by Helena Maeve
“I’m in,” Merrick said, drawing everyone’s attention. No one was more surprised than Eve.
“You’ll take your chances with us?”
Merrick nodded. “I’ve seen the lawman operate—I figure he’s coming along, right?” With Eve’s cautious confirmation, he pursued. “At least he’s fair. No disrespect, but I don’t know you, lady.”
“Nothing disrespectful about that,” Eve said. “We’ll be glad for your company. If the rest of you need time to think—”
“We’re in, too,” Trish cut in.
“We are?” Sebastian sounded a little more dubious.
“You know what happens to cats in a meteor shower?” Trish asked, craning her neck to meet his gaze. “Don’t be an idiot. Plus, if there’s even a slight chance I can learn how to do what she does, I’m taking it.”
Sebastian didn’t seem overly thrilled about being dictated to by a girl half his age, but for reasons easily understandable to shifters, he fell silent. Tacit agreement was better than nothing.
“We’re ready,” Eve said when she found Neil speaking in low voices with Felix.
“It went well?”
Eve smiled. “Did you hear any growling?”
“I did find the silence conspicuous,” he confessed and slid an arm around her waist. “I suppose we have an announcement to make.”
“I suppose so,” Eve echoed. She couldn’t help but steal another kiss. It didn’t matter that Felix was standing by, making gagging noises, or that they were all teetering on the edge of the precipice with nothing before them but the sharp, sudden drop of a bottomless chasm. Living through A-Day once hadn’t done shit to prepare Eve for what would come after, but maybe if she wasn’t alone for once, if she could face it with a motley flock of like-minded individuals—maybe there was a chance that they could pull through.
They parted slowly, as though reluctant to let the kiss end. It was no surprise that they were both breathing hard.
Eve slid her hand into Neil’s, slotting their palms together neatly. “You’re up,” she murmured. She didn’t think to release his hand as he called the attention of their gathered, well-dressed assembly to him.
Epilogue
Missouri, one hundred and forty-five days after
Eve rolled down her jeans and stepped out of the ravine. Her clawed toes dug into the grassy bank, sending pebbles pelting down into the stream like bullet casings. She crouched to pick up the pole and hefted it effortlessly over her shoulders. Water sloshed in the plastic canisters, dribbling over the rim and into the grass. According to Neil, the plumbing would be functional again in a week or two. They would certainly have the well in working order by then, thereby sparing Eve the treks to the river and back.
She didn’t mind. There were worse things to get up for at the crack of dawn. This way she got to have a little run before the others woke up and the daily business of scrubbing pots and pans began anew.
She had barely gone half a mile before the farmhouse came into view on the crest of the hill. It didn’t look like much from a distance, just four walls and a drooping rooftop in bad need of repair. That was precisely why they had chosen it. The adjacent annex—formerly a barn, now a house in its own right—was coming along nicely. Come winter, it would be ready to house a third of their numbers. Everyone was looking forward to that after a long, cramped couple of months of communal living.
It had been something of a revelation to discover that she wasn’t the only one unused to sharing her space with others. Squabbles were infrequent now, but in the beginning, they had come at least twice daily. There was no generalization possible—witches fought amongst themselves, some fae couldn’t stand the way everyone seemed to brood and talk about the past all the time while others engaged in the sport with almost perverse pleasure—and every single person in their makeshift diaspora had sooner or later lost their temper.
More surprising than that was how little physical harm they’d all come to in the process of snarling at each other.
Eve stepped over a river snake scuttling through the undergrowth. It didn’t notice her and Eve had no desire to cause any casualties today. A shadow flitted above her head. She recognized Merrick returning from his morning hunt. He, too, seemed to prefer the pre-dawn quiet. Eve had spied him chasing a sparrow the other day. It had been a spirited chase, but eventually it had been Sebastian who had snatched the bird in mid-flight, opening its belly for Merrick to feast on the stringy entrails.
Not every adjustment was easy—the witches had brought with them a great number of potions and powders that shifters and fae found offensive. It fell to Felix to negotiate the truce. He wasn’t the most diplomatic, but so far Neil’s brother had proven startlingly adept at navigating conflict. Whatever feathers were ruffled, he was generally able to smooth them in a matter of days.
Eve had watched him closely for any sign that his power was flagging again, but whenever he injured himself, whether it was in the chopping of wood for the hearth or in falling from a ladder while he was fixing up the shutters, he seemed to mend quickly.
Everything seemed to have returned to normal—insofar as carrying gallons of water from the stream to the abandoned farmhouse they had commandeered was in any way normal. It’s a matter of perspective, Eve told herself as she crouched on the porch, passed the pole over her head and slipped it free of the rope straps that held up the jugs. The first task on her agenda was complete.
She didn’t have a watch anymore and her phone had run out of battery long before they had left St. Louis, but by the bright glare of the sun barely creeping over the treetops in the east, she judged that she had time before she needed to concern herself with the rest.
The steps creaked badly, so she opted for the ladder propped against the kitchen wall and from there, the bedroom window that opened with a muted noise, mostly because Eve hit her head against the underside. She winced, biting back a yelp of pain. Very smooth, super-shifter.
There was no movement from beneath the covers, only the rhythmic, ponderous heave of Neil’s breaths. She didn’t let that stop her as she peeled off her clothes and slipped back under the covers beside him.
She hadn’t realized that Neil had a tendency to snore until they’d reached the farmhouse. He must have been sleeping with one eye open before, because here he was out cold the minute his head hit the pillow on most nights. Then the tractor-loud rumbling began.
It was both endearing and a little frustrating. Eve had expected that romance would die after the first week they spent sleeping in derelict shops and ditches—or under the open sky when they could find neither of the other two. And for a while, it had. She had just made her peace with sleeping beside a man who didn’t have the energy to touch her when one night, under their sleeping bag, she had felt Neil’s fingers dip below the waistband of her jeans. They had been very quiet, so as not to wake the others, but she knew that at least her fellow shifters had sensed what was happening.
They hadn’t stopped since. Sometimes it happened in the shower, or whenever they had a shared break from chores indispensable to the running of the farm. It was lucky that Neil could seal a room for their use from time to time, or else the whole gang would’ve heard her cries by now.
“You smell like the river,” Neil muttered against the curve of her shoulder, his voice slurred with sleep.
“Deal with it, some of us have to work,” she teased, but there was no heat in it. They shared the tasks around the farmhouse—Neil got the kitchens and the utilities, she got the manual labor. They made do.
She felt the curve of Neil’s smile against her nape as he tipped forward, sliding an arm around her waist to pull her close. She didn’t need a watch to count the seconds before he noticed that she was naked under the covers. She knew it the moment his breath caught on the cusp of a laugh. Her own mirth was hard to conceal. “Oh, I take it you’re up now.”
“I’ll say…” He scored his teeth against her shoulder in a playful bite in retaliation, but t
here was no concealing the stiffening length of his cock against the small of her back. “You know, this is why Trish has been making eyes at you.”
“Because I’m sleeping with you?” Eve snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, lover boy.” She canted her hips back in case there was any doubt as to how she felt about his flattery, a gesture that Neil answered with a low, husky moan.
“That’s not what I meant,” he breathed against her ear. His voice was low and dark and dangerous, and Eve shivered despite herself. She made to turn over, but the touch of a hand at her nape stopped her short. “Why don’t we do it like this instead?”
Eve grinned into the pillow. “Fine by me…” She was in no rush to protest, what with Neil walking his fingers over her flank and hip, into the crevice of her buttocks. He had such lovely hands. She brought her knees up a little higher to give him better access, relishing the gust of his warm breaths against her ear. “Is it turning you on?”
“What?”
“Being in control,” Eve clarified without an ounce of shame. She had come too far, struggled with too many hang-ups to be put off by Neil’s desire. He seemed to like being with her whatever they did—even if it was just sharing a sleeping bag on a cold night when they buckled under the burden of joint responsibility. They had offered hope and sometimes it felt like it was all a lie, sometimes she worried their makeshift family would pick up and just leave one day. But Neil was right there beside her on the days when paranoia got the better of her and he held her hand as they fell asleep at night, even if they had fought not five minutes before.
He bit lightly at her earlobe. “Oh, is that what this is?” She could feel him grinning. “It’s been so long that I couldn’t tell.”
“Screw you.”
Neil laughed in earnest. “Patience, grasshopper.” He pushed the covers aside with a haphazard motion, baring them both to the cool breeze. “You left the window open?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Eve urged. She couldn’t wait long enough for him to get out of bed and close it and come back and resume what he was doing so, so well.
“You’ll have to be quiet, then.”
“I can try,” Eve bit out. “Just keep going…”
Neil kissed the jut of her shoulder. “You like this?” he asked and because he could be awful sometimes, pressed his fingers deep into her, his thumb dancing over her clit.
Eve had to shove her mouth into the pillow to smother a moan. Had he been the charitable sort, he would’ve taken that for a sign to ease up. He wasn’t and he didn’t. If anything, he sped up his ministrations, peppering kisses across the wings of her shoulders as she squirmed and clawed at the sheets.
And just when she thought she could take no more, Neil removed his fingers with a slick, vulgar noise and sucked them into his mouth. Eve only saw him out of the corner of her eye and still she flushed, feeling her cunt pulse with need. “This is torture, you know. Pretty sure the Geneva Conventions have stern reprimands reserved for you…”
“You can take it,” Neil said, a far cry from concerned. His bright grin and the way he made a point to lick his lips gave him away. “You taste delicious. Would you like a ta—”
Eve hooked a hand around his nape and pulled him in, pressing her lips to his before he could finish the question. There was something kinky and delightful in tasting herself in his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to slake the arduous need coiling in her belly like a starving animal. “What I’d like,” Eve bit out, “is your cock.”
She felt the spike of his arousal against her thigh. It was flattering to know that he wasn’t unaffected. Sometimes he could play up his nonchalance, but Eve was learning and she was learning fast. “I need you inside me,” she murmured, and gasped when he shifted onto his knees. His hands at her hips were rough enough to bruise—something she’d been asking for ever since they’d done it on the floor of her apartment in Jennings.
Eve pushed herself up onto her knees, aware of how exposed she was, how vulnerable. A distant flicker of panic sparked deep within her being, but it was nowhere near as present as it had once been. She would always fear relinquishing control to others. She knew that now. Neil knew it, too. Even as he aligned them and pressed his length into her, he knew not to pin her down at the shoulders, or slam home before she let him know she was ready. Grabbing her in general was a no-no, but on occasion, she liked to see Neil get a little rough, and treat her as though she could take whatever he dished out.
“You okay?” she heard him ask, voice strained as his hands stroked restlessly over her back, and realized that she had fallen silent, too silent.
“I love you,” Eve blurted out, brain-to-mouth filter not only broken but also clearly obliterated, blown to smithereens, torn up like a paper bull’s-eye riddled with holes. “I mean, yes. Okay.” She turned her face into the pillows. “Fucking fine.” The next word out of her mouth was going to be please.
Neil still hadn’t moved. What was he waiting for, a written invitation?
Eve arched her hips back, taking him down to the hilt and moaning with the burst of sensation. He wasn’t so long that it hurt to press her hips flush against his and she enjoyed the slap of his balls against her thighs when he took her from behind—the rare few times that it happened. But Neil wasn’t doing much taking this morning and Eve could feel frustration bubbling like champagne beneath her skin.
She sat up, twisting at the waist. “What is it? Don’t tell me you’ve lost interest…”
That seemed to snap him out of his trance, because he fisted a hand in the messy twist of her ponytail and brought their lips together in a harsh, almost punishing kiss. It was overwhelming and Eve relished every second of it. As she did the minutes that followed. Neil pulled her onto him with strong hands not unaided by the flicker of magic that coiled in his veins, no easier to separate from the man he was than it would’ve been for Eve to set aside her shifter nature.
At times it felt like he was pinching her nipples, like warm tongues were lashing her cunt, but his hands never moved from her hips and hair, pulling her onto his shaft however he pleased. It was hard to tell what was imagined and what was physical—maybe all of it. Maybe it didn’t matter. Eve gave back as good as she got, if only by rolling her hips against his and savoring the way that seemed to interfere with the very controlled, very fast pace he’d set for them.
She could feel his fingers scrape down her spine and couldn’t say if they were really his hands or some manifestation of what he wanted to do to her. She didn’t care. It felt good. Too good. “I’m close,” Eve panted, screwing down and onto his hard dick. “I’m so close, Neil— Fuck, oh gods…”
“Come,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “Come for me.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. The maelstrom building in the pit of her belly grew and grew like a star going supernova, until it ignited, setting her nerves aflame. Eve barely smothered a cry as she tipped over the edge into orgasm. She could hear herself sucking in big gulps of air like a drowning woman.
She didn’t want to be one of those girls who met a guy and credited him with making everything all better—it seemed like unfair pressure to put on someone who was both flesh and bone, and prone to screw up from time to time—more often than that, for some people. Yet being with Neil was like an out-of-body experience. Every time he held her, or kissed her, or made love to her, it felt like she belonged, like he was the watershed between the awful before and the unknowable after.
She didn’t regret telling him. After all they’d been through, he needed to know.
Eve shook with the thought, overwhelmed and oversensitive, hyper-aware of the crackling of branches outside their window and the squeak of the bed beneath them, the whole world drawn into much sharper focus than it should have been. She’d heard this referred to as mating, as bonding, but as far as she knew that was only pack myth.
She was only dimly aware of Neil thrusting into her twice, three times more before he followed her over the edge, spending
into the tight, throbbing clasp of her cunt. She nearly sobbed when he pulled out, leaving her empty and bereft in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.
It was wrong, so very wrong, but Eve felt wrecked and broken, and yet she’d never welcomed the loss of control more. She collapsed onto the bedding in a tangle of uncoordinated limbs, barely managing to avoid smacking herself in the face with her own hand. “That was…”
“Yeah,” Neil echoed, his chest rising and falling as quickly as if he’d run a marathon. She turned her head, even if it hurt her neck, because it would’ve been a sin not to enjoy the sight of his cherry-red cheeks. A sheen of sweat slicked his flushed skin—too much temptation for Eve to resist shifting a leg over his hips and pressing her mouth to his throat. He shivered and moaned, but didn’t push her away.
He only stiffened briefly when she murmured, “Put it back inside.”
“I can’t go again,” Neil breathed huskily.
“I know.” She wasn’t asking for another round. They were both oversensitive and sated, but it didn’t feel like enough until Neil guided his softening member into her pussy and Eve settled herself above him, legs on either side of his thighs to trap his cock in place. She could feel his gaze long before she looked up. “Can this just be a thing—I don’t really know how to explain…”
Neil shook his head. “You don’t have to.” He was the one to fold their fingers together in a gentle clasp. “I like you up there.”
“That makes two of us,” Eve said, grinning.
He did eventually slip out of her and her thighs began to shake after a while, so Eve moved aside, sprawling strategically to avoid the wet spot on the sheets. She was too hot to stand Neil’s arms around her, but it felt nice to know he was close. She could feel his cum sluicing down her thighs, warm and sticky, and thought mine. It seemed like a jinx to call him that, which was why she seldom permitted herself the thought.
