by Eva Chase
I was just as much a scion as he was, and the heir of Bloodstone didn’t run away.
“There goes that chin,” he said softly, with so much tenderness my throat closed up. “All glorious defiance. I swear, the last thing I want to do now is hurt you, Rory.”
Maybe some part of me wanted him to convince me, to prove to me that all that past between us didn’t have to matter. That the good in him could override the rest. In that moment, I could imagine that being possible, even if I wasn’t there yet.
With a click, the lounge door opened behind me. I glanced back to see Jude on his way in, his stride casual until he caught sight of the two of us. Something about the vibe in the air made him hesitate. Then he started to backtrack, reaching for the door. “Never mind, I can see you’re busy.”
My head jerked around in time to catch the glower Malcolm had been shooting his way. My hackles rose with my own protective instinct. I marched across the room to catch Jude’s arm.
“This is your lounge too. I don’t want you to leave.”
He stopped, his gaze flicking to Malcolm and back to me. At my expression, his shoulders came down. He eased closer, taking my hand. “Well, in that case…”
Malcolm cleared his throat with a disgruntled sound. I gripped Jude’s fingers and turned to glare at the other scion.
“You want to prove yourself?” I said. “The first thing you’ve got to demonstrate is that you can handle me having other guys in my life. Because if you try to tell me who I’m allowed to care about or make out with or anything else—if you try to make me choose between you and everyone else—then I’m going to choose the guys who aren’t making up rules about how I live my life.”
Jude ducked his head. “Well said, Ice Queen,” he said in an amused tone, but the squeeze of his hand told me how much the declaration had meant to him. I didn’t imagine he was used to being valued over the Nightwood scion.
I bobbed up on my toes, and he met my kiss, no hesitation in him now. My other hand slid around his neck as I leaned into the embrace. The thought of Malcolm watching, of him deciding how he was going to respond to my statement, somehow made the kiss even hotter.
If Malcolm still had any illusions of me kowtowing to him, he’d better get rid of them fast.
Jude slipped his arm around me as I pulled back from the kiss. I tipped my head against his chest and looked toward Malcolm.
He was watching not me but Jude, with an expression that looked almost startled. Had he ever seen his longtime friend look actually content? I wasn’t sure Jude had ever been content from the moment he’d discovered his father’s secret until finally admitting that secret to me. It had burned too deep a hole in him.
Jude gave my hair an affectionate ruffle. “It’s no good loving a wild thing if you’re going to stick it in a cage.”
“Wild?” I said in mild objection, and he chuckled.
“Only in the best possible ways.”
Malcolm’s gaze had come back to me, with a heat in it that was nearly scorching. “No, I suppose it isn’t. I can handle starting on the sidelines.” He folded his arms over his chest and nodded to Jude. “Let’s see how well you can drive her wild, then.”
Jude hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Malcolm tipped his head, considering. “Go down on her. Get her off.”
Jude’s eyebrows leapt up. He wavered for a second and then glanced at me in question. Desire had already lit in his eyes.
An unexpected giddiness ran through me. I’d been with two guys at the same time before, but they’d both been participating. To have Malcolm, lord of the scions, exercising the self-control to stand back and watch his friend do what I suspected he’d have liked to do himself… I guessed that would prove something. It made the temptation to go along with his suggestion that much more delicious.
Why not? What did I have to hide? If he was going to melt down over seeing me with Jude after all, it’d be better to find that out now and lay any question of us getting together to rest.
Okay, maybe I was a little wild.
I teased my hand down Jude’s chest, and he grinned, obviously taking that as answer enough. As he captured my lips again, he walked me a couple steps backward so my shoulders touched the wall. He held me there, kissing me so thoroughly my mouth tingled, while he trailed his fingers down my side and over my thigh, and then around to the already eager place where my legs joined.
My hips swayed toward him as he stroked my clit through my clothes. He smiled against my mouth. With tantalizing slowness, he undid the zipper of my pants and drew them down until they fell the rest of the way to puddle around my ankles. Leaving my mouth to kiss my neck, he hooked his fingers around my panties. With each inch he tugged them down, he descended twice as quickly.
He pressed his lips to my sternum and my belly button through my blouse. When his breath spilled over my sex, I tipped my head back. Anticipation hummed through me, almost as heady as the pleasure to come. I braced one hand against the wall and curled the other into Jude’s hair.
He lowered his mouth to me with a swipe of his tongue that sent a bolt of bliss through me. A moan vibrated from my throat. He worked me over gently and then more determinedly, increasing the pressure with every sound that escaped me. Pleasure rippled up from my core in sharper and sharper waves.
As he teased his tongue around my clit, Jude stroked his hands over my thighs and then up to my opening. He suckled hard and dipped a finger inside me at the same time, and I let out a noise like a growl, all wanting. My hips jerked.
Oh, fuck, that felt good—but somehow not good enough at the same time. I wanted to be really full, full of him.
Malcolm didn’t get to call the shots, not in any of this. I had the final say in how my lovers came to me—and how they made me come.
My fingers tightened in Jude’s hair and urged him up. “Jude. I need more.”
He caught my eye, his smile coming back with a flash. In an instant, he’d straightened up. His hand dropped to help me as I fumbled with his zipper. I wriggled my panties the rest of the way down to my feet.
Malcolm let out a wordless sound of protest, but I didn’t give a damn. I clutched Jude’s shoulders, and he lifted my thighs, molding them around his hips as he plunged into me with a hastily cast spell. I cried out at the burst of pleasure. My legs squeezed around him, holding me up and holding him to me. With each rock of his hips, fresh bliss swept through me.
Jude kissed me roughly on the mouth, his control starting to wobble. I arched into him, and he thrust deeper to hit just the right spot to send me spiraling higher.
“Love you,” he murmured in a hot rasp by my ear. “Love you so fucking much.”
With those words, I shuddered right into ecstasy. The crackling of pleasure raced through me, jolting another moan from my throat and setting every nerve singing.
As I clutched onto Jude, his breath broke, his rhythm turning jerky. With a groan, he spilled himself inside me.
We came to rest against the wall, my legs still clasped around Jude’s hips, his head tucked against mine. I touched his cheek and turned his face for another kiss, long and lingering. Only after that did I look to where Malcolm was still standing.
The Nightwood scion’s hands and jaw had clenched, but his eyes were outright blazing, and not, from the feel of them, with anger. Especially not when paired with the bulge that had formed against the fly of his slacks.
Without letting myself rethink the impulse, I reached out to him. After a second, he stalked over. I let my feet sink to the ground, but I kept my other arm around Jude. He nuzzled my neck as I held Malcolm’s gaze.
“Not what you asked for, I know,” I said. “You might be the king of Blood U, but you don’t rule over me.”
“Point made, loud and clear,” Malcolm said, with a rawness that sparked one more wave of desire through me. That and the fact that he’d accepted our deviation from his orders with relative grace brought my hand to the front of his shirt. I grasped i
t and pulled him to me.
If Malcolm objected to kissing me while I was still partly entwined with another guy, he didn’t show it. His mouth claimed mine with all the searing confidence I remembered. I was breathless when he eased back, but from the hitch of his chest, so was he.
“I’ll take that for now,” he said, with a look so heated it promised a hell of a lot more to come, if I decided I’d take him.
If I was free enough in two days’ time to take anyone at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rory
The dynamic between Malcolm and I might have been shifting, but the lines drawn in the past hadn’t completely dissolved. When Declan called a last-minute meeting of the scions to discuss my hearing, this time over breakfast in a corner booth at one of the restaurants in town, he didn’t include the Nightwood scion in that invitation.
As I slid onto the bench next to Connar, I couldn’t say I wished Malcolm were there. He could talk all he wanted about “adoring” me, but I hadn’t seen any evidence yet that he’d risk his standing in his father’s eyes to help me in any public way. Sharing one kiss with him was a heck of a lot less risky than sharing the details of my planned defense.
The waitress started bringing over plates and glasses a minute later, the rich doughy smell of fresh waffles filling my nose along with the savoriness of crisp bacon. Declan, who’d arrived just after me, blinked at the spread as he sat down across from me next to Jude.
The Killbrook scion leaned back in his seat with a smirk at his neighbor. “I took the liberty of ordering for all of us. I figured once you got here, you’d be all talk and forget about the fact that breakfast generally includes eating. Grab whatever looks good. I think we can share.”
He rolled the last word off his tongue with a sly glance at me. Warmth tickled through me despite the anxiety balling my gut, but only for a moment.
My hearing was tomorrow. This was our last chance to prepare. But Jude was right—better not to do it on an empty stomach.
I lifted one of the waffles onto my plate and garnished it with a dollop of syrup. The anxious pressure inside me made me stick to only a small bite to start, but the fluffy sweetness offset some of my queasiness.
Declan gave Jude a bemused look, but that didn’t stop him from taking toast and bacon for his own plate. “I’ve actually got good news,” he said as he scraped butter over the toast. “I still think the practice session we did was worthwhile, Rory, but your judge has been replaced again. The new one is much less Insight-leaning.”
“Really?” Connar perked up, avid interest gleaming in his light blue eyes. A smile slipped across his face that looked more triumphant than I’d have expected.
Declan lifted his gaze to contemplate the other guy. “Do you know something about this? It’s pretty unusual to have a change like that so close to a major hearing, let alone two.”
Connar’s grin stretched a little wider. “I wasn’t sure it would even work. It was a gamble.” He glanced at me. “My parents insisted on meeting with me a couple days ago. They still think I’m going to help them undercut you. So… I told them you were glad to hear about the new judge because you thought what he’d glean from intensive insight would push the case in your favor.”
Jude let out a low whistle and a laugh. “Look at the heir of Stormhurst turning schemer. The rest of us better watch out.”
Connar started to glower at him, but I grabbed the bigger guy’s arm with a grateful squeeze. “Thank you. Obviously they bought your story. You might have just saved me a whole lot of trouble.” I paused. “Are you going to get in trouble with them when you speak for me at the hearing?”
He shook his head. “I already prepared them for that. I told them I’d need to testify on your behalf to keep up the ‘ruse’ of being on your side, but that I wouldn’t say anything too concrete.” His mouth slanted. “Unfortunately that’s mainly because I don’t have any concrete testimony I can give.”
“I still appreciate it. Every little bit has to help.”
Looking at him and around the table, an unexpected sense of conviction settled over me even though I still had a long, uncertain day ahead of me tomorrow. The four of us were working as a real unit now, not just as lovers but as the colleagues we were meant to be for the rest of our lives. Despite our rocky beginning, our goals had ended up aligning. Even Malcolm was starting to reject his father’s ideals, if only in private.
For the first time, the sense of what it might be like to rule alongside these men really hit me. We could do a hell of a lot when we were all barons. We could change the whole direction of fearmancer society into something much less villainous.
It didn’t matter what the joymancers had done or how much I could trust them—I didn’t need them. I didn’t want them involved. I had all the support I needed to tear down the toxic parts of the community right here with me, ready to work from the inside.
As long as I was still free to do that work after tomorrow.
A thought that was obviously on Declan’s mind too. “Not that you’re out of trouble yet,” he said. “But you definitely have one problem off your plate. Have you made any progress with Cressida? If she did hear or see something, her testimony could be all you need.”
I grimaced, poking at my waffle. “She’s still avoiding me. I don’t know how I could convince her to stick out her neck. She obviously doesn’t see any benefit in it for her, and it’s not as if I have anything she doesn’t have that I can offer her.” Money meant nothing to someone whose family was already rolling in it. I hadn’t established any real connections in business or politics yet. Mostly what I brought to the table were enemies.
Jude waved his fork at me. “You have the barony. She’s got nothing like that.”
“I can’t exactly give that to her,” I replied. “And I don’t have much official power yet anyway.”
“You will, though, if you get through the hearing. Maybe you can work with something there.”
“There was—” I cut myself off, hesitating. I’d come across some magical theory in yesterday’s studying that could apply to this situation. A way of guaranteeing Cressida a future reward dependent on future needs. But it’d been so open-ended that my instinctive reaction had been to reject the idea.
She’d helped Victory with the other girl’s campaign of harassment against me. She clearly didn’t have any interest in supporting me for my sake or doing the right thing. How the hell could I trust her with any kind of open-ended deal?
But maybe it was time to take that gamble, just like Connar had with his parents. Owing Cressida some uncertain price was better than becoming the other barons’ virtual slave.
And really… a few months ago, I hadn’t trusted any of the guys sitting around me. As I’d just been thinking, they’d changed so much, revealed depths I hadn’t suspected.
Most of my fellow students had to be more than simply villains. I could be cautious, but maybe I should give more of them the benefit of the doubt. These were my people. I was going to lead them one day—soon, as long as I didn’t let the older barons win.
That girl in the library yesterday had outright attacked me to try to get me re-arrested, and I’d been willing to forgive her. I had no idea what pressures Cressida might be operating under, did I? What have you ever done for me? she’d asked, and from a fearmancer perspective, that was a totally valid question regardless of the stakes.
The guys were watching me with open curiosity, waiting for me to finish. I pushed a piece of my waffle across my plate. “I think I’m going to have to take a leap of faith.”
Since our initial talk, Cressida hadn’t been going to quite the same lengths to stay away from me. This time, waiting for her to come down from her afternoon class, I lingered in the first floor landing rather than right outside the door.
Despite the lesser intrusion, she stiffened as soon as she saw me standing there. She picked up her pace as if to stride right past me, but I stepped over to block her as unaggressi
vely as I could manage.
“You said I’ve never done anything for you,” I said quickly, pitching my voice low to avoid the curious ears of the students filing past us. “And that’s true. What if I could do something that would make it more than worthwhile for you to get involved in my ‘mess’?”
She stayed tensed, but something shifted in her expression, a hint of eagerness that gave me hope. I motioned her to the side, away from the other students. “We could talk downstairs? There’s no Desensitization session going right now.” I’d checked.
Cressida’s mouth tightened before she exhaled in a rush. “All right, fine. Let’s hear this. But it’d better be good. People will notice that you’re even talking to me, you know.”
Exactly why I’d already planned a nearby private spot for that conversation. We tramped down the stairs into the cool basement air and its thicker silence.
The waiting area outside the Desensitization chamber wasn’t exactly comfortable, not much more than half a room with a wooden bench on either side. With a little luck, this conversation wouldn’t take very long. I said a few words in casting to make sure no one would follow us down while we were there and sat on one of the benches.
After a moment’s hesitation, Cressida sank down opposite me. “So?”
“Have the other barons ever done anything for you?” I asked. “Is screwing me over going to get you anything from them?”
She scowled at me. “What does that matter? I’m not staying out of this to get some reward—I’m trying to make sure whoever has it out for you doesn’t put me and my family in their crosshairs too.”
Nothing about her response gave me the impression that the barons had approached her or that she knew they were the ones who wanted to undermine me. Her family’s name hadn’t shown up on Professor Banefield’s list. That wasn’t any kind of guarantee, but it gave me the confidence to continue.