by Eva Chase
My fingers closed against my palm, and Gabriel’s legs locked. Without even thinking, I’d whipped my magic around him.
I yanked my hand back, a cold wave of nausea rolling over me. I’d thrown magic at my consort. I’d tried to restrain him, to trap him.
The tendrils of energy shrank back from Gabriel’s ankles. He looked down at them and then at me, his face blank with shock. He hadn’t really thought I’d go that far.
Neither had I. Spark help me, what was I even doing?
“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice came out ragged and small. I swiped at my tears, and Gabriel’s mouth twisted. For a second, I thought maybe he’d waver. “I won’t force you to stay. Can we please just… talk a little more?”
“I don’t think any amount of talking is going to be enough at this point,” he said. “I’m sorry too, Rose. But I can’t stand by and watch you destroy the woman I loved.”
My chin trembled. I braced one hand against the hood of the car. “Your motorcycle. Your things in the apartment. You’re just going to walk off with nothing?”
His gaze slid to the estate wall and back to me. “They’ve been on your property. You stopped yourself just now, but how do I know whether you could reach me through them, what you might do to me later? No, I think I’m safer like this.”
He turned and set off again, walking down the road with strong brisk strides. My hand, my traitor hand, itched to reel him back to me. How could he leave?
It only took a minute before he disappeared over the top of the first low hill on the way into town. My legs gave. I collapsed against the car, my head dropping into my hands, a sob hitching from my throat.
The three consorts still with me surrounded me in an instant. Seth tipped my head against his shoulder and Kyler slung his arm around me from the other side in a tight hug. Damon spat on the ground in Gabriel’s general direction.
“Good riddance then,” he said. “He ran away once, and he’s running away again. You don’t need a guy like that.”
“We should get into the estate,” Seth said, his voice rough. “We’re vulnerable out here.”
Right. The estate. The protections there. The protections Gabriel no longer had. Would it matter to the Frankfords that he’d declared he didn’t stand with me anymore?
Another sob worked its way up from my chest. I let Kyler draw me into the car. Damon scooted in on the other side and looped his arm around mine. Seth got into the driver’s seat. Gabriel had left the key in the ignition.
Seth pulled up to the gate and tapped the control on the dash to open it. I buried my face in Ky’s chest, clutching Damon’s hand tight, as the car eased up the drive and over to the garage.
What if Gabriel was right? Had I gone too far with Master Courtland? With the decisions I’d made before? I’d just wanted to strike back, to hit them where they weren’t expecting it…
To make them pay. Yes. That was part of the impulse too—the impulse I’d given in to, like he’d said.
“We’re still here, angel,” Damon said. “None of us is going anywhere. We’ve been here since the beginning and we’ll be here until the end. You never have to worry about us.”
“That’s right,” Ky said, kissing my forehead. “I know all you want to do is protect us.”
“What if I did want to hurt them too?” I said. “Has it bothered you, any of the things I’ve done or said?”
He hesitated—not for long, but for long enough that I wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said no.
“I’ve never seen you this angry before,” he said. “I understand why you are, but that doesn’t mean I like seeing it.”
The engine shut off. Time to get out, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to move. The shock and the loss were still reverberating through me.
“Come here, angel,” Damon said, kicking open the door. “We’re going straight to that bedroom of yours, and you’re going to forget you ever had a fifth consort.”
A pained laugh escaped me, but I followed him. Seth got out, his movements stiff. He exchanged a glance with Damon, and he tipped his head as if in acknowledgment. “I’ve got to get my charger so I’ll have my phone ready if there’s any news about my dad. But I’ll be back soon.”
He went to his truck as Damon and Ky walked with me to the manor. Jin appeared in the living room doorway as we came in.
“What the heck happened out there?” he asked, taking us in.
“We’re not talking about it right now,” Damon said fiercely.
Jin backed up a step, holding up his hands. “Hey, okay. I’ll be here if you need me.”
The thought of telling him about Gabriel made me feel twice as wretched. Tomorrow, I could go to him for comfort too. Today… Today Damon clearly wanted me to himself, and I didn’t have it in me to argue.
Damon led me into the master bedroom. He shot a wary glance at Ky following us in, but Ky raised an eyebrow as if in challenge, and Damon must have decided we didn’t need another fight. He shut the door and locked it. Then he pulled off his protective token and his shirt, revealing ripples of muscle from shoulders to six pack. Something stirred inside me beneath the vicious aching.
“I’m yours,” he said, a slight rasp creeping into his voice. “Do whatever the hell you want with me, Rose. Bring your magic out. Push me around. Test my limits. I’ll take it all. I want you to know there’s nothing you can’t do with me. Nothing you can’t show me.”
Just for an instant, desire flared over the hurt. Yes. I wanted to push him, to hold him like I hadn’t let myself hold Gabriel. To let out all that power that had been crying out for me to stop my consort from walking away.
I swiveled my wrist, splaying my fingers with a pulse of my spark, and my magic shoved Damon toward the bed. He caught his balance and grinned, so eagerly any guilt I might have felt about manhandling him melted away. The sense of control leached away at the pain coursing through me.
With another twitch of my fingers, I opened his belt and his jeans at the same time. The second he’d kicked them off, I shoved him again, hard enough to toss him right onto the bed. He landed on the mattress with a chuckle.
“Come and get me.”
Oh, fuck, yes, I was going to. I marched up to him and climbed up, straddling his hips. Then I stopped, looking down at him. My breath came in ragged bursts. Damon gazed up at me with those dark blue eyes, like he could see right inside me. But even I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted here.
Hands came to rest on my sides. Kyler’s. He hitched up my dress to my waist and paused there. I nodded, raising my arms, and he tugged it off me.
“I’m here for you too,” he said, soft but sure. “Always. Whatever you need.”
A shiver ran through me. “Touch me,” I said. “Push me. Make me forget. Just for now. Make me feel something that doesn’t hurt.”
He undid my bra and slid his hands around to cup my breasts with a confidence he hadn’t had a couple months ago when we’d first come together like this. I leaned over Damon and trailed my fingers over his chest. He watched me with languid eyes, his gaze hot enough to burn. Then Kyler pinched my nipples—not too hard, like he was testing my reaction—and I gasped as a much more pleasurable sort of pain shot through me to my core.
“Yes,” I managed to say. “Just like that.”
I stroked my hands back up to Damon’s shoulders and farther to pin his arms in place. Ky kept working over my breasts, kneading and pinching a little harder each time, as I leaned down to kiss my other consort. Damon kissed me back hungrily. His arms flexed as if to reach for me, and I pinned them to the mattress with an extra jolt of magic. My body tingled with the thrill. He must have enjoyed it too, because he groaned against my mouth.
Ky bent to press a kiss to my back with a scrape of teeth that sent an even sharper tingling through me. Sandwiched between the two guys, flooded with heat, I rocked my sex against Damon’s hard-as-steel erection. He let out another groan and bucked up to catch my lips again.
I fu
mbled with his boxers to free his cock. The feel of it, so silky smooth and rigid at the same time, had my panties soaking with arousal. I yanked their thin fabric to the side and lowered myself onto Damon with a stuttered sigh.
It felt so good, being filled by him. So good, the way he thrust up to meet the pace I set. So good, the way Kyler’s hands moved with us, finding every sensitive spot on my upper body and teasing it to the limits between pleasure and pain.
But not good enough. Every time I thought my peak was in sight, it faded away into the distance again. I couldn’t quite let go. Couldn’t quite rock fast enough, absorb enough sensation, to completely drown out the deepening agony echoing through me.
One of my consorts was gone. Really gone, because he’d wanted to leave. Because I’d made him stop loving me.
A lump filled my throat. I tried to ride it out, but my eyes went hot. My inner battle must have shown on my face, because Damon slowed. He shifted his arm, and I let him go so he could touch my cheek.
“Angel…”
I crumpled over him, and he stopped thrusting altogether. His strong arms came around my shoulders while Ky’s softened to hug me around my waist. My breath shook as I fought the tears.
“It’s okay,” Damon said hoarsely. “It’s okay. You don’t have to— I just thought—”
I nodded to show I understood, my forehead brushing his chest. Kyler hugged me tighter and planted a gentle kiss on my spine.
Damon eased to the side, rolling us so we were lying next to each other. Ky snuggled close against my back. I tugged them both closer, wanting to be enveloped by their warmth. Wanting to drown in it so I didn’t have to remember those moments after Gabriel had stopped the car yet again.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered into the space between us. A few tears leaked out with that admission.
“You just keep doing what you were doing,” Damon said. “He’s the one who had a problem.”
“And if you want to try something else, we’ll try something else,” Ky added. “We’re here for you. All of us.”
As if on cue, there came a light rap on the door. Seth’s voice carried through tentatively. “Hey?”
My heart squeezed. There wasn’t any cure for the pain I was feeling, but I knew what I wanted while I rode out this first wave of it.
“Can you tell Jin to come up too?” I called. “I need all of you.” All of them that I could have now.
Damon didn’t protest, just ran his hand over my hair in a soothing gesture. Did he even realize how tender he could be when he wasn’t trying to show how tough he was? I hugged Ky’s arm where it was slung across my chest and nuzzled Damon’s shoulder. One thought pierced through the pain.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, a little more steadily, “but there are too many people depending on me now. Too many people who don’t even know they’re depending on me. I can’t back down now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rose
I woke up foggily, the way you do when you’re fighting off a cold. My eyelids were heavy and a bit sore; there was an ache in my throat and my chest. It took a moment before the memory surged up: Gabriel’s accusations, our argument, the way he’d stormed off.
The bed around me felt empty. A splinter of sharper pain shot through the ache. I rolled over, opening my eyes, and found I wasn’t alone after all.
Kyler scooted closer to me. When I reached for him, he pulled me into his arms. I nestled against him, skin to bare skin, wrapped in his warmth and his faintly minty smell.
“You slept late,” he said. “The other guys got up to grab something to eat. But we didn’t think you should wake up alone.”
“So you volunteered to go hungry?” I said.
He chuckled. “I traded off with Damon. It was hard enough convincing him he wasn’t going to be much comfort if he was starving. How are you doing?”
“You know. Pretty awful.” I swallowed thickly. “But I can’t mope around in bed all day. Not with the Frankfords attacking us like this. Have you heard any news about your dad?”
Ky nodded. “They had to bandage him up pretty good, but he’s coming home with my mom this afternoon. Seth and I will go see them, but we’ll come back here to sleep. All of us want to be here any way you need us.”
They’d said as much last night, but it loosened a fragment of the tension in my chest hearing it again.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I don’t know how to protect everyone. We can’t just move all your parents and everything that matters to you on to the estate. I don’t even know how well I can protect all of the estate grounds… I can lay down spells over the main roads into town that should detect if anyone with magic crosses over. At least that would give us more warning that they’re up to something.”
“But really what we need is to shut the Frankfords and their people down,” Ky said.
“Yeah.” A brief flare of anger seared through me. If I could have just raced into Portland or wherever they were right now and burned them to the ground… But even as I pictured it, my fury faltered with an uneasy twist of my stomach.
I didn’t think I could have gotten away with doing that kind of violence anyway. The Frankfords would be protecting themselves as well as they could. Even making the attempt would probably get me arrested, and who knew what would happen to my consorts and the estate then?
But even if I could have gotten away with it, murdered them without consequence, it was thinking like that, acting like that, that had driven Gabriel away. Could I really blame him for not wanting to be with someone who’d contemplate cold-blooded murder? The real wonder was that the other guys were still here.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight against a fresh flood of tears. “Hey,” Ky murmured. He caressed my hair and kissed my temple. “Any moment I can spare, I’ll be working on this. I’ll go through all the files again. I’ll talk to the witches who came to you and see if they’ve thought of anything else they saw or heard that might help. I know I have to be missing something. Normally I’d have put together some kind of an idea by now.”
“I know how much time you’ve put into this,” I said. “If there’s anything you can figure out, you’ll get there. I’m sure of it.”
“But I want to be sure you’re okay too.” He stroked his hand over my hair to the crook of my jaw. I tipped back my head to seek out his lips.
We kissed long and slow, a tingle of pleasure spreading over my skin. My nipples pebbled where they brushed Ky’s bare chest. My spark fluttered, spreading warmth through my insides in turn.
“You know,” Ky murmured against my mouth, “it was fun playing a little rough last night. But that’s not the kind of lover I prefer to be.”
“Good,” I said softly. “Because I don’t think that’s the kind of lover I need right now anyway.”
He smiled and kissed me again, sure and gentle, his thumb grazing my cheek as if he were mapping the planes of my face. He eased down to mouth the tender skin of my throat, and my breath hitched. I tangled my fingers in his tawny curls as he dipped even lower, nibbling across my collarbone, following the curve of my breast until he could flick his tongue over the tip. I quivered, a whimper working itself from my throat.
He eased me onto my back as he suckled and fondled one side of my chest and then the other, until my nipples were stiff with delight and the rest of me squirming with desire. With a sly grin that suggested great plans, Ky drew farther back, kneeling over me. He kissed my stomach, my belly button, the hollow of my belly just beneath it. His hands slid down my panties and then traced up and down my thighs. I gave a murmur of encouragement and then a gasp as his mouth settled over my core.
My hips arched instinctively, seeking more of the hot sweet pressure of his lips. He swiveled his tongue around my clit until I was panting with the waves of pleasure that rolled through me. My fingers curled into the sheets. My eyelids fluttered, and my gaze caught on Ky’s erection jutting against the fabric of his boxers.
Ready at attention with no one attending to him.
That wouldn’t do. I hooked one finger around his boxers and tugged. He moved his hips toward me, closer when I pulled again. I yanked his boxers down. He groaned with a hot rush of breath over my sex as I sucked the head of his cock into my mouth from below.
At my encouragement, he rocked over me, his lips and tongue having their way with me while his cock bobbed up and down, as deep into the back of my throat as I could take him. I lapped the salty musk from him and moaned as he suckled me harder. My hips started to buck in time with the movement of his mouth.
He dipped a finger inside me as he licked my clit, and that pressure tipped me over the edge. Bliss raced through me with a shudder. My lips clamped around his cock, and Ky came too, a flood of thick salty fluid shooting into my mouth. I swallowed it, coasting on my own quivers of pleasure as he groaned with his.
He kissed my sex one more time and then eased around to cuddle with me. The ache of loss still gripped my chest, but I could offer him a dreamily pleased smile.
“I don’t know why we’ve never tried that before.”
His gray-green eyes gleamed. “Oh, I’m sure there are all sorts of experiments still ahead of us.”
As I nestled against him, an even sharper pang dug between my ribs. An uncertainty I couldn’t shake, even though I’d tried to reassure myself yesterday. I pushed myself back to look Ky in the eyes again.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Do you think I’ve gone too far? Was I too hard on Master Courtland yesterday?”
Ky wet his lips. “Rose… I don’t understand why Gabriel left, but I understand why he was worried. You have seemed angrier, and more ruthless, than I’m used to. Than I like seeing you have to be. But I’m not sure that you don’t have to be that way right now. If you see other ways to fight these people, then I’d be happier, but if that’s the only way, then you have to fight. I’m not going to blame you for that. I promise. We’ve all talked—we all feel the same way.” His tone turned wry. “Well, other than Damon, who thinks it’s about time you got ruthless.”