Chapter 21
Finch
I’m simultaneously in heaven and hell. Damned to fight the urges surging through my nervous system that are currently battling for control.
My role here isn’t to engage. It never is.
I’m the captain of my crew. The one who stands apart from the others, who ensures we all get out of skirmishes alive, whether we’re fighting a storm, or battling against one of the bastard king’s ships.
I do not get involved in the private lives of the crew unless they start to infringe on the safety of the rest of us.
I leave all of that to Torin and sometimes to Jack, although he often seems to simply stir the pot.
Tonight feels different, though. It’s my brother’s mate—which makes it a family matter in my book. And I’m crossing lines like you wouldn’t believe.
I’m supposed to be a silent observer. A safety net in case they all lose their heads to the lust that’s so thick in this room, I can practically feel it coating my tongue.
And worst of all is that I volunteered myself to take on this role.
Jack told me he wouldn’t be a helping hand, and that the books mention someone needs to keep their heads to ensure the ritual stays on track, and I found my hand shooting up before I knew what I was doing.
Reva arches her back as Aster settles himself between her legs and Kit lavishes her breasts with his boisterous attention. Torin’s still behind her, stroking her arms with invisible hands and playing the puppet master for the four of them.
My fingers itch.
Despite desperately trying to distract myself with my knitting, I’m now holding the needles so tightly there’s a genuine worry I might snap them clean in two. My eyes skim over their writhing forms once more before I return to counting my stitches.
But, oh, I used to be such a slut for touch.
For any kind of foreplay, really. That was back when touch was always linked to pleasure, and I loved touching others.
Now, things are different and the only parts of me that don’t mind being touched are those that aren’t fully connected to my brain.
The wayward tentacles that mark me out as a freak.
The product of sick experiments that left me so far from human, even my own mother wouldn’t recognise me.
She’s dead now, of course, succumbing to the draw of the furthest horizon while Kit and I were trapped in that terrible place. We came out both thoroughly changed and orphaned, fully aware that the world we had been part of before the Deadwood Cove laboratories no longer existed.
Reva lets out a moan that has me clenching my fingers into tight fists with the urge to... do what exactly, I don’t know.
It’s the first time in a long while that I’m fighting to calm my raging cock, which clearly didn’t get the memo that we do not like physical intimacy of any kind.
Not anymore.
One of my extra appendages reaches out to brush up and down my arm in a placating motion, like he’s trying to soothe the ache in my chest. The other is torn between covering my eyes and reaching down to press against my cock.
Even my own crew, who have been with me for decades at this point, don’t quite understand that my additional appendages don’t answer to me. They work off a separate system to the rest of me. A system that currently seems equally traumatised as turned on.
Then Torin spreads Reva’s legs impossibly wider, and I tense, recalling what she said about the injury to her hip.
But he massages her flesh, murmuring words I can’t hear into her ear as Aster draws her closer and closer to orgasm.
She lets out a loud moan right as he lets out a shout that’s louder than anything I’ve heard from him before.
Aster then collapses, like his cock was storing his life force and now that he’s unloaded it, he’s done.
Tor meets my eyes for a moment and I don’t know if he’s just stellar at reading my expression, or if the two wayward tentacles raised over my head are making crude motions that I’m not aware of, but he gives me a nod of understanding.
“I want you to eat Reva out until she comes,” Torin tells Aster. “Then you’ll come over her glorious tits,” he continues. There’s no room for argument in his tone, and Reva lets out another desperate little moan, like she’s enjoying this back and forth even though she can’t see a thing.
Or it might be to do with the fact that my brother has his fingers deep inside her again.
“Kit, come up here and fill her mouth while Aster eats her out,” Torin says. “Something tells me you might like it.”
They shift positions with an almost laughable eagerness while I return to counting my stitches.
I don’t know exactly what I’m making here, but it’s much larger than my usual hats, scarves or socks.
A blanket, perhaps. Whatever it is, I might have to start the whole thing again another night.
One where I don’t have lightning shooting down my spine for the first time in literal decades.
Aster sets himself to his task with his usual eagerness.
Pretty quickly Reva is sitting further upright so that she can bury her bound hands into his hair, holding him exactly where she wants him.
He seems to love that, if the way he’s groaning is anything to go by.
He pulls away every so often to take a deep breath, as though he’s not actually breathing while he shows her what that dastardly tongue can do.
I shouldn’t be watching. Not when it’s clear that they’re all enjoying themselves and they’re still early enough in the games for exhaustion not to be a concern.
But I just can’t seem to stop myself.
It’s not that I’m imagining myself in any of their places. That’s not a possibility for me, and not just because of my issues with touch.
The relationship I’ve fostered with Reva so far wouldn’t allow it. That was why she accepted me in this supervisory role so easily, I think. I’m her mate’s brother. Slightly aloof. Slightly odd. Someone who she can while away hours caught in insomniac hell with, but nothing more than that.
Still, despite all my issues, I can admit she’s beautiful like this.
There’s a sheen of sweat covering her skin, and the room smells of sex and something faintly floral.
I suck in a greedy inhale. Fuck. If they bottled the scent, there would be riots with crowds surging to buy it and an epidemic of men walking around with stiff cocks after catching it on the wind.
I stifle a chuckle to myself, realising I’ve managed to distract myself through another of Reva’s orgasms. Plus, my brother has just finished groaning as he comes down Reva’s throat and she swallows him down like a good girl.
We’re up to three or four of her orgasms, I think. Plus one apiece of each of the men, barring Torin, who’s more interested in orchestrating things than getting his rocks off. We only have to double or triple that number before it’s enough to appease the sex gods so that Aster can start his spell.
Aster is muttering something, looking slightly wild and dazed. I have no idea what he’s saying, but I’d imagine it’s something like, ‘I want your taste in my mouth for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.’
“You can move,” Torin tells him. “Come on up here.”
Reva stretches out her hands as if to touch Aster, and he thrusts a couple of times into her bound hands.
“I’m not sure this’ll work,” she says softly.
Torin doesn’t say a word as he reaches his arms around her body, cupping underneath her hands with one hand as he sets up a slow, steady motion. Aster hisses, muttering under his breath again. His eyes are fixed on Reva’s, looking even more desperate and wild than before.
In one smooth motion, Torin pulls Reva’s hands away so that Aster’s got a clear picture of her heaving breasts. He keeps his own arm in position and I’m assuming he’s now gripping Aster’s cock with one invisible hand, jerking his cock right as he erupts all over Reva’s smooth skin.
Aster leans down and gives Reva a dirty kiss before helping to guide her face with both hands so that Kit can kiss her too.
And I knit another row of messy stitches.
And another.
And another.
It goes on for hours, with a couple of breaks thrown in to clean things up a bit and to gulp down some water and another of Aster’s concoctions.
Then I return to my corner and they return to their fucking. For hours and hours. Exactly how it should be, how it presumably needs to be for this sort of thing to work.
While I might not know much about witchcraft, I’ve been around for long enough to know that with more complex work, the conditions need to be exactly right.
Sometimes it’s words spoken by moonlight.
Sometimes it’s finding impossible ingredients, like a hair from a doe’s tail. lost during a moment of joy.
And it turns out that sometimes, it’s when you’ve come so many times you’re close to delirious.
By the time they reach that point, Kit has tapped out and is softly snoring on the blankets. Aster’s eyes look heavy and Torin has shifted position so that he’s lying directly behind Reva, blocking my view of her.
In all the time that’s gone by, Torin hasn’t come once.
He’s been holding himself back, and still he doesn’t go as far as to push inside her when he finally succumbs.
Based on the sheer size of him and the girth he’s dealing with, I know he mentioned it being the end of things if he tried to go further than thrusting his cock between her legs.
I can understand his hesitance. It’s something few people understand, for you to feel freakish inside your own body. In danger of causing damage, even if there’s no intent to do so.
He finishes with a roar, and the two of them collapse, spent.
Which means this is my cue.
Ignoring the mixture of scents that are thick in the air and the damp patches all over the blankets, I step close enough for one tentacle to shake Aster’s shoulder.
“It’s time.”