by Emma Dawn
Making sure I was comfortable. He slid two finger down through my fold and to the opening of my rather wet center. I bucked upward and he casually swatted my ass cheek which sent a pleasant tingling through my body. He reached up and brushed his fingers over my nipples, increasing the pressure and changing it at the same time. The sensations dipped into an icy cold and then back to warmth, prickling and dancing as he began to swirl his other fingers ‘round and ‘round.
I wanted nothing more than for him to slide into me but I didn’t think he’d give in that easily. But maybe I could make it harder on him.
It took all my concentration to lift my hand and slide it through my wet folds, picking up the moisture I wanted. I locked eyes with Mars as I slid my hand over his cock, thinking about the trembling sensations he was giving me. Wishing I could give him the same experience. He froze as my hand slid to the base of his cock, and I let it glide down farther to cup his balls, rolling them in the palm of my hand.
“Quick study.” He moaned the words as his hips thrust into my hand. I tipped his cock down so that it sat at the opening of my pussy. I wasn’t going to last much longer and I wanted him in me, I wanted to feel all of him. To feel him come inside me as I orgasmed around him. I wanted the currents he’d set loose on my body to run through us both.
He grabbed my thighs and pulled himself into me in a push that had me arching so high that only my head and heels touched the floor. He began to move, slowly, and the pressure on my clit built with each thrust of his.
“Yes.” I wanted to be closer to him, to kiss him again. But I couldn’t help the sensations that were holding me down. I held a hand out to him and he took it, as if knowing what I wanted. Mars helped me so that I sat on him, my body still humming, the orgasm there in the distance but building fast.
“My turn.” I cupped his face and kissed him deep. His arms went around me holding me to him. The currents around my nipples brushed against him and he gave a low growl that was nothing but pure male pleasure. I lifted myself off his cock and then slid back down.
I did it again, and his hands went to my ass, cupping each cheek. He helped me up and down, harder and harder with each thrust as I took control of the rhythm of our movement. My mouth found his as pressure built in me, I could feel it like a freight train ready to take us both out with the power of it.
His hands swept up to my nipples and he removed the invisible clamps. All the sensation flooded back into them with a rush of tingles that sent me over the edge. The magic he’d put on my clit spiked, pushed on me and I screamed my pleasure into his mouth and he took everything I gave him.
I kept riding him hard, even though my orgasm was fading. For two reasons, I could feel him holding back and I could feel a second orgasm coming for me.
I was going to take both, thank you very much.
Chapter Seven
Escaping the Morloosh; Not as Easy as It Sounds
“Stop.”
That single word from Mars could not have cut into me more. Here I was, sitting on his cock, feeling the throb of him inside me, feeling my own orgasm still shattering what was left of my hold and he telling me to stop?
“Why?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Something . . .something just made me say it. Like someone else was inside my head.” He shook his head. “Strange. I only know a few warlocks who can do that.”
I cupped his face with my hands and his violet eyes met mine. “If you don’t want me—”
“I do. I don’t know where that came from.” He urged me to move again, and this time, I kept my hands on his face. Kept my eyes locked on his as he slid toward his own orgasm, as his breath hitched and as his chest heaved. His hands tightened on my ass and a shot of pure electricity zinged through me from his fingertips right to my G-spot. That orgasm that had been waiting in the wings exploded through me, stronger even than the first one. The waves of pleasure had me breathless and . . .sobbing. I was crying? What the hell was wrong with me?
Mars laid me down on the blankets and wrapped us up together in a cocoon of warmth. “Rose, are you okay?”
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I whispered into his chest. His heart was still racing as was my own.
I didn’t know what to make of it because, honestly, I’d never cried during sex before. That was for super emotional girls. I was not that person. I didn’t think.
Or maybe it was just that I’d never been with the right guy. I breathed in the smell of Mars, of the scent that was uniquely him. Yes, that was part of it. Despite only knowing him for a very short time, he felt right in my life. I wouldn’t call it love. I was not so stupid as to think I’d fallen that far, but I could see it becoming love given time. Given more of this.
I buried my head against his chest and let the tears trickle out not bothering to stop them. “Good tears, I think.”
“Is there such a thing?” His whisper held a hint of laughter in it.
I smiled against his skin. “For women, yes.”
“Ah. I didn’t know that.” He tightened his hold on me. “Sleep. And then when we wake, we need to find our way back to the others.”
I closed my eyes and did as he suggested. My body was languorous from the wild ride we’d had, and from the trauma of the day before. I fell into a dozing sleep, only to be awakened a short time later by the sound of snuffling. I sat up. The fire had gone out and the candles had burned down to next to nothing.
The one window had shutters on it and from the other side a shadow cascaded past it. A rather large hulking shadow.
The Morloosh? If I was a betting kind of girl, I would have laid money on the odds that whatever was out there was not our friend.
I put a hand on Mars, shook him gently. He opened his eyes slowly at first and I put a finger to his lips, then pointed to the window. The creature passed by again, gave a grunt, and tapped again on the wood as if asking to come in. Polite for a big stinking monster.
Mars moved to a crouch and slowly, carefully began pulling his clothing on. Why he didn’t just make them slide back onto his body was beyond me.
I moved to stand on the pile of clothes I’d shed what seemed like a lifetime before, and called them up over my legs by sliding my hands on my bare skin. The clothing this time was still the leather and corset, only this time I added fur lining and a cloak all in the same emerald green.
The grunting outside stopped and turned into a low growl.
The wooden door rattled as the claws slid over it.
Mars grabbed my arm and pulled me back so we were against the fireplace. He put his mouth to my ear. “Can you make the fireplace wide enough that we can escape up it? I can’t stop the Morloosh. It eats magic, using it to power itself.”
I turned around. “Sure.” I was sure of no such thing but what other choice did we have? We had to escape the Morloosh and for whatever reason, Mars didn’t think he’d be able to stop it with his magic.
I smoothed my hands over the stone that made up the fireplace, imagining them widening and giving us room to climb out.
The fireplace shook and rumbled and then it was widening under my hands. A stairway would be good too. As I thought it, a narrow stairway wound its way from the bottom of the inside of the fireplace all the way up to the top of the chimney.
“Good girl.” Mars kissed my cheek. “Now go, get up there onto the roof. From there you should see the way back to Ivan and the others.”
I put a hand on his arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“No, I must face him. One last time.”
I tightened my hold on him. “Nope. That’s not happening. The Morloosh can kill warlocks?”
Mars nodded. “They feed off the power.”
“Then leave him a little present,” I said as the door rattled and the Morloosh thumped against it. “Something like what you put on me.”
His eyes widened. “You want me to give the Morloosh an orgasm?”
“It’ll keep him busy don’t you think?”
He rubbed his hands together over and over, creating a ball of electrical current and lust. It was like I could smell it in the air now that I knew what he was doing.
He placed the ball on the blanket we shared, right in front of the fireplace.
“Now, let’s go,” he said.
The door cracked and the Morloosh shot a hand through the opening. White fur and claw tipped fingers that sparkled like some sort of crazy blue nail polish.
I ducked into the newly widened fireplace and started up the steps I’d created. I used hands and feet to hurry myself along and I kept checking to make sure Mars was with me. He was right there, and I knew that no matter what happened, we’d face it together.
I leapt out of the chimney and onto the roof. There was a sound of splintering wood and then a roar of frustration and then . . . a grunt of uncertainty followed by a moan that could only be one thing. Mars grinned at me as he hopped out onto the roof. “Brilliant.”
We had to stand there and listen to the Morloosh enjoy himself, not because we wanted to, but because we needed to find the others. And spotting the pinprick of fire in the swirling snow was harder than I thought it would be.
Panic began to settle around me as the Morloosh began to make the obvious sounds of coming to an end of his pleasure. We had to hurry, we were running out of time.
“There, I see them.” Mars pointed and in the far distance was a curl of light from a campfire.
“Are you sure?”
“I see Ivan pacing in the snow. Well, I’m assuming it’s him because he’s the only one who paces. We must have been gone longer than planned.” He grabbed my hand and we leapt off the edge of the roof into the loose snow.
Without another word, we ran from the house and the Morloosh within it. Hopefully, he’d have a nice little snooze after—the house behind us exploded in a shower of wood and chunks of brick. Nope, I guess not.
“Faster!” Mars pushed me ahead of him. Or he tried to. I clung to him and pulled him with me.
“Together or not at all!” I yelled. Maybe I could change things. It was different, the magic I had here, different than Mars’s so maybe the Morloosh wouldn’t be able to eat it.
Running, I held a hand out behind me and thought about moving the earth, of changing it so the Morloosh couldn’t get to us.
The ground dropped away behind us, in an ever-widening crack that headed straight our way. I saw the Morloosh go down and then the crack continued toward us. “Shit.”
Mars and I redoubled our efforts at getting away, clawing at the snow and the rock, desperate to escaped the chasm I’d created. Yes, I’d stopped the Morloosh but I’d opened a whole other problem. I tried to close it behind me but it was like something was stopping me, something was holding back my ability to manipulate things.
“Go!” Mars shoved me ahead of him, using his magic to lift me and throw me farther from the crack in the earth.
“No!” I screamed the word at him. Screamed as I fell, and so did he. I watched those violet eyes disappear into the crack that I’d opened, and in that last second, I knew he had done it willingly. That he’d do it again to save me.
I hit the ground hard, the snow flowing up and over me like a wave of water. I lay there in the silent tomb I’d been tossed into, and for a moment, I could believe that everything that had just happened had been a dream. That I’d fallen asleep at the wheel. Ended up in a ditch, and that I was in a hospital right now. That when I opened my eyes there would be a fat male nurse with bad breath bent over me asking me how I felt. That I wouldn’t have this gaping hole in my heart that Mars had somehow, impossibly, made in such a brief moment in my life. Wet drops squeezed from my eyes, and I fought them because my tears such a short time ago had been because everything had felt so right, and now . . .now it couldn’t be more wrong.
A hand shot through into my tomb and pulled me out into the darkness of a snowy winter’s night. I stared up at Ivan, his hands that ones that held me upright. I stared into his eyes, horror and grief flooding through me. “I lost him. I lost him and I tried so hard to save him, but it wasn’t enough. Oh. God. It wasn’t enough.” The sobs that caught hold of me, I couldn’t control them.
Ivan didn’t say anything, his hands tightened on my arms for a moment and then he turned me to someone else. Jessop caught me as I fell and he went with me to our knees. I couldn’t stop the tears. Couldn’t stop the grief.
Jessop held me tightly against his chest and he waited until the sobs subsided into hiccups.
“What happened?” Ivan said from across the fire. “Did the Morloosh take him in the crystal cave?”
I sniffed once and turned slowly to face Ivan. “Does it matter how he died? He’s been cast down the rungs of this stupid ladder and now he’s gone.” A trembling hiccup slid out of me.
“It do matter, Rosie,” Liam said. “We can’t tell you why exactly, but it do matter, the manner that he died.”
Between hiccups and more tears, I told them how he wanted to go where he’d died and I led him away to the little survival shed. How the Morloosh had found us there, and how we’d booby trapped it then how we’d run. How I’d changed the ground behind us but it had kept falling and I couldn’t stop it. That it had eaten up the Morloosh and then . . .how Mars had used his magic to send me out of harm’s way and he had fallen.
“You’re sure the Morloosh didn’t take him?” Ivan didn’t seem upset, just confused.
I nodded. “It’s my fault he died.” God. The truth of that cut me through to the core. Jessop held me tighter.
“No, it’s not your fault. You can bend things here. And maybe you started that crevice but—”
“I tried to stop it,” I whispered. “But it was like someone was pushing on what I was doing. So I couldn’t stop it.”
The men all looked at one another, but again it was Ivan who spoke. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “Like when I’ve manipulated things before, the world just flows and bends like clay to my thoughts. This felt like someone else was bending the clay against what I wanted and I wasn’t as strong as him.”
“Him?” Liam asked. “Do you be sure?”
I blinked a couple of times, thinking back to the sensation of running, and trying to close the gap behind us. “Yes, I’m sure it was a him.”
“Then it likely be your father. Gavin,” Liam said. “If he gets to the Chalice ahead of us. Then he could get out.”
“But doesn’t he need guides?” I was so confused; how could this be happening?
The men exchanged a look I knew all too well. I’d seen it more than once on adults when they were trying to keep something from the children in the room. “I am not a child. Spit it the fuck out.”
“The way to the Chalice is opened with every challenge you face,” Torq said. “Think of it like keys unlocking a door. If your father is in hiding. Then he could be literally coming along for the ride, waiting for you to open the way for him, so he can jump over you.”
“And then at the last second, he’d kill her and take her power,” Ivan said. “Torq, did you know her father?”
Torq frowned. “Gavin? Only a little. He was a trainer, but he came in after I went through my training. Mars knew him better, I think.”
I bit my lower lip thinking about what Vincent had said. That I shouldn’t have sex with the men. What if that was why it had all fallen apart? What if that was why Mars had died? What if his death was my fault on more than one account?
I closed my eyes and pressed my hands to them, blocking out the world around me. But all I saw was Mars falling again, tumbling away from me and I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save him.
Now two of my men were gone. I pulled myself up short and sorted through my feelings. Slowly I lowered my hands from my eyes and looked at each of the men remaining at my side. Jessop, Liam, Torq and Ivan. Yes, even Ivan. These were my men, as were Ma
rs and Kessler. Something strengthened inside of me. An inner understanding of the words Mars had spoken. That life was better to be lived to the fullest, to reach for it all.
I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, sensing the world like I’d done with Kessler. There, under all the fear and grief were Kessler’s words and the truth tied to them. “You can save us, Rose. Save me.”
The feeling that perhaps I’d not lost Mars or Kessler settled on me. That perhaps if I were brave enough, strong enough, I would find a way to bring them back. I bit my lower lip and stood. I locked my legs so they wouldn’t tremble.
The intuition I had I wasn’t about to share with the men. I wasn’t sure they would understand what it was, or why I would feel that way. I only knew that we had to keep moving forward. That was the only way we would find out who was after me, and if I was lucky, how to bring those we’d lost back to us.
Chapter Eight
Crabs, I Don’t Like Crabs
Ivan, Liam, and Torq stood on the other side of the fire from where Jessop and I were still hanging onto each other. His arm was still around me and I turned to look at him. The other three were speaking in low tones, ignoring us for the moment. Which was perfect for what I was about to suggest.
“Jessop, I think I know what I have to do,” I said.
His normally humor-filled eyes were serious. “And what is that?”
I lowered my voice as Ivan turned toward us, his eyes narrowing. “I have to keep moving forward. I have to face the next challenge before my father—or whoever is following me—has a chance to regain strength.”
“But you need to let yourself deal with the shock of losing Mars—”
I shook my head. “I need the men here to come with me, one by one. To trust that I will find a way to save us all.” The words felt right, and almost like they weren’t my own. My hand rested against his neck and an awareness that I didn’t have before filled me. As if I were looking out at the world through his eyes. And what he saw was a woman he desired very much, one he already admired and wanted to help.