Discord (Bound to the Fae Book 1)

by J. Kearston

  Cambria downs the last of her champagne. “For a party, this is rather dull, Luce.”

  “Come on,” Dorian offers, “let’s go see what they have to snack on here. I know how you adore anything free, even if it’s disgusting.”

  Cambria laughs as Atlas wraps an arm around her waist, the three of them walking off. “Your slightly rude, completely accurate statements don’t affect me, Mr. Grey. Why would I pay for dinner if there’s a free option? Hey wait!” she suddenly exclaims. “You owe us dinner too!”

  Dorian grins cheekily. “Why do you think I scored myself an invite as Luce’s plus one? I’m treating my family out to a fancy night on the town, ow!” he yelps as Atlas smacks the back of his head.

  “Cheap bastard,” he accuses as they fade into the crowd.

  I spend the next hour and a half mingling, making small talk and counting down the moments until we can politely excuse ourselves to go home for the night. It’s been torture being pulled into conversations of investments and the stock market when a flash of purple keeps catching my eye.

  Typically, I look at these events as nothing more than chores, but tonight I look at it as my greatest trial of restraint.

  When the soft sounds of the grand piano in the corner start to resonate around the room, I cut off mid conversation. Not even bothering to excuse myself, I make my way to where I can see better, Cambria sitting next to Atlas and showing him a basic few keys to repeat while she starts in on the higher notes.

  Her fingers soar across the keys, her cheeks flushed so I assume she’s had several more drinks since we parted ways. With expert skill, she throws herself into the song, eyes closed and playing from memory alone.

  Atlas struggles to keep up, but even that doesn’t deflect away from how captivating she’s become. Soon, he stops trying all together and turns so he can watch her in awe, becoming just as mesmerized as the rest of us as the music continues to build.

  Shit.

  Hastily, I fumble the pair of earplugs out of my pocket and into my ears that I’ve taken to carrying around since the second time in the club, knowing they’d come in handy with her around. It started as a way to protect myself, to make sure she couldn’t use her abilities to persuade and manipulate us. Then it just became habit, even after it was clear that she didn’t have to use any special abilities to manipulate me; she had me wrapped around her finger and just needed to ask.

  I make my way through the still bodies, eyes glazed and staring at her, transfixed. Pulling Atlas from his seat, I steal his place and brush my arm against hers to get her attention.

  My fingers find their place on the keys as I set in as the counterpart. I’m in nowhere near the same league she is, but I can hold myself well enough that I don’t make an idiot of myself.

  “You’re coming on a little strong here, love.” I speak low under my breath.

  My fingers never still, nor do hers as she blinks a few times, shaking her head. “Fuck.”

  The corner of my lip twitches as I fight a smile at the infuriatingly charming girl. “You’re alright, just start dialing it back gradually.”

  She does so, lessening the magic she’s pouring into the air slowly. It takes nothing away from her skill, leaving people just as captivated, but entranced of their own merit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you could play?” she asks, and my amusement grows, feeling lighter and less stressed.

  “You never asked.” We play a little longer before I admit, “It’s been years, and like you, I don’t have the fondest memories attached to it. I’m surprised you’re even up here playing.”

  She doesn’t falter, even turning her attention away from the keys and onto the side of my face. I’m not nearly as confident, keeping my eyes downcast.

  “On the contrary. Music is the one thing they can’t take away from me no matter how hard they try,” she states adamantly, her voice clear and steady despite the heavy buzz she’s feeling.

  I lick my lips, being careful not to make a mistake on the complicated crescendo. “You’re something else, Cambria Alina Lark. Every time I think I have you figured out, you say something like that and make me question everything.”

  Even she refocuses on the keys during this section, the two of us unable to speak as we push ourselves harder, faster. The music swells, and I lose track of our conversation, caught up in the music just as much as her now.

  A line of sweat trickles down my temple as we finish. She managed to draw back her abilities completely and the room wastes no time breaking into applause and excited chattering, but she doesn’t give them a moment’s notice.

  She pivots in her seat to face me, chest rising and falling rapidly with her quick breaths. “Whatever may have happened, I’m glad you decided to play again. I’m not going to pry; it’d be hypocritical of me after everything, but I’m here if you ever want to talk about it.”

  I groan, suppressing the urge to kiss her and undermine an entire night’s worth of effort. “You, breed-who-must-not-be-named, are without a doubt the biggest challenge I’ve come across in my thirty-one years on this earth.”

  She gasps melodramatically, getting to her feet. “Lie all you want, but Dorian’s rubbed off on you.”

  I grab a glass of water from a waitress. “If you’ll recall, it’s Atlas that mocks his obsession with anime and manga; anything he constitutes as ‘nerd’ stuff. Not me. Though this, on the other hand, was a popular movie reference. Who do you think raised him?”

  Her grin splits her face as Atlas returns to steal his date back for the evening. She rises on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek and the two leave smiling, dancing to the gentle music now flowing through the intercom system someone was inspired to utilize.

  Cambria changed the tone of the entire event with just that one act, and everyone is enjoying themselves far more than they were before. The terse business deals give way to laughter and the sniping is replaced with humorous anecdotes.

  If only she could see herself the way the rest of the world does instead of the way she was trained to.

  Chapter 19

  Dorian

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did,” Cambria replies seriously.

  I shake my head in disbelief. “How did you know?”

  Cambria crawls up the bed towards me with a sly smirk. Lucien and Atlas are already gone for the day and it’s Nick’s turn to watch the shop, so I get the whole day to do whatever I want with Cambria. And there are many, many things I’d like to do right about now.

  “Lucien’s diary,” she quips as her hands settle on my chest.

  I grip her hips as she straddles me, trying to slow her rocking or speed her up, I’m not exactly sure. I don’t want to embarrass myself here, but fuck, she feels good and we’re not even naked yet.

  “He doesn’t have a diary,” I argue a minute later, when I remember we’re in the middle of a conversation. Hard to think when all the blood once in my brain has bigger priorities right now.

  She winks. “But he has loose lips if you get him drinking. Same thing. And he let slip your obsession with this fandom, so I went shopping.”

  It’s a sexier version of the recognizable red dress, but unmistakable. Her hair is twisted into two long braids, now blonde, and chains are wrapped around her arms.

  “I can’t believe you dyed your hair,” I breathe, incredulous.

  She waves me off. “Temporary, it’ll wash out.”

  Grinding myself against her, I arch my hips. “I can’t believe you went that far though. Where did you even get replica chains of this quality? The ends are actually sharp enough to do some damage, not that fake-”

  She puts a hand over my mouth. “If you guys are all in, then so am I. You do so much for me so let me do something for you, okay? Now, are you going to keep talking or are we going to put these chains to good use?”

  I rumble my approval, brushing aside her hand to kiss her. She trails her palms over my chest and up my arms before tethering one of my wrists to the bed
post, followed by the other. They don’t have the same restraint as rope would, so I could easily slip out if I needed to, but that’s the farthest thing from my mind. I doubt rabid bulls could pull me away if they tried.

  She kisses a trail down my chest, licking along the edge of my boxers as she slowly hooks her fingers in the waistband. I lift my hips as she tugs them off and casts them aside, my dick as hard as the steel chains digging into my wrists.

  A flick of her tongue across the tip of my cock has me jerking and when she swallows me down, I nearly come right then and there. I grit my teeth as she palms the base, stroking and sucking slowly, like she has all the time in the world.

  “Oh hell, gorgeous, if you keep that up you won’t get any fun out of this.”

  She hums and my eyes practically roll into the back of my head. “On the contrary, I’m getting plenty of enjoyment out of this already.”

  Despite her words she lets up, rolling a condom on before straddling my hips. She skipped the underwear, and as she grabs my cock to tease along her slit, I can feel the truth in her words. She’s already so wet, and with a flex of my hips as she guides my length, I bury myself inside of her.

  She gasps softly, shifting to find a more comfortable angle. I strain to remain in place as she adjusts, but I shouldn’t have worried. She starts riding me a moment later and I wrap my hands around the chains, gripping them tightly. Her motions are slow at first until she finds a good rhythm and then she picks up speed, one hand on my thigh behind her and the other on my stomach.

  “Fuck, I want to touch you,” I groan, straining against my restraints, wanting to work her clit, to be that final thing to tip her over the edge.

  “You can take point next time,” she breathes. “Consider this an early birthday gift.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek as I try to hold back, to last as long as possible, but she’s making it a damn challenge. One of her hands disappears beneath her skirt, brushing against me as she starts toying with herself. When she starts tightening around me, so close, she leans down and bites at the bend of my shoulder beside my neck. I curse as I start coming, and never once does she slow. She draws out the blissful feeling, and by the end I’m a shuddering mess of hypersensitive nerves.

  “Fuck, Cambria,” I mutter, not sure if I mean it as praise or a plea. Either way, I refuse to close my eyes and miss a single moment of this sight despite how worn out I suddenly am.

  “Maybe later,” she winks. “But this was about me wanting to do something for you, no strings attached.”

  She rocks her hips again before climbing off of me, untangling the chains and tucking them under my bed.

  “That was without a doubt the best wakeup call I’ve ever experienced.”

  Now free, I take her face in both of my hands and kiss her, hard. Her palms settle on my chest and we stay that way for a moment, just enjoying the brief respite from our lives lately and all of the heavy revelations that have come with it.

  “I did get you one more thing, but you can’t have it until later,” she adds with an ominous smirk.

  I kiss her once more before getting dressed. She stays in the outfit while she cleans the house, and it’s all I can do to let her work instead of bending her over the arm of the couch like I’ve been envisioning all morning.

  So instead, I try to focus on something productive. Despite it being my day off, when you own a business, a part of your head is always at work. I sit in the living room and look over the inventory lists to see what’s currently trending as a hot seller, cross checking prices of different suppliers to see where I can get the best deals. I also browse forums and chat rooms, looking for a trend of anything up and coming I can get ahead of.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket and I answer it, sighing when I see the name. “Yeah?”

  “D? You’ve got to get down here man, we’ve got a problem,” Nick says on the other side of the line, breathless.

  I set aside my notebook on the coffee table, a sinking feeling in my stomach. “What’s going on?”

  “A pipe burst or something in the customer bathroom and the place is starting to flood,” he replies.

  “Shit!”

  Hanging up, I jump to my feet, calling for Cambria and scrambling to get my shoes on. I’m just about to race out the door when I remember Luce’s warning and look back at my sweet little fae.

  “You’re going to need to change before we can leave, because if you show up looking like that right now, you’ll incite a riot,” I tell her honestly.

  She snorts before heading back to her room to throw on jean shorts and one of Atlas’ band shirts. “Better?” she asks, undoing her braids and switching to a ponytail.

  “I’m sure as soon as you walk in, nobody will care about the flood anyway,” I answer honestly, laughing, “but thanks for humoring me. I would never let anyone do something, but there’s a stupid guy part of me that wants to be the only one to see you like that.”

  We get into my car and I race towards work as she taps her fingers on the dashboard like drum sticks. “I kind of like it, if we’re being honest. How possessive the three of you act; it makes me feel wanted. Is that dumb? I know full well you guys wouldn’t stop me from doing something I was determined to do even if you didn’t approve of it, so even Lucien’s controlling demeanor doesn’t bug me like it should after how I grew up.”

  I steal her hand and kiss the back of it. “Not dumb. There is no one set way to look at things. You feel how you feel and there’s no shame in that.” I shrug. “If you spend your entire life worried about living a way everyone approves of, you’ll never be happy and you’ll still never please everyone. Ultimately, you’re the one living it, gorgeous. Do what makes you happy, others be damned.

  “Atlas pretty much signed his life away to Lucien and is far happier for it, even though most of society would balk at the idea. If anyone heard that a twenty-two year old took in a fifteen year old he didn’t know, they would have instantly called him a predator without looking any deeper. But you and I know that’s the farthest thing from the truth.

  “Stop worrying about if it’s okay to feel the way you do. Trust me, Cambria, if something comes up that isn’t working for all of us, we’ll bring it up. Just like I’d hope that you’d talk to us if something was bothering you so we could address the problem rather than suffering in silence. You know why?” I park the car and shut off the engine, turning to face her.

  “Because that’s what a family does?” she guesses and I smile.

  “Exactly. We love each other, more so for our imperfections. Trust yourself, Cambria, and the rest will fall into place.”

  I kiss her briefly before heading into the store and my jaw about hits the floor. It’s far worse than I could have imagined; the entire first level is under two inches of water.

  “You didn’t shut off the water?!” I shout at Nick, and he frowns.

  “Was I supposed to?” he asks with honest confusion.

  Sometimes I forget that he’s only nineteen. Thankfully, he isn’t a total dumbass and managed to clear the bottom shelves of books before they got damaged and stacked them up on a table. I bite my tongue instead of yelling at him. Despite the way I was forced to grow up early, not everyone was.

  “I plugged the fan in in the back to try and keep stuff dry, but it isn’t doing much to help,” Nick adds and I rescind my previous thoughts.

  Some people are just born without common sense.

  Scrubbing a hand down my face, I hurry up and unplug the fan before we end up electrocuted and turn around to find Cambria, but she’s already gone. She comes up from the basement a minute later, shaking her head at Nick.

  “Water’s off, but it’s leaking into the basement.” She walks off towards the bathroom and I stop Nick who was starting to sneak out the front door.

  “Oh fuck no, get your ass back in here. How long was this going on before you called me?”

  He looks sheepish and doesn’t answer.

  “Look, I’m
just going to check the security footage anyway, so you might as well come clean,” I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose and taking slow breaths so I don’t explode.

  Nick refuses to look at me. “You wouldn’t blame me if you saw her.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Do you mean to tell me you were screwing some chick when you were supposed to be working?”

  He swallows and I smack a hand on the counter. “Did you at least lock the front fucking door first?”

  Another bob of his Adam’s apple and I curse as I stomp over to the register, not surprised to only find a few coins in the bottom. I slam the drawer back shut and whip out my phone to call the police.

  This day started out so well, too.

  Cambria calls Atlas to help and between the two of them they manage to get the busted pipe taken care of. All the while I force Nick to stick around to help me mop up while waiting for the police to arrive to take the report. I also put out a call to the insurance agent, dreading the cosmic fuck ton of paperwork I’m about to be buried in. After Nick is done with his statement and admits to turning off the cameras for privacy, I fire his sorry ass and throw him out.

  The rest of the day is a blur of cleaning, salvaging, and phone calls. I lock up that night having to post a sign about being temporarily closed for repairs with a heavy heart, but there isn’t much I can do until all of the insurance agents sign off on the report and get an inspector in to attest it’s safe to reopen. There’s just so much damage I’m not even sure if they’ll allow it without massive renovations.

  “Maybe Luce will hire you as my co-maid,” Cambria tries for humor to pull me out of my depressed state.

  “I don’t think I could pull off the uniform nearly as well as you do,” I reply with half of a sad smile.

  “As household chef then,” she amends and I snort.

  “I think we were all pretty surprised to see that was not one of your many talents.”

  She laughs and steals my hand, mirroring my habit and stroking her thumb across my scar. “It was a valiant effort though.”

  Shaking my head, I pull into the driveway and turn off the car. “You set the dining room on fire. Not even the kitchen. How did you manage that?”