Consort of Fire: A Paranormal Reverse Harem Novel (The Witch's Consorts Book 4)

by Eva Chase

  “Rose,” Seth said softly. He stood as I did and tugged me into his arms. “We’ll get through whatever comes. We’ve made it this far.”

  Jin reached for me next, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’ll paint our way out if I need to,” he said with a wink.

  “You painted us out of a lot of trouble already,” Ky said, coming over. He kissed me gently and squeezed my shoulder. “We’re a good team. We’ve got this.”

  Damon had already slung his arm around my waist before Ky let me go. He hugged me to him. “Anything you need, you just ask and I’m there, angel.”

  Gabriel waited to stand until the other guys had stepped away. He watched me more hesitantly now. “Come out to the garage with me? I’m not sure—I might need a little help on the stairs.”

  I would have protested that he didn’t need to shut himself away from the rest of us in his apartment, but the plea in his eyes suggested he wanted my company more than my physical support. It might be good for us to talk away from the judgment of the other guys.

  “Of course,” I said, and glanced at my other consorts. “You can crash in my room or any of the unused bedrooms. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Jin gave us a knowing smile. “No need to rush.”

  Gabriel walked beside me out to the garage with the same careful steady pace he’d used on his way to the house. I’d have thought he was just taking his time if it hadn’t been for the sealed wound beneath the charred side of his shirt. His jaw clenched as he yanked open the door. I grabbed it from him.

  “Go on,” I said. “You asked me here to help. Let me help.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?” he said, sounding both regretful and wry.

  He took the stairs at about half his usual pace, but it wasn’t as if he needed to hold on to me or anything. By the time we made it to the top, a sheen of sweat gleamed on his forehead.

  “Sit down,” I said as we came into his apartment. “Or lie down. You could get some proper sleep.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “We should talk. More. I…”

  He turned and pulled me into his arms. I clutched at him, burrowing my face in his shirt, breathing in his familiar mossy scent. Wishing I could pretend the last week and a half had never happened, that we were the way we’d always been. But I couldn’t. My eyes were already welling up. My chest hitched with a sob I couldn’t quite suppress.

  “Rose,” Gabriel said rawly. He hugged me tighter, bowing his head next to mine. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t true. None of the things I said were true, except that the way I was seeing you fight back was scaring me. I’ve never, not for one second, stopped loving you. I know you. I know that’s not you, not really. You were backed into a corner. I couldn’t think of anything else I could do to break you out.”

  “But it is me,” I said around the lump in my throat. “I did those things. I hurt Master Courtland to find out what he knew. I wanted to hurt the rest of them.”

  “Only after they hurt you so badly first. Only knowing how many other lives were at stake. I don’t blame you. I just didn’t want to give them the chance to push you even farther down that road.”

  “We could have figured out something together. You didn’t have to try to do it all yourself.”

  He paused for a moment with a bob of his throat. “I guess I felt like if anyone was going to make a move like that, risk what we had, it should be me. I’m the one who dragged you into this to begin with, back when we were kids.”

  A startled laugh jolted out of me. I eased back to touch his cheek and look him in the eyes. “You can’t really be blaming yourself for all of this.”

  “Your father trusted you before he found out you’d been hanging out with us. If I hadn’t drawn you in—”

  Oh, my dear consort.

  “Gabriel.” I traced my thumb over his cheek. “You have to stop beating yourself up for things that weren’t your fault. From the way my dad talked, I think he planned to hand me over to those demons pretty much from the moment I was born. And even if he hadn’t—do you think I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when you invited me to join you guys running around the estate? I knew much better than you did how my family felt about unsparked people. I could have said no. But I didn’t, because I wanted to be there. You can’t make that your responsibility.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. “Leaving you the way I did was my responsibility. I’ve got to take all the blame for that. Is there any way I can make it up to you?”

  I leaned my head against his chest. My emotions were tangled up inside me, taut and aching. The best I could offer was honesty. “I don’t know. It might just take time for those wounds to heal. But I love you. I’m so happy you’re here. Don’t doubt that for a second.”

  “That’s the most I could really ask for.”

  He gathered me in his arms again, and for a few minutes we stayed there in silence, simply holding each other and enjoying that we could. Gabriel stroked his hand up and down my back.

  “You know,” he said softly, “sometimes I can’t help trying to imagine what it would have been like if we could have come together without all the schemes and conspiracies going on around us. If you hadn’t left; if we could have kept growing up alongside each other and figuring out how we felt about each other like normal people do.”

  If my father had simply wanted me to find a partner who’d make me happy, regardless of what their bloodline was. If no one in the Assembly had wanted to restrict who witches took as their consorts. What a beautiful thing. The thought of it brought a pang into my chest.

  “What do you imagine?” I asked, snuggling closer. “Tell me how it would have been.”

  He hummed to himself. “We’d have had wonderfully awkward dinners-with-the-parents, me in that grand old dining room of yours and you up here with just me and my dad. He’d probably have had a rule about my bedroom while I was still living here: ‘The door stays open if there’s a girl in there!’” Gabriel chuckled. “So we’d have gone out lots too. I’d have…” He paused. “Come here. I’ll show you. That’ll be even better.”

  His fingers twining with mine, he led me out the apartment door and down the stairs. My pulse thumped with eager curiosity. Why shouldn’t we lose ourselves in a bit of fantasy for a little while? But when he came to a stop in the shadowed interior of the garage by my Buick, my legs locked. I hadn’t been in that car since the day he’d stopped it at the gate and told me he couldn’t stand to be near me one moment longer.

  Gabriel’s hand tightened around mine. “I don’t know if I could ever completely write over that memory,” he said, “but we could at least make some new ones to compete?”

  I dragged in a breath. My lungs had tightened, but maybe he had the right idea. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s try.”

  He opened the passenger door for me and got into the driver’s seat, not bothering with his seatbelt since he wasn’t starting the engine.

  “I had my own car pretty soon after I turned sixteen,” he said, gazing through the windshield as if he could see the alternate past he was conjuring in the darkness beyond the glass. “This old clunker I bought for pocket change and then fixed up to something halfway decent. I’d have driven you out to the theater in Hermiston to see movies, or into town for the closest thing I could afford to a fancy dinner out, or just to cruise around the countryside.”

  I pushed aside all thought of the last time I’d been in this car and focused on the picture he was painting. “We could have gone out to the reservoir. Better swimming than my little pond here. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

  Gabriel glanced over at me. He took my hand again. “We could go out there sometime for real. All six of us. For a bunch of married folks, we sure haven’t done much dating.”

  I had to laugh. “No, we really haven’t.” The warmth of his hand and the glide of his thumb across my knuckles sent a shiver of a different sort of longing through me. “Where would we have driven out to if we
’d wanted a little privacy?”

  The corner of Gabriel’s mouth curled up. “Oh, there are a couple of popular spots for that sort of thing. There’s a picnic spot in the woods off the highway where no one much goes in the evening unless they’re teens looking to make out. And the pond just east of town—too mucky for swimming, but great for bonfires and smuggled beers and pairing off.”

  All the teenage experiences I’d never had. “Which did you prefer?” I asked.

  “Not either of those. I used to imagine where I’d take you, if you came back and I could see you again, even back then. There’s a spot along the river where there’s not really enough room for people to park for it to get popular, but if you go at the right time you can see the moon shining in the water and the crickets get going… I used to drive out there just to think.”

  “Always by yourself?” I teased, even though my heart pinched at the thought of him with some other girl.

  “I was saving that spot for you,” he said, his voice so low it sent a tingle through me.

  “And are you going to show me what you imagined we’d have done out there?”

  His smile grew. He leaned over and cupped my face, tipping my jaw up to meet his kiss.

  It was the first time we’d kissed since he’d come back to me, but it felt as sweet as always. The moment his mouth brushed mine, I didn’t know how I’d ever get enough of him. I ran my fingers into his hair and kissed him harder, as if I could mark him with so much love and desire it would hold this happiness with us forever.

  A pleased sound reverberated from Gabriel’s throat. He met my passion with his own, his lips coaxing mine apart so our tongues could tangle, his hand slipping down over my neck to my chest. He traced the curve of my breast through my clothes, and I arched to chase that contact. Even that muted touch left me shivering with need. To feel him everywhere, to claim him, to remind myself how much he was still mine—and how much I was his.

  Gabriel eased back just far enough to say, “Back seat?” in a breathless voice. I nodded and scrambled back there with no further encouragement needed. Gabriel’s side bumped the seat as he followed, and he winced, but before I could ask if he was okay, he was there with me, lying me down on the leather seat beneath him as he kissed me again.

  Our mouths crashed together hot and hungry, and his thigh slid between my legs with a rush of delicious friction against my core. Like another day, another car, when we’d collided in a haze of longing until Gabriel had wrenched himself away from me.

  Maybe we were writing over more than one painful memory today. Remaking every moment he’d pulled back, replacing them with this expression of his desire.

  He broke the kiss to tug my shirt up over my head, and I yanked his off in turn. His hand dipped beneath me to unhook my bra as we fell back into each other. His mouth branded mine, and his fingers teased my nipples into peaks. His thigh rocked against my core until I was gasping. He bent over to slick his tongue over my breast, and I moaned, clutching his head.

  When he slid lower, my grip tightened. “No,” I said. “I want you here with me.”

  Gabriel looked up at me, understanding gleaming in his eyes in the dim light. He undid my jeans, and I kicked them off at his tug. Then he was leaning over me again, his lips finding mine for another searing kiss.

  He caressed one breast and then the other through that kiss and the next and the next, until I was squirming with need, my whole body burning with pleasure. My hands skimmed up and down the hot solid planes of his chest. I rocked up to let my clit brush the bulge in his jeans, and he groaned against my mouth.

  I jerked his fly open, and he helped me peel off the jeans between breathless kisses. A shudder ran through his body when I trailed my hand over his erection.

  “You’ve always been the one for me, Rose,” he murmured. “You always will be. No matter what happens. No matter what you do. I was meant for you.”

  “And all I want from you is for you to be here with me,” I said, choking up.

  Gabriel kissed me with the same heat as before but so tenderly I thought I would melt. His thumb stroked over my clit through my panties, and I whimpered. He kept up that gentle teasing, drawing quiver after quiver out of me. An ache filled my core. I needed him filling me.

  I wrenched at his boxers, and we wriggled out of our underthings together, almost toppling off the seat in the process. A giddy giggle escaped me before he caught it with a kiss. His lips trailed down my jaw to my neck as he slicked the head of his cock over my clit and down.

  He gripped my hip to urge me up to meet him in the cramped space. I clutched his shoulders, and he slid into me with one smooth movement.

  A shaky sigh slipped from my lips. I rocked to meet Gabriel’s thrusts, urging him deeper, harder. The heady friction radiated through every nerve. I wanted to feel him everywhere, so deeply I could never forget this moment, even if it couldn’t completely write over what had come before.

  “Rose,” Gabriel groaned, plunging far enough that the base of his cock grazed my clit. I arched up, seeking that contact, trembling as the wave of sharper pleasure rolled through me again. He pulled me tight against him, and with his next thrust ecstasy burst through my body. I gasped, my toes curling with it, and Gabriel bucked even faster. His fingers dug into my hip with an enjoyable pain as he spilled himself inside me.

  He sagged over me, not quite leaning his weight on my body, and a jolt of concern broke through my joy. “You didn’t push yourself too hard, did you? Your injury—”

  “I’m fine,” Gabriel said gently. He eased himself down beside me at the edge of the seat and kissed me. “Straining that wound a little was worth it to start other ones healing.”

  Emotion swelled in my chest. “Yeah,” I said, and traced my fingers up his jaw to return that kiss. I was pretty sure I’d be able to drive this car again now. Though maybe not without blushing the first few times.

  We cuddled there for a little while, until the awkwardness of the cramped space crept in. Then we eased ourselves upright, exchanging fond glances and smiles as we fumbled back into our clothes. The moment I was dressed, Gabriel pulled me onto his lap and kissed me so thoroughly I was tempted to undress all over again. I reined in my desire.

  “You should get some real rest now,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “You too,” he said with a bump of his nose against mine. “It’s been a longer day for you than anyone else.”

  I kissed him one more time before he headed up the stairs to his apartment, and then I crossed the yard to the manor to rejoin my other consorts, wherever they’d ended up in the house.

  The hall was quiet when I came in. I could give Imogen that call now. I’d just started for my purse where I’d left it on the hall table when the stillness was split by the jangle of my ringtone.

  My heart stuttered as I grabbed my phone. Was it the Justice Division calling me in for questioning already? At least I could hope if they were going to arrest me outright, they’d have simply shown up, right?

  The number that came up on the screen had the Portland area code. I braced myself and raised the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Lady Hallowell?” a voice said, so rushed it took me a moment before I recognized it. “This is Gwen Remington. We met earlier today on the Frankfords’ property. How much exactly do you know about these demons?”

  I blinked, groping for my balance. This wasn’t how I’d expected any call from the Assembly to go. “I, um— A little. Not much more than what’s in the Frankfords’ files. Why?”

  “A little is better than nothing,” she said. “I think we’re going to need your help. The creatures have broken through their portal.”

  * * *

  How much will Rose and her guys have to sacrifice to overcome this horrifying threat? Find out in Consort of Light, the fifth and final book in the Witch’s Consorts series. Click here to get it now!

  Want a glimpse into the history between Rose and her guys? You c
an grab, Rose’s Boys, the Witch’s Consorts prequel story FREE here!

  Next in the Witch’s Consorts series

  Consort of Light (The Witch’s Consorts #5)

  In the last few months, I've faced more danger with the five men I'm not supposed to love than most people encounter in a lifetime. And it's not over yet. Our enemies have unleashed a threat greater than anyone in witching society could have believed possible.

  How do I fight back when we're up against forces that could destroy our entire world? I wasn't prepared for this. But the monsters we're taking on are about to find out that Rose Hallowell doesn't give up. Even if it means asking more of my consorts than I hoped I’d ever need to.

  I have to believe we can come through the darkness into the light. All I know for sure is there's no turning back now.

  Get it now!

  Dragon’s Guard excerpt

  Did you know I have another reverse harem paranormal romance series, full of shifters and steam and mystery? Here’s a sneak peek inside the first book, Dragon’s Guard.

  The last dragon shifter meets her four hot alpha mates—and life is about to get dangerous.

  DRAGON’S GUARD

  1

  Ren

  “Are you waiting for someone, honey?” the bartender asked.

  It was a reasonable question, considering that I’d been perched on one of the leather-cushioned seats at the bar for ten minutes without ordering anything. If the place had been any busier, he’d probably have pushed me a lot sooner. But there was only one other patron down the counter from me, a grizzled dude who was glued to his beer and the burble of the football game, and a handful of people scattered around the wooden tables in the rest of the room.