She pulled my face to hers. When she was only inches from me, she whispered, “You. Are. MINE.”
And she slid onto me.
Her silken heat closed around me, and any ability to think at all went with it. My thighs tensed as I thrust against Matt’s hold and into her, but she had every vestige of control—she teased, pulling away to the very tip, then sliding my full length inside, gripping before squeezing.
Matt growled behind me, pushing his own hips forward, grinding himself into my back as the link entrapped him as thoroughly as me.
Anna was moaning with every move, her body tightening around me. I quivered, so close, so close—but it wasn’t going to be enough, and I knew it. Xumi’s hooks had penetrated too deeply.
Never second-guess a succubus. Or a mate.And with that, Matt sank his teeth into my shoulder.
The unexpected surge of pain took me there. Instantly. I screamed with the power of it, a full Dragon shriek as my body thrust her upward, lifting her until it knocked her hands loose from my face.
She didn’t need her hands, for what was in her to feed. As she rode me, I sensed her drink deep of what pulsed between all three of us. Matt erupted against me, his ecstasy blasting through the link, filling it with explosions of color and sensation.
I was lost in it as she shattered around me, wave after wave milking me of every last shuddering drop. Until my thighs shook with the strain of holding us, and I released her to drop to my knees.
Matt dropped with us, his teeth loosening in my shoulder. But then, Anna gave back what she’d taken, a lightning bolt of lust that coursed through Matt and I. We were both rock hard again in an instant, and Matt groaned long and low as heat exploded for a second time against my back. His teeth sank deeper, and I cried out as Anna rode me through another orgasm, even more powerful than the first.
When Matt removed his teeth and pulled on my shoulders, I collapsed to lie in a damp, tangled heap upon the moss.
He released me, but I held Anna in my arms. I’d never thought I would do that. My heart filled to overflowing.
She twisted to grab something off the ground—the Bellati’s horn. As she held it to her chest, I trembled all over. I’d never felt anything like the power that pulsed between us. It crashed up against the faces of my past, and—it engulfed them. Didn’t shove them down deep, or wall them off, but rather, flowed over and around them. Acknowledging them. And by doing so, it silenced them.
As I lay there, stunned, the link began to surge and recede like a rapid-fire tide through Anna and Matt and me, but reaching outward too. As though still searching, unsatisfied.
My gut twisted. It wanted Sebastian. For the first time, I accepted that Matt had been right. That this thing between us wasn’t something that could be ignored.
“Look.” Anna’s breathless voice had me loosening my arms as she held up the horn. Was it brighter than before? The spiral more defined?
“It’s stronger,” Matt whispered. He’d moved to lie on her other side and now propped himself up to stare down upon it.
I swallowed. Had what we just done strengthened the horn? It could buy us more time to save Sebastian. But it didn’t matter, not really. Because unless we could find him...
I didn’t want to acknowledge the abyss within us. The space only he could fill.
Or the fact that if we didn’t save the Bellati, we might not be able to save ourselves. A couple of hours ago, that would not have mattered to me.
But now, it meant everything.
50
Sebastian
I awoke with a gasp, my mind rife with images of writhing forms and cries that echoed through the air, caught up with demands that my own body be too far spent to fulfill.
So I lay, trembling, as my senses slowly returned to me. My equine nose detected dust, Trantils, and manure.
And blood. I smelled blood.
I be lying flat out on my side, and my head ached almost as badly as my nose and the area behind my ears. All be signs of having been knocked cold by the crystal power in the headstall.
I be no longer in the courtyard—I’d been dragged to one of the ancient stalls in the barn beneath Galeran’s hideout. They hadn’t bothered to remove the headstall. It be still cranked tight around my face.
I rolled onto my chest, and then attempted to stand. Managed it on the third try. My legs shook and barely held me. If Finn mounted me now, I didn’t think I could carry him.
My days be coming to an end, and I knew it. I tried to estimate how long I’d been lying in the stall—a small barred window offered slanted sunlight across the wall. Evening, I thought, not morning.
