by Holley Trent
Down as far as she could go, she closed her eyes and felt Keith lace his fingers between hers.
“So beautiful.”
“Stop.” Notching her teeth into her bottom lip, she sought her rhythm and learned the shape of him—how far to grind down to find a place that took her breath away. How far to ease back up to stoke the pre-orgiastic tingles. “Stop complimenting me or I won’t take my time.”
“So don’t take your time. We have all night.” His grips on her fingers tightened and hips spasmed beneath her.
Oh.
“It pleases me,” he teased, “that people will envy me for my lovers. They’ll wonder what deals I made with the gods to have my way, and I’ll never tell them that I did nothing to deserve it.”
“Well, neither did I.” She squeezed him tightly inside her and exhaled a moan of pleasure that evidently had Asher paying attention. He was behind her again. Running his fingers up and down her spine and kissing the bend of her neck.
She thought she could manage a bit of diversion. Untangling her fingers from Keith’s left hand, she reached behind her, and low.
Asher’s immediate hiss told her that he hadn’t expected the touch. That was all the more reason for her to maintain it.
With each slick pull of Keith’s cock inside her, she mimicked the action with Asher in her hand. Inside and out, sharing a rhythm, as her muscles strained and back ached from the unusual stretch. She’d be feeling it for days, but she didn’t care. She wanted them both to be a part of what she was feeling. She wanted them both to know when she was close so she wouldn’t be the only one affected by the frenzy and the hunger to keep consuming even after their bodies had been sated.
Her eyes sprang open when Asher’s fingers landed on her clit. She was in such a haze that she hadn’t realized that Keith had positioned it there.
His eyes were open and the look of determination on his face made her heart swell.
“Is this okay?” he asked, planting his hands on her hips. Helping her ride him. Harder. Faster. Sweat trickled between her breasts and her legs quivered.
She leaned down to kiss him, unable to resist, because all she wanted to do for however many days she had left was to care for him and Asher. She wanted to erase the looks of uncertainty from their faces because she wasn’t going to make things difficult anymore. They would have plenty of difficulties ahead without her adding useless objections to the mix.
Up. Down. Faster. Harder.
Asher’s fingers worked furious circles around her clit and the pressure from Keith’s invading cock overwhelmed, and she had to just stop for a second before she broke.
She needed to breathe, but she couldn’t.
She couldn’t draw air. Couldn’t feel. Couldn’t see.
She could hear, though.
Whispers. They didn’t belong to either of her men.
And then she could feel something—the gentle caress of whisper-like touches on her face. Exploratory. Curious. And then she felt as though something had been scooped out of her—some useless, heavy thing that had only ever been grief. Old grief. Not from the husband she’d lost, but something she’d been carrying since birth. The grief from not being wanted.
“You don’t need it,” the whispers said.
They left that place raw and open, but it’d heal over in time.
And then there seemed to be a resorting in her mind. A quick tampering with the web that strung the Afótama together. There were flashes of red and dark bluish silver, all twined together like flags kissing in the wind. Before she could make sense of it, she was back in Keith’s bed. He was holding her up off him, repeating her name.
She could hardly focus. She couldn’t even feel her skin.
Asher crawled around and peered into her eyes. “Mal?”
“Huh?”
“Are you well?”
She planted a hand over her pounding heart and rubbed.
“They wouldn’t let me get close to you,” Keith said.
“Who?”
He shrugged and let her down onto his chest, squeezing her tight in the circle of his arms. “Whoever kept Ótama animated for so long in the other realm, I think. What did they do to you?”
Keith’s cell phone rattled against the headboard.
Annoyed, he snatched it off and looked at the display. He answered warily. “Yeah?” His gaze flitted to Mallory. “Yeah. She’s here. Why?”
“Who is it?” she whispered.
She didn’t even realize that Asher was beside her, wiping her hand clean with a wet cloth. She must have missed an orgasm or two. A glance at Keith beneath her hinted at as much. He was softer, and his condom had done its job.
“It’s Tess,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Connection is shit, but I’m pretty sure she said that your father fell off the web.”
“I don’t understand,” Asher said.
Mallory did. She understood.
She put her hand over her heart to that scooped-out place and thought about that chilling vision she’d had so many nights ago. The red and silver. The almost-women trying to tell her something—that she belonged to a place and to some people. They’d wanted that for her. They’d given her signs so she’d get out of her own damn way.
“He’s alive,” Keith said, covering the phone mic. “She got confirmation that right now, he’s en route to Fallon. He’s just not on the web. Did you do that?”
“Well, if I did…it wasn’t on purpose.”
Keith gave Mallory an adoring look and said into the phone, “I guess we can say eliminating him from the web was a combined effort and you can draw whatever conclusions you need to from that. Are you going to have any problems mending that hole in the network?”
The phone volume was low, but Mallory still managed to make out the sound of Tess’s scoff.
Apparently, she had opinions.
“You can interrogate her later. Right now, she’s busy being in love with me. It requires concentration.”
Mallory let out a strained titter at his silly words. She could imagine perfectly the look of bewilderment of Tess’s face.
“Good-bye, little sister.” Keith disconnected, tossed the phone aside, and closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
“Talk about it tomorrow, hmm?”
“After all the dust settles. Yeah. That’d be my suggestion.”
Mallory wasn’t going to disagree with that.
Asher puttered about, disposing of Keith’s condom and turning off the lights.
When he returned to the bed, Keith sighed and asked, “Who gets to be in the middle? I’m not moving. The bed is molded to me.”
Asher snorted. “Put Mallory in the middle this time. I’m feeling generous.”
He was going to have to get used to that, she thought as she settled in between the two of them, pulled the covers up to her chin, and waited while they threw arms and legs over her.
There was no way in hell she was ever giving up that spot. If they were going to be leaving her to her devices for the better part of three or four years, she was going to fill her touch quota any way she could.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ótama
“Well, that settles that, then.”
Ótama nudged closed Dan Petersen’s hole in the web, so as not to leave Contessa with the task, and gathered up her bag.
She looked at the clock atop the mantle in her room and nodded with finality.
The children were long overdue for peace. They should have been wallowing in the glow of new love and bonding with the mates who’d carry them through the next stages of life, not fretting over hostile outsiders.
Ótama understood. They felt slighted. Those outsiders wanted the connectivity that her people had but they didn’t have their abilities.
She and her sister Astrid had always squabbled about the way Ótama’s magic connected people…but not her. Remembering those arguments had moved so many other figurative puzzle pieces into place for her.
While Ótama’s legacy
was one of separation—of leaving places that didn’t fit and establishing a community in a safer place—Astrid’s was evidently one of rigidity. Of an inflexible traditionalism held together with a patchwork of blame and what-about-me-ism.
The rift was irreparable. Astrid’s descendants had gathered from their lore that Ótama’s clan was something to cut down—to destroy. Ótama had taken all the best with her when she’d left Iceland. Perhaps they’d never forgiven her for that.
That didn’t matter anymore.
She’d fix things. There’d be no repairing the rift between her clan and her sister’s kin. Too late for that. To each, her own.
She stepped into the mansion’s service elevator and searched for the button for the basement level. Modern technology still flummoxed her, but she was learning more and more every day.
This was her job, she’d decided. The gods had brought her back from the in-between place to make her descendants comfortable, and she would do so with pleasure so that their children and their children’s children would not have to endure the same trials.
No more missing ones.
No one would dare take people from them again.
She clutched her bag tightly to her chest as the elevator shuddered to a stop.
The doors opened.
Heath was leaning against the wall nearby, twirling his key ring around his finger. “Sure you want to do this, princess?”
She stepped out and looked eagerly for his vehicle. “I hope this will not cause you any undue trouble.”
“They’ll get over it. I’m more worried about you.”
“I am ready to go.”
He raised a brow, looking so much like his ancient father in that instant that her breath caught.
Am I really so old?
She was, of course, even if she didn’t look it. Her mind was old.
“I want to fix this,” she insisted. “I must.”
“Have you told anyone else you’re leaving?”
“No.”
Heath grimaced but gestured her toward the underground garage. “You’ve got about six hours before people start watching security tapes to figure out where you went. Best get moving.”
She nodded, lifted her cloak hem, and moved briskly toward his vehicle.
Six hours seemed a decent head start.
When she was young, six hours had meant that no one would ever catch up.
Times were different. People were constantly monitored and tracked. Machines held their secrets only until their users put in the right commands to make them spit them out.
Six hours would have to be enough.
She was going to fix it—all of it—or die trying.
She wasn’t afraid. After all, she’d been dead once before.
SERIES NOTE
Dear Readers,
As you’ve read, a lot is happening quickly in and around Norseton! Now that the Dahl siblings are all loved up, the series lens will obviously fall to a certain ancient witch and the fairy who won’t let her out of his sight.
Ótama’s story will conclude the series, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see our favorite characters again. The Hearth Motel series, featuring Heath, Simone, and the rest of the fairy crew, will continue with lots of cameos from their family and friends from Norseton.
Also, there’s sweet Elliott to deal with. I can’t say yet what I have planned for him except that his book will be a stand-alone set outside of The Afótama Legacy arc.
The best way to stay informed about the fate of Ótama, Lachlann, Elliott, and the rest of the magically-inclined weirdoes is to subscribe to my paranormal romance newsletter.
COPYRIGHT AND CREDITS
A LEGACY DIVIDED is a work of fiction. Names, places, entities, and scenarios in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
First Edition
Copyright 2018 by Holley Trent
Edited by Marci Clark
For more information, please visit www.holleytrent.com.
Holley Trent
340 S Lemon Ave #4969
Walnut, CA 91789
USA
Cover stock image: copyright vladimirfloyd via Adobe Stock.
