Consort of Thorns

by Eva Chase

  “I think I sent a red herring for Mrs. Gainsley to go investigate,” I said. “We’ll see if it works. If I ever get to leave this car.”

  He chuckled softly. “I can try and lower myself onto the floor.”

  I touched his side before he could move. “No. It’s okay. The last thing we want is Tyler noticing us like this. His shift is almost over anyway.” I hesitated. Gabriel’s heart was thumping in his chest almost as hard as mine. “Unless you’re uncomfortable. I’m not going to try to— I meant what I said. Whatever you feel—or don’t feel—toward me, it’s totally fine. I never expected anything.”

  Then I shut up before I babbled into even more awkward territory.

  Gabriel bowed his head. His forehead touched mine. “I know. It’s not that, Rose. You didn’t do anything wrong, I swear it. You have no idea…”

  I waited a moment after he trailed off. A quiver ran through my nerves. It’s not that, he’d said. Not that he didn’t have those kind of feelings for me? I couldn’t hold back the words.

  “Why don’t you tell me? Seeing as we don’t have a whole lot else to occupy us at the moment.”

  He adjusted his weight again, tension coiled through his muscles, and his thigh slid deeper between my legs. I bit my lip against a gasp of pleasure.

  He was turned on too, I realized all at once. It wasn’t discomfort making his heart thump. Not if that hard length resting against my thigh told me anything.

  Gabriel drew in a ragged breath. “You’ve got no idea how hard it is to be this close to you and not make a move,” he said thickly. “Maybe the rest doesn’t matter. What do you want, Rose?”

  “Right now?” He did want me. I was starting to feel dizzy with desire. It caught hold of my tongue. “I’d pretty much die for you to move your leg just a little closer.”

  His breath stuttered. Then, slowly and deliberately, he shifted his thigh so it pressed right against my clit through our jeans. “Like this?”

  I swallowed a whimper. My hips flexed against him before I could stop them. A bolt of pleasure shot up from my core. My spark didn’t brighten, because its connection was only to my consorts now, but the rest of me all but blazed.

  My hand fisted around the side of his shirt, as if that could hold me in check. “Gabriel,” I murmured.

  “Rose.” His head dipped beside mine, burying his face in my hair. He rocked against me at the same time as he kissed the crook of my jaw.

  A whimper slipped out of me, too desperate to contain. I clamped my lips shut.

  “You like that?” he whispered, his lips skimming my skin.

  “So much. Please.”

  I didn’t even know what I was begging him for, but somehow he did. He adjusted himself again, lifting away from me for one brief but painful second, and then he was settling himself flush between my thighs, his rigid erection against my sex. A strained sound worked its way out of his throat. As he stroked against me, a moan traveled up mine. Before it could break from my lips, I clutched his hair and dragged his mouth to mine.

  We kissed, hot and messy, as we arched against each other. I didn’t know what we were doing, but it felt so good I didn’t give a shit.

  My teeth grazed his lip. He kissed me harder, his hand shoving up under my shirt. His thumb teased over the peak of my breast so gently I almost lost it just like that.

  My fingers traveled down his side to grip his hips. Pulling him to me, like I’d wanted to so badly earlier. Like I’d thought he wouldn’t want. But there was no denying the hunger in his mouth as it devoured mine and the rocking of his hips and—

  The garage door down the bay grated shut with a thump and a cutting off of the light. Gabriel startled. He pushed off me into a kneeling position, peering through the window. I knew with the silence that had fallen that Tyler was gone. It was just us and our heaving breaths in the tight space of the car.

  I couldn’t see Gabriel’s expression in the darkness, but I felt his body tighten. “Shit,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to—” He eased farther back, reaching for the car door. “You should go. See if that plan of yours worked.”

  His voice was strained but firm. I peeled myself off the seat, every nerve trembling. When I touched Gabriel’s arm, he flinched. Flinched. My heart dropped to my gut.

  “I want you,” I said. “I want you with me, in case I wasn’t clear enough about that before. What you do with that information is totally up to you, but you have to know that much.”

  “You don’t know me, Rose,” he said. “Not any more. Not really. The guy you want, he doesn’t exist. It’s been at least ten years since he did.”

  He clambered out of the car and held the door for me to follow him. I scooted across the seat. My mouth had gone dry. “What makes you think I wouldn’t want the guy you are?”

  He gave a rough laugh. “It’s better for both of us if we don’t go there, I think. I’ll help you. I’ll be here for you. But I shouldn’t have crossed that line. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rose

  It wasn’t hard to look as if I barely noticed or cared about Mrs. Gainsley bustling to the manor’s front door. I was still dazed from that… whatever that had been with Gabriel. I don’t think the estate manager even noticed me, perched there on the sitting room sofa, willing my stirred-up hormones to settle down.

  It won’t happen again, he’d promised. But, snuff my spark, I couldn’t think of much I wanted more than another interlude like that, only more of it. I’d felt the desire radiating through him.

  But desire wasn’t enough. He didn’t want me, not completely. Only enough to give in to an urge when it was almost unavoidable.

  The front door clicked shut behind Mrs. Gainsley. I pushed myself off the sofa. I had bigger concerns anyway. Four consorts who had dedicated themselves to me in every way that I had to protect. A life to claim for myself.

  I headed up the stairs and stopped on the upper landing, where I could see through the large triangular window that loomed over the door. Mrs. Gainsley crossed the drive to the garage. A few minutes later, her Lincoln pulled up to the front gate. Beyond the wall, it turned left, the right direction to head to Master Cortland’s house.

  My ploy had worked. He’d seen the magic and called on her to investigate.

  Now I needed to do my own investigating.

  When Meredith had been our estate manager, I’d never found her office locked with anything other than a regular key. Today, I could feel a tremor of magic as I reached my hand toward the office door. It wasn’t just Dad’s office Mrs. Gainsley had secured. She wasn’t taking any chances. Other than assuming there was no way anyone else in the house could work around her magic, that was.

  It was only about a five-minute drive out to Master Cortland’s house. I didn’t know how long she’d spend there looking around, so I’d have to make this as fast as possible.

  When I’d broken into Celestine’s private magicking room a few weeks ago, I’d had to strain myself to shift her spell. But that had been with an unkindled spark, only faintly lit by a guy I wasn’t yet consorted to. Now, with the passion of four consorts behind me, I found I could ease the protective spell on Mrs. Gainsley’s office door to the side with just a swift swipe of my hand. I didn’t disturb it, only moved it. It would feel exactly the same to her when she got back.

  I eased open the door and slipped inside.

  The space should have felt familiar. I’d been in here so many times when it had belonged to Meredith. The desk and the filing cabinets stood where they always had. But Meredith’s soft amber perfume had vanished, replaced by a sharper, citrusy scent. The old leather desk chair had been swapped out for a straight-backed wooden one, the only padding a thin velvet cushion inlaid in the seat. A small brass clock sat at the back corner of the desk, its faint ticking reminding me of the seconds speeding away until the time Mrs. Gainsley might return.

  I yanked open the filing cabinet drawers one by one, with a twist of my
fingers when I found one locked. A lot of the documents inside were left over from Meredith’s time, nothing Mrs. Gainsley had anything to do with. I knew for sure Meredith hadn’t been part of Dad and Celestine’s plotting. I’d practically told her outright what I’d suspected, and she hadn’t shown a hint that she was worried I’d uncover a real plot, only confusion.

  If only she were still here. I didn’t even know where she and her husband would have left for. They’d lived on the estate since before I was born.

  I shook that painful thought aside and kept digging. In the lowest drawer, I found some files Mrs. Gainsley had clearly put together. Some new vendor forms to do with the wedding. The reschedulings she’d started working on this morning, not cancelling but postponing. So Dad was smart enough to realize he wasn’t going to convince me to take a new husband in just two weeks’ time. He still expected it to happen in five. One week’s buffer before my twenty-fifth birthday…

  What did he plan to do if I outright refused Killian? Could a consorting work without both consorts’ agreement? Surely the Spark would know what was in a witch’s heart and refuse to form the connection if she were coerced…?

  But Dad believed he had enough sway over me, I guessed. His little lamb. I’d always followed his guidance before now, hadn’t I?

  How surprised he’d have been if he’d known how much I’d done in the last few weeks behind his back.

  Nothing about those records was at all incriminating, though. I moved to the other cabinet, tuning out the tick tick tick of the clock as well as I could. Meal plans, notes on the gardening schedule for the summer, interviews arranged with a few possible temporary employees for when one of the kitchen staff was off on maternity leave… Everything neat and precise as the woman herself. Not at all what I needed from her.

  My teeth gritted. Well, what did I expect? Mrs. Gainsley was the underling in this scheme. Dad had been so careful to keep himself out of the actual arrangements… He must have had Celestine handle everything even with Derek, so he couldn’t be implicated if Derek lost his nerve. He’d had Celestine so cowed…

  A shiver ran through me as I tugged Mrs. Gainsley’s lock back into place. Had Dad arranged Celestine’s “accident”? As much as I’d disliked the woman, the idea made me feel sick. But what better way to ensure that she never revealed what sort of man he was to anyone else? Who else would have had anywhere near as much reason to kill her?

  She’d looked so scared at the thought of him learning of her failure the last time I’d spoken to her.

  My teeth worried at my lower lip as I darted down the hall to Dad’s office. He’d been in such a rush when he’d left. I could hope he’d been a little bit careless, couldn’t I? By all that was lit and warm, please, let him have slipped up somewhere.

  The spell Mrs. Gainsley had placed on his door was essentially the same. All it required was a slide to the right of the knob so it no longer affected the lock. I paused and cast a quick tendril of magic to search all around the doorframe.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t assumed she’d taken the exact same precautions. There was another spell embedded in the floor on the threshold. If I’d just walked in without catching it, I wasn’t sure what it’d have done. The energy in it felt prickling hot.

  I wove a sort of basket of magic with my hands, encasing the second spell. Then I shifted it too, over into the wall. Letting out my breath, I hurried inside.

  The growl of a car engine outside made me jump. I sprang to the window. Relief washed through me when I saw it was just an old clunker sputtering on past the estate. I still had at least a little time.

  I’d already searched the shelves, the books. I pulled open the desk drawers again, just for good measure. Nothing relating to my impending consorting jumped out at me.

  A tremor passed through me as I popped open the laptop, sitting down in Dad’s leather chair. The smell of those licorice candies hanging in the air no longer felt remotely comforting. What if he kept all his secrets locked inside his head where I could never prove they existed.

  Shoving aside my doubts, I peered at the computer screen. If I could find something without having to take the laptop out of the house, that would be even better, even if I doubted my chances. First to deal with the password… I’d never learned any forms for interacting with computers, but it was a matter of sorting, and fitting into place, and opening. I’d learned plenty of gestures that captured the right sensations.

  I focused on the password box and arched my arms in the air. My hands bent and flexed as I shaped the magic around the computer. Release. Let me in. Just one more nudge…

  A cool sweat had broken out on my forehead, but the screen jittered and switched to a loading symbol. I let out my breath in a rush. It had worked.

  The files readily at hand all appeared to have to do with Dad’s business. This deal and that one, various financing collaborations he set up between witching businesses across the world. His most recent opens were all from that Cairo project he’d spent so long working on.

  I opened up his email and skimmed through that too. Cairo this and Cairo that. There was one of the company presidents urging him to put together some sort of celebration around the sealing of the deal, like Dad had said. Dad’s response, begging off because of my wedding—so much for that. I searched for anything to do with Celestine, or with me or my consorting, and came up empty.

  Maybe there was nothing to do now except bring it to Kyler and hope he could work his own brand of magic on it.

  I was just opening a few last applications at random when an alert popped up on the corner of the screen. Dad had his text messages connected to his laptop. He hadn’t thought to turn that function off—why would he, when no one should be on this computer other than him.

  The message was from Mrs. Gainsley, replying to something Dad must have sent her. I can get the contract drawn up as soon as Mr. Sorensen is on board. Just say the word.

  My pulse thumped. Mr. Sorensen—my supposed new consort. Of course. He would need to give his magical signature just as Derek had on his contract with Celestine.

  And he’d have to give Dad the final authority over what he did with me. Celestine wasn’t here anymore to be that buffer. I just had to wait until they’d signed the contract and then steal it out from under them like I had the old one.

  Once I turned that contract over to the Assembly, we’d be safe. The estate would be mine. Everything else—who lived where, how I hid my magic—I could figure out later.

  But that was still counting on me being able to find that contract in time. If text messages came into the computer, maybe there was some way of seeing old ones?

  The sound of another engine filtered through the window. My head jerked up. This time it was Mrs. Gainsley’s Lincoln, cruising along the road to the gate.

  I scooped the computer under my arm and ran for the door. As the gate hissed open, I pulled Mrs. Gainsley’s security spells back into place. Then I ran for my room to dig out my old backpack.

  I was going for a little hike this evening. But it wasn’t going to be in the woods.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kyler

  Rose had only been in my apartment once before, but somehow it had never felt quite as much like a home until now, with her stepping back inside. The place in my chest where the magic of the consort ceremony had wound through me filled with a glow where it had been empty a moment ago.

  What would it be like to live with her someday? To see her every day, morning through night?

  The thought turned the glow into an ache. We still didn’t know if we could ever have that kind of closeness, even though we were already bound together more closely than most people who were married. It might even be better for her if we never did.

  “Sorry about the rush,” Rose said, setting her canvas backpack down on my coffee table. “I know you might not be able to do a completely thorough search just tonight. But Dad called and confirmed he’ll be back tomorrow, so we don’t ha
ve much time.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I can do a lot with just a few hours, believe me.”

  Rose had looked steady enough when we’d all met up this morning, but her father’s betrayal was obviously weighing on her. Her smile was a little tight, her posture tensed. When I touched her arm and drew her closer to me, she relaxed a little, but not completely.

  Well, why should she? The other guys and I were as much a part of the problem as part of the solution, weren’t we?

  Rose tucked her head under my chin, snuggling closer for a second, and I let myself set aside those worries, just reveling in the soft warmth of her, breathing in the faintly sweet lilac scent of her hair. I kissed her forehead. “If there’s anything we can use on that computer, I’ll dig it out. You can be sure about that.”

  “I know,” she said, and hugged me tighter. “My knight with shining code.”

  I laughed. “No one’s ever put it that way before. I’ll try to live up to the title.”

  Rose curled up on the couch next to me as I opened up her dad’s laptop. “I magicked my way through the password,” she said. “I’m not totally sure how to reactivate it so he doesn’t realize something’s wrong.”

  “That’s fine. It should be easy enough to restore. You’ve just saved me one step.” I opened up a new window and started delving into the computer’s inner workings. Lines and lines of code, and not particularly shiny either. After a few minutes of running a baseline set of tests, I glanced over at Rose. “This could take a while, and it’s not going to look very exciting. If you wanted to just leave me to it, I’ll text you if I find anything.”

  She gave me a look as if I’d made the most absurd suggestion in the world. “And go where? Back to the house with Mrs. Gainsley lurking around? No, thank you. Some unexciting time sounds good to me right now. Especially if I can spend it sitting here with you.”