Chapter 62
Ash
Life returns to normal with a deep breath.
It’s cruel in a way. How effortless life just exists.
My cousins were the first to leave. But not before we made plans to reconnect. Just as soon as we figure out how time moves between all of us.
My mother actually chose to stay. She made friends in that kitchen. Over baked breads and pastries. I get it. Sweets do have the tendency to break people down.
The group of them who were imprisoned by Moros, some human, some from other courts, they all chose to stay here because despite everything it’s the only place that has felt like home to them.
I get it, I feel the same way.
Dagda and the triple goddess disappeared the moment the dust settled. Somehow, I know they’ve finally laid down for that well-deserved nap.
I’ll miss them, but I also understand.
Tiana began rebuilding from the dust of her court. Rising like a phoenix. Slowly those in hiding emerged back to their homes. And when Tiana remained a stable presence, even more so.
Kestra already took on a consort, much to Kieran’s chagrin, it was in fact Jadeve. I don’t have the heart to tell him that she may or may not have a couple more.
I’ll leave him his peace.
He’s already had to deal with my little big brother. Who is keeping his promise to annoy the absolute crap out of him.
Maybe that’s why we all ended up back at the Academy. Ironic as it is.
Also because it keeps Whispen distracted. He’s already a professor. The youngest but also one of the oldest. It’s really quite the mind fuck.
We settled in a cabin within the Wild Forest and near the Academy grounds.
The Treasures are still gone. Disappeared with the rubble.
I suspect they’re off to find a new bearer. I learned a lot in the last few weeks. I’ve enjoyed listening to the guys’ origin stories at night when the nightmares wake me.
Instead of pretending they don’t exist, I’ve been opening up more and more.
I also don’t think my guys miss the Treasures at all.
Finn, well, he really is rewriting history.
Orion is my literal bodyguard during court activities.
And Kieran. Oh, my Kieran. He’s the professor now. On the hidden lore of the Unseelie Court.
He won’t tell a soul how much he loves it.
“Where did you go, my love?” Orion presses a kiss to my temple. We’ve been walking back home. Home.
I still can’t get used to saying it. Home.
“I was just thinking.” I lean into him, holding onto his arm. “It’s been weeks and I’m feeling a litt—”
All the breath leaves me as Orion flips me over his shoulder, his hand cupping my ass. “You have no idea how much I want the end of that sentence to go as follows,” he pauses dramatically. “Horny. I’m feeling horny. I’ll even accept randy.”
I can’t even laugh in this position, though I try.
My hair trails along the ground. Daisies reaching up to tug on the strands to see if I need help. And rushing off when they get what’s really about to go down.
“Horny,” I tell Orion.
He pauses right there on the path home. We aren’t even close.
“Orion.” I press up, knowing exactly where he is going with this.
“Do you want to run, my queen?” he asks, his body vibrating.
“No.” Running is the last thing on my mind.
“Good.” He walks over to a tree and pushes my ass against a branch. “Skirt up, baby. I haven’t had lunch yet.”
“You cannot possibly mean—”
And there goes my dress.
“You ripped it.”
“It’s in the way of my meal.” My bare ass presses against a tree branch. “Now hold on to that branch.”
I swear a branch moves just so I can settle my torso on it.
“Now wrap those sexy thighs around my head.” I do as I’m told because I very much like where this is going. “Just like that, baby.”
He’s not quite there. His hands span my hips, calloused thumbs digging into the dip beside the bone, and even from below me I can see the strain of him—the way his shirt pulls tight across his shoulders, the bulge already obvious through the front of his pants.
Then he taps the tree.
This bitch grows until I’m now dangling.
And I’m the perfect height. Only I have to kneel on his shoulders.
“It’s a honey tree.” He laps at my pussy and I hold on for dear life.
The bark warms where I’m gripping it and the smell hits a half-second later—honey, real honey, sweet enough to be obscene given what his mouth is doing. The bark itself is smooth under my fingers, worn soft like the forest knew I’d need something to grip.
My thighs clench around his head and he groans against me, the vibration shooting straight through my core.
“Orion—”
“Shh.” Another lap. Slow. Torturous. “I’m eating. Don’t interrupt.”
He’s not kidding. He devours me like I’m the first meal he’s had in weeks. His tongue drags through my folds, circles my clit, dips inside me just to taste.
The sounds he makes are obscene—wet and hungry and utterly without shame. It only makes me wetter.
The tree shudders beneath me. Flowers bloom along the branch I’m gripping, releasing a green-sweet smell that mixes with the honey and his sweat and whatever I’m putting into the air.
Naughty, approving forest. I love it.
“You taste like mine.” He growls it against my clit. “Like you’ve always been mine. Like every part of you was made for my mouth.”
“Orion, I’m going to—”
“Already?” He pulls back just enough to grin up at me. Pupils gone vertical, he’s barely in there. There’s a sheen of me already on his lower lip. “We just started, Thorn.”
“Then stop being so good at this.”
“Never.” He dives back in.
His tongue flattens against my clit, slow and broad, then narrows to a point that flicks just where I need it—and the second I start to clench around nothing, the second my thighs lock against his ears, he pulls back.
Breath hot against me, and smug.
“Not yet, Thorn.”
“You absolute —”
“Beg.”
I open my mouth to tell him exactly where he can put that suggestion, and his tongue finds me again—gentler this time, almost lazy, just enough to keep me on the knife’s edge without letting me fall over it.
“That’s not begging, baby. That’s complaining.”
“Orion, I swear to every god you’ve ever annoyed —”
He laughs against my cunt. Actually laughs. The vibration alone almost finishes me and he knows it because he pulls back the second I start to tip. He plants open-mouthed kisses on the inside of my thigh instead.
Then he bites. Hard enough that I hiss. Soft enough that the next sound out of me is closer to a moan.
“There she is.”
Two thick fingers push inside me. Slow, deliberate, the stretch coaxes a sound out of me I didn’t approve of.
His other hand splays wide across my lower belly, holding me still when my hips try to chase him. I can see his throat work when he swallows each drop that comes out of me. The pulse at the side of his neck right where my thigh is pressed against him hammers against my skin.
The way he can pin me with one hand and ruin me with the other… Well, It’s hot as hell.
“That’s it.” His voice is muffled against me but I hear every word. “Ride my face. Take what you need.”
I can’t help it. My hips roll, grinding against his mouth, and he groans like I just gave him everything he ever wanted. I’m so past shame and diving right into this forest voyeur.
“Fuck— Orion—”
“You think the forest grew this branch by accident?” He curls his fingers up, finding that spot, and the branch is creaking under my grip. “It knows what’s mine. The whole fucking world knows what’s mine.”
“Orion, please —”
“There it is.” He sucks my clit hard, then softer, then hard again, every pull of his mouth synced with the curl of his fingers.
“I have wanted my mouth on this cunt since the day you bled on that dais and I couldn’t get to you.
Years of guarding empty groves and the only thing that ever brought me back to life was you.
Now come on my tongue, Thorn. Right fucking now.
I want every tree in this forest to know who put that sound in your throat. ”
I shatter.
Pleasure tears through me in waves that arch my back against the tree, and somewhere underneath the white-out my magic answers.
It surges up from the soles of my feet, through my thighs, out through every place his mouth has touched me. The smell hits a half-second later. Pine sap and crushed honey-flower and wet earth, my magic going wide.
The forest answers with it. Vines spiral up the tree trunk. Flowers burst open in clusters of gold and pink. Somewhere nearby a flock of birds takes flight, the wingbeats loud as a small storm, startled by the magic pouring off me in waves.
He doesn’t pull off when I stop shaking, he only slows before he drags his tongue through me one more time, achingly slow, like he’s tasting what he made me do. Then he kisses my thigh—the soft inside, where I can feel the bruise of his bite forming.
“Delicious.”
“I hate you.”
“Your pussy says otherwise.”
I can’t even argue. He’s right.
He taps the tree and it lowers me back down, branches shifting until I’m cradled against his chest. My legs are useless. My brain is static. I’m fairly certain I just traumatized several woodland creatures.
“Can you walk?” He’s already carrying me, one arm under my knees, the other around my back.
“Absolutely not.”
“Good.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Didn’t want you to anyway.”
His pulse hammers under my ear all the way home. The pine pitch on his hand has dried to amber on the back of my thigh and I can feel it cracking when I shift.
There’s still a sheen of me on his beard and he hasn’t bothered wiping it. Instead he wears it like a fucking trophy. Every Fae we pass on the path home is going to know exactly what he was doing twenty minutes ago, and I can tell by the set of his jaw he wants them to.
Luckily we don’t pass a single soul.
I feel the other two before the cottage comes into view. Kieran’s silver-blue, curious. Finnian’s gold, already anticipating.
They know we’re coming.
They know what state I’m in.
“Kieran’s going to have opinions about my dress,” I murmur against Orion’s chest.
“Kieran can buy you a new one.”
“You ripped it.”
“I’ll rip the next one, too.” He grins down at me. “And the one after that. Until you learn to stop wearing things that get between me and what’s mine.”
The cottage appears through the trees. Smoke curls from the chimney. Warm light glows in the windows.
Home.
I’m still not used to saying it, but I’m getting closer.
The door is already open. Inside, two sets of eyes turn toward us. Both of them take in my bare legs, my ruined dress, the bite Orion left, the flush still burning down my sternum like he marked me there, too.
“You started without us,” Finnian observes. He’s sprawled in a chair by the fire, a book forgotten in his lap, looking at me like I’m a problem he’s very much looking forward to solving.
“She was feeling horny.” Orion sets me on my feet. My knees wobble. He steadies me with a hand on my hip. “I was being a good mate.”
“A good mate would share.” Kieran rises from the couch, and the temperature drops three degrees with him.
Frost feathers across the rim of the glass on the side table.
His gaze drags down my body and where it pauses on the bite, I feel the cold settle on it like a second mouth.
“Put her on the bed. We’re not done with you yet, troublesome thing. ”
The words send heat flooding back through me.
“Well?” I raise an eyebrow. “You heard him.”
Orion’s grin turns feral.
“Yes, my queen.”