13. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Lexia

The moment Ves pops in, he storms away from Slate and moves toward me. I think he's angry with me until he grabs my face and brings his mouth to mine. He groans a sound of approval, pressing his body against mine.

"I missed you," he says against my lips.

"I missed you too, Ves."

"I must be inside of you."

He lifts me up, not giving me an option—not that I'd tell him no anyway. My cheeks burn a little, knowing we're likely being stared at by Lumen and Slate. Though I've gotten used to the amount of sex Lumen and Ves want, and doing it with both of them at the same time, something about one of them watching still makes me shy.

It doesn't stop me from going along with it though. I wrap my legs around his slender waist, grinding myself against him as he moves down the hallway to the bedroom. He drops me on the bed and crawls over me, tugging at my clothes.

"Get them off," he growls, and I help him get my clothes off.

When he is on top of me again, I feel his cock rub against my pussy, his slickness sliding between my lips.

"Bigger," I gasp. "Make it bigger."

On the next thrust, I notice the difference. He's made his cock much thicker than it was before. Heavier. And it leaks more too. The warm liquid slips down, soaking the sheets beneath me.

Digging my heels into his backside, I shift my hips to line him up at my entrance and he shoves inside me, causing a delicious burn.

Everything is so wet that it only feels good.

Ves fucks me hard and fast, whispering how much he missed me. Loves me. Hates that we were fighting. That we were apart. I agree with him, kissing every inch of his body I can reach while he fucks me so hard the headboard slams against the wall.

When he comes, he leaves a puddle beneath my ass from the amount of cum he shot out. His mouth is between my thighs, not only cleaning me up, but making me come too. After, he's hovering over me again, kissing me, the sweet taste of us on his lips.

He presses his forehead to mine. "I cannot leave you again. I do not like it."

"Hopefully you won't have to."

He sighs, and we lie there together for a few minutes, just enjoying the fact we're back together.

Of course I missed him while he was gone, but I was with Lumen. I was distracted. It likely hit Ves harder because he was with someone he doesn't like. Not to sound insensitive, but I understand why his feelings are so big about this.

"Thank you for not killing him while you were gone," I say.

"I knew you would not approve."

"You're right." I huff out a laugh.

I expect him to argue with me, but he doesn't. That could be a good sign.

"We should get cleaned up," I finally say, knowing there are things to do now that we have the handbook. The journal is long, and it will take all of us working on it to get the entire thing decoded. Plus, I want to hear about their journey and what it was like.

Ves and I shower quickly, and once we're dressed, we go to the living room where Lumen and Slate are working on the journal at the table. Ves and I join them.

"This would be easier if we could hand out pages of the book," Lumen says, looking at Vesperon.

"You mean destroy it?"

"More like destruct," he says carefully.

"That is a good idea. What if pages get lost and end up in the wrong hands?" Vesperon says.

"We won't leave with the book, Vesperon. But it will make this faster," Lumen says.

It makes sense. If we could split the book into four, we could each work on our own parts. Though, we'd each need our own handbook too.

"We will be careful," Slate says.

"But there is only one handbook," Vesperon points out.

"We could make copies of it," I suggest.

"How do we do that?" Ves asks.

"There are stores with printers. We can pay them to copy the pages," I explain.

"No one can see this book," Vesperon says with a shake of his head. "It would be dangerous for not only the shadows, but the humans.

"We will do it ourselves," I tell him, putting my hand on his arm.

"Fine," he relents.

"Grumpy for someone who just got laid," Slate mutters under his breath and I shoot him a glare. He shrugs. "What? I'm serious."

I shake my head and get up from my seat. "Lumen and I will go." Vesperon opens his mouth to argue, but I don't allow him. "It is only fair since you and Slate went to see the witch. We'll be back soon."

I grab the handbook and gesture for Lumen to lets go with a wave of my arm. With his hand around my waist, we pop out of the house and end up in an alley behind a cream-colored building. Lumen holds me steady, and after a moment, I'm ready to walk. Traveling by light is cool, but it still makes me dizzy. At least this time I didn't get nauseous. We make it onto the sidewalk, and I look around for a shop that'll help. I spot a printing place just across the street.

Once inside, we make copies of the book. I work on that while Lumen works on keeping them in order.

"You've got a big book there," someone says from behind me.

I look over my shoulder, smiling at the guy who is trying to get a look at what I have. His bright red shirt with a name tag—Dustin—tells me he works here.

"Yeah, it's a school project."

"Over the summer?" he scratches his head.

"Summer school," I say with a shrug. "Didn't do so well last year, so if I want to graduate, I need to do all that I can."

Lumen keeps his eyes on the guy, as if he's about to attack him. He waits patiently as I handle the situation though. There's no reason for this to come to violence. The guy is just being nosey.

"You let me know if you need any help or anything," the guy says with a nod of his head. "And good luck with the project."

I thank him and offer a bright smile. He walks away to speak to some older woman looking at office chairs.

I blow out a breath and go back to copying the pages. "This is going to take forever," I say.

"Regretting making the decision to come?" Lumen smirks.

"A little," I admit, and we both chuckle softly.

It takes hours for us to get this done, and my back is aching once we're finished.

"When we're done with these, we will have to burn them," I explain as we walk to the counter to pay.

"Of course," Lumen says, dropping the stacks of paper onto the counter, along with the invoice from the printer to show how many pages we have.

The cashier, an older man, whistles when he sees it all.

"I thought you kids were all about saving the trees. Using those computers and stuff," he says as he grabs the invoice and scans the barcode at the bottom.

"My teachers said it needed to be on paper," I say with a shrug.

When we leave the store, I turn toward the spot we popped in, but when I try to turn down the alley, Lumen tugs on my hand. He gestures across the street at the neon ice cream cone sign.

"Can't say no to ice cream," I say with a smile.

Lumen and I walk to the ice cream shop hand in hand. The paper bag Lumen has in his other hand is heavy with all the paper in it, but he holds it like it's no issue at all.

We order ice cream, sit down and eat it, taking our time. We don't talk much, just enjoy our treat while watching people walk by. When we're done, we head home because we've already been gone a while and have no way of letting Slate or Ves know we're okay. They could be worrying. When we pop back into the house, Vesperon is at the table while Slate is digging through the fridge.

"The shadow was worried," Slate says.

"I am not embarrassed about this," Vesperon says, getting up to give me a hug.

"We're fine," I say. "It just took longer than we thought."

Lumen passes out a copy of the handbook to each person, then Vesperon carefully splits the journal into fours. The whole time, he looks as if he is in pain, like this is a bad idea. I understand him worrying about this, but it will make it easier.

"For the pages with just numbers, the first is a page number. Second is the line on the page, and the final number is the letter. So here we have 1546 2 35." Slate flips through his pages, as the actual handbook went to Ves, and finds the right one. Once he has it, he counts down to the second line, then goes across to show where the number is.

"Easy enough," I say.

We get to work deciphering our pages of the journal. I ask about their trip, and they tell me it was simple. They didn't run into issues, the witch was helpful, and they returned. Seems simple enough. Slate mentions some riddle that the witch mentioned out of nowhere. He recites it as best he can remember. Vesperon corrects him on a couple words. None of us can figure out what it means and aren't worried about it right now. The journal is more important. We fall into silence as we focus our attention on our work.

Vesperon's friend must be truly loyal to have gone through all the trouble to write this out. It's not that it's difficult, but it's time consuming. We work tirelessly for hours. Late into the night.

Lumen makes us food and coffee. The unspoken agreement is that we work until this is done. And that's exactly what we do.