Then as quickly as the end came, it was gone again. Harvest screamed in anger, but the monster still stood with a smile on his face. Maybe not today but soon. Very soon.
His prison was coming to an end and with it, everything else that stood too moral for the new world.
Just as the vortex was destroyed, the same vision that haunted his thoughts, brutally ripped through his mind again the same way they had before. Only more vivid. Stronger. Closer.
Blonde strands. Blue eyes. Bare. She came to him like the nuisance she was inside his head. Chocolate. Blood-red flower petals. On his knees. She beckoned the Devil so hard in the vision that he swore he could feel the taste of her on his tongue.
Then the vision twisted into something else, and his eyes turned blood red as he roared. He turned from the window, tossing the table into the air.
Then just as quickly as his anger came, he laughed, then laughed some more until the echoes proved just how insane he always was.
It was funny to him. No one had to power to take his future.
And it was beneath him to fall prey to a woman or lust.
He might as well have been the one to create the word. Lust.
“Never in a million years,” he muttered.
But no one had been there to hear him say it. It might as well have never been said.
Thirty-Five
Isabella
“I stopped you,” I answered Julius’s question.
I glared as he stalked toward me. Sebastian was there within a heartbeat, by my side, and as much as it warmed my heart, I knew I didn’t need his protection. At least not from this monster anymore.
Julius held malice in his smile when Sebastian grabbed his head and gasped. “What’s wrong?” I touched his shoulder as he continued his hold with his eyes pinched shut. When I looked around, I saw that his family was doing the same.
“You only prevented it from happening today,” Julius informed me, completely sure of himself. “Even if I couldn’t complete it with the vortex, the end was awoken because of it.”
“It’s true,” Sebastian whispered as he dropped his hands and scowled. “I saw it. I felt it. If you want to know the very day, I know that too.”
My heart dropped.
“Time to go, Isabella,” Julius dared to say. “All that’s left to do is wait, and now that you survived,” his sickened gaze moved over my body, “I want you with me on the other side.”
“You so much as touch her,” Sebastian growled. “You’ve done enough. I’ll protect her from you until there’s nothing left of me!” My blue-eyed Reaper stepped in front of me as a protective shield.
“Which will be soon.” Julius grinned.
Five swords pierced Julius’s chest at once. He looked down at his chest, then around him as Sebastian’s siblings blocked his sides, clutching their weapons. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave, and you guys can spend however much time there is left comforting each other or whatever it is you Reapers do. I just want Isabella.” Pain didn’t bother him if the bored-like tone he had with five swords through him was any indication. He stretched an arm out. “Come to me.”
I did, and Sebastian reached for me. Taking his hand, I reassured him with a smile. Seemingly confused, he reluctantly let go but stayed a breath behind me just in case he needed to touch me. I brought my hand up to Julius’s face and slid my hand down until he frowned. “The darkness no longer accepts you.”
“No!” he roared, and my smirk grew wider. The darkness never stirred. It was through with him. “I control it.”
“I control it,” I corrected him. “The darkness and I have grown close over our mutual attraction to a certain blond-haired Reaper.”
If Julius was angry before, he was livid now. I even had Sebastian’s siblings smiling as they stood around him. “You’re mine,” Julius hissed. Something warm flooded my veins at their smiles. Acceptance.
“No, I belong to me.” I turned away as Julius screamed.
I felt the wind move as Sebastian swung his scythe the moment I stepped away. I jumped just as Julius’s head tumbled at my feet. He was still screaming.
“I’ll get rid of this,” Grim said as he picked up Julius’s head. He was no longer fading in and out. “Too bad we can’t kill him, but we can at least send him somewhere else for now.”
“I’ll take the body to The Den,” Payne muttered. “I’m sure they’d get a kick out of having Harvest cut up like that.”
“I’ll take his head to the city,” Grim added, but just as quick as they said that, Julius’s body vanished from their grasp.
Barron cursed. “Should have fucking known.”
“I wonder where he’ll rejuvenate?” Maureen wondered. “Should take him at least a day after losing his head, anyway.”
Someone gasped behind me. Fear iced my veins. What could be wrong now? I turned around quickly and came face-to-face with Sebastian’s mom. She was covering her mouth with her hand. When she dropped it, she revealed a smile. “Sebastian,” she whispered. “Look on her shoulder blade.”
“What—” he started, then stopped. I swiveled around to face him officially worried. He looked like a deer caught in headlights his eyes were so round.
“What is it?” I asked quickly. His eyes were as bright as the smile on his face. I tugged at the spaghetti-strapped top Sebastian had materialized on me to wear. “You’re freaking me out.” I just wanted one of them to tell what was wrong with my back. It wasn’t like I could see myself without a mirror.
“I told you our touch meant something, Izzie. You are my one and only.” His words warmed the darkest parts of me.
“You have a snail on your shoulder blade, that’s what,” Maureen informed me, and I blinked up at Sebastian.
“How…?” All I could think about was getting to a mirror so that I could see it myself. “What does it mean?” I asked two different things at once.
He smiled. “I think it means you’re my soulmate, witch, just like I felt you were.” Damn these feelings and their need to make my eyes tear up with a knowing smile.
“Help me with the castle, will ya boys?” Grim hollered at his sons.
Stepping out the way, Melanie guided me off to the side as we watched them rebuild their home with the power they held. It was pretty amazing. They only stepped around the ruins, nothing else. You’d never think they were even doing anything until the castle started mending itself while they watched. Broken glass restored to whole, becoming windows once more. Broken piles of rubble became the dark grey brick that made their castle. The wooden double-doors was there like it was never broken to begin with. It only took a few minutes, and when they were finished, Sebastian held my hand as we walked back inside.
As I watched his family walk ahead of us, it felt like we were getting the chance to start over. Only I knew now that our moments together had a time in which Sebastian knew the limit to. It depressed me. My heart hurt uncontrollably because of it.
Then, with a kiss, my Reaper left me with his mom as him, his dad, and siblings set out to the human world with every Reaper they had. He didn’t tell me before he left what all had happened while I hadn’t been myself, but some things you could imagine.
His sister Kitty woke up the next day and was informed of what had happened. She, too, headed into the human world to help them, and if it hadn’t been for me, I knew their mother would have been with them.
With promises of comfort and reassurance from Sebastian the day before, I waited, each hour turning into days at a time.
I got to know Melanie during the weeks that followed as we waited for the Reapers to come home. The time spent with her helped me understand why Sebastian was the way he was. His mother was just as bright and heroic as he was.
The devastation was relentless in the human world. The deaths still rose even weeks later from those that were injured from the disasters in different parts of the world.
Despite everything that happened, parts of the world were left untouched and without co
nsequences of the vortex. And it was in these moments that Sebastian would tell me of the humanity he seen between the humans and their willingness to step in and help when tragedy strikes.
I’d only seen him three times since the vortex incident. Each time he came for me, it was only in search of my touch. He needed the energy when his curse threatened him, then he’d go back to the human world.
It was another two weeks when ghosts and deaths were settled down to normalcy as they called it that they all finally came home for good. They couldn’t help the humans. The only thing they were there for was to balance life and death once more. It was up to mankind to pick up the pieces while the Reapers dealt with the approaching end.
The vortex that Harvest and I opened had sped up the Apocalypse. Ten months. Ten months was all I had left to spend time with a man I had just come to love if the end couldn’t be stopped. It was even less in the human world. Time flowed vastly different between the worlds. And weeks of those ten months had already gone by while he was in the human world.
When Sebastian strode into the castle with his siblings, I was sitting on the third step of his parents’ stairway. I placed the bookmark in the book I was reading and placed it on the step as I stood and smoothed out the shirt I was wearing, then I self-consciously did the same to my hair as he caught sight of me.
I smiled, but he didn’t return it so I frowned the entire time it took his heavy steps to get to me. He gripped my wrist, pulled me in as the high of our touch licked over me until the hair on my neck and arms stood on end. “Let’s go, Izzie.”
His words liquified me and pierced me with arousal.
After six weeks, my Reaper was taking me with him instead of leaving me behind.
Thirty-Six
Sebastian
Time rapidly slipped by while I was away from Isabella. Even though I missed her and longed to be with her again, my body and mind were pushed and filled to the limit the last six weeks.
The devastation was real across the human world, but surprisingly, it was times like this when humanity showed, and I could understand Heaven’s need to protect the mortals. Only they didn’t know they were picking up pieces that were going to fall back apart sooner than any of us wanted.
And the fact that we wanted to prevent it from happening but was utterly powerless against it made it so much worse. Reapers weren’t made to prevent fate or time, we were only here to live it out and guide death until we were no longer needed.
In nine months we would no longer be needed, said fate.
I had a love/hate relationship with destiny. On one hand, it gave me Isabella, then on the other, it limited my time with her. That just didn’t sit well with me. Or any of my siblings.
As I stormed into the castle in search of Isabella, my eyes sought and found her out as she stood from where she sat on the bottom step of the stairs. Fucking hell, she’s beautiful. Tiny and sweet despite the lethal amount of death she can place upon someone with a single touch. And fate made her mine, and I considered myself very lucky because of it.
Six weeks of tiny touches across her arms, enough to keep myself awake, then I was forced to leave her instead of love her while we got the death toll under control. It was better now, not normal, but enough that we could finally come home and rest. We couldn’t let so many ghosts roam freely. Not when the end was already so close. Scared and confused ghosts could easily turn into poltergeists and the world didn’t need more trouble.
I probably looked pissed, and although I didn’t want to alarm or scare her, I couldn’t get my brain and face to relax as I gripped her wrist. That crackle of energy and lust burned through our touch, and I wanted nothing more than to just be inside her. I wanted to hear about what she’d been doing while waiting for me, and that was another thing that tightened my facial expression. The fact that I had someone to come back to. My smile had been tensed and knotted up so tightly that I hoped she understood I wasn’t angry or upset, I just wanted her so badly. I missed her so much, and these circumstances and everything going on right now scared the fuck out of me.
Because I had someone, and I was going to lose her if we didn’t fight against the approaching future.
All I could mutter was, “Let’s go, Izzie,” as I pulled her in and faded to my home that was now hers as well.
Delicate hands found my chest where muscles were rigid and tense from the weeks I’d been away craving and missing her. Instead of worry or fear in her eyes, I was met with a softness in her expression that was sure to loosen the knots all through me. And the moment she whispered, “I missed you,” and reached for my shoulders as she tiptoed—I bent down so that she could kiss me the sweet way that she did, she became my cure in every sense.
She pressed her soft lips against mine rather roughly until I accepted her invitation and the moment she opened her mouth; I swept in and tangled my tongue with hers. Wrapping my arm around her lower back, I pulled her up against me until her feet no longer touched the ground. My witch was a tiny little thing and weighed nothing, so it wasn’t a hard job to control her body for a release if I wanted to. And I wanted to. Most of all, I knew she wanted me too.
I lifted her body up higher. We panted as our mouths separated. She let her straps fall from her shoulders until the dress she wore loosened in the front and revealed her perfect breasts. I took a nipple in my mouth and sucked until she cradled my head with her arms and gasped as I walked blindly in search of my room and a bed to fuck the hell out of her with a whole lot of loving involved.
I was determined to tackle both at once.
“Sebastian,” she whispered in that lust-driven voice that had the tip of my cock pulsing and on the verge of bursting.
I laid her down on the bed, pulling the straps the rest of the way off her arms and slid her dress down. She lifted her hips and helped me the rest of the way. The way we worked was slow yet erotic. Undressing her was pleasurable itself. She leaned up and did the same to me, taking the bottom of my shirt with her hands and pulling it up over my head. Both of us could undress each other within a second with our power, but with the whispers in her breaths as she unzipped my pants, I realized how vital it was to take this moment as painfully slow as possible even though I was burning from the inside out.
Sliding my pants down slightly, she slipped her hand down and squeezed me rougher than the slowness I was trying to take with her. Fuck, her grip on me was deliberately unraveling me. I was shuddering after each stroke. Felt so good. I groaned, and her dark brown eyes bounced back and forth between my face and where her hand moved around my painfully rigid dick. Then she leaned up and kissed me, and I let her give and give. I let her mouth have all the control because once she pulled away, it was my turn.
As she pulled back, I came forth, sliding a hand into her hair and using the other to slide under her ass and scooted her further beneath me. She was forced to let go of my cock and grabbed my shoulders as I spread her legs and placed myself between them, towering over her small frame with my much larger one. But somehow we fit so perfectly, like she was made for my loving.
“I missed you, too,” I told her while pinning her legs above her head. While I planned to bottom out inside her and stay there until she passed out or couldn’t handle anymore, I wanted her to know how much I wanted her right here with me. I missed her so fucking bad. It was pure hell coming to her just to get an energy tap and leaving her once again. “Let me be your home. The place you run to, instead of from.”
With her knees beside her ears, her legs against my shoulders, she leaned up and kissed my forehead showing me just how flexible she was. “You already are,” she answered.
My heart ricocheted in my chest. Slipping my hand between us to make sure she was ready for me, I didn’t waste a second longer. I filled her until her face pinched in pain, then pulled back and did it again. Ecstasy took a hold of me as her body wrapped around me, pulsing and twitching. I wouldn’t last, but we were just getting started.
“Too much?”
I whispered as I studied her face for pain. I was buried deep inside her in this position but not all the way yet. Considering how tiny she was, I thought about changing positions so that I didn’t go all caveman and hurt her. My arms were literally shaking, I was holding back so much that I wanted to do to her.
“No,” she breathed out a breathy sigh. “I love it. You’re so deep. My body’s adjusting, go in the rest of the way.” I thought she might be reaching for my ass with her hands, but her arms were too short, so she was scratching at my back instead. It didn’t help that I had her folded up in this position either.
With her permission, I pulled out almost all the way, then slammed back into her mercilessly. Her body loosened further as she tilted her head back and whimpered.
Oh, fuck.
She was so beautiful.
I must be hitting her G-spot because her legs stiffened, and her stomach went taut underneath me. Her eyes opened and closed, often finding mine and when they did, the connection we shared intensified and it consumed me. I was practically begging her body to climax as my own release chased me. Her legs slipped from my sweaty shoulders. “Shit, you’re so tight,” was code for I was about to fill her up, and I didn’t want to. Not until I had her tipping over first.
Ladies first, right?
Then, I felt her pulse around me and it was over. “Sebastian,” she moaned my name as her orgasm tore through her and me.
Love you, love you, love you. She chanted in my ear, and I pulled up so that she could drop her legs, then I rolled onto my back and took her with me.
“I love you, too,” I grabbed her neck and whispered in her ear.
She tensed up on me. Our eyes met, and she looked surprised. “I never said I love you.”
I smirked. “Yeah, you did. Over and over actually.”
Those small eyes of hers kept growing wider and wider. “I love you, but I said that inside my head…. Sebastian, that’s what I was thinking.”
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