“Alright, enough,” Wes said, holding out a hand to my shoulder, forcing me back into my seat. “Arguing with each other solves nothing. We need to work together.”
Marta hugged herself and sat down. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. I was trying to protect us.”
“What else do you know?” Wes said. “Have you found anything else about Constance and her warriors?”
She shook her head. “I’ve read through it a few times. Some of the rituals are terrifying. Some are just bullshit, but it’s obvious she was desperate to fix the bond…or create something like it.”
Marta explained what she’d read, highlighting how the bond had torn through the three of them violently before dissipating altogether. It sounded like what happened to us when the demon attacked us at the crossroads.
“I think something about three people affects it,” she continued. “I have my magic back. I can try to contact the human realm. And once we have our bond, maybe we can…” She stopped and shook her head. “Open another portal back to our side.”
“It took three witches and four warriors to create the liminal,” Wes said. “You’re going to try it alone with the two of us?”
“If I can get in contact with Bridge or Isobel, maybe they can pull from that side while we push from our side and…I don’t know, squeeze through. Constance talks about using her rituals to gift her magic to her warriors, making it stronger than it was before.” She glanced between me and my brother, but when we didn’t respond, she rubbed her hands over her face. “It’s ridiculous, but it’s the only idea I’ve got. We’ve been researching for weeks, and we barely have anything to show for it.”
Wes drummed his fingers on the table and glanced at the book again, flipping a page over before looking at me.
“I suppose trying one of them won’t hurt,” he said with a shrug.
I widened my eyes and scoffed. “Oh yeah? Which one do you wanna do first? The one where we fuck each other under the full moon or the one where we carve sigils onto each other’s hearts and lick the blood off?”
Wes frowned. “No harm in trying both of them.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Do you wanna get out of here?” He raised his eyebrows. “To do that, we have to get our bond back.”
“Why don’t we try the original spell? The one Lilith did at the choosing.”
“That took a full coven,” Marta said. “Lilith entered a trance to speak to the ancestors while Circe guided her, and Val acted as a tether to the real world. Doing that without assistance can leave the witch lost. I could get stuck in the Under Realm. I could lose a piece of myself there.”
I had no desire to have any of them carve anything into my body, much less watch my brother fuck the woman I’d made come on top of me yesterday. And yet…the moment the thought was in my head, my cock twitched and something stirred in my gut, forcing me to shift my hips to keep my cool.
Living in close quarters with Wes for most of our lives had naturally blurred the line between us. I’d woken up, drunk and spinning, in motel rooms, only to look over at the spare bed to see my brother railing some chick we’d met on the road. There had been times when I’d hooked up with men and women, sometimes both at the same time, and caught a glimpse of Wes sneaking out or trying his best to pretend to be asleep with a tent under the bedsheets. There was even that night with the cuck and his girlfriends, and I’d be lying if I said Wes wasn’t hot when he was plowing into some chick.
Perfectly submissive. Bendable and willing. A gorgeous mouth to match his fascinating mind. In my darkest moments, I let myself regard Wes, especially when he was inhibited and letting his guard down. His strong forearms gave way to broad shoulders, and his perfect mouth had been made to be bitten. Hell, it was no surprise the guys I went for were usually taller and bigger than me, even if I dominated them.
But…for as much as we’d fucked around and developed a relationship that would fund a therapist’s salary for years, we’d never pushed that boundary between the two of us. And this ritual required active, willing participation from all parties. An exchange of sweat and seed. The thought both scared and excited me for reasons I didn’t want to pick at.
“You’re on board with this?” I asked the witch, grabbing the book from Wes’s hand. “You’re okay with ‘connecting flesh under the power of the full moon until the sun rises?’”
She pushed her fingers back through her dark hair. “I’m not okay with any of this, but I don’t know what other choice we have.”
I licked my lips and sighed, downing the rest of my beer in one desperate gulp. “Fine.”
“Fine,” she repeated.
“We don’t have to do that one first,” Wes said.
“It’s best if we work from the outside in,” Marta added. “Blood’s the sacrifice, flesh is the bond. Soul is the seal. They have to be done in order.”
“Cool,” I said, adding as much sarcasm as I could. “Drinking blood in the woods at midnight. Wonderful.”
“One problem,” Wes said. “The moon is the same every night. It never grows full. What are we supposed to do about that?”
Marta sighed. “The moon is conjunct Mars, the same as it was the night we created the liminal. We’ll have to work with that. We can do it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I blinked and swallowed the clench in my chest. “You don’t think that’s jumping the gun?”
