My throat tightened at the way his voice cracked, but I nodded. Slowly, he relaxed and began moving me again. It didn’t take long before pleasure made me clench around him, and sweat was beading on my brow.
Darian reached down to circle my clit with his fingers while Asher moved deep inside me, and soon I was crashing again, pleasure whipping through me as Asher roared his own release. When our shudders subsided, Asher’s head tipped down, and he nuzzled my neck, his breath hot on my skin. Darian helped me move further back on the bed and pulled me against his chest while Kade helped clean me.
Lifting my hand, Darian kissed it before peppering soft kisses up my arm, over my collarbone, and up my neck. Unable to help myself, I laughed at the almost ticklish sensation, but he cut off my laugh with a kiss to my lips that took my breath away. When he pulled back, he said, “You, my dear, are even more of a treasure than I thought you would be.”
A treasure?The sincere expression on his flawless face left me speechless.
I stared at his glowing blue eyes until Kade dropped down on my other side and turned me toward him. Leaning down, Kade pressed a soft kiss to my slick forehead. “We’re going to have to find a way to break the rules, Mahare. Because there’s no way you’re leaving us to join a house.”
I swallowed down the lump building in my throat. “And what if that’s what I want?”
“Doyou want to join a house?” Asher asked from where he’d stretched across the end of the bed. He’d pulled on his pants, but his chest was still bare, and I didn’t miss the fact that he’d moved close enough to allow my feet to touch his abdomen.
“No, of course not,” I said automatically, and the three monsters around me relaxed at my response.
I knew then that I should have said yes. Because even though I wasn’t planning to join a house, if Cara wanted to return to our island, I would escape with her in a heartbeat. If I made them think I was planning to join a house, it would have made the transition easier, even though I was becoming painfully aware of how much a part of me didn’t want to ever leave them.
“Well, I guess we’d better get Locke on board, then,” Asher said with a grin, and he reached down and began massaging my feet.
I groaned and closed my eyes as he applied pressure in all the right places. Goddess, the sex had been amazing, but Asher’s hands on my feet were downright magical.
No one talked about the Taratun council and how the idea of me staying with them was impossible. They didn’t even have a house, and I was a newblood. If anything, the parties during the Week of Orash had shown me how I was expected to join a house and integrate into their society. I didn’t think they’d be happy if I decided to join Kade and the others.
But Asher simply kept massaging my feet, and I gave in to the lull of sleep with Kade and Darian pressed by my sides.
CHAPTER 23
~ Locke ~
Iwatchedfromashadowy corner as Raine danced to the thudding tempo that filled the ballroom. The result of multiple glasses of wine had made her cheeks red and her eyes glassy, and she danced as if she was determined to forget about the world. I didn’t blame her. Kade, Darian, and Asher surrounded her, and I found myself wanting to join them.
My need for the little human had only grown since I’d tasted her in the tunnel, and being away from her was all but driving me mad. But I didn’t move from my spot. Raine was an enigma. A distraction. And I couldn’t let myself be drawn into that. More than that, I couldn’t let her be drawn to me. Being with me would bring her nothing but pain. I hadn’t found a way to break the bond between us, but I would, and then she’d be free to join a house. I didn’t let myself wonder whether she wanted me to break it. She couldn’t stay tied to us.
The night bled by, and eventually, Raine and my brothers left the party. Rather than follow them, I left the ballroom and headed higher up the mountain. Finding the exit I was after, I made my way onto a small balcony, and then I was in the air with the cool wind sliding past my wings.
It wasn’t long after that I landed on a cobblestoned street in the heart of the city. I avoided the blue light of the lanterns, sticking to the shadows and making my way to the back of a dark stone building. It didn’t take me long to pry open the lock, and then I was inside the massive, domed structure, my feet barely disturbing the dust coating the blue and white checkered floor of the ancient library.
Watery moonlight shone through the domed glass ceiling above my head, and I peered around at the stained wood shelves that covered the curved walls of the building and the hundreds of ancient leather-bound tomes. The woody and musty scents of the books lingered in the air, and my chest expanded as I breathed in deeply. When I exhaled, my body relaxed, and my muscles loosened for the first time that night.
It took me only a few moments to pile some books into my arms, and then I was making my way over to one of the fabric couches that sat tucked away from the great glass windows that dotted the front of the building. Placing the books on the small table next to the couch, I lit the lantern I’d left there.
I knew visiting the library for the third time in a single week was too risky, but I had to keep searching. There’d been a time when the double doors at the front of the building were always unlocked, and the space was a hive of activity rather than as quiet as Katakin’s ancient graveyard. The fae queen, Izla, had frequently visited the library and often added to the shelves, bringing tomes of brightly colored fae fairy tales to add to the collection of texts, but when her curse had first spread throughout the kingdom, the city had erupted into chaos.
When the citizens discovered the queen was behind the curse, the library was just one of many places that was attacked and targeted because of her known involvement there. Thankfully, a group of monsters had banded together, saving the structure and the books within, but many of the stones on the left side of the building were still blackened, and the scorch marks forever told the tale of the incident.
Only young at the time, I couldn’t recall every detail of what had happened over the months following the curse, but I remembered the Taratun barricading the doors of the library and forbidding anyone from entering it. The shelves contained mostly fictional works, and it was announced that believing in miracles was the reason we’d allowed the fae witch into our kingdom and were cursed for our hospitality. Therefore, from then on, we were only to live in the present and real world of Katakin.
Shoving thoughts of the past from my mind, I settled onto the chair and pulled one of the books in front of me.The Broken Kingdomby Sharou Zanae. Considering the number of works by Sharou, I guessed they were a prolific writer back in the fae kingdom of Zalei, Queen Izla’s home world.
Rifling through the yellowed pages, I searched the fae fairy tale for any talk of magical bonds. I didn’t bother looking for anything that hinted at curses. I’d searched these books countless times in the past and found nothing that explained how to end the curse—or rather, any talk of curses at all—but it was possible I’d missed information that indicated about bonds. I hoped to come across something that could help but found nothing but the same charming, if delusional, tale.
“Pretty sure you’ve read that one before,” purred a voice, and I stilled, my hand pausing on the next book I’d been about to grab from the pile as Lyr materialized from the darkness. She stood near the closest row of shelves, leaning back with one leg folded over the other as if she’d been there for a while.
I frowned, annoyed that I hadn’t noticed her. The female had a gift for blending with the shadows, but if I hadn’t been so engrossed with the book, I would have picked up her heartbeat. It was a reminder I needed to stay vigilant.
“It’s one of my favorites,” I drawled. It wasn’t a lie. I enjoyed the story, which spoke of a dream kingdom beyond the stars. When the people of the kingdom forgot how to dream, a monster burrowed out of the earth and tormented the city. A young boy was the one to figure out the monster was a nightmare, and they had only to dream again for the monster to disappear. When I was younger, I’d often imagined Katakin was the dream kingdom and that I’d be the one to bring us from the darkness of the curse, but I was beyond such hopes now. Especially because it had become painfully clear that I was the fucking monster, and no one was waking up from this nightmare.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “The Taratun could have you killed or imprisoned. No one wants to remember the old ways, and looking through fae fairy tales might make you appear as a fae sympathizer.”
