by E. M. Moore
He shook his head. “Its bloody nonsense is what it is. We acted in a way we thought was best for our coven and now we’re getting punished for it.”
“It’s not exactly a punishment,” Travis said. “I think they really don’t know how Norah’s going to affect our magic, so they’re taking precautions.”
“But we know how she affects our magic. She makes us better, so I’m still on the ‘I don’t give a fuck what Walter says’ plan. The djinn came after Norah, so we have to do something about it.”
A moment of hesitation ran up my spine while Gabe and Randy nodded at one another.
Liam looked at me. “Do you think he was after you?”
I shrugged. “I can’t say that he was. It was evident he was there for me because he showed himself to me first, but he had plenty of opportunity to get to me when we were in that small hallway, but he didn’t. He let me walk right by him and get back to you guys after I tried to put him in the sleep spell. Then again, he kind of growled at me at the same time.”
“A warning,” Gabe said.
Liam grabbed a book from the coffee table and tossed it in Gabe’s direction. “Let’s just keep reading up on the djinns. We don’t know enough about them yet to make a decision about what to do.”
“We know enough about this one. It came there for Norah and it’s not as if he offered to grant her a wish. If he didn’t do that, then he’s not on our side. She didn’t call him to her.”
They all looked at me as if they expected me to refute that. “Listen, I’ll be the first to admit I thought it was cool to have a genie, but no, I didn’t call one and I wouldn’t even know how to even if I wanted to.”
“See,” Gabe said.
Liam just shook his head and looked down at the webpage he’d been reading on his laptop before Gabe’s outburst.
I gave Gabe a small smile, but he just kept stewing. His face was red, framed by his blond hair he reminded me of an erupting volcano. Why couldn’t we go back to the bar where we were having a good time dancing? Maybe that was part of the reason I’d been scared when the djinn showed up. We thought we were finally getting some time where we wouldn’t have to worry about these types of things then, bam, another paranormal thing happened right in the middle of our good, stress-free time.
Travis walked over to Liam to look over his shoulder. “What are you finding out?”
Liam shrugged. “Not much so far, but the best I can tell, djinn aren’t necessarily bad. They’re strictly creatures that follow through on whatever their master wishes.”
“And their master,” Gabe started, unrelenting. “Somehow wanted to get to Norah. Why else would it have showed up at Nan’s? It’s not like it just happened there by accident and found us. Dean Reid sent it.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense either,” Randy added. “Why would Dean Reid come ask for our help and then send the djinn to Norah? I don’t know if I buy that, and trust me, I don’t like the Reid’s either.” He flicked his gaze toward Liam for a moment who was too enthralled in reading to even see.
“We can figure all that stuff out later, but we have to come to a decision on one thing,” Travis said, his fingers curling into the couch cushions. “Are we telling Walter and the superiors about this, or no?”
“No,” Gabe said immediately.
My stomach dropped with the intensity of his reaction. I sat up from my own position and went over to him. I unwound his arms he’d curled around his chest when he noticed I was coming over and then sat down facing him, my legs pulled up onto the couch beside us. “Hey,” I said.
“Don’t try to change my mind.”
“I’m not,” I told him earnestly, then I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’m just worried about you.” I tracked my finger along his jaw bone until he looked me in the eye. “Where’s my smiling Gabe?”
“He’s taking a vacation,” he said, deliberately looking away from me.
“Well, I need him back. I get why you’re upset, but we have to all come to a conclusion on this.”
He looked down, an almost challenge in his voice. “You know why I’m upset?”
I nodded, making sure I had his full attention before I said anything. “Because your Gabe and you’re an Enforcer. Your grandfather was an Enforcer before you and it’s all you ever wanted to be. Well, besides a football champion. You don’t know how not to be a member of the Order and just because you gained your fifth, which you have no control over, Walter comes in here and tells you that you can’t do any of your Order duties until they figure things out.”
His eyes widened the more I talked, and he started to loosen up.
“Does that sound about right?”
He swallowed, then moved forward, his head angling until his lips pressed into mine. They were firm yet soft. Sure, yet pliant. We melded so well together it made my heart sing. I understood his sentiment though. It was nice having someone know you. Someone who really understood you, sometimes even before you knew why you did things yourself. It made you feel far from lonely. I got him and he got me, and he told me all that in the kiss we shared in front of everybody.
“Good,” Travis said. “Now that Norah’s calmed Gabe down, can we talk about this rationally?”
Gabe finished the kiss, appreciation and a hint of amusement in his eyes. “Screw you, Mate.”
I lifted up and gave him a peck on the lips. Then, I turned around on Gabe’s lap and pulled his arms around me while I faced the rest of them. “I say we come to a conclusion the way you always do. A vote.”
“Sounds good to me,” Travis said. He gave me a wink, and I smiled back at him. “Who thinks we should tell Walter what’s going on?”
Travis, Liam, and I all raised our hands. A rumble started in Gabe’s chest.
I turned to him, pulling his head down so I could whisper in his ear. “Just because we tell them doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it on our own. It’s a courtesy.”
“What if they send someone else here to deal with it?” he asked, his voice still hard. “Salem’s our territory.”
“Do you really think they’re going to do that?” I countered. “We didn’t get the call. Nothing really happened. We’re just giving them a heads up.”
“I vote for Norah’s idea,” Randy said.
Travis and Liam gave me a disapproving look, but I just smiled back at them. If there was anything I’d learned, it was that you had to make decisions for yourself. Not everyone had your best interests at heart. Gabe and I felt the same about that. If the Order had really wanted to know about us, they would’ve stayed and asked questions about what I did to them, but they didn’t. Which told me they already had their preconceived notions about what a female Enforcer did. The one and only question Walter asked me, inside my own head no less, was what kind of relationship I had with the guys. Why should that matter unless he had proof of something else? They were holding back, so we should be able to too.
“Fine,” Travis said, “I’ll make the call.” He turned away, his hand already on his cell, but I called his name. He looked over, and I crooked a finger at him. He came forward and Gabe pressed me back against him. My heart stuttered. I was a few seconds away from being in a Travis and Gabe sandwich again.
I called Travis down. “Closer,” I told him. When he was only several inches away, I leaned up and gave him a kiss on the lips. “Thank you.”
Gabe’s hips moved up, sending a satisfying thrill through me. I loved that this boy was up for anything. It was hot as fuck. We’d have to do something like that again.
“Any time,” Travis said, his green eyes blazing.
Travis spun on his heel and left the room to make the call. As soon as he left, the sexual tension in the room died a few notches. Randy’s jaw locked, but then he moved closer to Liam, taking up Travis’s spot looking over his shoulder. “Is there anything in there that explains why Norah’s magic wouldn’t work?”
Liam’s head lolled from side to side as if he wasn’t exactly
sure, but he had a theory. “Not really,” he said.
“But what do you think?”
He looked up over his laptop, then shut the cover and moved it to the table in front of him. “I think maybe that the djinn was sent to us by someone more powerful than you, and so the djinn was there to do whatever its master told him to do, and it didn’t matter that you tried to stop him.”
“Because he was controlled by a more powerful witch than Norah?” Gabe asked, pulling me closer against his chest.
Liam nodded.
“Well, it’s not Dean Reid, then,” Randy said. “Norah could take Dean.”
“But what about his father?” Gabe asked. “If his family has had control over the djinn for centuries, maybe that would override anything Norah has even if Mr. Reid isn’t more powerful than her. Since Mr. Reid is the one who technically has control over the djinn and not Dean, he could’ve sent it.”
“For what reason?” I asked. “Mr. Reid doesn’t even know about me.”
“Maybe he knows Dean came here to ask for help, and he’s trying to scare us off,” Randy said with a slight shrug.
That was the best working theory yet. “So, you know what this means?” I asked. I waited until they all looked at me. “No matter what Walter tells Travis on the phone, we have to contact Dean to find out what the hell happened. We don’t have a choice because there’s no way I’m going to let a djinn just follow me around all the time and not do anything about it.”
7
Randy blinked at me. “Do you have to wear that?”
He’d just knocked on my door to see if I was ready. I’d answered in a low V-neck cut shirt that showed major cleavage. The v cut so low it was at least an inch under my breasts before it stopped. “This is how you get guards to open gates for you, so yes.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Are you going to go all caveman on me?” I asked, intrigued.
He stalked forward and all the breath in my lungs whooshed out. I bit down on my lip to keep from smiling. He could throw me over his shoulder and carry me to the bed. As I thought it, he did exactly that. He plucked me off the ground easily and carried me back inside the room. “You, Norah, are in so much trouble.”
Heat seized between my legs. “I am?” I asked, sucking in a breath.
“First,” Randy said, his voice gruff. He let me go, and I bounced onto the bed. He stood over me, his eyes hard. “You let me watch you get off in between Travis and Gabe in a crowded bar.”
“You loved it.”
“I’m talking,” he said, drawing closer, inching my legs open.
“Then, you let Gabe devour you when you’re two feet away from me. Again, I watch.”
“You can always join.”
He gave me a menacing look. “Now, you’re going to wear this shirt for someone else, so he can get a full look of you. You know he’s going to be thinking about your tits, what they look like on display, what they feel like in his hands…”
My nipples hardened at his words. They really wanted to feel Randy’s rough hands on them, torturing them with his skilled movements. I had so little time it was impossible to fill it with everything I wanted to do with my guys. There were too many other things to worry about, like djinns and powerful families, which made it more difficult to do what I really wanted. Right now, it was yanking Randy’s pants down and telling him he’d better enter me or else.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice breathy even to my own ears.
“Time to head out,” he said. He reached out, trailing a finger down my cleavage, then up and under my shirt where my nipple pebbled and waited. He kept going though, glossing over it, barely even a thought to give me what I wanted.
I groaned in frustration.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Then…?”
“We don’t have time,” he said simply if not with a bit of revenge. He was talking about the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Reid were headed to a gala tonight, and we saw it as a perfect opportunity to show up at their house, hoping Dean would be home alone. As for me, I was planning on getting past Owen again like I did the first time. It worked once, so it would work again.
I trailed my own hands down over my breasts, my chest heaving into my palms to fill them until I kept going, lower and lower until I was at the inseam of my jeans. “You know what was best about being at the bar?”
Randy’s gaze had followed my hands and they were now stuck to where I was. I pressed down, right over top of my clit, my hips reacting on their own accord while Randy’s eyes filled with fire.
“Feeling like we were free to do anything. No worries, no magic, no djinn. Just me and a couple of my guys acting out of instinct.”
So, I was bad. I was trying to get him to cave. He’d started it though, so there was no way I was going to apologize. He was the one who instigated it with the rough talk. He was the one who touched first, heightening my senses. I was just going to finish it.
Randy made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a tortured harrumph. I hooked one leg around his, and then grabbed his hand, throwing my weight over top of him until we rolled, and I was in the power position now. That old saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall? It was true, especially when he didn’t fight me. He could act as tough as he wanted, but he wanted this.
Once he was flat on his back on the bed, I went to work on his belt. I unclasped it, pulling it out from its restraints and then worked on his jeans next until they were yanked down, his huge cock standing there proudly just waiting for me.
“Don’t tease me, Norah,” he breathed.
“It’s like you don’t even know me,” I said, moving forward. I wrapped my lips around his hard cock and sucked. His hips pumped up into my mouth and I took him all in. He was already salty at the tip, and he was on fire, waiting for me. This wouldn’t be a nice, sultry jaunt toward climax. This would be quick and dirty, strictly out of need to feel the other.
I teased him with my lips for as long as I could stand it. Then, I stood, undoing my own jeans and letting them fall to the floor before kicking them off. My panties were next. I tossed them to the side with my feet and then climbed on top of Randy. It was like climbing on top of a sleeping rock. He grabbed my hips, already pulling me forward and I sank down onto him, making us both cry out. He was big, by far the biggest out of all my guys. Size truly wasn’t everything, it was knowing how to use it, but damn if it didn’t fill me, making me stretch and ache in a glorious way.
“Fuck, Randy.”
He grunted, urging my hips to move, and I obliged. I was already slick with want, and the way he filled me, touching all the sensitive areas made it easy to already be on the uphill stretch to orgasm.
I ground against him, coming down hard. His eyes sparked. “Again.”
“Fuck,” I breathed again. There was nothing like seeing him just as aroused as I was. I reached up under his shirt, feeling his massive muscles. His strength, his power, lent an irresistible urge to make him come for me. That I could give this guy anything was amazing. I could make him go to his knees in want, cry out in ecstasy. Little old me and this gorgeous specimen of a man. He was so hard inside me. His hips came up to meet mine until he hit the backside of my wall time and time again.
He reached up, tearing my shirt open so he could see my breasts instead of just the cleavage. I was bare, exposed in a beautiful way as I rode him. “Make them bounce,” he ordered.
My thighs squeezed together as I made my motions more pronounced, forcing my hips up and then down furiously until they did just as he asked.
“That’s right. Fuck me. Show me what I’ve been missing.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. I went to turn, but he grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him.
“Don’t you even dare. Fuck me good.”
The footsteps stopped, and I pictured any one of the guys in the doorway watching us. I slammed own on top of him, throwing my head back to let out a cry.
“Again.”
Fuck yes. He was so hard, so perfect. I felt my breasts bob as I came down again, harder and faster, doing exactly what he wanted, exactly what we both needed. The last one sent my world spinning. “Oh, Randy,” I started. “I’m going to come.”
“Again,” he ordered. “Squeeze me tight.”
I pulled my muscles in until I sank on top of him again, losing the fight against the oncoming orgasm. It ripped through me in a delicious pleasure, and I made sure he knew it too, calling out his name.
He took my hips, angling them while pumping up a few short times until he, too, ground into me, his cock constricting and then spurting what he had inside me. I closed my eyes, loving the feeling of being fulfilled like that. When I opened my eyes, I smiled down at him. “You should punish me more often.”
“I might have to if you don’t straighten out.”
I moved over top of him and he groaned. God yes, I could so go for a round two.
Someone cleared their throat behind us and I turned. Travis stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with his hands crossed over his chest. He looked sexy enough to eat. “The rest of the guys are already in the car.”
“We’re coming,” I told him.
“So I heard.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Randy said.
“It was my fault,” I told Travis. “There was a low-cut shirt involved. Randy couldn’t stand it.”
“I bet,” he said, smirking. “Are the rest of the guys going to be able to handle it?”
“She just needed to know that she was ours because she wore it for Owen.”
“Owen?” Travis asked, his forehead wrinkling.
“The guard,” Randy explained.
Travis’s jaw locked down just as I’d seen Randy’s do.
“It’s nothing,” I told him, thrilled that they were a little jealous. “It’s just how you get things done around men who think with their little heads.”
“Men don’t think with their little heads,” Travis said. “Boys do.”
I couldn’t argue with him there. If Owen was a true man, I wouldn’t have been able to seduce him in that way unless he was mine. He thought he could have me just because of what I wore. A true man would know the difference between a woman wearing a shirt like that for herself and wearing a shirt like that to get attention from her man.
