Page 14

Juniper

W e heard their screams before we saw them.

Bodies fell from the ceiling, dropping through the rock like it was nothing but an illusion, and I wondered if it was just that, a spell to mask the real way out. Perhaps it was, but I didn’t have time to think about it when we were scrambling to get out of the way. Some of us – myself included – snapped out of our frozen stupor with enough time to catch them with our magic before they hit the floor. I didn’t know how far they’d fallen, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that many wouldn’t have survived, and those who did would have been left nothing more than a broken shell.

At first, I tried to reach for my Air Affinity, but when I touched it, it receded back into my body and escaped my attempts to grasp it. Concerned but knowing there wasn’t time to dwell when live hung in the balance, I quickly switched to my Earth Affinity and wove a tangled web of soft vines in a net to catch them before they hit the floor. It wasn’t the best choice since they bounced and rolled into one another, but it was better than nothing. Other Witches and Warlocks with an Affinity for Earth joined me, merging our magic to reinforce the net.

I could hear the others muttering, a few looking down at their hands as if they’d betrayed them and I knew I wasn’t the only one who was suffering from an inability to access my other Elemental Affinities.

Most people didn’t even know I had an Affinity to all four. My love of gardening was well known so they assumed I was connected solely with Earth. I never corrected them, choosing to keep the true extent of my abilities to myself. And Oz. He was the only person alive that knew everything there was to know about me. I hadn’t even told my parents, afraid what they would do if they found out. They may have raised me and loved me since birth, but we weren’t blood. Fear and prejudices ran deep within our community. Those with less power always wanted more, and those with more were constantly under threat. It was safer for everyone if I kept it to myself, so my inability to connect to my Air Affinity was a blessing in disguise.

The bodies stopped falling, though we all waited with bated breath to see if there were any more coming. Just as I was about to gently lower them all to the ground and retract my vines, another body fell. This one was a large, purple Daemon that landed on top of the pile where they had all rolled. I heard a few bones crack and some moans of pain, but otherwise everyone still seemed to be alive.

Then another body fell, his scream preceding him and my heart both dropped in dismay that he was and floated that I wasn’t alone. Oz fell on top of the Daemon who seemed to catch him to prevent further injuries to both him and those beneath him.

‘ Ozzie?’ I called out to him in our mental link.

His head snapped up and his eyes scoured the crowd of us below as he searched for me. ‘ Junie? Oh, thank fuck…’

‘Ozzie, what happened? How did you just fall through the damn ceiling?’

‘Ceiling?’ he asked while carefully extricating himself from the tangle of bodies to reach the edge of the net. ‘ We didn’t fall through the ceiling, Junie. We woke up in a meadow surrounded by trees, then the trees woke up and attacked. They threw us in a pit and we fell for ages. I didn’t think there was a bottom...’

I winced, my palms turning clammy at the mere thought of a drop like that and I hadn’t even been the one to fall. ‘ Shit, Ozzie. That’s a nightmare. Are you injured?’

‘No more than a cut from the battle at the academy. Can you let us down now, please?’

I absentmindedly retracted my vines. When the warmth of my magic returned to me I realised I’d been shivering and goosebumps covered every inch of my skin, but his words distracted me from it anyway.

‘ Battle? What battle? Is everyone okay?’

Everyone fell the last distance to the floor and I cringed. ‘Oops. Sorry,’ I muttered over the groans of pain.

‘ The academy was under attack, though now that I think about it I don’t think we were the target. The portal hypnotised a bunch of you and everyone still in control of their mind and bodies sort of panicked.’

‘And panic leads to violence,’ I surmised, watching him rise up to standing and wishing I could run over and give him a hug. I needed one, and I knew he’d been craving one, too.

But a prickling on the back of my neck proved that more than one eye was on me, though I felt multiple from opposing directions staring with a little more intensity than the others. I already knew one was the snake dude. He thought he was so clever hiding in the shadows and following me, but the rest of the Shifters weren’t so discrete. Plus, he had a habit of hissing and his onyx scales rubbed against the rocks louder than he probably realised. He’d have been better off in sand, or even a forest where other animals and sounds could have masked his.

I decided to leave him be to see what he was up to. He would reveal himself eventually, and I’d be ready when he did.

‘June! Oh, my gods. I’m so happy to see you!’ A pair of skinny arms wrapped around my neck and squeezed so hard I felt like my head was about to pop right off, but it was the owner of those arms that had me pushing them away, and not so gently.

‘Kendra, what are you doing?’ I asked, my tone harsher than I usually let it be as the small smile I had scrounged together dropped from my face.

The bitch had the audacity to look confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The last time I saw you, you were throwing around accusations like confetti at a damn wedding,’ I reminded her. If we were back at Aurora Academy I would have smiled and played nice, but I simply didn’t feel like it down here in the dark. She had shown me her true colours and there was no place for fake shit in these trials. Unity didn’t happen by stabbing people in the back. Or the front in her case since she’d accused me to my face. I’d give her props for that, at least.

Qarinah, who must have sensed the change in me since she wouldn’t have been able to understand our verbal exchange, stepped up beside me with a menacing aura that made me kind of fall in love with her a little bit. She was best friend material for sure, and I intended to keep her.

‘Who the fuck is this whore?’ Kendra sniped, sneering at my new friend. She must have been able to sense Qarinah’s innate sensuality on top of her killer curves that were almost on full display beneath the thin material of her dress and was clearly threatened by it. I introduced them, enjoying the little bit of pettiness I felt at having the Daemoness at my back to defend me against the woman I’d once thought was my friend. A shallow friendship it may have been but it was still a friendship until proven otherwise, and Kendra had done so in abundance these past… days? Day, singular? I didn’t even know how long it had been since that uncalled for showdown in the courtyard.

Kendra stormed off in a huff, moving over to where Oz stood with that purple Daemon by his side who I’d just noticed was joined by another purple dude, though all three of them ignored her. She tried to sidle up next to Oz, but he merely pushed her away and kept his attention on me. That wasn’t going to help the rumours but in that moment I didn’t care. His mere presence was a balm to my soul when everything else was turning to chaos.

But then my eyes flickered to the side, taking in the shirtless piece of purple man-meat at his side. When the Daemon saw me looking, his eyes caught mine and… darkened was too much of an understatement for what they did. No, they smouldered . I was taken off guard by the sudden sexual tension that popped up between us, smacking me in the face with a force that should have knocked me on my ass. My clit pulsed at the erotic promises I found in his gaze and my breathing sped up as I tried to catch my breath.

Suddenly, he prowled towards me like a predator approaching their prey. I felt trapped in his gaze, their depths hard to see in the dim light but no less electrifying.

His pace sped up the closer he got like he couldn’t wait one more second to reach me, and I should have felt the urge to run but, much like with the Fae and Arden’s blade against my neck, I was frozen in place with excited anticipation. My magic swirled inside me and shoved at my mental barriers as if it was just as eager to reach out to him, but I stayed where I was, patiently waiting for him to come to me. Something big was happening here and I didn’t know what it was but I was ready to find out.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but in reality was only a few seconds, he was in front of me. He stood so close that if either one of us breathed a little deeper we would be touching, but I held myself back, curious what he would do. I heard Oz asking if he needed to step in through our mental link but I sent him reassurances that I was fine. Instinctively, I knew that this giant purple Daemon would never hurt me.

He towered over me, so his chin was practically touching his chest while I tilted my head all the way back just to maintain eye contact, but there was something soothing about the position, like we had done it a hundred times already. This man felt familiar to me somehow. Not personally, of course. I’d never actually met the man. It was more like our souls recognised each other, like this meeting was meant to be.

Qarinah’s silky, sultry voice almost broke through our little bubble, reminding me that we weren’t alone and that this wasn’t normal, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. He responded to whatever she’d said in a voice so deep that it vibrated through every atom of my being and caused the goosebumps to return, only this time they were from the sheer pleasure of the sound and the promise I sensed within it rather than the cold. If anything, I was overheating.

I felt more than saw Qarinah’s presence move away. My magic latched onto her, seeking answers. For what, I didn’t know, but I sensed she was sulking like a toy being taken from a kid than actually upset at whatever was happening here between us so I pushed her back to the recesses of my mind.

And then he struck.

Bending over me, his lips latched onto mine, soft and pillowy and utterly delicious as I ran my tongue along the seem, eager to taste him. He groaned low and deep in the back of his throat, the sound doing things to me I never even thought possible, then thrust his tongue forward inside my mouth like he was trying to fuck me, its texture silky smooth and absolutely addicting. The closest I ever got to this feeling was when I fantasised about Hawthorne. Guild suddenly stabbed through my heart, but it was quickly replaced by lust when the Daemon man’s hands spanned across my back and pulled me closer. My hardened nipples rubbed against his bare chest through the fabric on my sweater and I wanted nothing more than to remove it. I wanted it all gone. Nothing should have been between us, blocking our skin from making the connection we both seemed to crave with a fiery passion.

When we parted, both of us panting heavily as we fought to regain our breath, I looked around sheepishly, sure everyone would have been either annoyed, disgusted, or confused by our blatant display. Except no one was there, and we weren’t even in the same tunnel.

‘What the…?’

‘Where are we?’ the Daemon asked. It took me a moment to realise he’d spoken in English, my head whipping back to stare at him with wide, shocked eyes.

‘You speak English?’

He frowned down at me, confusion swimming in his lilac eyes. ‘I am not speaking this English . You are speaking the language of the Legion.’

I snorted in disbelief. ‘No, I’m not. I’ve never even heard of that before.’

A single, darker purple eyebrow rose up high on his forehead, an impressive feat I was sure Oz would have appreciated since his only went up so far. ‘And I have never heard of this English you speak of. We seem to have found a way to connect so that we can understand one another. I won’t be complaining. Tell me, Beautiful. What shall I call you?’

He stepped even closer, removing any distance between us and lowered his voice as he asked the question. I couldn’t stop the blush if I’d tried, my entire body heating up at not only his compliment but the way he was very successfully seducing me.

I giggled. ‘Well, you can keep calling me Beautiful if you want. That works for me,’ I grinned cheekily at him in an attempt to defuse some of the sexual attention. I actually thought I might combust if he kept it up.

He returned my grin with a smirk of his own, his eyes heating up as they dipped back to my lips that were heavy and swollen from his kiss. ‘I can do that, but I need your name, Beautiful.’

‘J-Juniper,’ I stammered, melting into him when my knees went weak and I could hardly hold myself up any longer.

‘Ah, yes. That is what your friends called out when you stepped through the portal.’

I blinked, taken aback by the sudden turn in conversation. I hadn’t expected him to already know my name, let alone know anyone I would call a friend since I didn’t really have any… Wait. He was sticking pretty close to Ozzie earlier. I wondered what that was about.

I cleared my throat. ‘Well, you know my name and you’ve had your tongue down my throat. You should probably return the favour.’

His eyes flashed with heat and he lowered his lips barely a breath away from mine. ‘I enjoyed tasting you, Beautiful. It is no hardship to do so again…’

I giggled again, high-pitched and breathy. ‘I meant your name…’

‘Phenex.’

‘Phenex,’ I rolled the name over my tongue, enjoying the way it tasted.

‘Indeed.’

Silence encompassed us as neither one of us made the move to close the distance, like we’d both decided to freeze time and take a snapshot to last forever in our memories.

He was the one to break first.

‘I’m going to kiss you now, Juniper.’

I let out a barely audible squeak but rose to my tiptoes to close the distance myself. The action shocked him, not expecting me to make the first move, and I took full advantage of his gasp by tangling my tongue with his, desperate for more of his taste.

My hands came up of their own volition (I swear, I had no control over them) to run along the dips and divots of his muscular abdomen. I stroked them higher, pausing at his pecs where I expected to feel two little nubs, only to come across smooth, unblemished skin.

I pulled away and stared at his chest, curious to find them nipple free.

‘You don’t have any nipples,’ I said, and a laugh burst from his chest, the sound so sexy I felt a gush between my legs.

‘Why would I have nipples, Beautiful? Those are for feeding babies, yes? That is part of a female’s anatomy, and I am no woman,’ he said, grinding his hips into me to prove his point. I inhaled sharply at the feel of him, hot, hard and girthy beneath his pants.

‘Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?’ I blurted, causing him to let out another laugh as I took him aback once again.

‘A tree stole it.’

I snorted a laugh, the sound completely and utterly unattractive in every way possible, but even though I flushed with embarrassment I lifted my chin and owned it. I dared him to say anything.

Instead of any form of repulsion, however, all I found was tender amusement. And then I brought my brain back to the topic at hand.

‘Right. The trees. Did they really wake up and move around like animals?’ I asked, my curiosity taking hold and leading me towards the rabbit hole.

He scoffed. ‘They did, but I don’t want to talk about trees right now, Beautiful. I want to strip you bare and fill you with my cum.’

My squeak was louder that time, but instead of backing away I stripped out of my clothes in record time. I was all for it. I didn’t know how we’d gotten here so quickly but I wasn’t going to complain. He could paint me with his come any time, inside and out.

‘Fuck…’ he swore as I bared myself to him. His hand snaked down beneath the waistband of his pants and I watched with fascination as he gripped his base and squeezed. I could tell because the veins on his forearms popped and I swooned. Fuck me, I swooned hard.

I nodded vigorously. ‘Yes please. That’s the idea. Clothes off, Phenex.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he agreed, any levity completely gone as he obeyed me. It made me feel powerful that this man, technically a stranger even if I felt like I’d known him over many lifetimes, was letting me command him. I liked that a lot, though the thought of him bossing me around was just as appealing. Maybe we could switch it up. I wondered what a fight for dominance would look like between us. I thought I could take him, even if he was unfairly large.

When he shucked his pants, I was proven incorrect. Large was an understatement. This man was going to split me in two, but I was going to love every second of it. I’d just need to ease into it…

‘Come here,’ he commanded, taking back control with that deep, rumbly voice that made my knees go weak and my brain turn to mush. That was the only explanation for what was happening right now. I wasn’t really a one night stand kind of girl, and I never put out on the first date. A man had to earn my body, yet Phenex had shown up all purple and sexy and growly and I couldn’t help myself. I had to have him inside me before I died a slow and painful death by empty pussy.

My core clenched around nothing, the ache inside me building to painful levels.

I obeyed.

But I couldn’t give him all the power just yet.

Throwing the rest of my admittedly miniscule amount of caution to the wind, I dropped to my knees in front of him and eyed his cock, curious to see if there were any major difference between Daemon and Human anatomy. There wasn’t much, mostly just purple colour but most of the cocks I’d had in the past had turned purple eventually, only it was typically just the head.

My hand wrapped around his shaft, my fingers barely able to touch my thumb, and that was when I noticed the difference. And no, it wasn’t his size, though that was obvious. On every inch of his shaft there were slightly raised bumps beneath the skin. He was fucking ribbed for her pleasure.

‘What did I do to deserve you?’ I whispered to it reverently.

‘Are you talking to my dick?’ he asked, amusement colouring his tone.

I looked up at him from beneath my lashes and gently trailed my fingertips over those little lumps and smirked. ‘Yes. He deserves some affection, don’t you think?’

He opened his mouth to answer but I didn’t let him, licking a path from the base to the tip, swirling my tongue around the swollen head, and then I swallowed him down as far as he could go, opening my throat I wouldn’t choke on his excessive size.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he hissed, and I was suddenly so excited to draw out more of his sounds of pleasure. I wanted to see how many he could make. I wanted to learn every inch of his body and discovered each and every erogenous zone so I could make this large Daemon male crumble at my feet.

I was going to make him mine .