28. Tabitha
Tabitha
The night before we hit the stronghold, none of us can sleep, so we don’t bother trying.
We’ve made camp in a shallow cave a half-day out, warded to the teeth, Gavriel’s shield humming a perimeter and Azaan’s wind curled round the entrance like a guard dog.
Tomorrow I put on a dead woman and walk into my ex’s fortress and pray my family can pull me back out before either the ghost or the grief-mad demon keeps me. Tomorrow could be the last time.
So tonight is for us.
Nobody says it out loud. We don’t need to.
Valerian conjures the furs and the fire, and Luka checks the ward one final time.
Then the five of us are just there, in the warm dark, and the want rises up between us slow and certain, because this is how we say the thing we’re all too superstitious to say, which is: come back to me. All of you. Come back.
“Come here, my Queen,” Gavriel says, and it’s his turn to have me first, and I go to him gladly.
Gavriel loves like he fights, all restraint until there’s no reason left for it.
He’s huge and careful and red-eyed and reverent, and he lays me out on the furs like I’m the treasure he was made to guard, which I suppose I am.
He kisses down my body slow, that scarred mouth soft on my skin, and when he settles between my thighs and licks into me I fist my hands in his auburn hair and hold on.
He eats me like he’s got all night, which he does, deep and thorough and relentless, until I’m coming against his mouth with a cry that echoes off the cave walls, and he growls his satisfaction into me and keeps going.
“Gav,” I gasp. “Gav, I need you, come here...”
He rises over me, and he’s enormous everywhere. When he pushes into me it’s a stretch that borders on too much and lands exactly on perfect. He goes slow, watching my face, feeding me every inch until I’ve taken all of him, and then he holds there, buried deep, forehead to mine.
“My Queen,” he says roughly. “Whatever happens tomorrow. You’re mine to guard. Always. Even into the dark.”
“Then guard me,” I breathe. “Now. Hard.”
He does. God, he does, and I lose myself in it, in the size and the heat and the sheer devotion of him, until the others can’t hold back anymore and the night opens up into all of them.
Luka takes me next while Gavriel’s still catching his breath, flipping me over, pulling me back onto his cock with a groan, one hand splayed on my belly and the other in my hair. “Mate,” he snarls against my neck. “Say it. Whose are you.”
“Yours,” I gasp. “Yours, yours...”
“Ours,” Valerian corrects, sliding in front of me, and I take him in my mouth without being told, because I want to, because I want all of them at once, want to be so full of the four of them there’s no room for tomorrow.
Azaan works slick fingers into my arse until I’m loose and desperate and begging, and then it’s Luka underneath and Azaan behind and Valerian in my throat and Gavriel’s hand guiding mine to him, all four of them, everywhere, the bond drawn so tight it sings gold and violet and smoke through the whole cave.
“Look at her,” Valerian says, wrecked, watching me take all of them. “Our filthy Queen. Taking every one of us like she was made for it.”
“She was,” Gavriel growls, and it’s the most words he’s ever said in bed, and it undoes me.
They fill me until there’s no room left for a single thought that isn’t them, and I love it, I’m greedy for it, I want to be so full of the four of them that tomorrow can’t reach me.
Luka rocks up into me from below, deep and slow, while Azaan sets a filthy rhythm behind, and I moan around Valerian and stroke Gavriel in time.
The four of them groan as one, and the realm outside the cave glows brighter with every second of it.
“Come on, kitten,” Azaan pants in my ear. “Come on our cocks. Let go. We’ve got you. We’ve always got you.”
They move together the way only they can, months of learning me, learning each other, and I come apart between them again and again until I’ve lost count, until I’m nothing but sensation and love and the five of us braided into one thing that no ghost and no grief-sick demon and no cold white army can ever pull apart.
“That’s it,” Valerian pants, ragged, filthy, undone the way only I ever get to see him. “Take all of us, little kitty. Fall apart. We’ve got you. We’ve always got you.”
I do. We all do, one after another, and the realm drinks it up and glows. For one perfect hour there’s no war and no book and no tomorrow, just my family and me and the fire.
After, tangled up in the middle of them, warm and wrecked and thoroughly loved, I finally say the thing.
“If I don’t come back tomorrow...”
“You will,” Luka says.
“But if I don’t. If she keeps me, or he does.
” I make myself say it. “I need you to know it was worth it. Every death. Every mile of this stupid hellscape on foot in stupid shoes. All of it. Because it got me you. Four of you. That’s more than I ever thought I’d get.
So thank you. For coming for me. Every time. ”
For a moment none of them can speak. Then Gavriel’s arm tightens round all of us at once. Azaan presses a kiss to my hair, Luka murmurs something in a language older than English, and Valerian takes my hand and holds it over his heart so I can feel it beat.
“We’ll always come for you,” he says. “It’s the one thing in three centuries I’ve ever been certain of. Now sleep, my Queen. Tomorrow we get your book back.”
And, wrapped in the four of them, warded round by love and magic in the belly of hell, I actually do.