She grabbed for me, but I didn’t let her. She wasn’t the woman I wanted beneath me, and I felt the urgent need to punish her for it. Smacking her hands away, I transferred them to my grip and yanked them high up over her head, stretching her body and opening her up for me to take. Her breasts pushed out at the new angle, the dark nipples erect and begging to be abused, so I bowed my head, gripped one between my teeth and bit down. Hard.
She cried out, the sound more pained than pleasured, but I didn’t let up. Nipple still caught between my teeth, I nudged her legs open with my own and settled between them, my cock already seeking her hot entrance. I pushed in with one hard thrust, all the way to the base, enjoying the way she squirmed beneath me and whimpered at the sudden invasion.
Enid was always wet for me, and it didn’t take her long to adjust to my thickness. I started pounding into her as soon as she did. Flesh slapped against flesh, combining with the slick sounds of our fucking. Grunts tore from my throat as I pushed into her roughly, my grip around her wrists tightening as I moved my other hand to squeeze her delicate little throat.
Her mouth gaped as she attempted to draw in a breath to no avail, and I thrust even harder inside her. I wanted her to hurt. I wanted her to suffer for being the wrong woman.
Her walls started to flutter around my length, the danger I posed driving her to heights no other man had managed to achieve. I would know. She told me all about them.
Within moments, she was squeezing me like a vice, her scream nothing but a whistle through my grip around her throat. Spurts of liquid squirted from her, soaking me in another shower I would need to wash off before getting into bed. The thought of smelling like her removed me from the moment, and I struggled to keep going. I just wanted to pull out and be done with it, but she deserved more than that from me.
I kept thrusting, drawing out her pleasure until she was a loose weight against the mirror. Only then did I release her, sliding myself from her slick heat. I was still hard, my orgasm nowhere near close. I could keep going, but she just wasn’t doing it for me tonight. I didn’t think she would ever really be what I needed. She wasn’t Juniper, and that was a problem.
Enid stirred, sitting up with a sated smile on her face that soon dropped when she realised I hadn’t come with her. Her lips were quick to reform into a sly smile, eager for more, but I stepped away to put some distance between us.
‘Not tonight,’ I said, then picked up her clothes and handed them to her before returning to the shower.
‘You need to get over her,’ she said, her voice tinged with frustration and no small amount of concern. When we’d first started sleeping together, it had been a lot easier to look past the fact that there was no romantic love between us. Lately, however, it was getting increasingly difficult to find any sort of pleasure in any woman, not just Enid. I would have worried about the state of our friendship, except she knew the score. No strings, and our friendship remained intact.
‘Easier said than done,’ I mumbled, hoping she couldn’t hear me over the stream of water bearing down on me.
I wasn’t so lucky.
‘This isn’t healthy, Thorne. I’m worried about you. You need help.’
Help wasn’t what I needed. I neededher.
There was no time to dwell on it, however, because the distinct tingling that overcame my entire body let me know I needed to hurry it up and make it to the safety of my soft mattress before I collapsed. Another vision was coming, the second one today. Even if my previous vision was like a personal attack that had rubbed salt in an open, seeping wound, two visions in one day was enough to let me know that something big was happening.
I barely made it to the bed, still sopping wet as the vision took hold. Unfortunately, it was very much like the first. My stomach twisted with nausea as I was forced to watch the woman who held my heart and didn’t even know it have sex with someone else. Again. It was strange, as the first vision showed her partner to have purple skin and curling horns. A Daemon, which was insane since they didn’t even exist. This new one showed her with another, this one a man with dark skin that shifted to onyx scales beneath her touch and long, black hair that cascaded around them like a curtain, blocking out the world around them.
While I was cursing the fates for plaguing me with these visions, taunting me with the knowledge that she would literally rather be with men who didn’t even exist than realise that I’d been right under her nose this entire time, I understood at least one aspect of the message they were sending me. Something big was happening, and Juniper was somehow at the centre of it all. The content of my visions had dread curling in my gut, because while they were ambiguous in their context, I had a feeling Juniper was going to need a protector, and I intended to take the job before someone else could.
No one was going to touch her. I’d make sure of it.
Chapter 7
Juniper
Drumming.
That was the only way I knew to describe what I was hearing. It wasn’t like real drums, but more like my pulse pounding in my ears. A steady beat but with a different, more intricate rhythm. Still musical, but more from an innate sense than an outward expression.
I could sense it was magical in essence, calling to me like a siren’s song with the sole purpose of nudging me towards my fate. I instinctively knew that if I followed it, I would receive the answers everyone sought, that the mystery of what was happening would be revealed, but my common sense told me not to. It could have been a trap. Or worse.
And yet, even with that knowledge, it persisted, indifferent that I was aware of its intent.
It was a powerful enough force that I found my body moving of its own accord despite my desire to stay exactly where I was, comfortable in my bed, wrapped up warm and cosy in my covers.
As soon as my bare feet hit the carpeted floor, however, the drumming stopped.
I shook my head, physically attempting to shake loose any dregs of magic that dared to remain, the rest of my drowsiness going with it.
That was weird…
With my renewed consciousness, the earlier events came back to me. The headache. Hawthorne and Enid walking in on me and Oz hugging. The curse activating. Hawthorne catching me when I tripped. Getting blood all over him before I ran away.
Gods, I was such a mess. It was no wonder he never noticed me unless I was quite literally falling all over him.
