Page 40

Chapter twenty-nine

Rae couldn’t sleep for the second night in a row, her body clock all over the place.

I think we both know this goes beyond me simply giving a shit.

Aidan’s words played on repeat as she tossed and turned.

It wasn’t the only memory playing on repeat.

No, it was perfectly spliced between him bending her over her workbench and fucking her from behind, and how he’d practically feasted on her in Cormac’s basement.

Except he hadn’t actually feasted, and Rae realised with a jolt that she was a little disappointed about that.

“You are seriously fucked in the head,” she muttered to herself, throwing aside the covers to grab her vibrator from the bedside table.

A joint would add to the vibe, but Rae settled back into the covers, closed her eyes, flicked on the vibrator, and tried to focus as she moved it over her centre, tried not to think about Aidan’s canines sinking into her flesh, a shiver racing through her at the thought.

But then— nothing . Out of battery. Fuck my life.

She was too wound up to work for it. A smoke and a swim were the only two things that would help, so she grabbed the joint she’d rolled earlier and made her way to the natatorium.

Everything was in place. Her cadets were all ready and waiting for the next order at the end of the week after the facility raids, and then it was time to neutralise every last drop of magic the Vampires and Fae residing in the city possessed.

Less than a week and she’d be out of the manor and out of Aidan’s life for good.

Too many times, Rae had almost given up the location of his magic.

Too many times she’d almost given in, but she couldn’t, or all of this would have been for nothing.

She didn’t dare let herself dwell on what finding Nim was going to look like when her thoughts were so fractured, her resolve so frayed.

Quinn and the rutok—Ru, Bae had named him—bounded along behind her as she padded down the stairs, but Rae needed some peace from the rutok’s antics, shutting them both out of the natatorium with a quiet apology.

Hiding everything from Aidan had been an exercise in mental acrobatics, and she felt worn thin from the effort of it all.

She’d finished her joint before she even made it to the showers and breathed a sigh of relief as the weed eased some of the tension in her shoulders.

Getting through the rest of this week was going to be damn near impossible.

Between her blind hope that Nim was still alive, trying to keep Aidan out, coordinating Omnia, and practicing reaching for all her enchanted pieces of silver, Rae wished she could dive under the surface of the water and remain there, just like the Sirens could.

A foolish wish, but she jumped in regardless.

Underwater, the thoughts swirling around her brain were easier to control, to silence.

Well, almost all of them. Even beneath the surface, her skin burned at the memory of Aidan’s touch, her heart beat faster at the way he’d filled her, at how he’d made her come apart around him with his tongue.

She swam closer to the bottom, following the boundary of the pool three times before she needed to resurface, gasping for breath.

Get it together, Rae. Pulling her hips onto the underwater bench along the perimeter, she leaned her head back to take in the star-painted ceiling, her eyes falling shut and her hand slipping into her underwear.

The click of a lighter had her hand stilling, eyes flicking open to a puff of smoke above her.

“Don’t stop on my account, Farren. Need a hand?”

Rae twisted to her side to see Aidan lying on his back on the ledge above, one arm under his head as he stared up at the ceiling. “In your dreams, Vale.” But she didn’t pull her hand away, too close to what she wanted to stop now.

“Tell me to leave,” he told her, but there was no command in his tone as he shifted, swinging his legs beneath him.

Rae couldn’t. Didn’t want him to go, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she screamed at herself for how stupid that was. How dangerous.

Aidan stepped off the ledge and crouched down beside the water, close enough Rae could feel the heat from him, two fingers swirling in the water, his heated gaze taking her in, a predatory expression that sent a thrill racing through her.

He was only wearing swim shorts, and for the first time, she saw how his tattoos trailed down his muscled thighs too.

“Then show me how you like to touch yourself.” Her breath hitched, fingers circling her flesh, holding his gaze, long past caring what the consequences were.

His head tilted as he assessed her, eyes half-lidded and full of lust. “I like that you’re the only one I can ask that of and be certain your actions are of your own accord. ”

“Another assumption,” Rae all but gasped, back arching, the water lapping at her breasts. “You’re getting far too cocky, Vale.”

He dived in with barely a splash, resurfacing directly in front of her, wiping his hair back from his face before resting his hands on her hips and lifting her out of the water onto the side of the pool.

“Then show me.” He rolled her underwear down, pulling her ankles free one at a time before resting them on his shoulders.

“Show me,” he said roughly, water dripping from his eyelashes.

Rae obeyed. She wanted to touch him, to feel him, but she knew he was going to make her wait. So she moved her fingers slowly at first, small circles right where she needed them, teasing herself and him, relishing the way his eyes followed her every move with ravenous hunger.

No matter how much she tried to tell herself she hated him, she couldn’t deny the pull she felt towards him.

But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.

Not when she was so close to the release she so desperately craved.

Needed. A breathy moan escaped her, fingers moving faster, and Rae could have come just from the look on Aidan’s face.

Without warning his mouth was on her, hands lifting her onto his face, his tongue delving into her as sparks danced down her spine.

Rae tangled her fingers into his hair, thighs clamping tight around his head as release shook through her, but Aidan held her firmly, his tongue not relenting until she stopped shaking around him, until she was a boneless mess in his arms.

He lowered her gently, turning them around so he was sitting on the underwater bench, Rae’s body sliding down against his. He tucked her knees on either side of his hips, the hard length of him pressing against his stomach between them as Rae’s breathing slowed.

Feel better now? he asked her.

Rae tried to shrug dismissively, but her ragged breaths and rapid heartbeat gave her away.

Aidan’s laugh rumbled through her where their bodies pressed together. Liar, he said in her thoughts. His teeth had extended, and Rae wanted nothing but to feel them on her skin, to have him inside her.

“I want this,” she told him, hands running down his chest, the scar over his heart, his hard abs, lower.

She palmed him over the top of his shorts and he thrust up into her hand, silver eyes never leaving her face.

“And this,” she murmured, before kissing him, her tongue sliding against his canines.

She felt Aidan’s sharp inhale and freed him from his shorts before wrapping a hand around his length to guide herself onto him.

His eyes were like liquid silver as he filled her, one hand wrapping around the base of her throat as if he was pinning her to him.

“Gods, you feel fucking perfect,” Aidan breathed, his cock pulsing inside her, the size of him stealing her breath.

Rae leaned into his grip, but whatever words she held on the tip of her tongue, in her thoughts, all eddied away from her as Aidan’s other arm wrapped around her rear, and then they were moving.

Her on him, him inside of her, they met each other thrust for thrust, hard and fast, Rae’s fingers in his hair to pull his mouth against hers.

He slammed into her harder, and Rae arched back at the way he filled her, his mouth coming down over the wet fabric of her bra and taking a nipple into his hot mouth, his canines just pressing through the fabric.

A murmur in the recess of her mind whispered at how right this felt, how he felt inside her, around her, but she shut it down as Aidan’s grip became just the right side of painful, the most sensitive part of her rubbing against him with the friction she so desperately needed.

Coupled with his mouth on her breast, the hand at her throat, the savagery with which he fucked her, another orgasm tore through her, and Rae could do nothing but fall apart in his arms, her body coming alight with every second of it.

The hand that had been at her throat cupped the back of her head, but Aidan didn’t slow his pace, eyes roving over her face, her mouth, and her neck the entire time. “So fucking beautiful,” he murmured.

Bite me , she pleaded, long past caring how desperate it sounded.

Aidan’s eyes flared, and then his mouth was on hers again, the slide of Rae’s tongue against his teeth tearing a sound from deep within his chest she felt reverberate everywhere they touched.

He kissed her the same way he fucked her: roughly, wildly, exactly how she wanted him, but he was being careful too, Rae thought, not to nick her skin.

She pushed at his chest. “I don’t want gentle, Vale,” she said through ragged breaths. “Bite me.”

He wrapped both arms around her in answer, hips never slowing as he looked down at her hands on him, at where their bodies joined beneath the water, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Do you ever stop fighting, Witch?

The words sliced through her, hit a wound so deep she’d long since tried to bandage over.

All she’d ever known was fighting for herself.

To escape. To stay alive. All of it, alone.

Rae pushed off him, heaved herself out of the water, and pulled her underwear back on.

Emotions threatened to spill to the surface, but she shoved everything down, smothered it, and willed it to smoulder into nothing, leaving only anger to bubble to the surface.

“Farren, wait,” Aidan commanded, but there was a pleading edge to his tone.

He was pressing against her thoughts too, waiting for access, asking.

She hated the softness in his voice, the kindness in his actions, hated herself for all of it.

But she’d been lying for so long it was becoming difficult to separate truth from lie, and she couldn’t stay here with him for a moment longer.

So Rae did what she did best and pushed him away. “Thanks for the ride,” she called out without looking back, waving a hand at him dismissively and making her way out of the natatorium, shrugging on a robe and padding back to the safety of her studio.

Ru found her on the stairs, and this time she let him snake through her legs and scramble up her robe to settle around her neck, a contented little rumble coming from the mass of white fur.

She locked the door behind her for all the good it would do.

Ru bounced off her neck and onto a cabinet, so Rae used that as an opportunity to get cleaned up, to change into something more appropriate to sit and use an open flame with other than her underwear, though she’d done exactly that many times before.

She set to work on a tag for Ru, pushing all thoughts of Aidan from her mind, and the look on his face when she’d walked away. Rae dragged a hand through her wet hair. The bastard could rub one out for all she cared. He didn’t get to bring feelings into this. They had an agreement.

“Fuck,” she muttered at her bench pin, willing her hands not to shake.

Halfway through marking out a piece of silver, she decided to make a tag for Quinn too. They were gifts. So they’d have a little piece of her with them when she was gone, but also because, selfishly, she wanted to be able to find them again.

The movements calmed her. The familiarity of the tools, the repetitive motions.

She filed by hand because it soothed some of her anger.

For Ru’s tag, she’d pierced his name into the silver.

Quinn’s, she settled on simply engraving the letter Q, filling the recess with some black enamel.

Dawn had long since come and gone by the time she was done, the pieces already imbued with magic and sitting on her workbench.

Rae had one more piece left to make, one she wasn’t ready to work on just yet.

As she tidied away her tools, she reminded herself what this was all for.

Who. And how much her people stood to gain if she succeeded.

It would all be over soon, and Rae thanked the Goddess for that, because being in one place for too long had started to stifle her.

She’d always been a flight risk, another moniker in her mother’s repertoire.

She paused by the door, questioning whether to get some sleep before she headed out into the city to tie up a few loose ends, but knew the faster she was out of the manor, in the daylight, the better chance she stood of getting everything done. Aidan wouldn’t risk exposing himself to follow her.

More regret threatened to surface, but Rae swallowed it down.

The sooner this was all over, the sooner she could join Seylan.

Maybe Nim would want to come with her too.

Start over. But Rae knew that was not the case.

Knew Nim would never understand what she was trying to do.

As she made her way into the city, a small part of her couldn’t help but get stuck on the fact that for a while now, she hadn’t understood either.