by Sadie Moss
When I tell him that, he laughs. “Good. Let’s make it a little harder.”
He starts putting a few shields up, more and more layers, and one by one I start to take them down—to figure out how to get around them, to work my way in through the cracks. It takes a physical toll, draining me as much as an intense sparring session would, and I can’t even imagine how much power it must take for Asher to project his control into multiple people, or for Agustin to project himself into my mind from hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away.
It takes time, but I get better at it. And as I pick out the thoughts that he’s holding out for me like carrots, I start to get glimpses of other things too. Things I don’t know if he intends for me to see.
Or perhaps they’re thoughts he does want me to see, or at least is all right with me seeing, because they’re all things about me.
I get a flash of the first time Asher saw me, through his eyes. He’s sitting down at The Den the night I noticed them all come in. He looks up and sees me behind the bar—and my heart skips a beat.
I never realized this was how he saw me, even all that time ago. That he saw me as someone so… lovely.
That’s the odd thing about memories. They’re not objective. In my memories, I don’t necessarily see things how they actually were. They’re filtered through the lens of whatever I was feeling at the time.
And to Asher, I look wonderful.
I can feel the strange sense of wonder, the soft inhale in his thoughts, the oh, hello, there you are.
I can also feel him noticing Cam and Dmitri’s reactions. I can sense the way he thinks, hmmm. Contemplating.
We shift, and I don’t know if it’s deliberate or if it’s just a natural progression of Asher’s thoughts, but now it’s the two of us together, the first time we had sex. I remember that time fondly—of course I do—but it takes my breath away to know that Asher views it in this… sort of rosy glow in his mind. Not in a “perfectly lit romance movie” kind of way, but with so much fondness and love that it saturates everything like a color, something you can’t help but notice.
I don’t want to invade his privacy too much or make him uncomfortable, so I pull out, receding from his mind and going back into mine. That’s the thing about controlling or reading someone’s mind—it’s easy to lose track of yours in the process.
And that’s when I realize—oh, shit.
I didn’t leave my shields up.
Asher gives me a gentle smile, and I know he knows what I just realized. “It’s hard to do two things at once, mentally,” he acknowledges.
“So you saw inside my mind.”
Asher nods. “It was wide open. I didn’t go too far in, just kind of let memories or whatever else you were thinking about brush against me.”
That means he probably saw me thinking about my memory of our first meeting and our first time. My face heats up, but I’m not blushing in an embarrassed sort of way. Just in a… pleased way. I honestly don’t mind that Asher’s in my mind, seeing those things.
We’re getting to know each other in a really intimate way right now, and I like that. It’s not something most couples get to do, and I know I wouldn’t want him in my mind all the time, but for something like this? Yeah. I like it. It’s nice.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Asher says, taking my hands and lacing our fingers together. “Remember your shields this time. I’m going to think of a specific memory I want you to try to get from me, and you have to keep me from getting to a specific memory of yours, sound good?”
I nod. I can handle this.
I think.
Turns out, I can’t handle it, at least not at first. It takes a few tries. But Asher is patient, and Liam occasionally yells advice from where he’s lounging on a large chair in the corner reading Better Homes and Gardens.
By the time the sun starts to set, I’m finally getting the hang of it. It’s not to the point of being almost instinctive the way it is for Asher, who’s had three years to hone his power, but it’s something I’m feeling more comfortable with. Maybe even something I can go up against Agustin with.
A sudden thought strikes me as Asher, Liam, and I head back to the small house in the clearing, stopping me in my tracks.
Agustin. Oh, fuck.
Asher’s been in my mind today, rooting around, and I haven’t cared. Because it’s Asher, and I trust him, and it’s a new and welcome level of intimacy between us.
But Agustin has been in my head too. He’s seen—God only knows what he’s seen. What he knows about me now.
My skin crawls.
What has he seen?
What does he know?
Chapter 18
I try to shove that worry out of my mind. There’s no point in freaking out about what Agustin might have seen. I’ll just pretend he saw everything, and then I won’t drive myself crazy wondering about it. And what could he see that he could use against me anyway? He already had a damn good clue about me and the men from when we fought in person. A quick background check on my name would tell him about my sister, my dead mom, and my dad.
And, uh, honestly—this is going to sound really harsh of me, but if he feels like kidnapping my dad, good fucking luck to Agustin. Dad’s powerful and connected, and I don’t stand around wishing he’d die in a fire, but I’m not going to worry about him either.
So, really, what could Agustin see? What could he know that he wouldn’t have found out another way or has already found out? It’s nothing for me to worry about. Nothing to panic over.
That’s what I try to tell myself, anyway.
I don’t say anything about this to the others. It’s done, finished, what could they possibly do about it? Offer me therapy?
Instead I keep focusing on my training. Liam wants me to work with each of the men in turn to learn how to mimic their specific powers, because in the case of a fight, they’ll be the ones who’ll most likely be closest to me, so being able to pick up their powers and use them with some skill will be helpful.
Dmitri’s up next, bright and early the following morning. Liam, who probably got filled in by Roman, elects to do some work with Justin and Maddy on their powers while I’m with Dmitri.
“Your reputation about not playing nice with others clearly precedes you,” I point out as we push open the doors of the training barn.
“I never said he couldn’t watch,” Dmitri grumbles.
“No, you just made it clear with the muttering and the glares that you don’t want him giving you advice on how to work your own power.”
Dmitri rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t contradict me.
“Let’s keep it simple,” he tells me, stepping into the middle of the large space. “Don’t try to use magic while you’re duplicated. We’ll split. Each one of you will spar each one of me.”
I’m good at sparring. I’ve gotten better and better at using my magic, but physical combat is the area where everything’s always come naturally to me. And Dmitri and I have always been the best sparring partners—we paired up every chance we got in Tamlin’s fight class, and honestly, it’s the main way that we flirt.
Every couple has that one weird thing, and that’s ours.
“Sounds easy enough.” I roll my neck and stretch my arms behind my back.
It doesn’t sound easy at all, actually. None of this does. But it’s a lot easier than trying to duplicate myself and then fight a bunch of different people using my magic. It could be worse.
I mirror Dmitri and split myself, which is… weird. It can be really disorienting, as I learned to my dismay when I was fighting Agustin with the guys in his basement lair. It’s like trying to watch five televisions at once—no, play five video games at once, since you’re not just trying to pay attention to the screens, you’re also trying to control them.
Dmitri raises an eyebrow, his dark eyes glinting. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“I literally haven’t even done anything yet, but thanks.”
“Thes
e aren’t just puppets for you to operate,” he explains. “That’s what I thought when I first started doing this. It’s an easy mistake to make. You think you have to control them constantly.”
He splits himself, and his doubles all drop into a fighting stance. “But they’re not puppets. They’re you. If you let go of your control, they’ll do their own thing. It’s like having a clone. They have your memories and your personality. If you want to give them orders, then give them. They’ll usually obey. But don’t try to be everywhere at once. You’ll just drive yourself crazy like that. Relax into it.”
I cock my head at him, pursing my lips. “If you say this is like fucking meditation…”
“Then I won’t say it,” he says, smirking.
Oh, that asshole. He’s lucky he’s hot.
“All right, wise guy.” I roll my eyes at him, then draw in a deep breath, reaching out for my duplicates with my senses. “I’ll try.”
Following his advice, I think just one thing at my doubles: fight Dmitri.
Sure enough, they all launch themselves forward, each lunging toward one of Dmitri’s doubles.
I, of course, take on the original.
Fighting like this is so bizarre. I can feel what my doubles are feeling, but it’s more like an echo of it. Like I can’t feel the stone dropping into the water, but I can feel the ripples. I’m vaguely aware of them—one’s punching, another’s doing a flip to evade a hold—but it’s similar to the way I was aware of what people are doing in the rest of fight class when I used to spar with Dmitri. I’m able to put it in the background.
That’s kind of nice. I thought I’d have to somehow focus all of my attention on five separate things at once. When I tried that against Agustin, it led to things like one of my doubles crashing into a wall head first.
But this is a lot easier.
Except…
I can feel whatever my doubles are feeling, right? Like an echo. And that isn’t just when one of Dmitri’s doubles lands a good blow on one of my doubles. It includes their emotions. Their exhaustion, their frustration—
And their lust.
Like I said, sparring is sort of our form of foreplay. It’s how we flirt. Sparring in front of people like we did in Tamlin’s class became an exercise in restraint because the instinct to let it lead to something more—something very inappropriate to do in front of other people—was pretty damn strong.
Right now though, there’s no one around. So we can give in to those feelings.
I know Dmitri is feeling it too from the way he’s getting flushed, the way his eyes are shining, predatory, and the way a smirk is tugging at the corner of his lips. When he just wants to win a fight, he gets even more tense, his eyes narrowing in concentration, a snarl stuck in the back of his throat, his teeth bared.
This isn’t that. This is arousal.
I know I shouldn’t do it—I’m trying to learn how to fight better with this power, after all—but I let Dmitri pin me.
He gets my hands up above my head, and he’s straddling me, staring down at me, his chest heaving, and all around us our doubles are losing control, no longer in tightly ordered pairings but a full-on melee, and two of them sink down onto the floor, kissing passionately, then one of Dmitri’s doubles gets a hand down the pants of my double and it’s oddly hot to watch, and I can feel how she—me—we—are getting wet, moaning, breathing harder, so incredibly turned on.
A part of me kind of wants to watch the show, watch Dmitri fuck me in four different ways, make me scream four different times, but the rest of me just wants it to be the two of us. Not echoes, but real, immediate, right here.
I pull my doubles back into myself, and a second later Dmitri does the same.
I’ve barely even finished when his mouth crashes onto mine.
A rush of desire fills me, like an echo of everything my doubles were just feeling, as if there are five of me contained inside my one body, and they’re kissing five Dmitris. As if the chemistry between us has increased exponentially.
Our teeth knock together as we kiss fiercely, neither one of us holding back from what we’re feeling. Those days are long gone, and I think we both like to remind ourselves of that sometimes—that we no longer have any reason to dance around our feelings, to avoid or deny them.
His hands are all over me, squeezing and massaging my breasts through my shirt, sliding over my hips and ass, his touch possessive and demanding.
“Don’t think this is getting you out of training, Princess,” he pants, abandoning my lips to bite and nip his way down my neck. “You still need to practice. I’m gonna fuck you till your knees are weak and then make you spar with me.”
Wetness floods my panties at his taunt, mostly because I have no doubt at all that’s exactly what he’ll do. Still, I can’t have him getting cocky or anything, so I dig my fingernails into his back, grinning up at the ceiling as I tilt my head back.
“Yeah? Well, good. ’Cause this is just my warm-up.”
He laughs against the skin of my throat, and I swear I feel the vibrations of it all the way down to my clit.
Before I can say anything else, he spins me in his arms, pulling me flush against him with my back to his front. He’s already hard from our sparring session, and he grinds his cock against my ass like a weapon, making me whimper breathlessly. He must like that, because he does it again, splaying one large hand across my stomach while the other dips beneath the neckline of my shirt, rolling my nipple between his fingers.
I hiss out a breath, digging my heels into the floor for more leverage as I press back into him, rubbing my entire body against his like a horny cat. He grunts, then uses his grip on me to keep me from falling as he walks forward, guiding us to the far side of the large room.
There’s a pommel horse set up alongside several other pieces of training equipment, and Dmitri grabs my hands, keeping his body plastered to mine as he places my palms on the smooth surface of the leather, bending me over almost in half.
“Keep your hands there, Princess. Don’t move them.”
Goddammit, I love when he gets all growly and demanding. If I decided not to keep my hands on the pommel horse, there’s not a lot he could do to make me—we’ve proved by now that we’re pretty evenly matched when it comes to sparring—but I do what he says eagerly. Good things happen when I give growly Dmitri what he wants.
He hesitates for a second, as if testing to make sure I’ll really stay put. Then he slides his hands slowly back up my arms, over my shoulders, and down my back, tracing the muscles along my spine. The movement is unhurried and deliberate, and although he’s not even touching any of my best bits, tension ratchets up inside me with every inch.
When he reaches my lower back, his hands drift down to palm my ass, groping and squeezing as he makes a low noise of appreciation in his throat. My hands have turned into claws on the pommel horse as I struggle for the willpower to remain still under his ministrations. I want to spin around and grab him, to kiss him until I can’t see straight as I slip my hands into his pants and—
A sharp slap to my right ass cheek makes me jump, more out of surprise than pain. The sting fades immediately as warmth floods in to take its place.
“Stay still, Princess. Do you think you can do that?”
Dmitri’s voice is a low rumble, and I realize I must’ve unconsciously started to move as I thought about all the things I wanted to do to him.
“Yes,” I gasp, craning my neck to look at him over my shoulder as I flatten my hands on the pommel horse again.
He grins, the expression breathtakingly beautiful and wicked at the same time. “Good.”
The hands on my ass move up a little, hooking the waistbands of my pants and panties and dragging them down. He leaves them bunched up midway down my thighs, but it’s enough. Cool air hits my bare ass and pussy, and I shift my weight backward as much as I can without taking my hands off the pommel horse, trying to get closer to Dmitri.
He chuckles, running a finger
over the curve of my ass. “Impatient, are we?”
“Maybe I just want to get back to training,” I shoot back, biting my lip to hide my grin.
I’m joking, but I do feel a momentary twinge of guilt that breaks through the haze of desire swimming in my mind. The magical world is on the precipice of disaster, and I’m about to fuck Dmitri in a barn. What does that say about my priorities?
But I’ve been working. I’ve been training. For hours and hours every day. Our fight against Agustin consumes my thoughts, both waking and sleeping, and not a single one of the people here with me could be accused of slacking off either.
Right now, I need this. I need to connect to Dmitri, to feel something good instead of the relentless fear and determination that drive me these days. And I know he wasn’t kidding about making me spar with him afterward, even if my legs feel like wet noodles.
So I push the guilt aside and let myself have this moment, shivering in anticipation when I hear the rustling of Dmitri’s clothes as he shoves his own pants down. He slides his cock up and down my slit, gathering my wetness and brushing it over my clit, making me groan.
Dmitri’s been known to tease me like a motherfucker—which I may secretly love—but today, he doesn’t. Just as I’m bracing myself to withstand his agonizing, drawn-out torture, the head of his cock slips inside me, and he surges forward.
My whole body rocks from the force of it, and I use my hands on the pommel horse to keep myself from falling over. Our voices mingle in the air as we both groan in satisfaction, and he drapes himself over my back again, pushing my ponytail over one shoulder as his lips find my ear.
“There’s no better place in the world than buried inside you, Princess,” he murmurs roughly. “I could die happy like this.”
A sudden stark fear makes my heart stop, and I turn my head to look at him, our faces so close our lips are almost brushing.
“Please don’t die.”
He freezes, his gaze locked on mine, his expression shifting. I know he’s thinking about it too—everything we have, and everything we’re each terrified to lose.
