by T. M. Cromer
Alastair’s fingers tangled in her hair, tightening and guiding her head down to his groin. “After.”
He moaned as she took the full, hard length of him into her mouth. He checked his instinctive hip thrust.
When she glanced toward his face, it was to find him watching her. Burning desire brightened his eyes, lending an eerie, iridescent quality to their brilliant blue color. His jaw was slack, and his breathing was faster than normal.
Triumph, laced with a heavy dose of sexual power, curled her lips. She palmed his balls and gave a squeeze as she rolled her tongue around the base of his cock. She withdrew only to suck him in deep again. His throaty groan pleased her, and she did it a second time, tightening her grip on him with both her mouth and hands.
“Christ, that feels amazing.”
She circled both hands around him and jerked him off as she continued to pleasure him orally. Within minutes, he was spent.
“I have no words,” he panted.
“None needed,” she quipped. “But it’s your turn to get busy.”
She touched herself intimately with her fingers, and placed his closest hand on her breast.
“And if I’m too tired?” he teased.
“Then you should get un-tired right now.”
“In that case…” He settled himself between her legs and shifted the pink lace to the side. For a long second, he stared at the exposed flesh. “So perfect.” He inhaled. “The scent of you haunted my dreams. I’d wake touching myself, wishing I could taste you again.” Alastair swiped a tongue across her opening. “Better than I remembered,” he murmured. “So much better.”
He wasted no more words as he fastened his mouth on her. His tongue teased as his fingers filled her. Again and again, he brought her to the brink, only to back off. When she could take no more, she gripped his head, lifting to make eye contact.
“Finish it, you bloody bugger.”
He laughed and dropped his head to shower her with more love. Just when she was ready to explode with frustration, he caught her nub between his teeth and lightly bit down. That, in addition to the fingers stroking her inner walls, sent her over the edge. She screamed her release as she clutched him to her.
“Now, darling. Now,” she begged.
Her underclothes were gone in a flash, and in another second, Alastair was thrusting into her hard enough to steal her breath.
“Harder,” she gasped. “Harder.”
He slammed into her as she held on for dear life, relishing the sound and feel of their bodies coming together in perfect rhythm. She’d never felt more alive than right then with the full weight of his body pressed to hers. Aurora raked her nails down Alastair’s back and dug into the muscles of his ass as she came a second time.
“I love you,” he gasped out, raining featherlight kisses upon her flushed face. “I love you.”
Opening her eyes, she met his wondrous gaze. She wanted to say the words, but she couldn’t. They stayed trapped within her, refusing to come forth. Locked up along with all her other deep emotions.
His shut his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. He didn’t withdraw from her as she expected at the end of their lovemaking. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, pressing deeper within her.
“I would stay forever attached to you if I could. Connected here…” he stroked a hand along their joined bodies. “…intimately, until the end of time.”
“You say the sweetest things.” She laughed and tightened the muscles of her vagina around him. “I will never grow tired of feeling you inside of me.” She could feel him growing thicker once again. “Already?”
“No recovery time needed with you, my love. It’s like I can’t ever get enough.”
She shifted her hips and pressed her pelvis to his. “Me either.”
“I have to go. I’m meeting GiGi for breakfast,” Aurora told Alastair a few hours later.
She was lying. She always raised her brows in a way that encouraged the recipient of her tentative smile to believe her—and it always meant she was lying.
“Why don’t you invite my sister here for breakfast? She’s more than welcome to join us.” He straightened his tie and surreptitiously watched her in the mirror. Her irritable frown almost made him crack the smile he was desperately trying to suppress.
“We wanted to meet at Monica’s Cafe in Leiper’s Fork. I’d ask you to join us, but I know you find that place too provincial for your tastes.”
“It’s growing on me.”
The frustration on her face was laughable. Without a doubt, Aurora had some nefarious scheme up her sleeve. Most likely, GiGi planned to help. Or really, the probability was high that his sister was the ringleader.
“Darling…” Her voice took on a beguiling tone. “… I haven’t seen your sister in an age. I’d really like to spend one-on-one time with her.”
Teasing time was over. He needed to discover what these two were planning. “Of course. Go enjoy yourself. I’ll catch up with you later.” He drew her close and gently kissed her lips. “Give my sister my love.”
“Of course.”
“Do you need me to teleport you to Thorne Manor?”
“No, no. I’m much stronger than I was.” She bussed his cheek and snapped her fingers, disappearing in a flash.
“Alfred,” Alastair called out.
“Yes, sir?”
“Get Ryker Gillespie on the phone. Tell him his wife is up to no good.”
“Yes, sir.”
Twenty minutes later, Ryker was swearing up a storm, and Alastair was doing his damnedest not to release a locust plague on mankind.
“How the hell do they know about Sebastian Drake?” Ryker demanded, pointing to the scrying mirror on the wall. “Did you tell Aurora?”
“Do you take me for a fool?” Alastair snapped. “As if I would throw either woman in the path of danger.”
“That sneaky little witch!”
He snorted a laugh at his friend’s apt description of his wife. Ryker was spot on. “The question is, what do we do about it?”
“I’ll tell you what we do about it. We don’t let my wife screw another man, is what we do about it!”
A long stream of swear words left Ryker’s lips again, and Alastair envied him the ability to curse. An epic rant would have made him feel better on many occasions. Now was one of those times. When he got his hands on Aurora, he was going to strangle her.
“By all means, Ryker, go tell your wife what she can and can’t do. I can’t wait to see the fallout.”
“Fuck off, Al.” He paced the room as Alastair sipped on a glass of Glenfiddich.
“Obviously, we need to go back to England.”
“Ya think?”
“Keep it up, Gillespie, and I’ll bind you to a chair with duct tape over your mouth. I’ll leave the scrying mirror tuned to GiGi’s seduction of Drake so you’re forced to watch.”
Alastair’s threat did the trick and snapped Ryker out of his rage.
“You’re an asshole.” Ryker sighed and rubbed the heel of his hand over the area of his heart. “She’s going to give me heart failure, Al. I want you to make her feel guilty as hell when I keel over from the stress.”
“Consider it done. The eulogy will be touching. Not a dry eye in the house.”
He studied his dark-haired friend for a long moment.
“Ryker? Might I suggest you patch up your differences after this? It’s long past time you retire from the Council as spymaster.”
“Yes. I’m close. One more project to finish and I’m out.”
“Good.” Alastair walked to his desk and lifted a leather-bound photo album. Two turns of the page found what he was looking for, and he ripped the image from its mooring. “This is the location we need to focus on.”
“Where is this? The castle is monstrous.”
“That, my good friend, is Rēafere’s Fortress.”
“Rēafere? Isn’t that the old English word for reaver or thief?”
Ala
stair grinned. “It’s the original Thorne stronghold.”
“How did I never hear of this place?”
“It’s the Thorne family’s last line of defense. No one knows of it but me. As the eldest, I maintain the rights to the property. If something were to happen to me, it would pass to Nash along with a detailed letter I’ve written in the event of my demise.”
“But why didn’t he learn of it when he thought you’d died?”
“My great-grandfather Nathanial was still living. He was the rightful heir at the time.”
“Dear Goddess! How old did that make him?”
“Old enough. We’re a hearty lot—when enemies aren’t trying to knock us off. Someday, I’ll show you our family tree. For now, let’s get to the fortress and make a game plan to stop the women from walking into trouble, shall we?”
16
Sebastian Drake was the stuff of fantasies. Six-feet-four, shoulders easily twice the width of an average male, tapering down to a waist that was pure lean muscle. The red plaid kilt he wore stopped just shy of showing his tree-trunk thighs, but one could guess by the way he was posed—one foot propped against a stone bench, both meaty arms crossed over his leg—that they were as impressive as the rest of him. The outline through the material of his man-skirt showed as much.
Aurora did her best not to stare as GiGi beamed up at him from her seat on the bench beside him. It was all she could do to remind herself that she wasn’t in the market for a burly bedmate. But she did allow herself one last peek at his shapely ass.
“My brother is a conceited prat. Please do wipe the drool from your chin and avert your eyes. If we add to his ego at this point, his head won’t fit through the doorway.”
Aurora sent a laughing glance at Arabella Drake. “That bad?”
“The worst. I’m afraid your flirty friend is going to make him insufferable.”
“She does enjoy the attentions of a gorgeous male.”
“Then they are a match made in heaven.” Arabella shook her head and turned away. “Would you care for tea?”
“Very much.”
“You’re English, but I detect a hint of another accent.”
“I’ve resided in America for many, many years. I’m sure I’ve picked up American speech patterns.”
Her companion nodded as if “America” said it all. “Why are you here?”
“My brother, Jace. It seems he’s run afoul of your brother, and I’d like to extract him from the mess he’s made.”
“Brothers are a bore.”
As her hostess poured tea for the two of them, Aurora took the time to study her. Features too strong for a typical beauty, Arabella was striking. Her manners lovely. Yet, an underlying core of steel resided beneath her soft exterior. That much was obvious. Odds were, Arabella Drake was nobody’s fool.
“Does your friend hope to seduce my brother into giving her what she wants?”
“Is it that obvious?”
She laughed and handed Aurora a porcelain cup. “Thank you for not lying.”
“Honesty is the best policy, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
Aurora sipped her tea as she watched the scene before them play out. Sebastian fondled a perfectly curled lock of GiGi’s gleaming hair. The sardonic amusement on his rugged features said he was just as sharp as his sister. Dear GiGi would need to up her game if she planned to get information out of him.
Turning her attention back to their hostess, Aurora met her knowing green eyes.
“What is it you wish to ascertain, Mrs. Thorne?”
“What can I do to save Jace? Whatever he’s done to slight your family, I’ll rectify if I can.”
“He stole Sebastian’s woman. Can you rectify a broken heart?”
Aurora wanted to slam her head on the table—multiple times. “How did my brother manage that?” She cut a glance Sebastian’s way. Jace was an attractive man, but Sebastian Drake made him pale in comparison.
“It doesn’t matter. She was a slapper. A truly horrible slut of a woman, who set out to lure my brother to the dark side.”
“Slapper? That’s a new one to me. You make her sound like a villain from an episode of Star Wars.”
Arabella’s head whipped around. “My understanding is that you were in stasis for a good twenty years. How do you know about pop culture references?”
Giving the younger woman an arch look, Aurora said, “The original Star Wars movie was released back in the nineteen-seventies, dear. I’d have had to be dead not to hear about it.”
A genuine, hearty laugh erupted from Arabella, drawing the notice of GiGi and Sebastian. She quickly waved away their attention and turned to Aurora. “I like you, Mrs. Thorne. So, I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Sebastian is ambitious. He wants to rule the Witches’ Council because he feels the way they currently run things is archaic at best.”
“From what I gather, he’s not wrong.”
“Right. He wasn’t as attached to Claudia as he’d like Jace to believe, but he’s threatened him with death and dismemberment if your brother doesn’t help him achieve his goal.”
“But what can Jace do?”
“Provide intel on Alastair Thorne so that Sebastian can leverage him to do his bidding. Failing that, capture Alastair and turn him in to the Council. They’ve been after him for a long time, as I understand it.”
“I see.” And she had the feeling she did. Jace had tried to make it appear as if he had trapped her and Alastair at the castle in order to save his own ass. Knowing Alastair would kill him without a qualm, Jace had locked them in the tower room, with the assumption that she would remember about the hidden passage. Jace could then claim he was trying to do as Sebastian asked. “It appears GiGi and I have played into your brother’s hands by coming here.”
“It appears so.”
“Does Sebastian truly believe he can defeat a group as powerful as the Thornes on his own?”
“It was rumored Alastair was at odds with his family.”
“The rumors are wrong.”
“Well, things just became more interesting.”
Aurora chuckled and sipped her tea. “You could say that.”
“You don’t appear concerned. Why is that?”
She cast the young woman an enigmatic smile. “Would you be concerned if Alastair Thorne would move heaven and earth to find you?”
“Only if I was on the wrong side of his affections,” she muttered. “My brother is in a fix, isn’t he?”
“Only if he’s on the wrong side of Alastair’s affections.”
Arabella laughed again. “Sebastian deserves whatever his machinations wrought.”
“All men do.”
“Well, now we know Drake’s real game,” Ryker stated in disgust. His intense regard scarcely moved from his wife’s animated face. His restraint was admirable. Alastair doubted he could be as controlled had Aurora been flirting with that damned Lothario.
“Now we know,” he agreed.
He smiled wryly at the memories of Aurora’s words. Would you be concerned if Alastair Thorne would move heaven and earth to find you? She knew him well.
“The question is, what do you intend to do about this upstart?”
“Give him a bigger fish to fry.”
“Who’s bigger than you?” Ryker scoffed.
“Victor Salinger.”
It turned out that Victor Salinger wasn’t going to be as effortlessly set up as Alastair had initially believed. Victor seemed to be lying low and wasn’t easily drawn out since their last confrontation a few months before. The trouble was Alastair had nothing with which to trade. Other than his life, not a thing would tempt his old enemy to come out of hiding.
“Maybe I should up the stakes. Put my life on the line to entice Victor to take the bait,” he mused aloud as he stared into the crackling fire. He and Ryker were firmly ensconced in a pair of club chairs in the library of Rēafere’s Fortress, going over options to appease Drake, get Jace
out of his current pickle, and somehow make everything right with the women in their lives, who were currently sipping tea in the parlor.
Ryker shot upright from his lounging position, dropping his feet from the ottoman to the floor. “No! No way, no how. How many times do we have to go over this? How many times do you have to step into the crosshairs of that deranged sociopath? This is Jace’s fuck up. Let him clean up his own mess.”
“He’s Rorie’s last living relative, with the exception of her children. I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t. You shouldn’t sacrifice yourself on the altar of his career choices.” Ryker slammed his tumbler down on the side table between their chairs. “Think, Al. If you do this, you could cost your family everything.”
That caught his attention, and he gave his friend a questioning look. “How do you figure?”
“With you gone, the rest of the Thornes are vulnerable. Those girls only have an inkling of the heartache and destruction the Désorcelers can provide. Don’t do this to them. Don’t do it to GiGi or Rorie either.”
“Look at you, making such an impassioned speech. It’s like you care more than you let on.”
“Stuff it, Al. You know I’m speaking the truth. Without you to stop him, Victor can create havoc the likes from which this family will never recover.” He picked up his glass and swallowed the last of the contents before he plopped it back on the surface of the table. Standing up, Ryker glared down at Alastair. “Don’t be a fool for love. Rorie’s a big girl. She knows what’s at stake, and she knows her brother made his own bed.”
“You forget, Preston can protect the family if need be. Besides, I made a promise to her when she was in stasis. I intend to keep that promise.”
“A promise she didn’t extract from you,” Ryker retorted angrily. “You’re my best friend. The last true friend I have. Don’t make me grow old alone with just my regrets.”
“If you patched things up with GiGi, you’ll have more than regrets.”
“That’s on her, Al. Not me. I’ve tried my damnedest to get her to listen.”
