Chapter 41
Quinn
Heat crawled over my skin, sinking into muscle and marrow.
Every twitch made the ropes bite and caress at once, each knot sending a pulse of pleasure through me.
I’d never been this high, this needy. It was better than whispers, hunger, and the endless guilt that had become my life.
I tried to move my hands, and my bindings moved with them.
I moaned, cheeks burning. Wrong. So wrong. And still, my body begged for more.
Between one blink and the next, Cayden appeared in front of me, buck naked with his thick, hard dick straining between his legs. He pushed against my breastbone, lowering me to the bed so he could straddle me.
My heart stumbled. His eyes were Cayden’s, but everything else was… off. Corrupted.
“No. This isn’t what I want.” I struggled against the bindings. My unbound legs thrashed as my body argued that we wanted exactly this. More of exactly this. “You’re not really Cayden. I abandoned Cayden. I left him. I’m a shit friend. You don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
Cayden’s eyes watered, and he cupped my cheek. I flinched back, expecting pain. Instead, my best friend’s calm washed across me. The same feeling when he linked our ankles together under the table or let me fall asleep on his shoulder filled me with comfort.
I still didn’t believe it.
I wrenched back. “No. This is a trick.”
The not-Cayden ran his hand to the back of my neck and fisted my hair. “It’s me, Quinn. I’m here to save you, but right now, I need to play along. We’re being watched.”
Not-Cayden doubled, and the room spun with the drugs coursing through my system. “Prove it.”
He brought his lips to my ear but didn’t kiss me. “How dense are you, my special runt?”
His words should have hurt, but I felt him smile against the side of my face. He’d used dense and special to describe me when we first met. They’d been insults once, but they were ours; a frayed lifeline yanking me back to reality. Relief slammed into me, and massive tears ran down my cheeks.
If Cayden thought I was worth saving, maybe I was.
Cayden kissed my ear and ran his tongue along the outside. He sucked my earlobe into his mouth. My tears dried, and my toes curled.
“They expect me to fuck, not talk.” Cayden ran a hand down my side and expertly plucked a silk rope. A trio of knots vibrated, and my hips bucked in response. “I need to pull out whatever they drugged you with, and you need to be ready.”
For what? I must not have verbalized the question because he didn’t answer.
He plucked the rope again. I trembled as the knots vibrated with it. Yes, slipped out before I could catch it, soaked in need.
Cayden kissed down my body before spreading my legs and lying on his stomach. He paused with his mouth inches from devouring my sex, but still not touching me.
Drugs ran rampant through my system, and ropes I hadn’t asked for bound me. I shouldn’t want more. But I did. Cayden reached under my hips, urging me to crush his head with my thighs. Slowly, I brought them up, hiding his face from view.
His breath brushed my clit before moving to my thigh. He kissed my skin once before his tongue danced across it. A straight line joined a curve with a slash. It took a sluggish heartbeat to realize he drew a rune with his tongue.
With my legs up, the knots rubbed and rubbed. Liquid heat washed through me. I panted and mewled like a cat in heat.
He connected the last line, and painful fire burned through my veins, making me scream. A sharper pain dug into the inside of my thigh. I looked down to see his teeth sunk into my skin, disguising the pain of his magic.
My head cleared, though the heat running along my body didn’t ease. Cayden covered me with his solid frame. He bit my neck and sucked, continuing the show while hiding as much of me as possible.
The world stopped spinning. The stars above came into focus.
Mirrors all around reflected the twinkling bobbles with us, intertwined with the blood red of the sheets.
Cayden bit my neck a final time and kissed up.
His very hard erection dragged across my hip, and sparks literally crackled in the air above us.
“Ezra needs an opening,” he said so softly.
Ezra was here too. Hope filled my heart. Although the ropes still felt too good, with the drugs gone, my brain was taking control of my hormones. Why had Cayden told me Ezra needed an opening?
I was tied up and collared. I was useless. No. Don’t do that. I stopped myself. I wasn’t what those voices said; I wasn’t my old crazy self either. Cayden told me because he knew I could help.
I wasn’t drunk this time, but the exact words filled my mind: I was power incarnate. Literally, magic didn’t change the world until the tremors, yet I had power before them. This collar was supposed to keep me from using magic, yet I’d touched it with my Majekah and changed its properties.
Ezra needed an opening. The collar blocked my magic, but it didn’t block my Majekah, which logically meant the magic I called up when I panicked should still work. I needed an emotional overload.
Cayden shifted his weight above me. His hard cock brushed my junction, and knots ground against my clit. I was a ball of pure, needy heat. What was an orgasm other than a release of energy and emotion?
“Flip me,” I whispered to Cayden. “I want to ride you.”
Cayden froze, his lips almost resting on my cheek. “I won’t rape you, Quinn. You didn’t choose to be here. I shouldn’t even be touching you.”
“Trust me.” I turned my head. “I’m asking for this. Just let me up.”
Trust me. Those two words made my best friend move.
He pushed up and ran a hand down his front.
As if he couldn’t stand the pressure anymore, he pumped his throbbing erection.
A tear fell out of one of his eyes. Without warning, he grabbed my waist and flipped us like I was a rag doll.
He made sure his dick rested against his stomach, far away from entering me, before lowering my spread legs.
I took it. “Make me explode.”
He reached for my wrist, and with a single pull, the bindings fell, freeing my arms. I placed my hand on his chest and ground my clit against his hard length, giving my body exactly what it wanted.
The stars glowed brighter in the mirrors.
More sparks popped around us. My collar warmed, almost burning me.
Cayden strummed a trailing line of silk.
The knots squishing my clit combined with the pressure from Cayden’s throbbing dick made me lose my mind.
Little noises I didn’t know I could make came out in grunts and moans.
The collar heated further. I tried to picture teleporting to my dorm, or maybe into Xan’s arms. But everything felt too good, and rational thoughts slipped away.
Cayden braced my hips with his hands and rocked under me. “Is this what you want?” He dug his fingers into the top of my butt cheeks, and the knots tightened.
My orgasm ripped through me like a rupture—violent, brutal, unstoppable. Power detonated from the collar with a sonic boom, shattering glass. The sky fractured as reflections rained down on me. Through the jagged gaps, Cayden’s brothers stared back.
My heart hammered as fear and embarrassment swallowed my orgasm.
The emotion only lasted a second as the shattered glass kept moving with the shock wave of my magic.
Sharp shards sliced out in every direction.
Men dressed in tie-dyed orange dropped to the floor, blood spattered from faces and necks.
Someone screamed as a massive chunk slid into their abdomen.
Blood painted the walls and clung tackily to my skin, hot and metallic in the air. My breath came in ragged gasps. I hadn’t meant to kill them, hadn’t meant to kill anyone, but their screams said otherwise.
My body shuddered from so many mixed emotions that I couldn’t move. Horror, anger, and lust collided, freezing me as the truth slammed in.
The old man, Cayden’s Prophet, sent Cayden in here to rape me while his followers watched…
and I was killing them for it. Cayden grabbed my head, pulled me down to him, and captured my lips in a bruising kiss.
I couldn’t help but return it. For one moment, everything I’d done vanished. It was just my best friend and me.
A patch of shards to my left crashed against something solid.
Cayden groaned against my mouth before releasing my lips. He reached to my back and pulled one of the silk ropes, and the remaining bindings fell away from me. I hadn’t seen him start drawing a rune, but a pile of clothing flew toward us.
“You’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing.” Cayden pulled my bumblebee-yellow hoodie over my head. “If any live, I will gouge their eyes out. This is what my family does, and I will make sure it never happens again.”
I swallowed. Men lay on the ground, begging for help, while others lay unmoving. But too many were already picking themselves up.
The Prophet let out a rasping laugh. This wasn’t over.
Cayden finished pulling his pants back on and shoved his feet into a pair of shoes. I managed to gather enough wits to pull my arms through my hoodie. I’d been drugged, but we’d been making an opening for Ezra, right?
Cold, sticky liquid brushed my legs as the hoodie fell into place. Blood soaked the bottom. My stomach lurched, bile burning up my throat. Goosebumps raced over my skin, and a violent shiver tore through me. I jerked back, swiping at my thighs as if I could scrub the feeling away.
“We have to go now.” Cayden grabbed my arm and pulled me off the raised bed.
A shard of glass cut into my bare feet, and I bit my lip shut to keep from hissing in pain.
“Go where, son?” the Prophet rasped.
I curled in on myself. I didn’t want to turn, but I couldn’t stop myself.
The Prophet stood behind a wall of Cayden’s brothers.
The glass from my explosion lay in a circle around them.
They were untouched. Not a drop of blood.
My stomach hollowed out. The Prophet hadn’t survived by luck; he’d been waiting for this moment.
Cayden stepped in front of me with both his hands already glowing.
“Get the fuck out of here!” he snarled and thrust his magic toward his Prophet.