Consort of Pain

by Eva Chase

  He yanked my panties down, and I fumbled with the fly of his jeans. Then he was pushing me up against the tree again, hefting my thighs around his hips, his mouth crashing back into mine. The rough bark rasped against the bare skin at the top of my back, but that hint of pain only brought the pleasure of his touch into brighter relief.

  His cock filled me with one hot thrust and a wave of deeper pleasure. I moaned, bucking my hips to meet him. With every stutter of his breath, every caress of his hands, every plunge deeper inside me, magic twined between us even more strongly.

  “My Gabriel,” I murmured. “My consort.”

  He let out a choked sound. “From now until always, Rose.”

  He picked up his pace even more, our bodies coming together at an almost frantic rhythm. His hand closed over my breast with a flick of my nipple through the dress’s fabric, and somehow that was what sent me over the edge.

  Pleasure spiked through my nerves. I cried out, and Gabriel closed his mouth over mine, drinking in my release with a few more jerks of his hips. Then he came too, with a rough gasp. He rocked against me, his rhythm slowing, until we came to a stop braced against the tree, breathing hard, lost in the hazy afterglow of bliss.

  Footsteps whispered over the grass. My other consorts came up around us, touching my shoulder, my face—forming a tighter circle around us. An embrace, all six of us together, as if we were just one body, one being. I leaned my head to the side against Seth’s shoulder, squeezed Jin’s fingers, and slipped my other hand around Gabriel’s neck to keep him close against me.

  It was done. Whatever else the Assembly threw at us, whatever else lay ahead, no one could shake the ties I’d formed with the guys who’d always felt like my destiny.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rose

  “Oh, you absolutely have to try Tilda Carrington’s regencies,” Naomi said between bites of breakfast croissant. “If you like Cadence Marsten, you’ll love Tilda’s stuff.”

  I laughed around my own mouthful of buttery pastry. “Well, how can I say no to a recommendation like that?”

  “And there is one author I’ve read who writes about women with multiple partners… Who was that again? Oh, I’ll have to look through my collection to find it. But maybe that would appeal?” My cousin raised her eyebrows.

  Warmth crept into my cheeks, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking that scenes in those books might give me a little inspiration in certain areas. Inadvertently, my gaze drifted to the guys sitting around the table with us.

  Kyler had clearly been listening in. He met my gaze with a grin. “You know I’m always a fan of research.”

  Damon’s head jerked up over the heap of bacon he’d been inhaling. “What are we researching now?” he demanded.

  Ky opened his mouth to answer, and the doorbell rang, followed almost immediately by a sharp rapping. I stiffened in my seat, and all five of my consorts tensed. Naomi’s brow creased for the few seconds before a muffled but strident voice carried through the door and down the hall with the knocking.

  “Ginny? We need to speak immediately.”

  “That’s Aunt Irene,” Naomi said to me under her breath. “She’s not very good at taking no for an answer. Or things like calling ahead rather than showing up unannounced.”

  My shoulders came down, but my pulse was still skittering. “Should we be worried about her? She wouldn’t turn us over to the Assembly, would she?”

  “I don’t think so,” Naomi said. “She’s a bit of a hardass, but she’s not, like, malicious. She’d never do anything to hurt the family. And I know she was wrapped up in the case with Grandma and Gramps when they were trying to reach out to your mom and then investigate her death. I’ve heard her and Mom talking about it a few times. She definitely didn’t like your dad at all.”

  Aunt Ginny had obviously heard her sister’s call. Footsteps pattered down the hall. The door sighed open. Whatever she said to Aunt Irene, it was too quiet for us to make out all the way over in the breakfast room.

  “They called me right up,” Irene replied, her voice even harder to ignore now that there wasn’t a door between her and us toning it down. “Wanted to know about Rose—said she might have come to see us, that she might have several unsparked men with her?” She sounded incredulous and either impressed or horrified. It was hard to tell which. I had a bad feeling I knew who “they” were, though. Our enemies hadn’t been totally convinced we’d left the city if they were still poking around here.

  The conversation continued at more of a hush. I set down the rest of my croissant, no longer hungry. The pastry’s sweetness had soured in my mouth.

  Gabriel reached over and set his hand over mine. Meeting my newest consort’s gaze, absorbing the reassurance of his touch, my nerves settled a little.

  Whatever happened, we were in this together. Completely, now.

  A moment later, an imperious woman swept into the room with Aunt Ginny at her heels. My mother’s older sister—because who else could this woman be—radiated an air of authority from where her gray-streaked black hair was pulled into a twist on the top of her head to the buckles of her loafers. She fixed her eyes, the same dark green as mine and my mother’s, on me in an instant.

  “So, she is here,” she said, and took in the rest of the figures around the table too. “And the men too.”

  My heart thumped faster, but I pushed myself to my feet and pasted a smile onto my face. “Aunt Irene? It’s so good to finally meet you. And to be able to introduce you to my consorts.”

  Irene’s eyebrows arched. She gave me a crooked smile in return. “Alora’s Rose. What strange things you’ve gotten yourself into out there on the west coast. It appears we have a lot to talk about.”

  When I’d finished telling Aunt Irene my story, she just looked at me for longer than felt completely comfortable. We’d moved into the living room, ending up in almost the same positions as when I’d given this account to Aunt Ginny’s family yesterday, except only Aunt Ginny and Naomi had joined the Levesque side of the room this time. Naomi had given me supported nods while I’d been talking. It had been a little easier the second time, as intimidating as my older aunt was.

  “We’ve seen signs of it ourselves, haven’t we?” Aunt Ginny spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since Rose told me all this—there was Helen Osler, the way she got quieter during that first year of her marriage, and she faded out of the get-togethers with the rest of us… We thought she was just wrapped up in her new life, but maybe it wasn’t a good sort of wrapped up. I haven’t even heard from her in years now.”

  “And Rhiannon Wells,” Irene said, her face drawn. “I have to wonder about her too. There was something about the consort she ended up with… I talked to her once after the move, and something in her voice…” She shook her head. “But that isn’t the most important matter of the moment. The most important matter is that you’re harboring six people the Assembly has named as criminals, even if most of the members don’t have the full story. They already suspect Rose might be here.”

  “You said you got a call,” I ventured.

  She didn’t seem bothered by my admitting I’d listened in on that conversation. Maybe she realized it was hard to expect anyone not to, at the volume she liked to talk.

  “A representative from the Justice division wanted to make me aware of the ‘situation’ and find out if you’d been in contact,” she said. “I told her you hadn’t, naturally, because you hadn’t. But I’m sure this is the next place they’ll be checking. I’m surprised they haven’t already given you a call.” She glanced at her sister.

  “They must have assumed you’d know all there is to know about the goings-on in the Levesque family,” Aunt Ginny said with a slightly teasing note in her voice. “Owen, Greg, and the girls know not to mention anything outside this house. We’ve been careful.”

  “But if we know witches who might have had their magic bound like Rose’s father tried to do with hers,” Naomi said. “If
it could be happening to other witches, witches my age who are just preparing to get consorted now—we have to stand up to them, don’t we? What if one of these predators sucked in Stella?”

  Ginny’s jaw tightened. Of course she was worried about her younger daughter.

  Irene let out a huff. From what I’d gathered, her only daughter was twenty-nine and already long consorted, and I supposed she didn’t need to worry about her son, who was twenty-one, getting tied up in some sort of trap.

  “You haven’t had many opportunities to go against the Assembly,” she said to my cousin. “I watched everything your grandparents went through for Alora—and it all came to nothing. If you go after the Assembly and you don’t have an absolutely solid case, you’re as likely to be crushed as anything. Your grandfather lost half of his business clients over that matter. We nearly lost the estate, with that sudden drop in income.”

  “I’m not asking you to fight for me,” I said. “We just needed somewhere to take shelter while we prepared for whatever we’re going to do next. And to find out if you had any proof or information we could use.”

  “We don’t have a whole lot of choice about what we do,” Seth put in. “Either we fight, or we let them take us. And the second option probably ends with us all dead.”

  Damon had his arms crossed over his chest, his expression wary. “Yeah. They brought the fight to us. We didn’t ask for it.”

  “You simply being here implicates us, you know,” Aunt Irene said to me, ignoring the guys.

  “She’s our niece,” Aunt Ginny protested. “We owe her at least this much.”

  “We don’t even know the girl.” Irene looked at me. “I’m just stating the facts. You dropped into our lives out of nowhere.”

  My stomach balled into a knot, but I managed to nod. “I understand. I wish I hadn’t needed to impose like this.”

  “It’s fine,” Ginny said. She raised her chin. “You don’t have to get involved, Irene. You didn’t have to come over at all. I kept you out of it because I didn’t think you’d like the risks, and obviously I had the right idea.”

  “The whole family assumes the risk even if you don’t tell me,” Irene said. She sighed, looking weary for a fleeting moment before she raised her chin again. “Here we are now. Let’s see what we can make of this muddle. Rose, perhaps you can—”

  A new ring of the doorbell cut her off. We all glanced at each other. “Are you expecting anyone?” Irene asked Ginny.

  My younger aunt shook her head. “And you’re already here, so that eliminates the usual random visitor.”

  Irene glowered at her. Naomi got to her feet. “Well, we’d better answer it.”

  Ginny sucked in a breath. She motioned to her daughter. “We can’t take any chances. Take Rose and her consorts upstairs—show them the trap door to the attic. If you have to hide anywhere, that’s the best place. There’s a dormer that’ll let you out onto the roof if it comes to that. And Naomi, you can run interference to give them time if anyone comes upstairs.”

  “You’re assuming it’s the Assembly,” Naomi said.

  “I just know it could be. Go on.”

  She hustled toward the front hall as the six of us hurried after my cousin up the stairs. Naomi opened the door to what I took to be Aunt Ginny and Uncle Owen’s master bedroom. At the back of the walk-in closet, a small square was etched in the ceiling.

  “You have to pull over the chest and climb up on it to get up there,” Naomi said. She grasped the edge of the chest and tugged. “Here, I’ll get it in place now. Stella and I used to goof around up there as kids. Not much to see except a few pieces of old furniture and some boxes of stuff we never use.” She looked at me, her eyes worried. “You’ll be okay?”

  “We don’t even know if it’s someone looking for us at the door,” I said, but my gut was still tight.

  “I guess we’d better find out. We might be able to hear them from the landing. But as soon as it sounds like they might come up, you’d better head for the attic. Come on.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Seth

  We sat in a cluster near the top of the stairs, ears perked as voices carried from the first floor.

  “Well, it’s certainly a surprise to be having a couple members of the Assembly dropping by out of the blue,” Rose’s Aunt Ginny was saying with a quick laugh I was relieved to hear didn’t sound forced.

  She was purposefully calling attention to her visitors’ status for our benefit, I realized. Knowing we were probably listening in to determine the danger. A flicker of gratitude slipped through me. I hadn’t been all that impressed by Rose’s witching society so far, but this part of her family seemed like good people.

  “I apologize for the intrusion,” a male voice said in return. Rose stiffened beside me. I recognized it too. It was the man who’d confronted us in Manhattan, the one with the beakish nose and the red-brown hair, for the “parlay” that had quickly devolved into a gun fight thanks to Damon.

  Well, and thanks to the Assembly guy too. Maybe I wasn’t keen on Damon’s over-the-top methods, but I could see why he’d felt he needed to act.

  We all did whatever we could to protect Rose in our own ways.

  All six of us and Rose’s cousin Naomi kept our lips tightly shut as the voices traveled from the hall into one of the side rooms below. “I’m afraid it’s a bit of a delicate matter,” the Assembly guy was saying. “I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

  “We’d just finished up breakfast anyway,” Ginny said. “Did you need to speak to Owen too? He’s about to head into the office.”

  “No, no, that’s all right. I see your sister has come over. Perhaps she’s already informed you of some of our concerns. I also wanted to ask you about a major magicking we noticed emanating from your property last night.”

  Naomi’s mouth tightened. “Don’t worry,” she murmured to Rose. “Mom already thought of a thorough explanation for the spell we cast to stop them from noticing your magicking.” But a thread of worry wove through her words.

  “Should we go up into the attic?” Rose asked.

  Naomi shook her head. “Let’s wait and see how this goes. If they really do just want to talk, no point in making a commotion up here.”

  My brother leaned over, his voice pitched low. “Can’t they force your mother and Irene to tell the truth? Isn’t there a spell for that?”

  “They’d need reasonable proof of wrongdoing and an order from the high Assembly court, or they’d be using illegal magic too,” Rose said. “If they were sure Ginny was harboring us, I’m thinking this faction wouldn’t care about that, but it doesn’t sound as if they’re sure at all.”

  “So they’re playing it cautious,” Naomi added. She glanced over at Kyler. “We may not be in the trendy west coast witching crowd, but our family has a long history and plenty of magic to call on. They wouldn’t want to be careless with us.” Even though she still sounded nervous, a fierce sparkle had lit in her eyes.

  The conversation below had faded out, muffled by the walls as they’d moved deeper into the house. I resisted the restless urge to shift my weight. Ginny had indicated there were only two Assembly people here, and at least the guy couldn’t use magic on his own. Though I guessed he might have one of those batons. But even so, if it came down to some kind of fight, we had four powerful witches on our side.

  It wasn’t so much whether we could survive the next hour as how we’d survive if we had to reveal our hand that far. And I knew Rose didn’t want to get her mother’s family in that kind of trouble. She was biting her lip, her fingers worrying at the hem of the blue cotton blouse Naomi had lent her.

  Several minutes passed in that tense silence. Then Ginny called up, “Naomi, Stella, would you mind coming down for a moment? We’ve got a visitor who needs to speak with you.”

  Naomi scrambled up. “Just a second, Mom,” she called back. Then she turned to Rose and patted her pocket with her phone. “I’ll send you an SOS text if you ne
ed to get going. But if you feel safer, you can go up to the attic now. Just make sure you’re quiet about it.”

  Her younger sister emerged from her room down the hall. Naomi ducked her head close as they went to the staircase, presumably filling Stella in on everything she’d missed. Stella’s eyes widened. She nodded and shot a quick smile our way.

  Rose looked around at us, a question in her gaze. Stay here or really go into hiding. I hesitated, not liking either option. The thought of being shut up in the attic with only a dormer window for escape made my skin creep.

  “Let’s pull back into the bedroom,” Gabriel murmured. “Leave the door open so we can still hear if anything major happens.”

  As one being, we got up and eased across the hall to the master bedroom. Rose slipped into the closet and hopped onto the chest so she could push open the trap door. “In case we need to head up there in a hurry,” she said. “Maybe the rest of you should go up ahead—”

  Damon was already shaking his head. “We’re sticking with you, angel.”

  She frowned, but she didn’t press the issue. Her fingers curled into her palms. I wondered how much it bothered her having all that magic in her but feeling it wasn’t safe to use it. She could have sent those Assembly people off in an instant if she’d wanted to. It just wasn’t worth the consequences.

  Her phone vibrated in the pocket of her jeans with a faint hum. Rose flinched and reached for it, waving us toward the closet. Then she let out her breath.

  “They’re leaving the house,” she said. “The Assembly people and my family. Naomi didn’t have time to say why, but she promised she’ll text us when they’re heading back so we know when to be on guard again.”

  As she spoke, the thud of the front door carried from downstairs. I exhaled some of my tension in a rush and reached to pull Rose to me.