Page 28 of Son of a Witch

Regardless, I understood the message she delivered. I just wasn’t ready to accept it yet. Dark days lay ahead for Tor and me. I just wanted to navigate them together. As a team. A family. A pack, as Raze called it.

My chest pinched with longing for my brother. The voice of reason and peace in the team.

Astra tugged at my hand. “Want to go to your room and read the latest edition of Aurora’s Universe?”

Not when I felt like the villain in this story. “No. I haven’t been able to get into my comics these last few days.” My latest editions delivered to the prison as one of few inmate treats went straight to Tor, and I found them in the bin.

Astra chewed her beautiful, luscious, pink lips. “Okay. How about we lie on your bed and listen to music?”

Music. Both soothing and aggravating when I couldn’t control the stream of tense, dark chords that cast me into the gloom where the screaming demons dwelled.

“Sure.” I faked an upbeat smile, one I’d copied from Tor, because Dad always said mine were creepy and weird.

She rubbed my shoulder and climbed to her feet, encouraging me up with her. Fingers clasped tight with mine, we carried our trays to the bench and deposited them for cleaning.

Only she brought me relief lately, her comforting touch staving off the pain of my headaches. However, I had this terrible feeling that this wouldn’t last forever. Nothing ever did. Soon she wouldn’t be able to calm my wounded soul, and I’d have to answer for my crimes.

CHAPTER10

Astra

I just wantedto stay like this forever. Locked between his arms, seated crossways on his lap, my head on his shoulder while he chased away our worries with music.

Pascal’s powers interpreted sound frequencies through sonar imaging, emotion, even harnessing them for various physical effects. But his most precious gift was the music he made with his body and hands. Echoes of the song he played for me in the prison’s hall capturing all his feelings for me, his affection, admiration, respect, and hope had brought me to my first non-physical orgasm.

Piano notes pouring off his fingers were exquisite and just what we needed. Hopeful and expectant. A light in this darkness. Air that I so desperately needed to breathe. The reassuring caress my body needed. Every note brought my body back to life, making me feel something besides an ever-present numbness.

“It’s beautiful,” I praised him, my fingers sorting through his hair, needing to feel him, but wary of interrupting him with a touch to his arms.

Lost to his rhythm, he didn’t acknowledge me, though I know he heard me through the notes my words gave off. Encouraging his melody, I ran my hand along his sleeve, up his arm, across his chest, earning a groan from him and a tumble of pleased keys. Each melody lifted me out of my dark place, the wings of angels carrying me higher. I needed any escape I could catch—physical, emotional, spiritual—so long as it let me forget everything for just a moment.

The new warden hadn’t discovered the keyboard Vartros permitted Pascal to keep in his cell. A device to keep him sane when the noises of the prison crowded his head and got too much to bear. Dread leaked into me for when the place became operational once again. Sentries would have to report it at their next inspection, confiscating it, breaking hell loose for my man.

I kept up my stroking of Pascal, the sweeping ballad telling me how much he enjoyed my touch. My heart kicked up in tempo, knowing how I affected him.

At the midway mark, his impromptu composition turned heavy and laden with remorse, completely changing the tune. I didn’t interrupt, just let him play. Allowing him to get it out of his system the best way he knew how. Pascal didn’t bottle his emotions like some men, taking it out on a punching bag or shouting at his loved ones. He emptied all his heartache, his frustration, and helplessness into his outlet … his song. This virtuoso would remember every note too, and replay it years later.

I couldn’t endure the regret haunting his eyes. The suffocating weight of his guilt. How he strained to make things right with Tor but only made it worse. Remorse was killing him as much as it was destroying Tor. Something had to give before I lost every one of my men.

Nothing I did made a difference, and I quickly lost my battle. Life threw every curveball it had at us, and it got harder to duck when they came sailing at our heads, faster, sharper, and with more bite.

I felt like a sailor clinging to the shattered pieces of a boat while a storm decimated it. The fool trying to hold everything together while the wind and waves tore it apart. Leaks sprung everywhere, water pooling, the wood sinking lower and lower. Pretty soon I’d be tossed overboard, dragged down by the punishing currents, left to drown, taking my men with me to the depths of the sea. I wanted to give in, let the water claim me. But that was too easy.

I needed to find the version of me that never gave up her fight. Astra Nomical never let anything beat her. This new me let it overwhelm her. Shit, I had to find a way to keep my men afloat with me.

My fingers danced along his chin while my lips brushed his cheekbones, the plane of his jaw. The music streaming from his hands switched tempo, the notes easing, softening, picking up in beat. Velvety skin met my fingertips as they slid across his neck and face. Lightning fired along my lips as I feathered kisses across his chin all the way to his ear.

Fingers never letting up, he stole a glance at me, the corners of his emerald eyes crinkling. “Are you trying to distract me?”

I hit pause on the kissing. “No. I’m enjoying it too much.”

Pascal’s fingers ceased striking the keyboard keys and all the notes died and hung in the air around us like an electrical charge. His arms came around me gently, circling my back, pulling me to his chest. I needed to be touched like I needed air, every cell in my body desperate for contact. His lips dropped to mine, taking me in a drugging, addictive kiss.

“You know how to get my attention,” he whispered, kissing my temple, setting off campfires that warmed the rest of me.

“Sorry.” I grazed my fingertips along his perfect jaw. “Keep playing if that’s what you want.”

“No, I’m finished.” He lifted me in his arms, carrying me to the door, toeing it closed with his boot. “I’m all yours to take advantage of.”

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