22. Willow
Chapter 22
Willow
“ D o you think anyone will notice if I steal a few Chaser charms on the dancefloor?” I ask absently. “So many of them dangle unprotected, ripe for the picking.”
Styx deadpans and replies, “We can’t repurpose charms already keyed to others.”
“I knew that.” I blush.
He gives me an unimpressed look and then scours the crowd, ignoring me. It both riles me and confuses me. My emotions have been hard to regulate since the mate bond connected but then disconnected. It’s like my hormones are bouncing back into me, furious they have nowhere to go for relief. That scent-marking thing is starting to feel like a really good option for more reasons than my perversive fantasies.
My heart soars when a familiar tune comes on, and the mostly mortal crowd cheers. Grinning, I look at my companions and shout, “It’s my Aunt Melody’s song! She used to be famous in the old world.”
“I remember.” Legion’s lips twitch.
“This is a sign,” I groan. “Who wants to dance with me?”
I look at them expectantly, my grin still on my lips.
Legion shakes his head. “I don’t dance.”
“Neither do I,” Bodin grumps.
“I do.” Styx sidesteps Legion to walk toward me but then smashes his shoulder against mine as he passes. “But not with you.”
I watch him stroll into the dancing crowd, and my grin broadens. I should be angry at his mercurial behavior toward me, but I’m not. Melody’s song is on. I stare at the remaining two.
“Come on,” I plead. “This is the last night we get to mingle like this in public! It will be fun.”
They don’t move, so I start walking backward, trailing my finger down my neck and dipping into my juice-covered cleavage before sucking my finger suggestively.
“Guess I’ll find someone else to dance with, then,” I tease.
Legion palms Bodin between the shoulder blades, and he stumbles toward me. It’s hard to fight my triumph, but when Legion strides behind him, expression hot, I raise my arms and thank the stars in the sky.
I wind around the loners, skirt the main thriving mass, and climb onto the grassed dais. Alfie’s familiar russet hair is a few yards away. His green eyes lock with mine and fill with emotion before hardening as he takes in who is behind me. Dahlia and Becky are beside him, cheering and singing along to the music. Two other female Chasers I don’t recognize listen avidly to something he says. My first thought is that he’s boasting he knew Melody, but then I remember he hasn’t told anyone where we came from. While he never went to the extremes I did, he’s as ashamed as me about our past. Or maybe he’s just ashamed of me.
Legion tugs my shoulder.
“Just here,” he barks, pointing to a spot near a pole.
Fine with me. I’d rather stay far away from that floater anyway. With a sigh, I lift my chin and inhale deeply, taking the scent of my mates into my lungs. I lift my hair off my neck. The sensation feels so good on my skin. But it feels even better when I let it all cascade down and leave my hands swaying in time to the music as I saw Styx do earlier. I close my eyes and remember Melody trying to cheer me up last year before she celebrated Christmas with the other old-worlders.
“Sugar, give me a song, any song, and I’ll sing it for you.” She squishes her curvaceous body next to Forrest on the sofa in the Guardian’s house.
“That one you sang when Uncle Forrest stole you away from Crystal City.”
“By John Farnham?”
I nod. She gives me a coy look from beneath her platinum blond, wavy hair and starts tapping a beat on a porcelain saucepan between her legs as she sings, “We have the chance to turn the pages over . . .”
“Behind her.” Legion’s gruff order draws me out of the memory.
“What am I to do?” Bodin returns, sliding around to stand behind me.
“Brace her. Stop her from falling off the dais.”
Warm, steady hands land on my hips. Bodin presses the length of his body against my spine.
“This feels awkward,” his deep voice vibrates through my back, but I’m moaning at the tingling sensations.
“Feels right to me.” I move to the music, swaying my hips, falling back into my memory. While I scowled too much to dance that day with Melody, I’m making up for lost time now. I’ll have to tell her one day that I remembered. That I danced thinking fondly of her.
“Sway your hips in time with hers.” Legion’s voice grows huskier, quieter. “Yes. Like that.”
If I could stay here forever, I would. It feels so good leaning against my warm pillar of strength, to feel safe enough to let myself go without being too drunk to know my name. The effects of that grape are mild, as Legion predicted, and not muddling my thoughts. I just feel . . . happy.
It would be my honor to catch you. Fox’s voice swims into my mind. My eyes flutter closed, and my grin turns wistful as the music sinks into my bones. I reach behind to rest my hand around Bodin’s neck. His breathy growl of approval tickles my skin, tightens my nipples, quickens my pulse.
“You missed a spot.” Legion’s deep voice is closer this time. Softer. Is that desire I detect in his tone? A wall of heat envelopes my front. My breath hitches. I open my eyes and find his dark eyes hooded behind those brass rims. He’s not dancing, just soaking me up like the sun on a cold day. Only Legion could stand where everyone else dances and command attention with his presence, his beauty.
He gathers my long hair to one side, then trails a finger down the side of my exposed neck. “Here,” he tells Bodin softly. “Clean up your mess.”
Hot lips land on the skin beneath my ear. I gasp as a shiver runs through me. Legion’s gaze collides with mine, holding me captive as he traces another sticky rivulet down my neck, over the mounds of my cleavage, to the dip in the middle and taps. “And here.”
Bodin twirls me to face him and pushes me back. Legion tugs me hard against his body, trapping me with a strong arm beneath my breasts, lifting them like an offering to Bodin’s lips. The low-cut V-neck collar is not built for such actions. The pillows of flesh almost burst from their confines. My sensitive nipples drag precariously close to the edge of the fabric.
Bodin swallows my gasp, kissing me hungrily.
“No,” Legion growls. He grips Bodin’s knot of braids and forcibly guides his mouth back down to my decolletage. “Lick every last drop of your mess.”
“How do you know it’s mine?” he chuckles, dragging a raspy tongue over my cleavage.
“I saw you.” A breathy, rough confession. “I stayed back and waited, watching you.”
Bodin groans and shoves me harder against Legion. Every swirling, open-mouthed swipe of his tongue feels like he devours me. He inches closer to my aching nipple. My world centers on that point. Please. Yes, there. Lower. With a moan, I arch into him, wanting to guide that friction. Bodin nips me. My hitched breath makes him look up at me with smug, male eyes.
“I said lick, not nip,” Legion scolds, his breath tickling my ear.
“She likes it.” Bodin nips me again, and I moan. “See?”
Hypnotic music swirls like his tongue. Hands, warm and large, sliding around my hips to my belly.
“Bite her lower.” Legion’s quiet demand is hot on my jaw as he cranes for a look over my shoulder. “Through the dress.”
His long hair falls forward, tickling my exposed skin, adding to the overwhelming sensations. Through the dress, Bodin takes my nipple between his teeth and gently clamps down until pleasure floods me. I cry out. He suckles until his saliva dampens the dress. A breeze washes in and cools the spot, adding to the sensations threatening to overwhelm me.
“More,” I beg. Whimper. Try to guide Legion’s hand where I need it. Lower. Through the slit of my dress. “Please.”
“No.” He tugs his hand away from me, voice cold, “I refuse to touch you this way.”
A confusing swirl of arousal and anger swamps me. They crowd me between their bodies. Legion’s reticence doesn’t make sense. My heart sinks. He’s tensed every time I touch him. Now this. All I can think is that he’s rejecting me, even when he directs Bodin’s lips to my neck and adds, “But I will not leave you wanting.”
I might have walked away to protect my feelings, but Bodin’s tongue swirling on my sensitive breast is insistent, hungry. I fall back into that place of need, spiraling fast into hot desire, forgetting about the cold body behind me.
To anyone else, it might look like we’re slow dancing, my head thrown back against Legion’s shoulder, Bodin’s face buried in my neck. Their shoulders meet on my exposed side. The pole obscures most of my left. So no one sees the hand snaking up my thigh, burrowing beneath the split in the dress. It’s Bodin’s hand, but Legion is there too, covering his, directing him—they move in tandem to tug aside my soaked panties.
I gasp at the first swipe along my folds.
“Yes,” Legion rasps to Bodin. “Into her tight heat.”
We groan in unison as Bodin’s finger enters me, stretching me. Blood roars in my ears as he leisurely pumps in and out, following every direction Legion utters. I vaguely recall Fox’s confession—that he waited for me to have sex. They all waited. You are the first queen we’re biologically compatible with, Legion said earlier. Their only experience in eons of existence comes from sensual voyeuristic moments stolen while in their invisible wraith forms. They watched and learned from others. They saved these precious first moments for me.