Page 66 of WitchCurse
“It’s better, I think,” he said. “The wolf just wants to rip him apart. But it’s not like he’s some fae monster. He has a wife and kids. And what would it solve? It wouldn’t undo what’s been done to me. I’m not even sure it would make me feel better.”
“What he did to you was wrong. He hurt you.”
“Yes,” Toby agreed, his gaze focused up above us on nothing.
“Do you want to talk about it? Would it hurt less if you share?”
“Do you want to talk about your memories of your mom’s death?” He threw back.
The memory of my mom dying beneath werewolf fangs was faded, but never truly vanished. The first few months nestled in Liam’s pack, with the wolves howling on full moon nights, had been brutal. I’d clung to Kiran in the camper, him too far gone to notice much, and prayed to return to Underhill. No wolves in Underhill to attack or bring rise to memory. And then there had been the wolf who sat at the steps of the camper, even on full moon nights, not offering any aggression to us, and keeping the others away. I’d grown brave, sitting on the steps beside him, touching his fur, even letting him rest his head in my lap.
Months had brought us here. I’d avoided diving too deep, fearing that Kiran’s destruction would cause Toby more pain. But tied together, Toby and Kiran finally healing, there was hope. Optimistic, Kiran had called me. Maybe I was. I wanted a chance for us. Was it even an option?
Toby reached up and touched my face, turning it his way. “I’d like it to be.”
“But we have to convince Kiran, too,” I said, worried. “I need him.” From that first moment he had entered my dreams, I felt like he was part of me. Something bigger than what I was. Did he need me at all?
“He would never have survived without you,” Toby leaned up to kiss me. I opened my mouth and slipped inside his to taste him with my tongue. It was heaven. A few moments of bliss, no demand, simply existing in each other’s presence. We could easily turn it into a frantic touch, race toward the climax, and pretend that neither of us felt something missing. We were meant to be three, not two. “Do you think he’ll be willing at all?” Toby asked, curling in close until I was practically lying on top of him.
I thought about that for a while. The long years with him giving a thousand answers, and none exactly right. He’d been used a long time, but knew pleasure. It was why he dreamed of Landon, the one lover who had shown him affection without judgment. That was what we needed to be. Yet I’d been taking from him every moment of our bond. The very ties between us keeping me alive using his magic. I sighed.
“I think he wants to be worshiped,” Toby said after a while.
“He hated when the fae brought gifts. We built the sanctuary in the middle of nowhere to keep everyone away. But as Underhill dissolved, fae came, offering gifts and themselves, in exchange for protection, even while they feared him. He retreated.” Hiding from everyone. At first, I had thought it strange that the fae offered themselves. I had thought of it as some weird fae sexual quirk, until I learned Kiran had to eat fae from time to time. The only other way for him to feed was to be gifted magic by a higher fae.
“Not like a king,” Toby corrected. “More like he’s important.”
“He is,” I said.
“I think that’s how we fit. At least part of it.”
“To worship him?” I wondered. I thought of a thousand ways I’d like to worship him and all were centered around having him between Toby and me in a dozen positions. Maybe I’d gone a little too long without even enjoying the company of my right hand.
Toby reached up and rubbed me through my pants. “That’s part of it, and I’m on board. I’d like to have memories of both of you on your knees, lips wrapped around my cock. I really want to know what it’s like to sink into him. He should be hot as a furnace, right?”
Fuck. I groaned, body responding hard to the image.
“I can’t believe you never…” Toby waggled his eyebrows at me. “I mean look at you, and him. I know he has some hang-ups about his looks, sidhe bullshit not all that unlike Sebastian’s issues, but how could you not tap that?”
“He was dying,” I reminded him. “Fading. Non-functional. If I asked for something, he could have worn glamour and pretended, but it would have been little more than a dream.” I’d had plenty of the normal sort of dreams of Kiran and I together. Knew they weren’t the specialdreamwalkingsome of the fae could do because they neverfeltreal. Not like that first masquerade. We’d been bonded less than a decade when he seemed to completely lose the ability. Lack of magic?
“So how do we convince him there’s stuff worth living for?” Toby asked. “Mainly us?”
I laughed humorlessly for a minute. That was the key wasn’t it. Kiran kept himself aloof because he was afraid of being hurt and abandoned. What was the only way to prove we wouldn’t leave at the first sign of trouble? We were metaphysicallyboundto each other. But maybe if we accepted the worst of him. Whatever it was he was hiding? It couldn’t be any worse than Toby’s memories, right? And much like Toby, Kiran had never gotten vengeance for all the wrongs bestowed on him. Was that part of it?
“Maybe we do need to hunt down and kill Zephyr,” I said.
“I’m in,” Toby grinned. “Tearing him to pieces would improve his looks.”
But it was more than that. We needed to know what was hidden in the darkness. Even if we couldn’t touch it, it weighed Kiran down. Was there a way to free him from that abyss when it was a prison of his own making?
“Facing it,” Toby whispered, his hands stilling around me. “And that’s brutal.”
I wrapped him in a hug, holding him tight. We’d handle whatever came. Nothing in the darkness could be worse than losing everything that was starting to come together.
CHAPTER22
Kiran