by Eva Chase
A flush spread up Ky’s neck to his face. His eyes gleamed with eagerness. He helped me yank his chinos down and then kicked them aside. I lay back as he eased down my pajama pants with a teasing graze of his fingers. He kissed a trail down my belly in their wake. One hand dipped between my thighs. He groaned as he felt how wet I was. I rocked against his hand, needing more.
“Kyler…”
I was on the verge of begging, but he didn’t make me. He climbed back over me, guiding his cock to my entrance with one hand. Both our breaths hitched as he eased the head over my clit and down. I arched my hips up, and he slid into my opening as easily as if we’d been made to fit together, filling me all the way.
For the first moment, he bent his head to my shoulder, a shudder running through his chest. “Rose,” he said. “You have no idea. God.” He kissed me, wildly, and then he started to move.
He took his time finding his rhythm, but every thrust, tentative and then more sure, sent me spiraling higher. As he met me faster, harder, our bodies melded together even more tightly. Bliss jittered all through my nerves. I kissed him roughly, my hands sliding over his shoulders, his chest, wanting to touch every inch of him.
“I think,” Kyler murmured, his voice getting ragged, “if I just…”
He angled his hips so the base of his cock bumped my clit with each stroke. A sharper bolt of bliss shot through me. I’d like to find whatever website taught him to do that and give them a gold medal.
I bucked to meet his thrusts, intensifying the contact. Sending the pleasure racing through me even higher with the searing rush of my spark. My body started to shake. A cry caught in my throat. “Ky!” I said, and he rolled his hips one more time. My orgasm crashed over me, sparkling behind my eyes.
“Oh fuck oh fuck,” Kyler groaned, but there was no complaint in those words. His hips jerked, and he came inside me in a hot rush.
We rocked to a halt together, both of us panting. Our skin was slick with sweat everywhere it touched. I loved the feeling of it. I pulled him down beside me on the bed, aligning my body as closely against his as I could.
Ky hummed happily. He tucked my head under his chin and held me tight, and for just a moment, I imagined he could stay here with me for the rest of the night.
What a lovely dream that would be. How much longer until I could make it a reality, and not just with him but with all my consorts?
Chapter Eleven
Rose
“So what are we looking for again?” Philomena asked.
I hung back beside her as Mrs. Gainsley moved her body through a magical form to release the seal on what had once been Celestine’s private magicking room. Once I could announce my kindled spark, it would be mine.
“We’re not going in to look,” I told her silently. “Well, not really. We’re going in to make sure Dad finds something.”
The air vibrated with released magic I wasn’t supposed to be able to feel. My father, watching at my other side, didn’t react at all. A faint chill tickled over my skin. Then, with a sigh, the door swung open.
“Is it okay if I help you search?” I asked Dad as the estate manager stepped back to let us by.
“By all means,” he said, without any sign he was worried about what I might find inside. “Just let me know if you come across any official-looking documents. Anything related to her business operations may be confidential. Better to let me handle those.”
Like a box full of magical contracts? Was he trying to ensure I didn’t stumble on the one signing my magic over to Derek or just taking a normal professional precaution?
Argh. I couldn’t keep relying on speculation. I’d conjure up some “proof” for him, subtle enough that he’d believe Celestine might have held on to it but blatant enough that he’d have to realize she’d been up to something shady, and his reaction would tell me everything I needed to know.
“Okay,” I said to Phil as she breezed along with us into the windowless room. “Look for a good place for a stray paper to just happen to be lying out. Somewhere he’ll believe Celestine could have hidden it—or missed it—but where he’ll see it while he’s searching.”
“Aye, aye, my lady,” Phil said with a wink.
The sound of our footsteps seemed to dull amid the windowless walls. Dad and I crossed the polished wooden floor to the room’s sole piece of furniture: a large cabinet at the back. I wasn’t supposed to have any idea what it contained, but the truth was I’d searched most of it last week. With the magic I wasn’t supposed to have either.
Dad opened the cabinet doors and gave the shelves a quick glance. I did a similar mental inventory, though for different purposes. It wouldn’t make any sense for a note to be mixed in with supplies like feathers or gems, or to be sitting out far too obviously on a shelf. The contracts box wouldn’t work, because it contained only official documents…
A deeper chill sliced through me. The contracts. I’d taken the one relating to my consorting out. Now that I didn’t have to worry about Celestine tracking it down to retrieve it, I’d secreted it away in the pages of one of my novels—a gothic romance featuring a vain and ruthless stepmother as the villain, which seemed appropriate. But if Dad were expecting to find it, if he looked through that box and found it missing…
Common sense broke through the rising haze of panic. It was okay. If he didn’t find it there, he’d just assume Celestine had hidden it somewhere else. That would be the obvious explanation, not that I’d managed to find it and hide it using my theoretically non-existent magical powers.
Dad grabbed the first couple boxes off the top shelf. I knelt down and tugged out one from the lowest, which I hadn’t made it to in my explorations before. I didn’t look at the box of contracts waiting for us, now at eye level, but my skin prickled with my awareness of it.
“It’s too bad I can’t just put the contract back,” I said to Phil as I pawed through a heap of incense packets. “You couldn’t ask for better proof than that. But it’s also the only proof I have. I can’t risk Dad keeping it if he really is in on the scheme.”
Philomena cocked her head. “Can’t you just conjure a new one? Stick it right on the top, so he’ll see it the second he opens the box…”
I shook my head, just slightly. “There’s a certain quality to magical contracts. You can feel the binding magic in the signatures. I couldn’t conjure something that intricate and specific, at least not until I have a lot more practice using my powers. Even without any magical ability, Dad would know it wasn’t right.”
I pushed the incense box back onto the shelf and reached for a bag that proved to be full of glyph tokens, some on smoothed stone, others carved into what looked like chunks of bone. Those weren’t standard, but some witches felt the former life essence gave the tokens an extra kick of power. I restrained a shudder as I shoved that bag back.
“What about those books?” Phil said with a tip of her chin. Dad had just opened up a box of old journals and private witching texts stamped with family names. Private archives and spell notes. I’d dismissed them when I’d made my earlier search because they hadn’t looked recently used, but Dad was considering them.
“I’ll have to go through these later,” he said. “I doubt they’ll say much if anything about your stepmother’s recent activities, but if nothing else offers guidance…” He ran his hand through his dark hair and turned back to the shelves.
I exchanged a glance with Philomena. That could be perfect. While he was distracted with the rest of his investigation, I could quickly conjure a slip of paper tucked inside the first notebook. He’d see it as soon as he started paging through them. I could even leave it poking out a little to draw his attention.
I’d already come up with the wording I’d use… Notes about binding and the consort ceremony, the date when mine was supposed to happen, a mention of some of the resources Master Cortland had been looking up. Any witching man would recognize the morbid significance of the symbols. I’d spent a good deal of the day yest
erday poring over the few papers I had with Celestine’s actual handwriting on them and practicing conjuring an accurate facsimile.
The false evidence only needed to convince him long enough for him to act. Or not act, as the case might be. My stomach twisted at the thought.
The outcome didn’t matter right now. What mattered was getting there—getting an answer, even if it was hard to accept. I just had to perform the magicking without him noticing…
A rustling sounded near the door. My head snapped around. Mrs. Gainsley had come into the doorway. She was watching the proceedings.
Shit. I couldn’t magick anything with her watching.
I yanked out the last box at the bottom of the cabinet as I stewed. How to send her off, for long enough that I could finish the magicking…? I wet my lips and looked up again.
“Matilda,” I said. My tongue stumbled over her first name. She’d told us all to call her by it as we always had with Meredith, but it felt strange to me being just as familiar with her, a relative stranger, as I’d been with the woman who’d practically raised me alongside my father. “Would you mind—I was thinking it might be useful to have any records of purchases Celestine asked Meredith to make on her behalf, so we know what supplies in here are most recent. Could you check the office for those?”
“Yes, of course, Rosalind,” she said. My hackles rose despite myself. Celestine had always insisted on calling me by my full name too.
The estate manager slipped away. I eased the lid off the box in front of me, watching for the right moment. My gaze fell on a stack of file folders inside.
Celestine had been keeping some other sort of records in here. I hadn’t made it to this box last time. The contract had been such a damning find I hadn’t seen the need to keep going.
At the same moment, Dad hefted the box of contracts. He peered inside, and his eyes sharpened. He rested them against the shelf, looking at each intently as he paged through them.
Now—this was my moment.. I turned away from him and faked a cough, rotating my arm and then dancing my fingers through delicate movements, hidden close to my chest. My spark jittered inside me. Power flowed into my hand. Just one little piece of paper, a few lines of handwriting, the image in my head made real… There.
The paper trembled into being just under the cover of the first notebook in the box he’d set aside earlier, a corner jutting out exactly as I’d intended. A wash of relief swept through me as the energy inside me ebbed.
It was done. As soon as he looked at those books, I’d know whether my father was the loving if sometimes distracted man I’d always thought he was… or my worst enemy.
“What are those, then?” Philomena asked, kneeling beside the box I was supposed to be looking through.
I turned back to it. “Let’s find out.”
The first couple file folders held magazine clippings of dresses and make-up—nothing that made a whole lot of sense to me. It was hard to imagine my stepmother lowering herself to even looking through unsparked fashion magazines, let alone drawing ideas from them. But then, it wasn’t as if there were any regular publications on witching fashion. Maybe she’d been driven by desperation.
The corner of my mouth twitched with amusement—and stiffened when I opened the next folder. A photograph of Derek stared back at me. My pulse hitched.
She had a file on my theoretical fiancé. I probably shouldn’t be surprised. She must have done plenty of research to determine he was the best candidate. There might be some interesting material in there for my own use. Was it just this folder, or had she filed away more than one with information on him…?
My fingers stilled with the next folder half-open. Another young man smiled up at me from another photo—not Derek. I didn’t even know this guy. Who the hell was he?
Another potential candidate?
“What have you got there, Rose?” Dad asked. Damn, I’d been staring long enough that he’d noticed my hesitation.
My instincts pulled me in two directions at once. I forced out an answer.
“Nothing. Just some magazine clippings. I’ll keep looking, though.”
I made myself move on to the next folder—another witching man, one I recognized from a trip we’d taken a few years ago to Edinburgh—how many of them were there? I dug deeper.
Five. Five likely candidates my stepmother had gathered. The folders under those were more clippings, these ones of various foreign locals. Travel planning? I didn’t know why she’d kept that in here, but I didn’t really care about my stepmother’s eccentric habits right now.
I needed the chance to go through these files undisturbed. To know which other witching men looking to consort I might need to inform the Assembly about. Had she approached any of the others? Had any of them done something to make her think they’d be willing to commit a lifelong crime on this scale?
Matilda’s footsteps tapped toward us down the hall. Moldy cinders. I gritted my teeth, focused on the spark inside me, and made a hasty gesture with my hand as if swiping a bug off the top of the stack.
The five folders vanished—and hopefully had reappeared under my pillow in my bedroom.
“Dad,” I said, raising my head and fishing out one of the travel folders. “Some of these clippings are of different places around the world. Maybe they’d give you some idea of where she might have gone?”
“Thank you,” Dad said. “Let me take a look.”
Matilda reappeared at the doorway. She was holding a small record book and a handful of receipts. “I’ve gathered everything relating to magical purchases,” she said. “But it doesn’t look as if any of the ones your former estate manager had date from after your arrival here.”
“I guess they probably won’t be that useful then,” I said, sitting back on my heels. “But thank you for looking.” I glanced up at Dad. “I think I’ve covered the bottom shelves. Are there any boxes or bags up there you haven’t gone through yet?”
Dad shook his head, still flipping through the file of travel clippings I’d shown him. “They’re mostly standard supplies, exactly what you’d expect. I appreciate your help, lamb. And maybe something we’ve found here will help me find some answers. But I think we’re done here.”
He set down the box of files on top of the box of books and hefted them both. I followed him out into the hall. Derek was just heading from his room to the stairs. He paused at the sight of us. His gaze seemed to stick on the boxes in Dad’s hands as Dad strode into his office. Derek’s jaw tightened.
Oh, he didn’t like the thought of what Dad might have found in Celestine’s things at all, did he? That ought to be a good sign. A sign that he didn’t believe Dad would approve of her scheme.
Please, Spark above, let it be a good sign.
Chapter Twelve
Kyler
When I’d told Rose I could blend into the Seattle scene no problem, even I hadn’t realized it’d be this ridiculously easy. I was perched at a bar-height table beside the broad front windows of a downtown coffee shop, my laptop open in front of me and the big gray building that housed her “Witching Assembly” across the street. The room around me was filled with the clatter of fingers tapping frenetically on keyboards and tablet screens.
I swear anyone who wasn’t hard at work on a computer of some sort would have stuck out like a sore thumb.
I took a drink of my coffee—bitter black and still so hot it almost burned my tongue, just the way I liked it—and got down to work. I’d picked the table in the back corner, so no one could wander over and happen to look over my shoulder as I pried into the security around the Assembly’s local network.
Hacking was a lot like carving a sculpture out of a hunk of marble. At least, what I imagined that would be like, from that time I’d spent a few nights reading about ancient Greek artistic techniques. Jin probably would have had a better idea.
But anyway, you started with what looked like a big, blank, impenetrable block, and you felt along it with your chisel until you
found the right point to chip away so that it cracked along just the right lines. And then you kept chipping and cracking it open until you discovered the form waiting underneath.
Thankfully, I was a lot happier working with carefully placed bits of code than a literal chisel. And no doubt a lot faster too. In a matter of minutes I’d stripped away the outer layers of security and was diving into the standard interface of the Assembly’s private databases.
This was only the outer layer, though. I skimmed past daily agendas and contact lists and meeting minutes, all stuff any employee would have had access to. Just to be thorough, I did a quick search for “consort,” which led me to the Consorting Advisership department behind a security wall I could already tell was pretty flimsy. Otherwise in the main network there were just a few mentions in general records of the Advisership’s activities and schedule, announcements of recently joined consorts…
Would my name, and the other guys’, be up there next to Rose’s some day? The idea made me feel giddy and a little itchy at the same time. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted the bureaucrats inside that industrial-looking building cataloguing our relationship. It was ours, not theirs.
I left the outer rim of the network behind and dug into the Consorting Advisership’s locked section. Chip, chip, chip, crack! Nothing to it.
The wall crumbled away, leaving me staring at a vast array of data—completed consort ceremonies, new applications, interviews conducted, follow-up communications sent, and on and on.
A sick sort of curiosity prickled at me. I found myself typing out Rose’s name, even though I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy seeing the information that was associated with her in here right now.
Several files came up—all of them for her and that Derek asshole, of course. The initial declaration of intent to consort. Her stepmother’s filing that she would conduct the ceremony. Notes from an interview when the advisers had come to the estate last month. The couple meets the criteria for a solid and stable partnership. No concerns noted.