Chapter 5
Trillian stood in back of me, wrapping one arm
around my waist, and with the other he ran his hand along my skin,
fingers long and narrow, making me shiver. I let out a long breath
and leaned my head back against his chest, drifting at the feel of
his touch.
I could sense him—I could sense all my men,
thanks to the Soul Symbiont ritual. We’d bound ourselves into a
quartet, forever and always, beyond time, beyond death. But
Trillian was my alpha; he’d been the first man I’d ever truly
loved—not the first one I’d fucked, but the first one I’d loved.
Magnets we were, from the very beginning, and we’d defied family
and custom to be together.
He blew in my ear, a gentle stream, tickling me
until I laughed and reached up to swish him away.
“Stop.” It came out as a whisper, but the force
behind his voice cut through and I dropped my hand. “I want to
possess you tonight. I want to be your master.”
“You are my alpha.” I acquiesced, my own voice
low and sultry, caught in the rising passion that filtered through
my system as if I’d drunk sweet wine or a fiery brandy. My
tiredness gave way as the desire began to build, and the
combination made for a delicious sensation as I gave myself over to
Trillian.
“Dance for me, my beloved.” He slowly let go of
me and crossed to the bed, sitting on it, crossing one leg over the
other as he leaned back on his palms, watching me.
I flicked on the music, as my heart rose to
match the heavy beat. Slowly, I began to sway my hips to the drums,
sliding my hands up my body to cup my breasts. And then the music
took over and I immersed myself in the song, my skirt swirling as I
turned, trailing my fingers along my sides, over my breasts, up to
greet the stars.
Swaying lightly, I gently rolled my head to let
my hair trail down my back. As I fell into the music, the beat
became a rhythm mirrored by my body, carrying me away down a dark
path, fraught with bloodred roses and night-blooming jasmine. And
then, just like that, I was topless and my breasts bounced gently
as I freed them.
Trillian let out a short gasp and I caught his
gaze, drawn to him like a moth to flame.
“I want to fuck you hard and fast,” he
whispered. “I want to feel my cock in your mouth. I want to eat you
out, hear you scream, rub my face against your breasts.” His words,
raw but not coarse, sent a shiver up my spine. I loved hearing my
men tell me what they wanted to do to me.
Just then, the door opened, and Smoky entered
the room. I whirled, so ready to be played, like a harp, like the
drums, like an instrument of joy.
He glanced at Trillian, then back at me as his
hair rose up to grasp my wrists, the silken strands coiling around
my skin, their grip so strong I couldn’t break it even if I wanted
to. A faint smile broke through his lips, turning them up just
enough at the corners to remind me that he might look like a man,
but he was all dragon, hungry and possessive.
His hair stretched my arms wide as the strands
brought my hands up to slide them behind my head and hold them
there firmly. My hips shifted in sync with the slow pulse that
echoed through the room.
The music picked up, switching songs, and I was
in a woodland glade as the threads of Smoky’s hair swirled me out,
twirling on my toes. And then, I was free again, the music playing
a trail of bread crumbs for me to follow. The room darkened as
Smoky lit candles and turned off the lights.
At some point, I unzipped my skirt, letting it
drop to the ground. Eyes closed, naked I danced, leaving care
behind, leaving worry behind, letting the music cleanse and purify
me as it burned through my body.
And then an arm snaked around me, and my eyes
flew open to meet Trillian’s; he was holding me by the waist as he
circled with me, both of us caught in the web of music. We circled
the room, the music growing darker, and he let out a low growl,
ripping off his shirt.
His jet black skin glistened under the light. I
gasped, once again mesmerized by his beautiful body. Slender but
well built, he had the perfect V-waist. A thin sheen of
perspiration glistened over his muscles, and I snaked toward him,
pressing my tongue to his neck, and slowly—ever slowly—I slid down
his body, drinking in the salty taste of his skin, the drops of
water melting in my mouth as I approached his belt.
I knelt in front of him and reached for his
buckle, and—with precise movements—opened it and slowly drew the
belt out of the loops and tossed it away. He reached down and
unzipped his pants, and I slid them down his legs, facing his
erection, thick and pulsing.
From behind me, I felt Smoky step up to press
against my back, and I turned to him. He had undressed and now his
hair fluttered, ankle length, around him as if a wind had caught it
up and was tousling it. The silver strands whipped this way and
that, dancing to the music. Caught between fire and ice, I reached
up and grasped Smoky’s cock in my hands, leaned over and trailed a
line of kisses along its length.
He moaned, his head dropping back as his hair
went snapping into the air. Holding him firm in my hand, I turned
to Trillian and slid my lips over the head of his penis, the salty
taste of his pre-cum tickling my tongue. I knew them, intimately—my
men—inside and out. I reveled in the taste of their bodies, the
feel of their skin against mine, their girth inside me, filling me
full, spreading me wide, taking me out of my head when the demons
played too loudly against my thoughts.
As my lips formed suction around the tip of his
penis, Trillian shuddered. I began to slowly lower myself onto my
hands and knees, facing him, snaking my tongue down his length,
slightly widening my mouth so I could take more of him in. Quarter
inch by quarter inch, I swallowed him down. Breathing through my
nose, I matched my breathing to the rhythm of the music, slow and
pulsing, as Trillian began to pump ever so gently into my mouth,
sliding in and out between my lips.
And then Smoky was kneeling behind me, his
fingers reaching around my waist, down to finger my clit, tweaking
me, caressing me, driving me higher as my desire grew on dragon
wings. I let out a muffled moan as my pale knight thrust himself
inside me, sliding through the folds of my pussy, pulsating with
hunger and life.
As Smoky began to drive deeper into me, the
music shifted and we were riding a breezy riff, a flute leading us
like the proverbial piper, and I closed my eyes, my tongue
flickering along the length of Trillian’s cock, the shining
darkness of his skin in sharp contrast to my own paleness.
A flash of light flared on one of Trillian’s
thighs and for the briefest of seconds, I saw one of the spiraling
tattoos that had buried itself within him—and within me—during our
initial bonding. The silver spiral shimmered through the depths of
his skin and then was gone, but I knew it had merely faded from
sight. The bond we’d forged that night in the temple would never
break—not only were we bound by the Soul Symbiont ritual, but by
the Ritual of Eleshinar.
Smoky’s hands found my waist and held tight as
his hair took over. The silky threads found their way to curl
around my nipples, and one strand began tickling my clit, stroking
lightly across it, vibrating to the music, driving me further into
my sex haze.
All fatigue was forgotten as the three of us
moved, one beast, one creature joined together, rhythmically
twisting and writhing to the music, a bright aura forming around us
as our passion magnified.
Trillian pulled gently out of my mouth and lay
down on the floor, and I began to rub against him, as even more of
Smoky’s hair reached out and held my breasts tight, a firm passage
for Trillian’s cock. My nipples slipped over his skin as I trailed
up and down against him, with Smoky still driving me onward, a
musky odor filtering through the room from our passion.
Beads of perspiration began to glisten against
my skin, dropping in a line to splash against Trillian’s stomach.
The music heightened, as did the mood of our union. I closed my
eyes, my breath deepening into ragged pants as the feel of Smoky
inside me, the tickling of his hair intensified. The friction of
Trillian’s cock sliding between my breasts settled into a lathered
drumbeat as I pressed against him. A low mist began to rise from
the floor, the icy chill from Smoky mixing with my moonbeams and
Trillian’s dark fire.
And then, missing Morio, I reached out with my
mind—with the bond that connected all of us—and felt him there, on
the edge of our union. He heard me and responded, his energy
swirling into play with mine. I coiled around him, touching his
essence, stroking his aura. We spiraled together, and then Smoky
and Trillian were there, supporting us both, helping keep Morio on
track.
Here we could see how tired he was, how much
energy had been drained off him. And the change that Menolly’s
vampire blood had wrought was apparent, too. His youkai side—his
inner demon—was afire, stronger in spirit.
Together, Smoky, Trillian, and I poured our
focus into bringing Morio into our midst, entwining him in our web
of passion. I could feel him catch his breath, could feel him gasp
as I coiled around him, merging with his being, and then, as I
started to come, soaring ever higher, I grasped all of my men and
we bolted, like a group of stallions and their queen.
Sweat glistened on my body. With Smoky’s driving
thrusts, and Trillian’s musky gliding between my breasts, I held
tight to the spirits of all three of my husbands and went diving
over the edge, spiraling into that black void that is la petite mort, the little death of orgasm.
I slept like the dead that night—at least the
dead that Morio and I weren’t scaring out of their graves. When I
woke, Smoky and Trillian were already up and my nightgown and
bathrobe had been laid out on the bottom of my bed, three red roses
gently placed atop the silk. I smiled; they often did things like
that—bought me flowers or perfume—and I felt truly loved.
Slipping out of bed, I took a long, leisurely
shower, still unable to warm up, then dressed in a warm rayon
skirt, a hunter green jacquard bustier, and a light silk
see-through shirt over the top as a nod to the weather. I slipped
into stilettos and brushed my hair. Placing the roses in a bud vase
next to the bed and adding water, I gave them another deep sniff,
inhaling the warm scent, before peeking in on Morio.
He was asleep, so I tiptoed back out of the room
and headed downstairs.
Delilah and Iris were at the table. I glanced
around. “Where’s everybody else?” Menolly, of course, would be
asleep, but the house seemed unusually quiet.
“Smoky and Trillian are out patching a hole on
the roof. Morio’s asleep—he seems to be resting deeply today. It’s
good for his healing.” Iris handed me a plate of waffles, bacon,
and scrambled eggs.
“He’s still asleep. I checked on him before
coming down.” I took a seat and doused the waffles with syrup,
wiping the drip with my finger and then licking off the sweet
maple. “What about Shade? Roz?” After a pause, I added,
“Vanzir?”
Delilah cleared her throat. “Shade’s off . . . I
don’t know where he is, to be honest. He took off early this
morning.”
“Rozurial is outside playing with Maggie in the
snow.” Iris bit her lip. “Apparently, Vanzir has decided to spend
some time hanging around down in the Demon Underground, looking for
news of the remaining spirit seals.” She gave me a long look.
“You’re going to have to deal with the fallout eventually. When are
you going to talk to your men about what happened?”
“How about never?” I mumbled. That was the
last conversation I wanted to have.
Trillian and Morio would manage, but Smoky—no way in hell could I
keep him from going after Vanzir.
Vanzir was a dream-chaser demon, and during our
last crisis, he’d ended up feeding on my life force. There had been
no choice; he was trapped by his nature, and though he tried to
break off the attack, he couldn’t.
The only option I’d had to stop him was to fuck
him—it put a stop to his feeding on me. Although it was the last
thing I’d planned on, it was better than him siphoning off my
energy, which was terribly painful and a much more invasive
violation.
But try telling Smoky that and making him
understand. I knew he wouldn’t take his anger out on me, but I
wasn’t so sure he’d leave Vanzir alive. The Moon Mother had already
punished the demon—she’d stripped away his powers. She had also
stripped away the soul binder that kept him our slave. So he was
now a free agent, but without any protection, which was more
punishment than I would have come down on him with.
I finally pushed back my plate. “I’ll talk to
them in a day or so. But first, we have to meet Aeval and check out
what’s going on with that portal.” I stared at my half-eaten
waffle, then stabbed at it with my fork. “I’m really hungry this
morning. May I have another waffle, please?”
Iris laughed, but slid one onto my plate, along
with another egg.
As I dug in with appetite, the phone rang.
Delilah answered and when she hung up, she motioned to me.
“That was one of Aeval’s assistants. Hurry up
and finish that. She got impatient and is already waiting for us in
the park. We’re to meet her there instead of heading out to Talamh
Lonrach Oll. What should we take? Will you bring the staff she gave
you?”
I shook my head. “It’s more for ritual, or
journey. I still don’t know how to use it, so I’d best leave it
here. No, she made it clear to me last night. We take iron rather
than silver. I’ve got some of my old paraphernalia around
here.”
When I’d been younger, a new member of the
OIA—although at that time we’d been in the YIA, the Y’Elestrial
Intelligence Agency—I’d often used iron. It had been considered
illegal by government officials. Or rather immoral. But I didn’t care. It got the job
done.
I’d worn heavy leather gloves to protect my
hands and done what was necessary to apprehend our suspects. Nobody
but one supervisor ever made an issue out of it, and he—Lathe—had
been determined to fuck my brains out. I kept refusing him, so he
made my life hell during his time there.
Delilah blinked. “Iron? You still have that
stuff?”
“Yeah, but even if I didn’t, we’d have a much
easier time here than back home getting hold of it.” I shrugged as
she stared at me. “I never could follow the rules, and hey—it saved
me from Roche.”
Roche had been a savage serial killer I’d caught
back in Otherworld. Actually, truth was, Trillian had played a big
part in his capture. I owed him my life, and he’d won my heart. The
chemistry had been instantaneous; we’d ignited like gasoline and a
match. But nobody else knew the full story. And they never would.
The truth would stay between my alpha love and me. I’d wanted to
give him credit, but finally, he convinced me it was best to keep
the details of Roche’s capture quiet.
“Yeah, that’s true,” she said. Delilah still
tended to bend to authority, although she’d grown out of a lot of
her naïveté over the past year and was becoming a strong, vibrant
woman in her own right. I was proud of how far she’d come. “We’d
better get moving, so if you want to grab your torture instruments,
let’s get moving.” Her nose wrinkled, but she grinned at me.
I shrugged. “We don’t have a choice anymore. We
have to fight dirty. We do whatever we need to win. Because winning
is the only acceptable option.”
“It seems that’s what our life has become. I
need to change into my boots before we go. You’d better get out of
those stilettos if we’re going through that portal. You said you
smelled peat and that means bog marsh.”
I glanced at her. She was dressed in heavy jeans
and a sweatshirt with a gray tabby cat on the front, but she was
wearing canvas Mary Janes. Her hair was short and spiky, an edgy
cut that fit her new found confidence.
Delilah was tall, six one, and lean. Menolly was
lean also, but short—five one—and petite. I was somewhere in
between—at five-seven, I outclassed Marilyn Monroe in the hips and
breasts department by a long shot, with an hourglass figure from a
porno king’s fantasy. My boobs and hips could move men to
weep.
Which meant wearing a lot of separates so
clothes fit me right. But that was okay with me. My closet could
have furnished a fetish bar, considering my love of leather, lace,
bustiers, and chiffon skirts.
We headed up to the study, careful not to wake
Morio. My family trunk was sitting in the corner, and I quietly
grasped one handle on it while Delilah took hold of the other.
Together, we carried it to my bedroom. Our mother had commissioned
hope chests for each of us when we were little girls, and mine was
made out of the starblazer tree—a black wood similar to ebony that
resonated with strong magic, only found back in Otherworld.
I opened the lid for the first time since we’d
arrived here. A scattering of treasures—mostly sentimental—filled
the trunk. I picked up an old photograph of our mother. She’d had
it taken while still a student in Spain, and I held it up, looking
silently at the beautiful blond woman who stared back at me.
Delilah draped her arm around my neck, gazing at her with me.
“She was beautiful,” I whispered. “You look so
much like her. Only a lot taller.”
“I miss her. It’s hard to remember her, though.
I was still pretty young when she died and you took over. But I
always remember she smelled like something . . . I don’t know what,
but it was good.”
I smiled then. “I know what.” As I pulled a
bottle from the trunk and opened it, the fragrance filled the room.
Chanel No. 5. “You should buy some. They still make it, you
know.”
With a wistful look, Delilah shook her head.
“That smells so much like Mother. I remember that scent. But I
don’t think I could wear it the way she did. I might get some,
though, just to keep on my dresser, for when I miss her.”
Slowly, I capped the bottle again and kissed it
gently, a wave of homesickness rolling off me. With Mother gone,
I’d clung to Father, and now I’d lost him, too. At least Menolly
and Delilah still had his love. Shaking off the sense of loss, I
put the bottle back in the trunk, along with her picture, and then
pulled out a bag and gingerly opened it.
A spider came crawling out, and I automatically
squashed it. Ever since our encounter with the werespiders of
Kyoka, we’d left none standing inside the house, still worried that
the remnants of his cult might have spies around.
I shook out the contents onto the floor, and we
stared at the booty. Two pairs of iron handcuffs. An iron-bladed
dagger with an antler hilt that I’d managed to procure. And
Trillian’s gift to me—a silver flail with nine thin iron chains.
They were long enough to snap back on me, so I needed to aim
carefully, but they’d give a world of hurt to any Fae who dared to
stand up to me.
“Sometimes I miss the days when we were looking
for common criminals, don’t you?” I stared up at Delilah, feeling
bleak. Life was a lot harder now, and the stakes a lot
higher.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” She sighed and
knelt beside me. “You really want to take this stuff with
us?”
I nodded. “Considering the Bog Eater’s hanging
out in there, as well as who knows what, you want to chance not
being able to rescue him? Something like this flail could turn the
tide. Your dagger is silver, and as aware as the blade is,
Lysanthra can’t stand up to one of the Elder Fae.”
“I see your point. Okay then. We take it. I just
. . . fighting dirty has never set well with me.” She scrounged
around looking for gloves for the two of us. “Here, these are thin
but will give us enough protection to handle the iron.”
Iron burned us—not quite so bad as full-blooded
Fae, but enough to leave marks. If we didn’t get the metal off our
skin, it could eventually kill us, eating through our flesh like
acid.
“Dirty or not, when dealing with the insane, the
murderous, and the freaks, I’m all about anything that gives me an
edge.” I slid on the gloves and gingerly picked up a pair of
handcuffs. “I can’t decide whether to bring the Black Unicorn horn
or not. We’re going after Fae, and I have my qualms about whether
it would help our enemies or hurt them.”
“Bring it. Please. We might need it and you
can’t know how it will affect the Elder Fae until you try.”
“True enough.” I pocketed the handcuffs and
flail as Delilah picked up the other set of handcuffs along with
the iron dagger. “Let me grab it and then we’re off.” As she headed
downstairs to get her coat, I went into my room and changed shoes,
then withdrew the horn from the hiding place I’d fashioned in a
small space under a trapdoor and throw rug.
I held up the glistening horn. Crystal, with
threads of gold and silver running through it, the horn of the
Black Unicorn was only one of nine known to exist. Each had been
shed as he reincarnated.
And with this horn I’d brought down the Black
Beast, sent him into his next incarnation. He was running free now,
a young stallion, set for another thousand years. And I—bloody and
battered—had earned my spot as a priestess for the Moon Mother by
being the conduit for his sacrifice.
I was still leery of using it—each time, it felt
like the horn vied for some power over me, though I hadn’t
mentioned it to anyone else. At the core of the horn lived Eriskel,
the jindasel through whom the Elementals of the horn channeled
their energy. And through Eriskel, their magic channeled to
me.
Putting the horn in the deep pocket of my skirt,
I closed the hidden Velcro fastener. I’d had Iris retrofit most of
my skirts to carry the horn safely, so that even if I wasn’t
wearing the Black Beast’s cloak—fashioned out of his hide—I’d be
able to carry it with me.
As I put on a warm black microfiber jacket and
made sure my boots were tied securely, I wondered just what we were
getting into. I cinched my jacket with a silver chain belt, then
tied the bag with the handcuffs and iron flail to it. Delilah was
waiting for me outside by my car. We were going together, and my
Lexus had snow tires and handled the snow better than her
Jeep.
As we silently belted ourselves in and I started
the car, I breathed a short but sweet prayer for protection. I just
hoped the Moon Mother was listening.