“That’s why you killed him,” Jonas whispered. Torren had said as much, but Jonas had refused to believe it. “He knew you wouldn’t claim me, so he had to find another way to make sure you suffered.”
“I knew what he was doing to our coven. I should have put a stop to it long before I did, but he was my brother. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Jonas dropped his chin to his chest and groaned. “Why didn’t you tell me after he was dead?”
“The spell isn’t broken with a witch’s death. It’s absolute until they remove it. By that point, I’d lied for so long. What good would have come from me telling you? I still couldn’t claim you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have bargained with that bitch Natalie and got your ass cursed again, for one.” He still had so many damn questions, but he could barely stand, and his head felt like someone was playing the bass drum inside his skull. “I get that you think you were protecting me, but you still should have told me.”
“Get some rest, Jonas. You’re about to fall over.”
“I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“Then come to bed with me.” Nicholas took his hands and led him toward one of the cots. “You can still hate me when you wake up, but right now, I just want to hold you. Come to bed with me, baby.” It wasn’t fair that a simple, softly murmured endearment could have him forgetting why he was trying so hard to resist the man.
“Okay, but will you still respect me in the morning?” Nicholas smiled crookedly and kissed him full on the lips. “It’s well past morning, and I’ve always respected you. I don’t know how to make up for the things I’ve done, but I promise I’ll find a way.” Jonas eased down on the cot and scooted back to the wall to make room for Nicholas. He sighed when he felt his mate’s warm body press up against his chest. “You’re an asshole, but I love you.” Soft lips whispered down the side of his neck. “I know, and I love you, too. Give me a chance to prove it.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jonas answered around a yawn before resting his head on Nicholas’s shoulder and falling asleep.
Chapter Eight
It was the perfect dream. While he’d had the same fantasy a million times over the years, this one seemed much more real. He could feel strong hands kneading the muscles of his chest, the warmth of breath against his neck, and plump lips that ghosted up and down the column of his throat.
“Want you, Nicky.”
Nicholas’s eyes popped open, and he scrambled back until he fell off the narrow cot and right onto the concrete floor. “It’s not a dream.”
Leaning over the edge of their makeshift bed, Jonas smirked down at him. “Come back up here.”
The one time he’d been weak and let his desires overrule common sense, it had spelled tragedy for his mate. For so long he’d resisted the temptation that Jonas presented. Years of deprivation and clawing hunger for the gorgeous man had led him down a path that would seal Jonas’s fate.
Making love to Jonas had been simultaneously the best night of his life and the stupidest decision he’d ever made.
As though picking the thought straight from his frantic brain, Jonas reached out to him, offering his hand and another smile.
“Phillip isn’t here, and he can’t hurt us anymore. I did a lot of thinking while you slept.”
“What did you think about?” And more importantly, what had been the outcome of Jonas’s musings?
“All the times you lied to me. I thought about all the secrets you kept from me.” Jonas crawled off the bed and right up to Nicholas, forcing him to recline on his elbows or bump heads with the vampire.
“I thought about all the times you hurt me, and all the ways I’d pay you back for it.”
Swallowing hard, Nicholas opened his mouth to apologize again but pressed his lips together when he realized he had nothing to say that would erase the damage he’d done.
Jonas’s hard body settled over his, covering him from chest to groin and pressing him back into the floor. “Then I thought about what I would have done if our positions were reversed.” He dipped his head and licked a slow path up the side of Nicholas’s neck. “You know what I realized, Nicky?”
“No.” Nicholas panted as he did a full-body shudder. His heart raced, his stomach fluttered, and his cock swelled painfully in the span of seconds. He wasn’t sure if he was answering Jonas’s question or verbally denying how much he wanted the things his mate was doing to him. The last time he’d let his dick do the thinking, he’d almost claimed Jonas, and that could never happen.
Jonas nipped at Nicholas’s bottom lip and then swirled his tongue over it to soothe the sting. “I realized that I’d do whatever it took to keep you safe—even if that meant lying to you. Oh, I tried to deny it.
I told myself that I would never purposely deceive someone I love.” He pressed their mouths together and tickled the seam of Nicholas’s lips with his tongue. “The truth, however, is that I would. If it meant never having to live without you, even if we were just friends, I would tell you every story in the book except for the one you wanted to hear.”
“Jonas, stop. I can’t do this.” Nicholas tried to squirm out from beneath his mate, but Jonas held him pinned in place. “Please. We can’t do this.”
“Nicky, I know all of your secrets now. I know what I’m getting into, and I know you can never claim me. It’s not ideal, but I can live with that. You are everything I want, and if that means this is all we can have, I’ll be the happiest man alive.”
“Listen to me.” Nicholas freed his arms and stretched them up to grab Jonas’s face in both hands. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Phillip isn’t going to hurt me. Why are you so afraid?”
“The one time I let my guard down, I almost claimed you. The need is always there, but it’s so much stronger when we’re connected like this.”
To his surprise, Jonas smiled, turned his head, and placed a soft kiss in the center of Nicholas’s palm. “Then let me be in charge. Let me take care of you, Nicky.” Then he claimed Nicholas’s lips in a passion-fueled kiss before he had a chance to argue.
The wet tongue that stroked in and out of his mouth made his head spin and his cock throb. Jonas tasted like heaven—warm, moist, slippery heaven. His gums tingled where his fangs threatened to elongate, and a fire blazed inside his belly.
A needy moan escaped him before he could cut it off, but Nicholas was too far gone to care. It had been years since he’d had a taste of his mate, but it was even better than he remembered. “Mine!” Instinct took over, and his fangs burst through his gums. Nicholas fisted his hands in Jonas’s hair and jerked him down so that the fragrant skin of his throat pressed against his lips. Skimming his nose along the jumping vein in his mate’s neck, Nicholas groaned at the glorious scent. His mouth watered, his cock pulsed, and all reason fled his lust-filled brain.
“Nicky.” Jonas said his name breathlessly as he rocked his hips and humped their denim-clad erections together.
He didn’t know if it was a plea or a warning, but his name sounded so sweet on Jonas’s lips. “Say it again.” One hand released Jonas’s hair and traveled down his back to cup his firm ass. “Say it again.”
“Nicky,” Jonas breathed, barely more than a whisper.
“That’s it,” Nicholas cooed. Insinuating a hand between them, he fumbled with Jonas’s fly until he was able to part the fabric and extract his lover’s leaking prick. They both groaned when Nicholas wrapped his fingers around the thick, hard flesh and dipped his thumb into the weeping slit.
Jonas jerked and shuddered in his arms, a needy, desperate mewling pouring from his parted lips. Nicholas scraped his incisors down the damp skin of his mate’s neck, hard enough to make Jonas moan, but not enough to break the skin.
“No biting.”
There was no need for the reminder, though. While his body, heart, and mind all yearned to cement the bond between them, the tiny voice of reason at the back of his head pitched a fit at doing anything to endan
ger the well-being of his mate. “Carne nudo revelabis,” he murmured, smiling when their clothes vanished and Jonas gasped in surprise. “Is my witchy hoodoo still too much for you?”
“If you can magick us up some slick, I’ll never say another word against it.” Jonas squirmed on top of him, molding their nude, heated bodies together as his hands roamed over every inch of flesh he could reach. “Hurry, Nicky.”
Nicholas could do better than produce a bottle of lube, though.
“Cedite mihi. Relevare modo. Oblita doloris. Tantum delectatio manet.”
“Oh, my God!” Jonas humped against him harder as his eyes rolled back in his head and the cords in his neck strained. “What are you doing to me?”
“Do you like it?”
“It feels amazing. It’s like I can feel you inside me. I can definitely get into this magic thing.” His fingers dug into Nicholas’s shoulders, and he rocked his body, creating a mind-numbing, delicious friction between their pulsing cocks.
“I won’t always use magic,” Nicholas assured his lover. “I want to take my time with you.” His head dropped back and he growled when Jonas gave a hard swivel of his hips. “Next time.”
“I’ve wanted you for too long, Nicky. Fuck the foreplay and get to the good stuff.”
“You’re playing with fire, babe. When I get inside you, it’s going to be hard and fast.” Nicholas didn’t wait for an answer before flipping them over and pressing Jonas into the floor beneath him.
“This is your last chance to say no.”
“Fuck me, damn it!”
Well, it wasn’t poetry, but it was all the affirmation that Nicholas needed. Pushing Jonas’s knees toward his chest, Nicholas skimmed two fingers along his lover’s crease, right to the slick and loosened star he sought. Claiming his mate’s mouth in a heated duel of tongues, lips, and teeth, he inserted both fingers and pumped in and out of Jonas’s silky channel.
If he practiced a bit more, he could get good at this magic thing.
Jonas’s hole was well stretched and slippery with lubrication, allowing his digits a smooth glide without resistance. Confident that he wouldn’t hurt his partner, Nicholas took both of Jonas’s arms and stretched them over the Enforcer’s head, pinning his wrists with one hand. “Don’t move,” he ordered in a low, feral growl.
Lining up the engorged crown of his cock with Jonas’s hole, he teased the muscles with minute nudges, loving the way they relaxed and opened to allow him entrance.
“Stop teasing me.” Jonas groaned and arched his back, pulling against the hold Nicholas had on his wrists. His dick flexed and jerked, bouncing against his lower abdomen and coating it in clear drops of pre-cum.
It wasn’t candlelight and slow music. It wasn’t rose petals on silk sheets. Hell, they didn’t even have a bed. Still, as he impaled Jonas on his hard length, encasing himself to the root inside his mate’s velvet-lined tunnel, the moment was perfect simply because of the man beneath him.
Jonas threw his head back and cried out as his inner walls constricted around Nicholas’s cock like a vise. The heat, the snug hold, the sweat that glistened over Jonas’s hard, muscled body—the sights, the smells, the erotic sounds—it finally existed outside of Nicholas’s dreams. The hard concrete floor of the holding cell wasn’t a room at the Ritz, nor was it a fumbled and hurried encounter in the dark of night by a muddy pond.
Pulling out until only the crown remained to stretch Jonas’s entrance around the flared ridge, Nicholas waited for his lover to meet his eyes before surging back in hard and fast. A clawing, aching, and overwhelming need burned inside of him, driving his hips in lightning-fast strokes as he plunged into Jonas’s welcoming body over and over.
He could see his mate—touch him, truly feel him—without the fear of being caught and punished. Instead of keeping half of his attention focused on the world around them and any signs of encroaching danger, he was free to focus solely on the flex of Jonas’s muscles, the way his hips jerked up to meet each one of Nicholas’s demanding thrusts, and the sweet sounds of his mate’s pleasure.
Looping one arm under Jonas’s knee, Nicholas lifted his leg, opening his mate to deeper penetration. It still wasn’t enough, though.
His cock swelled and pulsed inside Jonas’s hold. His sac tightened, his balls ached, and a deep rumble began in his chest as electricity shot through his body and pooled in his belly.
“Close,” Jonas grunted. He tried to free his hands, but Nicholas held them firmly in his grip. “Please. Touch me. Fuck!”
“Look at me,” Nicholas demanded, leaning over his lover until their noses almost touched. “Open your eyes and look at me, Jonas.” Those soft blue eyes peered up at him, and Nicholas knew he was lost forever. “Come for me.”
The words seemed to flip a switch for Jonas. His loud roar echoed off the walls as he bucked upward and tensed. Hot ropes of pearly cum erupted from his cock, filling the space between them and splashing against Nicholas’s chest and abs. “I love you,” he gasped, the words barely audible.
That was the true magic. Not the silly parlor tricks Nicholas could do, but those three little words. Burying his cock to the hilt, he pressed his face against the side of Jonas’s neck and stilled, groaning as his balls emptied and cum filled his mate’s depths.
“Datum gratis. Duo corda sicut unum. Obligo me ad vos. Offer totum, quod sum et pignus amoris mei aeterna.” He whispered the words against his lover’s skin, not sure where he’d heard them, or how he knew them. “I love you, Jonas.”
“Did you claim me?”
Nicholas jerked up and stared down into Jonas’s wide eyes. “I didn’t bite you.”
“I feel different, though. I can feel you like I feel myself. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s there. What did you say just now?” Nicholas frowned as he repeated the words, and then spoke them once again in English. “Given freely. Two hearts as one. I bind myself to you. Offer all that I am and the pledge of my eternal love.”
“Is that…” Jonas trailed off and mirrored his frown. “It’s beautiful, but what is it?”
Nicholas wanted to weep as he slowly eased out of Jonas’s hole and knelt on the floor between his splayed thighs. “It’s the claiming invocation of a witch.” He dropped his head and closed his eyes in anguish. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Nine
“Well, this is a damn mess you’ve gotten us into.” Varik scrubbed at his face and groaned. “We’ve got four missing members of our coven, a psychopathic brother who has apparently come back from the dead, and now you’re telling me that Jonas is going to die because you claimed him with some witch’s spell. Does that about sum it up?”
Jonas took his mate’s hand and squeezed gently. “Ease up, Varik. It’s not his fault. Yes, however, that’s a pretty accurate description.”
Nicholas said nothing in his defense. In fact, he’d said barely more than a handful of words since he’d claimed Jonas in the basement. Jonas felt fine, though. He certainly didn’t feel like he was dying. “Maybe you were wrong. Maybe he didn’t really curse you. Or maybe it was only your vampire half.”
“That’s a lot of maybes,” Ridley said as he came into the sitting room and plopped down in one of the armchairs. “If Phillip is alive, I say we hunt his ass down, make him reverse the spell, then kill his ass again.”
“How does someone come back from the dead anyway?” Demos asked from beside Varik.
All eyes turned to Nicholas. Sitting up a little straighter, he squeezed Jonas’s hand and brought it to his lips to kiss the knuckles.
“I’m going to find a way to fix this. I won’t let you die because I fucked up.”
“You definitely fucked something,” Ridley mumbled under his breath as he made a show of sniffing at the air.
Jonas growled and leaned forward on the sofa, but Nicholas’s hand on his arm stopped him from launching himself at the alpha. “I just want to bite him once, just one little bite, Nicky. It won’t hurt…much.”
�
�Bring it on, bloodsucker.” Ridley smirked and held his arms out wide.
“Shut up!” Demos shouted.
It was such a shock to hear the normally quiet and reserved Enforcer yelling that Jonas shut off his caustic reply immediately.
When everyone was quiet, Demos nodded and turned his attention to Nicholas. “How is your brother back among the living?”
“The Relegatis,” Nicholas answered without hesitation. “He found it.”
“The rega-whoseits?” Jonas cast a look around the room, unsurprised to find everyone frowning in confusion. “Nicky, what is that?”
“The Relegatis. It’s a Book of Shadows.” Nicholas waved his free hand around airily. “The Relegatis is a spell book.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Varik agreed. “I’ve heard of it. I thought it was just a legend, though. It’s supposed to be a Book of the Banished, or something like that.”
Jonas’s head was starting to pound again. There had been an overload of information in the last twenty-four hours. “Can you please explain this to me in plain English? I’m not following here.” Turning to him, Nicholas took both of Jonas’s hands and gave him his full attention. “Varik is right. It’s a Book of the Banished. It contains the darkest spells of the Magiks. After Andre’s death, Phillip became obsessed with finding it.”
“I’m guess it wasn’t for recreational reading or sentimental value, either.”
“He wants to bring Andre back.”
“He can do that?” Nicholas arched an eyebrow at him but didn’t comment on his outburst. It took Jonas just seconds to realize how stupid his question had been. “If Phillip is really back, then I guess he can.”
Nicholas brushed the hair back from Jonas’s face and smiled tenderly. “I know it’s a lot. I don’t want to dump all of this on you, but I don’t want to keep anything from you anymore.” No, Jonas didn’t want that, either. He was a vampire—the epitome of myth and legend and things that went bump in the night. Surely he could get his shit together and accept the fact that something so fantastical might really exist. The world was filled with magic and things beyond their comprehension. Why not this?
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