Page 30

twenty-nine

They sat us down at the very end of the room, on one of those leather couches that was round and wide and perfect for every fucking position— ugh .

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop shaking with need, and I was so fucking wet between my legs it wasn’t even funny.

An incubus brought us two glasses full of that red liquid that I supposed was wine.

The way she looked at me and licked those lavender-colored lips made my stomach twist. She wore a latex type suit of the same color that hugged her perfect figure in all the right places, and fuck if I didn’t momentarily imagine taking it off her with my teeth.

“Don’t move,” Rogue told us, before he turned around and walked away, leaving us all alone.

Sweat on my brow.

Rune grabbed the wine in front of him and drank half in one gulp. I thought it would be a good idea to do the same—my mouth was so damn dry.

But the moment I reached out my hand for it, Rune gripped my wrist. “Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t handle it. It’s Enclave wine. It’s filled with the strongest aphrodisiacs in Verenthia, and you’re already flustered.”

Flustered. The way he said it made my toes curl.

“Fuck, Rune!”

“I know this is difficult for you but try not to pay attention. The more aroused you are, the better control of you they have. That’s their magic,” he said, and again—his voice was so low and alluring. So fucking sexy I wished it could be a person so I could fuck it, too.

That’s how messed up in the head this place had made me.

Enough, Nilah. Enough.

I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath and said, “Talk to me. Just talk to me.” Because it was still better to focus on him rather than on what was going on around me. All the sex and the laughter and the moaning. These people looked like the happiest, most relaxed people I had ever laid eyes on in my life, both on Earth and in Verenthia, and it was perfectly natural to want to be like them…wasn’t it?

“They are succubi and incubi, and they’re very powerful. They have active magic, and lust and sexual pleasure of any kind of being is their fuel. The more they please a person, the more power they get. The more pleased that person, the easier for them to take it to the next level. Do you see those Seelie fae?”

Meanwhile, I was looking at him with my lips parted and my tongue basically hanging out like a damn dog, second away from drooling.

Now I really wanted to look around me and not at him because I was this close to jumping on his lap and kissing him, to hell with everything. It was an itching, a craving, an ache inside me that was going to drive me insane if I didn’t get my release.

And I felt it just the same when I looked at the two fae Rune was talking about. The incubi with the long dark hair were now on their knees between their legs, pleasing them with their mouths.

Fuck, how was this not illegal?!

“Look at the color of their skin. Look how spent they are,” Rune whispered, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps. I looked, but I didn’t see what he was talking about at first. “Yes, the succubi can please better than anything on the continent, but the price you pay is your body’s energy. Watch…”

I did watch. I watched closely how those women were sucking off the fae, and I wanted to do that, too—to Rune—and I was driving myself crazy sitting here.

My eyes closed. “Rune, we have to get out of here.” Because I wasn’t sure how much longer I had before I lost my mind for real.

“It’s not the right time yet. Breathe, Wildcat. Breathe,” he whispered, and it wasn’t helping me at all, but I breathed. “It’s completely natural to want them, but?—”

“I don’t want them!” I hissed. I didn’t want any of them—I wanted him . This fucking guy sitting right here with me!

“You don’t?” He obviously didn’t believe me, and his arched brow said so.

“Look, I can’t handle this for much longer—I’m only human, okay?”

His wide eyes were a little bloodshot, which I hadn’t really noticed until now because of my own feelings. And when he came closer and looked at my lips like that, God Himself must have sent divine intervention to hold me back from jumping his bones.

“Give me a few more minutes,” he finally said, closing his eyes as he got himself together—much easier than I ever could. “We’re going to get out of here soon.”

So, I did.

I gave him a few more minutes that seemed like an eternity to me. I kept my eyes closed most of the time, because every time I opened them, an incubus would be there, fucking a woman from behind slowly while she stood on the couch on all fours—while a succubus lay underneath her and sucked on her nipples.

Or a guy would be there, sliding his cock between the boobs of a gorgeous orange-haired sccubus, while the woman next to him was getting choked by the cock of the incubus standing in front of her—and that wasn’t even everything.

Then…

“Get up and walk outside slowly. Keep your head down and try to hide in the crowd,” Rune said.

About fucking time.

This time, I did exactly as he asked. This time, I kept my head down and I walked slowly, even if it was torture for me. My view spun every now and again, and I barely saw the bodies of the people outside—they weren’t having sex, just mingling and talking and laughing and dancing to the music coming from that one-man band I no longer even heard.

I was not okay.

But I did as Rune asked, turned when he told me to turn, stopped when he told me to stop, and I thought we would make it. We were so close to the front of the yard, the darkness where we’d come from calling my name, promising to hide me if I only made it all the way to it.

Then suddenly, someone stepped right in front of us.

“I thought I told you not to move. Where do you think you’re going?”

It was Rogue, the hot incubus with the tattoos on his arms, and more of them were slowly surrounding us.

Others watched, whispering in each other’s ears. I looked at Rune, and he looked at me. Shook his head once.

Don’t try anything, I thought he meant.

Once again, I listened.

That’s why, five minutes later, I found myself walking down a set of narrow stairs under the building where Lorei’s little party went on.

* * *

The gold paint of the massive cages was chipped in several places to reveal the dark metal underneath. There were four of them, two in front, two in back, stacked side by side, pressed so closely together it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. Together, they formed a solid cube, like a cage within a cage.

They sat at the bottom of yet another set of stairs in a wide room with grey brick walls, a narrow ceiling, and a few of those gas lamps on the walls.

“Lorei used to use them for his acts a few months back, but now they bore him,” said Rogue, and he was talking about those square golden cages. They were as big as a small room and furnished—some had tables and chairs, some couches and armchairs, and all had chains and ropes hanging from the top bars.

“But they’re still as reinforced as the day he had them made,” Rogue continued. “The best Ice magic money can buy. I suggest you save your energy if you’re thinking about trying to run.”

He was talking to Rune, who walked behind me with his head down, never putting a foot out of line. I looked up at him, terrified, but he was perfectly calm. He even gave me a tiny nod that I almost missed, as if to say that it was okay.

I really didn’t believe him this time because we were in an underground room and there were cages in front of us, and Rogue was already holding open the door of the right one of the first two. The wall next to it was made of bricks entirely, no sign of a door or window or anything at all, just some piles of discarded rope on the ground.

For a moment, when I stopped in front of the wide door, the bars as thick as my forearms, I considered begging Rogue to let us go. Maybe it would work. If I begged extra hard, maybe he’d listen.

Except I was not about to beg anyone for anything until the day I died. I’d tried it once when I was a kid. It hadn’t worked. Never again.

I entered the cage with my head up. Rogue’s aura fell over me again and took my breath away—just when I’d forgotten what it had been like up there, surrounded by so many people having the time of their lives. A fucking orgy—and I’d been forced to sit there and take it all in.

Yes, I was definitely not okay.

And it got even worse when Rogue shut the cage door behind me before Rune could come through.

I turned, heart in my throat, ready to start screaming my guts out when the incubus said, “You—on the other side.”

Again, Rune looked at me and I could have sworn I heard the thoughts in his mind. He was calm, and he wanted me to remain calm, too.

What the hell other choice did I have but to keep my mouth shut?

With my hands fisted tightly, I watched Rogue and the other four incubi lock Rune in the first cage of the second row. I could still see him—all cages were right next to one another so the corner of mine touched the corner of his. He was right there.

I went closer until the thick golden bars began to buzz with little lightning bolts just like those chains had, and I stopped in my tracks.

“You will stay here until Lorei is available. He won’t be happy that you tried to run, though. He won’t be happy at all,” said Rogue as he and the others stood by the stairs, those large keys in his hand, smiling.

“You think he’ll let us have a go at them once he’s done?” one of the darker, slimmer incubi behind him asked, his eyes moving fast from me to Rune.

“Pretty sure there won’t be much left of them when he’s done,” said another, and all five of them began to laugh.

My skin crawled. Bile rose in my throat instantly. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!

The incubi proceeded to walk up the stairs, turning to look at us every now and again as they talked and joked and made bets about whom Lorei would take first. The moment they walked out, all the lanterns on the walls dimmed down so that the tiny lightning bolts that went around the bars of the cages became twice as intense.

Heart in my throat, I turned to Rune again.

“What is he going to do to us?” I whispered, terrified now because there was a part of me that insisted that, if that guy Lorei came here and started taking my clothes off, all I’d ask of him was to let me be near Rune.

Fuck!

“Nothing,” Rune said, and the little electricity charges on the cages didn’t seem to hurt him. He had both his elbows on the bar that went around the middle, and he’d reached his hands all the way to my cage. “Come here. Nobody’s going to do anything to us.”

I was flying to him before I realized it, and I gripped his hands in mine.

“What the hell is happening here?” I asked because now I was touching him, and the moment I wasn’t so terrified as to pass out, I became pure arousal. My entire body had turned against me, and it demanded release even though it knew very well it couldn’t get it.

“It was on purpose, Wildcat. Calm down. I wanted them to take us away from that party, put us somewhere alone.”

“What? Why?! ”

“Because you needed a break.” My mouth clamped shut. He was absolutely right—I did. Except being away from the fucking orgy wasn’t doing much to calm me down, apparently. “And because there’s no way they’d miss us trying to escape. We can’t make it out of this place if everyone can see us. We’re okay,” Rune insisted, squeezing my hands with those long fingers.

And now I was imagining them inside me.

I closed my eyes, shook my head. “Did you know they would put us in golden cages?”

“No, that part I didn’t see coming, but I can break us out of here. I just need a bit of time,” Rune said.

“We don’t have a bit of time,” I reminded him, turning to look back at that door at the top of the stairs. I could barely see it now because of the dim lights and the way those little lightning bolts went up and down the bars like they were fucking insects running around.

“We do. We have time. I’ll get us out of here. All you have to do is sit tight and wait—can you do that? You have a couch right over there.”

I finally looked at the cage.

The entire space was maybe a little smaller than my room back home, and it indeed had one of those leather couches from upstairs, worn and used by the looks of it. It just reminded me of everything I’d seen up there. My thighs squeezed together, and a moan almost came out of me. There were ropes every few feet tied to the bars over my head, some so long they touched the concrete floor, some threaded with gold, and some a deep green. A chair was close to the door of the cage that was the most unusual chair I had ever seen, with thick armrests and the back slightly reclined, and there was an actual hole on the seat, which I really didn’t want to know the purpose of. Or of those chains that had fallen all around the thick legs that seemed to be nailed to the floor.

Then there was something I first thought was a changing screen, a divider, one of those I’d seen in movies behind which women used to change clothes—except this one looked pretty big if stretched out all the way, and it was made out of mirrors. My imagination was already running away from me, and I was picturing that mirrored screen spread all around me so that I could see myself and Rune from every single angle no matter where I looked.

Something else that could have been a record player was in the corner, close to a brass tray with ashes in the middle and these sticks all around, which reminded me of the one Miriam had burned to get me to tell her who I was. Dead plants in planters were in the other corners, too, and pieces of red silk were folded near them, covered in a thin layer of dust.

“I don’t want to be here.”

Mostly without Rune, but I didn’t want to be here at all. Not in this cage or basement or the Enclave—not on this goddamn continent.

“We won’t be here long,” Rune said, and I turned to him again, went closer, grabbed his hands.

“Is there any way I can come to your cage?”

He must have seen the desperation in my eyes because he paused for a second, just as two blue electricity charges ran up the bars to the sides of his face, making him look absolutely divine.

God, I wanted to lick his face so badly.

“No,” Rune said, but the way he said it—like he was pissed off. Like he was judging me for trying to make this a little bit easier to bear. Like he was mad that I’d even ask to be close to him when he knew better than I did what the very air in this place was doing to me.

“No I can’t, or no you don’t want me to ?” I asked, and I was angry, too. So damn pissed off—mostly at myself, but also at these creatures who behaved like they owned me, and at Rune, too, for both saying yes when asked if I was his slave, and for not being equally as desperate for me as I was for him.

“You can’t,” he said, and slowly he let go of my hands, putting his back to his cage, knowing very well that those little lightning bolts hurt me, and I couldn’t reach out for him at all.

“And it’s for the best. You need some time to cool down,” he added.

I laughed bitterly—how could I not? It wasn’t heartbreak that I was feeling—no way, that wasn’t possible. It was just anger and this strange feeling of betrayal that was coming over me, that was making me feel just as crazy and just as worthless as I had my whole life.

Once in my miserable existence I actually really liked a man, and I wanted him with my entire being, and he was looking at me like this with those beautiful eyes?

My God, I’d never been closer to losing my mind.

“Wildcat, calm down,” Rune whispered.

“Don’t call me that,” I spit and closed my eyes, tried to breathe in deeply. “I know you blame me.” Because I was to blame, and I blamed myself, too.

“I don’t.”

Even if it didn’t sound like a lie, it had to be.

“Tell me something, Rune,” I whispered, leaning as close to the bars as I could without being stung by this magic that hummed on their surface.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Do you want me?”

I felt no regret, no shame, no embarrassment because I was consumed by magic and by this need for him that was slowly turning into fucking pain. I needed to know if he even felt the tug a little bit, if that kiss we’d shared had been all me or if he’d wanted it, too. Because it had felt like he did, and he’d kissed me back with the same urgency, but then I’d basically begged him to do it.

So, I needed to know.

Rune looked me right in the eye, didn’t breathe in for a good moment. Didn’t blink or move at all.

“No.”

Liar.

He was a fucking liar because I could see the desire written in the colors of his eyes every time those charges of electricity went up and down the golden bars.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to break my own heart any further, or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to do what I knew I shouldn’t do— and maybe and maybe and maybe…

Either way, I stepped back and straightened my shoulders and said, “Then turn around. Don’t look at me.”

I continued to walk backward, and just the thought of what I was about to do made me want to fucking moan. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t natural, but I’ll be damned if I could take it for a moment longer.

I give up, I thought. I fucking surrender.

“What?” Rune whispered, but I didn’t answer.

The leather couch was on the far right of the cage, and he watched me move all the way to it. The armrest was thick and round, and just as soft and as hard as I needed.

I put one leg on the other side of it, knee against the seat, and spread the other as far as I could, torso still slightly turned so I could see him standing there at the corner of his cage.

“Wildcat, what are you doing?” Rune demanded, his voice louder now, harder.

It vibrated right between my legs.

With my eyes on his still, I sat on the armrest, and fuck, it felt incredible.

“ Don’t look at me,” I told him again. My voice came out breathless, but I didn’t care.

I closed my eyes, faced the bars behind the couch, and I moved on the armrest, forward and back, slowly. A moan ripped out of my mouth, and if there had been any part of me left that could have stopped me from doing this, it was gone now. My control flew right out of the cage where I couldn’t reach, and I started to pick up the rhythm.

My eyes were closed, my head thrown back, and in my mind, Rune was watching me. I didn’t dare look back to confirm it, afraid I’d find him with his back turned. I just continued to move on the armrest, rubbing my pussy against the leather as my back arched and I moaned every time I exhaled.

It was heaven. The feeling was so powerful, so intense that it took less than a minute of moving like that to get me close to the edge. I was dying for release, and no matter where it had come from, I was going to have it.

So, I moved off the armrest and sat on the couch, put my heels on the edge of it, spread my legs and pulled my dress up to my thighs. I didn’t dare open my eyes at all, both afraid that I’d see Rune watching, and that I’d find him at the other end of his cage, looking away. I just slipped my fingers underneath my soaking wet panties and touched myself.

The sensation made me scream as if in surprise. I had never before in my life been more turned on, more wet, and the way my fingertips felt sliding up and down my wet folds was fucking insanity. I slipped two inside me and my body came alive, my hips moving on their own, my back arching. My other hand was on my breasts, cupping and squeezing, then pulling the fabric down so I could pinch my nipples, the need driving me insane.

I cried out and moaned and whimpered, and I called out his name more times than I cared to count. If he heard me, so be it. I was way past holding back now.

And I was close, so close. I was moving, my entire body controlled by the pleasure ripping throughout me. All it took was a little bit of pressure on my clit.

The orgasm grabbed me and took me all the way to the sky.

“Rune!” I cried out, completely delirious, and my hips kept moving, making the high last a long time.

Finally, I fell down—floated to the sides light as a feather. Finally, my body didn’t feel like it wanted to burst into a million pieces. Instead, it was calm.

Finally, my heart didn’t feel like it was inside a tightening fist but was free to beat as fast as she could.

And finally, I opened my eyes.

Rune was right there at the corner, lips parted and eyes wide open as he looked at me, breathing almost as fast I was. His hands were around the bars of his cage, and they’d moved. They’d warped to the sides where he’d grabbed them, the golden paint completely chipped like he’d ruined them with his bare hands.

He’d seen me.

Rune had seen me, and right now that wasn’t a bad thing at all—it was the most wonderful thing in the world for me. Just like in my imagination, he’d stood there and watched me touching myself while I called out to his name. He’d nearly broken those bars with his hands because of it, too.

I wondered, was he hard? It was too dark to see.

I wondered, if I asked him now if he wanted me, would he say yes?

My mouth remained shut because I wasn’t sure that would be the answer, and I didn’t think I was ready to hear another no. So, I slid to the side and lay down on the couch, my breathing slowly returning to normal, my heartbeat already calmed down. I held his eyes for as long as I could, and I committed every inch of his face to memory over and over again because I never wanted to forget him. No matter what happened tomorrow or next week or next year, I never wanted to forget this man.

That’s how I fell asleep.