Fae Captive (The Mage Shifter War Book 1)

by Elle Middaugh

  His hands naturally went to my head and I expected him to fuck my face. But he didn’t. He waited. He wanted me to impale myself.

  Fine. I’d do it. And fucking love it.

  I bobbed up and down, using my teeth to barely scrape the base of his dick when I bottomed out. Then I sheathed them with my lips as I slid up, using my tongue to stimulate him more. I added a hand at his balls, working them while my mouth fucked his shaft. He moaned softly.

  The taste of his precum made me wild. It was different from salty human precum, different from fae precum, which was sweet. There was almost a rosemary undertone to it. I wondered what his cum itself would taste like. I sucked harder, determined to find out.

  That’s when Bodie yanked on my head, pulling me roughly off his dick and leaving my throat with a sore, raw feeling that I loved because I always associated it with a good, hard fuck.

  "Protection," he gasped. "I gotta go grab some."

  I shook my head and reached for his dick again. "No, you don’t. Fae royals are injected with magical protection at birth. To prevent bastards." I rolled my eyes. "It isn’t removed until marriage." I swallowed, thinking about how mine had been removed but then replaced. But I shoved the memories aside. They had nothing to do with today.

  Bodie’s brow furrowed but he didn’t comment. Instead, he pushed my shoulder so that I would lay back down and straddled me as I sank back to the floor. His hips ground into mine and the heat of his dick made me writhe in anticipation.

  "I like it rough," I said.

  He leaned over me with a smile. "Too bad. I don’t." And he leaned down and gave me the world’s sweetest, softest, most frustrating kiss.

  "No," I groaned, when he pulled away for a breath.

  He didn’t listen. He just peppered me with kisses. On my brow, on the tip of my nose. He nipped my lips and moved to my neck as he started to palm my breasts. I tried to reach between our bodies to grab his dick, but he shoved his hips down and simply ground his massive rod into my abdomen. "No, little Butterfly."

  I stilled. I could fight him. I knew how to slide my leg up and flip him. But I was such a good little submissive. And I really really wanted his dick inside me. I decided to torture myself, and do as he wanted. He played with my nipples, gently plucking at them.

  And just when I had resigned myself to a night of vanilla sex, he roughly flipped me over. Then he yanked on my waist, pulling me up onto my knees. He slammed into me, dick bottoming out roughly against my cervix. The pain was so fucking good I just about shattered.

  But then his fingers stroked that little spot on my wing.

  And I did fall apart. Every part of my body spasmed as he rode me and rubbed my silky wing with his fingers. My head tumbled to the floor, my cheek pillowed by the rug, my nipples roughly moving against the thick fibers with each thrust, getting a delicious rug burn as he punished my body and sought his pleasure. He yanked my hips up with his free hand and held me in place as he somehow managed to thrust even harder.

  Black specks danced along the edges of my vision. Pain and pleasure blended into a song, like a baritone and a soprano harmonizing. Yessss.

  "Come on, Butterfly," Bodie commanded with one final swipe across my wing. "I want to see you come again."

  For some reason, in my altered state, my mind pulled up an image of Easton. I imagined him watching us, stroking himself, saying, "I’m next."

  The thought of the two of them sharing me, using me for their pleasure, drove me over the edge. I exploded with an orgasm that melted my fucking bones. Bodie had to hold me up with both hands as he thrust several more times before shuddering and spilling his seed inside me. When he was spent, he gently withdrew and lowered me to the rug. Then he turned me to the side, gently moving my wing back and creating a space for himself.

  Instead of leaving like a dom would, intent on cleaning me up and getting the fuck out, he snuggled. Bodie, who by all the accounts I’d heard was a hitman, snuggled. With me.

  For some unknown, ungodly reason, that brought a smile to my face. It grew even wider when he grabbed my hand and raised it to his lips, giving a soft kiss to the back of my sore knuckles before pulling me in even closer.

  As the high from the orgasm wore off, this feeling of tenderness bloomed in my chest. And that made me scared. Made me second guess my instincts. I wondered... had I just royally fucked myself over? Could it be possible that I was—somehow—falling in love with my captor?

  15

  Easton

  Where the hell was Bodie?

  The flames still chomped at the buildings behind us, but now they were surrounded by human firefighters who had a zero percent chance of containing this shit. Of course, the Mage Police had yet to respond. As always.

  Mages were the only ones who could create these magical fires, and the only ones with the power to put them out. They always took their sweet ass time in doing so, too, making sure the buildings were nothing more than blackened bricks before swooping in and cleaning up the mess. Fuckers. There’d been a lot more fires lately too.

  Next to me, Drake was spouting orders to a couple of shifter betas, making sure they would herd everyone else out of the area and take them to one of the apartment complexes we’d bought with our illegal weapons sales.

  I shook my head, disgust and fury at the unfairness of it all causing my lip to curl. Thank god Drake had been prepared, that he’d had the foresight to shore us up for shit like this. Far too many shifters were already out on the streets, and now there’d be more.

  My eyes scanned the heads and faces of every person we passed, looking for Bodie or Aubry. Last I’d seen, he’d had her. But neither of them seemed to be around anymore. Their absence created a roiling sense of uneasiness in my gut. It wasn’t quite fear, but more like apprehension. Like a bomb was about to drop, and I was somehow going to get hit the hardest.

  Drake pulled a shitty little cellphone out of his pocket—honestly, the man should have bought stock in burner phones—and quickly dialed a number. His clothes had remained unharmed since he’d shifted and fought fires in pure dragon form. I couldn’t say the same for myself. My shirt was covered in soot and had a few holes in the front.

  I ran a hand through my hair and ash rained down on me. My throat felt like I'd swallowed an entire sandbox. My lungs, like they’d been clawed from the inside out.

  Someone handed me a water bottle. Some human paramedic or something.

  "Can I check your pulse?" he asked.

  I waved the well-meaning guy off, but opened the water and took a sip.

  Oh, sweet life.

  Next to me, Drake lowered his phone with a frown. "Bodie's not answering."

  I handed him the water bottle and he tipped it up to his lips, letting it pour like a waterfall until he finished the whole thing off.

  "Do you think they're back at her cell?" I asked, hoping I was right. "Reception that far underground sucks."

  "Or she's giving him trouble," Drake's eyes narrowed.

  Clearly, his thoughts were darker than mine. I got the sudden image of them in her cell, and her giving him something else entirely… My muscles tensed and my jaw ticked as I forced that image away.

  I might have been crazy, but somehow, my gut didn't agree with Drake’s worries. I didn't argue with him though. Nobody argued with Drake. Except Bodie. And when they did go head to head, it felt like two planets colliding, sending shockwaves into the entire universe.

  I wasn't sure I could handle watching that right then.

  "You wanna check the cell, and I'll check his place?" I offered, trying to avoid what I was certain was gonna be an intergalactic meltdown. I dug my hands into my pants’ pocket and pulled up my key ring. I had a set of keys to both Drake and Bodie's places, just as they had a set to mine.

  Drake's lips scrunched, the corners almost tugging into a feral grin. He wasn't happy, but he nodded anyway. If I wasn't there to run interference between the two of them, he'd get to go volcanic for a couple minutes. And I t
hink, after all this tension, he wanted that.

  He marched on ahead, while I peeled off to the left.

  I'd duck into Bodie's place, rinse off, borrow some fresh clothes, and then go break up the fight of the century. I could only hope they wouldn't draw too much blood before I got there.

  Part of me chided myself for not going with Drake right away. But I was fucking exhausted. My muscles ached. My heart ached. I'd seen at least fourteen lifeless bodies this afternoon. And then, I'd been forced to watch Aubry clinging to the side of a building, damn near falling to her death as she tried to save a child.

  Fuck me.

  I didn’t know what was worse: fearing for her life, or watching the kindness pour out of her as she selflessly risked it all for a whimpering pup. That kind of compassion and devotion was downright sexy.

  I rubbed at my chest, as that sensation of a bomb dropping assaulted me again. My heart couldn't take much more of this shit. But it felt like there was always more coming. Always something bad around the corner.

  Speaking of corners, I rounded the next one and yanked open the door to Bodie’s apartment building. Sooty footprints covered the filthy old rug. Good. Hopefully that meant more people had fled and escaped the fire.

  Tragedy is the terrible seed that allows kindness to bloom. That was what my mother used to say. It wasn't always true. Kindness certainly hadn't resulted from the torture and devastation I’d experienced within my own family. But around here... shifters of all stripes and colors had been forced to band together. It was kind of beautiful when I thought about it.

  And even for me, I’d at least found some sense of happiness now that I’d left my past behind. But still, I wished the world was different. I wished life was easier and fairer. I wished I could plant a seed of kindness and watch the blooms spread like wildflowers, skipping the seeds of tragedy altogether.

  But it never seemed to work like that.

  I stymied my philosophical thoughts as my sore hands fumbled with the key to Bodie's apartment. The prospect of a cold shower was calling to me, and already, I felt guilty about the potential fight going down at Aubry’s cell. I needed to get back there as quickly as possible. I shoved open the door... and I froze.

  My eyes widened. My mouth fell open. My heart plummeted straight to my toes like a cinder block, leaving my chest hollow and empty.

  There, on the living room floor, were Bodie and Aubry. Both of them were completely naked, and clearly, riding the high in the wake of a good fucking. Her white hair fanned out over the red rug like fresh snow over an open wound. He was gently caressing her delicate skin, and she was gazing up at him, smiling softly.

  Aubry was… smiling. She was… happy..

  My eyes didn't even rove down her perfect body because that smile was like a grenade exploding in my chest. It was a bomb. The very bomb I’d been dreading this entire time.

  Fuck. No… This can’t be happening.

  Aubry was the first to spot me, immediately curling up into a ball and using her wings to hide her nudity. From me. She was hiding from me. Pain ripped through my chest like a serrated knife hacking into my very bones.

  Bodie turned around and sat up. "What the fuck, man? You don't even knock?"

  I dropped the keys. My fingers were too numb. They fell to the floor with a ping that was the only sound in the airless room. This was worse than the fire. I couldn't breathe.

  I can't breathe…

  I turned, unable to speak, and stumbled back through the doorway. My broad shoulder crashed into the frame, knocking me sideways before I pushed off and ran down the stairs. Two steps per flight, two flights per floor, three floors… a dozen steps later, and I was barreling out the front door.

  I had to get away.

  My feet pulled me down the sidewalk with no comprehension or interference from my brain. I had no idea where I was going, where I was even at anymore, and I didn’t really care. As long as I was separating myself from them.

  How could I let this happen? How had I managed to get so attached?

  There was a connection and a pull right from the very beginning in the pub, I knew that. I was aware of it, even though I’d tried to ignore it. And then Bodie felt the mate bond with her, and it was like a slap in the face. That connection we’d had? It suddenly meant nothing.

  I tried to let it go—let her go—again, but then her stupid fucking parents ripped a hole right through her chest. Better men than I would have walked away, but I couldn’t stand to see her hurting. I’d comforted her, and we’d talked, and I’d fallen a little further into that forbidden black hole of desire.

  I’d walked her to her cell, and again, tried to leave… but she’d asked me to stay. And I’d listened.

  My heart squeezed at the memory as I stared blankly ahead.

  No matter how attracted I was, no matter how much I wanted her… I shouldn’t have stayed. I shouldn’t have opened my heart to her. I shouldn’t have damn near kissed her… And now that she was with Bodie—her true mate—I definitely shouldn’t be feeling heartache and jealousy.

  I bit my lip hard enough to break through the skin as I willed the aching, unfamiliar feelings to take a hike. Of course, the bastards didn’t. They hung around, clinging to me like anchors, pulling down to the bottom of a hopeless sea of longing and regret.

  Fuck, this was bad.

  I walked and stared and tried not to think, strolling through the darkness of night completely aimless for a while, until I spotted Larry's frazzled hair in the distance. Distraction. I needed a distraction. I couldn’t think about what had happened. Not now. Not ever.

  I hurried over to him. "Hey, Larry. Whatcha doing? Can I help?"

  The old mage glanced up at me in surprise. "I thought you’d be with Drake."

  "No, we, uh… split up to help." Not a total lie, I told myself.

  Larry scratched his grizzled head. "Well, I think evacuation’s taken care of. And the humans won’t be able to stop the flames, but they can at least contain the spread for us… so... I'm off to the Los Angeles County Crematory Cemetery. You're welcome to come along, I suppose."

  I nodded. "Sounds good."

  "I need to pick up a few things at my apartment… a bone saw for one."

  My eyebrows rose. But after working with Bodie and Drake, I was a little hesitant to ask why he needed that. "Um... mind if I clean up at your place while you grab what you need? I kind of lost my keys."

  Larry checked his watch. He was one of the only guys I knew who still wore the outdated things. Then he sighed, the sound almost sympathetic. Like he somehow knew how much I needed this physical and emotional cleansing. "Sure."

  Five minutes later, I was inside his cramped apartment, picking through meandering stacks of books. Ten minutes after that, I was showered and wearing some grey sweatpants that ended mid calf and a black t-shirt that said "Officially the World's Best Daddy." The t-shirt was about two sizes too small so it clung to me, emphasizing every dip and rise of my muscles, but I didn’t give a shit. I slid back into my dirty tennis shoes sans socks.

  "Ready," I announced.

  Then we set out.

  I didn’t know if Larry’s beat up Honda could make it. Luckily, it was so late at night the streets were nearly deserted so we made it to the cemetery in under ten minutes even with his car stalling out once.

  Drake called me just as we parked, but I didn't answer. I already knew what he would say, and honestly, I didn’t want to crack open that can of worms ever again. Eventually, after three missed calls, I texted: Helping Larry. Bodie and Aubry are fine at his apartment. Even writing that much made my throat burn with… something.

  We got to the white, mission-style building without incident. But when we arrived at the gate, Larry cleared his throat and stopped walking. He didn’t make eye contact with me as he shuffled his feet. I got the distinct feeling that he was embarrassed about something.

  "I don’t like what we’re about to do, but it’s necessary," he admitted.

&
nbsp; I raised a brow, finally wondering what the hell he was up to. "What is it we’re about to do?"

  "Steal some murdered person’s bones."

  My brows furrowed and my lips thinned just before they curled in sarcastic amusement.

  Hmm, maybe I should have stayed and faced Bodie, instead. I stared up at the barbed wire that topped the dark chain link fence. Nope. I still feel better about burglarizing some bones.

  "The county cemetery is where they send all the unclaimed bodies. Gang member victims. Unidentifiable murders. Stillborn children. Loved ones who couldn’t be afforded a proper burial. This place is a veritable clearing house for forgotten souls."

  Well, that sounded promising. Tons of bodies, all of which with dangerous or depressing backstories. Shit, maybe the place was haunted?

  "How are you gonna know which ones are…?" I began hesitantly.

  "Typically, you go for someone without a face." Larry made a disgusted grimace. "That’s usually a murder."

  My stomach churned. Tonight was just going from one god awful depth of hell down to a new layer I didn’t even know existed.

  "So, we’re not digging up bones?" I clarified hesitantly. "We’re cutting them out of unclaimed corpses?"

  "Right," Larry agreed, his face paling in the moonlight. "This is a crematorium, after all. All that’s buried under those headstones is ash."

  Jesus fucking hell… I scrubbed a hand across my face, contemplating getting the hell out of there and just leaving old Larry to figure this shit out on his own. But Larry had already headed over to a length of fence near the building.

  "Just, follow my lead," he whispered.

  I had to force my feet to shuffle along. It was after midnight. The cemetery was closed to the public. And by the smell in the air, the fires were still raging—and I hoped to god those were the fires from back in Skid Row that I was smelling and not some roasted, faceless gangster.