20. Ash
Chapter Twenty
Ash
“ S he has a point, you know,” Rowan said.
I snorted. “Yeah, and I’m supposed to be moved by her telling me how precious I am? No, thanks. I don’t fall for flattery.”
Rowan leaned his shoulder against his tree. “You’re full of shit.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I’m serious. Artemis cares about you and your well-being. Not that you don’t know that—she didn’t give you a second chance just because she felt like being generous. She wants you to be okay.”
“Yeah? Well, I am okay. She doesn’t have to butt into my business all the time.”
Rowan stayed silent, only raising his eyebrows.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You were thinking it.”
Rowan burst out laughing. “And what was I thinking, oh mind reader?”
“You were thinking that she should worry about me because I’m looking for trouble hanging out with Dolus.”
Rowan shook his head, a smile playing around his lips. “I just think you’re making a mistake, trying to recreate yourself into something you’re just… not. I mean, come on. I know you’re all battered and bruised and bored out of your brackets, but do you really think doing something else than being who you are is going to change it?”
“That’s the plan.”
“You can run away from your duties and your magic, and you can run away from everyone who’s been there for you, Ash, but you can’t run away from yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes, ready to give Rowan a piece of my mind. Who the fuck did he think he was, telling me shit that was so… true. Dammit, he wasn’t wrong. That didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed off about it.
Before I could say something, my skin tingled and the magic around us shifted. Rowan and I both looked up.
“What is?—”
“There you are,” Lorraine said, bursting through the trees. Her blond hair streamed behind her, and her green eyes spewed fire. “We need to talk.”
“Okay,” I said. She was furious about something. Her anger was hot on my skin and crackled in the air around us.
And gods, she was fucking hot when she was this angry.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” she demanded.
“You were the one who said you wanted to talk. So, talk. I’ll listen.”
She clenched her jaw and glared at Rowan.
“Will you excuse us?” I asked Rowan.
“No, he can stay,” Lorraine said, to my surprise. “I’m pretty sure he’s in on the whole thing.”
“I was going to stay,” Rowan said. “This is my tree. If someone has to leave, it’s not going to be me.”
Lorraine shook her head at his words, turning her attention back to me. “Why didn’t you tell me about the magic?” she demanded.
My blood ran cold. I studied her face, trying to decide how to react. “The what?”
Cool and collected it was—nonchalant. Nice.
“Don’t you dare play dumb with me,” Lorraine snapped. “There’s magic everywhere, and we’re stuck in some alternate reality, and you kept it from me.” She leaned forward as she talked, challenging me.
“You’re right,” I said in a low voice. “About all of it.” I could very well tell her it wasn’t real, but that would be cruel, especially when she was so convinced. Who had she been talking to?
My mind spun. When my thoughts landed on Dolus, my stomach twisted. I wanted him to help me, but I didn’t want him to come close to Lorraine. She was mine.
Besides, I didn’t trust Dolus. Something about him was… well, there was a reason Rowan had warned me against him. I wasn’t listening, but that wasn’t the point.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lorraine demanded when I didn’t say anything else.
Rowan cleared his throat. “You know what? I changed my mind—I’ll go. You guys can stay. I’ll be back later.” He turned around and walked away, leaving me alone with her.
Dammit, I was hoping he could help me out here. Lorraine was pissed off at me, and she had a good reason to be.
I studied her face, trying to decide how to respond. “You’re human,” I finally said.
“And you’re not.”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“Does it matter?” she countered. “It should have been you.”
I sighed. “Look, humans don’t know about stuff like this, and you were in a state when I found you. I couldn’t throw all this shit on you on top of everything you’ve been through. I didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.”
I could tell what she was thinking. Her expression was tough to read, but her anger was starting to fade. That was something.
“I’ve been asking about my sister. You could have told me then,” she said. She looked more hurt than angry now.
Fuck.
I hated it when women were vulnerable. It made me want to protect her, and I didn’t want to feel like I had to protect her. That suggested I felt something more for her than just making sure she stayed alive, and the last time that had happened, my whole life had turned upside down.
Lorraine knew now, and she was pissed. Maybe she would want to go, and maybe that was a good idea. If she left, then I wouldn’t have to worry so much about my stupid feelings. If she left…
“Look, if you want to go, I get it,” I said, though the idea of her leaving made me uneasy. Those guys were still out there, looking for her.
Besides, I’d fucked her, which meant I’d bound her to me for the time being.
Shit. I’d forgotten about that.
“I mean, I don’t think you should go,” I started, but I didn’t know how to continue. She couldn’t go. That was my fault. I’d forced her to stay here because I hadn’t been able to keep it in my pants, and if she chose to leave now, she would find out that was what I’d done.
My mind spun. “They’re still out there, looking for?—”
“Will you show me?” she asked.
“What?” I blinked at her.
“The magic. Will you show me what it’s like?”
I frowned. “You want to see it?”
She nodded. “It’s not every day a girl gets stuck in an enchanted forest, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Enchanted forests are only in stories.”
“Right,” she said, pursing her lips together as if she was trying to hide a smile. “It’s completely different than this.”
I shook my head, irritated. She was fucking cute when her eyes danced with laughter, and she was inquisitive about my world. Not a lot of people gave a shit about my world. Ava sure as hell never did. All she cared about was getting what she wanted. It had taken me too long to figure that out.
I kept telling myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes with Lorraine as I’d made with Ava, but every time I thought I was ready for whatever Lorraine could throw at me, she surprised me by not being like Ava at all.
It caught me off guard. She intrigued me, and that pissed me off. I’d been determined not to let her crawl under my skin, and she was doing it anyway.
I glanced through the trees, turning her request over in my head. Showing her my world wasn’t going to cause shit, was it? What could go wrong?
“Okay,” I finally said. “I’m not supposed to share this with humans, though. We’re hidden for a reason, but I can show you a few things.”
Lorraine’s face broke into a smile that only made her that much more beautiful. Everything about her was beautiful, incredible, magnetic, attractive… I glanced down at her chest. I couldn’t help myself—she wore a hunting dress again, and the brown fabric was in stark contrast to her milky white skin. The dress only covered enough to make her decent in front of others. It certainly did nothing to make her less attractive.
In fact, it left just enough to the imagination to make me want to rip that dress off her and…
I cleared my throat. “Come on. I’ll show you the lake.”
We walked through the trees, away from Rowan’s tree so that the jackass could get back to it if he wanted to. While we walked, she asked questions about the magic barrier around the cottage, about the vale and the power there, and how it all came together.
“I don’t know how it works,” I admitted when she asked about the human world and this one. “I just know that we exist in the same place, but on different planes.”
“How did I end up here, then?”
“It’s getting close to All Hallows’ Eve,” I said.
“What?”
“All Hallows’ Eve… you know what that is, don’t you?”
She frowned at me for a moment. “Do you mean Halloween?”
I shrugged. “People call it different things, I guess. Times change.”
“Okay,” she said, understanding what I was trying to say now. “So, there’s magic around Halloween?”
“There’s always magic,” I said. “Around All Hallows’ Eve—Halloween—it’s different. It becomes unstable, it grows and bends. And sometimes, people slip through the cracks.”
“Does it happen a lot?” Lorraine asked.
I shook my head. “It happens every couple of decades. The last time it happened was about fifty years ago.”
“Oh, wow.”
I nodded.
We stepped through the trees, and the lake lay sparkling and blue before us. On the far side, sprites and druses lay in the sun together, drinking in the rays.
“Oh,” Lorraine breathed. “They’re so different.”
I tried to see my world through her eyes. The sprites had green skin that looked almost a little transparent, with long hair and voluptuous bodies. They were almost always naked.
It was a beautiful sight to behold. Everything about the vale and the magic here was beautiful. My heart constricted. Would I miss this place when I left?
I shut down the thought right away. I wasn’t going to second-guess myself.
“Do you look like that in your natural form?” Lorraine asked.
I chuckled. “No, I’m a drus. We’re not green. When I’m in my natural form, I’m in the tree.”
“Show me,” Lorraine said.
“There isn’t much to see once I’m there,” I said. “That’s where I was when you ran past me that night.”
Lorraine blinked at me, and I saw her going back in her mind’s eye. The fear that she’d felt flickered across her features for a second before her eyes widened.
“I thought I tripped over the roots of a tree or something.”
“Technically, you did,” I pointed out.
Lorraine shook her head. “This is crazy. I should be freaking out about the fact that you’re some kind of shapeshifter and I’m stuck in this magical realm, but I’m not. I’m just…” She trailed off, and I waited for her to finish.
“You’re just what?” I probed when she didn’t keep talking.
“I get now why I can’t reach out to my sister. Do you know where she is?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t tried to find her.”
“Would you be able to?”
I hesitated. “I’m not supposed to.”
“I just want to see if she’s okay. That’s all. I get it if I have to be here for a while longer.” She didn’t really get it, but I wasn’t planning on going into that if I didn’t have to. “I just want to know that she’s still alive and Oscar didn’t do something to her, too. I’m sick with worry about her.”
Her green eyes were pleading, her face filled with worry.
“I can show you, but we have to stay in this realm,” I said. “We can’t go into the human world.”
“It’s weird that you can’t go there but I came here,” Lorraine said. “That seems backwards.”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t really backwards at all. We could go into the human world as much as we liked if we wanted to. Lorraine just couldn’t go back until after All Hallows’ Eve since she was bound to me and the magic in the vale now.
I jerked my head for her to follow me, and I walked into the trees. Lorraine slipped her hand into mine, and I looked down. Her fingers were slender, her hand small and delicate, but her touch was firm. Warmth spread through me from the contact. I tried not to enjoy it as much as I was.
“Here,” I said when we reached a circle of power in the forest. “If you can feel magic, you might feel a rush of it when we step into the circle. It’s unsettling, so you should keep your eyes closed, okay?”
Lorraine looked like she had a ton of questions—she was inquisitive as fuck—but she didn’t ask them. She only nodded and closed her eyes. I led her into the circle. The magic shivered over my skin when I stepped into it. When she followed, her breath caught in her throat.
I pulled her tightly against me. I felt her curves against my body, the swells of her breasts pushing up against my chest, the line of her hip. When I let my magic go, pushing it outward, she grabbed tightly onto me, and heat flowed through my body. She was pushed so tightly against me that if we were naked, I could get inside her.
My cock hardened just thinking about it.
The magic rippled over us, and then it faded.
Lorraine still clung to me, her eyes squeezed shut.
“We’re here,” I said. “You can open your eyes.”
Lorraine blinked her eyes open and looked around. We were in a human town, the town where Lorraine lived. We stood in the street.
“How did we get here?” she asked, looking around. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I let your subconscious do the work. I just used my magic to take us there.”
Lorraine shook her head. She didn’t ask how I had access to her subconscious—that was a good thing, because I wouldn’t have known how to answer.
Humans walked past us in all directions.
“Can they see us?” Lorraine asked.
I shook my head. “We’re in a different realm, remember?”
“Right,” she said. She looked around and started to walk in a certain direction.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find my sister,” Lorraine said.
I followed her through the town until she reached a small home. Her breath caught in her throat when a woman arrived right when we did. She looked just like Lorraine, only younger and a little more childlike.
“Cat,” Lorraine breathed. Her eyes filled with tears. She took a step forward, but her sister didn’t see her before she opened the front door. “At least she’s alive,” Lorraine said to me. “And she looks okay. I wonder what happened to Oscar.”
I bit my tongue. If he knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t show his face now. I could still step into the human world, and I wanted to rip his throat out for what he’d done to Lorraine.
“We should go,” I said gruffly. “We can’t be here too long.”
Lorraine swallowed hard. “Can I talk to her?”
“No.”
“Just for a short while,” she said. “They won’t find me here. I just want to know that she’s okay. And make sure she knows I’m okay, too.”
My stomach twisted. I felt like shit for what I’d done to Lorraine. I hadn’t thought shit through when I’d trapped her in my world.
“We can’t,” I said regretfully. “I’m sorry.”
Lorraine looked like she was going to cry. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go, then. I know she’s alive. That has to be enough.”
I nodded, and Lorraine turned away. I made to follow her, but a thought occurred to me.
Dammit!
Lorraine’s back was turned to me. I slipped out of my world and into the human world. Before Lorraine could see me, I slipped in through the door.
“Cat,” I said.
Lorraine’s sister spun around, her eyes wide. “Who are you?” she cried out. “What are you doing in my house?”
“I’m not here to hurt you. I can’t stay long.”
“Get out,” Cat threatened, picking up a knife from the kitchen counter. “Get out, or I’ll scream.”
“Just shut up and listen,” I hissed. “Lorraine is okay. She’s safe.”
“What?” Cat’s face went from anger to tears. “Where is she?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’m not supposed to be here. She’s safe, and she’ll be back. I just wanted you to know.” I turned back to the door.
“Wait!” Cat called after me, but I didn’t have time. I stepped through into my own world.
By the time Cat stepped outside, I was gone. She looked up and down the street, looking for me, but she had to accept that this was all she was going to get.
I hurried to catch up to Lorraine.
“Can we go?” she asked dully.
“Yeah,” I said. “We can.”
Lorraine nodded, and I wrapped my arms around her. With a whoosh of magic and her body pressed up against me again, we were back in the vale.
Lorraine leaned against me long after the magic faded. When she finally looked up, her eyes were a bright green, but she wasn’t as upset as I’d thought she’d be.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her back, drinking her in.
“Show me your tree,” she said breathily.
“What?”
“The tree you live in, with your magic…”
“Right,” I said. I did not just think she meant my cock when she’d said show me your tree.
I led her through the forest to my tree. Lorraine lifted her hand and ran it over the trunk. When her fingers touched the bark, I felt her touch on my side and jerked lightly.
“You can feel that?” she asked, mischief in her eyes.
“Yeah.”
She ran her hand over the trunk of the tree, watching my reaction as goosebumps broke out over my skin. Her fingers were warm to the touch, and magic danced on my skin wherever she touched me. I licked my lips and stared at her.
Her eyes changed. They became darker, and she let go of the tree. She took a step closer to me and looked up at me with hunger in her eyes. They echoed my own.
I didn’t wait for her to say something—I grabbed her and kissed her. I slid my tongue into her mouth, and she sighed. The sound was erotic, and my cock bunched up in my pants, aching for a release. I wanted her—hard, fast, and now.
When she threw her arms around my neck, I spun her around and pushed her up against my tree. I ground my hips against her, letting her feel how hard I was for her.
I moved my head to her neck and kissed and nibbled her skin, working my way down to her chest. The fucking dress was in the way. I wanted to lick and suck her nipples. I wanted her naked so I could taste every inch of her.
I kneeled before her and slid my hands under her skirt. Lorraine gasped, staring down at me, her lips parted and breathing coming in shallow gasps. I pushed her skirt up to her hips, baring her perfect pussy. Thank the gods for our archaic clothing that made everything so easy to access.
“Ash, we shouldn’t—” Lorraine started when I hiked her leg up. Her voice trailed off when I slid my fingers over her pussy. When I closed my mouth over her and flicked my tongue over her clit, she cried out, tilting her head back against the tree and pushing her hands into my hair.
“Someone might find us like this,” she gasped while I licked and sucked her.
“Let them,” I mumbled against her pussy, and it only made her gasp again. She pulled my face against her and bucked her hips. The encouragement was enough to rip off her dress and fuck her against my tree, but I held back.
As much as I wanted to do that to her, I would take things slow and take her back to the cabin for the grand finale. I would give her the first course here.
I listened to the erotic chorus of her moans. Her breathing came in erratic gasps, shallow and trembling. She was delicious. I could eat her out for the rest of my life and never go hungry.
Her breathing told me she was getting close to an orgasm. The scent of her arousal confirmed it, and when she swallowed hard, I pushed my fingers into her.
She cried out, and I pumped my fingers in and out of her. She was so tight, her insides so smooth and wet. I couldn’t get enough of her. It took everything I had to control myself and let her ride this orgasm out before I grabbed her and made her mine.
When she orgasmed, I felt it. She cried out, and her body tightened around my fingers. Pleasure washed through her body, and I didn’t only feel the way her muscles physically contracted, I felt the pleasure come in waves as if it was happening to me on a small scale, too.
It was because we were so connected now.
I waited, licking and sucking her gently while she rode out the orgasm. Her cries and whimpers were addictive. I wanted more.
I let go of her, and Lorraine lowered her leg to the ground. She stood on wobbly legs as she tried to catch her breath. I stood, tugging her skirt down, and took her hand.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the cabin,” I said. “I’m not done with you yet.”