22. Ivy
The rain continued well into the next day, a torrential downpour that kept us inside. At least the heat had broken, and everyone’s mood lifted by being able to breathe in the auditorium.
Stephens damn near died on the spot when we got to the fight scene between Romeo, Mercutio, and Tybalt, and the awkwardness that had been there three days ago was now nonexistent.
“I don’t know what it is between you and Lex,” Stephens told me afterward, “but you two showed me something tonight I want you to lean into. How different would this scene be if Tybalt and Mercutio were secretly in love?”
I snorted a laugh and buried my face in my hands.
Jesus Christ.
“Secretly in love, huh?” Lex said, twisting his lips into that smug, arrogant grin that I hated. “Well, I don’t know if Ivy and I can pull that off, but we’ll try.”
“Play around with it tonight,” Stephens said before turning his attention to Carter and Miri.
“I have about a thousand things I’m thinking of playing around with tonight,” Lex purred next to my ear. The heat from his breath coasted down the front of my shirt, and he lifted a finger, delicately dancing it over his bite mark on my neck.
The entire left side of my body broke out into goose pimples, and I shivered.
“Well, that’s too bad.” I took a step away from him. “I was going to do some research, so I guess you’ll have to play with your girlfriend instead.”
“Maybe I’d rather play with your boyfriend.”
“I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige.” It should have made me jealous, and perhaps a small jolt of fire surged through my blood before I quickly smothered it down. The thought of Lex and Carter fooling around turned me on, and that confused me. Shouldn’t I find it audacious? Shouldn’t I be upset that they had something I didn’t? The whole poly thing was still new, and until I figured out what happened to us in those woods, I didn’t have time to focus on it.
“What are you researching?” He raised his eyebrows, looking genuinely interested.
My various subjects flitted through my mind—the town, fairies, ruins, ancient rings, disappearing women, fairy gifts, the words on our hands, this indescribable urge to disappear deep inside of the woods and never come out again. Ya’ know, the usual things a twenty-two-year-old prelaw student wants to know about. No big deal. Still, I didn’t want Lex to know. He’d wanted us to drop it, but I couldn’t tame my curiosity.
“None of your beeswax,” I said in that same tone I’d always used with him, the one that told him to fuck off. But this time, it held less bite.
* * *
I headed to the library. Ashley had said there was an entire section devoted to the local legends, and I planned to stay here until I read them all or until the library closed. The rain pelted against the windows while I flipped through the pages of a dusty old tome I’d pulled out of a shelf that clearly no one had touched in ages.
Killwater Woods: History and Grounds by J. M. McMurphy
I’d been here for two hours and so far all I’d learned was the college had been founded in 1645. Prior to that, the land was completely undeveloped. The college had kept the surrounding forest in trust since then, allowing no one to build on it since at least the 1680s, which meant the ruins we found were older than the college.
No way that could be true. It looked old, but not five hundred years old. Maybe two or three hundred tops? Of course, what the hell did I know about ancient Irish ruins? I’d been a poli-sci major. I closed the book and put it back, trailing my fingers down the shelf as I read each title, hoping one would jump out at me.
Legends of the Killwater Area. I grabbed that one and balanced it on my hip.
The Curse: Plague in Sixteenth Century Northern Ireland. That one sounded fun, so I grabbed it as well before returning to my stack at the table.
My research led me down the windy rabbit hole of disappearancesin Killwater, at least forty in the last hundred years, which hadn’t been enough to raise alarm at face value. The police chalked them up to drunk college students never finding their way out again, but combined with the local legends about fairy curses, it gave the woods a sinister vibe.
What was up with that ring? Did it mean something? Was it important?
There were as many legends about fairies as there were books in the entire library—maybe the world. Some of them weaved a frightening tale of child abduction, of human infants replaced with fairy changelings. They mentioned light and dark fairies that used to live in Ireland before men destroyed their realm and speculated that there might still be fairies living in the woods today. But I didn’t put much stock into these tales. They were, after all, stories.
Explain Siobhan’s kiss. Explain disappearing for twenty-four hours when it felt like twelve. Explain the vow on your hand.
Until the end.
Our vows carved into the same spot on each of our palms, curving along the lifeline on our mound of Venus. There was no way any of us could have held a knife steady enough to carve something this small.
A throat cleared from the spot in front of me, and I looked up, my eyebrows furrowing when I met Lex’s incredulous gaze.
“You’ve been down here all night,” he said.
“And?”
“I told you, I had plans for us.” He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, his button-down shirt rolled up to the elbows. His dark hair fell in his face, unkempt from how much he’d evidently run his hands through it, and his pouty lips pursed even more as he waited for my response. Lex had always been so undeniably attractive, and after what we’d done together only a few nights ago, I should have gone running right back into his bed. But no…my feelings for him couldn’t have changed that quickly, so I needed to keep researching, keep figuring out what made us react this way.
I snorted a laugh and went back to my reading. “I didn’t think you were serious.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because we don’t like each other, Lucifer.” I flipped another page in my book. “We never have.”
“We married each other.”
I rolled my eyes and turned another page. “That was pretend.”
“Was it?”
He grabbed my hand and flipped it over, revealing those stupid fucking scratches, and I tried to act like the pulse of excitement at his touch had more to do with how warm his palms were compared to mine. I whipped away from him, brushing my thumb over the vows like maybe I could rub them away if I tried hard enough.
“What were these plans?” I said.
His lips lifted into a slow, devious smile. I got his meaning loud and clear.
“We’re not high anymore.” I sighed, pretending like his heavily implied innuendo didn’t annoy me…didn’t make me run hot for reasons I’d rather not investigate. “There’s no reason for us to pretend like that was anything else.”
He hummed a noise and tilted his head, his eyes wandering over me as I resisted the urge to squirm. I hated when he looked at me like this, like he was peeling my layers away and baring my soul, whether I wanted him to or not. Yet, hate and love were so fucking close to the same thing, weren’t they? I clenched my hand into a fist to keep from dragging him across the table so I could see if his lips tasted the same way sober as they did when I was drunk.
Needing to put space between his mouth and this clawing, aching desperation in my soul, I stood and pretended like there was another book I wanted to find. Lex stalked behind me as I meandered down an aisle, looking over the spines for something to grab.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” he said.
I sighed and ran my eyes down the books on my right. “Try me.”
“Whatever this thing is between us, it’s only going?—”
“There is no thing between us,” I cut him off with a curt look over my shoulder.
“Oh, sure there is.” He took another step closer, his hands in his pockets. “Everyone sees it now. Even Stephens.”
“That had nothing to do with any thing between us. That had to do with a drunk night in the woods.”
He ran a finger over wisps of my hair, brushing a piece back from my face, and the soft caress of his fingertips sent a flush of wanton heat down my neck. Flames spread up my cheeks and into my chest, my palm instinctively going to cover the X on my throat. He smacked my hand away, widening his eyes as he gripped my windpipe and traced his thumb over it the way he had the night at the pub.
God, his touch on me made me shake, as if I had a direct line from that spot on my neck down to my clit. I shivered with need for him, so agonizingly aware of it that I clenched my jaw to keep from reacting.
No.
This was Lex, and he was off-limits, always off-limits. I didn’t like him. He didn’t like me. We’d already defined our roles together. There was no reason to change them. Even if we were going to be married.
I took a step away.
“I know your secret, Ivy Washington,” he whispered, narrowing his hazel eyes, that dark hair falling on his forehead.
“I don’t have any more secrets, Alexei Fairfax,” I said, gulping against my suddenly dry throat.
“Yes, you do.” He leaned in closer, the heat of his body radiating into my skin, making me sweaty and flustered. “The last time, the time just between us, I know it was you.”
I swallowed, avoiding his gaze and everything about him. The way I wanted him shouldn’t be real. It wasn’t real.
“You you, not high you.” He pressed his mouth against the curve of my ear. “You liked it.”
I trembled, squeezing my thighs together to curb the pulse between them. I had liked it. I liked it so, so much. But I couldn’t tell him that.
I moved away, but he shot his hand out and wrapped it around my wrist to tug me back. I collided with his chest, the smell of deodorant and cigarettes and Lex hitting me in the face, making me want to bury my nose in his neck to breathe him in until I suffocated.
“Let go of me.” I struggled against him.
“You and me? It’s fucked-up, X,” he growled. “But you like that, too.”
“I hate you,” I snarled, baring my teeth.
“Yeah?” He brought his face closer. “That’s the thing I like the most.”
“You’re a sick fuck.”
“So are you,” he hissed. “Aren’t we a pair?”
I could have killed him. I could have dug my fingers into his eyes and smacked at his head like I used to do when we were kids. Now that I raged with all the scalding, furious passions of a woman, I wanted to hold him down by the neck and fuck him until I couldn’t think.
He must have read that in my gaze because he shook his head and laughed out a dark, demented noise that made him seem villainous, like a creature out of a horror movie.
“I bet if I shoved my hand in your pants right now”—he ghosted the tip of his teeth over my earlobe—“I’d find out just how much you love hating me.”
“Hmm.” I narrowed my eyes at him and backed up, my entire body flush against the racks, his thigh between my legs, his heart pounding in rapid time with mine. “I bet you’re so thickheaded that you actually think this hate-to-lust thing is working on me.”
“Is it?” He grinned, brushing his lips over mine in an electric sizzle that amplified the untenable connection between us.
I scoffed. “You should be so lucky.”
“Oh, X. Luck has nothing to do with it.” Lex chuckled and leaned back a millimeter, just enough to meet my gaze. Then his attention darted to my mouth and back again. “You look like you want me to kiss you. Do you want me to kiss you?”
Yes.
“No.” The word came out on a squeak.
“God, you’re such a liar.” His mouth descended on mine, mesmerizing and commanding, and I tunneled my hands through the hair on the back of his head, my nails against his scalp. He growled and bit at my bottom lip while our tongues wrestled for dominance, and I moaned when his cock twitched against my pelvis, revealing that he was just as much into this as I was. This dance had been going on for far too long.
He teased at the button of my jeans, plucking them open with a simple flick. Then he shoved his hand down the front and cupped me, his middle finger playing over my clit and going right for my entrance, already slick and ready for him. Shame rolled through me at how much I wanted it. That chuckle echoed low in his chest, urging me on, making me desperate and needy in ways that I shouldn’t…not from him. But oh, God…it was like my desire for Lex had been dormant under my skin for eons, and now that it had gotten loose, I struggled to contain it again.
“I fucking knew it,” he murmured, breaking the kiss and resting his forehead against mine. “You want me so bad that you can’t stand it.”
Glaring up at him, I yanked at the leather of his belt, the metal jingling as I snapped open the button on his pants. Just when I was about to shove my hand down hispants to prove my point, a throat cleared behind him, and we both jumped. Lex ripped his fingers out of me and I rushed to grab my pants, holding the seam together as I glanced at our intruder.
“Excuse me, Ivy,” the librarian said. “We need to close up. Should I hold your books for you?”
“Uh—yes. Please.” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat to try to hide it. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” A heartbeat of silence. “Hey, maybe you two could…I don’t know…Go find a room. The whole library can hear you. Good acoustics, you know.”
Lex let out a deep belly laugh while mortification rolled through me, and I stalked away, buttoning up my jeans before running my panicky fingers through my hair to make myself presentable.
I did not want Alexei Fairfax. Not one fucking bit.
As long as I kept telling myself that, it would be true.
It’s called manifestation.
I flung my messenger bag over my shoulder and grabbed the book about plague, hoping the disgusting topic would cool my sexy time jets. I pretended I didn’t like the way Lex smiled at me as he casually followed me back to the dorms, like how a lion might leisurely trail after a baby gazelle, if only to give it a false sense of security before tearing it to pieces.
Except I wasn’t a baby gazelle. If Lex was a lion, I was a lion. And I would sink my claws into that pretty fucking face as soon as I could.
We walked down a dimly lit corridor. It was late, almost ten thirty, so the overhead florescent lights had long since been replaced by the navel orange of the low-wattage bulbs over the doors. No one was around, just the two of us and our footsteps on the hardwood.
A few feet from the main corridor, a flutter kicked in my lower gut, sort of how it felt right at the start of sex, right when a cock slid inside me, a poke right up against my G-spot. I paused, furrowing my brows as I decided it must be residual effects from my encounter with Lex in the library…not like I’d liked any of that. Not at all. He’d all but attacked me. So I ignored it to put my head down and keep walking.
The flutter kicked harder this time, and I dug in my heels as my eyes clenched shut, a moan barreling out of my throat. Tingles of pleasure shot through my body, and need vibrated through me, my body suddenly so aroused, so desperate to be filled, I thought I might combust.
“Fuuucck,” Lex said in a starved tone, his body next to me. I fisted my hands in his shirt as another wave of lust rocked through me, this one more intense, arching my back and frying my nerve endings.
I couldn’t stop myself. I pushed up on my toes and devoured Lex’s mouth as he tugged me over to the shadow cover of an alcove between two doors, pressing me up against the cool brick wall. The sharp contrast to his overheated body added to my shivering muscles, and I parted my legs on instinct to make room for him, my knee going to his hip so he could get that rock-solid cock right up against my clit.
How I moaned when they finally connected. How I loved it. How I had craved it.
For, undoubtedly, he had been correct.
I wanted him so badly I could barely stand it.
I wanted his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my neck, his thumb pressed right up against that X he was obsessed with. He rutted against me like the world might end, like we were figuring out how our bodies smashed together for the first time. The friction of the denim and my panties and his dick against my aching clit added to the growing sense of urgency building inside of me, seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
Like I could feel every person in the world who was doing exactly what we were doing, who was reveling in their own debauchery.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered. “Please don’t stop?—”
A crescendo hit, and I tightened my hands around the fabric of his shirt, my nails digging into the chest underneath, every molecule pulsed with the weight of my orgasm pulling me under its grip.
I couldn’t resist it. I gave into the rush of euphoria racing through my veins, squealing and laughing while it had its way with me.
Lex thrust against me two more times before his cock gave a jerk, and he froze, groaning in my ear, sinking his teeth into my earlobe, clinging to me like he might fall over if he let go.
Once those feel-good hormones died down, he leaned back and looked at me, his mouth agape and eyes wide, shock and horror mixing in that hazel stare, mirroring my own.
* * *
My body raged like it did out in the woods, like I was high on life and the world would never end. Except this time, I hadn’t had any wine. I hadn’t kissed a stranger who offered me a gift I promptly lost. This had come out of nowhere.
When we got back to the dorm, we discovered it had hit Carter and Miri even harder.
I opened the door to a hushed, “Shit” and “Is it them?”
Miri sat on top of Carter, her legs on either side of his thighs, her skirts plumed around them. Her hands were on his knees, and his fingers gripped her ass, but his jeans appeared to still be on. They hadn’t gone much further than Lex and I had in the hallway. I didn’t remember much from that night in the woods, but this couldn’t have been the first time they’d been so close. I’d slept with both Miri and Lex, so who was I to judge? Yet the two of them here by themselves hit me in the chest with a fiery righteous stab that I had no right to feel, tingling all the way down to my fingers, which had intertwined with Lex’s.
I wanted to sob. I wanted to join them. I wanted…I didn’t know…I just wanted.
“It’s okay, X,” Lex whispered, leaning into me. He moved the hair over my shoulder and brushed his fingers against the side of my neck. “Look at how beautiful they are together.”
They were. The strength in Carter’s chest matched the elegance and softness in Miri, and together, they were the most elegantly made people I’d ever seen. I loved both of them so incredibly, so completely, that watching them together turned me on. It shouldn’t, but it did.
“We’re married,” Lex whispered. “Remember? We made vows.”
I turned to face him, his mouth so close to mine, so frustratingly close. It hit me again. This overwhelming power, this urge to consume everyone in this room.
I had to have him. I just…I had to.
Lex kissed me and tore at my shirt, yanking it over my head. I scrambled for the button on my jeans and shoved them down to my ankles, stepping out of them. He had that look in his hazel gaze again, the one he’d given me in the library, like he couldn’t wait to devour me. His hair fell over this face and I raked my fingers through it, brushing it out of his eyes. My bra went next, and Carter whispered something to Miri that made her chuckle, and the sound of their combined joy radiated through my soul.
I fell back on the bed right next to Carter, holding myself up on my elbows as I spread my legs for my nemesis. My fiancé. My husband. The heat radiated from Carter’s body, from his shoulder down to his legs, and when Lex stripped right in front of us, Carter and I made similar groans of excitement. He wasn’t as muscular as Carter, but that did not make the long lines of his body any less desirable. His tattoos contrasted his skin, swirling and sparkling in the dim light, making him out to be the villain he always claimed he was.
“See something you like, Chicago?” Lex drawled, making Carter laugh and throw back his head, sighing and groaning and gripping Miri’s hips harder while she worked to free his cock from his pants. Lex paused to wrap an arm around Miri’s neck and pull her lips to his.
“Hello, darling,” she whispered with a big grin.
“Hello, Princess,” Lex said, and then he crawled over me, bringing his mouth to mine again and spearing his cock deep inside of me in one quick movement. I arched into the mind-numbing sensation, gripping Miri’s calf and sinking my teeth into Carter’s shoulder at my side.
I should fight it, I told myself. I should push this away—this high, this unknown craze that had abducted us and taken our sensibilities. It’s not real. None of this is real.
It seemed so much easier to simply sink into its abyss, to let Lex bite my neck and hold me down and take me while our husband fucked our wife in the bed next to us.
In an upside-down version of what had happened the other night, Lex grabbed my chin to force my gaze back to his, holding me with his stare while I met his thrusts blow for blow. That tension sparked to life again, that familiar pull to Lex Fairfax that had started the night his brother died. Perhaps no matter what we’d done, no matter what happened, we would have always ended up right here.
Carter grunted and Miri moaned, clearly as caught up in the pheromones as Lex and me, and their pleasure echoed inside of me as if it were my own. Because they were. We were one. We had promised each other unconditional eternity and then we’d consummated it for an entire day. There was no going back now. We were truly connected on every molecular and meta-physical level, and this was the proof.
I grabbed Lex’s satiny hair and arched into his assault, and when Miri came, it exploded inside me, shoving me into my own orgasm. Nothing in the world was more exquisite than the heaven we’d found inside this room.
“Fuck.” Lex groaned, kissing me as he exploded deep inside me, his cock jerking, his muscles tensing. God, what a magnificent sight. “Fucking hell, X.”
Carter’s orgasm erupted next, a warm fiery thing, followed quickly by Miri. Then it was over. Whatever had hit us, whatever caused the madness, it dissipated as quickly as it had come on.
Lex rolled off me and Miri fell to the other side of Carter, her legs spread out over him, and her feet resting on my stomach. For the moment, we basked in the moonlight creeping in from the slits in the window.
My body ached. My mouth felt dry. I tasted like old books and Lex and sweat, and we all smelled like sex. But none of that mattered, because what had just happened meant only one thing. Whatever happened to us out in those woods had followed us back to reality.
“This is bad,” I finally said.
No one disagreed.