When he dipped down, jerking me from my thoughts, I jolted in surprise, then moaned when his tongue popped out and trailed over the curve of my jaw, down my throat, and along to the ‘V’ of my collarbone. When he moved up the other side, I groaned as he bit me hard enough to sting, then sucked down. Knowing he was leaving me with a hickey, I was well aware I should have shoved him off me, but I didn’t want to. Didn’t need to.
I was one of those weirdo women who loved to be bitten. Who loved the visual reminders of sex and intimacy. Throughout the day, I’d look at them and be transported back to the moment when they’d happened, and that had been before sex meant anything to me.
Now?
When I thought about seeing the marks and being reminded of this exact minute?
Sol.
I instantly spread my legs and arched up to cup his hips with my thighs. When I hauled him down, I heard Matt and Dan chuckle a little, but I ignored them. My focus was on Seph now, and he was all I saw.
As I stared into his eyes, I leaned up and nipped his bottom lip. A growl escaped him, a deep, rumbly one that seemed to vibrate through my body. I felt it deep in my core, right where I was supposed to, and the second it resonated with me on a base level, I felt the slick gather.
With a shudder, I whispered, “Are you mine, Joseph?”
His lips curved. “I was born to be yours.”
If they weren’t words made to make a woman whimper, I didn’t know what was.
Leaning up again, this time to lick that smile of his, I whispered, “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“That you’re mine too?” His cocky grin had my nails digging into his bare back. He rocked, pushing his dick down against my sex in response to the movement, and I moaned, loving the glide of his shaft through my already wet pussy.
“Always,” I breathed back, meaning it, knowing it to be true. Everything that made me me resonated with everything in him. I was made to be his, made to be theirs. I’d just never known it… until now.
Reaching down between us, I grabbed his cock. He tilted his ass back and up, and I took advantage. Rubbing his dick in my palm, I peered down between us when he pushed higher so I could touch him better. He wasn’t being all growly, not as much as I’d expected, not like Dan and Matt had been earlier, but I wasn’t disappointed, not if it meant I could touch him this way.
With the two inches of air separating us, I used that precious space to arch my pelvis and tap the tip of his shaft against my clit. I loved that. The visual in porn always blew my mind, and seeing it in the flesh with his dick and my pussy? Definitely mind-blowing, except it rewrote the definition of the term and gave it a whole new subsection.
Licking my lips again, this time with hunger, I stroked his shaft down until the tip was at my center. A part of me wanted to use his cock to get off, to rub my clit until I was begging him for more, but I liked this sense of control. Up until tonight, I’d felt like I was being ravaged, pinned down, held down, taken and claimed in their own way.
Tonight was different.
Delicious. Dark. Decadent.
I moaned as his thick tip pierced me, and when he just stayed there, motionless, I used my heels to try to get him to move. No matter how hard I dug into his ass, he wouldn’t budge.
“Jerk!” I exclaimed on a grunt, pissed even more when he laughed at me.
“Who’s in control here?”
“I’m doing the Claiming,” I pouted.
“Who owns you, Riel?” he rasped, his voice suddenly like silk being dragged over gravel.
“You do. My Virgo does.”
His smile hit his eyes, along with a fire that threatened to scorch me. “Exactly. I do.” With those words, he thrust into me hard and fast. Hard enough to make me scream, fast enough to make me cream.
He stayed there, unmoving, letting me feel his thickness, letting me absorb his presence. Panting, I tried to get my breath, but he’d taken me by surprise and I was still reeling, my pussy fluttering anxiously around the invader it wanted but was still taken aback by—yes, pussies could totally be taken aback when a Fae Virgo male decided to plunge into you without warning.
I dragged my nails down his spine, making sure to leave marks for the morning. I wanted him covered in them, tagged in my ownership.
As I dug the tips into the base of his spine, just above his ass, I whispered, “Are you going to move?”
Rocking my hips to urge him on, I clasped him tighter too. Fluttering the muscles around him as I tried to get him to shift, to buck into me, to fuck me as I needed.
“I never expected you,” he breathed, looking deep into my eyes. “I couldn’t have expected you, because you were everything I didn’t know I wanted.” His lips twitched into a smirk. “I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.”
Before I could reply, before he could say another word, he pressed his mouth to mine. I parted my lips instantly, letting him in, welcoming him, and clinging to him as he began to thrust, slow and deep at first. Tiny twitches of his hips that made me feel him all the way in my core. Then long retreats that had him almost leaving me before plunging in hard and fast yet again.
As he dragged me up the mountainside, taking me to my peak, I tore my mouth from his and tipped my head back. I needed the space, needed the moment to catch my breath. He bowed over me, his lips kissing my throat once more, and the urge was there—just as it had been earlier.
I needed his taste in my mouth. His pure essence.
My nails scraped up his back before settling at his shoulders where I dug in deep. He hissed, and jerked a little in surprise at the move, but before he could pull away, I dipped down and pressed my teeth to the marks.
The taste of him exploded on my tongue. Sweet Sol, it was like I could taste his personality as I absorbed his flavor. It wasn’t the first time I’d tasted it, but this way it didn’t taste of iron or that odd metallic tang that came when you sucked a cut on your finger.
This had character. A body, almost. Like a fine wine, rich in flavor and smoky with it.
As I sucked, I moaned as he began to thrust into me. The time for toying with me, teasing me, was gone, and I’d never been happier for that.
When he dragged me toward my orgasm, all I could taste was him. I wasn’t even focused on my pleasure, just his, just him.
He was right.
I’d never expected him, them. Yet here they were.
Changing my life, one day at a time.
Nine
Riel
A soft chuckle jerked me from my slumber. It was raspy, deep, and so weirdly unique that I both recognized it and didn’t.
It was warm, reminiscent of piping hot spiced cider on a cold winter’s day, and it had a similar effect on me.
When I opened my eyes to that all-consuming darkness, I didn’t fret. That laugh wouldn’t let me. That laugh told me all was well, told me that I was safe and cosseted even if I didn’t register where I was.
“Mija, so soon you forget about me.” A tsking sound. “After we met so recently.”
The voice, tinged with the huskiness of a lifelong tobacco smoker, imbued with the lilting rhythm of a Latina, was amused enough for me to blink. Of course, I saw nothing. There was nothing to see in such Stygian gloom.
The darkness, more than the voice, brought the memory back to me. It was only a few days ago, barely any time at all for me as I’d been unconscious throughout most of the hours that separated our initial meeting, but it felt like a lifetime since I’d last encountered such a vacuum of space.
“Tatarabuela?” I guessed, wincing as I sat up. My skin felt overheated as it connected with whatever it was I laid upon. I felt hypersensitive, the very hairs on my body seeming to house a million nerve endings, each one sending the message that something was different, I was different.
“Sí, it is I.” That soft, raspy laugh made another appearance. It wasn’t delicate, wasn’t elegant. It was wholesome and full. And I knew it was nuts, but I could only compare it to a
consommé, so clear and pure, fragrant with flavors but the exact opposite of a hearty and warming stew.
One so gentle. The other earthy.
“Why did you bring me here again? Are we in danger?”
“Sí, you’re in danger. You’re walking toward a goal with no path in sight.”
My throat clutched at that because I knew she was right, but I had no idea what else I could do to protect my family from the looming Fae threat. “I’m working on instinct,” I corrected, needing her to know there was some method to my madness.
She snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Temper whirled inside me, flashing so quickly out of nowhere that it was like a wildfire in a field of deadwood. “Instinct is all I have to work with,” I stated grimly. “What would you have me do when there is no one I can ask about my situation?”
A hum. “Your Virgo can aid you if you allow them to.”
My brow puckered. “How can they help me? They’re as—”
“You’re going into Rut,” my great-great-grandmother snapped. “You must allow them to ease you, it will help you harness your powers. But not yet. Not now.”
“What? You mean, I haven’t already,” I winced, “rutted?”
“Hostia, no. It still burns away deep inside you. The metamorphosis you underwent put it on a slow burn. Your Rut will be like no other, but you must wait until you allow yourself to fall to its powers. The Rut can be appeased, and it must be until you do as I say.”
I bit my bottom lip. “Is the Rut why I feel like fire ants are crawling over my skin?”
“Yes,” came the sad whisper. “I’m sorry to hear it pains you so, mija.”
This time, I didn’t just bite my damn lip, I gnawed on it like it was a steak and I hadn’t eaten in days. “This feeling will grow worse with time, won’t it?”
“Sí, and that’s why you have to act fast, mija.” A shushing sound appeared, and like a phantom, I felt the whisper brushing over my skin. It soothed the strange ache inside me enough to have me moaning with the relief. It was like pouring a vat of calamine lotion onto poison oak—a relief but not a cure. “That may buy us time.”
Reflecting upon the fact my dead great-great-grandmother had just cast a spell on me, I blew out a breath and whispered, “Time in which I can do what?”
“Linda y lista,” came the soft words with another chuckle. Pretty and clever.
“I aim to please,” I half-snapped.
“Good, if that’s true, you will do exactly as I say.” The sudden harsh tone reminded me of a general rallying its troupes. “Time is precious, mija, and your instincts are not totally wrong. It was genius to capture the battalion, even more genius to get the AFata on your side in case things devolve, but I have no wish to see our brothers and sisters suffer in a pointless war. I know that is a desire you share.”
I gulped. “Yes. I don’t want a war. The AFata do.”
“That’s because they’re short-sighted. They’ve been waging terrorism on the Assembly for so long that they’ve become blind. They believe acts of aggression are the only ways to succeed, but they’re wrong.”
My brow puckered. “I’m glad to hear that. I don’t want to fight, but neither do I want to be hunted for the rest of our lives so I can be experimented on.”
“Of course,” she murmured. “No child of our line could survive such captivity. We are too elemental. It would kill us.”
“Salvation through death,” I muttered. “At least if they do catch me, I wouldn’t be held for long.”
A snort sounded. “Let’s not be pessimistic, child.”
Wasn’t it strange how, back at the finca, I felt like a stalwart strength in the face of my mates’ and my grandparents’ confusion, but here? I recognized that show of strength for what it was—someone walking in the dark, trying desperately not to fall over.
Just because my instincts guided me more than theirs did, it didn’t mean I was in the know.
“I feel pessimistic,” I admitted, my shoulders sagging as I whispered, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Claro que no,” was muttered around a soft laugh. ‘Of course not.’ “You are young, child. That’s why you have me. Even my granddaughter is young in comparison to me, and it is the ancestors who will help you, it is the old lines that will take you forth and have you succeed where Sol and Gaia wish you to reap change.”
My eyes stung. “Gaia and Sol?”
“This is a quest from them, is it not? Only they could put you on such a path and give you the means with which to succeed.”
The gentle chiding had my bottom lip quivering. “Is this hopeless, tatarabuela?”
“Not if you do as I say.”
Her resolve would have concerned me if she was anyone other than a child of my line. The de Santos del Sol were powerful. Generation after generation of witches who were celebrated in their homeland.
“If you can find a way for me to live out my life with my Virgo—” Sol, how I wanted that. Every single one of my days had been a black hole of solitude without them in it. I hadn’t known differently back then, but I did now. I recognized that we were still new to one another, still very much in the learning curve of a relationship that none of us had anticipated, but I wanted it so badly the ache in my body was nothing compared to the one in my heart.
My tatarabuela shushed me. “That was always your destiny, mija. You were born to be theirs as they were born to be yours, and together, you will reap a change that has been written in the sands of time since Sol and Gaia granted us that lofty thing called fate.”
“Tell me, what do I do,” I whispered, hope fluttering through me where there’d only been determination before—a determination to survive, something I was intent on achieving through sheer bullheadedness and instinct.
“What is a Gaian candlestick?”
The black darkness swarmed around me as I gathered my thoughts together. “The means with which we bless our houses, our families. Each point represents an element, but earth is at its center for that is where Gaia’s true strength reigns.”
“True, very true. All children learn this and they wouldn’t be wrong, for that is what it has come to represent. What they don’t know is its origins.”
“Origins?” I rasped. “We’ve been blessing our houses since the beginning of magic. Our hearths need cleansing—”
“That they do, but who came up with the notion of cleansing our hearths? Sol and Gaia touch us each and every day, but they have only ever communicated with the first families.”
My mouth ran dry. “The first families?”
“Sí.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Oh, but I am. Deadly.”
Heart pounding, I whispered, “They’re a myth.”
“Of course they’re not, mija. Now who’s being short-sighted? Magic has its roots as does any flowering plant, for that is all magic is. Another of Gaia’s creations that grows with time once properly nourished.”
Thoughts racing in time with the dull beating of my heart, I murmured, “What nourishes magic?”
“The meteors.” A hum. “The Fae.”
I jerked upright and instantly regretted it. The jolt set all my nerve endings alight once more, and only the whisper of a breeze in this seemingly airless place calmed the licking fires that bit at me like a rabid dog in need of blood.
“Calm yourself, mija,” my tatarabuela chided. “There is no point in agitating yourself.”
There wasn’t?
Far as I could tell, I was being dealt more life-changing blows with every word she whispered.
I snarled, “The Fae do not nourish. They are pirates. They steal from us. They take our magic and—”
“The meteors bring Sol’s powers to Gaia’s land,” she interrupted, her voice calm and soothing, talking over mine as though I hadn’t spoken at all. “But even the Gods err. We are their children, incapable of dealing with their raw powers, and our suffering was something that ev
en Gaia and Sol did not foresee. As the power from Sol’s stone spread across the Earth that first time, the magic overpowered us, and so another of their children came to our aid.
“We work together in harmony, sowing the seeds of magic as a team but, along the way, that has been forgotten and that is what must be redressed.”
My throat tightened. “You’re damn right it must,” I rasped.
A chuckle. “All in good time, child. Before Sol enriched our magic and changed things for us, there were those who were the first to be granted Gaia’s Gift. Four in all.”
“One for each stick on the Gaian candelabra?” I hazarded a guess.
“Sí. One for each element. We, my child, are wind.”
For a second, I could do nothing but gape at her. “What?” I shrieked. “We’re a first family?”
“Sí.” The calm voice did anything but calm me down.
“My mother lives in one of the shittiest neighborhoods in Florida. She works two dead-end jobs and my kid brothers haven’t had a fresh pair of clothes between them that aren’t hand-me-downs—”
“Magical wealth and personal wealth are two separate things entirely, Gabriella,” came the instant reprimand. “You know this. Even you, who are the de Santos del Sol witch with the least knowledge of your powers thanks to your destiny, know this.”
I did, but holy Sol! This was too surreal to be true.
My parents lived in abject poverty. We’d been seconds away from food stamps almost all my life, and only my mother’s sheer will and certainty that the Conclave would find us had stopped her from seeking federal aid.
We’d been living like humans without the full benefit of humans all my life, and we were a first family?
Even before Eight Wings, where most of my knowledge banks on my kind had begun to fill up, I’d known what they were.
My mouth quivered as I whispered, “I have no affinity with the wind.”
She snorted. “Your abilities with the weather make a liar out of you. The AFata approach you with wind. Not only does the Fae part of you polarize their magic, but they cannot capture you with your own elemental power.” A laugh escaped her. “My darling Gabriella was always a canny one. All that time in their midst and she never let on, not once, that she had witch wind in her arsenal.”
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 52
