by Lexi Ostrow
“You’re certain this is the Guardian thing? That all the things I’ve found I like about you, without even getting to know you, aren’t playing a part in this?” As she asked the question a second time, her voice was filled with lust.
He hadn’t laid a hand on her other than her palms, and she could feel her body burning for him to touch her. She used her free hand to tug his pants down, and releasing his cock, she took his cute little white briefs down next.
She watched his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Is there anything else you want to tell me you like about me before your drive me mad?”
She licked her lips as she watched his erection bob just slightly as his hips seemed to quake with need. “I believe I asked you a question first, Dale.”
He growled and dug his hands into her hair, but didn’t pull her to him. Instead, he spun them, pushing her back against the wall, and she whimpered as lust slammed into her hard.
“No, no this is not just the damn connection. You intrigue me, Breena. You’re complex. You’re a puzzle to solve. You’re a warrior, a protector. And yet, you seem to delight in any kill that gets you a tactical advantage over your enemy. You seek out your father’s affection in a way I never did…but wish I had. You’re one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever laid my eyes on, and I can’t even fathom how you can look at me and desire me back. But you do, I can see it in your beautifully speckled eyes. You want to touch me as much as I want you to do it. You care just as little as I do that we don’t even know each other because we both know this isn’t meant to last.”
She sucked in a deep breath and held her gaze on his. His words riled her to the point where she didn’t want to do anything but change his heart and force him to be with her so they could explore their connection together. She smirked at him and ran just the tip of her index finger along his shaft. It seemed to lean toward her, and she loved the strangled moan that pulled from him as she did.
“I think I’m more than ready to see if there’s something else I can like about you, Dale.” She bent at the waist, pushing him back just a bit, and closed her mouth over just the tip of his erection as she swirled her tongue over the tip.
The drip of semen was salty on her tongue, and she slid it over his slit again, to let him know she enjoyed it. His hips were trying to push his cock further into her mouth, and she took a gentle hold on the base of it, controlling how far he was able to slip as she slowly began to suck on him. She was the one who groaned as she took his thick dick further into her mouth.
Up and down, she let her mouth slide and her tongue follow. His hips ground in a circle, and his cock slowly thrust in a circular motion in her mouth. He must have liked it. She felt his entire body tremble as she began to twist her mouth on his length. His hands fisted in her hair, but he never slammed her mouth further down on him, merely used it to speed up her strokes and stop her slow torture.
“Fuck, Breena. I don’t think I can let you do this much longer,” his words were punctuated with deep breaths and pants.
She smiled around him and sucked her cheeks harder. She had no intention of stopping. She needed him to want her, to trust her. Sex was well and good, but she’d found men loved a good blowjob even more. And you’re beyond enjoying the way he’s squirming under your mouth because you want him to want you, simply because you want him as well.
Her mouth began to move up and down him quicker, her teeth gently grazing behind her tongue as it swirled a path as she went. Her hand rubbed where she held his dick as well, and she was lost to the sensation of him deep inside her mouth as his grunts and moans grew louder.
Dale’s hips bucked into her mouth quicker and quicker while his hands pulled on her hair, the sensation sending little jolts through her. He gave one last grunt and buck of his hips before she felt him come in her mouth. She licked away his release and continued to suck him until he was spent. She pulled back, using her thumb to carefully wipe away a little off the corner of her lips, and stood upright, reveling in the utter satisfaction plastered on Dale’s face.
His whole body heaved with the force of his breaths, and his pants were loud in the quiet of the room. He slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her so completely that, when he pulled back, she felt as if he’d touched her in all the right places. Her legs were quivering, and as his finger traveled up her thighs and slipped inside of her, she cried out.
His finger thrust in and out of her, and she couldn’t help as her legs began to shake. With his free hand, he steadied her, and she felt lost in the sensation of being brought to her knees and held up by Dale at the same time. Breena’s head tossed from side to side as he hit the perfect spot with every motion. She didn’t stop her hips as they began to move on his digit. She wanted this, wanted him to know how bad she wanted it.
Her release caught her off guard. Her whole body shook from the force of it, and she screamed, a hoarse cry with no intelligible word. His finger continued to slip in and out of her, and her hips made no attempt to stop riding him, even as her spasms began to slow and the haze of pleasure cleared from her vision.
He let his finger slip out from her folds, and she shuddered again from the sensation, making no move to break the hold he had around her waist. They stood there, him naked from the bottom down and her skirt pushed up, for what seemed like hours. They didn’t say a word, and she watched as the heavy rise and fall of his chest slowed to normal breathing.
Dale broke the silence first. “Do you want it to be more than Guardian bond? What we have I mean?”
The question caught her off guard, and her mouth gaped open, and then closed quickly. Did she? How could he even expect an answer after less than a day’s worth of hours spent together?
“I’m not certain,” she confessed.
His eyes narrowed as he took a step backward. She had the distinct feeling that had been the wrong answer and she didn’t understand why.
“Is it a problem that I’m not comfortable wanting something with you?”
His dark green eyes reflected pools of hurt, and she couldn’t fathom why her honest statement would have undone him so much.
“Because without you wanting more, there’s no way to change who you are.”
His own confession was loud to her ears, and she pulled back, feeling as if he’d struck her. “You still want to change me? To make me something other than the character that called out to you in the first place?”
He paused then, indecision was all over his face, but his voice was stony, “Yes. There is so much more going on than you were told. So much more hanging in the balance than just being powerful.” Dale sunk down onto his bed and groaned as he shoved his hands through his hair.
Breena didn’t want to feel bad for him. She hadn’t asked to be a Guardian, she had merely embraced the opportunity. If he wanted to forsake everything she was, then he was not someone worth protecting, worth fighting for. In fact, if that were the case, it would make it so much easier to do what her father had planned.
It felt impossible to push down the pain she felt at his abject rejection of who she had been written to be, who she honestly felt she was. Especially since she hadn’t always enjoyed the tasks she did for her father, but in time, the killing and torture had given her a rush that nothing else could because it had given her power. They were alike in that way, in their love for power and reasoning why they embraced the dark, but she doubted he would let her share that.
Her arms crossed over her chest, and she narrowed her eyes at him, waiting for him to stop the moping and look at her. “Well then, I think it’s only fair to know all the cards in the deck. For both of us. You tell me you’re not dark, and I tell you I’m not dark. But neither of us is believing the other, which might just mean we are the perfect two halves of a whole after all.”
Dale’s upper lip pulled back as if he was going to snarl, and, for the second time in a short span, she wondered how the lust could be switched on so easily when she also wanted to strangle him.
She could see him searching for the proper word.
“—a condition that occurred. Ciara, the girl’s name you’ve heard me mention, was faced with an impossible choice. To be in love, or to be a Word Speaker. The rules were bent, and we were allowed to interact. She taught me as much as I taught her, even if she never knew it. When the time came, she made her choice, love. Which meant her powers had to be destroyed or given away.”
Nothing he was saying was different from what she’d heard prior, simply a little more detailed. “I’m not hearing anything that explains why you’re so determined to keep me, but alter me.” As the words came out of her mouth, an image of someone erasing a drawing of a sprite came into her mind, and she shook her head in disgust.
She almost wished he would release her back, so she could go back to the ignorance of believing she was her own being. Dale didn’t respond with any anger, his tone stayed level and it frightened her a little. How much control over his temper he had because she could see the fire burning in his expression impressed her He let his arm drop from her waist, and she immediately missed the warmth and protection she’d felt when it was there as he walked to sit back on his bed.
“She picked me. She was as untainted as you could get, despite the cards life had dealt her. When it was time to give her power to someone, the other brother, he let her pick, and she gave them to me. The weight of this war is all on my shoulders. I lost my Guardian about two weeks ago, there is barely a week left until my birthday. If I don’t want to lose the ability to one day world walk to Ciara, then I had to pick a Guardian from three books. I had known from the moment I looked at the cover that the dark haired woman was stunning, and you are. But I’d known the moment I started reading that you weren’t the right match. You delight too much in killing, and in others suffering. I can’t imagine how it could change as the book went further on, but I don’t have a choice. I’m drawn to you, and I’m out of time. Either I’m going to be able to show you that there are other ways to be in control, powerful, without hurting others. Or I’m going to fall prey to everything that makes you dark and betray the people that trusted me.”
Breena stared at the human on the bed, just stared at him as if he wasn’t Dale, rather just someone she had walked past. The whole of him was broken. He was in so many fractured pieces trying to force himself to be something that he wasn’t that she was beginning to realize that Leather Jacket wasn’t wrong, he didn’t belong on the other side of the war. Not if he was beating himself up this much to do it.
“I want it to be more, Dale, but not if you’re going to keep looking at me like I’m the devil. I won’t change what I do for my father, and I think you’re making a mistake with the war you’re a part of—”
“We’re both a part of it now,” he cut her off, and he wasn’t wrong.
“I want to show you want it’s like. To take just a little bit of energy from someone while they sleep. To show you the way it amplifies the powers you already have. Your strength, your elemental magic for certain. If you can do this, you can be an even greater asset because you’ll be stronger. You want to be whatever your definition of good is so damn bad, see what happens when you’re faced with the darkness then. If you’re truly as set in your ways as you want to be, then you’ll have gained more power than you already have and will have a Guardian willing to fight on whatever side you chose.”
She wasn’t lying, not completely. She wanted him on the winning side because she wanted him alive. She would do whatever she could to accidentally unleash the darker craving within because she wanted to keep her family safe, and because she still had to have him trust her enough to help with her own war. Now that she knew her world continued so long as she was his Guardian, there was no need to lock him up, only to gain his help.
He said nothing, his eyes looked down at the floor, and she feared she’d lost him.
“God help me, but okay. If you truly believe there is a way to do this, to fight your way and not kill people simply because they’re in the way, then I will try it. I took a chance for Nessa, and I can do the same for the Guardian I have now. Because I can tell you, I want this to be more than the Guardian bond. Selfish or not, I want to have someone to spend my life with the way other people get too.”
There was absolutely no conviction to his words as he conceded to trying things her way, but she had to do what she was doing for both of their sakes.
Chapter Nine
He snarled as he slashed his hand shut over the viewing window. Things couldn’t have been any more of a mess if they’d deliberately tried to fuck things up. “Give her a choice, let her pick her own destiny.”
His eyes flashed a darker shade of silver, and he narrowed them at absolutely nothing. He’d been a fool to offer Ciara any sort of choice. Word Speakers were meant to fight in a war, not to fall in love with their Guardians and have a fucking existential crisis.
He saw his reflection in the hall mirror, lines of anger were etched so deeply into his face, he almost looked like his brother. His black hair was mussed, and his staple trench coat was half hanging off his shoulders from the fit of rage when he’d watched Breena return to Dale. He raised a finger and shook it at the mirror, a good fifteen feet away.
“This is your entire fucking fault, you know that don’t you?” His lips moving on his reflection was like a mockery. Without warning, he lashed out with a lightning bolt and sent shards of glass exploding outward.
His brother wasn’t anywhere near him, and he could still hear the jackass comment about seven years bad luck. “Too bad I’m already fucking there. Two Guardians, two sets of punishments and two lost soldiers.”
As he talked to himself, he walked to the nearest pile of glass and waved a hand, merging the pieces back together inside the mirror frame as if they’d never been broken at all. “You’d think by now you would have learned to stop fixing broken things.”
Ciara Miller had been broken, torn between her world and her Guardian’s when they’d somehow found out they were soul mates. A concept that still blew his mind, but there was no way to know that the author wouldn’t have written a character just like Ciara when the time had come. Julian Michelson had been broken, fuck, he’d been useless, not just broken. But Dale, Dale had been the one he shouldn’t have helped. Dale hadn’t been broken, he’d had fractures breaking apart who he was, of course, but he’d had a decent enough grip on the boy through a Guardian that was pure hearted.
He’d gone and given him enough power to be the central force in the war, and it had gotten his Guardian replaced with one who belonged more to his brother than she ever would to him.
Breena of the Unseelie was a dark Fae, even if she only did as instructed. She held no remorse in her heart, and within moments, she’d undone his countless efforts with Dale. He’d shut the doorway down the moment clothes had come off, and he knew he needed to check on the pair and see just where they were. He’d taken enough chances with Dale, he could just as easily kill him and take yet another punishment from Huracan.
Without bothering to move, he opened up a doorway that he had no right having access too—Ciara and Stryder. Ciara had given up her powers, but she did not give up what she was, and he would forever check in on her. There would be a day when he would attempt to yank them both from their happily ever after, and in order to do that, he needed to maintain tabs on her. Their world would never be just a book again, a Word Speaker lived in it, and the author had perished in a crash—yet another consequence of his actions, no doubt.
In a moment’s time, the distorted space opened wide to reveal a sprawling grass landscape with both ex-Word Speaker and ex-Guardian lying in the grass together. Though he couldn’t hear them, it was easy enough to see that they were happy, safe and completely unaware of the dangers they’d broug
ht to the war.
His lip curled backward of its own accord as Ciara rolled on top of her mate and began to kiss him. Rage boiled so fast when he went to close the doorway, his nails slashed through the tiny section of space and something unheard of happened.
A hole appeared.
The space revealed a short, dark haired woman slaving over a microscope.
“What in the Hell?” He took a step closer as he was observing the woman diligently work.
There was no mistaking the fundamental thing that was missing from the equation. Her soul didn’t shimmer with the light of a Word Speaker. It was flat, dull and rather lifeless. She was not a book character either. There was no telltale color distortion of the world he was looking at that indicated it, and he could tell, from her soul, that she was decidedly human and very real. He had no business opening a viewing doorway to her.
“So how can I be seeing you?” his voice was filled with awe, and rather than disturb the scene, he took a step back and just watched.
She was diligent in whatever her work was. Her slender hands moved with decided action as she slipped slides in and out of the microscope and twisted knobs as she looked through it. He had no idea what she was—scientist, doctor, lab tech. The possibilities had no bearing to him, but he couldn’t help but respect her precision of craft. Before he’d been granted the life he had, he’d been a skilled weapons crafter for his village, for his brother the hunter as well.
She turned then, and titled her head to the left as she did, letting the short brown cascade of hair slip over her cheek and show him her eyes. He sucked in a breath as the impossible happened. Her chocolate colored eyes locked on his. He watched as her lips parted on a gasp as if she could see him, and he couldn’t seem to look away.
Neither could she.
For what felt like minutes, he stared into the viewing window to a woman who he shouldn’t be able to see, and she stared back. With each second that ticked by, his body began to quicken with desire, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to stop it. Sex was a rarity for him, there could be no connection with someone who couldn’t live forever, and he certainly couldn’t tell his story to anyone. For years, he had dreamed of a Word Speaker that would be strong enough to be able to choose to not have a Guardian, to choose to be with him.