6. Abandon

6

ABANDON

L ucca is hard from our delicious foreplay in the waterfall field. I’m soaking—and not from sweat as I heave deep breaths, excited our afternoon has taken this turn. I’m slick and throbbing, eager for more as he caresses me on the picnic blanket, curling my naked body up in his wind of magic in the bright summer afternoon. As he grazes my nipples with his knuckles, pulling them, I am undone. My head falls back as I arch.

And Lucca eases his body over me, parting my legs as he settles down between my thighs.

“I want you, Ariana.” He slides deliciously against me now. With slow thrusts, he’s got me parted, but hasn’t angled to go in.

Yet.

“I want you, too.” As we kiss, our bodies touch all along their delicious length. Our breath and magic flow around us in the hot summer day. We’re moving as one; Lucca stroking himself against me as I arch beneath him. I rock to his sure, slow tempo. He breathes hard, but not from exertion.

Lucca’s strength is outstanding, and stamina is not his concern .

I feel through our bond how he wants to make this last, though. This is our first time together; neither of us wants it to be a hasty endeavor as we move as one in the late day. Nearly as adept as Quinn at lovemaking, Lucca’s centuries of experience flow through him now as he smiles at my lips. He moves his hips away enough that he can slide his hand down between my thighs.

And ease a finger up inside me—making me break our kiss as I cry out his name.

“Shh…” Lucca croons as he rocks with me, pressing his finger up deep inside me as he makes me writhe beneath him. My magic bursts all around us now in waves of dark rainbows, and his careens around us as well, diamond-bright in its prismatic glory.

With a dark smile against my lips, Lucca slides another finger in to join the first; I writhe hard against him now, undulating with delight as I shudder and grip with pleasure. Lucca tortures me blissfully—but I need so much more, as he seizes my hands in his free one, moving them above my head. I try to hold on to him, needing to grasp something, anything, as he punishes me so sweetly down below.

But then Lucca whispers a phrase in an ancient Fae language I don’t know. As he speaks, long branches of the willow tree above us braid down for me to hold on to. I gasp, blinking up at them—and Lucca thrusts into me deep with his fingers. I cry out, gripping the tree’s branches.

And hear it sing as Lucca takes me.

He knows how to do it. Gods, he knows everything as I writhe and he traps me with his tall, powerful body, pinning me below with his hand. My heart thunders with every thrust of his hips and skilled fingers; breathless, Lucca’s eyes burn diamond-bright as he pushes me into taking more.

Heat burns between us as he slides his fingers in and out, burying them inside me again and again as if they are something else. As he does, I arch, slamming into him so hard I nearly knock him off me. Lucca’s eyes widen and I feel his surprise; he didn’t know I was strong enough to move him like that. Now that my magic is fully open, my Dark Fae power stabilized by both Quinn’s and Lucca’s fury in my veins, my body holds surprises even I don’t know about yet.

As Lucca grins wickedly for this new game, however, he crushes me beneath him with a powerful, artful grace. I luxuriate in his tall, strong body pinning me. He kisses me, devouring my lips as he passionately fucks me with his hand.

His strength holding me down from bucking now, as he pushes me hard.

An immense glow burns me up from the inside, then. Deep where it begins, it rises like the blazing midsummer sun; I cry out as a diamond-white fire fills my vision. I expand with it, reveling in it, feeling like my skin blossoms away as my entire being fills with glorious heat. Lucca’s filled with it also through our bond, and cries out with me as bliss scalds straight to my core.

I come so hard, I feel like I dissolve in a blaze of light. I don’t even know when Lucca thrust his cock inside me—we move together in that never-ending wave of sunlight now, kissing and needing each other, desperate to be closer.

Fucking isn’t even the term for it. It’s rutting; heady, devastating, and wild as so much pleasure burns inside me, I feel like my skin will split and boil from the heat between us. As that heat scalds into the midsummer day, Lucca gasps for air between kisses, and I do as well.

His heart thunders so hard I can almost taste it as he hauls my thighs up around his lean waist and takes me harder. I have a moment of clarity; of Lucca holding my gaze with his scalding, diamond-bright eyes as he thrusts a quick thought into my mind to make sure I want it like this.

I can’t even speak as I roll into another wave of bliss. I assure him through our linked minds that this it exactly how I want it—before I scream and grip hard, dissolving as I’m hammered by another wave of orgasm. Sunlight explodes from me as Lucca dives in to kiss me and trap my scream of pleasure inside my mouth; his eyes blaze a thousand colors of the noontime sky now as light blasts through his aura .

Lucca holds nothing back now as he fucks me. He thrusts like a madman, taking me to my core as he makes me come over and over. As I blaze on and on, I don’t know how I wind up on top. I just am. He pulls my hips down hard upon him now with his powerful hands locked on my thighs; as he thrusts up into me with gleeful abandon, he roars, then orgasms, shuddering beneath me as a monstrous wave of energy takes him.

But Lucca’s not done as he keeps going, still rock hard inside me. He hauls me down now, pinning me and making me grind on him. I fuck him like I’m riding a horse as he pushes up to one elbow and kisses me, hard. I come again, screaming into his kiss as everything inside me turns to jelly. Now he rolls us to all fours, wrapping an arm around my chest and balling a fist in my hair.

Fucking me more.

Somehow, we’ve wound up in the grass, the picnic blanket gone. Lucca opens me so wide now, hauling my ankle up over his shoulder as I lay on my back and he thunders into me. His willow-branches weave around my hands, arms, and torso, giving me something to grip as he fucks me as deep as he can possibly get.

He’s so thick, and so hard now, stretching me wide as I writhe with delight upon his glorious abandon. I’ve never been this flexible; as he presses down, though, kissing my lips with a biting, animal frenzy, everything inside me opens to him.

We come together finally, in a massive wave of light that flashes all through us, inundating the waterfall glade. For one moment, the Music of the Spheres explodes through us in a symphony of heavenly glory, as I cry out his name as Lucca cries out mine.

We collapse together—kissing over and over in a spent, incredible delight. The Music fades as my leg slips to the side and Lucca clutches me close, his heart and breath heaving as our wave of glorious light calms.

His entire body shudders and mine does also, our mutual rainbows braiding and re-braiding as they simmer through the glade on the last traces of Music. No longer just dark or bright, our combined magics are dark-bright and bright-dark all at once, strangely similar to how Lucca’s and Quinn’s powers have braided together on multiple occasions. It’s Lucca’s and my power doing that scintillating dance now as we revel in each other.

An amazing interplay of shadows and light shimmering all through the hallowed glade.

“Goddess!” At last able to brace himself on his elbows so he’s not crushing me, Lucca kisses my lips. “Ariana Summers, you are nothing less than a goddess!”

“You’re not so bad yourself!” I laugh as we settle into the afterglow—still glowing throughout the glade, as rainbows everywhere glorify in the sun’s last rays slanting across the field.

With a gleeful chuckle, Lucca executes a lithe movement; he rolls himself to the crushed grass, pulling me up atop him. He growls, cuddling me close to his amazingly fit body and winding me so tight in his arms I’m deliciously squished.

It’s just where I want to be as I laugh, delighted by our first lovemaking and growling at him back now in a sudden, animalistic way I’ve never done with anyone. But Lucca only laughs.

And cradles me in his strong, swordsman-fit arms as the evening winds cool our drying sweat.

“God, if everyone could fuck like this, the world would be a much happier place!” Lucca nuzzles my lips again, then kisses me.

“Hear, hear.” I grin as I settle my head on his chest. Lucca is impeccable, and I get to revel in it now as I lay naked atop him. Fae-lean but strong with the perfect amount of muscle, he’s gloriously honed in a way that makes me want to just run my fingers over him all day. I start to now, easing my fingers along his ridged abdomen, then sliding them over his fit chest and stark hipbones.

Making him laugh as my fingers tickle him.

“Stop! My gods, stop. You’ll make me want to throw you down again and fuck you more.” Lucca clutches my hand, pressing it to his chest. I smile, feeling the deep, strong beat of his heart, nuzzling my face in his chiseled chest and kissing him lightly.

“You’re so… vivid compared to Quinn. So bright and full of life…”

“I’m Summer Fae.” Lucca is gentle now as he looks down at me. “This is how we are, Ariana. We revel in life, we enjoy it, and it strengthens us. Everything we do is out of love and passion, bliss and the blaze of laughter in a hot midsummer’s day. Drinking, fighting, negotiating, sex… it’s all done with this same glory. It’s who we are.”

“Yes, but… you have it more than most.” I try to put my finger on what makes Lucca so different from the rest of his people. Even though I’ve met other Royal Summer Fae who have tremendous power, I still can’t quite understand it, but it’s as if Lucca simply shines with a brighter glory than the rest of his kin.

And with a darker passion, through his old bond to Quinn.

“Dress you in rags, and you’d still shine this way,” I muse as my fingers peruse the hard planes of his chest and the gold and white Faeanic sigils tattooed upon him. “Brighter than all the rest. And darker, too, because of your connection to Quinn.”

“Some Fae-tales say that to blaze too much is a bad thing,” Lucca says with that simmering darkness now; I glance up to see a deep pensiveness in him. His eyes have darkened to a lovely evening cobalt as the sun begins to set behind the waterfalls. “I’ve always been this way, Ariana; more passionate than my kin. It didn’t seem like a difference when Quinn and I were children, but as we got older, after he was turned Vampire… it enhanced, I guess.”

“You hide the fullness of your passion.” I understand with the deepest truth of my magic now, sensing a wound in Lucca that he and I haven’t talked about yet. Deep inside, his brightness is so massive, it churns like a maelstrom—I can feel it inside our bond. His ability to shine so brightly, yet so strangely dark, is something Lucca controls most of the time, I understand then .

Blinking, I push up so I can see him—as a dark midnight shade takes his beautiful blue eyes.

“To shine too much is a dangerous thing in a Fae Court, Ariana.” Lucca is sorrowful now as I find him out. He strokes my cheek gently with his hand. “All my life, my father punished anyone who outshone him. I have tried to control it… and not show him how truly hot and wrathful I can go when my passions take me.”

“You and Quinn both hide how powerful you are.” I gaze down at Lucca. I’ve seen him become damn near a ball of lightning during battles, with enormous Fae-wings of sunlight practically going supernova as they sprout from his back.

But even now, when things got so hot and heavy between us, I know he’s controlling it. He is stopping his massive power from blazing too bright.

Just like Quinn controls his from going too powerfully dark.

“When we fought your father’s Darkwatch in the ravine all those weeks ago, you seemed like your power was gone after all that fighting. Was it?” I ask now, wondering.

“No.” Lucca shakes his head as he holds me with a very serious gaze. He reaches up to stroke a lock of sex-tangled hair back from my face. “What was exhausted was my body and my control. If I had unleashed the fullness of my blaze without my body and mind’s firm control after we had done that much fighting, Ariana, it would have gone wild. It would have killed my father’s Darkwatch, many of whom are friends, and very well may have killed you and Quinn. I couldn’t take that risk. So I let them take me, knowing Quinn could get you out and heal you.”

“You sacrificed yourself that night to save us.” I understand, stroking his jaw as I recall what Quinn said about the King’s golden manacles, and Lucca’s abuse under his father. “Then you sacrificed yourself again a week ago when you made that Vampire Bloodsign in the grass to save us from those Revenants. ”

“And I would do it again, rather than see you or Quinn get burned by a Bellari’s power, or hurt by some Vampire plotting against us,” Lucca says, sober now as he brings my hand to his lips and kisses my fingers. “I did not just inherit my father’s rage in my magic, Ariana. I also inherited my mother’s steadfastness. Which I wield for you and Quinn, and for my people, rather than seeing any of you come to harm. By everything I am, I swear it.”

I lean in and kiss him then, loving my bound Fae Prince’s beautiful heart and valiant love. As we part, still beaming at each other, a cool wind sweeps the glade from the waning day. Something about it strikes me; I glance over as something draws my attention out in the grass.

I realize I’m looking at a mountain of blooming field-flowers where there was only summer grass before. It’s the same spot where Lucca’s Bloodsign was—obliterated now by our magic as our bright and dark rainbows eat the last of that Bloodsign up from our glorious lovemaking.

Flowers growing in a riot in their place.

“Lucca…!” I say in amazement, sliding off him and sitting up.

“I see it,” Lucca says with awe as he sits up also, both of us blinking at the place in the field that had been so dead and barren before. Now, we watch the very last of the deathly-dark Bloodsign vanish as it’s eaten up by shimmering rainbows of light and dark magic. More flowers sprout in its place, flowing up out of the ground and blossoming in a riot of colors as we watch.

Before I can kiss Lucca, however, amazed at what we just accomplished and what it might mean for our trio’s power, another thought from Quinn hits me.

Like a lance of fire and darkness right through my head.

Ariana! I need you both back at the Hotel, now. Enough dawdling! Come to me.

The quick message is typical of Quinn’s dominant yet secretive ways. This missive, however, is like a punch right through my mind as Quinn demands our presence now, rather than requesting it. As I nearly fall over from my seat, Lucca catches me with a quick hand. A bright flash of fury lances through Lucca as the Summer Fae Prince’s blue eyes darken until they’re the color of bruised thunderstorm skies at midnight.

“His Subtleness calls. Again,” Lucca says as he sets his jaw, hard.

“That’s definitely urgent now.” I try to smile, though I have to blink away a fugue from the intensity of Quinn’s second mind-sending. “I guess we’d better get off our asses and go see what Quinn wants.”

Whatever he needs us for can no longer wait; I massage my temple as the image of a catacomb hall from the Red Letter Hotel Florence flashes through my mind. It’s a mind-sending from Quinn, of where he is beneath the Hotel. I know the hall; as Lucca eyeballs me, I nod.

As he heaves a deep sigh, Lucca stands from the crushed grass of our lovemaking; offering me a hand, he hauls me up to standing with him. But before we reclaim our steeds from where they’ve wandered off beneath the trees, or our discarded clothes from the rumpled picnic blanket nearby, Lucca crushes me close.

He kisses me deep, claiming me as his.

Before we send our steeds leaping back towards Florence and our bonded Master Vampire.

Who never lets us in on his damnable secrets.