Chapter 38
Nyssa
Ipush at Dreven’s hair, and he lifts his head, mouth wet, eyes dark. I’m still shaking, nerve endings firing everywhere. Dastian slides his hand between my thighs and draws slow circles, keeping me on the edge. Voren kisses my throat, his breath steady, his control infuriating and perfect.
“I want you.”
Dreven strips without comment and looms over me, pausing to search my face. I hook a leg around his waist in answer. He pushes in slow, careful, eyes on mine. The stretch is deep and immediate, and the sound that comes out of me isn’t elegant.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, thrusting deep.
Voren shifts to my side and brings his thumb to my mouth. I take him in, sucking hard enough to make his breath stutter. Dastian kneels by my hip, stroking my cheek with the back of his knuckles, smug as sin.
“Tell me what you want next,” Dastian says.
“Everything,” I manage.
Voren pulls his thumb free and replaces it with his mouth, kissing me slowly and deeply.
I hold his wrist and bite down when Dreven hits a spot that makes my vision spark.
Voren groans into my mouth and presses his palm to my chest, right over the Crown’s seam.
My pulse thunders under his hand, steadying. He pulls back.
I grab Dastian by the nape and drag him down for a kiss.
He smiles against my lips and then slides his hand over my nipple as he rubs small, precise circles until I’m arching.
Dreven adjusts his angle, bracing one hand beside my head, driving in harder.
I lock my ankles at his back and take it, everything tight and perfect and mine.
I tip over with a cry, clenching around Dreven as heat races through me in waves.
He follows quickly with a rough sound, burying himself, shuddering.
Dastian barely gives him time to move out of the way before he flips me over and presses his hand to the small of my back.
His cock is inside me in the next breath, and I cry out as he sinks into my cum-soaked pussy.
Dastian fills me with a smooth, relentless rhythm, one hand on my hip, the other splayed between my shoulders to keep me right where he wants me. I push back, meeting him, needy and greedy, and he laughs under his breath in that way that makes my skin prickle.
“Take him,” Voren murmurs in my ear.
Heat climbs again, sharp and fast. Dastian grinds deeper, angling just right. I curse, loud and unashamed.
“Harder,” I manage.
He gives it to me. The bed knocks the wall with each thrust, steady and ruthless.
Dreven’s hand wraps around mine, his thumb tracing the pulse at my wrist as if he’s keeping count.
The pressure builds and snaps; I come with a gasp I can’t swallow.
Dastian doesn’t stop until I shudder apart, and then he drives in again, deeper, harder.
I whimper as I drench his cock, needing more. Needing everything.
“Don’t stop,” I pant.
Voren’s hand slides down my spine. “We won’t.”
Dastian changes his rhythm, deeper, slower, and lifts me up enough for Voren to slide underneath me, and I straddle him.
Voren enters me carefully, pushing his cock in alongside Dastian’s.
“Yes,” I whisper, the stretch burning in a good way. “More.”
He gives me more, measured, deliberate, and Dastian matches him. They find a pace together that makes my head spin.
“Beautiful,” Dreven says, voice thick.
I’m braced, greedy for it. Dastian’s hand slides around, pressing on my clit when Voren pushes all the way in.
My vision goes white around the edges. I break with a hard cry and shake through it, clenching around both of them.
Dastian curses and pounds through the clench, rough and perfect.
Voren holds me still and gives me slow, ruthless thrusts that wring aftershocks out of me until I’m gasping.
“Come all over us again,” Dastian growls.
A sharp snap of pleasure jolts through me at his words.
Dastian groans and follows me over the edge, spilling, and then stays buried, pulsing. Voren is nowhere near done yet. Dastian withdraws, and Voren flips me over so that I’m underneath him. He pounds into me. Hard. Fast. Wet. Hot.
I rake my nails down his back. He thrusts deeper, steadier, and I break again, everything tight and shaking. He follows me with a rough sound that goes straight through me, pulse after pulse, until he stills.
For a long moment, none of us moves. My heart hammers. My body hums. I am warm and wrung out and, for the first time since the beige nightmare knocked on my door, quiet in my own head.
We breathe. The world doesn’t end. The cottage doesn’t shake. It’s ridiculous that the answer to an existential crisis is a slayer, three gods and a bed, but here we are.
I open my eyes and find Dreven watching me. “Still here,” I say.
“Good,” he replies, and kisses my temple. “Don’t disappear without telling me again.”
“I’ll pencil it into my apocalypse calendar.”
Voren’s fingers trace idle circles near my navel. “The dead are murmuring again.”
I go still. “Now?”
He nods once. “Far. Old stone. The ones who remember say the ground hums there.”
I sit up, every muscle complaining. “If I were a sentient void developing a taste for symbolism and leverage, I’d pick old stones.”
Dreven is already moving, efficient and annoyingly beautiful about it. He finds some fresh clothes and helps me into them like I’m not fully capable. I let him. I’m shaky enough to accept a hand without biting it.
Dastian swings off the bed and starts pulling on his discarded clothes, energy already rising under his skin. “Field trip to the old Abbey ruin?”
“Looks like,” I say, sliding off the mattress. My thighs protest. I ignore them. “We don’t go in blind.”
Voren nods, face gone distant again. “They’re circling the mound. The dead from the sea. Old kings. Older farmers. They’re not afraid, but they are wary.”
“Of what?” I ask, grabbing my blade from the bedside table and sheathing it. My hands feel steadier with steel in them.
“The quiet inside.” He looks back at me. “It settled. It isn’t feeding. It’s waiting.”
“For me,” I say. Stating the obvious helps pin it down. “Good. That makes two of us.”
We dress fast. I yank my boots on and shove my hair into a high ponytail that I then wrap around into a tight bun. Dreven watches me like I might evaporate. I meet his gaze. “I’m not going to vanish.”
“Good,” he replies.
We move out to the living room. The rain has stopped mid-drop outside, frozen in place like an installation some pretentious artist would get praised for. I shove the front door open. It clatters against the wall. The rain unfreezes and crashes down as if we’ve offended it.
“Tabitha,” I say, and she appears like she was waiting on the doorstep.
“You’re going,” she says. Not a question.
“Old Abbey,” I confirm. “If you tell me we need a permit, I’m going to scream.”
“I was going to say you need constraints.” She holds up a neat geometric sigil that hangs in the air between us. “If the Devourer attempts ingress, this will narrow entry points to the seam you choose. It won’t hold him. But it will make his options fewer.”
“Fewer is good.” I glance at Dreven.
“You will go on without me.”
I study her eyes for a long moment. “Are you sure?”
She smiles. “I am of no use to you now.”
“Two extra hands won’t go amiss,” Dastian says, giving her a nod that seems to be approval.
“These two hands will be needed to rebuild the Pantheon after you defeat the Devourer,” she says. “I’ll be waiting. I’ll know if you fail, and you will hear my goodbyes on the wind.”
“We won’t fail,” I grit out at those sombre words.
“Make sure you don’t,” she says, and then she vanishes again.
I nod and look at Dreven. “Shadows to get us close?”
He steps to my side, his expression smoothing into that calm he wraps around murder. “Always.”
Dastian cracks his neck. “Let’s do this.”
Voren grips my wrist. “The dead will guide us in. Keep to their line. They are drawing a path that doesn’t touch what he has claimed.”
“Right,” I say, and then I hesitate. “Aethel?”
“Still in the crypt,” Voren answers. “She is seething. She cannot cross.”
“Good. Let her stew.” I adjust the strap of my blade and look at the three of them. “We go, we look, we don’t engage unless I say. If he tries to take me, let him. I’ll make him regret every second he spends inside me.”
Dreven’s jaw flexes. He hates it. He accepts it. It does something warm to my chest.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Born,” Dastian says.
“Always,” Voren echoes.
Dreven doesn’t answer. He just takes my hand.
We step into his shadows. They fold up and over us, cool and absolute without suffocating.