Brie
At first, I feel nothing but his mouth on mine. He inhales, but otherwise, is still as stone. The tension between us is so thick I could drown in it, and I wouldn’t bother saving myself by coming up for air.
I pull away just a touch–just enough to take a shuddering breath. Maybe this was a mistake. I’m not sure what I was thinking kissing him back, but… here I am, wondering when he’s going to start laughing at me.
Logan’s nose brushes mine as he closes his eyes. His hands drift to my waist, and my eyes flutter closed as his grip tightens. He takes a step toward me, then another, until I’m forced back, until my shoulders hit the wall. Time moves in slow motion as his lips brush the corner of my mouth, and he groans.
Logan presses me to the wall and kisses me hard enough to steal my breath away. I rise on my toes to meet him, my lips parting as I try to suck in another breath, but his
MariannaSarah and Sydney are with Skye, standing against the railing around the massive orrery made of copper and glass. Planets spin, tilting on their axes, while the models of stars whirl around on no set course. Blake steps to the side but keeps his hand on my arm, tugging me close, while I gaze in awe at the marvel of magical engineering taking up the entire room. We’re the only people here. We have the whole place to ourselves. The room is much warmer, thankfully, than the rest of the temple. It’s my nerves going haywire, I suppose. I watch as Sydney picks Skye up and swings her onto his shoulders, walking out of sight around the back of the orrery. Blake sighs deeply but smiles as he says under his breath, “My dad can read the positioning of the stars better than my mom can. They have a small orrery at the castle in Crescent Falls, actually. My grandfather Isaac designed it, and my grandma Maddy secretly had it built for him as a present.”“I didn’t realize that these powers
MariannaThe townhouse in Wisteria Way is cloaked in shadows I don’t remember being there as I follow my mom into the living room. Dust shimmers in the sunlight, highlighting just how long it’s been since anyone has been here. I stare at the foot of the stairs for several seconds, locked in my head as the memory of Dean screaming in my face and punching me hurtles back into clear, unfiltered focus, but then Mom steps into my line of vision, and the present pierces the memory, fading it into obscurity. “You know,” she says, sliding her finger over the dusty mantle, “I think I’m going to stay here.”“What?” I follow her progress across the room while she inspects the freshly framed pictures now resting on the mantle. New frames, since Dean smashed everything that was once there. Someone came here a few weeks ago and cleaned from top to bottom, scrubbing any hint of what happened here from existence, but the smell of bleach still hangs in the sunbeams drifting through the curtains as
BlakeMarianna and I doze in the quiet darkness of my bedroom for nearly an hour before convincing each other to get up long enough to put on clothes and brush our teeth, at least. Within minutes, we’re back in bed. Marianna snuggles close while I stare at the ceiling, listening to the… silence, as she drifts back to sleep. The world is a shockingly loud place, even in the dead of night. Normally, this is when the stars–the voices in my head–are the most annoying. Loud. Chaotic. Constantly chattering back and forth about everything and nothing all at once. But now?I can hear the breeze coming through the windows. The curtains tremble, fabric brushing against the wall. The palace creaks, settling, pipes groaning and rumbling all around but hushed by the thick walls. I don’t remember closing my eyes. I don’t remember a blank, empty kind of sleep washing over me–dreamless. But I wake several hours later to the moonlight shifting across the ground and the bedroom door silently opening,
MariannaOver the course of the afternoon, I check on Blake and Skye repeatedly, but both are sleeping like the dead. Sarah, Sydney, and my mom return from their lunch in great spirits. Sydney goes off to find Ryatt, and I slink around the castle while my mom and Sarah live in “grandma bliss” together, making up for lost time. I’m checking on Blake and Skye for the eighth time as the sun sets when Maeve clicks her tongue at me from the entrance of the suite, tilting her head in a motion to follow her. “Have you eaten today?” she asks as we walk through one of the many upper hallways in the palace, which after today, I feel like I can traverse without getting totally lost. “Barely,” I admit, and she nods.“Same. Come on.” She opens a side door I thought was just a mirror, and a staircase appears. I guess I should still be careful walking around this place, especially now that I know there’re tunnels and corridors within the castle walls themselves. We reach her suite, which is gra
MariannaBlake can barely manage to walk the twelve feet to the bedroom door without needing to brace himself against the wall. I lunge for him but halt mid-step when a tall, broad, and honestly, impossibly handsome man in his mid-seventies barrels into the room looking downright murderous. His black hair is brushed away from his face, peppered with dark gray, but his silver eyes are sharpened and honed on Blake as he braces his hands on the doorframe and scans Blake, then the room, and… softens when he sees me standing in outright terror only a few feet away. I know him. Not personally, of course, but it’s impossible not to know of the ever feared, ever worshipped, Alpha King Ryatt–The King of Shadows, of darkness. The King of The Roguelands and the mystical, secretive Veiled Valley that he passed down to his daughter. Blake sways but manages to keep himself upright as he stretches a hand toward Ryatt in what I can only describe as surrender. “Ryatt, not now.”“You’re Marianna, the
BlakeMarianna is just as close. I feel it before she can–the way she tightens and begins to spasm around my cock, the way her thighs lock and her toes curl behind my back. Her teeth graze my neck as she pants, breathing my name as our worlds collide and burst into nothing but starlight, and there it is… the tapestry. Our threads–once frayed, now binding into one. I see our life stretching through the stars. A long life. “Please,” I damn near beg, and she bites down, sucking a bruise as her teeth sink into my skin and the mate bond erupts into what I can only describe as madness. I slam her against the rock as my release barrels through me like a rogue wave. She comes as well, screaming my name into the night, but I bite down on her neck, holding her still, damning the still healing skin left behind by the mark the healers cut out of her–a mark that should never have been there. It should always have been mine. I keep us there, suspended, my feet flat on the bottom of the pool as