boat shoes that looked trendy enough to make him look like he was trying too hard. He looked around the store, giving a casual glance over all the stuff before finding us behind the counter and coming closer. “Is it just you guys?” he asked.

  We nodded.

  He stared at my hands around Travis’s hips, his face pinching. He’d seen me with my hands on all of them lately. I was sure he had questions but because he was brought up with manners, he didn’t ask. That was fine with me. I didn’t feel as if I had to explain my lifestyle choices to anyone, especially Dean Reid.

  “Liam’s not here?” he asked.

  “Not for a little while,” I told him. “Why? What’s up?”

  His face smoothed out a little. “Just curious.”

  I eyed him a little longer this time. He’d told Liam the truth about his parents and how they were childhood friends. I wondered if he wanted to be his friend again, if he wanted to pick things up now that they weren’t in the sandbox anymore or if he was just as content with the way things turned out. If they were as close as he made Liam believe, I couldn’t imagine he’d want to forget it all. They had so much in common. It might even be good for Liam to have him as a friend. He’d be able to understand more about what happened to him and who his parents were.

  “So, what happened yesterday?” Travis asked.

  Dean ran a hand through his hair and for the first time, I realized it wasn’t gelled to perfection like it normally was. He was also pale with shadows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept very well the night before. Welcome to the club, I wanted to say. Looked like we were both having a harsh day of it. At least he probably slept on a nice, soft mattress in a kickass room that was probably decked out in whatever he wanted.

  “Crazy stuff,” Dean said. “I was able to track the djinn a little, but he kept avoiding me. Kept blipping out and showing up somewhere completely different. It was like a game of cat and mouse. He’d lead me somewhere and then leave. I’d pick up the trail once more, only to lose him again.”

  “Well, Randy told you some of the places he went, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I wonder if that’s when I lost him, when he was messing around with you.” He looked at me in earnest. “I really wish I knew what was going on.”

  Travis looked at me and I gave him a slight nod. During our massage sessions, we’d been tossing around ideas and we couldn’t get Jay out of our head. He was the only person that made any sense, even more so now that the djinn had taken a piece of my clothing. If he’d truly done it so he could have easy access via a locator spell, well, who else could it be?

  “Here’s the thing,” Travis said. “We have an idea of who it could be.”

  “Yeah?” Dean asked. He stepped forward, eager to hear what he had to say.

  “If it’s not your father, there’s only one other person that we know of that wants Norah. We don’t know why this person wants Norah, which makes it even more difficult to trace though.”

  “I thought you guys defeated the guy who wanted Norah. Isn’t that what I was helping Ren with?”

  “Yes, and no,” Travis said. “We did take care of him,” he said, careful about what information he gave Dean. “But he wasn’t the one calling the shots. Dupre had someone else above him and we think he’s the one that might be behind all of this now.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense.” Dean shook his head. “My family is the only one that’s supposed to have control over the djinn. How does that come into play?”

  “That’s one of the mysteries, but it has to be linked,” Travis said. “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jay?”

  “No,” Dean said right away. He stood straighter and looked down at the counter. “I haven’t heard that name.”

  “He was working with Dupre.”

  The air in the room thickened. A tingle of awareness started at the base of my spine and worked its way up. It wasn’t until the tail of the familiar peeked out of Dean’s collar that it dawned on me why.

  I gasped, but it was too late.

  Travis stood, moving in front of me, but it wasn’t me Dean was going for. His hand shot forward, full of magic that was hidden behind the counter. Travis careened backwards, knocking into me until we fell as a heap on the floor.

  I winced when I made contact with the tile. That did not feel good on top of all the other aches I had going on that day. I peeked down, noticing Travis’s head on my stomach. I took his shoulders and shook them before whispering, “Travis, Travis.”

  He didn’t move. My stomach lurched. “Travis!”

  Footsteps sauntered around the counter. Looking up into Dean’s face gave me déjà vu. I didn’t know how I didn’t recognize it before. The pale face, the lost eyes. It was like staring at Liam when he had the serpent familiar on him. I pushed at Travis to get my body free. “You know who Jay is, don’t you?”

  A wicked glint started in Dean’s eyes. “Just met him myself. It turns out the djinn was leading me…right to Jay.” Dean wiggled his fingers in the air and then stared at them. “This power is pretty cool.”

  He glared back down, and I threw myself in front of Travis’s unmoving body. Instead of feeling a sharp pain, I felt my shoulders being pulled back by an unseen force and my hands moving together behind my back. I tried to pull my wrists apart, but to no avail. They were fused together. Hard, forceful hands clasped down on my shoulder and he pulled me to my feet. Travis’s head fell off my thigh and fell onto the floor at my feet.

  I stared down at Travis’s unmoving body. “You better not have hurt him.”

  I kicked out, hoping to hit Dean where it would catch him off guard, so I could try to make a run for it, but instantly, my ankles were fused together and I started to tip over. Without having the use of my arms to brace my fall, Dean caught me just before I head-butted the counter.

  “That would’ve hurt,” he said.

  “Fuck you.”

  He pulled me close to him, so close his nose and lips were the only things I saw. “I got to ask,” h
e said, his false voice dripping with curiosity. “Are you sleeping with all of them? Do they know you’re sleeping with all of them? I’m just curious as fuck because I’d love to get in on a little of that action.”

  I screwed up my facial features to seem impartial. This wasn’t Dean Reid. I wasn’t saying the guy wasn’t cocky or full of himself, but he truly wouldn’t be saying these things if it weren’t for the familiar on him. It was the same thing that happened to Liam. Liam did and said things he never would have if it weren’t for the familiar. Dean—the real Dean—had done nothing but help the Order. It was just hard to remember that when my hands and feet were magically tied, and his creepy hands were feeling up my backside under the pretense of helping me walk from the store.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Oh, I agree. Actually, I don’t. I want to jump your bones and I’m used to getting my way.”

  “Don’t,” I said, my voice hard, almost pleading with Dean. If he was still in there somewhere, maybe he could help keep himself under control… unless I completely misjudged him.

  His jaw ticked, and he swallowed hard. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk out of the store before the others get here and then you’re going to get into my car. I’m going to take you to Jay.” I struggled against him and he pulled back on my arm, my shoulder cracking in pain. “You’re going to do that because if you don’t, I’m going to come back here and finish off Travis. You know I can, too. You’ve seen the familiar at work before.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling for the magic in my palms, hoping I could do something to incapacitate Dean so that Travis and I could get the hell out of here and back to headquarters where we’d be protected by ancient, powerful magic.

  Dean burst out into a laugh loud and hard. “Do you think I placed regular magical restraints on you? No. These take all the power you just tried to pull from you and put them back into the restraints itself. Thanks for making them even more powerful. Now, are we ready to leave this store?” He checked his watch. “I imagine the others will be on their way. I believe Liam gets out of class in about five minutes.”

  I stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  “My good friend came back to Salem and you don’t think I keep tabs on him?”

  Part of me knew that to engage with him would be stupid because it was mostly the familiar talking, but I also couldn’t help myself. “You know his schedule? Why didn’t you ever try to talk to him?”

  He pulled at my arms and I shuffled toward the front door. He loosened the leg restraints a little, so I could take regular strides but still felt the pull limiting my range of motion. I had enough just to walk without tripping and falling on my face.

  “I thought I’d made that clear before. My family is on the downhill slope to bad. How in the hell was Liam, who’d come back as a member of the Order, ever going to be my friend? It wasn’t going to happen. My dad had pretty much assured that.”

  I swallowed, suddenly feeling bad for Dean. If familiar-controlled-Dean was telling the truth, he cared about Liam more than he let on.

  “Don’t make a sound once we step outside. You know no one can help you. They’re just normal.” He pushed me out the door and then pulled it closed behind us. I took one more look inside, trying to see Travis. He still hadn’t moved, his feet peeking out from behind the counter exactly as they were when we fell.

  Dean angled me down toward the good restaurants where the historical part of Salem suddenly turned into the commercial part. There was a bank down there and offices. It was also in the opposite direction Gabe and Liam would be coming from. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Like I’m going to tell you. For all I know, you have some freaky way to tell them.”

  “If I can, don’t you think I can end up telling them anyway, whether you tell me now or when we just show up there?”

  He didn’t answer. He kept his face straight ahead. We passed vacationing families on the street and others in suits and dresses for their work day. We even passed other people on the street I could tell were a part of Salem’s witch businesses. Some wore capes or goth makeup. They looked like the quintessential centerpiece to Salem, but none of them knew what was going on here. The reality that was so close. To them, we were just two people walking down the street next to them. He was right about them being useless. I tried to pull on my magic again, but the wrist restraints only cinched tighter. He was right about that too. I was stuck, and he knew it.

  The only thing I could do was hope that when Liam and Gabe got there, they could wake Travis up and find out who had taken me. If there was a way to share where I was going, I didn’t know it. Even if there was, I had no idea where I was headed yet. Not that it mattered. When Dean walked me toward his fancy sports car, he pulled open the passenger side door and helped me sit. After that, he snapped his fingers in front of my face and the world went dark.

  I was alone and going to Jay. The only good thing about it was that I might be able to find out what he wanted with me now. Even though he was stronger, we might be able to take him out like we had with Dupre.

  Maybe.

  Hopefully.

  18

  Travis

  “Fuck.”

  My eyes blinked open. A hand came down hard on my shoulders and shook me. I’d remembered vaguely Norah doing that right before... Norah! My eyes flew open, but instead of seeing her sweet brown eyes, I stared up into Liam’s terrified face.

  I sat up fast, my head spinning. I closed my eyes to try to stop it from happening, but the world tilted and even though my eyes were shut, I felt as if I was in a kaleidoscope. Colors shifted, and the world moved in front of me like it was an earthquake and I was barely holding onto the edge. “Where is she?” I was finally able to get out.

  Liam sat hard on the floor beside me. “I was hoping you would know something about that.”

  I racked my brain trying to think of the last thing I remembered. We were talking to Dean. I got a chest ache and then everything went black. But no, there was more. “Shit. The familiar.”

  Liam’s eyes widened, and true terror swept over him. He knew firsthand what it was like to come up against that thing. “What about it?”

  “The familiar is on Dean.”

  He sucked in a breath. “And he took Norah?”

  With a major case of cotton mouth, I tried to swallow. I looked away from Liam as he took out his cell phone. I was supposed to be watching her. How did I let this happen? Now she was with someone who had the familiar and we didn’t know where she was. Because of me.

  I must have let some or all of that out because Liam spoke up. “It’s not your fault.”

  Fuck that. It was completely my fault. I should’ve been just as paranoid as Randy and not trusted anybody. He sure as fuck didn’t trust Dean, but I had.

  “I’m calling Randy. You call Gabe.”

  My stomach did a mad somersault. Now someone else would know what I let happen. I pulled my cell from my pocket. The screen was cracked. I must’ve landed on it. Thankfully, the thing still worked, it was just a little hard to see. Liam’s conversation with Randy was going about as good as could be expected. He was a raving lunatic when things like this happened. The guy could turn into an ogre in three seconds flat, which was good for us most of the time, but it only served to deepen my guilt. Norah was taken because of me.

  “Hello? Travis?” Gabe asked, a little forcefully. I wasn’t sure how many times he’d tried to answer the phone when my mind was occupied elsewhere.

  “Norah,” I said, my voice cracking.

  There was a pause. “What about her?”

  As soon as I said the words, hot, thick guilt soured my stomach. “Dean came into the shop. He has the familiar on him and now he has Norah.”

  He didn’t ask how I could let that happen, but I knew they were all thinking it.

  “He hit me with some magic,” I said immediately as if that would explain everything away. />
  “I got to go, Coach,” I heard Gabe say. His coach yelled multiple protests, but Gabe ignored him. “I’ll be on the South lawn. Pick me up.”

  He ended the call, and I slowly pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at Liam. He helped me to my feet, and I shifted a little, uncomfortable. My chest still hurt like a bitch. I brought my hand up and rubbed there. “Are you going to be okay?” Liam asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Let’s just get the fuck out there and find her.”

  He walked to the door, and I followed him as steady as I could. When he got there and turned around, I was only halfway through the store, so he slowed up. “We can’t just start searching for her without a good place to start. We’re heading to the Reid’s again and I don’t care if we have to raid the fucking place, we’re looking through his stash of books and we’re also going to get Reid to fucking call that djinn, so we can figure out where she is.”

  All of that sounded like a damn good idea.

  When I got to the door, Liam put a hand on my shoulder and urged me forward. He kept it there as we went for the Jeep. We got a few glances from confused people as we walked down the sidewalk, providing me with proof that I looked a lot worse than I felt, and I felt shitty.

  He helped me into the passenger seat and then sent a text out to Randy. “Telling him to meet us at the South Lawn of SSU. We’ll go in the Jeep from there.”

  I nodded, resting my head against the seatbelt. He turned the keys in the ignition and pulled out into traffic, making a few cars beep in the process. It didn’t faze him, he just kept on about his business, weaving through traffic as if we were in an Indy 500 race and we needed to get to the finish line first. We kind of did, didn’t we? Norah was at stake here.

  Because of me.

  “Is there anything else you remember?” Liam asked.

  My head had started to throb, so I put my fingers on my temples as I thought. “We were asking Dean if he knew about Jay. I think that was the last thing we said before he hit me in the chest with some powerful ass magic. I had no idea Dean was that powerful.”