Ruined by Shadows

by Lola StVil

  “Okay, I promise,” Sadie says. “If, and that’s a big if, it comes to it, I will make sure Arken doesn’t get to weasel out of the deal.”

  “Thank you,” Atlas says.

  She’s coming back towards me when Perry jumps up.

  “Oh no you fucking don’t,” he says.

  Atlas turns him, her face shocked.

  “You’re not just going to give up, Atlas. You might be ready to give up and crawl into a hole and die, but I think I speak for us all when I say I’m not ready to let that happen. So you can have your day to pretend everything’s okay if that’s what you need, but the rest of us will be out there fighting for you and trying to find a way out of this.”

  “Perry,” Atlas says.

  “No, Atlas. This isn’t open for discussion. Because while you’re making the ultimate sacrifice, you don’t have to live with it afterward. We do. And we all need to know that we gave this our best shot.”

  “Okay,” Atlas says quietly. “If that’s what you need to do.”

  “Anyone else got a problem with that?” Perry demands.

  No one does. I never thought I’d be grateful to Perry, but he just said what I should have said, but the shock left me speechless. I just didn’t have the words.

  “We should start making plans now,” Langston says. “And then we’ll be ready to go out and find answers in the morning.”

  Pest nods enthusiastically.

  “I have a few books here I’ll look over, and if the answer isn’t in those, I’ll head back to my place and grab a few others that might be useful.”

  “Sadie, you know some of the most powerful witches and wizards in existence. Call any of them that aren’t on Arken’s side and quiz them,” Perry says.

  He keeps giving the team orders, but I don’t hear the rest as Rachel comes to stand in front of me.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute, Kane?” she says.

  “I’m kind of busy here,” I say.

  “It won’t take long, and it’s important,” she insists.

  “Fine,” I sigh.

  I turn to Atlas.

  “Will you be okay?” I ask her.

  “Of course I will,” she replies. “I know everyone wants to try and help and I love that about them. If it’s what they need to do, I won’t stand in their way, but I do need to rein Perry in a bit before he goes into full-on dictator mode.”

  The team is starting to spread out and make calls to whoever Perry asked them to call. The kitchen is no more private than the lounge, and reluctantly, I take Rachel through to the bedrooms. I draw the line at taking her into Atlas’s room, and I open the door to one of the spare rooms. She follows me in and closes the door.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” she asks.

  “Are you kidding me? Atlas might die tomorrow, and that’s what you’re worried about? It’s not high school, Rachel. Everyone doesn’t have to like you.”

  “Come on, Kane. You can do better than that. Stop avoiding the question. I’m a Valkyrie. I can handle the truth.”

  “Okay, you want the truth? The truth is I don’t trust you. You worm into our lives and I have to wonder if you have some ulterior motive. Pest has known you for all of five minutes, and he’s already tripping over himself. I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

  Rachel smiles a sad smile. She sits down on the bed. I remain standing.

  “You don’t know, do you?” she says.

  “Know what?” I ask.

  “Pest and I have known each other for a lot longer than you think. Years ago, we had a bit of a fling. It didn’t last that long, but we really cared about each other. We bonded in a way that can’t just be broken.”

  “So why wouldn’t he say that?” I ask.

  “Because there’s more to it than a simple breakup. We had a child, Kane. Pest couldn’t be involved in the child’s life, and I guess he didn’t tell you we have history because he is ashamed of walking away.”

  Now that, I didn’t see coming. I know I already thought she was shady, but this? It’s more than one step too far. When I tell Pest what she’s saying, surely he’ll see that she’s poison. I turn towards the door.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Away from you before I do something I can’t take back. And to tell Pest exactly what sort of a person he’s involved with. How can you make up such an awful lie?”

  I don’t wait for an answer; I just storm out. I go to the room Pest has been staying in. I knock and walk in without waiting for him to okay it.

  “We need to talk,” I say.

  Pest puts a marker in the book he has open on the desk and turns to me.

  “You’re right, we do. About what I said earlier—”

  I wave my hand.

  “Forget about that, Pest. I just had a weird conversation with Rachel. She asked me why I don’t like her, so I told her the truth. That I don’t like the way she has you so into her so quickly. She gave me some story about you two having a child together years ago and you walking away. That’s the sort of girl you’re in bed with, Pest. I know you think I wanted something like this to happen so that you would be forced to break up with her, but I didn’t. I wanted to be proved wrong, and for you to be happy, but this is a step too far. She’s accusing you of being a deadbeat who walks away from his own kid, and you have to see that’s too much.”

  “It’s not a story, Kane. It’s true. I didn’t tell you because, well, I didn’t tell anyone. I—”

  “You walked away from your own damn kid!?!?!?” I shout.

  “There’s more to it than me just not wanting to be a father,” Pest says.

  “Bullshit. What other reason could there be? Because you sure as hell can’t claim you weren’t into Rachel. And even if you weren’t, you leave girlfriends maybe, but not kids.”

  “I know this is a touchy subject for you, Kane, but please, let me explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain. Nothing you’ve told yourself to justify what you’ve done is a good enough reason to leave a kid behind.”

  Something occurs to me, and I shake my head.

  “That’s why you always defended Sadie, isn’t it? Because you’d done the same thing, so you empathized with her. And you hoped that one day if your own kid came looking for you, I would somehow help you defend your bullshit excuses. Well, I won’t, Pest, because what you’ve done is the lowest of the damn low.”

  An image floats into my mind. A little blonde girl with Rachel’s mouth and Pest’s eyes. Tears fill those big blue eyes.

  “Why didn’t my daddy want me? What’s wrong with me?” she whispers.

  I want to hug that little girl and tell her nothing’s wrong with her. It’s something that’s wrong with the bastard who fathered her. I want to tell her he’s the one missing out, not her.

  “Kane, please,” Pest says.

  The image of the little girl breaks up, and it’s my own tearstained face I see. I know what it’s like to grow up unwanted, and while I may have forgiven Sadie, I’ll never quite forget that pain. And I can’t condone someone else causing a child that much pain.

  I realize that Rachel isn’t the bad guy in this, Pest is.

  “You know what, Pest? You should end things with Rachel. Because she deserves better than a loser like you.”

  Pest gets to his feet. He looks angry, and his anger makes my own flare up. How dare he be angry?

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know the situation or why I left,” Pest said.

  “The reason doesn’t fucking matter, Pest. What matters is what you did. And what you did is unforgivable.”

  I whirl around and slam the door open.

  “Where are you going?” he asks. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I’m leaving before I punch you because I’m afraid that if I do, I won’t stop. We don’t need to talk about this. I have nothing to say to you.”

  Pest follows me out into th
e hallway.

  “Kane, wait. I get why you’re angry, and I get why you don’t want to discuss it. But you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone about this. Please, it’s important.”

  I spin back to him.

  “Why? So you can keep up the charade that you’re this stand-up guy? You know what? I’ll keep your damn secret until this thing is over, but don’t think I’m doing it for you. I’m doing it because if Atlas knows who you really are, she won’t want your help, and like it or not, we need you to figure out a way out of this for her. Or are you walking away from her too?”

  “I’d never walk away from her, Kane. That’s not fair, and you know it.”

  “You want to talk about what’s fair? Go talk to the kid you abandoned and see what she thinks about what’s fair,” I snap.

  I walk away, ignoring him calling after me. I go back to the lounge, the anger sizzling within me as I think about the times Pest told me to forgive Sadie. He didn’t give a fuck about Sadie. He wanted to get some sort of third-party redemption by seeing that a child could forgive their parent for leaving them.

  “What’s wrong?” Atlas says, standing up from the couch as I walk into the room. “What did Rachel want?”

  She is alone in the room, and I can’t hear any voices coming from the kitchen.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “Saudia and Regal went out to talk to an old friend of Regal’s father. Carla is off somewhere talking to the other Valkyrie leaders. And the others have all gone to bed so they can get an early start in the morning. Now, tell me what happened with Rachel.”

  I shake my head.

  “Nothing much. She wanted to know why I didn’t like her.”

  I smile. “And there was me thinking I was being subtle.”

  Atlas laughs. “You’ve never been subtle about anything in your whole life,” she tells me.

  “True,” I agree. “Anyway, I was wrong about her. She’s not who I thought she was.”

  “I’m glad you had a change of heart, but you seemed angry when you came in here.”

  “Pest and I had words. Nothing serious,” I say.

  “Enough talk,” she says. “Kane, take me to bed and make love to me as you’ve never done before.”

  Now that’s a plan I can get on board with. I let go of the anger and concentrate on Atlas. Our eyes lock, and I can see her desire for me in her dilated pupils and the flush of her cheeks. I step closer to her, and as our lips touch, it’s like we’ve been unleashed.

  THE FOLLOWING SCENE HAS MATURE CONTENT. YOUNGER READERS CAN SKIP THIS SCENE WITHOUT MISSING ANY PLOT POINTS, AND START UP AGAIN AT THE NEXT MESSAGE

  Her hands are all over me, up and down my back, grabbing at my ass, pulling me against her, feeling every part of me. I push my hand into her hair, pressing our lips together. My other hand caresses her back and her side, clutching at her, needing to feel every part of her.

  It takes everything I have not to throw her to the ground and make love to her right here, but anyone could come back at any moment. I pull back from her. Our breath comes in matching gasps as I take her hand and lead her to her bedroom. The door is barely closed when we’re on each other again.

  We come together, breaking apart only long enough to remove Atlas’s jeans and underwear and shove mine down my thighs. I run my hands down over her ass, and gripping her thighs, I lift her up. She wraps her legs around me, and I lean back against the wall as I reach around and position myself at the edge of her warmth.

  “Ready?” I whisper into her ear.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she says in a husky voice.

  And she is. I can feel the heat coming off her in waves, and I can feel how ready she is to receive me as I hover on the edge of her. I run my tongue down her neck, and I feel her shiver against me as she moans. The sound of her moaning like that is too much, and I can’t hold back any longer.

  I plunge into her fleshy depths, and she cries out in pleasure as I hit her sweet spot. She twists my shirt in her fingers as I begin to thrust.

  Everything, every thought, every fear, leaves me as the need to have her consumes me. She becomes me, and I become her as our bodies move together in perfect sync. I move my hands down her body and rest them on her hips.

  She opens her eyes and brings her eyes to meet mine. She gasps as her body releases everything she’s got. It starts in waves and then speeds up, crashing out like a powerful waterfall. It is so intense, but so utterly amazing to see the pleasure contort her face into a grimace, to hear the moan dragged from her as she rides the waves of her pleasure.

  She begins to clench around me, and it’s all I can do to hold off my own orgasm, but I don’t want this to be over. Not yet. I’m going to give her the night of her life.

  Her spasms relax, and she bites her lower lip, giving me a coy smile. The smile bursts into an O of surprised pleasure as I ram into her again, going in deeper and deeper, taking her by delicious surprise.

  Her next orgasm hits and her nails dig into my back. The pain spurs me on, excites me, and I thrust into her slippery folds, dragging it out, making her feel the pleasure in every nerve in her body.

  “Oh my God,” she says, throwing her head back, her back arching. “Shit, Kane. Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop. Ohhhhhh.”

  The last sound comes out of her like a strangled scream as the intensity of her orgasm grips her. Her walls tighten around me, pushing her over the edge. She lets go completely, giving herself over to the moment. I feel a rush of warm wetness coat me as she hits her peak. It matches the sticky wetness running down my back as her nails dig deeper into me, piercing the skin there.

  I push off the wall and spin around, pinning her against it. I move the top of my body back so I can take her in. I run my fingers lightly over her neck, watching goose bumps rise on her skin at my touch.

  Her hair is plastered to her head, and her face is shiny, and she has never looked more beautiful than she does at this moment. Her face begins to twist again as I keep going, relentless in my need to pleasure her.

  “Kane, I can’t,” she pants out, exhausted from her last orgasm.

  I thrust again.

  “Oh my God, I can,” she says as her breathing becomes ragged.

  She can’t put her head back this time. There’s nowhere for her to go but against the wall. Her back arches, her stomach pressing against me, but I give her no reprieve. I keep up the pace, fast and hard, and then I pull right back, almost out of her.

  She gasps and her eyes fly open as I thrust all the way back in. Her eyes roll in their sockets as she is seized by another wave of pleasure, and I can’t hold back any longer as she screams my name over and over.

  I mash my lips to hers as the waves crash over me, and we race to finish together, hitting our peak. Our juices mingle as I breathe her in. I pull back and put my head on her shoulder, nuzzling into her neck as I moan out my pleasure.

  Every muscle in me goes taut as the final thrust takes me over the edge and our moans become one.

  I pant for breath as the feeling begins to subside. My legs feel weak, shaky, and I back away from the wall, keeping hold of Atlas. She keeps her legs clamped around me until I reach the bed and she releases her hold. We collapse onto the bed beside each other, both of us spent. I lie in an exhausted daze beside her.

  As my breathing evens out, I feel my eyes start to close. I fight to keep them open. I’m not ready for this night to end. It seems that Atlas feels the same because the bed shifts beside me. She pushes herself up as I turn sleepily towards her.

  She pushes me back down onto my back and hooks one leg over me and smiles as she grinds herself against me.

  She grins. “Don’t even think about flaking out on me.”

  “Never,” I say, fully alert now.

  I prop myself up on my elbows, and she leans down to kiss me. Her kiss is soft, tender. She pulls back and pushes my shirt up, running her nails up and down my chest. We undress each other the rest of the way.
Slowly, between kisses, like we have all the time in the world.

  When we’re both naked, I gently push her onto her back and kiss her neck. I move down her body, moving my tongue across her skin in lazy circles. She tastes like salt and musk and sweetness all rolled into one. I flick my tongue across one of her nipples. As it stands to attention, I take it between my teeth, nibbling it gently and pulling it more erect.

  She gasps and writhes underneath me, and I move to the other nipple. I suck hard, taking as much of it into my mouth as I can while flicking the other with my finger and thumb. She reaches up and pushes her fingers into my hair as I work on her.

  I move back, trailing kisses down her stomach until I reach her center. I push her thighs further apart and look at her pulsating clit, ripe and ready. Her juices glisten in the moonlight that streams in through the window.

  “Kane, you don’t have to…” she starts.

  “Shh,” I whisper. “Tonight is all about you.”

  I lean forward and run my tongue over her. I feel it swell beneath my tongue and she moans again. I could spend the whole night down here, but I know she must be getting sensitive, and the last thing I want to do is disappoint her. I move my tongue in circles, teasing her, drawing it out. She wraps her legs around my head and grinds against my tongue, begging for more. I comply by adding a finger, slipping it inside her, one then two. She gasps and begs for more.

  I flip her over on all fours and start to suckle her clit again from behind, placing my right hand on the small of her back, focusing on her pleasure point. She arches her back, and I pin her to the bed on her stomach. I make small circles on her pleasure point with my index finger and thumb, while using my tongue to do the same on her pulsating center; I slip my fingers in and out.

  She writhes, bucks, and grinds, begging me, not sure exactly what she’s begging for. Just when she thinks she’s had enough, I nibble on her clit one last time before she wriggles free and flips over. She hooks a leg around my shoulders, pushing me against her, and I apply a little more pressure. She lets out a little screech sound. It becomes a rhythmic sound, ah, ah, ah, and I know she’s close.

  She moves her leg and half sits up. She grabs my arms and pulls me up. I let her do it, sliding back up her body. She nods to me, and I enter her again. I move slowly, going in deep, feeling her against my full length.