Page 63 of Great Falls Rogue
In the bedroom, the bedpost behind me cracks in two, a blaze of phantom pain shooting through Coal’s fractured bone as we spin to land on the bed. The mattress cradles my back, Coal’s blue-purple eyes fixed on mine. Our chests heave.
Coal’s gaze breaks away from mine and roves over me feverishly. My hair, face, breasts, shoulders, his eyes take me in thirstily, his pupils dilated with desperate wonder.
“Leralynn,” he says hoarsely.
“Coal?” I whisper, though I can barely breathe. Can barely fight against the rising hope.
He grips my face with his good hand. “Leralynn,” he repeats, his blue eyes glittering with specks of purple. With recognition. “Mortal.”
With gasping breaths, Coal pulls me until my backside is at the edge of the bed. As the tension-charged air cools my exposed sex and backside, he hoists my legs onto his shoulders and buries himself inside me so swiftly that I have to muffle a scream with my arm.
My swollen, sensitive channel throbs, stretching to accommodate the male’s great size and power. I bite back moan after moan as Coal—my Coal—thrusts harder still, the thick head of his cock hammering against a spot deep inside me, his motions driving me up the bed. He follows on his knees and pounds into me until the bed shudders against the wall, the slapof sweaty skin against my damp backside echoing through the room.
His face hides nothing from me, need and love and grief crossing it in lightning-quick succession. I reach up and pull him toward me until his bound arm brushes my breasts, our foreheads pressed together. His breath hitches, but he never lets me separate from him. Never backs away just because holding me hurts him.
“I didn’t know who you were, Lera,” Coal rasps, the hurt carried on his words’ wings so intense that it chokes me. “But I fought for you long after I stopped fighting for myself.”
Gasping for air, I inhale his metallic musk, not yet ready to answer, craving something, anything, to drown out the tearing in my soul.
As if sensing my need, Coal’s callused fingers invade my slick folds, tracing my inflamed bud. With the fullness and stretching from his cock already holding my every nerve hostage, the extra sensation shoots through my body so fiercely that gripping the sheet with my hands is all I can do to keep from screaming.
That’s when Coal brushes his thumb right over my apex.
My body spasms around him, my focus narrowing to nothing but the eruption of searing, agonizing pleasure exploding from my sex. The rising wave of sensation just begins to calm when Coal’s cock gives its own final spasm, spilling his warmth into me. My channel clenches all over again, milking the emptying cock inside it for every drop. Coal buries his face in my neck and whispers my name, nipping my neck as my second release shudders through me. Then his mouth is on mine, and nothing exists but our lips and breath and racing hearts.
16
Lera
Itremble against Coal’s bare chest, tracing each ridge of his abdomen with my fingers, the arm he has wrapped around me an iron band of reassurance. The amulet’s tattoo-like runes on Coal’s skin are a pale version of themselves, and I can almost swear I feel the conquered magic grumbling in disapproval.
My own amulet lies on the floor amidst the wreckage of the room. With the enhanced strength of magic that surged when we mated, Coal’s native healing gifts went to work on his broken arm, searing the shards together enough to let him remove the sling despite still wincing at the movements.
My mind is still stunned, disbelieving, not quite knowing where to start. I’ve been on the outside of my males’ lives for so many weeks now that I’ve forgotten how to be a bonded quint mate.
Trust still hasn’t settled into my bones—trust that this is real. That it will last.
Coal squeezes me tighter as if reading my thoughts, leaning down to search my gaze with piercing blue eyes before taking a deep kiss that plunders my mouth. Part reassurance, part fae’s primal possession.
“You don’t like hugging,” I remind him stupidly, my mind and soul still spinning wildly to process what’s happened to bring us to this moment.
Coal flashes his canines. “I’m not hugging you, mortal. I’m ensuring you don’t race off to save the world before I get my full fill of your presence.”
“What do you remember exactly?” I whisper.
“I remember a reckless mortal being too brave for her own good.” Coal’s callused thumb traces the pointed top of my ear, which is nearly as sensitive as my sex. “Everything that I did and knew in my veiled human form is just as clear in my memory as what came before it, though I’m now aware that parts of it are fiction. When I think of my role as instructor here, I feel the amulet’s footprint around my neck grow warm and insist that I believe its tale.”
“That’s what I feel like when I wear the amulet.” I burrow myself deeper into his hard chest, the magnitude of the night’s consequences falling onto my shoulders like drops of rain that quickly morph to a downpour. Did Coal’s conquering of his amulet’s magic break the veil? Or will the humans continue to see him as one of them? Will the effects last? Without the mental connection that Coal and I share, will the other males ever come back? What should I—
“Stop it, mortal.” Leaving off caressing my ear, Coal grabs it instead, pulling my head back to find my eyes. “Whatever you are thinking, you no longer get to think it alone. Understand?”
Heat fills my blood, though I’m not sure whether I want to kiss the bastard or kick him. I settle for sticking my tongue out at him.
Coal snorts, then glances out the window. “First things first, you can’t stay here in the instructors’ wing and I can’t go out there until we know whether my veil is still effective on humans. I presume that the walking disaster you call Arisha is in your rooms?”
I nodded, chewing my lip. “You want me to try to bring her here?” The thought of separating from Coal just when I’ve gotten him back is ridiculously difficult, but the male is right. I can’t stay in his bed—or what’s left of it with the post broken—forever. “Now that I know where your room is, I think we can use the window and avoid the corridors.”
“Good stars, no,” he mutters. “I don’t trust that girl to walk across clean raked sand in broad daylight without tripping over her own feet, much less prance to the instructors’ wing in the middle of the night. Nor can we use the Gloom… I can feel the curtain between the Light and Gloom being thinner than it should be, but it’s still there.”
