Chapter 27 #2
He slides the small straps of my nightie down, exposing my breasts to the cold, my nipples already hard from his vicinity.
He looks at them, then back up at me with reverence, like he’s missed them.
Hot kisses pepper down my neck, down my chest, until my nipple is in his mouth, the wet swirl of his tongue causing me to grab a handful of his hair.
I raise up, my hand finding his hardness beneath his sweatpants, stroking up and down.
I need him inside me, I need us to be one again, so I pull him out, and his eyes pin mine from under his black lashes.
My cold fingers wrap around his sensitive skin for the first time in so long, and the yearning in his eyes, the fucking yearning. It ruins me.
“Oh, God,” he hisses. “I’ve missed you so much.”
So I lie back and push my pelvis against his dick, holding it firmly between us, begging him, as he rushes passionate kisses up my neck. He stands there for a moment as I work my body up and down his length, my wetness lubricating him, making him tremble.
“Oh fuck, Aster.” He breathes out, his fingers pinching my nipples.
I moan, the sensation making every cell in my body roar with pleasure.
“Fuck, that feels so good, baby,” he cries out then gently pushes me on my back and slides my body higher on the table. Crawling on top of it, body hovering over mine, he says, “But when I come, it’s going to be deep inside of you, okay?”
“Please,” I beg, and then, he’s at my entrance, that familiar need only he can set aflame inside of me, begging. Everything blurs from the tears in my eyes, the push of him filling me, so tight, so heavenly.
His hands find each side of my face, and I feel his first thrust all the way to the top of my head, to the depths of my soul. Thumbs wipe away tears from each eye, and he slowly pulls out and pushes back in again, so deep, so full.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I cry, grabbing his face like I’m holding on for dear life. “You’re really here.” I’m sobbing, and he stops for a moment, eyes piercing into mine.
“I am, I’m really here,” he breathes into my mouth. “Don’t cry, baby.” But there are tears in his eyes as he gently pushes inside me again.
My legs fall open, my body taking in every sensation as he rides me, his forehead on mine, the roll of his hips raising mine with every press inside. There’s the familiar weight of him on top of me, his arms caging my head, protecting me. Like no time has passed. Like we are infinity.
“Tell me you’re mine, Aster,” he whispers against my lips, taking my tongue into his mouth as he fucks me, the tempo rising, the intensity feeling like my body has finally crystallized.
Like I was just air before, just riding the waves of life for the past year.
I haven’t felt so real, so present in months. “Tell me your mine,” he says again.
Hips slowly grind into me as he pulls up to look into my wet eyes, the desire from sobbing and being fucked at the same time overwhelming me.
I press my hand over his heart, its rampant beat heating my palm, as my index finger caresses his Adam’s apple. The friction is enough, the push and pull but then his fingers trail between us until he’s stroking and circling and fucking me at the same time.
“Bastian…” I cry, noticing the blush on his cheeks, something I’ve never seen before, and time slows to a drip. “I’m yours. Since the beginning, I was yours.”
I place a hand on his cheek, my thumb grazing the blood that’s flushed to the surface of his skin.
“You are so beautiful. You never blushed when you were a vampire.” Something about that moves him, so with a sharp intake of breath, he grinds harder and faster, sending shockwaves back into me as the table rumbles under us.
I clench my eyes shut as his fingers slide over my clit, again and again, the waves of pleasure those fingers cause against my bare flesh as he drives into me, steals my breath, and my neck tenses from the ecstasy.
A breeze kisses my face, the heat of our bodies the only thing keeping us warm. The thrusts suddenly stop, and my eyes shoot open.
“Aster,” he breathes. “We’re fucking floating.”
I look around us, the table still under our bodies, but up at least five feet in the air, the deck closer to us than the ground. I yelp, and he laughs, pressing his open mouth against mine.
“We are magic,” he whispers. “You and I.”
The familiar words send me reeling, so I press my hips up to be filled by him again and beg, “Don’t stop. Keep going.”
He slides back in, filling me, his hip bones pressing into me, carving their place against mine forever.
The wind in our hair, the floating table making us weightless.
And within moments I’m almost there, the muscles in my belly tightening, the pleasure building from the way his eyes are fused to mine, the way he rides me.
Like there was no distance between us. Like our hearts were attached the whole time.
“I’m so close,” I cry, my heart racing, and I look at him. “I don’t want it to end.”
“It’s never ending,” he growls, picking up the pace, the table seeming to ride the waves of our rapture.
“It will always be like this.” His thrusts come hotter and heavier, and my hips rise to meet his, and I’m back in that space where only Bastian and I live when we come together.
His mouth on mine, our bodies moving together in unison.
It’s bright and brilliant, the pulses of pleasure bellowing inside me like a siren’s song, my mouth delivering words of love into his ears.
The gusts of electricity crackle throughout my body as they wash over me, his warmth filling me as he moans, and the table slams to the ground, sending our hearts into a whirlwind, our breaths stolen from our very bodies.
After, we tiptoe back into our room, his hand pulling me behind him. We warm each other under the blanket as he whispers how badly he needed me, how glorious it was, how much he loves me. And we fall asleep until I’m awakened by my mother’s phone call.
I run to the family room and fall on the couch, sliding the call button on.
“He doesn’t remember,” I say, not wanting to beat around the bush. I close my eyes, expecting her wrath.
“What the fuck do you mean he doesn’t remember?” The phone zaps my ear, her rage causing a current over the line, and I can’t help but cry out, dropping it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t… Are you okay?”
Rubbing my face, I pick it back up, placing it on my other ear. “That hurt,” I whisper through gritted teeth.
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose. I just…how can he not remember, Aster?”
Her voice is so strained, almost desperate, and I hate that I don’t have the answer we all wanted so badly.
“That night, he was a new vampire, and he drank the blood from a drunk man, and he was heavily inebriated. He’s so upset that he can’t remember, believe me. He’s seriously disappointed in himself.”
“Well, he should be,” she says, and I sigh, slowly breathing out.
I’m constantly reminding myself that I put her into this precarious situation, so I try to have patience with her negativity when it comes to Bastian, but my patience is growing thinner and thinner.
But that means I must help resolve our delicate situation to rid myself of this guilt.
“Chantal said it must be in his memory somewhere. That I need to find it and pull it out from the deep pockets of his mind. I thought of different ways to do this…take him back in time, bring up things from the era to jar his memory. What do you think about that?”
She’s quiet for a moment, turning over the idea in her mind. “I think that could work. But it would have to be home, and where he was that night. Go into his memory. And we really need to have that blessing ceremony.”
I sit upright, clenching the phone in my hand. “I’m not pretending Aven’s a girl, Mother. It’s dangerous.”
“What’s dangerous is that we have an almost two-month-old child that’s only supposed to be a month old. We need a blessing ceremony to keep the coven at bay. I had a dream last night that something was revealed there. Believe me, Aven won’t care that you put him in a dress.”
“It’s not that…wait. What happened in your dream?”
“It wasn’t very vivid. But it’s the first sign I’ve gotten, so it must mean something. In my dream, we were standing around, and out in the bayou, I saw Franklin’s ghost. Why would his ghost be there?”
“That’s very strange. God, what a mess,” I say, that uneasy feeling in my stomach clenching like a fist. From the bedroom, Aven’s cries erupt, and my stomach drops.
“A mess that must be cleaned. A mess we can’t pretend doesn’t exist, Aster. Come home.”
At the end of the hall, a gleam of sunlight bursts and Bastian emerges, Aven on his chest, bouncing as our son cries from hunger.
“I have to feed the baby. I’ll call you back.”
“Aster, call me back.”
“I will!” I say, exasperated, and hang up the phone. It zaps in my hand immediately, her little way of getting back at me for hanging up, and I throw it on the couch, my anger boiling inside.
“What’s wrong?” Bastian asks, but he knows. Aven’s eyes are pinched from crying, wanting my milk, so Bastian hands him to me. I nurse him, stroking his brown hair back, his cheeks puffy and warm. He makes little sounds as he eats, music to a mother’s ear.
“I love him so much, Bastian. I only want him to be safe.”
Bastian sits next to me, helping to prop a pillow under my elbow, already knowing the ways I’m most comfortable while feeding him. He watches intensely, a look of protection overcoming his face.
“He will be safe. He’ll be safe as long as I’m alive.” It’s a vow, a father’s promise, and I believe him, but I also believe in all of that which isn’t under his control. The magic that can be used against us.
“My mother wants us to go back home. For one, there are ways to get memories flowing, but we’ll need to take you back to Pirate’s Alley.
And for two, she says she can’t hold the coven off for much longer.
She saw Franklin in a dream and thinks it’s a sign we have to go to the blessing ceremony.
And we’ll have to pretend Aven is a girl for the ceremony. ”
“What?” He looks at me in disbelief, his eyebrows knitting together. “What if they find out?”
“I’m worried about that too. And I’m just…I’m scared to go back there. To be so close to them. My aunt Violetta has been hounding me to have a child, and since she heard I gave birth, she hasn’t called me once. She only gets updates from my mother. She doesn’t care about me.”
I grip his hand in mine as a manic thought bubbles up and races through my mind. “What if we just ran? Like we were supposed to before Franklin killed you? What if we just took off? Disappeared?”
Bastian lets go of my hand, his finger grazing Aven’s leg, looking at his son fondly. He looks back at me and shakes his head.
“No. No more running.” His eyes are stern, his hard chest slowly moving with calm breaths.
“Look where running got us. If we had just come forward, if we had faced everything head on, we could have been accepted, or fought and I could’ve lived, and we wouldn’t be in this situation. We aren’t running anymore.”
“We could have been killed if we came forward,” I say, but he only shakes his head.
“No more running, Aster. I want a life with you without looking behind my back and worrying all the time. I want a full, beautiful life, and now that I’m not a vampire, I know it’s precious—so precious, and I want to collect those precious moments with you and Aven.”
His eyes are wet, glistening like crystals in the sun, and I bite my lip.
I wipe a tear from the corner of his eye and think about everything he signifies in my life.
I had once reconciled to a life without love, a life where I had to have a baby and sell secret potions that I hated, and slog through every day, surviving.
Bastian showed me I could have so much more in this one, precious life, and that I would have to be brave, so I would be brave.
For him. For Aven. For Chantal and my mother. I would be brave.
“Fine, we’ll go home,” I say, and surprisingly, it feels good to say it. I miss my home, my city, and even my mother.
Aven fusses, so I stand, patting his back and gently bouncing in his favorite way.
Bastian’s warm arms surround me, bouncing with me.
“This ceremony is concerning,” he whispers.
“But I think going back to Pirate’s Alley is a good idea.
Do you really think your grandma said something life-changing? What if it was a joke?”
“It wasn’t. I know she said something important.
Because she said you would change everything.
And so far, it’s absolutely true.” I look up to him, his impressive height cocooning Aven and me like he’s a hawk protecting its nest. I reach up to kiss his jaw, down his neck, nuzzling my cheek against his shoulder as we rock back and forth together.
Chantal stumbles down the hall, face weary from a fun night out, with a cynical look.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
I smile with my mouth closed. “We’re going home.”
The widest grin grows across her face, and she drops to her knees. “Thank God! It’s too damn cold here, and I need my southern food back.”
I laugh, surprised she had kept that in this whole time.
“Get over here, Cousin,” Bastian says, and for a moment, it’s like the old him is back. The mischievous grin, the squint of his eye. “Come on, group hug.”
“I don’t do group hugs,” Chantal says as she stands, bewildered.
“But I do. I love group hugs,” Bastian smirks, and she can’t help but laugh. I walk over, grab her hand, and pull her into our circle. We rock together, her eyes assessing. “We’re doing the blessing ceremony?”
I only nod, and she nods back, her face serious.
“See, isn’t this nice?” Bastian says through a grin, and Chantal sways back and forth with us, trying not to smile, but I can see it under there, under that vampire-hating exterior—she’s starting to like him.
“Aven, they have us trapped,” she whispers in the baby’s ear, and Bastian winks at me, the first time he’s done that since I brought him back, and it takes my breath away. Is my sunshine boy coming back?
“Okay, Chantal,” Bastian says. “On the count of three, say, Go Team!”
Chantal breaks out of the circle, shaking her head while Bastian and I laugh.
“What kind of white picket fence nonsense…” she mutters as she takes off down the hall, but before disappearing into her room, she makes eye contact with me and says, “Ya’ll are cute.”
And that’s when I’m certain my chest has burst into sparks because we may not be the usual team, two witches and an ex-vampire, but we are all we got, and that’s plenty.