The Witch's Consorts: The Complete Series, page 66
Gabriel shuddered beside me. Then his fingers moved as if on autopilot to cancel the email he’d been poised to send and then to trash the files.
Frankford held out his hands. “I think we’ll just take that.”
“And release her consorts,” Helen Frankford said to the enforcers.
The ones who’d been restraining Ky and Damon stepped back. Damon glowered at them and rubbed his arms. Ky made a strained noise as Gabriel handed over his computer.
“Well, I hadn’t gotten it that customized yet,” he said as if consoling himself.
“Back in the car,” I said to the guys, and motioned to the figures gathered around the gate. “Why don’t you clear the way?”
Frankford looked up from the computer and smiled thinly. At a gesture from his wife, the group of enforcers parted.
“There,” he said, in a tone that didn’t sound victorious or defeated. “Go on home, Rose Hallowell. And the Spark willing, our paths will never cross again.”
I returned his smile as I opened the front passenger door. “Nothing would make me happier.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rose
It’d been less than two weeks since I’d last set foot inside the manor, but somehow stepping into the wide foyer of my family home with the crystal chandeliers overhead and the curving wooden staircase ahead of me, breathing in the smells of old wood and recent polish, I felt as if I’d arrived somewhere unfamiliar. Maybe because this was the first time I’d been able to walk through those doors with my consorts at my side.
“It’s probably not a good idea for us to stay here, right?” Kyler said, looking around. “All the time, I mean.”
“If we want to avoid a whole lot of talk from people in town, it’s probably better if we mostly use Seth’s house,” I said. “But I want you to feel like this is your home too. It’s the weekend. Hardly any staff are around. After everything we’ve been through, I think I deserve one night with you here.”
Jin took in the place with a grin. “I can agree to that.”
I made a shooing gesture. “For now, poke around. Get comfortable. There are half a dozen guest rooms if you want to pick one we can make yours. Nothing’s off limits. Before anything else, I am going to take a shower.” It’d been too long since my last one, and my skin still felt gritty from that scramble down the cliff face.
Upstairs, I hesitated in the hall. Technically the master bedroom that had once been my dad’s and Celestine’s was now my domain. The thought of stepping in there to the ghosts of their presences made me shiver.
I eased open the door and peeked inside. My stance relaxed. Before we’d left, I’d asked one of the cleaning staff to change the bedding. The sheets and duvet were crisply laid out, nothing about them suggesting anyone else had ever slept here. Celestine had swept her belongings off the dresser before she’d left under my compulsion. The bedroom window had been left open, a light breeze stirring the gauzy curtains. The room smelled like the summer flowers blooming outside, fresh and sweet.
If I was going to take over as lady of the house, I had to start somewhere.
I grabbed my bath supplies from the common bathroom and carried them to the master bedroom’s en-suite. I was just checking that the towels were fresh too when the floor creaked by the doorway.
“Hey,” Damon said, poking his head in. “How’d you like some company?”
I raised an eyebrow at him, and he grinned in response.
“I could use a shower too, you know,” he added.
“Oh, and I’m sure that’s the only reason you’re looking for an invitation.”
“Well, no.” He sauntered over to me and looped his arms around my waist. His breath tickled my ear as he spoke. “I believe we started something in the bus a couple nights ago that we still haven’t finished.”
His touch was enough to send desire spiking up from my belly. “You make a good point. But I do still want to shower.”
“Oh, I was counting on that.”
He slid his hands to the hem of my shirt and tugged it over my head. His gaze darkened with hunger as he took in the swell of my breasts within my bra. Reaching to unclasp it, he leaned in for a kiss at the same time. I soaked in the heat of his mouth, need tingling through me, and ran my hands down his chest. With a yank, I removed his shirt in turn.
My fingers settled on the bulge beneath the fly of his jeans. I pressed against it teasingly, and Damon growled. He stripped my jeans and panties off me and nudged me up against the glass wall of the shower stall.
“Shower first,” I reminded him, breathless.
“You’d better hurry up and get me undressed then, huh?”
I wasn’t going to wait for an even more explicit invitation. I unzipped his fly, and he stepped out of his jeans, kicking his boxers after them. My rebel had an impressive body I hadn’t gotten the chance to admire in a while. I traced my fingers over the taut muscles from shoulders to abdomen, noting the little scars here and there. His cock stood at attention between us, thick and hard. Heat pooled between my legs at the thought of taking him into me.
Soon, but not yet. I turned on the water and pulled him with me into the warm spray.
Damon kissed me again as the water cascaded over us, his hands slicking up and down my arms and then cupping my breasts.
“Let’s get you clean,” he said in a meltingly low voice.
As I shampooed my hair, he soaped up his hands and ran them over my body again, gliding with that slippery sheen. Everywhere he touched, desire flared beneath my skin. He swivelled his palms against my nipples and then dipped his fingers over my clit down to my opening. A moan tumbled out of me.
But I could pay back that torture. I grabbed the soap and spread suds across that well-muscled body, all the way down to his erection. Gripping it tightly, I stroked him up and down until he pressed me up against the shower wall again.
“I’m fucking sparkling now, and so are you, angel. Time to get to the good stuff.”
No argument here. I smacked the lever down to shut off the water.
Damon scooped me off my feet, bracing me against him with my core flush against his cock, as he shoved the glass door open. He carried me across the room, and we toppled together onto the bed side by side. Our skin was still damp, but I didn’t want to wait any more than he did. He hooked one of my legs over his hip and drove into me. His cock stretched me with a burn so sweet I couldn’t hold back another moan.
I didn’t have to. There was no one in the house right now I had to hide my joy from.
We rocked together like that, facing each other on our sides. Damon brushed the damp strands of my hair away from my eyes and kissed me hard. Then he just stared into my eyes as his thrusts sped up, taking me deeper and deeper with every one. But the look in his eyes was so tender it made my heart ache. Pleasure rippled through me, filling me, lifting me.
I grasped his shoulders, trying to hold on, to keep that connection, but he plunged against the sweet spot inside me and my eyes rolled back of their own accord. My orgasm rushed through me with a bliss both demanding and loving. I cried out, arching toward him, and he groaned as he spilled himself inside me.
He stayed there as his cock softened, gathering me even more tightly against him. I tipped my head against his chest. His fingers grazed over my hair in a gentle caress.
“I meant it, you know,” he said.
“What?” I said, my lips brushing his naked skin, his bittersweet scent filling my lungs.
“When they had me, out at that guy Frankford’s house. When I told you to do what you had to do. I’d never want you to give up what matters to you for me. If I ever go down, it’ll be my own fault. Don’t you hold yourself back for me. All right?”
“Damon.”
He pulled back to look me in the eyes again. “All right?”
I grimaced at him. “You matter to me. I’m not going to give this up.”
He didn’t look completely satisfied, but he tucked his head over mine again.
The door whispered open. “Ah,” Jin’s voice said, teasing. “Getting started without the rest of us, are you?”
Damon huffed. “Not my fault if the rest of you didn’t take the same initiative. Plenty of room here. What are you waiting for?”
I laughed as not just Jin but all four of my other consorts hopped onto the bed around us.
“Group hug?” Kyler said, and Gabriel chuckled. I just sighed and nestled happily among the men I loved.
Sometime in the middle of the next morning, I wandered into the front yard where I’d spotted Gabriel from the window. He was standing by the garage, eyeing the row of parking spots, most of them now empty. I wondered if Dad would be by to pick up his other cars or if he was going to abandon them to my use. At some point I’d have to pick out one of my own, I supposed.
“You know, I don’t think it makes any sense for you to stay a Hallowell employee,” I told Gabriel, coming up beside him. “Paying you to work for me would feel really weird at this point.”
He slung his arm around me. “I can see that. Just as long as you’ll let me freeload in the garage apartment. And I should probably keep tinkering with the cars, for appearances and so I don’t die of boredom.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, you’re going to be working for me without me paying you? I’m not sure that’s better.”
He grinned and leaned in to give me a quick kiss. “I like the tinkering. I like the apartment. It’ll keep the rumors in check, right? I promise I won’t do any oil changes or engine maintenance I don’t want to.”
“I guess that’s all right then,” I grumbled.
He laughed and nuzzled my cheek. Then a shadow passed through his bright blue eyes.
“We’re not leaving things here, are we? Just spending the rest of our days relaxing around the estate and pretending we’re not in one epically big relationship? Those… demons, and all the other witches Frankford and your father and the others might be hurting because of them…”
My chest tightened. “I know,” I said. “Believe me, I haven’t really stopped thinking about that. I promised not to share the files or talk about what we learned, but there have to be other ways I can take down the families involved with the portal without breaking the contract we agreed to. I should probably start by reading through those files so I know exactly what we’re up against. You’ve still got them on your tablet.”
Gabriel nodded. “I can shoot them over to your computer whenever you need them. Probably better if we have multiple copies, just in case.”
“And we have the video you took, which they didn’t even know about to include it in the binding.” I nibbled at my lower lip. “It’ll take some maneuvering, but we’re going to keep fighting. You can count on that. I just want to take the time to do it smart, now that I have a little breathing room. We were on the run too long.”
The rumble of an engine made my shoulders tense. I peered through the gate as a small dented Ford eased up outside. It wasn’t the kind of posh vehicle I’d have expected an Assembly member to be driving, but I couldn’t take that as a guarantee.
A woman who didn’t look much older than me stepped out on the driver’s side. Her fawn-brown hair was scattered around her face, her rectangular glasses askew. She pushed them farther up her nose and caught sight of us through the bars. Her body went rigid and then relaxed, just slightly.
“Is this the Hallowell estate?” she said in a soft raspy voice.
I stepped forward, Gabriel following behind me. “It is,” I said. “I’m Ro—I mean, Lady Hallowell. Can I help you?”
She hugged herself, but a small bright smile touched her face. “I hope so,” she said. “Your cousin Naomi sent me this way? I was told this is a safe place for witches who… who can’t trust the people they thought they could.”
I blinked at the young woman. Where had Naomi come up with that? We hadn’t discussed anything like this.
Then a smile of my own curved my lips. Whatever my cousin had been thinking, she’d been right.
“It is a safe place,” I said, moving to open the gate. “Why don’t you come in and tell us why you’re here? And then we’ll see what we can do to make everything out there safer too.”
Consort of Fire
The Witch’s Consorts #4
Chapter One
Rose
Naomi had thought of everything. My stomach was full of seafood linguine that had included crab she’d ordered straight from the coast. The cherry-and-chocolate sweetness of the cake she’d arranged lingered in my mouth. Some of the best wine I’d ever drunk had been flowing from the bottles still at the ready on one of the side tables in the Hallowell manor’s huge great room, and the playlist carrying through the speakers set up with her phone was the perfect mix of peppy and groovy. She’d even put up streamers, gold and silver twinkling where they crisscrossed overhead.
And all that didn’t even include the fact that she’d come all the way from New York just to throw this party. Taking it all in from where I’d ended up standing next to her as I took a few minutes’ breather, I couldn’t help saying, “You know you really didn’t need to do this.”
My cousin shrugged with a smile and a bob of her chestnut ponytail. “A witch’s twenty-fifth birthday is supposed to be the biggest deal in your whole life. I couldn’t let you spend it like any other day. Besides, you deserve the chance to make some more good memories after everything you’ve been through.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. The last few months since I’d moved back to my family’s country estate, the one where I’d spent my childhood, had been a roller coaster. The kind where you spend most of it clinging to the safety bar for dear life afraid that the next jolt will toss you right out of the car.
Naomi nodded to the two young women on our temporary dance floor. “Also I figured I really should check in after I started sending witches in need your way. How are they doing?”
I considered the estate’s newest residents. Lesley—twenty-six and recently widowed, prone to hiding behind her fawn-brown hair and rectangular glasses—had turned up at the gate first, about three weeks ago. Imogen—twenty-two and unconsorted, with an almost hyper energy that matched her bright red curls—had shown up a couple weeks later.
“I think it’s going okay,” I said. “It’s awkward, not being able to ask all the questions I’d like to or tell them everything I know, but they were both scared when they got here and they’ve relaxed a lot since then.”
“Have they told you much about why they came running?”
“Some. Lesley’s family started putting a lot of weirdly insistent pressure on her to marry some new guy just a few months after her first consort was in that accident. Which makes me wonder if the accident was even accidental. Imogen lost her parents when she was a kid and ended up with an aunt and uncle. They’ve put a bunch of suitors in front of her in the last year, and she’s gotten a really bad vibe about all of them. I think they just needed some space, somewhere no one would try to force a consorting on them, for them to start to figure things out.”
I rubbed my mouth against the itch to tell her more and the knowledge that if I tried, the oath I’d been forced to take would stop me. Last month, I’d discovered that Charles and Helen Frankford, high ranking witching folk with positions in the Witching Assembly that governed all our society, were the leads of a faction that had been essentially enslaving young witches for their own dark purposes. Dark purposes that had something to do with immense, terrifying creatures they called demons, living in a world the Frankfords had accessed through a portal in a seaside cave.
My own father and stepmother had tried to arrange a consorting for me within that circle—one that would have left me unable to deny their chosen consort’s requests or to use my magic in any way he didn’t approve of. I’d escaped that trap only through luck, a lot of struggle, and the love of the men who’d been my beloved childhood friends. But so many more witches might be caught up in their schemes or about to be.
We’d found plenty of proof. We’d stolen a hard drive from the Frankfords’ estate. Unfortunately they and their allies had caught us before we’d been able to leave with it. I’d been forced to make a deal to save my consorts’ lives. They’d sworn an oath not to do or order harm to our lives, freedom, or happiness—and I’d sworn that none of us would speak of the files we’d discovered or the crimes we’d recently uncovered. The fact that we’d managed to copy over those files before they’d destroyed that hard drive didn’t help with that. I couldn’t mention their contents even to my own cousin.
Lesley’s father and Imogen’s aunt and uncle were named in those files. Only a few times, as minor supporters, but that was damning enough. It was a good thing they’d come to me.
“Do you know if their families were involved with the Frankfords?” Naomi asked. She knew the basics of what had gone on—she’d been with me when I’d gotten the lead that brought us to the Frankfords—but nowhere near the full picture.
“I can’t talk about that,” I said, my stomach tightening.
“Ah.” She grimaced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked about that tonight. This isn’t the time for thinking about that stuff. I know how hard you’ve been working from all the time you’ve spent holed up with your computer since I got here yesterday. Between you and those guys, I’m sure you’ll figure something out. And at least you’re keeping some of the potential victims safe until then.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” I said. The pressure in my gut didn’t totally lift.
A mischievous glint came into Naomi’s eyes. “So how has consorted life been treating you now that you can finally settle in without worrying about getting arrested or worse?”
