“I want to give you everything I can,” I said. “I want to take you even higher.”
She let out a breath shaky with pleasure. “Mmm, yes.” Then she lifted her head.
Jin had scooted back from us, cleaning up with a grin, and Damon had returned from his chat with the guys up front. He took in the scene we’d made, his eyes darkening with lust, but he stayed where he was. Until Rose raised her hand to him.
“Are you sure?” he said, his voice rough.
Her smile grew. “I get just as much from giving as from receiving.”
He let out a chuckle. “Well, in that case, who the hell am I to argue?”
It was almost painful, sliding all the way out of Rose as she rolled over. But a second later she was urging me back into her from behind. I pushed into her sex with a groan, caressing her side, her breasts, her ass as I set a new rhythm. My fingers settled back over her clit.
Rose sighed in pleasure. Then she motioned Damon even closer, undoing his jeans. A wordless mutter escaped him as she slicked her tongue over his cock. “Oh, angel, there’s no better heaven than this. I swear it.”
I never would have thought, a couple months ago, that I’d have wanted to see a woman I loved getting it on with another guy—even if I was getting it on with her at the same time. But now, knowing the bond we all shared, knowing how much we all meant to her, it turned me on even more to feel all the pleasure humming through the room.
Pleasure and the sizzling energy that must be feeding her spark. As I thrust harder, fingering her at the same time, that energy seeped deeper into my own skin. Or maybe it was seeping out of me?
A clamping sensation formed around my ribs. Not exactly pleasant, but I could take it. I’d promised I’d give her everything. She’d already given everything for me and the other guys back at the prison.
I was the strongest one here. Better me than anyone else.
Rose’s body started to quiver around me again. I flicked my fingers against her clit, soft and then hard and then soft again. She moaned around Damon’s cock. His breaths were coming as harsh as mine now.
I kissed the back of Rose’s shoulder, driving myself as deep inside her as I could, seeking that sensitive spot I knew could set her off. Bliss radiated through my body, melting the edge off the clamping sensation in my chest. Damon groaned and clutched Rose’s hair, and Rose gave a shaky cry. As her sex contracted around me a second time I couldn’t hold back any longer.
I spilled myself inside her with a rush of pleasure and relief. The pressure around my ribs eased off.
Rose tugged Damon all the way down onto the floor and pulled us both up against her, snuggling between us. I hugged her waist, content just for a moment to lie there in the hazy afterglow. Trying not to think about what she might need all this magic for that still lay ahead of us, and how much she might have to expend all over again to protect us if her Assembly caught us now.
A minute later, the van jerked to a stop. “All right, love birds,” Kyler called cheerfully from up front. “Make yourselves presentable. It’s time to ditch this van.”
Chapter Six
Rose
Iwoke up at a bump of the tires. Thin dawn light and a stretch of pine trees welcomed me from outside the window of the seven-seater SUV we’d commandeered last night. I lifted my head from the cheap jacket I’d bought during the same quick stop, which I’d been using for a pillow. My neck throbbed from the awkward position it’d been bent in. With a flick of my fingers, I sent a soothingly cool waft of magic through the muscles there.
Over the tops of the seats ahead of me, Seth’s tawny hair showed where he sat at the wheel. Jin had taken over navigating beside him while Kyler slept in the middle seat next to Damon. Gabriel had his head leaned against the window across from me in the back seat, but he straightened up when he noticed I was awake.
“Where are we?” I asked. I’d drifted off not that long after we’d found the car and a hasty meal at a fast food drive through, with instructions that the guys had to wake me up right away if they saw any trouble. They hadn’t woken me, which had better mean trouble had stayed away so far.
“Somewhere around the middle of Montana,” Gabriel said. “Ky figured that was the most isolated route.”
“And I was right,” Ky piped up from the seat in front of us, where I guessed he wasn’t sleeping anymore. “We haven’t seen anything but trees in at least an hour.” He paused. “Where do you think we go from here, Rose?”
I didn’t know. That fact made my stomach ball into one giant knot. All I’d been able to think about before was getting us away from that corrupt faction of the Assembly and the enforcers they’d commandeered to their cause. But I’d gotten the guys into this mess, so now I had to find a way through it.
“We can’t go back to the Hallowell estate,” I said. “Obviously. But I guess… Back before this all blew up, I thought maybe we could run away somewhere. Find a place where nobody would know who I was and just live our lives there. We could still do that. We’d have to be more careful, since obviously the Assembly would be keeping an eye out for us now… But there aren’t that many witches in the world they could have on the look-out for us. It wouldn’t be that hard to keep a low profile. If we’re not hurting anyone, eventually they’ll have bigger problems to focus on.”
“Finding a place to just live our lives doesn’t sound so bad,” Gabriel said, setting his hand on my knee with a reassuring squeeze.
Maybe not to him. He’d spent the last few years rambling all over this continent and South America too. He’d lost his dad to a suicide that was partlymydad’s fault, and he’d told me his mom and her new family had turned him away. I wasn’t sure he had anyone, really, except for us.
But the other guys did.
“It’s not really fair to all of you, though,” I said. “None of you would be able to reach out to your parents or your friends or anyone you know back home, because you can be sure the Assembly would be keeping an eye on them now that they know who you are. Even sending any more messages from a new phone would be risky. You shouldn’t have to give up every bit of contact with those people.”