Sixty-Six
Turning to Antonio, I place my bloody hand on his chest and breathe, “Fuck me right here.”
I have too many emotions inside me. So much joy and rage and pain. And I need him to fill me. I need him to show me he loves me. That he will give me all the protection and safety my husband could not.
He yanks me to him, his hands on my ass, lifting me up as his mouth comes down. I part my lips; his tongue invades me. I kiss him back as fiercely as he’s kissing me, the last two months’ build-up exploding in a blinding heat.
Reaching between us, I yank at his cotton shirt, tugging it up. I can’t get it off him unless he puts me down though. He squeezes my ass, then lowers me to the floor. I step back and to the side. He lifts his shirt, and my jaw drops as my eyes roam over the muscled cut of his chest. Grabbing his hips, I tug him towards me and kiss my way across his skin.
Up.
Up.
Up.
I suck a nipple into my mouth, and he groans.
He slides his hands all across my body, touching me as if he knows me but is learning me at the same time. He cups and pinches, lingers and strokes. We strip off our clothes, our mouths still glued together, then we rub naked against each other. But he’s moving too slow, and I want him now.
I want to feel the closeness of his knot. I want to feel it expand inside me. Reaching between us, I grab his cock. It’s thick and hard in my hand. He grunts, lifting me into the air. I wrap my legs around him, then slide down his cock.
He breathes harshly as he presses me up against a wall. I cling on as he fucks me hard, jerking my hips as much as I can, trying to get him off quickly so I can feel that knot.
That closeness.
That connection he can’t stop.
I run my fingers through his hair, panting and crying out. The urge to take some V is clawing at my stomach though. If I take some, it’ll feel even better. We’ll feel even closer.
My mouth moves as I start to beg for some, but he turns my face to the side as he kisses my neck, and my eyes land on Varius. Then move to the vial of V on the table beside his bed.
“The bed,”
I rasp as my orgasm builds. Antonio kisses me on the lips as he carries me, his cock jerking against the walls of my pussy with every step. He lays me down on the bed. I arch my back as he fucks me fast, using the motion to secretly look at the bottle of V. I raise my arms, hiding my reach under thrashes of desire.
Thinking better of it, I pull back. Wrapping my arms around the back of his head, I clutch at his hair, moaning and crying out as I kiss him hard. I need to distract him. Wait for him to be on the verge of coming so he won’t be as quick to stop me.
He groans against my mouth. His tongue sweeps around inside me. His hands tighten on my hips as he slams in deep and hard. I clench around him. My arms lift back up, one aiming for the bedside table, seeing the unstoppable arousal on his face. His knot starts to swell, and I wrap my fingers around the vial of V…
I cry out as his hand grabs mine.
“No,”
he grunts as his knot nestles thick inside me.
“You’ve taken a Rick,”
I whine. Then my red eyes widen as I peer around his shoulder, and he jerks his head to look behind him to see what I’ve seen. He starts to roll, trying to put me between them, but Varius lands on his back before he can, his eyes even redder than mine.
The Craving has grabbed hold of him completely – Sau’s safe-guard having kicked in even though his curse’s broken.
The three of us fall off the side of the bed, and as Antonio releases me to fight off my husband, I take the vial of V.
And smash it into the werewolf’s right eye.
This is the moment I have been waiting for for fucking months.
He screams as I crunch the glass into his socket, blinding him. With the shards inside him, even if he shifts, he won’t be able to heal himself. Fur spouts across his neck, only a section of him changing – just enough to stop Varius from sinking his fangs into his throat.
Calling on my fire, I push it down my arms, letting it burn me to get to him. Normally, he would have time to run away, but he can’t leave me because of his knot.
Check.
And fucking.
Mate.
“Tell Siome I said she could have you,”
I snarl as my fire starts to singe his flesh. “You killed my baby!”
Howling, he shifts his lower body, and I scream in utter agony as his cock grows inside of me, the size of it tearing apart my pussy. My fire dies beneath the onslaught of pain, what remains of my control on it slipping. Varius roars in anger as he slices his new claws down Antonio’s back. The werewolf starts to shift his top half, but I push my fire back through my arms, stopping him. He can’t shift the part of him that’s on fire. It’ll harm him permanently.
He looks at me, so much pain in his gold eyes. So many feelings of betrayal. He thought I was his fucking long lost love. And maybe I am. We are not reborn with our previous memories. But even still, I want him to burn for everything he’s done to me.
Seeing the anger twisting my face, he mirrors it with his own.
Varius jumps onto his back and wraps his arms around the alpha’s neck, choking him, but Antonio shifts one arm into that of his wolf and slices his claws across Varius’ face. My husband lets go on instinct. A primal beast under the effect of the Craving.
Antonio rolls, his cock still stuck inside of me, and I go with him as he regains his feet. He grabs hold of my waist. His claws dig into my skin – now both arms changed. My fire flickers across his chest, but I keep it burning – until he yanks me off his knot.
He tears off most of his own dick, but he also rips out a chunk of my insides.
I scream.
Varius roars as he jumps off the werewolf’s back to get to me.
But Antonio throws me so hard across the room that I go through the wall and well into the next one, my intestines hanging out of me, flapping in the air. I hit the ground with a gasp, my body convulsing from the pain. I’m going into shock.
A keres, a reaper of death –long billowing hair, a scythe with dozens of souls trapped inside its blade trying to get free– flickers into existence. Her kind hugs the outer planes of Purgatory, and she’s shaping her world around me so she can reach inside me and take my soul.
Varius screams as he tries to get to me, but Antonio, now fully in his wolf form, though his chest is heavily burned, intercepts him, and the two of them crash through the other room.
My eyes flicker to the reaper.
She steps closer to me on bare feet, the world rippling out from her like she’s walking across a lake. Every ripple turns a bit more of this world into hers, changing nothing other than the fact that she can rip my soul from my body.
She smiles, a wide spread of small, sharp teeth, all points of pain and pleasure.
“Not long now, dearie,”
she coos as she reaches a hand towards me.
Her eyes bug wide as a child appears on the other side of me. A demon of some sort with red skin and little horns on her head above a smile so crazy, it matches the madness of her eyes. She jumps over me, a set of wings spreading out, and her barbed tail whips out, wrapping around the keres’ scythe. She yanks it out of the reaper’s hand. Tosses it into the air.
Then grabs it and slices it across the keres’ neck, cutting off her head.
My mouth falls open, blood trickling out of it. I have no idea what this creature is. A drazic perhaps, but they don’t have wings. So maybe she’s just a keres hunter… There is so much unknown about the planes of Purgatory.
“Micha!”
My head tries to turn at the sound of Maddox’s voice, but there’s no more energy left inside of me. The demon child thing turns back to me. She shakes her head on the vertical axis as she smiles wide. Her pigtails swish. A forked tongue flicks out to lick the lowered scythe.
“Pah.”
She spits to the side. “Tastes like chocolate.”
She drops the weapon, her little button nose wrinkling in disgust. Then she dances towards me like a ballerina, the tutu she’s wearing finally making “sense”
– the only sense I can catch at the moment. Her shirt is way too big for her though, and it billows as she moves. The words: Wanna be my bitch? is scrawled across it, above two dog collars: one black, one pink and spikey.
She stops beside me. Bends down with her hands on her hips. “Helicopters go nom nom nom. Goats go vroom vroom vroom.”
She vanishes, as does the plane of Purgatory, and I find a bottle of healing potion being pressed to my lips.
Maddox is talking to me, telling me to stay with him as he squats down beside me, naked and covered in blood. He points a wand between my legs, then up to my stomach.
I stare at him, so fucking happy he’s still alive.
I’ve known he’s been inside Varius’ brain for the last two months – that he went in as the egg of a tapeworm. Khalid contacted me through my soul doll not long after Varius stepped through the teleportation circle. He gambled with his brother’s life, not knowing what I’d do.
But I’ve wanted to kill Antonio since he took my baby from me. I lost my way a little, fell a bit too deep into the person I was pretending to be, almost died under the need for V – but I struggled forward every fucking step.
So Khalid told me it’d take two months for Maddox to mature enough to be able to use his magic again. Meaning, I had two months to get Antonio to lower his guard so we could attack.
But now that’s failing.
And he’s killing my husband.
My eyes fly over Maddox’s shoulder as I gulp down the liquid. A scream builds in my throat as I watch the two of them fight. Varius is completely consumed by the Craving, so he’s moving purely on instinct. He’s not thinking. He’s not planning. He has the power and speed to almost match Antonio now, and his wounds are bleeding less, but he can’t get the upper hand. He’s being torn apart piece by piece – a slash here, a bite there. Slowly but surely, he’s going to die.
“Help him,”
I beg, knowing I need more than one potion and a few flicks of a wand to get back into the fight.
“You’re the prio–”
I scream as Antonio punches my husband in the chest. Safeguard spell or not, he won’t survive having his heart ripped out. I try to push to my feet, but my legs won’t move. Maddox curses as he abandons me to pull on his shadows. Priority doesn’t mean shit if we’re all going to die.
He has Aleric inside his cage in the Shadow Domain, and he knows our only hope is if he gets him out. Now.
Varius roars as he headbutts Antonio in the face. The wolf staggers back, and his arm jerks free, but instead of blood and bits falling out, nothing does. Black smoke-like magic swirls in the hole, then solidifies, and flesh is there once more.
My mouth drops open, but I push my questions aside. There’s no time to wonder about whatever new magic he has. I struggle to my feet, ignoring the pain of my injuries, but I’m not leaving my husband to die after he walked into hel to save me.
Not leaving him to kill Antonio when that right is mine.
As Maddox starts to pull the cage out of his shadows, I rush forward. Bending low, I scoop up the knife I used to torture Varius. If I can heat it up until it’s molten and leave a chunk inside Antonio, he won’t be able to heal it until it’s out.
I’ve already taken his eye and damaged a good part of his chest. He can’t keep this up forever.
The damage I’ve already taken says neither can we.
But I’m already dead inside. He’s already killed me. He took my baby and Dayne, and if he takes Varius, there’ll be nothing left. So I jump into the fray, not caring that I am joining a battle between two sups way more powerful than me.