Fate's Fools Box Set

by Bell, Ophelia

  Aching to give him something to find joy in, I leaned up and pressed my lips to his again. He opened for me and tilted his head, sliding his arms around my back. He kissed so differently from Llyr and Rohan—the only two men I had kissed before him. Bodhi was more cautious, like he was afraid he’d scare me away if he pushed too hard.

  The kiss stretched from seconds to minutes, yet with each pull of our lips and swipe of our tongues, I only wanted to taste more of him. His aura swelled with lust, mirroring the pressure of the bulge in his pants where our hips fit together. The tingling of the energy drawn to our arousal incited an aching reminder of my waning magic, and the more we kissed, the greater that ache became.

  Bodhi could fulfill that need, and perhaps in the process I could help banish some of that darkness from his soul, if only temporarily.

  I slipped one hand down the hard planes of his chest, pausing at the waistband of his jeans. When I ventured farther, grazing my palm over the ridge of his erection, he froze and exhaled sharply against my mouth.

  “Deva . . . what about Rohan?”

  “This is for Rohan,” I said, dropping my other hand as I lowered myself between his thighs and unfastened the button of his fly.

  He clamped his hands over mine, halting my progress. A breeze blew in, carrying the scent of sea air and sage that enhanced Bodhi’s natural aroma, now mixed with the musky scent of his arousal. His dark hair fluttered around his cheeks as he stared down at me, clearly struggling over his decision to make me stop.

  “It would be a gift,” I said, my mouth already watering for the sensation of his Nirvana and the flavor of his essence. Explaining why I needed to make him come didn’t seem appropriate.

  He barked a soft laugh. “For me, or for you? I just can’t. I see how Rohan looks at you, and I know exactly how he feels. Unless you guys play by different rules or something, but even if you do, I think I need a little more time to adjust.”

  He urged me to stand, and when I did, he reached out and cupped my face in his big, gentle hands and pulled me into another ravenous kiss. When he pulled away, he added, “Thank you so much for the thought. I am probably . . . no, I’m definitely going to regret turning you down.”

  “I already regret it,” I whispered when my core twinged in protest at the deprivation.

  He averted his eyes. “Well, you definitely aren’t going to regret this. Follow me.”

  He turned toward a shadowy corner of the balcony and started climbing a set of steps I hadn’t seen before. When he got to the top, he beckoned and I followed, letting him take my beer and help me up the rest of the way.

  When I reached the top, I found us on a small, square platform overlooking the neighborhood all the way to the dark, chilly ocean beyond.

  “There,” Bodhi whispered in my ear, pointing up.

  I looked at the sky and gasped. The moon hung high above, fat and full and glowing bright. While I stared up at it, Bodhi stepped away and rummaged around in a bench behind us, then produced a thick blanket he spread out on the wooden floor of the platform.

  We sat side by side and I closed my eyes, breathing deeply of the cool ocean breeze blowing across my skin. Ozzie’s face floated unbidden through my mind, an old habit I had of picturing him every time I felt the slightest breeze and fantasizing that he was the one who had sent it to me.

  But there had never been a message, despite my ability to hear the whispered words turul could send each other on the wind. I’d received messages from my stepfather Lukas when my father wished to relay something to me quickly, but never had Ozzie communicated with me that way.

  Bodhi slid his hand down my back, resting it at my hip for a second before retracting it as though thinking better of it.

  “You can touch me. I’m not going to break,” I said.

  “I’m just afraid I won’t be able to stop.” He chuckled. “You’re like a fucking magnet. My thoughts, my hands . . . I couldn’t stop thinking about you for even a second after you left yesterday. I dreamed about you last night.”

  “Oh? What happened in your dream?”

  “Things I need to not remember, if I want to stay sane right now,” he murmured. “I usually come up here to chill when I’m wound up. Or I take my board out there.” He indicated the ocean.

  “Your board?” I asked.

  “Surfboard. It’s easier to deal with loneliness when I’ve got the waves and wind for company. Until we figure out how to kill this fucking chill that’s taken over my soul, I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot more time out there, or hauling my windsurfing rig up north for a while.”

  I suffered a pang of envy for that level of freedom and communion with the elements. Leaning back on my elbows, I stared up into the dark sky, fixing my gaze on the moon and enjoying the peace and freedom I’d managed to find for myself. Yet the longing for more lingered.

  Bodhi craned his neck and looked at me over one shoulder. “What did you mean before, when you said it would be a gift? Last night when I dreamed about you, I woke up with the strangest sense that as much as I wanted to . . . you know . . . I should save it. Does that make sense?”

  I turned onto my side and met his gaze. “To what?” I asked, prodding even though I could easily infer his meaning.

  His aura flared and his eyes narrowed. “Jerk off,” he said. “I didn’t, even though the dream was really fucking dirty.”

  A charge of arousal shot through me. “Tell me about it,” I said, leaning a little closer to him.

  He eyed me in silence, his gaze dropping briefly to my chest and sliding over my body. Then he swallowed and shook his head. “Another time, maybe. I’ve got too many questions. The gift thing meant something. I want to know what.”

  With a sigh, I sat up and stretched my legs out in front of me, smoothing my dress over my thighs. “The energy that powers our magic, like the magic I showed you inside, is all around us. It’s like air, except it needs to be harnessed to be used. Each of our kind harnesses it a little differently through links to the various elements.

  “The turul are the wind race. They use it to harness magic, and they can command the weather if they’re powerful enough. Their abilities cover pretty much anything that involves air, which includes music. My friends think your family must have turul blood, given how musically inclined you are, and I believe them. I’ve felt it all day today. I felt it the other night when I sang with you.”

  Bodhi twisted around and lay on his stomach, his expression rapt. “Grandma used to say we were descended from Sirens, like in the myths. So that isn’t true?”

  “I don’t know about that. Since you’re bloodline, you could have a mix. Water and wind, perhaps. Nymphaea and turul.”

  “Nymphaea?”

  “They’re the water race,” I continued. “Satyrs and nymphs. They access magic through water, mostly through moving water—oceans, rivers, blood. Especially blood, I think, but other bodily fluids too.”

  He smirked. “So the gift thing . . . you meant it literally?”

  “Oh, that? No. I mean, not that your semen doesn’t have power, but for the nymphaea, exchanging it is more about mating than actually transferring power. Only the ursa and the dragons have the ability to transfer power to a partner who isn’t their mate.”

  “Fascinating,” Bodhi drawled, smirking at me.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you mocking me?”

  He chuckled and raised his hands. “No! Well, a little. You just sound so serious about it. Like you’re trying to prove how much you know.”

  “I know pretty much everything, at least about how the four races work. There are other things in the universe that are a mystery to me. Those hounds, for example. And humans.”

  Not to mention how to actually use all the powers I should’ve had, but there was no sense boring him with my lack of ability to apply all my knowledge.

  “Wow, you’re a regular Hermione Granger, aren’t you?”

  “What’s a Hermione Granger?”

  He
stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, then tilted onto his side and patted my knee. “We’ll cover that later when I teach you about humans. Tell me more about ursa and dragons.”

  I lay back and continued, my body tingling comfortably in the warmth of his nearness. “Ursa are the earth race. They harness not just the stones and inorganic elements buried in the ground, but also fertility magic—living, growing things.

  “The power of new life is the most potent, amazing thing there is, but it’s volatile. Female ursa need multiple male mates to help them control it. The males will pair up so they can sufficiently service the females through their fertile periods, or through pregnancy. All that magic has to go somewhere.”

  It was for this reason the ursa were the most fascinating and awe-inspiring of all the races, in my opinion. I knew I had the potential for that much power, but had never felt a glimmer of it within myself. If I ever did reach estrous the way normal ursa females did, I’d be in possession of enough power to awaken all the other pieces I was missing, or so I hoped. I’d also need a pair of mates to help manage it, whether I wanted them or not. But that didn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon.

  “Pairs?” Bodhi said, sitting up a little straighter. “They service the females in pairs, these guys?”

  I laughed at his enthusiasm. “Yeah, sometimes more than two. And not always two ursa males, at least not recently. My auntie Jade has three mates. My aunt Numa has five, but she’s a dragon.” And every last one of them displayed a soul bond so brilliant it made my heart ache.

  “Have you ever been, ah . . . serviced by two ursa?”

  Before I could recover my wits enough to answer, a voice called out from below. “Deva! Where the fuck are you?”

  I got to my feet and looked over the railing to see Rohan and Keagan standing beneath the strings of lights illuminating the backyard.

  “Up here with Bodhi!” I called back. Bodhi rose and slipped up beside me, leaning on the rail and waving down.

  “Awesome! I’m coming up!” Rohan replied.

  I thought he’d head back inside and find the stairs, but before I knew it, he’d grabbed hold of the nearby fence in a very inhuman display of skill, climbing up to walk nimbly along the top. From there hopped up onto the porch roof, then leaped across to grab a palm tree at the corner of the house and shimmy up it.

  “Holy shit,” Bodhi said. “He is definitely not human. What is he? You said he wasn’t turul. Dragon?”

  I laughed as Rohan finally hoisted himself over the railing and swooped in to hug me like he hadn’t seen me in ages. “Yeah, he’s a dragon,” I said. “Though after that, I can’t help but wonder if he’s part monkey.”

  “Just not afraid of heights,” Rohan said. “I’d have flown up, but I didn’t think it’d be kosher to show my wings in mixed company.”

  “So what about him?” Bodhi asked, nodding down at Keagan, who was glaring up at us.

  “Come on up, dude! It’s easy!” Rohan shouted.

  “Ursa,” I said.

  Keagan gestured rudely and went back inside.

  “Yeah, he prefers keeping his feet on terra firma,” Rohan explained. Then he flopped down onto the blanket and sighed. “More room for us. What’ve you two been up to?”

  25

  Deva

  “We were just talking.” Bodhi shifted away to a chaste distance.

  “I was explaining to him how the different races work. How we use magic. How we absorb magic. I was just about to explain dragons.”

  Rohan’s gaze flickered with inner light, betraying his shift to his dragon sight. He scanned Bodhi from head to toe, lingering on his groin and smirking.

  “Either you really love the boring details of the higher races, or you’re as enthralled by our little chimera as the rest of us.”

  “Ah . . . not sure what you mean,” Bodhi said, drifting his hands down to cover the pronounced bulge in the front of his pants. His aura flickered with shame, and I knew if he wasn’t veiled in shadow, we’d be able to see him blushing. “What’s a chimera?”

  “The perfect mix of all of us,” Rohan supplied. “But I don’t want to delay your lesson. Deva, why don’t we give him a demonstration of how dragons absorb magic?”

  He stood and reached out a hand to me. I took it just as another song drifted up from below. This time it was just Keagan on guitar, singing a lullaby from the back porch.

  I glanced over the railing to the front of the house. Susannah and Gus were on the front walk, saying farewell to several guests, the hounds still happily at their heels. When the guests disappeared, Gus took Susannah in his arms and began to slow dance right in the center of the walk.

  “Looks like a good idea,” Rohan said, pulling me backward into his arms and swaying with the music, hands on my hips and his mouth at my ear. His arousal rubbed at my rear and I sucked in a breath.

  “Tell him what you know about us, baby,” he said into my ear.

  I flicked my gaze back up to Bodhi’s face. His lips were parted, his eyes fevered, and his aura a bright swell of need.

  “Dragons are the fire race,” I said, my voice roughened by the desire Rohan drew out of me with his touch. “They revel in fire, literally and figuratively. Passion, lust—it works on magic like a magnet. It finds us when we are aroused. But it isn’t just dragons it clings to. It comes to all of us the same way. Humans too.”

  Rohan slid his hands up my sides and cupped my breasts. He let out a little puff of breath, and a moment later, the tightness of the bra and panties he’d conjured for me earlier disappeared. My breasts suddenly felt heavy in the bodice of my dress and the buttons strained, one of them popping open at the top to display more of my ample flesh. A chilly breeze floated in, gusting up my dress and cooling the slick heat between my thighs.

  Bodhi fixed his gaze on my breasts and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. With a slow blink, he tore his gaze away and scrubbed a hand over his head.

  “Am I . . . drawing magic now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, breathless now from Rohan’s heated kisses against my neck. He slipped his hands along my arms and twined his fingers with mine, still moving to the music and Keagan’s song as he pulled my hands up and placed them at the back of his neck.

  “You are dying to touch her, aren’t you?” Rohan asked. “What the hell’s stopping you?”

  “She’s yours, man,” Bodhi choked out. “I respect you too much to horn in.”

  Rohan let out a low chuckle in my ear. “She isn’t mine. Not yet. But I am hers, body and soul.”

  My breath caught at the intensity of his words. “Ro—” I turned to object, to insist he take it back; I wouldn’t let him tie himself to me when we couldn’t have a true soul bond.

  Rohan stopped me with a finger to my lips, then replaced it with his mouth. His kiss was achingly tender and hungry at the same time, and it stole whatever words I had intended to say.

  When he broke away, he gave me a sly smile. “Let’s show him what it feels like to make a dragon come, baby.”

  He pushed me slowly backward and released me, stepping back when Bodhi’s hands went to my hips.

  “Make her come if you want to understand, but take your time about it.”

  Bodhi’s heart thudded so hard I could feel it through my back. His fingertips dug into my hips, and he seemed to be holding me away from his pelvis, almost like it hurt him to be in too close contact.

  “Are you good, Deva? Do you want this?” he asked.

  “Only if you do,” I said, turning my head just slightly to look up at him.

  Rohan reached out and cupped my cheek. “Look at me, baby. I’m dying to see your face when you finish. I missed it before.” He lifted his gaze to Bodhi. “What are you waiting for?”

  Bodhi relaxed his hold on me and I sank back against him, gasping at his erection digging into my ass.

  “You said to take my time about it.” He brushed his lips against my ear. “Is that how I make this good for yo
u, Deva? To draw it out?”

  His fingers toyed with a button of my dress, unfastening it before he teased his way down the line to open the rest. As he worked with deliberate, tortuous movements, he grazed his lips over my neck, compelling me to tilt my head to give him better access.

  When he’d opened the last button on my bodice, he gripped the sides and tugged them apart, exposing my breasts to the chilly ocean breeze. Before me, Rohan made a low rumble of approval and Bodhi shifted his head, gazing down as he cupped both my breasts.

  “Sweet Jesus, you’re perfect,” he murmured, hefting my flesh and grazing his thumbs over my achingly hard nipples. I whimpered, pushing back against his groin and until he hissed.

  “Slow,” he rumbled, as though to remind himself of his task.

  He left one hand at my breasts, toying with each nipple in turn as he slipped the other down my belly to the cleft between my legs. He pressed the fabric of my dress flush against my wetness, soaking the thin cloth instantly. The pressure against my sensitive flesh made me cry out and push my hips into his touch.

  “Goddamn, are you this wet for me, or for him?”

  I met Rohan’s intense stare, but he knew the answer already. “You’re the one touching me, Bodhi.”

  “Fuck yes,” he whispered, finding the hard bud of my clit and rubbing it.

  More of my juices soaked through the dress until the only way I knew he wasn’t touching skin was the constricting nature of the fabric binding my folds. He stroked until I squirmed, craving more direct contact.

  But then he stopped, dropping his hands to the bottom of my dress and bunching it in his fists, hiking it up to get beneath. When his warm fingers met my bare flesh, I sighed in pleasure. He rumbled another soft curse against my ear as he slipped his fingers between my folds and explored.

  “So fucking smooth. I didn’t think I’d like a girl smooth like this, but goddamn. Are you sure you want to let me hog all the fun?”

  Through my haze of pleasure, I saw Rohan smile and ease closer. He dipped slightly and gripped the back of one of my knees, lifting my leg to spread me open for Bodhi.