Then my second of observation is over, and he’s stepping into the cubicle with me.
“Four, it’s cold,” I manage, gasping and teeth chattering, edging back from him.
“I like seeing you cold,” he growls, and his dark eyes lighten to an almost emerald color as the pleasure trickles into the corners of his lips.
“I don’t,” I gasp, my back pressing against the marble tiles.
Two things simultaneously occur to me; that parts of my body are heating beyond caring about the cold water, like molten metal is filling my core and driving the ice back, and that he’s not moving.
If I want to get out of this shower, I’m going to have to make him move.
I’m not even sure I want to get out of this shower. Except this guy is the literal Seed of Darkness, and he’s at least twice my size. If any of the guys were going to break me – it would be this guy.
“Let,” I begin to gasp. “Me.” I try to suck in enough air to keep talking. “Out.”
He leans closer, his whole being drawing in towards mine.
“Make. Me.”
So I do the most obvious defensive move a girl has, I kick towards his balls, but he chuckin’ moves forwards! He lifts my leg out of the way and slams me back into the wall. My lungs crush, and I tilt my face toward the ceiling – struggling to inhale. Inhaling is the only thing I can think to do right now.
At least the only thing besides not screaming from the adrenaline-pleasure mix that’s taken over my every brain cell.
Just a fraction lower, and he’d be inside me. And, oh damn, I want him inside me.
Now.
Like this very second.
Screw trying to breathe.
I graze my fingers over his shoulder, some instinctive part of me trying to lift myself higher and keep myself alive.
Stop being so practical! I gasp inwardly.
Just relax a little lower... Lower.
He smashes his palm into the wall, shattering the marble into sharp shards that slice through his skin and leave long, thin, lines of blood running over the white stone.
“Stop,” he growls.
“I’m not pinning myself to the chuckin’ wall.”
His chest rumbles, vibrating through my breasts. Through the point where my leg is against his hip, held tightly in place by one of his hands. The one that isn’t bleeding.
“And I’m not holding my own leg in a death grip.”
His fingers flex wide, but the pressure from his palm increases. Lowering my leg is impossible. I’m pinned. I press my palm to his chest and push hard. As hard as I can. Nothing, just a heavy grunt-chuckle from him.
“You tried to kick me,” he rumbles, “and you failed.”
“So you’re punishing me by holding me under cold water?”
He smiles, very slowly. “How long before a mortal turns blue?”
“Maybe,” I manage, “maybe I don’t mind turning blue. Maybe I like it in here.” Maybe I like you in here…
I adjust my hips just slightly, letting the tip of him slip inside of me and feeling his muscles quake. His hand shivers against my leg with fingers trembling as his breathing hitches and wavers. And his hips rock in a very controlled backwards movement. Like he doesn’t want to – but he has to.
No, no, no, my insides are screaming. Fire rushing through me, forcing me to try and follow his retreat.
“You were saying?” I say, my mouth quite happy to keep functioning whilst the rest of me is exploding.
Fuck me… my body is screaming, in so so so many ways.
“Stop it,” he growls – like I’m still the one pinning us here.
Like I’m the one making all of this happen just because I want him.
“If you’re going to torture me here, I’m going to torture you,” I say, a smile almost creasing my lips before he drops my leg, smashing his other hand against the wall.
Then he throws me over his shoulder.
My head hits the side of the cubicle, and the shot of pain distracts me from the fact that I’m being carried, dripping wet and butt naked, out of the bathroom and down the hall.
I’m just coming to my senses when we walk into the suite, and he dumps my wet-naked-horny-as-hell ass on the ground in the middle of the lounge room floor.
“Deal with her,” he growls.
Two looks shocked, sitting on the lounge to my right. Three is frozen in the open doorway to his own room, eyes wide with barely contained need, and thank chuck One is nowhere in sight. My first reaction is to squeal rather indignantly, launching myself over the lounge on the left and using the thing as a shield for all the wet parts of me that I wasn’t planning on displaying to them.
“What happened to her?” Three asks, a thread of concern in his voice.
Just a thread though because the guy’s smiling at me. He rubs his palm against his pants leg, trying to wipe away sweat or distract himself from places he would rather put his hand, I’m not sure.
Four puts a hand on his shoulder and shoves him into his room.
“You didn’t take her some clothes?” Two asks from the lounge – still looking at me but not moving.
“I didn’t even get a shower,” I exclaim. “Or a towel. Someone throw me a towel!”
Three comes back out of his room, a clean shirt in his hand, beelining for me.
“Wait,” Two says, leaping to his feet and getting in front of his brother. “Give it to me.”
He wriggles his fingers, and Three begrudgingly hands the shirt over, which Two tosses across to me.
“I don’t know what you did, but you really need to undo it before One gets here,” he says.
“I didn’t do anything. Four there tried to drown me in freezing cold water. Why are the showers so cold?” I growl, trying to get my shaking fingers to unfold the shirt, whilst still semi-squatting behind the back of the lounge.
The cotton won’t cooperate.
“They’re not,” Two says. “Unless you were in the end one. It’s broken.”
“Of course it is,” I exclaim.
I’m too pissed off at the shirt and the shaking and Four setting me up for a cold shower to care that I’m standing and no longer have the lounge to keep my modesty.
So of course, the suite door slams open, and One stalks in.
Stalks. Eyes instantly aglow with an intensity in them that stops my heart mid-beat.
“Why does she smell like sex?” he growls.
Fuck! He can smell that?
“How can I smell like sex when I haven’t had any!” I shout, giving up on getting dressed and just hugging Three’s shirt to my chest.
One’s eyes brush over the shirt, which I’ve managed to scrunch over my breasts with just enough of the hem hanging to cover most of my modesty – then he turns to Three.
“It wasn’t him. It was none of them – there was none of it!” I shout. “But if I wanted there to be any it, that it would be my choice.”
Where I get dressed should be my choice. What I wear and how it smells should be my choice. If I get dressed at all should be my choice, and if I spent a freezing cold shower almost – but so so so not – fucking Four, that should also be my choice.
I blink, and One is standing right in front of me. The whole castle has taken an inhale and gone dead still – nothing moving except the hair near my ear as he exhales sharply.
In the background, Three’s saying, “My power had nothing to do with this.”
“You do know we’re male, right?” One asks in a low, husky voice. It’s his I’m-holding-back-my-growl voice. “You do know how attractive you are, right?”
I don’t answer because my attractiveness, or lack of, isn’t up for debate … and maybe because my whole being is too busy cataloguing the various sensations running through my body, notably the parts of me that he’s pressing into. My body doesn’t care which.
“You wouldn’t survive.”
“Who says?” I manage to whisper.
“I say. Keep your clo
thes on,” he says, accompanied by a low growl emanating from somewhere deep within his chest. “And your legs closed.”
“My clothes, my choice.” The words feel strong, but they sound fragile. “My legs, my choice.”
He hooks his arm around my waist and lifts me off my feet. I don’t even get to look around and gauge the expressions on the other three – or even where they are right now – before One has me in his room and the door shut.
The room is dark, barely a glow from the lamp on the wall by the bed. A low chest is in one corner, clothes spilling out of it. Several swords are hanging on the wall, some kind of spear, and a bow. Various other weapons are piled in the corner. The bed’s huge, not four poster like Three’s, but huge, and it’s made with servant perfection – until One dumps me onto it.
Not dump, let me go, and continue to lecture me. Nope – he keeps his arm wrapped around my waist, lifting and sliding me up the length of the bed. His golden eyes literally glowing in the darkness. I press my palms to his chest, but he grabs both my wrists in one hand and pulls them away. I’m not even sure whether I was trying to keep the distance between us or get more of me closer to him.
He’s on top of me, and I’m not even wearing chuckin’ underwear. My fingers hitch Three’s shirt a little higher, exposing myself to more sensation as the hard buckle at his waist grinds against me. Traitorous fingers.
Traitorous body.
One looks like death itself is on the menu, and I’m poking the beast.
“You need to put your sexuality back in the bottle, servant. We have a rule, and if we break it, you will die.”
His eyes flash brighter if that’s even possible.
“Sorry,” he says, as power slams into me, “but you need to understand.”
I gasp, my back arching. Blood is pumping through my body so hard that my ears begin to ring. His power, heavy with demand and control, threatens to knock me unconscious as bolts of lightning sear through me.
He leans down lower, groaning a little – which makes his breath skitter across my neck. How can I feel so insanely lost in power and sensation and yet notice something so small as his breath against my exposed skin? Sparks of static follow, trailing over the exact spot where his breath just was. Over my neck, down to the neck of my shirt.
Maybe he feels my reaction, because his lips press in hard kisses against the exact same path his breath just followed. Under my chin, over my throat, to the edge of the fabric.
“You’ll die,” he growls.
But he’s not listening to himself – otherwise, he wouldn’t be gripping the edges of my shirt.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t be pulling at those edges hard enough to rip the shirt in two. Straight down the middle. Shirt gone.
“You’re pinned,” he says.
Until this moment I hadn’t realized that I’m locked in place, pinned by the static charge that’s racing through every muscle and fiber in me. As if in protest, my back arches and my hips lift, pressing against the hard length of him that’s barely contained inside his pants.
Which gives my heart another flutter of excitement. But none of this releases the power in my legs or the way he has my arms pinned down again.
“You need to stay down,” he growls, lifting his weight and relaxing his power but keeping his grip on my hands. “You need to obey me.”
“No,” I snap, and before the sound has even left my lips, he’s yanked me into the air by my trapped wrists and launched us both against the nearest wall, his other hand gripping my jaw.
The bed is firmly underneath his feet, but my toes are barely grazing the fabric. I’m held aloft by a combination of my raised arms pressed to the wall under one of his hands and the hard line of his whole body leaning into me. He angles my chin, draping dark shadows over his face.
“Obey,” he says in a long low growl.
“No,” I growl back – just as animalistically as he does.
I’m the one pinned against the wall here, practically naked again. Very defenceless. My whole body is saying ‘take me, I’m yours,’ but my mouth keeps saying other shit.
This shouldn’t even be the way my body responds. The guy literally just hit me with the kind of energy that could have killed me, in a display of power meant to scare me away – and my whole being wants more.
I suck in a deep breath. Then another. I try to distract my mouth by chewing on my lip, but it doesn’t work.
“Make me,” I say.
And, oh, damn if that wasn’t just the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.
He lets go of my jaw, his fingers trailing down over my flesh at an angle where his rough nails scrape and scratch. Over my chest, over my breast, over my stomach… I’m expecting them to seductively slip through my hair and over my clit – but they don’t.
They’re gone – then pressing hard inside me.
Crap.
I squirm.
Whimper.
Then give in to his push and retreat rhythm.
“One,” I gasp his name.
“This feels good?” he whispers.
I manage to nod.
“What about this?” he whispers.
Power zaps out from his fingers, making my legs lift higher and my thighs clench tighter and my everything, e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g zing with the kind of pleasure that’s too sinful to exist.
Moans. That’s what I’m reduced to. Quaking. Quivering moans.
“One!” Four booms through the door.
“Obey,” One begins to command, his fingers steady on the rhythm even as his lips press into a thin line and a sense of urgency overtakes his expression. His hips move in time with each thrust of his fingers, and there’s some spark of joy inside me created just from knowing his body is being pulled into this too.
“You know,” I manage to gasp.
“One,” Four shouts through the door again – I ignore him.
“Getting me to change my mind usually involves offering me something undesirable as punishment…” But this is just too… more…give me more... for me to give in to him.
His expression darkens.
“That’s my rule. I know you want it.” His fingers ever so slowly slip out of me. “But you’re not allowed to have it.”
I would grab him, stop him from straightening away from me, but my hands are still pinned to the wall above my head. Instead, I wrap my legs around his waist and grip as tightly as I can.
“No,” I say. “My body, my choice.”
“She. Can’t. Take. It,” Four shouts through the closed door.
And both of those things, being told what to do by me and by his brother, might be exactly the reason why he presses his lips to mine. Why his free hand flicks at his belt buckle. He cups my ass, lifting me higher, and lets his pants fall to the ground.
“I make the rules,” he growls, biting hard on the edge of my lip.
I cry out – but I’m at that almost incapacitated stage again. His power presses in on me, draining my fight as my core demands more. This almost fucking isn’t enough. This almost having my guys is driving me crazy.
I hear a ting of the metal clip and a swish of fabric as his pants fall to the bed. He splays his hand out flat on my hip and firmly pushes me down, slipping inside me like he owns every bit of my movement. Every bit of me.
“My body,” he growls, gripping my ass hard and lifting me up slowly.
Too slowly.
I moan out his name as the door bursts open and light explodes into the dark room. Four storms in, with Two and Three in his wake.
I’m not sure what happens next. One second I’m in One’s arms, him standing on his bed, holding me up, legs wrapped around his waist, and him inside me. Next, I hit the bed hard, and he hits the far wall harder.
My back arches and relaxes, arches and relaxes, and there’s no way I can stop myself from doing it. I can feel my feet overhanging the edge of the bed, shaking and twitching. Even though One is now on the other side of the room, I still bloody want him, and my
whole body is still being shredded by his power.
Three approaches the bed and grips my trembling foot – but even he can’t still it. His long hair falls forwards, framing his face, as his gaze trails up my legs and settles on the shudder of my hips. Need, desire, and lust, overtake his expression as he climbs slowly over me, his hand fumbling with his belt and freeing himself.
“It’s too late,” he says, his voice silky.
Leaning over my shaking body, he runs his fingers along the inside of my thigh. Pushing my legs a little wider before he lowers himself over the top of me. Rubs against me, the tip of him moving up and down over my clit. My on-fire, ready to burn up, clit. Not even trying to get inside of me yet.
“What are you doing?” Two calls into the room.
He’s still trying to help Four muscle One out of the room..
“I’m going to take the pain away,” Three whispers, and as he inhales, I exhale. “Because if we leave her now, she’s dead for sure.”
One growls and puts his fist through the wall. In the calm provided by Three, I twist and face them.
“See, I win,” I say.
One levels his gaze at me, reining in his anger just enough to let his glowing eyes dim.
“Your rules,” he growls.
“What are your rules then?” Three asks, still rocking just a little, just enough.
“My body, my rules,” I repeat – because that’s as chuckin’ far as I’d gotten. I don’t actually have any rules.
“You get to pick who you get naked with?” Three suggests.
The fingers of his free hand trail along the inside of my raised thigh, again. Heat and distraction take me over.
One’s fingers are like lightning… and Three’s are like a hot coal as they twirl my clit, his cock still just teasing me, then his fingers brush against my ass, taking me by surprise and making me jolt a little out of his reach.
“Yes, who,” I stutter and nod vigorously.
“And when,” Two suggests, pushing his way into the room.
“How,” Four grunts.
“How many?” Two corrects, dropping his pants to the floor.
“She hasn’t decided yet,” Four says, shoving his brother across the room.
“We will kill her,” One growls.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 34
