by Jasmine Walt
He pulls back up, his hot tongue leaving a blazing trail of sensation in its wake as he licks his way back up to my clit. I want to be self-conscious when I realize that I'm bucking into him, angling my hips against his lips to better drink in every sweet sensation. But his eyes are dark with pride and want, heading off my awkwardness in its tracks. I give myself over to the crescendo building inside me with a wordless cry.
His tongue teases me down from the peak, easing off as my nerves flare and tingle with pleasure. But I want more—everything—the orgasm, the shivers, the trembling, spasming muscles, the twitches. I don't want him to back off.
My fingers snarl in his hair harder, refusing to let him back off, and he gasps. My body crests the edge, spots dancing in my eyes as I come hard, my whole body arching, my clit pulsing, and my heart pounding.
Reza straightens, his chin glistening with my arousal and a wicked grin on his face. It's infectious, and between that and the afterglow, it's all I can do to keep the laughs contained in my throat. I'm out of breath, giddy, and begging for him.
“God.” My lips are shaping the words, but I can hardly feel them forming in my mouth. “Please.”
Reza bites his lip, his eyes dancing. “Since you asked so nicely.” He braces himself between my legs, the tip of his cock hovering at my entrance.
It's barely brushing me. It slides against my wetness almost like his tongue was a minute before. I'm writhing, straining to take him into me, even as he keeps himself just out of my reach.
Only when I still my trembling body and look him in the eye does he thrust home, our souls sealed together in that fragile point of contact. I wrap my legs around him to bind him to me, adrift in the soft motion as he begins rocking, holding me to him and impaling me deeper.
I lock my arms around his neck and bury my face against his shoulder. The skin is slightly rough, the remains of his injury, and with my breath trapped against my face, I can almost feel a little of that searing heat.
He's strong, so strong, from his rigid cock flexing inside me to the muscles corded hard as he pumps into me. And with the static tickle in my throat from the power in the air, it's impossible not to remember that just as he shaped this world, he's gonna shape mine, too.
I sink my teeth into his neck for the reaction, though it's only a light nip, and the shapes floating in the air around us shift, reacting to us. The whole world is waiting for his touch, not simply me. I can feel its ripples as his power unfurls inside me, bound by blood and love and lust and pain. He takes my hands, pulling first one, then the other away from his neck. He laces our fingers together on the ground on either side of my head, his touch reverent yet forceful.
In his touch, in this world, is the connection I've been missing, the last piece of the puzzle that can quiet my fears. My world is in his eyes, the way they crinkle when he gasps. It's in his scars and the events that have shaped both of us together. It's in his fingers entwined with mine and our forearms pressed together. Only with each other can we be powerless, because we can rely on each other for protection. And that give-and-take is everything.
His fingers tighten in mine as his thrusts grow more urgent. I spur him on with my heels and push my hands against his to give him more leverage. I won't break if he manhandles me a little, and he knows it, too.
His weight shifts, pushing my hands into the ground harder as he lowers himself to me, his lips grazing my throat, my chest, and then my breasts, his tongue caressing my tightened buds through my dress. I gasp at the fabric's scratch and at his breath caught in it, a tantalizing reminder of what it'll feel like when he pries me out of the fabric and claims me for real.
I can almost taste his lips. Just the thought of his tongue darting against mine leads me back to the way his mouth felt against my sex, leads me to… I don't know, really. I'm torn, incapacitated by the need to experience everything alongside him. The impulse is part impatience and part indecision.
Reza moans, his speed picking up. There's something of the baying hound in it, a wild, reckless cry into the universe. And I'm the only one around to hear it. I'm not used to seeing this side of him; for so long, I bound myself to only see his hard side, the side that could hold me down and tie me up despite his obvious remorse.
But now, I'm determined to see every side of him that I can. I want to watch him study, memorize the way he looks when he's relaxed. I want to watch him sleep and wake him up with a kiss.
He pauses, extricating his hand from mine to palm my breast. I don't want to feel fabric between us. I arch into his touch and slide my hand between us to pull my hemline up. He takes the hint to help me. I miss his hands in mine, but it's worth it when he presses me back to the ground and it's bare skin against bare skin.
I'm drowning in my own senses, filtered through the charged air. As keenly as if I were still in a dog's body, I can smell us, the sweetness and spice of my arousal and his precome. As keenly as if I were blindfolded, I can feel the way the air whispers against my skin, the way his balls slap against me in his eagerness to take me as deeply as possible. I strain to push my knees to the side even more, to expose myself to him even further. Our minds might be along different paths, but they're traveling to the same place. We need the same thing, and we don't need words to say it.
Someone knocks on the door, no doubt coming to see where we wandered off to, and Reza jerks his head to the side to look. Unconsciously, he slips out of me—only for a moment before he returns his attention to our tryst. He repositions himself to take me again, and I caress him, trapping his erection between my caressing palm and my slick sex. He thrusts to slide against me, urging me higher. My fingers are coated in my own arousal, and he slips against me effortlessly. I gasp, bucking my hips into him, and our mutual pace accelerates. I shut my eyes to blot out the fireworks in the sky. I'd rather see nothing but him. Feel nothing but him. His moan startles my eyes open. Automatically, I find his gaze, my whole body trembling at the possessive need in how he looks at me. I arch my back to savor his body against mine, and he moans, his fingers tangled in my hair. A hot dash of come streaks across my stomach. His eyes immediately return back to mine and then down. He's breathing hard, and his eyes are wistful to have missed that last moment together. Someone knocks on the door again. “I'm gonna kill whoever it is,” he says.
“I guess that's a hint to move inside then.” I laugh, dryly. And then an idea occurs to me. We might need a break to talk about what just happened, but that doesn't mean we're done.
I dip my finger into the small pool of seed on my stomach and trace it upward, sketching the shape by memory. The sigil he first taught me originally meant welcome, not strictly open. It meant the kind of possession that says you are safe. I will take care of you. Everything we've done for each other.
I can't think of a more fitting thing to wear than my promise to him, shaped and bound with his essence. My finger glides slickly against my skin, though it takes me a few minutes to remember all of its curves. His eyes widen as I complete the sigil. The glow is almost blinding, with our eyes adjusted to see in comparatively little light.
A bashful grin plays across his face as he surveys me, completely naked and covered with that mark. Then he grins and reaches between us, his finger slipping between my legs. It comes back glistening with my arousal. The liquid leaves a glistening trail across his chest as he mirrors me, shaping his sigil confidently.
The knock comes again, louder this time.
Reza passes his hand over my stomach, smearing the sigil and dissipating the glow. I break his, and then as one, we reach for our clothes.
He leads me back inside with a strong arm around my shoulders. Whoever interrupted us didn't wait around that long.
47
Alisa
“Wake up.”
“What?” The words come out muffled. I sit bolt upright, and Reza has his hand over my mouth.
“We're under attack. And we have to be quiet. Follow me. It's Morena, some of the Whirlwind, and one o
f her mutant hounds. Nobody I recognize this time. So far, the barriers are keeping them out. But I'd rather not give them a chance to probe our defenses for weaknesses.”
“Morena? What do you need from me?”
“Two things. I've opened up a path outside. Too small for us, at least in this form. Once we're out there, I need you to erect another barrier for us. Doesn't have to be pretty, just enough to keep hostiles out. I'll do the rest. And just in case, get the hell back to the Well if the casting falls. Under no circumstances should you tangle with Morena yourself.” He remembers my question and clarifies it for me. “Morena's their leader. You'll know her by her scales. She's half dragon, too. She just got a completely different set of skills from the bloodline. Now come on.”
He leads me in the shapeshifting spell, now that I can sketch the sigil myself. It's easier this time. I follow him to a board he pushes out of the way with his snout. I'm sure this path is new, fabricated sometime while I slept.
Suddenly, we emerge into trees along the edge of the Well. Towards the entrance, several Reapers are casting with a woman elegantly dressed standing behind them, obviously their leader. Her neck shimmers with scales. The way they catch the light, even at that distance, is more than a little hypnotizing. Still more creatures stand around, looking bored, no doubt waiting for our defenses to fall for their fun to start.
Reza straightens on two legs, his form already returning to a man's. I'm an instant behind him. I start on the barrier immediately, feeling extra exposed since neither of us have any clothes. I don't have time to form the barrier out of whole cloth, so I simply stretch the Well's barrier around us. When it's done, I nod at him.
“Great,” he says and steps out from the underbrush. It's then that I see what's happening. He's working on some spellwork of his own, a casting requiring some incantation I don't recognize. The earth beneath the Reapers falls away, leaving only the sheer cliff beyond the Well.
Some notice him at the same time others begin to run from the approaching cliff. They bounce off the barrier comically, and he keeps moving forward, pinching the Reapers and the woman leading them between our defenses and a fall of several hundred feet. He leaves them just enough room to stand, but not to turn, then leans his head over the woman's shoulder.
“The fall won't kill you, Morena,” he says through a grin so wide it shades his voice, “but it's a long-ass walk out of the Charyndis. And it's somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand degrees down there. Centigrade.”
“I'm an American,” I deadpan, “so, all I know is that means it's hot.” Really, the centigrade comment is the least confusing bit of that.
He smirks. “Real hot. Hot enough it might kill even you in a different plane. But here…it would just be unpleasant.”
“How unpleasant?” I ask. He glances at me as though surprised to remember I'm still here.
“Cook all the skin off her bones hot. Probably leave her enough meat to keep crawling. And in a few years' time, she might even be able to crawl back up here to one of the exits.”
Morena sighs coldly. “Name your terms.”
“You leave us be. And us includes anyone under my roof. I don't care if they're demonic enemy number one—they stop existing when they cross my threshold.”
Her shoulders shrink.
“Sealed, on pain of death.” He presses his advantage.
She tenses, but she's between a rock and a three-hundred-foot drop into the Charyndis. He draws a sigil in the air, and Morena glares back over her shoulder but completes the mark with her own hand. The sigil burns into the skin of her exposed bicep before disappearing.
Reza reaches through the barrier and pulls her through. “Think peaceful thoughts, fellas, or the magic will knock you right off the cliff.”
“Do it,” Morena says. He pulls them through, one at a time. One bristles at Reza's touch. “Our business is done here,” she snaps at him, then turns to leave.
Something bothers me, but I hold my question until the last of them are gone. “What was that pain of death stuff?” I ask. Reza turns me back toward the gate.
“It's an old spell, some say the oldest…a demonic oath with some teeth to it. We needed such a thing to have any kind of civility at all; it's tough to build a society when everyone operates in shades of gray. The oath takes care of that. If she raises a hand to the Well, her blood will corrode her from the inside out; it's about the most painful death I could imagine, and I've seen some pretty nasty ways to go.”
“And that works.”
“Sometimes too well. The spells can be terribly literal; she could get pretty nasty indigestion just raising our taxes too high. Let's go in; better not tempt fate.”
48
Alisa
Eren greets me with a cup of coffee when I nod at him after walking blearily down to the main floor. “You look like you need it.”
“Just a bit.”
“Up all night?” he asks and then winces. “Never mind. Don't tell me.”
“Yes, but studying. We were testing some variants—it seems to fizzle out after two rooms; we can't stretch it large enough to cover so much as a single floor. And I can't figure out why; there's nothing in the spell that should limit it, and the pool of power it's drawing from is plenty—”
“Don't tell me,” he says and shakes his head. “But after yesterday, you two kids deserve a little rest and relaxation.”
“We were just studying.” Now more than ever, we need the Well's defenses as strong as they can be.
“I only meant the two of you did well. You protected our home.” He puts his hand over mine, and for an instant, I see just a hint of his brother in him before he stuffs it down and goes back to dusting off a glass. “I never had the patience for spellcraft shit. I'm glad Reza's got someone else to talk about it with.”
I take a sip of the coffee, praying its almost magical, energy-giving properties will kick in. “I never figured on myself enjoying it, either. I've never really been big on book learning.”
He hesitates, looking away as though debating his next words. “Everything okay?” I ask, a little unnerved by it.
“Everything's fine. Just—I felt it. The spells were jumping around something fierce. Make him teach you control. Between the two of you, the sky was in flames. I'm not gonna watch that every night, or just before break—”
If only I could peel the blush off my face. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“It's fine. Just work on your casting. I felt it.”
“What?”
“When he bound you to the Mantel. I felt it shift, felt its power redistribute. It was strange.” His jaw clenches, but I can't figure out what about it has him so tense. Certainly, his fixation makes me wonder exactly what it was like, whether I really ought to be blushing to share some weird connection with him, too.
“It was strange,” I mumble, not knowing what else to say.
“There's plenty to go around…more than we could ever use. But it's weird thinking that there's this…thing…that's bonded us since birth that's no longer just ours. When Pops first started training us, knowing his death wasn't too far off, that shaped who we grew into. That power was something that was always just ours, for better and worse…and now it's not. It's yours, too. It's strange watching you two cast together, feeling the power move through you and realizing that this is something final. That it's a piece of my brother that's now no longer mine. It's a stupid bit of jealousy, but it's…lonely.”
“I—I can imagine. But only sort of. I don't have any siblings, and my adoptive mothers, well, they were loving but in a distant sort of way. They were both always so busy at work, so we never really tried to know each other. Sometimes it felt more like I was just a houseguest, and they were making conversation to be good hostesses. One of them was my mom's college roommate for a few semesters, and the other was one of her friend's sisters. I'm grateful for them, and I love them, but I don't think that I've ever felt either of them knew me that way.”
Eren shak
es his head. “I've got better shit to do than envy you guys, but…it's an adjustment.”
I manage a tight smile. I'm not entirely sure what to say, but Eren being on edge with me underscores the little moments when I miss everyone back home. Reza promised to work out a system for me to pass messages to them, and although the new distance hurts, I hope we can slowly close the gap. I miss getting to talk about the shape of our lives with the girls, and even cleaning up Lily's messes and trying to kid-proof the room. The little things I never thought I would. They burn in my gut, and although I know why I made the choice I did, I still wish I hadn't had to choose between Reza and my heritage and them. I still miss the normalcy—going to work, talking makeup, and trading anecdotes with the others before we took our spots for a night go-go dancing.
I'm afraid to talk to half the people in the Well; it's not simply that they look strange, inhuman, really. It's that they act it, too. Not one of them has attempted to flirt or grab my ass, and aside from a few coolly predatory looks, it's like I don't even register on their radars. Gene and Abel don't seem to be social people; I hardly even see them, and the other guests seem too dangerous for me to push my luck.
But with every day learning alongside Reza, I'm getting more confident. Every time the Well's power courses through me, I remember that first kiss with Reza, the feeling that I was home as that magic bled into me. It feels like a part of me now. That magic is still in every kiss, but I'm used to it. It no longer seems as acute, as forceful. It's just as well; I don't think I could keep up otherwise. As it is, our studies are punctuated with frequent breaks when the joy of touch becomes just as vital as the need to learn and act.
My life is strange, without question. But in that strangeness is beauty and a thousand sights I couldn't have imagined. A thousand touches that set my blood on fire. And a purpose that brings out steel I didn't know I had inside me. Maybe that's what I was looking for all along.