by C. R. Jane
“Yes, men love screamers,” she said, all the while nodding. “You’re doing something right at least.”
I drowned beneath the sheer size of Keon, which utterly consumed me, the friction as he shoved his cock into me igniting our fire once again.
I rocked back and forth as he slapped into me, and I moaned, yet letting myself fall completely under his spell was difficult while being watched by a psychotic, nosy ghost.
She was on her feet. “Lift your ass higher,” she instructed, while standing beside me, hands on her hips, “and tell him to finger you ass.”
“Get lost,” I growled under my breath.
“Say something?” Keon breathed, his pounding never once ceasing. His energy was unmatched, and when he fucked me, he did so as though he’d been saving himself for me for years.
I adored how he held on so hard to my hips, how he drove deep into me, his moans a delicious song.
“Don’t make so many sounds,” the ghost continued, and I cried out louder on purpose.
“Oh, he will know you’re faking it. I mean, it’s clear to me you faked the last orgasm.”
I glared at her, mouthing, fuck off.
But she didn’t seem fazed and pursed her lips, watching Keon slap into me, over and over. My whole body buzzed, and the rise of my climax pushed closer.
“It was deplorable how you sucked his dick by the way,” she continued.
I kept my head low as Keon rode me so fast, I could barely catch my breath. In and out, nothing stopped him. I shut my eyes, the excitement building to a point where it was too much. I grasped the grass, holding on as he slammed into me.
“You just took him into your mouth. No licking of his shaft and balls first. Did you never learn the fine art of teasing a man? I need to dig out a book I own. The longer you tease a man, the more he will keep you. I mean, look at this beast humping you, sweating, grunting.” She huffed. “You wouldn’t catch me rutting him because he just sees you as an easy lay. And while we’re on the topic, only prostitutes have sex doggie style, since it offers a lack of intimacy. Do you not like this man? Then why do you let him pluck your flower?”
“Enough,” I bellowed, just as an orgasm cut through me, tearing me to the most beautiful shreds of pleasure. My inner walls clenched around him as I contorted with fulfillment.
He never stopped pounding into me, growling his own pleasure. “That’s it,” he growled. “Squeeze my cock.”
I fell apart beneath Keon’s touch, and he put me back together. I couldn’t stop the groaning sounds that left me, while Keon unleashed deep, gruff noises, pulsing inside me with his own sudden orgasm.
He grasped onto my ass cheeks, squeezing as he pumped his seed into me. He drew them apart, and a cool wind brushed over my exposed parts. Sweat coated me, a drop running down my spine.
Even with my orgasm still pulsing through me, the painful need to have Keon never stopped haunting me.
I opened my eyes and didn’t even care that I could no longer see the ghost. I let myself get drunk on Keon. My whole body shook as I floated down from euphoria. I felt his hand on the small of my back, caressing me as he withdrew out of me. Instantly, I missed him and wanted him to fill me again. He might be a stalker, a killer, a dangerous bastard, but he was mine.
He wasted no time in scooping me up like I weighed nothing, and he brought us both to the ground.
I lay cradled in his arms, his chest pressed to my back, and I kept wondering about how far we had come since we first met, how much we’d gone through. How it was only now that I realized I could never have left Keon. He meant so much more to me than I ever wanted to admit.
“Selena, you fucking destroy me. You are always on my mind, in my dreams, and I can’t stop myself from coming to find you every day. It wrecked me to keep my distance.”
We stayed like that for so long, and I didn’t want to leave. Emotions swirled in my chest, overwhelming me with a strange sensation that made me melt against him. And that was when I realized that I loved Keon back just as much.
We stayed that way for a long pause, and I never wanted to leave. But I also wanted to be completely transparent with Keon. Plus, I needed some help.
“I think I brought back a ghost from the afterlife,” I said suddenly. I decided what better time to reveal a bit more about myself than now?
“What do you mean?” he asked, his breath washing over my cheek.
So, I told him everything from me waking up outside my cell, the things I’d stolen, almost getting killed, and what the shrink said about a possible trinket in the warden’s office. “I think it’s trying to kill me. It seems to appear when I’m sleeping or exhausted.”
His arms tightened around me. “Fuck. Then there’s only one course of action. Alaric or I will be with you at all times until we retrieve the trinket from the warden. We can’t leave you alone.”
“You make it sound easy.” A thread of hope speared through me that he had some connection that would assist with getting the object to help me.
“Nothing is ever easy in this shit hole, but we have no other option. And I sure as fuck am not going to lose you to a ghost.”
I curled my back against him and held onto his arm looped around me, never wanting to let him go. A sense of comfort flared over me, because for the first time in too long, I was starting to feel like it wasn’t me against the world.
Chapter 12
Alaric
The rumors were spreading. Precious possessions that prisoners would die to keep safe were going missing.
And all roads lead back to my little possessed siren.
I’d staged two break-ins so far of the warden’s office, but nothing had come from it. And we were running out of time.
Keon and I had taken to watching over her at night, but on some nights, somehow, she would disappear in the blink of an eye. Right in front of us, she’d go from sleeping in her bed fitfully to somewhere else in the prison. We both managed to track her down most nights, but the bags under her eyes were growing deeper.
Selena’s spirit was a klepto, or maybe it was just trying to get her in trouble. Any time she disappeared, she usually would wake up the next day with something new in her room, something stolen from other prisoners.
Discontent was growing around the penitentiary, and it wasn’t the easiest thing to return the stolen goods to their owners and not get caught. Selena had taken to hiding things in various places around her room that we weren’t able to get returned, but it was only a matter of time until there would be repercussions and she’d be caught. It was almost like the ghost was seeing how much she could get away with.
I was used to handling a lot at a time, but I usually approached every problem already knowing how I could solve it. The fact that I didn’t know what talisman in the warden’s office could help, and the fact that I couldn’t persuade him to tell me, was a situation I was unaccustomed to.
And it was driving me crazy. I stalked the halls, keeping an ear out for Selena’s name to be mentioned, and it was mentioned a lot. I turned a corner and stutter stepped when I saw Selena’s little pet, the hellhound, lurking against a wall. He was watching a fight that had broken out between a group of cat shifters. To most people, he would appear disinterested, but I knew better. He was aware of everything around him. And he wasn’t hanging in the hallway for his health.
He was waiting for me.
The hellhound didn’t look at me when I sidled up to him and leaned against the wall, pretending to watch the fight as well.
“How long are we going to play pretend?” I asked sarcastically as a prisoner shifted suddenly, swiping a paw full of sharp ebony claws across another prisoner’s face.
That probably hurt.
“I want to know what’s going on with Selena,” he growled. I bristled at her name leaving his lips. It sounded like a caress.
“Why would I tell you anything about her?” I answered calmly.
His body stiffened next to mine, and I smelled some
thing coming off of him that smelled suspiciously like brimstone. The hellhound was obviously very interested in Selena, enough to shatter the calm he was trying to portray.
“She’s ignoring me,” he admitted reluctantly.
I started to get suspicious. “I wasn’t aware you two were close.”
“Things have changed recently.”
My suspicions grew.
“Is she all right? She seems exhausted every time I see her. Is she sleeping? Eating?” The words rushed out of him like they’d been pent up inside of him. He was desperate to find the answers to his questions. He was a junkie going without his fix.
He’d fucking slept with her.
The hellhound had fucking moved in while the rest of us were on the outs.
A black haze descended on my vision. My hands curled into fists. I was jealous…I was enraged. It felt like hot flames licking at my throat. I’d come to an uneasy acceptance that I was going to have to share with the other two for the time being.
But the hellhound? The loner shifter?
How the hell had that happened right under my nose?
“The way I see it, Selena needs all the help she can get right now,” he told me, sensing my fury.
I thought about just how much help Selena needed as another shifter’s canines extended and he bit into the jugular of the guy he was fighting. I didn’t think the guy was going to come back from that one.
As I watched the shifter begin to chew on the dying man’s neck, my anger dampened. I thought about Selena crying in my arms, the fact that Keon and I hadn’t been able to protect her, those circles under her eyes.
She did need all the help she could get.
But I hadn’t gotten this far in life by trusting everyone around me mindlessly. Maybe there was a way to make his devotion to Selena useful.
I’d send him in next to look for whatever relic was in the warden’s office that could help Selena. If he got caught, then I wouldn’t have to worry about him. And if he got what we needed, that would be helpful too.
Win-win situation.
“Actually, she does need your help,” I told him with a grin.
I loved when things came together.
Selena
“You want me delivering food there?” I all but whimpered as Boris told me that my duties today would include Seth’s section of the prison.
“Do you have a problem with that?” he growled as he spooned a cup of what looked like slop into a few bowls and began to put them on my cart.
“No,” I told him reluctantly, scared to make a fuss about anything, thanks to the stolen goods hiding in my room and the rumors that I knew were flying around about me. A bead of sweat slid down my forehead, and the room’s temperature seemed to spike.
I smiled at Boris, getting a disgruntled grunt in return, and I began the trek to Seth’s cell.
I was nervous.
We’d barely spoken since he’d brought me back from death. With everything that had happened with Alaric and Keon…and I suppose Laz, I was starting to feel guilty about the freeze out after he’d saved me.
But every time my anger started to chill, I would see him with that girl…his fiancée, and all the hurt and anger would come rushing back.
The trip to Seth’s section of the prison seemed much quicker today. The guard walking behind me was silent, and I longed for a talkative one to keep me distracted. Granted, those kinds of guards were usually saying disgusting things to me, but at least it would be distracting.
The wails of the prisoners were louder here. You could taste the despair in the air. I passed by a cell where the prisoner was nothing but a pile of rags on the ground. When I set down the tray, the rags didn’t move.
Something told me they wouldn’t move again.
Butterflies took flight in my stomach as I wheeled the tray up to Seth’s cell. I frowned when he wasn’t waiting on his cot like he usually was. The guard wasn’t really paying attention as he opened the cell door, and Seth was suddenly there with a piece of concrete from the wall, smashing it against the guard’s head.
The guard fell to the ground as I choked on a scream. Seth dragged the guard into the cell and threw a blanket over him. I stood there in shock. Seth looked revitalized…better than I’d ever seen him. Was it the crystal? And why had he just done that to the guard? Once the other guards and the warden found out, Seth would be lucky to be left alive.
He was there in front of me then, pulling me into his arms. “You have to let me explain,” he whispered hurriedly. “You can’t shut me out anymore.”
“Seth, what is going on?” I breathed, the weak girl inside of me savoring the feel of his arms after so long without them.
“I’m desperate for you. I thought I could do it, push you away. But I’m weak. You should want nothing to do with me, because my entire kingdom is on the brink of destruction and all I can think about is the last time I felt your lips, the last time I touched you. How did I get to the point where I’m endangering everything just on the off chance that I can see your smile again?”
“Who was she?” I asked, my voice trembling as my heart reminded me of how much it had hurt to see him with her.
“My only connection to Fairie,” he told me, touching our foreheads together as his hands moved up and down my arms. “She was my betrothed before everything happened, before my father was killed and I was framed.” He brushed a kiss across my lips, cutting off my gasp at his revelation. “She’s screwing my cousin but still in love with me. She gives me tidbits about Fairie, things that I hope to use if I ever get out of here.”
“Do you love her?” I asked painfully, my heart clenching at the thought. Over the last few weeks, I’d tried to rip him from my heart, but ten seconds in his presence and I realized that I was still totally and desperately in love with the broken, complicated fae in front of me.
“No,” he said firmly, and my heart unclenched a bit from the confidence in his answer. “I was a boy when I loved her, I scarcely knew the meaning. And now…”
“And now what?” I asked him, my insides fluttering with hope about what he was about to say.
“And now I know I never knew what love was…until you.”
“You love me?” I whispered, because sometimes it was hard to believe that was possible, that one person, let alone three, could have those kinds of feelings for me. I’d gone my whole life without feeling any kind of love.
And I didn’t want to trust it.
But his lips were right there.
“You own me,” he whispered. “I’m beginning to think there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, even if it damned me and everything else in the world to do it.”
My breath hitched as he leaned closer to me and then stopped.
“Kiss me,” he demanded, but it was more beseeching than it was anything else.
“Seth,” I whispered, unsure.
His lips closed over mine then, silencing my fears. His tongue dipped in sweetly, shallowly, teasing me. Melting me. When he pulled away, I felt lightheaded. Just then, it didn’t feel like we were in a dark cell, chaos bound to descend at any minute. It didn’t feel like most days, where all I felt was hate and hurt from him.
It felt like we were stealing a little bit of peace.
And I wanted that so bad.
He pulled back and looked at me, a silent question in his gaze. I responded by pressing my lips against his once more. My mouth sealed over his, a sweet, slow, desperate dragging of lips. When we finally pulled away from each other, we were both breathing heavily.
“Please,” I murmured, weirdly hoping that he hit the guard hard enough that he would be out for a while. Because this was happening. I felt like I’d been waiting for this moment forever.
“Tell me what you want me to do?” he asked, his voice slightly shaking. “It’s been a long time, and this…this means so much more than anything I can remember.”
“Kiss me again.”
“Is that all?”
; I grabbed his head and pulled him to me, losing myself in the taste and scent of him, his skillful kisses unravelling me further. He pulled away and slid his mouth down my neck, licking and sucking until I wriggled against the sensation.
“I’ve been craving you since the moment I saw you,” he murmured.
The craving he spoke about had overwhelmed me too. I had a confusing need for this fae to hold and complete me, even though I’d been fighting this feeling for months.
Giving in to the longing, I winded a hand around his neck, stroking his hair. Seth made a soft noise in his throat and shifted closer. I ran my tongue along his bottom lip, and he responded with a fierce kiss, our teeth almost colliding as our tongues pushed against each other. Our hearts thumped in rhythm, matching the way our lives had somehow collided together.
However much I told myself that this wasn’t what I wanted, that anything with the four of them wasn’t what I wanted…my heart seemed to have other ideas.
Seth’s stubbled face scratched at mine, and I welcomed the feel of it. I trembled…the heat we were creating made me feel like we were about to explode, shoot off into the stars that I hadn’t seen in what felt like forever.
I pulled away and touched my mouth a little in disbelief that this was happening as I met the eyes of the male who had somehow stolen a part of my soul and given me part of his in return.
“You’re it for me, Selena,” he said softly.
I was distracted by the sensations I felt just then. The way his body felt against mine, his soft breaths mingling with mine. “You’re already in my heart and head. I’ve spent months trying to get rid of you, and you won’t leave,” I whispered.
His fingers tightened for a moment as a tremor rushed through his body, like he couldn’t believe what I was saying.
And I couldn’t believe what I was saying either. Maybe the loss of my power had made me defective.
He led me over to his cot and sat down in front of me, and it said a lot for the moment that I didn’t care that the guard was tucked under it. Today, I was wearing the hideous prison uniform that was two pieces, and I didn’t regret it as he slowly untucked my top from my pants and began to kiss the skin he exposed, lips cool against the heat as I helped him take it all the way off.
