Rory is all woman now—powerful and alive and completely certain of what she wants and what she needs.
And I’m all too happy to give it to her.
Every breath. Every gasp and moan.
Every fucking inch.
I lap at her skin, making love to her breasts and her rib cage with my mouth. I suck her nipples, kiss every rib. She arches up to meet me, her hands on my shoulder and head pushing me down, down, down.
My intended destination exactly, as fate would have it. I settle between her thighs, breathing her in. That scent—I can smell the longing on her. The lust. She’s dripping for me, I find as I dip my fingers between the slick lips of her slit. As I gather her honey up on my fingertips to taste her, a moan escapes her rose-colored lips.
If that’s what the slightest brush of my fingers against her clit can do, I can only imagine what noises she’ll make when I claim her with my mouth instead.
I discover that all too eagerly. Her taste is so sweet, so hot and so intoxicating that I can’t fucking help myself but feast on her. At first, my arms hook beneath her thighs, pulling her needy cunt against my mouth as hard as I can. But then Rory’s elegant fingers capture fistfuls of my hair, holding me against her as I suck her clit between my lips. Then, my hands can retire to more practical work: getting my own clothes off as fast as I’m goddamn able.
My cock is in my fist, my clothing stripped and abandoned as she comes for me. Gushing and cooing and purring as I take her with my mouth. By the time she’s done shaking and spasming and trembling, my cock is positioned against her.
I don’t waste a goddamn second. I want her and she wants me. This isn’t anything so complex or complicated as the magical world Rory’s found herself engulfed in—the world she’s dragged me into as well.
Rory may be a witch, but the desire we’re wrapped up in now is perfectly fucking human. Not fate—just nature.
She’s the woman I love, and I’m the man who’s going to claim her.
I ease myself into her, inch by inch. Her pussy is so hot, so tight around my cock that it burns, hot and sweet. The flames that I feel barely contained beneath Rory’s skin only drive me forward. Push me harder and harder to my goal.
We moan together as she takes all of me. Every inch. Her arms wrap around my neck and our eyes meet. The head of my cock is settled against her, deep as a man can have a woman, and I yearn to be deeper still.
“Please,” she breathes, labored and heavy.
I withdraw from her completely. In the next second, I’m slamming back into her, fucking her as rough as I know we both need right now.
Maybe I spend an eternity between Rory’s thighs. Maybe it’s only a beautiful half hour stretched into infinity as we lose ourselves to the pleasure we can give each other. One moment, she’s clawing at my shoulder blades, baring her teeth. The next, she’s cooing and whimpering, begging me for more.
No matter the time, for right now, Rory’s mine. As we come together, my cock pistoning in and out of her and her hips rising up to meet mine with every thrust, I know that no matter what happens—no matter what comes after this—in a way, she always will be.
Mine. Mine alone. Just as much as Rory belongs to anyone else, as her cunt spasms around me and she cries out my name—
“Drew! God, Drew! I love you—I love you—”
I know that she belongs to me just the same. Not just in this moment, but forever.
I hold her for longer than I ought to after. I stay inside her, her honey and my cum both pooling beneath us, dampening the sheets. I kiss her collarbones—her neck—her eyelids—wherever my lips fall, I mark with my kiss.
“Mine,” I breathe against her ear. “Mine.”
“Yours,” Rory purrs in agreement, easing against me. Her legs are wrapped around my hips, holding me in. Squeezing me tight. “Yours, Drew. And I always will be.”
It’s in the awkward, fumbling moments after I withdraw from her that we find ourselves laughing again. Catching each other’s little glances and unable to fight back our smiles. The whole of the shit with Xander’s mother—the revelation about Rory’s father—it’s not forgotten, but it’s eased. She’s relaxed again. Ready to take on this crazy-ass world and whatever comes with it.
“I needed that,” Rory admits gingerly, eyes sparkling. “You have no idea…”
“Not entirely true, Rory.” I laugh too, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’d say I’ve definitely got some idea.”
She’s still there where I laid her, reclined back on the pillow. Her hair’s a mess and her cheeks are pink. She doesn’t look so hungry now—in fact, she looks positively flushed.
But a growl from her stomach tells me that her hunger hasn’t entirely abated. I’ve only satisfied one particular kind.
“Ought to go down and get you some lunch,” I say, reaching for my pants.
I’ve barely moved at all, though, before she’s pounced on me. Her slender body pressed against the hot muscles of my back. Her teeth at my ear. Her arms around my neck.
“Not yet.” There’s laughter in her voice. Passion. Intensity. Everything I’ve always loved about Rory, just expanded tenfold. “I’m not done with you yet, Drew Iver.”
“And the others…?” I’m half teasing, half serious.
“They’ll just be grateful that I’ve forgiven them,” Rory says with certainty.
“Have you, now?”
“Yes,” Rory informs me. “I just…I needed you, Drew. You’re my…I don’t know. My rock.”
I look down at my cock, stiffening at the feeling of her hands smoothing down the hair on my chest.
“Hard as a rock, maybe,” I tease.
“Good.” She sounds so fucking pleased with herself. “Then you’re ready to go again.”
“Always,” I say—and then I turn on her.
Rory and I roll back onto the bed, a messy, laughing tangle of limbs. For as long as she wants me, I’m hers—and if she’s eager…
We’ve got an entire afternoon before we have to face the dangers ahead of us.
For right now, she’s mine. And dammit…I’m going to take what’s mine.
Rory
The book of shadows. Something has to be in there.
I’ve been scouring my mother’s personal record of her life as a witch for the past hour, but I’ve yet to come across what I’m looking for. Something—anything—that would give me a clue about my father.
All this time, I’ve wanted nothing more than to find out what secrets my mother’s past holds. What happened with her and the Regime that ultimately brought her to her death at the hands of the Warden. Yet now, I feel that there’s more to the story than I even began to imagine.
So I’m trying to pass the afternoon doing something productive. According to Xander’s mother, the stones will arrive before sunset. I still don’t take her at her word. The sense of foreboding I felt last night still hangs heavy. It’s too easy to expect her to just drop them into my waiting hands, giving us the power to journey into the past and find out what the hell really happened all those years ago. But worrying about it is driving me crazy, so I’m attempting to distract myself by searching for something in the book of shadows.
“You’re driving yourself crazy, Rory.” Drew echoes my thoughts as he rejoins me in his room, having gone down to bring me some lunch.
But I don’t feel like eating. “No. Not knowing is driving me crazy. At least if I stay busy looking for…something…I don’t feel like I’m sitting around here completely useless.”
He comes up to the bed where I have the book spread open before me. Setting a tray of food on the bedside table, he reaches for me, tipping my chin up and pulling my gaze to his.
“I know how I can distract you,” he says with a roguish grin.
I smile but shake my head. While another roll in the sheets with Drew might get my mind off things, I feel a sense of urgency. There are a million things I don’t know in this whole fucked up situation I’ve landed in, and
something tells me that if I can just unlock a few more clues, I’ll have a better sense of what comes next.
“I just wish there was a way for me to uncover the secrets my mother tried to wipe from existence.” I look back down at the blackened pages of my mother’s book of shadows, wondering for the thousandth time what was so terrible that she had to erase it from her own history.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Drew settles down on the bed beside me, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.
I know he feels pretty useless for the most part, not having much of a role in this whole fiasco other than being my support. But he doesn’t realize how very vital that is to me. I need his strength. He’s a rock for me, solid and unwavering, dependable and steady. I’ve never had to question his motives, and I’ll never doubt that he’ll do anything and be anything I ask.
“I wish there was, Drew,” I reply, flipping back through the pages until I reach the last page that’s unmarked by whatever spell my mother used to seal away her past. “But unless you can tell me anything about my father…”
I run my fingers over a sketch of the emerald necklace that’s tucked safely away with Ryker now.
“Is that the necklace you took from your home?” he asks. Things have been so wild, I’ve barely had time to think back to the night we escaped the Warden and Aisling.
“It is.”
My mother’s words echo in my mind, the memory surfacing again of the day she gave me the necklace.
This is your special treasure now, Rory. You have to take extra special care of it and never lose it. Promise?
This time, though, the sense of urgency is clear on her face. My child’s mind didn’t recognize it, but in my memory, it’s plain. Behind her soft words and gentle touch was a look of fear. Of desperation. As if she were willing young me to understand the implications of her gesture.
“That was a gift from your father.” Drew’s unexpected comment rips me from my memories.
“What?”
He nods, creases forming between his brows as he leans closer to the book to get a better look at the sketch.
“I remember she always wore it.”
I remember that too. Up until my father died. Although I now know he didn’t die. He became the mortal enemy of my mother herself.
“I asked my mom about it once,” Drew continues, squinting as if he’s trying to think back. “She said it was a wedding gift. A seal.”
“What does that mean? A seal?”
Drew shrugs. “Maybe a guardian thing?”
Maybe. But I don’t have any type of talisman seal from any of my guardians. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. But considering just how much I don’t know, I can’t discount the possibility.
“What’s this?” Drew reaches for the book again, using a calloused fingertip to scrape at the next page, charred by my mother’s spell. Some of the blackened page begins to fall away in ashes.
“Careful!” The tiny circle where he scratched away the roughened page disintegrates into black dust, leaving a hole that reveals nothing but the next blackened page.
“Shit. I’m sorry. But Rory, look.” He points to the seam of the pages where the char just begins to take hold. Unlike the rest of the pages, it’s not solid. The tendrils of my mother’s spell reach out in spiderwebs, stretching out to cover her most guarded secrets. “I can see something written there.”
I lean closer. He’s right. Just under the farthest edge of the black veins is what looks like words. I never noticed it before because the scrawled writing looks like just another thread of the spell. But looking at it with a different eye, it’s clear now that what looks like a sinister curl of black magic is actually the beginning of a word.
Sea…
Unable to stop myself, I reach out and scrape at the page. But just like when Drew touched it, the page turns to ashes under my fingernail. Only now, I can see the trace of something else on the edge of where the book is disintegrating. It’s not a letter, but it’s definitely the beginning of one, a continuation of whatever was being written. Sea…what?
I dust the ash off my fingers where they still hover over the hole in the page. Frustration and desperation fill me, and I can sense my hands warming with the heat of my magic as my emotions gain the upper hand.
I start to toss the book aside when Drew grips my arm with one hand and hold the book steady with the other.
“Rory,” he hisses.
I look down and find the powdery ashes glowing a pale silver. I glance at Drew, who is just as wide-eyed as I am, for half a second before staring back at the book. The ashes continue to glow, but paler now. What’s happening?
As the glow begins to dim, I panic and call up my magic with purpose now, focusing my attention on the silver dust. They glow brighter, then begin to shift. As if a breeze is blowing, they shimmer and stir.
“Oh my god,” I breathe as the ashes begin to lift from the page, rising and coming together, spinning around as if an invisible centrifugal force is acting upon them, shaping them into a tornadic funnel.
The cone of ashes hovers there over the page, spinning steadily. As if it’s waiting…
I allow a fragment more of my magic to edge forward, pushing the slightest of energy toward the page as my hand begins to glow the faintest of whites. Then suddenly, without warning, the hole in the page begins to glow, pushing back at me as if the book itself has a life force of its own, a magical energy that is responding to my own.
I pour incrementally more magic back into the book, and after a moment, the glow connecting my palm to the blackened page is so blinding I almost have to look away. Then as suddenly as it began, the light is extinguished, my connection with the book’s magic broken against my will.
I’m both confused and frustrated, but when I look down at where the glow has faded to nothing, I no longer see a hole in the page. Whatever just happened, reconnected all the bits of ash, sealing the hole to repair the page. But not just to repair the cauterized book. No. To mend the page entirely. To take it back to an earlier state.
A state where the original page looks as pristine as the day it was first written upon. Even the ink looks wet, as if the words were only just put to paper.
Shining black letters that read: Sealed.
“Holy shit.” It comes out barely audible, but I know by the way Drew is staring at me that I’m not imagining this.
“Drew.” I stare back at him, feeling as if my eyes are bugging out of my head. “Do you think…?”
“It’s worth a fucking try.” He nods adamantly as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. “What do you have to lose?”
He’s right. All I want to do right now is rip this page from the book and grind it into ash to see if I can recreate the original. What’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work and I destroy a page of my mother’s secrets? While that sounds pretty dire as a worst-case scenario, I have to admit, I may not ever find another way to uncover what’s hidden in these pages. If trying this holds even a fraction of a chance working, it’s worth it.
But still, I go slow. I scrape at the right edges of the newly reconstructed page, wanting to know what’s written next. When I’ve turned about an inch of the page into gray powder, I repeat the magic, holding my palm over the book and reaching out to whatever force lies within its pages. And again, the ashes begin to stir and glow, spin and circle, until white-hot light connects me to the book once more, blindingly bright for a moment before disappearing into nothingness.
When I look at the page, I let out a little whoop. It worked. I was able to repeat the spell without destroying the book in the process.
Drew leans forward and reads aloud. “Sealed by death’s.” He looks at me, his eyes now a little guarded. “Death’s what?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Feeling less afraid now, and desperate to know what lies hidden on these pages, I scrape away more, creating a pile of ashes and opening the hole wider
, making a circle of about three inches. Then I call up my magic once again. The page reconstructs more quickly this time, now that my hesitation is gone and I know what to do.
This time when I look down at the freshly inked page, not only are the inscribed words fully revealed, but another sketch is shining bright green. The necklace again. And beneath it:
Sealed by death’s kiss. Unlocked by heart’s own blood.
It’s a spell.
But there has to be more to it than that. An incantation.
Furiously, I tear at the page, needing to know what this means. When I thrust my magic toward the book again, the pile of ashes reforms almost instantly, as if the book and I are one now and I no longer need to make my request.
Written in my mother’s script is what I knew I would find. Words in an unknown language. Words that carry power.
I’m still new to learning the intricacies of spells, not even having created one of my own myself yet. But in the weeks that I’ve studied this book of shadows, I have learned something. Certain words carry more weight than others. I’ve seen certain bits of incantations repeated in more complicated spells. I’ve seen words that convey an emotion or a need. I’ve seen words that appear repeatedly to indicate the purpose of a spell.
That’s how I know that what I’ve stumbled on must have been blackened out for very good reason. Because immediately I know there’s something wrong with this. Something dark and forbidden. I feel it in my very marrow as I run my eyes over the incantation. I don’t recognize any of these words at first, but a shiver runs through me as I stop on the one I do know.
Necromanteion.
Oracle of the dead.
My fingers fly to my mouth. Was my mother dabbling in necromancy? The thought is almost too much.
It’s not possible. Not only because I want to believe she wasn’t into dark magic—though the desperate need to cover up her secrets screams that may not be the case—but that it’s truly not possible. Dr. Belmont was very clear on that point.
Emerald Vows: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Marked Souls Book 3) Page 12