by Callie Rose
We took several wrong turns—the place was a damn labyrinth—but eventually we found a sun room that opened up onto a little veranda overlooking a huge, irregular indoor pool. The walls around us were all made of glass, making it feel as if we weren’t enclosed at all. The pool’s wavy edges and round lagoons meandered in all directions, and there were flower-shaped island gardens dotted through it. Soft purple, blue, and green lights lit it from beneath, making it look like some kind of fantasy world in the deepening twilight.
“Perfect,” I breathed.
Without hesitation, I stripped down to my bare skin and dove in, relishing every molecule of earthly water as it caressed my body. I swam a lazy lap around the pool and came back to find Jayce floating on his back staring at the sky. He had also stripped down to nothing, and I got a lovely view of his muscular ass as I snuck up on him from below the surface.
I rose up under his shoulder with enough force to roll him over.
“Hey!” He twisted and landed on his feet, then splashed me playfully. “Feeling a little frisky, are we?”
“Maybe a little,” I said in a tone which meant yes, absolutely, so much. “It’s hard not to in here. The whole thing just screams whimsy.”
He didn’t say anything, but his expression softened into a look I’d only seen once or twice before. Like awe, but gentler—or lust, but somehow totally pure. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and let his fingers linger on my cheek.
“You’re beautiful when you’re happy,” he said quietly.
I cocked my head at him and gave him a teasing smile. “Only when I’m happy?”
“Okay, fine, you’re beautiful all the time,” he said, letting his hand fall. I instantly regretted being flippant. “I just really like to see you happy, that’s all. It doesn’t happen much. Well—outside of—”
“Yeah,” I cut him off, nodding. Sex wasn’t really the point right now. “To be fair, there hasn’t been a whole lot to be happy about. Every good thing comes with enough bad to make it almost not worth it.”
“Hm.” He swam away toward one of the gardens and glanced back at me, pulling me with his gaze. I followed. We leaned our elbows on the edge of the island, and I inhaled the exotic scents of flowers I couldn’t begin to name.
“I used to feel that way about Kingston,” he said. “Like any good he contributed to our group or the Custodians or the world at large was nullified by what he did outside of school.”
“All this, you mean?” I gestured around at the mansion which surrounded us on three sides.
“Exactly. You don’t get this rich without exploiting people. But on the other hand—if he wasn’t this rich, if he didn’t have the connections and money and power, we’d be completely screwed right now. Not just us either. The whole world.”
“That’s true.”
He frowned. “You know, I was excited to find out about the supernatural world. I thought the rules would be different. More in line with my beliefs, I guess, I don’t know. Figuring out that it’s all just bureaucracy, and that the only way to save the world is with money, fucks with my head.”
“You would prefer to pull a sword out of the stone and slay the dragon with nothing but the force of your will and a kiss for good luck?”
He grinned. “Well, wouldn’t you? It’s so much simpler. So much more real.”
“I guess that depends on what you define as real. To Kingston, the money is real. To me—God, I don’t even know anymore.”
He gave me a questioning look. I played with the petals of a flower, letting pool water drip into all of its little creases.
“I never believed in Santa Claus,” I blurted. “Even when I was little, the only things that were real were the things I could see and touch and taste. I had no faith in promises or tomorrows or magic, and all of that only got worse after my mother died. Then I didn’t even believe in love or that there was any goodness left in humanity.”
His face went still, and he watched me with serious eyes, but I wasn’t looking for sympathy. There was a point to be made, I was just having a hard time getting there. I waved his concern away before he could speak.
“I learned that reality is what I can affect myself. Things I wanted to happen only happened when I made them happen. Kingston, on the other hand, grew up in a world where money was the most real thing. As long as there was money, anything was possible—and since there was never a time when there wasn’t money, money underlined his reality.”
“Ah—no, that makes sense,” Jayce said. Then he shrugged, smiling a little. “For me, community was real. Family and people and small relationships. Things happened when people worked together to make things happen.”
“Exactly. But the thing I’m beginning to realize—and I don’t know if it’s because I live my whole life connected to your heads or if it’s just everything we’ve been through the last couple years—but the thing is, we’re all right.”
“What do you mean?”
“It took community to get the fallen working together in the underworld. The way the refugees from Gavriel were living down there was the sort of small relationship vibe that’s real to you. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if I hadn’t decided to take Gavriel on, and we wouldn’t have a chance at winning without Kingston’s money. It’s all real. Objective reality, I think, must be the shape you get if you stack everyone’s perspective together as a single thing.”
“Huh. That makes morality a lot muddier.” He furrowed his brow at the moss in front of him as he trailed a finger over it. “If everyone’s reality is true, how do you figure out what’s right?”
I laughed. “Do I seem like a star student of morality to you?”
“Ah, you do okay.”
I shook my head. “See, now I know that magic is controlling my life. You’re so good and so centered. If you were thinking clearly, you’d see that I’m really a terrible, jaded person who has no business playing the hero.”
My voice was light and teasing, but I believed every syllable wholeheartedly. It was a weight in my chest that tried to pull me under the water.
He must have read my mind, because he swooped around behind me and tucked his arms under mine, holding onto the island and curling his legs so that I was sitting on his lap. He kissed my hair behind my ear and nuzzled my cheek.
“Can I tell you what I think? What I really think?”
“Yes. Please. Brutal honesty.”
“The brutalest. Brace yourself.”
I braced, wincing, knowing that in any balanced universe, anybody as sweet as Jayce must have a capacity for brutality as dark as the blackest part of the ocean.
“I like you,” he breathed.
“What?”
He picked me up and turned me around. I wrapped my legs and arms around him and searched his eyes.
“You think I don’t know you, after all this time? I liked you from the start, Piper, and not just for the sex. You’re interesting and complicated and strong. You took to this new world you were thrust into like a fish to water, leaving your whole life behind without a second thought because you saw people who needed you.”
“It wasn’t that noble,” I admitted with a sigh. “My boyfriend was a cheating loser, I sucked at school, and my apartment was a dump. It wasn’t like I was leaving anything important. Besides, it was school or the underworld.”
“Right.” He chuckled, bumping my nose softly with his. “And all of your attitude and posturing those first few weeks had nothing at all to do with the fact that Hannah was a vulnerable mess. And you took on the lord of the underworld himself to get Xero back just because you had nothing better to do and you like fire demon dick.”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m a good person?”
His smile softened. “I’m telling you that you’re a strong person. That even though you might do the wrong things for the wrong reasons sometimes, underneath all of that stuff is an amazing person who cares about other people. And your bad stuff isn’t even that bad.”
>
“Not that bad? Mind control? Hormone control? Brainwashing people into getting themselves hurt or chained to me for life? It seems pretty fucking bad, Jayce.”
Tears stung my eyes as the weight of my decisions crushed my heart.
“You couldn’t help the bond,” he insisted. “What do you think I expected you to do, grovel and apologize for powers you didn’t have any knowledge of or control over? You were given a gift and you accepted it, that’s all. Whether it was a gift all of us were completely happy about at first or not is kind of beside the point.”
“I mean—okay, that’s fair.”
“You accept things the way they are, and you adapt. That’s a positive trait. And brainwashing people into getting themselves hurt—” He broke off, his brows drawing together. “Are you talking about the battle in the underworld?”
I shook my head. “A little, but no. Mostly before that. With the sprites.”
“You mean when the students were trampling each other trying to either fight the things or run away from them, and everybody was in danger?”
“I—well, yes.”
He shrugged, which lifted my body and pressed my breasts against his chest. My nipples hardened, and I wrapped my arms and legs a little tighter around him, relishing the heat of his body in the slightly cool water.
“You made a call,” he said simply. “It turned out okay. That’s why I say you’re the natural leader, Piper. It’s not because you have insight into our feelings or because you’re the focal point of the bond—it’s because you lead. You can make those tough choices in the moment. I couldn’t do that.”
“You couldn’t?”
He shook his head. “Nah. No fucking way. I’d second-guess myself and get caught up in little details and would be afraid to risk anyone else’s safety. I’d end up throwing myself on the front line, refusing to let anyone else help, and getting squished before I even had a chance to be useful.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I thought self-sacrifice was one of those virtue things.”
“Maybe it is. But it’s not a leadership virtue. And I’m not saying you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself, but you look at the bigger picture. You’re smart.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder and let his opinions tumble around in my head.
“You really think so?”
He pressed his lips to my wet hair, and I could feel the smile that curved his lips. “Yeah. I do. You don’t live your life in black and white like a lot of people do. And, hey, I might be a happy-go-lucky free-lovin’ hippie, but I can appreciate a nice dense gray area with the best of them.”
I arched a brow at him. “Is that what I am to you? A nice, dense gray area?”
“The densest,” he murmured, gripping my ass and squeezing. “Mm. Good stuff.”
My laugh was swallowed up by his kiss.
Chapter Twenty
The cool water of the pool lapped at our bodies as I wrapped my arms tighter around Jayce, my lips moving against his.
His kiss was soft and sweet and hot and dirty—a combination that only the beautiful blond man with the piercing blue eyes could manage to pull off. I fell into the kiss with abandon, letting my constant craving for him take over as I wrapped my legs around his lean waist.
His hands moved over my skin, squeezing and massaging all my good bits as our wet bodies slid against each other under the water. Little droplets of water clung to the ends of his hair, which turned a shade darker when it was wet. I drove my fingers into the strands, tugging them gently as he angled his head to deepen our kiss.
“Do you remember when you dragged me into that closet at school?” His voice was breathless, and the question came out muffled as he spoke against my lips. “The day we first bonded?”
I chuckled, grinding against his cock. He was already hard, and I could feel him growing even harder as I undulated against him, letting his thick length slide between my folds.
“Yeah. It rings a bell.”
He smiled into our kiss, then drew back a little to look me in the eyes, one hand splayed across my back and the other gripping my ass. “You fucking blew my mind that day, Pipes. I had never had sex that good, and I was pretty sure that was it—the best I would ever have.”
Tenderness mixed with desire in his expression, and he leaned in to kiss me again. I moaned softly as he plundered my mouth with his tongue, and when my head fell back, his hand was there to cradle the back of my neck as his lips worked their way down my throat.
“I was wrong though,” he murmured. “It’s better every damn time. I won’t ever be able to get enough of you.”
As he spoke, he unwound my legs from his waist, setting my feet back on the pool floor. I could reach the bottom here with no problem, and the water lapped at the tops of my breasts as Jayce continued working a path down my neck and across my collarbone with his lips and teeth.
He trailed farther down my wet skin, ducking his head underwater to draw my nipple into his mouth, and I sucked in a gasping breath at the unexpected sensation.
Jayce wasn’t done though.
As soon as he released my nipple, he traveled lower, pressing kisses along the plane of my naked stomach as he worked his way down. When he hiked one of my legs over his shoulder and buried his face between my thighs, my standing leg buckled. I grabbed for his hair underwater, latching onto fistfuls of his wet locks as he clamped his mouth around my pussy and lashed my clit with his tongue.
Everything felt strangely heightened underwater, and I could feel little bubbles of air escaping his nostrils and brushing over the skin of my stomach as they rose through the water.
Jesus. How the hell long can he hold his breath?
My fingers tightened in his hair, torn between the impulse to pull him up out of the water and an equally strong impulse to let him keep doing exactly what he was doing.
The trust I had in Jayce—and my need for him—won out, and I ground my pussy against his face, letting his wet tongue lap at me as he sucked on my folds. It felt like he was enveloping me entirely, consuming me, devouring me.
My toes curled into the tiled bottom of the pool as I shifted my hips, my heart beating hard and fast as Jayce’s tongue worked my clit. Just when I was starting to worry that I’d be guilty of death by pussy drowning, if that was even a thing, my bond-mate surprised the fuck out of me by lifting my other leg over his shoulder too.
I was so startled I almost fell backward into the water, but his strong arms steadied me as he surged up to stand with my thighs resting on his shoulders and his mouth still latched onto my pussy.
“Oh fuck! Jayce!”
I held onto his hair even tighter as the sudden rush of cool air on my wet skin made all the nerve endings in my body light up. My nipples tightened into hard buds, and the warmest parts of me were the places where Jayce was touching me. My legs squeezed his head, drawing him in closer to my body, and instead of protesting, he just attacked my pussy with renewed hunger, licking and nipping and sucking on my wet clit. The smell of my arousal mingled with the scent of chlorine in the air, and I rolled my hips in rhythmic waves as I clung to him for dear life, meeting each stroke of his tongue.
He said something that was too muffled to make out, but I didn’t need to hear the words to understand the command.
Come.
Come for me.
The coiled tension in my core unleashed in a torrent, and I writhed as sparks exploded through my veins. His grip on me tightened even as he hauled me closer to his mouth, holding me in place while he ate me out like his last fucking meal.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Oh, God fucking—”
A second orgasm tore through me on the heels of the first, making my body jerk and my head drop back.
Too far back.
We overbalanced, and pure bliss flooded all my muscles a second before I hit the water, sinking beneath the clean blue depths as my clit throbbed hard with aftershocks.
Jayce released me, and I flutter-kicked
in the water to right myself, laughing and gasping as my head broke the surface and my feet found solid ground again. My pussy was still clenching, my clit aching sweetly from the orgasm that had just torn through me.
“Oh, fuck, Pipes! Are you okay?”
Jayce was laughing too. His cheeks were flushed, and his ears were slightly red—probably from having the pressure of my thighs clamped around his head. He’d gone under the water with me when I tipped over backward, and he shook out his blond hair, making wet drops spray in all directions, before he reached for me, brushing my tangled dark locks out of my face.
“That wasn’t quite what I had planned,” he admitted sheepishly, biting his full bottom lip, although he was still grinning. “You’re hard to hold on to when you’re wet.”
I laughed even harder, feeling giddy and weightless from the two toe-curling orgasms and the sudden dunk in the pool. “There are about a million dirty things I could say to that, but I’m trying very hard to resist.”
His blue eyes darkened a half-shade, shining so intensely in the dimly lit pool house that they looked like pure cobalt. He reached for me and tugged me toward him, hauling my wet body against his as one leg slid between mine. His muscled thigh rubbed against my pussy, the coarse hairs on his leg a delicious rasp against my sensitive skin.
“In case you haven’t figured it out by now,” he murmured roughly, dipping his head to nip at my jawline. “I like it when you’re dirty.”
“Yeah?” I threaded my fingers through the back of his damp hair, riding his leg, already hungry for more. “Then make me fucking dirty, Jayce.”
His nostrils flared, and a heartbeat later, he palmed the back of my head, kissing me as if every other kiss up to this point had just been a rehearsal. He tasted like chlorine and me, and his teeth scraped against mine as he took the kiss so deep I had a fleeting fear that both of us would drown.
Still holding me tightly to him, he walked through the chest-deep water to the edge of the pool, and when we bumped up against it, he tore his mouth from mine.
