“Which time?”
The way he looked at me swallowed the air from my lungs. “Both times.”
“I wish you’d come a lot sooner.” Slowly, he leaned in and kissed my whole body with a single touch of his lips. His sigh across my mouth pulled goosebumps over my skin, and he kissed me again, harder, deeper.
I crushed myself to him, every point of contact lit with fiery need. My hips rolled forward involuntarily, matching his tongue’s thrusts. One of his hands dipped down to cup my ass, then he hiked up my thigh around his waist. His hard length pressed against my lower belly. His hungry mouth nearly tipped me over backward, but I hung on to the only thing keeping me from falling.
He worked my leggings down my thighs. His lips and tongue left mine to wander down my neck while he skimmed his hands under my sweater, pulling it and my bra up to expose my breasts and then over my head. When his mouth found my nipples, I arched into him with a loud moan.
“We’ll go slow,” he said between kisses. “Try it out. But you have to tell me if you feel something’s wrong. Do you trust me?”
The extreme huskiness in his voice actually made me whimper. Whimper.
“More than anyone,” I breathed. But this wasn’t all I wanted. I wanted him, not just sex.
“Then lie down on your back.” He kissed his way up my neck to lick my top lip. “Legs spread.”
I stumbled away from him, my head swimming with desire. I toed off my pants, now completely naked, and lay down on the rug by the fire.
His hands went to the button on his jeans, and he eased them down over the large swell. His length sprang out, hard and thick and ready. He stalked toward me as he wrapped his fingers around his cock and stroked it. Watching him heated me from the inside out.
I lifted my hips off the blanket, my body losing all control for the promise of his touch. Intensity hardened his features as he knelt down by my head, facing my toes, bracketing my temples with his knees. His heated gaze raked over my body as his gentle hand cupped my cheek.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
I nodded, staring up at his upside-down face. I’d only done this once—not sixty-nine, but sex—just a quick romp in the girls’ bathroom at school with a guy whose name I couldn’t remember. Nothing like this. Had Kason done this position before? Or had he just read about it in the two years he’d been forced into celibacy.
He climbed down my body, his torso eclipsing everything above. He kneaded my breasts, slid his hands down my ribs to my belly button, then settled his head between my legs. His cock hung above my head, and I licked my lips for a taste.
He dipped his head lower, pushing my knees farther apart, and his tongue stroked magic through my body. My hips drove into him, meeting his tongue’s thrusts, and then his fingers, too. I lifted up on my elbows to take his cock in my mouth, and when I did, he groaned inside me as a full-body shudder rolled through his entire frame.
Our bodies worked together to find a perfect tempo, but our combined heat grew combustible. His hips bucked with mine, fast and frenzied, and I tried to take him in deeper, tried to savor his salty-sweet taste. There were too many sensations running through my body at once, though, and I never wanted them to end.
I cried out at the budding intensity unfurling down to my toes, not quite there, but crashing my way to a powerful ending at full speed. I wished I could hold his body steady and stroke him, but hopefully my tongue made up for what my hands couldn’t do.
It seemed to do the trick. Before long, he gripped the backs of my thighs and threw his head back with a loud groan. Hot salty come rushed down the back of my throat, and I was so surprised, I swallowed.
He’d barely recovered when he sank between my legs again and worked magic with his tongue. I moaned, ready to drown with him in bliss. He rubbed his thumb over my clit, and I shattered around him while his fingers continued milking shudder after shudder from my spent body.
After he’d caught his breath, he climbed off of me and cocooned himself around my body. I folded my hands against his chest while I studied the hard planes of his jaw and the delicate curl of his eyelashes. Beautiful, inside and out.
“We’re not dead,” I said, a note of bewilderment in my voice.
“I doubt that counted as sex,” he breathed. “We’re going slow to test the curse out, see if it’s really broken.”
“Can I see your tattoo?”
He cracked open one eye. “Please tell me that wasn’t what you were thinking about the whole time.”
“Of course not.” Had that been a twinge of hurt in his voice? Leave it to me to ruin the moment when it had been more than perfect.
“We’ll check. Just…give me a minute to recover.” He caught my gaze and winked. “But don’t think we’re done yet.”
I grinned and he matched it with one that brightened his whole face. He leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose. Then his eyes sank closed, and his breaths deepened. That comforting, steady sound threaded with a softer Violent Femmes song and lulled me into a state of happy oblivion.
“Okay, minute’s up.” He rolled on top of me, pressing me to the floor, and raked his hands through my hair. His lips molded with mine. Each stroke of his tongue thrilled a buzzing energy down to my curled toes and back again.
I couldn’t help but chuckle into his mouth at how fast my body reacted to him. Or how fast his body reacted to mine.
“Kason,” I said between kisses. I could barely hear myself over the wild pulse between my ears. “Why do you want to break the curse with me?”
“I told you. I can’t get you out of my head.” He skimmed his fingers up my cheek. “And it’s not just with you. It’s for you.”
I laughed into his next searing kiss, but apparently he was serious. He stood then picked me up, my legs swinging over one of his arms and my back supported by the other, and walked me toward the steps.
“Uh, what are you doing?” I wrapped an arm around the back of his head, not to hold on exactly, but to brace myself in case he dropped me.
He stopped and pressed a kiss to my inner elbow at the side of his face. “Let go, Hadley. I’ve got you.”
He had me, all right, in more ways than he knew, and that made this all the more terrifying. Exhilarating. Both at the same time.
I dropped my arm and smiled up at him, my heart thundering. “This is completely unnecessary.”
“Shut up and enjoy it.” He traipsed up the steps as if he carried nothing but himself, but when he stepped into the bedroom, he slowed his pace and gazed down at me as if I might disappear. “Tell me if I hurt you. It’s been a long time.”
I leaned into him until I caught his lips, spelling out my complete trust in him with a kiss. “Shut up and enjoy it.”
He grinned. “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble in that department.”
He dropped my legs so my feet touched the floor, and then, convinced I was flesh and bone and not glass, he pushed his body into mine until my back hit the side of the wardrobe. Hard, like everything about him. His lips were rough, but I matched his vigor lick for lick. His short stubble scraped down my cheek to my chest, trailing a shiver after it, and then a full-body tremor when he took a bared nipple into his mouth and sucked.
I arched into his touch with a loud moan. My hips ground, desperately seeking his, but only finding air. It was a little embarrassing to have no control of my body, but so, so hot that he riled me up past the point of no return.
His hands worked down over my hips, his touch stirring a thrill through my blood, while he licked and kissed his way to my other nipple. At the same time he scraped his teeth lightly over it, he sank two fingers deep inside me. I leaned back against the wardrobe, the tendons in my neck pulled tight at my breathless moan, and rode his hand as his hungry lips found mine again.
I gasped between kisses as every thrust of his tongue and fingers drove me wild. But I wanted more of him, as much as he was selflessly giving me and everything else too.
“Kason. Fuck me. We don’t have a lot of time.”
He pulled away, his lips parted, his gaze scorching my face. “I’m being thorough.” He leaned in for a quick kiss. “You deserve to enjoy this too.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his top lip skimming my bottom one. “And because I bet you’re even more beautiful when you come.” His fingers slowed their momentum, and his thumb glided small circles up and around my clit, undoing the tight bundle of nerves there in a pulsing, head-over-heels spin.
I cried out as stars raced around the room, and Kason held me up so I could reach them for as long as possible before I sagged into his strong arms. My chest heaved against his, and I was pretty sure I wore a stupid grin but was too sated to care.
“I was right. Fucking beautiful,” he breathed. He gently removed his hand from between my legs and popped the same two fingers into his mouth. When he slid them back out again, he closed his eyes, as if savoring the taste of me. Damn, that was hot. “Thorough enough for you?”
“I think,” I said, resting my head against his shoulder. “I think you might be my favorite human.”
He pressed his lips to my hair. “Your only human.”
“That’s right.” I lifted my head to gaze at him, my chest aching at the level of truth in this conversation, and I needed him to see it. “My one and only.” Then I kissed him so I wouldn’t have to see his reaction, and he wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me toward the bed.
After laying me in the center, he propped himself on one elbow and took a foil square from the bedside table, placed it between his teeth, and tore it open. Then he took the condom and rolled it down his length, his forehead creased in concentration and the tip of his tongue braced against his lip.
“Does it feel good?” I asked.
“It’s about to feel a lot better.” He swept both my arms above my head and settled between my legs, careful not to crush me, his hard, condomed cock pressed against my inner thigh. Then, with a long, slow thrust, he filled me up.
I gasped as I stretched around him, my head thrown back against the blankets while his face hovered above mine in a state of pure bliss. I sure hoped we didn’t die in our quest to untie the Legacy knot and end fae power, but so far, so, so good.
A growl rumbled through his chest and into mine a second before he pulled out enough to drive into me again and again, his hips pounding against mine. I locked my ankles around him, just underneath his ass, and met his wild thrusts with my own.
He fucked with the same abandon that he’d melted the thorny black walls I’d erected around my heart. I smiled up into his kisses, ready to do this the rest of the night and into the next in case, for whatever reason, the first time didn’t take and his knotted tattoo didn’t untie itself. Someone had to do it in the name of…science? And it most definitely would be me.
I wished I could’ve run a hand over his back to see if the tattoo was changing, but I didn’t want to ruin this moment by crying out in pain because I’d touched him. I only wanted ecstasy.
With a loud groan, he pumped into me in quick succession while the muscles all along his body contracted. Talk about beautiful when he came. Kisses had swollen his lips into a glistening flushed oval, and the tender way he looked at me reached inside my soul with fluttering wings. He collapsed on top of me and wrapped his arms around my back to bring my body even closer to his.
“Fuck, Hadley,” he breathed into my neck. “Fuck.”
“I know.” I gazed at the ceiling and imagined the stars on the other side that would soon pinprick a velvet sky on a spring night, and held to Kason with both my legs and heart. I could get so used to this, to being with him every day. To loving him. It felt so natural, so real, that a part of myself feared it. That raw part of my heart that remembered all too well what it was like to love. And lose all at once. That was an impossible part to let go, especially when it hung on with painful, jagged teeth.
Another part of myself didn’t know if Kason felt the exact way I did about him, but he wasn’t running away screaming either. For now.
“Can you see my tattoo? Did it change?” He shifted, still inside me, and I tried to ignore the stirring in my blood caused by that simple movement.
I lifted my head to peer at his back. With him collapsed on top of me, I could now see it. And wow, had it changed. “Yes.”
“How so?” He pulled out gently, genuine excitement in his voice, and climbed to his feet and stood so his glorious backside faced me.
The runes, now more than twenty of them, had shifted to the sides. In the middle, the Legacy knot had untied itself to reveal Corvus, the constellation shaped like an uneven square with a tail dangling from its side that I’d found painted on a wall of Dimic’s Everlasting Ink. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe Dad was trying to tell me that Corvus was in Faction11 without actually telling me what Corvus was. Or who it was.
“It’s Corvus,” I said. “A constellation.”
“Really?”
“Really. Here’s one thing you didn’t know about me. I always wanted to be an astronaut, to float among the stars.” In a way, I supposed I was right then.
My gaze traced all of the changes of his tattoo, memorizing them so Nasty could translate. Hope tingled through my feet, urging me to go, fast.
“I need my laptop to translate your new runes.” I untangled myself from the bed. “Don’t leave.”
He shot me a sly grin on my way out of the room. “If I could, I never would.”
Smiling, I slipped into the upstairs hallway, the arctic wood flooring quickly drilling a chill up through the bottoms of my feet and the rest of my naked body. Had the fire gone out or was it just colder outside of Kason’s arms? Downstairs, the fire still crackled but didn’t seem to give off any heat. My breath plumed in the air. I stopped to check on the poppies—still alive, but the petals curled inward along their expanding black edges. As soon as I found Nasty on the couch, I hoofed it back upstairs and dove under the covers with Kason.
“I type. You look.” He took the laptop, giving me his back. “Damn, why is this thing so cold?”
“I think the magic in the house is dying with the poppies. Just hurry.”
He scrolled through the thousands of pages of runes, every once in a while holding up Nasty so I could do side-by-side comparisons. Hours later, we thought we had it.
Consume the poke root inside of you. If the human lives, he is not a human, and therefore not the Legacy to end fae power.
If the human lives… Those words hollowed out my insides. Poke root was poisonous, but it wasn’t deadly to witches. For humans, I supposed it could be. But if Kason wasn’t a human, then what was he? Whatever he was, his tattoo wanted us to find out, and the fate of all witches depended on whether he lived or died. That was hardly fair.
“Poke root.” Kason blinked at Nasty’s screen. “As in the poke root in the vial that was lodged in my back?”
I nodded. This wasn’t even a war humans should be fighting. They had nothing to do with it. Especially not Kason, no matter what he was or wasn’t.
My eyes welled with tears. My stomach churned.
I clambered off the bed and stumbled into the hallway as if I could find another explanation in another part of the house.
“Hadley, wait,” Kason called from the bedroom. “Maybe we translated it wrong.”
But we didn’t. I knew we didn’t.
“The rune for consume looks a lot like count, and I remember reading something about fae being compelled to count things like grains of sand. Maybe there are more vials of poke root inside of me?” A pause. “Are you listening?”
No, I wasn’t, though I appreciated his continued search for an alternative outcome. If I was forced to choose between ending eternal winter and fae power over witches, I would choose Kason. Every time.
Downstairs, I dressed quickly. Even with the fire blazing in the fireplace and wearing my sweater and boots, a shiver rolled up my back and spiked the hairs on the back of my neck. It was fre
ezing in here. Either that or something was…off. And not just the overturned poppies that now refused to stand upright, their red edges now sealed in black death.
I peeked around a crack in the kitchen curtains, but everything looked as it usually did. A gray depressing sky and a bleak snowscape.
Something shattered behind me, the musical sound of a small glass object splintering. I darted my gaze around for the source but found Kason entering the kitchen, now dressed in two thick shirts and jeans, his face washed of all color.
I followed where his gaze aimed and gasped. The poppies’ petals lay crumbled beside the vase on the island in little black powdered piles. Except one mostly red petal. It dangled from a thin gray stem, gently swaying back and forth as if marking the time until the magic inside the house dropped.
“The poke root vial. Where is it?” I quickly scanned the kitchen then rushed into the living room to the couch and coffee table.
He turned in slow motion. “I gave it to you.”
His words knocked the air right out of me because I didn’t have it. It wasn’t here. I didn’t even know where else to look.
“We’re leaving.” I zipped past him toward the back door to the garage with no idea if he could leave. But we had to try. “Now.”
“The gun,” Kason shouted.
“Leave it!” Just as I reached the door, glass plinked behind me. The final poppy petal had broken. The magical feel of the house I’d sensed since I first arrived blinked out.
The front door slammed open.
The Diamond Dogs rounded the corner into the kitchen, all three of them, as if they had been waiting for the exact second the spell on the house vanished. Their straight blonde hair shone with the same brilliance as the diamond collars around their necks and the diamond aterns at their wrists. The corner of Claudia’s mouth curled into an evil half smile, ripping my next scream from my throat at full volume.
“Kason!”
The outer walls of the house shoved inward. Windows exploded, spraying twinkling glass across the kitchen like a lethal snowstorm. I launched myself at the back door, glancing at my atern.
Legacy: Faction 11: The Isa Fae Collection Page 13