Chapter 20
MIA
His tail slithers around my leg, encompassing it.
The warmth of it comforts me. I sigh in contentment as it constricts into a more protective grip.
While I don’t regret coming to Ever Graves, I sometimes miss the nights when it was just me and Nox.
Things were uncertain, food was scarce, money was nonexistent, but I always knew what to expect.
I’ve come to hate surprises. They don’t usually bode well for little orphan girls like me. Even with all this wealth I’ve inherited, the feeling of uneasiness remains. Because money can’t buy me protection from the devil. It’s not the currency he accepts.
I roll onto my side to face him. We stare quietly at each other for most of the morning, basking in the rays from the rising sun that shines through the east window.
I don’t regret bringing him to our world.
Having this extra time with him has deepened our bond even more.
I love him so much it hurts sometimes. I just want to consume him.
To bottle his dark energy, its musky scent, and mainline it straight into my veins.
He gazes down at me through heavy lids, his pupils dilated and expression hungry. “I miss the old nights with you, my love. I miss… being inside your head.” He caresses my temples. “I’m angry that he gets to be in there now.”
I scoot closer so our chests are touching and let him gather me into his arms. “I know. Believe me, I’m not thrilled about it either.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings, Mia.
Especially if he is Bones’s brother. There’s a special connection between the Harkers and the Cranes that goes back centuries.
All the way back to your ancestor, Willa, and their ancestor, Enzo.
” He leans down and lands a gentle kiss on my cheek.
Followed by another. And another until he’s left a trail of soft kisses down my jawline.
My breath quivers under his touch. “I will always protect your feelings, love. But I’d also like to know more about the ancestors if you’re okay with talking about it.
” Because Nox is tethered to the nightmare men and the Skelker and to the devil himself, he can tap into a shared consciousness of sorts.
He glimpses flashes of the past and fragments of memories that aren’t his.
He kisses my neck all the way down to my shoulder, breathing me in as if my aroma alone will sustain him.
“I could never refuse you, my love… Willa Harker rejected the devil, that much you already know. But only after he seduced her. He has a way to make you do whatever he wants, but some say that it works only if you secretly want it too. There’s never been a clear answer about whether she went to him willingly or if he entranced her.
I do believe there were others at play as well.
The Bishop witches were not her friends despite her believing them to be at the time. ”
As the poison wears off, I feel the Skelker tugging at the edges of my mind again. But he stills whenever Nox speaks. Maybe he’s curious too… I nestle into Nox’s chest and release a little sigh of contentment as he threads his fingers through my hair, then massages them into the back of my neck.
“Willa became pregnant with his child,” he continues.
“She tried to pass it off as Enzo’s at first but eventually confessed to him as the guilt ate away at her.
When the boy was born, Enzo ordered her to send him away or else he would leave her.
Single mothers didn’t fare well in the seventeenth century, and a part of her didn’t want to raise the devil’s child either.
So she agreed. And the unnamed child was sent to Wickford Hollow Orphanage.
No one has any idea what ever came of him. ”
I guess I wasn’t the first Harker to live in that orphanage, as I’d thought… I’m suddenly filled with a twinge of sadness for someone I’ve never met, knowing all too well what it feels like to be left and abandoned. “How awful. It wasn’t the boy’s fault. How many more children did she have after?”
Nox cups my breast and lightly circles my nipple with his thumb. “Two more. Her daughter Ophelia was the first to be born cursed. She had the first nightmare man.”
“Shhh. Don’t say it like that.” Hearing him call himself a curse breaks my heart. It was what he was designed to be. But I’ve grown to love him so much that I no longer see him as anything but a part of me that I would die without. It would be like losing a limb or a piece of my soul.
Nox smirks and lightly pinches my nipple. “Not all of my kind are like me, love. Some drove their women mad. Well, I almost did that to you, didn’t I?”
I arch my back, urging him to play with my body more. “It wasn’t your fault. You were cursed too. You were born from my essence, my dreams, and you wanted me all the time. It drove me mad sometimes because I didn’t understand it.”
He flicks his forked tongue out and drags it across the top of my nipple. “I still want you all the time. And now I get to.”
I slip my hand between us and wrap it around the base of his two cocks. “You have no idea how much my body burns for you.” I alternate cocks, stroking each shaft with light, soft caresses. “Every time you’re near me. When I look at you. Fuck. All the time.”
He growls into my ear as his breath quickens. “It feels so good when you touch me like that. Mmm.”
I push him over so he’s lying flat on his back. I hop on top of him. “I want both of them inside me.”
His eyes darken as he reaches for the lube on my bedside table. “Put this on me first, love. It’ll get me in easier.”
I squirt a huge glob of it into my hand and coat both of his thick, veiny cocks from base to tip. I massage it in, taking my time as his foreskin stretches, his ridges protruding. “Fuck. I love how hard you get for me.”
He lifts me up and holds me suspended in midair as I line one cock up to my anus and the other to my pussy. I inch down, ever so gently. “Oh fuck.” I bite down on my lower lip.
“I love how you grind against me.” He guides my hips farther down, seating me on him.
A hoarse cry unfurls from my throat when I feel the deep stretch, first in my ass, then in my pussy. “Fuck. Oh shit. Mmm. Uhhh.”
“That’s my girl. You’re so pretty when I’m stuffing you.” He yanks my hips down hard, seating me fully.
I cry out and roll my hips forward as he lifts his up.
I’m flush against him so that both his cocks are fully buried inside each of my holes.
He snakes his tail around my waist, curling me tight inside his grip.
Tingles spread across my skin as the friction from all three of his unholy appendages set my body on fire.
“Nox,” I moan. I ride him hard with wild abandon, my orgasm cresting as I fall apart on both his beautiful cocks.
He growls louder and rakes his nails across my hips and thighs. “You were always mine first. Don’t ever forget that, my love.”
We both cry out when his cum bursts into both my holes, hot and thick. I rub my clit in circles over his abdomen in a frenzy.
“Yes, cum hard for me.” He shoves two fingers in my mouth and skims them all the way to the back of my tongue.
I suck them hard as I keep rolling around on his cocks. I clench and release until I’ve drained him of every drop. Slowing his pace to a gentler rhythm, with his fingers probing my throat, he coaxes me into another orgasm.
I could happily die like this.
“Good, Mia. Good girl. Mmm. You look so fucking pretty like this.” He stills himself and waits for me to move. He’ll fuck me all day and into tomorrow night if I ask him to. That wouldn’t be a bad life at all. Endless orgasms, caught between his magnificent cocks.
But I would never give up Draven, Bones, or Aries either. I am a greedy slut for my guys. I want them all here with me. All the time. And then I realize that the Skelker—er, Sonny, has been awfully quiet this morning. Maybe the poison is still in my system.
Nox caresses my hips while still throbbing gently inside me. “I was able to leave the house yesterday. I didn’t go far. Just walked down to the end of the drive and stepped outside the gates.”
Alarm bells ring in my head. My stomach flips. “What does that mean? I’m happy that you aren’t bound here anymore, but… what the fuck is going on?”
“I believe that when your oath was made, another was broken. The veil is gone, and I suspect we will be seeing Sonny Crane the Skelker in the flesh very soon. If his psychic hold on you is waning then it will no longer affect me either.” Nox’s eyes darken, and his tail tightens protectively around me.
Fuck. “I don’t hear him in my head right now. He hasn’t bothered me since the other night in the woods. What is he up to?”
“He’s coming for you, Mia. I believe he made a deal of his own with the devil. Freedom from the Wishing Tree. And in doing so, he freed me from the confines of this mansion. We are all tethered.”
He guides me up and then down onto the flat of my back.
I stare up at the brocade ceiling, fixating on the swirls of red and black paint that surround the large crystal chandelier.
The lights are dim, making the shadows look like figures with monstrous faces, taunting me with their spiteful expressions.
“Tomorrow is the Wild Hunt. I will lure him out during the festivities. Then I can check to see if he has a scar on his leg, like Sonny did. If he does, Bones, Draven, and Aries will be waiting close by. They’ll handle him from there.”
“And… if he doesn’t? It could be another trick. I should be there to make sure you’re safe.” He drapes an arm across my chest and tucks me into his side.
I shake my head. “He won’t come near me if you’re there. And as you said, you’re tethered. He’ll know. It’s now or never, love. He won’t stop until he has me. But if we can help him remember his own humanity, then maybe he’ll let me go…”
But what if I don’t want him to? That part I don’t say out loud. I can’t until I understand it myself.