by Ivy Asher
“Almost?” he growls indignantly, and the giggle sneaking out of me quickly morphs into a deep moan as he starts to pick up his pace between my thighs.
“Almost,” I repeat, gasping as he nips at my neck, his laughter vibrating through me as happiness fills our bond.
“I won’t tell the espresso machine,” he whispers conspiratorially in my ear, his deep sexy voice causing need to settle low in my stomach and goose bumps to crawl up my arms. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he adds, his smile wide, and then he claims my mouth and kisses me almost right out of my mind. “I fucking love you, Lennox, now scream my name again,” he commands, picking up his pace while heating up every possible erogenous zone I have.
I reach back and grab onto the metal headboard of the bed, trying to ground myself as much as possible as extra heat builds at my nipples, clit, and pussy. Rogan pounds into me, deep and hard, and I start a steady chant of you can do it, put your back into it...you know, just to keep that ego in check.
I fight it so hard, but it’s a lost cause. I’m mindless and mewling in a matter of seconds. Another one of those dangerous soul snatching orgasms starts to tingle and collect in my core, and I don’t know if I’m afraid of it or ready to jump in feetfirst.
“You feel so fucking good,” Rogan groans, and then he presses my knees back, opening me up even more for him, and starts driving into me even deeper. “Yes, baby, you like that,” he hums.
“No, no baby,” I gasp and then moan as he fucks me senseless.
“Shit, sorry.”
“Don’t be, I didn’t even know I hated it until you just said it and it felt weird,” I reassure him, groaning with approval as he picks up his pace again.
“Got it, no babes or babies. How about my honey or sweetie?”
I gag at the suggestions, grabbing on to his arms so he can thrust into me even harder.
“What cutesy name am I supposed to use then?” he asks breathily, trying to playfully pout. It doesn’t have the effect he wants because my moans coax out a smug smile instead.
“To be determined,” I squeal, but it’s all I can get out before I throw my head back and scream his name in complete mind-altering ecstasy.
“Yes, Lennox, that’s my girl,” he growls, and then he buries himself and cums hard.
We lie there, sweaty and breathless. I feel almost numb with endorphins and bliss from what he just did to me, and a happy sigh sneaks out easily. “You gotta teach me that thing you did with my blood,” I tell him drowsily.
“Hand over my secret weapon, just like that?” he scoffs, a sneaky smile playing on his kiss-swollen lips. “Come now, Osteomancer, you should know me better than that by now.”
“Mmmm, true. You do like to play things close to the vest. But I’m a quick study, Kendrick, and I will use my powers for evil,” I warn as I wag my eyebrows sinisterly, or at least I think I do, I can’t really feel my face.
He kisses me softly and boops my nose. I slap his hand away and laugh. “Oh no, I didn’t know you were one of those booper weirdos,” I declare, scrunching up my face in disgust. First the baby thing and now this? That’s it, I’m outta here,” I tease, not even bothering to move to support my faux outrage.
Rogan laughs and tweaks my nipple.
“Ahh, much better,” I joke, and we both crack up.
“Come on, let’s get cleaned up and talk about fun things like war with the Order and hunting demons.” He pushes off the bed, grabbing my hand and forcing me to come with him despite my protesting groans.
“You cannot fuck me into a jelly-like state and then make me talk about your mom. I’m pretty sure there are rules against that,” I whine.
He ignores me, pulling me into the bathroom, and starts the shower. “If I could get away with never talking about her again, I’d do it happily, but I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky,” he states, studying me as I rummage through the drawers in search of my shower cap.
I’d normally save this sexy look for later in the relationship, but I already washed and dried my curls earlier. I can’t be bothered to do it again so soon. Rogan climbs into the shower and starts to wash off, and I’m struck by the strange intimacy of what we’re doing, and even more surprised by the fact that it doesn’t actually feel strange at all. I pull my polka-dotted cap on, tucking my curls into it, and just watch him for a moment through the glass of the shower. So much has changed, and yet it all just feels the same somehow, which makes zero sense.
I can’t feel like we’ve done this a million times before, because we never have. We should be in the phase where I sneak off early in the morning to fluff my curls and apply the perfect no-makeup makeup look and then proceed to pretend that I naturally wake up that hot. But no, we’re practically at the “poop with the door open while having a conversation” phase, and I both like that and also side-eye it.
“So, what’s going on?” I ask, tilting my head and watching raptly as soap suds start to drip down Rogan’s abs.
I shake my head to try to snap myself out of my ogling as he turns to rinse himself, subsequently cutting off my view of all his front bits. Damn, the dude has an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. I’ve never felt the urge to bite down on a good piece of ass meat before, but I can now no longer claim that to be true. I turn to the mirror and look myself in the eye. My pupils are huge, and my face looks slightly panicked.
Get a hold of yourself, woman. We’ve got serious shit breathing down our necks. Now is not the time to daydream about nibbling on some beefy ass cheeks.
“Why do I suddenly feel a lot of frantic concern coming from you?” Rogan asks, and I look up to find his gaze in the mirror.
“What? No!” I squeak out in a rush. He shoots me a look that tells me he’s not convinced, and I quickly clear my throat and try again. “It’s nothing, and so that we’re clear, it’s also absolutely rude to spy on my insides.”
“Stop projecting them at me then.”
I gasp and press my palm to my chest. “I would never,” I declare adamantly and fake as fuck. He smiles and shakes his head at me.
“Get in here so I can do other things to your insides. The milkmaid thing you’ve got going on is working for me,” he orders, a sultry smile stretched across his lips.
And here I was thinking that my inner fiend was out of control—this guy is insatiable. I return my stare back to my own reflection in the mirror and roll my eyes. Crap. I do look like a milkmaid. Holding up a defensive hand, I turn around and narrow my eyes at his invitation.
“No more sex. We need to figure things out for real, and we can’t do that if I’m trapped on your cock twenty-four seven.”
Rogan raises a judgmental eyebrow. “Trapped?”
“You know what I mean,” I dismiss. “I woke up in a morgue. I had to sneak out of said morgue. And I’m pretty sure you were announcing some kind of situation when you broke into my aunt’s house and decided to dick me down.”
“Your way with words is truly so eloquent,” he counters with a sly mocking smile.
I flip him off. “Seriously though, how long was I out, and what was the situation that had you risking a Hillen beatdown?”
Rogan’s playfulness drops away, and as grateful as I am that he’s getting back to business, I also hate to see it go.
“You’ve been dead for thirteen days,” he tells me evenly, but his face shows the toll this fact has taken on him.
I feel as though the floor was just yanked out from under my feet. It’s like that trick magicians do where they grab the table cloth and pull it out from under a table full of china. Only instead of sitting unmoved and whole like the plates and cups are supposed to, I feel like I’m falling to the ground, destined to shatter at any moment.
Thirteen days.
A lot can happen in thirteen days, and judging by Rogan’s face, a lot has.
5
Strong, wet arms pull me into the warm spray of the shower, but I’m still reeling too much to care. Rogan grabs the soap an
d stars to rub sudsy circles over my skin as I stare at the white subway tile, trying to figure out why the number thirteen is rocking my world so much. I was dead. I came back. These are facts that should shake my foundations. Yet the idea of being gone for almost two weeks is what suddenly tips everything on the this is too much scale?
“How?” I ask meekly as Rogan continues to clean me up.
“I don’t know,” he replies stoically. “You died in my arms, and I just held you, hoping if I did it long enough, that you’d come back. I didn’t know if you even could, but I...I couldn’t let go. Elon’s heart had started, but he wasn’t conscious. The Animamancers were happy to take the credit for bringing him back, and I wasn’t about to fill anyone in otherwise.”
His hands brush gently over my breasts and then start to circle lower. I should feel turned on by the attention, but I’m too shocked to care or to want to stop him and either take over or take things further.
“The first time Elon and I died, we think we were gone for about ten hours. We were told our hearts started again around hour six, and then it took another four or so for us to fully wake up. The second time for Elon was much faster. Only a couple of hours, we estimate, from the time he died to when he was fully conscious again. So I just held you and waited.”
He shakes his head, his stare far away and pained. His soapy hands move to my hips, and I watch him methodically scrub every inch of me while he’s lost to the torment of what happened thirteen days ago.
“I probably shouldn’t have put up such a fight when they tried to take you from me. My parents have eyes everywhere, and I was drawing too much attention to us, but the whole scene was madness anyway. I thought my irrational stubbornness would go unnoticed amongst all the other horrors that were being uncovered in that place.”
Rogan’s eyes lift to mine with those words, and swimming in them is guilt and dismay.
“All the bodies. All the mancers now nothing more than piles of tainted ash. The state you and Elon were in when we finally broke through the doors.” He drops his eyes and, with a small shake of his head, resumes his soapy strokes.
“Elon woke up, and when he saw you...well, it bought us more time. They had set up a med tent outside the church while the Order was processing the scene. That’s where we stayed as Elon answered questions. We made other excuses to stick around, but when hour six came and went, and you were still lying on a cot with no heartbeat... Well, as much as we didn’t want to accept it, we had to consider the possibility that you might not come back.”
I reach down and brush wet locks of hair from Rogan’s forehead. He washes between my thighs, but neither one of us are focused on anything else but what he’s saying. Anguish mars his features, and I try to imagine what it would have felt like to try to guard his dead body, hoping for a miracle but equally worried about what happens if he gets one. If my heart had started beating in that med tent, it wouldn’t have just been his mother’s spies witnessing it.
“The Order took you away after the interrogation was over. We tried to argue that we were claiming you on behalf of your family, but we’re renounced witches, and the Order wasn’t about to honor anything we wanted,” he tells me, a growl of frustration tinging his tone. “So Marx stepped in.”
I’m surprised to hear this development. Yeah, I figured Marx and other familiar faces from the Order would be hanging around, but Marx isn’t in the loop, and I’m surprised he would have gotten involved. I turn to rinse off as Rogan completes his cathartic scrub down and stands up. The knob in the shower squeaks as I turn it to shut the water off, and I get out, grabbing my towel from earlier and handing a fresh one to Rogan from the shelf above the toilet.
“Marx knows now,” Rogan states almost hesitantly, and my head snaps up from where I’m drying myself off to find Rogan watching me.
“Holy shit,” I exclaim, shocked and at a loss for what to think or feel about that. “How did he take it?”
Rogan rubs the back of his head with the towel and sighs. “He thought we were kidding or that maybe we’d cracked up and lost it from everything that had happened. Elon told him everything from start to finish, and let’s just say he stared out the window for a concerningly long time.”
“Shit,” I commiserate, and Rogan nods.
“Yeah, he didn’t take it nearly as well as you did.”
“Do you trust him?” I press, suddenly uneasy.
“I do. I wouldn’t have told him if we didn’t need help watching over you until we were sure you weren’t coming back, but that has more to do with not wanting to pull him into this mess than it does about trust.”
We get dressed in contemplative silence, which is why I hear a familiar creak, one that sends my instincts screaming you are not alone. The hair on my arms slowly rises, and I throw my palm out to Rogan, indicating that he should stop moving. He does, watching me closely as I strain to listen for any more floor squeaks that will give me a better idea of how many we might be facing.
I want to send my magic pulsing out to detect who or what’s going on, but Rogan shakes his head and points to the window. I mouth doesn’t open at him, and his brow furrows with frustration. Another floorboard squeaks sharply, and this time the sound is followed by an almost inaudible shh.
Confusion filters through my dread because I would know that quiet admonition anywhere. She’s only spent a good portion of her life shushing me and her rambunctious son. But why is my Aunt Hillen creeping around her own house, and if she is, where the hell is Tad? My fear quickly transfers from me and Rogan to my aunt and my cousin. Shit, what if something happened when they were on their way back here?
Without another second of thought, I shove my magic out into the house, terrified that someone else might be with Hillen, someone like an Order member, but all I sense is her. Rogan reaches for me as I pull the door open and run out, but he isn’t fast enough to stop me. Frantically I round the corner that leads into the hall where I find a shaking Hillen holding a loaf of bread still in the pan over her head. She screams, which makes me scream, and then she chucks the bread at me with all her might. I flinch, but a hand reaches past me and catches the home-baked missile before it can break my nose.
Hillen’s eyes look over my shoulder and narrow with rage. I balk, completely stunned to see my aunt look at anyone with such brutal vehemence, but especially Rogan.
“What are you doing in my house?” she snarls at him. “Was I not clear enough before that you aren’t welcome here?”
“Hillen,” I admonish, taken aback by the venom in her words.
My aunt’s furious stare snaps to me, and as though she’s seeing me for the first time, her eyes widen with astonishment, and the blood drains from her face.
“Leni?” she chokes out feebly, reaching a hand out for the wall to steady herself as she takes me in. “Honey, is that you?”
I reach for her, and sorrow rips through her features as I fold her up in a tight hug.
Where is Tad?
“It’s me, Aunt Hill, it’s me. I’m so sorry,” I try to reassure her as she quakes in my arms, the sobs slowly building and spilling out of her. “Don’t cry, I’m here,” I coo as I direct us back toward the living room and the large light blue sofa there.
“He said you were dead,” she keens into my shoulder, and I squeeze her even tighter against me. “Said it was his fault, that he didn’t protect you,” she stammers.
My eyes flash to Rogan, who meets my stare with one filled with contrition before he drops his gaze to the floor, like the onus is too heavy right now for him to bear.
“He was wrong,” I tell my aunt, my tone firm as though I’m making this clear not only to her but to Rogan as well. “I did die, but Rogan saved me. He made it so I could come back.”
I see questions fill Hillen’s teary stare, and seeing her hurt so much makes my eyes sting and my throat grow tight.
Out of nowhere, the front door slams open, and all of us jump. Tad hurries in, grabbing for the knob. “Shit,
sorry, it got really windy all of a sudden.”
The declaration is innocent, but I find myself looking over at Rogan, wondering if the sudden wind is natural or mancer made. Like he has the very same concern, he casually moves to the window and peeks out of the closed curtain. I feel his magic flare and start to search as he stares out into the empty street.
So, this is what it feels like to be hunted.
I knew from the moment I was back that I would be eventually, but the reality of it hits me like a charging elephant. I’m not safe, which means I’m also putting Tad and Hillen in danger. My heart picks up, and I try to swallow down the cutting truth. I shouldn’t have come here, but I had nowhere else to go.
Rogan spins to me, the look on his face imploring me to calm down. “We’re okay,” he reassures, but I hear the unspoken for now in it all the same.
“What are you doing here?” Tad lobs at Rogan, his curious eyes moving to mine. “Did you suddenly remember his number?”
“Where the hell were you?” Hillen snaps at Tad, and I swear my attention shifts around the living room like I’m watching an intense tennis match. “I had to take a cab, Thaddeus!” she screeches at him.
“Elon is here,” Rogan announces, and I swear I get whiplash from how quickly I swivel my focus back to him. “I told him to come here after he searched your shop and your apartment.”
Hillen and Tad are quietly arguing, but everything around me goes still and fuzzy as Rogan moves to open the door.
Elon approaches the threshold, his green eyes pensive and anxious as he takes in his younger brother. He looks so much better than the last time I saw him. His cheeks aren’t as hollow, and his stare is missing the haunted glaze it always had back in the church. He’s clean, his scruffy beard gone, and the olive long-sleeve T-shirt he’s wearing hugs his muscles, as do his faded black jeans. He looks healthy, and recovered, and here.
“No sign of anyone at her shop or apartment. Have you heard anything?” Elon asks Rogan as he steps into the house.
