Six
Matthew
As Seph hurled himself to the bottom of the bed, she began sobbing, the purrs intertwined with those ache-inspiring cries. Even as he leaned up to study her in concern, I raised a hand, tilted her cheek to the side, and began to kiss her. Slowly, Dan moved out of the way and I supported her, letting him drift down to the bed as I kissed her breath away.
She moaned into my mouth, telling me without words that Daniel had slipped inside her. When her body began to jolt with his thrusts, I just focused on her, urged every ounce of my attention onto her.
I gave her my all, every single damn bit of me was hers for the taking, and she knew it. She grasped onto it with both hands as we took each other’s breaths. But though my kiss had been a strategic attempt to divert her thoughts, it was also a union. One that gave more than it took. One that breathed my need for her deep into her being.
I felt Daniel move, shifting around as he fucked her. His mouth returned to her tits, and if I’d needed more of a clue that he was a breast man, I had it. As he drowned himself in her very ample cleavage, I allowed myself to suffocate in her kiss.
When he came a lifetime later, I felt him pull away and twisted us around so that I lay on my back and she was on top of me. I could feel their seed slipping from her cunt, and though it should have repulsed me, it didn’t.
This was our woman.
We had to share.
Something inside me, something I couldn’t name that had snarled in response to Seph’s, growled again, and when the others echoed it, it felt right.
Sharing her wasn’t something I was used to, and yet it was right and natural. She needed the three of us to exhaust her, to protect her, to keep her safe because, I knew, this woman was special.
She didn’t know it yet, but that was okay. That was fine. She was still young, and she had decades before she might reach her true potential, but the gods knew even if she didn’t, and we were the first clue.
We would defend her with our lives.
Keep her safe.
Ensure her protection, but also, this oddly bestial relationship between us made sure that she—
I hated to say it, but I had a feeling it would keep her grounded.
From the little she’d said of what Linford had told her, and on top of what her mother had informed us, I had a feeling, a nasty one, that witches with a certain level of power could grow unstable and the Virgo bond, somehow, neutralized that threat.
If we could overpower her with our dominance, then we could contain the threat. It was never good when someone powerful grew too big for their boots, and we could stop that from happening.
I knew it, somehow, and had no idea how I knew it, but instinctively, it felt right.
Sucking down a breath as she slipped her thighs around my hips, her knees pinning me in place, she tugged her mouth from mine. As her hands came to my chest, she propped herself up so she could stare down at me.
She was tired—I could see that. Not like she’d been when we’d awoken her with our arrival, less so, but still fatigued. After what we’d gone through, a long sleep was nowhere near enough, we needed some rest, but this reclaiming was definitely required. Still, as she stared down at me, I could also sense that she needed this.
Most women would have been worn out by now, but she wasn’t.
It was there, at the back of her eyes, a sparkle that said she was ready for me.
Pumped, I reached for her arms and stroked along them, up and down, then, again acting on instinct, scratched my nails down the limbs, leaning up so I could reach around to score her back and shoulders with my nails. The hoarse cry that escaped her would be something I never forgot. On the day of my death, I’d recall that throbbing sound of need, and I’d also recall how her head fell back as she submitted, utterly, to my will.
She was on top, we weren’t as one, not yet, but somehow, I dominated her from below.
And that?
Was exactly how it should be.
I dug my nails in deeper, not stopping until she slipped higher, her hips rocking so that her cunt caressed my dick, and once again, I was reminded that if I had the power to bring her to her knees, she had that same power over me too. I whistled between my teeth as the sensations overwhelmed me.
“That feel good, cariño?” she whispered, her tone as sultry as the hot Hawaiian night air.
“Feels like heaven and Sol combined,” I admitted gruffly.
A laugh escaped her. “That’s what I love to hear,” she teased, and when she grabbed a hold of my dick and pressed it to her entrance, I hissed in shock.
“You need my cock, baby?” I ground out as her eyes fluttered shut when my dick tunneled into her.
“I-I do,” she whimpered, sighing as her pubis and mine finally touched.
“Sol, that feels good,” I bit off, my eyes closing as she grabbed my hands, twisted our fingers together, and used the bridge as leverage to start riding me.
She moved slow and steady at first, letting me see every single curve of hers in action. She rippled atop me, writhing like a wave that was surging into being. I’d never seen any woman more beautiful than her. Not just her face and her body, but the way she moved.
This wasn’t anonymous fucking.
This was more, deeper, everything.
She claimed me as much as I claimed her, making sure that every inch of me was bound to her as she bent down, shimmying her chest against mine before sucking on my nipples.
The gentle kiss, the caress, had me hissing. I’d never considered my nipples as particularly sensitive, but the way she nipped them?
Sol, it felt good.
As she sucked down on one hard, then bit it sharply, she reared up as I grunted, and used her grip on my fingers to start riding me faster. Watching her tits jiggle, her curves jostle with every move, was enough to mesmerize me, but her face? Her beautiful features tightened as she found her pleasure and made it hers.
She rocked against me, harder and deeper until she was crying out my name. “Matthew!”
I grunted, feeling my cum boiling in my balls as her pussy clamped down around me, clutching at me, drawing on me, milking me of every drop.
Her pace became frantic, rapid, and another scream escaped her, followed by a few more flutters of her cunt that had me groaning long and low in my throat.
When she collapsed atop me, her body folding over mine like a very curvy, very sexy blanket, she mumbled, “That’s better.”
I blinked. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I need you all.” A yawn escaped her. “Now I’ve got all three of you inside me.” Her sigh was replete. “Can we sleep?”
When she instantly dropped off, not shifting from her spot atop me, I figured she wasn’t waiting on an answer. When she began to purr, her replete and satiated state evident for us all to hear and feel, the three of us chuckled. But, I realized, I was just as sleepy now, and figured they were too. I cuddled into her, and the others settled in around me, binding her with our bodies in the safe haven of the bed.
As I tumbled back into sleep, I recognized that I felt a thousand times better now we’d reestablished the link between us, and what that meant?
Well, shit, I didn’t have a clue.
❖
Daniel
“Y-You’re joking?” Matthew stuttered.
Ten hours—thank you, jet lag—and a quick supper of open-faced sandwiches and chips later, we were less in the dark and somehow, more in it than ever before.
“I’m not,” she admitted. “Linford says the AFata have been after me since I was a child, and after yesterday, we know they still want me.” She reached up to shove her hair out of her face, displaying fingers that were covered in Band-Aids as she’d refused to let us heal the tiny cuts with our blood.
She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said cooking wasn’t her forte. Apparently, she knew how to cook, knew all her family recipes by heart, but it was the doing part of the cooking that stumped her. Thoug
h she’d tried to make ham and cheese sandwiches without the aid of magic, which made things taste bland, or so she said, she’d cut herself several times in the process. Apparently, the wind would help her in a duel with long ass knives, but throw in one that was made for cutting bread?
N.O.P.E
If I’d seen her in the kitchen, I’d have known, from the very start, why she was crap with weapons.
I figured it was our first duty to save the kitchen from her, so I’d made the simple sandwiches while she’d nursed the three scrapes she’d managed to get on her palm and fingers. She’d earned less during bouts, so those few drops of blood definitely weren’t shed honorably.
And speaking of honorable, she’d just dropped a whole lot of WTF on us, but what concerned me the most was the AFata stuff and how they’d been after her since she was a child.
I’d heard about them.
What I’d heard was bad.
In fact, it was a ‘shunned’ kind of bad.
Reaching up to rub my temples, I murmured, “I know about the AFata.”
Her brow puckered. “You do?”
“My dad’s a… I guess you’d think he was a diplomat. I heard him talking about them once to my mom. He only shared the news with her because he was freaked.”
“Why?” she whispered, her eyes huge in her face. There were still shadows under them but there was a rosy flush I also took as a good sign.
Waking up in a tangle of arms and legs had been weird at first, but it was like the opposite of falling out of bed on the wrong side—there was only the right way when she was close by. Sappy, sure, but I’d take that over her being plunged into a portal and yanked away from us.
Priorities.
“They’d kidnapped an ambassador’s son,” I informed them all, my tone grave.
“Human?” Seph queried, his eyes wide.
“Yes. To the Ukraine.”
Riel’s brow puckered. “But why?”
“Why do terrorists do anything?”
“That’s an extremely shortsighted argument.” That Linford was butting into the conversation didn’t exactly come as a surprise.
We were in the main house in the kitchen while he sat on the other side of the open door in the lounge. He’d refused my offer of a sandwich, had pretty much ignored us while Riel had shared everything she’d learned from him, and now decided this was the right time to get involved.
Typical.
“It might be, but the Assembly isn’t always longsighted, is it? Didn’t you tell us that last night?” I countered.
“Exactly. You just contradicted yourself.”
Damn. I had.
“Look, I’m just telling you what my dad said.”
“Pass the buck, why don’t you?”
Irritation swirled inside me, but this male was not only my elder, he was Riel’s grandfather.
That meant I had to be nice.
Even if it fucking killed me.
Dipping my chin, I murmured, “You’re right.” If it came out sounding tight, then shucks. That was because it was. As a thought occurred to me, one that revolved around her grandmother who’d been hiding them out for the entirety of Riel’s life, I murmured, “Riel?”
“Yeah?” she asked, twiddling with the handle of her coffee mug.
“What’s your surname?”
She blinked, easily replied, “Riviera del Sol.”
Linford stilled. “What? That isn’t your surname.”
A huffed laugh escaped her. “Of course it is.” She frowned when she saw how deadly serious he was. “What do you mean? I think I know my own surname.”
“It’s de Santos del Sol. That’s your surname,” he informed her.
“And that’s what I said,” she muttered, shooting him a concerned look. Like he was the one losing his mind and not her.
I cut the others a look, but told her gently, “No. You said Riviera del Sol.”
“I didn’t,” she argued, shoulders dropping in astonishment as she gaped at me.
“You did,” Matthew retorted, reaching over to grab her fingers and hold them in his. “What made you ask that, Daniel?”
“Because Gabriella Sr. went to all that trouble to hide them, but didn’t change their name?” I shook my head. “That makes no sense. I figured she’d…”
“My surname is Riviera del Sol!” Riel snapped.
Biting my bottom lip as I accepted that she wasn’t going to believe us unless she heard it with her own ears, I reached for my cell phone and switched on the recorder app, then asked, “Repeat that, Riel.”
When she did, I played it back and as she heard it, tension invaded her limbs.
“What did she do?” She glared at Linford. “Did you know about this?”
He shook his head. “No. She never told me where you were exactly, and I never looked for an address for fear I’d bring enemies to your door. She gave me two tasks. I had to ensure you received your letter of invitation to Eight Wings. And when you were there—which would be the first time you ever used your surname—if AFata tried to snatch you, I needed to ensure a portal would open up and bring you here.”
In witch lines that crossed with humans, the witch surname was the one that held sway. It wasn’t like the human tradition of a woman taking a man’s surname once they were wed. The witch’s held more power, and that was a tradition her grandmother evidently hadn’t wanted to break, so she’d found a way around it.
Rubbing my chin, I mumbled, “I guess it doesn’t matter. I was only curious.”
“Not matter?” she growled. “I’m saying a different surname!” She waved a hand and, suddenly, she was armed with a pen. She grabbed a serviette, then wrote her name. “See? That’s my surname, dammit.” But even as we watched, the letters began to shift.
Morphing.
Transforming into…
Riviera del Sol.
A snarl escaped her as she eyed the words, peering at them as though the serviette held the answers to all her questions. “How did I never realize this was happening? I feel like such a fucking idiot!”
“It must be happening with all your family,” I pointed out. “Everyone is in hiding, aren’t they?”
Her jaw tensed. "Yes.”
“Maybe she cast another spell. One that makes things blur when you mention or write your surname?” Seph chimed in.
“Is that even possible?” Matthew queried, his face drawn into a scowl.
A growl escaped her. “No. It fucking isn’t. But none of this should be possible. How are her spells still functioning after she’s passed on to the next realm?” Riel reached up and scrubbed at her temple with a force that made me wince. “This doesn’t make any sense. Everyone knows that a spell dies the second the witch does.”
Linford cleared his throat. “Your grandmother was very powerful.”
“Not powerful enough to rewrite witch lore. Even I know that,” she snapped, evidently agitated by what she’d just discovered. A spell that was a lifetime in the making, one that outlasted the caster’s own life on this plane.
Witches’ power concentrated with time. It was a strange phenomenon. It didn’t matter how many humans were bred into the line, the witch’s power seemed to condense through the years. If Gabriella was capable of making her spells outlive her, then what the Sol would Riel be able to achieve when she was fully in control of herself?
The notion stirred something else that made me curious. “You told us earlier that the magic behind the raven and the storm responded oddly to you. Why doesn’t our magic do that? Why did Linford’s portal call you home, and why, when we use it around you, doesn’t it misbehave?”
“Because the Fae in her is even more powerful than the witch. It is the nature of our species. We are dominant and all else is recessive,” Linford clarified. “Until she claims you, she’ll never be able to use her witch powers as well as she can her Fae.”
“What Fae powers?” Riel sputtered. “I can’t do anything—”
“You’ve nev
er been taught how to use them,” Linford corrected softly. “I told you yesterday that we have a magic all of our own. In you, that magic is more powerful than most.”
“Wait a minute,” Matthew burst in. “Are you trying to tell me that she can use Fae magic now, but won’t be able to use the witch magic properly until we’re claimed?” At Linford’s nod, he scowled. “Why? What kind of sense does that make?”
Riel’s grandfather shrugged. “Who said this had to make sense?”
I sputtered, “That’s hardly helpful.”
“And who said I had to be helpful?” he retorted. “I may have a lot of answers to the questions you ask, but I don’t know it all.”
Riel gnawed on her bottom lip. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be.” When he hesitated for a moment, I watched him, and when he shook it off, the sight caught my attention—for a second, he’d looked guilty, his eyes shifty, unable to hold ours, before he moved away and began to bustle around the kitchen.
She blew out a breath, but her gaze was still on the serviette where proof of her grandmother’s power still lay. “What do we do next? Linford says I can’t go back to the Academy yet. He says I’m still under threat.”
“While the AFata are after you, you definitely are,” I rasped, uneasy with the very idea of her returning to Eight Wings.
She cleared her throat. “B-But what about the trials?”
Matthew snorted and reached over to grab her hand. “You think they matter when your safety is at risk?”
I believe she stunned us all when tears formed in her eyes. “You don’t hate me?” she whispered, the words quivering from her lips.
“Never,” I murmured, voice throbbing with the truth of that statement. “I could never hate you, and I know, without having to ask, that Seph and Matthew feel the exact same way.”
“But our troupe—”
Matt shrugged. “What of it? It’s not like they’ll disband us, is it? If shit comes to shit, we’ll have to attend next year’s trial. They can’t make our troupe separate. If we can’t attend the two trials, it just means we can’t go out into the world as a functioning unit.”
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 32
