Chapter 41
EVER
I’m not doing this!” I grab Atom’s fists, trying to free my shirt. I don’t want it to be me.
“Yes, you are!” He looks up at me, buckets of worry in his eyes. And something else… confidence. “You have the control. You have the last of Ametrine’s essence. You can stop this.”
“That’s ridiculous.” My heart tips on its side, the realization hitting me: my father is the god of death, and I carry the essence from the creator of life. No wonder I’m so unstable. How am I supposed to balance that? “I can’t even control myself.”
The plants continue their upward climb, passing my chest, up over my head. And up and up.
“I’m telling you!” Atom yells, his arms slipping around my waist. “It’s the only way!”
I look up at Eli. “I can’t stop it.”
“Make her stop! Control her. She hasn’t learned yet,” Atom begs, giving no explanation on how he knows such things about us.
“This has nothing to do with me,” I say, still staring up into Eli’s face. But I’m begging for that to be true.
“It’s all you,” Atom cries. “Every disaster. You’ve been doing this since you stepped foot into Sonnet months ago.
You killed that girl with the ice. You covered the realm in snow.
You destroyed the arena and flooded the passages.
” He breathes heavily, looking up at me with soft eyes, an apology in them that I don’t want to accept. “You cause every storm.”
Atom squeezes me tight, but I have no breath left, no feeling. How could he accuse me of that? I don’t even know him.
He shoves Eli. “Get her out of here!”
Eli’s dark eyes move rapidly side to side, still anchored to mine. Analyzing. Calculating. Processing. No. He can’t believe this. His lips twitch, then I’m lifted into his arms, pressed against his chest. I hug him tight, my legs around his waist.
“Stay here and watch the kid,” he yells, then carries me through the growing teva, the heavy green and purple blooms flopping down far above our heads.
Clover and spice burn my nose. The stalks slap my back over and over, the wind howling in my ears. Eli holds one arm under my bottom and cradles his other hand behind my head. I hide my face and shout into his chest. “I didn’t do it!”
He doesn’t respond, running at an impossible speed. We finally exit the fields. The open air is a shock. I expect him to put me down, but my back slams into a tree.
He holds me against the trunk with the press of his body, his eyes raking over my face with a hunger I don’t know what to do with.
Seconds pass. I lose count. Then I’m holding him just as tight as his hands work at my pants, pulling them off my ass then grabbing both cheeks tight.
Our heads are almost at the same level, the hot air of our lungs the only thing between us.
Heat blasts through me in an instant. I’ve been teetering on the edge with the urges from linking. If we hadn’t had a child with us, I’d have stripped down in the passages and climbed on top of him, threat to my life or not. I push my hips into him, my chest. “Eli, what are you—”
“Helping. Shut the fuck up and kiss me.” His lips don’t wait for me to do the kissing. Or even for me to swear back at him. He slips his tongue inside so easily, as if it were coming home after a long day. And I welcome it, kissing him back, trying as hard as I can to forget everything else.
His tongue is warm, soft against mine, yet forceful.
I hold the back of his head, taking those perfect curls into my fists and making sure he can’t escape this moment.
Because I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want to go back to dead mothers and strange kids.
To missing Kelter and out of control plants.
I want to stay here. With him. With his hands on me.
We fall deeper into the kiss. Warmth settles in my core, pulsing. Wetter and wetter. Rain filters through the treetops and splatters on our heads and shoulders. Eli breaks our kiss and looks behind him at the teva fields. I peek over his shoulder.
“It stopped,” he says, panting.
“That’s why you kissed me? You thought it was me doing that, and you could distract me?” That low down heat rises to my chest and tightens. The rain strengthens, pouring down onto us, filtering through the branches above.
He gazes at the sky. Rain trickles down his neck before he looks at me again. And smiles. “No. I just get hard watching you control nature.”
“I’m not controlling it!”
Lightning strikes above us, thunder rolling in after.
He leans close. “Say it again, little Never.”
“I’m not!”
The sky flashes again. Once. Twice.
He moans along with the rumble of thunder. “Make it hail, and I’ll take you right now. I owe you a good fuck against a tree.”
“You’ll do it either way.”
“Maybe.” He raises me higher, a hand still on my ass to hold me up while his other hand lifts one side of my shirt and bra, my treasures tucked safely on the other side.
He runs his finger down the center line where my impression is cut in half, passing through my birthmark.
Then swirls his tongue over my nipple. ’Round and ’round.
“Look how hard it is for me.” He sucks it into his mouth.
I throw my head back, banging it into the tree and not caring. As long as my chest is closer to him. The ground shakes. And I feel him smile around my nipple.
“It’s not me!” I yell, holding his head against me as he rolls it back and forth, up and down, following the motions of his tongue. The tree jumps this time, as if yelling back at me.
“What’s happening?” I gasp. My need for him sparks through every cell. I pull my necklace over my head and shove it into my pocket. For Ametrine’s sake.
He licks my nipple twice and rubs his rain-dotted nose over it as he speaks, peering up at me. “You’re getting stronger. But it’s not consistent. Weather, elements, plants—it’s all nature. You just don’t have control yet.”
I whimper when he takes my breast back into his mouth, his tongue kneading my sensitive skin. “Control. Is not. My thing.”
He releases me again, pushing back against my firm grip on his head, and I regret distracting him. “I have some experience with control. And I’m going to find out what happens when you come.”
With that, he drops me to my feet and yanks my underwear and pants the rest of the way down. My bare feet slip out of them. He lowers his own pants enough to free himself. His length springs upward between us, immediately wet by the rain.
“Do you know how often I think about you?” he asks as his cold hands lift me up again, positioning my back against the rough, wet bark of the tree. I wrap my legs around his waist and hook my ankles, my arms gripping his biceps.
The ground trembles again. The tree roots writhe under our feet. “About as often as you lie?”
“Fuck.” He exhales. “Way more than that.”
Rain batters our heads, dumping down in heavy dollops from the trees above.
He positions himself at my entrance, a hand at my throat. “Show me how much you love me inside you. I want a foot of rain for every inch you take so well.”
His words open up new pockets of pleasure all over me. I smirk. “You’ll drown again.” My limbs are weak, my mind saturated with arousal. I’d do anything to feel more of this. He’s hazardous. I push against him, taking his entire length with one thrust of my hips.
He groans, taken off guard, then pulls back and slams into me, filling me so thoroughly it hurts deep in my core.
The bark digs into my back. I moan, and the tree creaks behind me, the rolling gray sky threatening to drop to the ground.
He puts his face in mine, cold water pouring down our cheeks.
I wrap my arms around him, savoring the feel of him filling me, of this closeness.
“More.” He repeats that same all-consuming movement, holding still once he’s deep inside me.
The tree lets out a long whine along with me. “Don’t stop,” I command. I try to force movement between us, but he has me pinned. Waiting. Shaking with need.
Then finally, he drives in and out, finding a slow, torturous rhythm. I lose myself with this man. His harsh touch. The addictive way he takes me. That spell in his eyes.
He bends to bite my neck, pinching harder and harder, until I’m not sure he has any intention of releasing me.
I squeal and slap his cheek. It does nothing.
His teeth clamp down with renewed force, his breath like steam on my skin.
A branch cracks above us and adds to the assault, smacking him in the face.
He laughs as it tumbles to the ground beside us. “You did that.”
“Did not. I would have picked a bigger one.” I wave my arm over my head, mocking his accusation, and another branch as thick as my arm splits and falls.
He dodges it, a grin twisting his lips upward. “Now you’re just misbehaving.”
“What happened to shut the fuck up? Isn’t that how this started?”
He growls and pulls the tender skin of my neck into his mouth, sucking and sliding and never letting go. I roll my head to the side. I need more. I need every part of me devoured by him.
But he pulls his lips away. “I hear something.” He seems caught in a far away thought, but it doesn’t stop his hips from crashing into me with every deep thrust.
“What?” I ask, sluggish and dazed with pleasure.
He grabs my throat again, holding me against the tree, and slips his other hand between my legs, still looped around his waist. His thumb finds my clit, and the wind howls.
And when he rubs in a circle all the way around it, every leaf on the tree goes flying, leaving it as bare as my ass.
The rain has no trouble reaching us now.
My body tenses from head to toe, my breathing frantic, pressure exploding at my core, needing release.
And when I think I can’t possibly feel another lick of pleasure, he tightens his hold on my throat and kisses me.
And the feel of his tongue gliding over mine, of his hand controlling my air, of the endless slippery touch of his thumb, him inside me, it’s more than enough.
I rupture from the inside out. Pleasure everywhere.
Inside, outside—damn, even the tree. It’s all one. And none. Everything and nothing.
I scream his name as I come, my hips slamming into him faster than my violent heart beats against my ribcage.
And with the final jolt of ecstasy that blasts through me, Eli is torn from my body and thrown backward.
He flies through the air. A deafening crack strikes.
Then echoes. I feel it in my spine, as if I were divided in two.
I reach behind me and hold the tree, seeking the grounding stability of nature that continues to fail me.
I can’t quite believe the man that was just inside me is now a dozen feet away on his ass, still exposed and hard.
The tree erupts with light, blinding white energy streaming up and down the trunk and through the roots.
And me. I can’t tell if the magic flows in or out, or if we’re only one, sharing. Connected.
And I panic.
Eli must see it in my face. He scrambles to his feet and tucks himself into his pants. “Never!”
But it’s too late.
The tree trunk splits down the middle with a long creak. Each half falls, ripping roots from the ground on either side of me. I’m just as uprooted, just as fractured. Dirty rainwater sprays my entire body upon impact. I spit it out.
Eli takes me into his arms, hooking one behind my knees and hugging me close. And I’m safe. Calm.
“Look what you did.” He smiles, but it droops into a frown. “Can you do those things again if you have to? Could you fight Vaile like that?”
“Not yet. I have no control. And Vaile have magic. But I could try if you didn’t mind risking every tree ending up in shreds while I kick their asses.”
“I wouldn’t mind.” He returns me to my feet. “Vaile only have magic once they’re linked, but most of them can’t do more than imbue stones or other minor stuff. Only some gifts are powerful.”
“I don’t see how that matters right now.” I look at his crotch, at his length, still hard and fighting for release from the constraint of his pants. “It’s your turn to come.”
He kisses my cheeks. “Put your pants on. You’ll owe me.”
I grab my underwear and pants, now soaked and coated in mud, and pull them on.
They hang off my hips, heavy and stretched.
Maybe the tree was too much for him. Maybe he thinks I’ll split him down the middle too.
Or maybe this savage beast of a man wants to chitchat.
I can do that. “What kind of powerful gifts?”
“Start fires with their hands.”
“It’s almost always wet in Sonnet. What else?”
“That doesn’t matter here. Fire is immune to water.” He reaches down and folds my waistband over itself twice so it sits snug on my hips. “Some Vaile can take away sight or hearing temporarily. It’s used to punish kids.”
“That’s messed-up. What else?”
He runs his fingers through his curls, gripping a handful tight before letting go. “Moving water. Breaking stone. Reading thoughts. And Sola’s gift, matter shifting. It’s not rare, but it’s useful—turn wood to ash, water to steam or ice.”
“Isn’t reading thoughts dangerous for you?” I ask, taking my necklace from my pocket and pulling it over my head.
“All gifts require hand contact. But I can block magic, remember?”
“So what do you need me for?”
He jerks back and slams his hands over his ears, his mouth open in a silent yell.
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, ears still covered, but apparently that does little to stop sounds with his level of hearing.
“Nothing?”
He drops his hands, pain still evident in his turned down brows and tight lips. “That noise in the Underbroke—I heard it through Kelter, but much louder.”
I rest my hands on his chest. I don’t want to think about Kelt.
Eli rubs my ear between his fingers, quiet for a bit. Then snaps out of his thought at the voice behind us.