Chapter 32

32

Wild entered our temporary room that wasn’t seeming so temporary.

“What are you doing?” He shrugged out of his heavy cloak.

I cracked open an eyelid. “Following the threads in my mind.”

“Nice.”

I closed the eyelid, then opened it again. “You don’t think that sounds crazy?”

“You’re a magus and a queen.” He kicked off his boots and walked into the bathroom.

I closed my eyelid again. “I ate too many marshmallows.”

“The taste of rebellion was hard to resist,” he called out.

No one resisted it. Every advisor partook of our contract-burning food fest. “I think all these intense decisions are making me delirious. The letter should piss me off, not make me laugh.”

He reentered, and I cracked an eyelid again. Wild was minus a tunic and plus sweatpants. His pendants rattled, and I dragged my gaze over his delectable body to his musician fingers.

“Is my soul in my fingertips?” he asked, standing before me on the bed.

I hummed and whipped out a hand. I sucked one of his fingers into my mouth.

Wild banished his sweatpants.

Laughter burst from me around his finger. “Is that a hint to check if your soul is somewhere else using the same method?”

More specifically, the piece of anatomy bobbing in my face.

He answered, “If we start that, it will end in the last step of the ritual. I’m barely holding it together.”

Truth be told, I’d sat here for an hour fantasizing about using the divination threads in my mind to bind Wild’s helpless self to me for eternity. So there were cracks on both sides. Probably minor and nothing to worry about.

I placed my hands in his. “Wild, the other rulers got me to thinking. I don’t want to wait another minute before we’re mated. Will you take me to our cave so we can have a sex fight over who gets to chain whose soul to who?”

He studied my face. “What about the coven?”

“What about the coven?”

“What about my parents and Frond?”

“What about your parents and Frond?”

“What about the foreign magus and supernaturals that will be here for training while we could potentially be out of commission for days?”

I squeezed his hands. “I care about respecting what’s between us. Others will be happy because we’re happy. Or they can fuck off.”

Wild’s chest rose as he inhaled. “How are you saying all this with my cock right in your face?”

“It’s a distraction, I’ll admit.” I sensed his next intent like a coming storm. “Do not smack me in the face with it.”

He grinned but managed to restrain the impulse. “Just seems like the natural thing to do.”

I shoved him back, then opened a portal to Sven.

The rest of the quad was in the room. Rooke wasn’t there.

“Hey,” he said, then glanced around. “That’s Wild’s dick! Why the fuck would you do that to us?”

“I didn’t think you’d turn and look around the room,” I retorted. “Don’t be nosy.”

“Don’t call when you or Wild is naked. How about that? What am I supposed to do with that visual?”

I smirked. “I can only tell you what I’d do with it. You may decide that’s not the path for you.”

Sven glared, and Corey budged him over, careful to look only at me. “What’s up?”

“Me and Wild are going to make this mating official.”

“Cool. Good to hear.”

“Thanks. Could you let everyone know?” I asked. “Just when they ask. I don’t know how long we’ll be out.”

Sven grimaced. “Is that wise? What if you’re out for a week?”

My demon rose in me, and it was she who answered through our mouth, “There are power gains to be considered, whispering magus. An unfinished mating ritual makes us vulnerable. We do not have much time before the demon king makes his move, but he is not ready yet. First, the gates open. Then the smoke spreads. Battle is close, but not here. The mating ritual is now or never.”

Everyone seemed to understand that they’d spoken to my demon. And that explained why she’d curled back up again after her fury and fear of seeing the smoke arrive. She knew the demon king wasn’t ready yet.

“She’s right,” Huxley spoke. “We found as much in the Vissimo’s archives. The scouting attacks are followed by a larger attack, but when the demon king truly intends to wage war, he opens the gates and sends out the smoke ahead of time.”

How handy would those Vissimo archives have been a month ago…

Sven’s worry was plain, but he pushed it back. “Then have a blast, lovebirds. We’ll do our best here while you’re gone.”

“Thanks, Sven.”

“Whatever. No thanks for the fucking dick in the face.”

“Join the club, my friend.” I closed the portal. “There. Sorted.”

Wild pushed me flat on the bed, then crawled over me. To my surprise, he didn’t banish my black underwear or white tee.

He moved his mouth to my ear. “Hold your breath, my queen.”

“What?”

A portal opened under me, and I was submerged in warm water the next second. I plunged downward, my back quickly finding the bottom of the spring, and I clutched at Wild above.

He dragged us to the surface, and I was pressed against the wall in our cave, a spluttering mess.

Wild’s mouth was hot on my body. Scorching.

“You couldn’t have set us on solid ground?” I choked, rivulets of water running down my face and from my hair.

“Not with my goal in mind,” he murmured against my neck.

I sucked in more air. “What goal would that be?”

In answer, his dark gaze met mine. He rolled my wet, white T-shirt up just below my boobs. He gathered the excess in two handfuls and crossed them over the front as I would if forming a crop top. “On your knees, Tempest.”

He had something delicious in store for us. I’d follow temptation for now. I sank down to chest height in the water, kneeling on a shelf that was either part of the cave, or provided by Wild’s magic.

Wild pushed his hard length through the hole formed by the crossed ends of my tee and settled between my breasts. Once he’d done that, he pulled the ends of my gathered T-shirt tight, forcing my breasts firm either side of his erection.

I peered down, seeing that my nipples were totally visible through the soaking material and straining with the need for his touch.

He hissed, and the sound echoed through the entire cave. “I’m going to fuck this part of you now. You’re going to take it all.”

And get something out of it too—as I already was. The urge to have him inside was almost painful, and that only made me anticipate what was ahead. “Do your worst, handsome.”

Wild slid up and down the valley of my tightly pressed breasts, loosening his hold on my T-shirt to accommodate his girth and increasing speed. The tee held my boobs high, and I bowed my head, putting out my tongue, and relished in his deep groan at the warm sensation offered for the height of each thrust.

He placed the gathered fabric in one hand, his burning eyes on my nipples, and I moaned as he rubbed a thumb over one.

When he pinched it, I cried out. “More, Wild.”

Under the surface, my hips circled against nothing. His snatched growling became more erratic, and then I was hauled upward to standing.

Wild sliced a hole in my wet tee, and I sighed as cooler air whispered over my nipple an instant before he took it in his mouth and sucked hard.

I clasped his head to my chest and hooked my legs around his hips, desperate to be closer.

His snarls were as wild as his name described him to be. He ripped tendrils of pleasure from deep within me. My magic, too, I realized through the growing haze. I could feel my magic entering him, responding to his ministrations. I was being parted from my power?

He sliced a hole in the fabric over my other nipple, and I thumped my head back against the cave wall in something akin to agony at the intensity of such fucking bliss.

Wild wanted my magic? If he kept doing this, he could take it.

Water swished against my back as Wild walked us through the pool. He growled and fire erupted in a circle of stones I hadn’t seen since the night of our last ritual. Another burst of magic and I was dry, my drenched white tee gone.

Only my black underwear remained.

Wild set me on my feet on the ledge at the entrance of the smaller cave. He didn’t move to push up after me, and I peered down the flat of my stomach to meet his glittering gaze. His head was in front of my hips, and he raised a musician finger to trace down the front of my underwear. I felt the fabric slit and give way. I felt the cooler temperature skim between my thighs.

And then the heat of his tongue replaced it.

Wild held my hands by my side and moved hungrily against my throbbing core. I pressed my pelvis against him to the maximum extent I could manage while perched precariously on the ledge. He kept me from parting my legs wider with his hold on my arms, and I knew his mouth could offer me deeper pleasure.

He knew it too.

His intent was to draw this out. Draw my magic out.

And it was working.

The tendrils of power he pulled out were still available to me, I could feel, but they felt more distant. Wild waspeeling my magic back to sink through that layer of me. He’d confessed to a desire to explore what resided beneath, and he was doing just that.

Two could play at that game.

I smiled in the flickering firelight and reached my magic down to circle his length. Then I started to stroke.

My lips parted on a silent gasp as Wild’s magic trickled into me. His magic wasmine to access already, but this was different. His magic surrounded me like the water in this spring had moments prior. As I continued to stroke and squeeze his erection, I could feel myself begin to swim in his power.

I sank into a part of him I’d never known existed. That I’d never dreamed to explore.

Thiswas what he felt right now, and that we could each feel and confirm that the other was sharing in the experience only spurred us faster to frantic levels. I was aware of his mouth moving furiously against my clit. I was aware of my magic surrounding him.

That pleasure started to grow more distant. I was cognizant of it happening and not as I became increasingly certain that we both floated on our backs in a different pool.

A white one.

We sank under the surface, side by side.

I couldn’t say what the place was. I could only exist in a tranquil peace at odds with the very distant fevered and frantic actions of my body and his that existed outside of this white pool. I could tell that this space was very, very special. Something most would never experience.

Morecouldn’t be possible with this man, my mate, surely. Yet I sensed whatever happened next would gift us more than love or physical pleasure.

My back struck the bottom of the pool.

Wild moved to hover over me and stared into my eyes. He was beautiful, glowing, and parts of him were different in this pool to what I’d known outside.

Gray tinged his hair at the temples. I understood this denoted his wisdom.

Light flared from his fingers. I understood this conveyed his ability to nurture and teach.

Iron plated his chest. My protector.

Half of his face was deadly promise, while the other was joy. These were the sides of himself inspired by me. One that I would receive, and one that I could invoke.

Breath wasn’t necessary in this place, but my chest rose at all that was revealed before me.

This was him.

This was Wild’s innermost self.

His soul.

His hand drifted through the white pool to my head where I intrinsically knew two curled and black horns peeked through my white hair. My crown.

Wild stroked over my shoulders, and I felt the weight of an entire race upon them. My task.

His palm rested over my heart that had been beating for far longer than I’d been alive. My wisdom.

Wild peered down, and I already somehow knew that there was a reason my back had touched the bottom of the pool and not his.

I was attached to a rocky pillar that extended into infinity beyond this pool. My strength.

Wild’s iron chest plate and the glow from his hands united and stretched out in every direction. As I watched, the elements of his soul created a shell around our space, our pool. They lined it and created a barrier.

I formed the roots of our mating.

He was the trunk and branches that would protect me at all costs.

We could not survive without the other.

My smile could’ve come from me or him. I’d never be sure again who might control whom, or if such control even existed for us any longer. His joy was my joy. His deadly promise was mine, and I would use it to crush whoever may threaten this pure-white space that was ours and to be revered.

We rose to the surface of the pool, and the pillar extending from my back into infinity rose with us. The floating sensation receded. Weight returned to my body.

My eyes opened, and the white pool was gone. We were by the fire in the cave, and Wild hovered over me here too.

He drew his length out of me, then pushed all the way in. His movements were impossibly slow, as were mine as I pushed to meet his thrust. Our pace had been slowed to give us time in that impossible white place. We’d slowed to an almost robotic speed to allow for our experience there. The fire was now flickering embers.

We’d spent hours in that white pool.

Wild pushed in, and I pushed up. We didn’t increase our speed. We didn’t need to.

Our gazes were locked. Our magic was locked. Our souls were locked.

He drew out.

While sexual pleasure was almost insignificant against what we’d just experienced, I could see that this physical union was a symbol of our whole mating.

“Mate,” I whispered, my breath catching.

“Mate,” he said hoarsely.

Wild sank deep into me, and as he shuddered his release, I did the same.

The shuddering echoed through all the levels of us. All the way to the bottom of that white pool.

All the way through the pillar and into infinity.