by Emma Dawn
“Should I stop?”
“NO!” I yelled the word as my orgasm crept closer, like a stalking panther as it eyed up its next meal. “I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me.” I opened my eyes as I spoke, unable to keep them closed any longer. “I want you, Diego.”
He snapped his slick fingers and his clothes disappeared in a flash of his magic, leaving only the hardened body of a warrior tested for years against the flames of battle. He held onto my legs above the knees, positioning me so the tip of his cock was against my pussy. I squirmed as if I could pull him in myself but he had me at his mercy.
And I loved it. I wanted more. I wanted to feel him inside me, to fill me, and let me come with him, to find that joining that only a true connection could give. Diego was trembling, his eyes strained as he slid an inch into me.
“All of you,” I commanded and he groaned as he drove into me in one hard push, filling me, stretching me wide to take him in. I pulled at the sheets and thrashed my head from side to side as he began to move, pumping in and out, his magic still inside me like some sort of perfect vibration.
I couldn’t stop myself from gasping, panting, and moaning. There was no control left in me and I knew there was no judgment. Diego wanted all of me, no matter how noisy I was. His hips kept up a steady rhythm that had me doing all I could to speed him up.
“Patience,” he whispered.
I couldn’t even speak, the pressure of his cock inside me combined with the magic tugging and pulling on my clit and G-spot was too much. The orgasm grew, growing with each thrust, easing each time he pulled out. Over and over, it built on this slow growing ebb and flow until the sweat slicked us both, until I thought I would die once more, this time from the sheer pleasure that rippled through and around me.
“Dom,” he groaned, “Come for me, my heart.”
His words unleashed something in me as his magic spiked and his thrusting went wild, driving into me with a frenzy of a man possessed. I screamed his name as I came, my pussy convulsing around him, my body arching and dancing like a puppet on a string unable to control any movement myself.
The orgasm went on and on, cascading over and over, throwing me into a pool of pleasure I was sure I would drown in. Slowly I surfaced, the weight of a body drawing me upward. I blinked slowly, not truly sure where I was.
Diego lay on me, his breathing out of sync, his eyes dazed. “That was . . .amazing.”
“You did all the work,” I laughed softly.
“Ah, but you don’t understand. Our magic won’t work on just any woman. Only on the one . . . we are meant to stay with.” He kissed me gently, and rolled to his side. “We need to sleep.”
I had to agree and already the fatigue of the day and the release of the multiple orgasms were dragging me down into a darkness I welcomed. Diego wrapped his arms around me.
“Sleep, Dominique, and when we wake, we will face the new day together. No matter what happens, I will not leave your side.”
I kissed him gently and tucked my head against his shoulder. His arms were strong, his body was warm and with a flick of his fingers the blankets pulled up around us. I sighed softly and let myself fall asleep.
Chapter 15
Sleep was not something we were given much of. Diego and I were woken by a large boom that resonated through the walls, floor, and bed. I sat up in the semi-darkness and immediately reached for the power of my birthright. My magic flared a deep purple and my leopard appeared at the side of the bed.
“The other two signatures, they are here.” I spoke on instinct but I knew it was true. I knew it as my magic hummed around us, and I understood that the part of me that was divination could perceive things yet hidden from others.
I stood, and thought about needing some clothes. My magic interpreted my needs and took from my mind my most favorite article of clothing. The deep purple folds of the dress flowed from my hips, and my waist was cinched with a thick belt of diamonds. I strode forward, the skirts billowing around me. Not exactly fighting wear, but then this battle would be about magic, not physical skills.
Diego was up and beside me in a flash, embracing his power. It was only then I saw his magic formed into a leopard as well. Just like mine. They padded ahead of us and even though I knew he couldn’t see the forms of the magic, I knew what it meant. That we were bound together.
I drew my shoulders back and flung the doors open wide. “Where is Lucas?”
Corbin and Sterling ran around a corner and slid to a stop. “He’s missing,” Corbin said. “We’ve been hunting for him for the last hour.”
My heart plummeted. “Call your magic up,” I said.
They didn’t question me, but did as I asked, bringing their power to the surface and sent it out. Both formed into that of a leopard as well, soothing me.
“Let’s deal with this shit once and for all,” I said. “I’m going to need a spa day after this.”
Corbin smiled and stepped beside me and Sterling fell in behind. I strode toward the front entrance of the Hive. “Rose is safe?”
“Ally and her men are guarding her. They will be her last stand. They know the consequences if we all fail,” Sterling said.
I didn’t doubt that he meant more than Rose’s life would be lost. “The warlock who wants to take over the humans is one of the signatures, isn’t he?”
Corbin nodded. “He is. We don’t know where Auralee is.”
“I killed her,” I said and tried not to quail under the harshness of my own voice. “So, it will be two warlocks to our four.”
“And Lucas,” Diego said.
I didn’t want to count on him. That wasn’t true. I wanted to, but I was afraid my faith would be tested far more than I was ready to admit. Because there had been something in that storm in the Temple of Light that had been familiar to me.
A taste of Lucas’s magic.
I couldn’t tell the other three there was a possibility that Lucas was a traitor to us. Not when they cared for him. Not when I loved him.
We reached the front doors and they flew open ahead of the four stalking leopards, our magic swirling together as if we’d been doing it for years and not mere minutes.
Snow swirled down the step, lit by a midday sun. The bastards had waited until the vampires would be at their weakest. I squared my shoulders and led the way up the stairs until I stood at the top. Two figures stood across from us, both I recognized.
Gavin, father of my blood. And Lucas, man of my heart. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out. Around me the other men stiffened as a unit.
“No.” Corbin breathed the word. “He would never.”
Lucas hadn’t moved an inch, not so much as a twitch.
Gavin on the other hand saluted us and smirked. “I’ve taught you well. Now I will give you a choice. Join with me and my master and help us to take our proper place in the world. Not mere guardians, but rulers.”
I stared at Lucas while Gavin spoke. I saw the pain in his eyes, the tears trickling down his face. He was bound still. He was the only one I’d not freed . . .but how was that possible if Auralee was dead? Her binding should have been broken.
Understanding sliced through all my fears. It was not Auralee who’d bound my men, but Gavin when they’d been injured. Each of them had said they’d been unconscious, injured when the bindings occurred, so they’d never seen Auralee do it. And I’d not thought that it might be someone else’s because the power in the bindings looked exactly as Auralee’s magic when I’d fought the oracle.
Now Gavin still had Lucas still under his thrall.
“Why did Auralee have you imprisoned before I freed you?” I threw the question at Gavin.
“Because she knew you would come to save me,” he growled. “She said you were weak and she was right. She still hoped to take the Cabal back to the fold, as did I. That meant killing you out of sight.”
“Why?” Sterling yelled across the distance. “Why would you betray us?”
“Because I was
meant to rule,” Gavin said. “I thought that my daughter, if she was strong enough, would rule by my side, and I fought Auralee and Eric to bring her around. But they were right. Both my daughters were too old to be trained. Better to be used for what they were—power sources.”
Rage lit in me like nothing I’d ever felt. That Gavin would hurt any of them was bad enough, but that he would then use Lucas, making it seem as if he were against us was beyond the pale. I strode forward, catching the other three off guard as they scrambled to catch up to me. I held my hand back to them.
“No. I will call if I need your help.”
I could feel their reluctance but as my rage grew and the magic swirled around me, they dropped back. There if I needed, but supporting me in my choice.
Gavin gave a slow clap. “You think that you can stop me? An untrained novice?”
I stopped ten feet from him, close enough to see the hatred in his eyes. Close enough to see he was nothing to me.
Divination, once more, rushed through me. I held my hand out to Lucas. Love was the answer. Love was what had allowed me to break the other bonds on the other men. Not my strength, not my power, but my love for them.
“I love you, Lucas. That is enough to break the bond.”
He shivered and bowed his head. “I have wronged you, so many times.”
Gavin laughed. “There is no power in love.”
“Love is life, and life given a choice is strength.” I continued to hold my hand out to Lucas. “There is nothing but love between us, and understanding.”
Lucas shivered, took a step, then another and another. The bindings fell away from him, rope-like red snakes that shattered as he accepted what I offered. I understood now that I had to fight for the first three men, but in order for Lucas to accept me, he had to be the one to throw off the bindings. He took my hand as Gavin screamed.
Gavin’s power was identical to Auralee’s, a violent red-shaped snake as it reared up over our heads.
Five leopards attacked as one, their mouths and claws sinking into Gavin’s magic before it could so much as touch us with its venom. Gavin fell backward into the snow, stiff as a board. I stared at him, my magic and the magic of my men pulsing around us.
Gavin grinned up at the bright blue sky. “We are not done here. There is another daughter I seek. My master will find her in death.”
My heart seized as Gavin jerked once and the last breath of air slid from him.
Lucas clutched my hand and fell to his knees beside me. “I am so sorry.”
I pulled on him. “Knock it off, Chuckle Buckets. I never believed you would turn on me. Who would laugh at my stupid jokes, then?”
I grinned at him and he shook his head slowly. “How did you know?”
I shrugged. “I saw your magic in the storm, but it was reluctant. As if it had been forced. And I saw the binding still on you. If it had been Auralee’s binding, it would have disappeared with her death. Which told me it was Gavin all along that had bound you four.” I wrapped an arm around his waist and breathed him in as the other three approached.
They spoke with Lucas, but I held onto him. As they each put a hand on me, I finally relaxed. This was what I’d been searching for in my dreams, in my whole life. These four men held everything to complete the missing pieces of my heart.
This was where I felt at home. Not a place, not a room, but four men who found me in my dreams.
I turned with them and headed toward the Hive.
“Dominique, what about Rose?” Corbin asked as we reached the steps. I found myself sinking, my skirts billowing out around me as his words brought an understanding forward in my mind that I didn’t want.
“She must find her own path now. We have given her the tools, and the souls she walks with will give her the strength to either live, or remain in death.” I bowed my head, tears falling uncontrollably. I didn’t want to believe that Rose would choose death over life, but she hadn’t been happy here. What if she refused to come home? What if she refused to see her way through the darkness. “Come home to me, sister,” I whispered. “Come home.”
Much as it pained me, we decided to leave Rose in the care of Ally and her Hive. We created a “body” with our magic that looked just like Rose to take back with us to show the other warlocks in the Temple of Light, along with Gavin’s body and his deception. Apparently Auralee and Gavin had convinced the other warlocks to leave the Temple of the Light so they could perform some new spells that would bring peace to the supernatural world. Most had left, some had stayed and they had paid for their disbelief.
I hugged both my sisters, and started the journey to the Warlock’s realm. I floated the Rose body beside me, a sheet over her, and Sterling floated Gavin’s body and we made our way through the levels between our world and the humans’. Funny how quickly I embraced things that were completely out of the ordinary.
When we reached the Temple of Light, three warlocks waited for us, two men and a woman. They held up their hands to stop us.
“Who comes?” they intoned together.
“Warriors,” Corbin said.
“Peace-keepers,” Lucas said.
“Guardians,” Sterling said.
“Warlocks,” Diego said.
Then they looked at me. I stepped forward. “Healers.”
The three in front of us could not have looked more shocked. “A healer?”
I bowed my head. “Auralee, Eric, and Gavin are dead. They fought to no longer protect the world of the supernatural.”
After that, things moved smoothly. I was deemed strong enough to forgo any testing when they saw what I could do, and after I’d healed a few injuries to show my abilities. It seemed that Gavin, Eric, and Auralee had staged a coup, injuring a fair number of warlocks as they took over the Temple of Light.
The fairy, Ella, came to me, her face blotchy with tears. “I did not know he would harm you. Please believe me.”
I nodded. “I do. I didn’t think he would harm me, either. But he was truly never my father. Just a sperm donor.”
The three warlocks who’d greeted us—Teal, Bhari, and Loanne—were the ruling leaders of the Warlocks and grateful for our Cabal’s help, but they were also leery. The five of us working together were powerful and we all knew it.
“Perhaps, we should offer to work closer to the Hive? If we were more open with them, I believe they would trust us more. Then perhaps there would be no need for discussions of war, or who is ruling who.” I suggested on the third day we’d been there. “That way we can keep an eye on Ally and the Windrun pack.” And better yet, guard where Rose was being kept safe in secret.
Corbin took the suggestion to the three leaders and they agreed—rather quickly, too, from what he reported back.
I smiled at the men with this good news, noting that once more, Lucas was avoiding holding my gaze for very long. In fact, he was avoiding me all together as far as I could tell. I sighed softly, I was going to have to do something about this.
Then a horrible thought hit me. What if he didn’t want to be a part of the Cabal now that I was officially here? All my fears that the men would be taken away were wiped clear as soon as I’d seen how our magic had meshed, how they all produced the same leopard. But that did not mean he would want to be a part of it.
And I wouldn’t force it.
But I also wouldn’t let him go without a fight.
“Lucas,” I stood as I spoke his name, drawing all their eyes to me. “I want you to come with me to pick out the site for our new home.”
He stood and nodded. “Of course, as you command.”
Yeah, I didn’t like that. Since we’d been back, he hadn’t laughed once, hadn’t cracked a joke. He wasn’t the Lucas I fell in love with in my dreams, and that scared me. Maybe I could find him again if I pushed for honesty. That was my only hope left.
We headed out toward the forest, over the ravine, and past the Windrun pack’s castle. Lucas was quiet and I worked through what I wanted to say and then
finally just blurted it out.
“Do you not want to stay with us?” I turned to face him, watching him closely. Sucked for me that the divination thing didn’t seem to work on my men.
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I didn’t trust your judgment, Dominique. I fought you when you went to save Rose. I didn’t want to help you stop the storm because I thought you would see my signature in it and think I was against you, and then to see me next to Gavin.”
I frowned at him and shook my head. “But you did help with the storm.”
“Only because I could see the three of you were dying. Nothing else could have moved me . . . how could you ever trust me again?” He looked at me, his eyes full of so much pain and shame that it took my breath away.
“Lucas,” I whispered, “I don’t ever want you to be unauthentic with me. You put Diego first. There is nothing wrong with that. It hurt my feelings, but I understood. I was more worried that you wouldn’t forgive me for putting Rose first.”
His shoulders shuddered. “But the other things—”
“Were done under compulsion. Would you condemn me if I had been raped? Would you think less of me?”
His head jerked up and his nostrils flared. “Never.”
“What was done to you was a kind of rape, Lucas. You had no choice and I would never hold it over you. I love you. I love everything about you, and I want you to come back to me. The man who I called Chuckle Buckets, the man whose laughter lit my heart.” I held a hand out to him, feeling the moment stretch. Either he would take my hand and we would be together, or he would walk away.
“I won’t ever give up on you, Lucas,” I said softly. “Never. But I would never bind you to me, not if you want to . . .go.” I sobbed on the last word, unable to take it back.
He took a step away from me and paused. “I love you, Dom.”
“I know,” I said.
He turned his head and a smile tipped his lips. “Thought I was leaving, didn’t you?”
My mouth dropped open and I swatted at him as he swept me into his arms. I clung to his shoulders, hugging him to me as his laughter eased the terrible chains around my heart that had left me believing I might lose him.
