“With you I would kindle my spark,” I said. “Will you join me?”
“I will,” Gabriel said, with so much weight and longing in those two words that my heart swelled.
His acceptance sent a thrum of power through the clearing around us. It sang in my ears as I lifted my charcoal stick into the air, stirring up even more desire. Gabriel copied my gesture.
“We will honor the Spark with our bond,” I said.
“We will honor the Spark with our bond,” he recited in turn. The flames on our sticks leapt higher, blazing against the dark. Energy raced down my arm and tickled around my torso, hot and needy.
Now I had to seal that bond I’d opened between us. I lowered the charcoal and snuffed out the flame against my palm. The fire on Gabriel’s vanished in the same instant.
As I had with the four guys around us weeks ago now, I drew the glyph for joining on my palm and guided Gabriel through its lines on his own. The feel of his skin against mine made me quiver with eagerness. Then I set one end of the white cord Naomi had given me on his marked hand.
“I, Rosalind Hallowell, take Gabriel Lorde as my consort,” I said. He gripped the cord as I did, and magic raced giddily between us. My voice reverberated with it when I added, “I will light my spark by him and never let it burn him.”
Gabriel held out his own length of cord, the blue one, for me to grasp in turn. “I, Gabriel Lorde, take Rosalind Hallowell as my consort.” He paused, his gaze burning into mine as magic surged through us both. “I will light her spark with my heart and never do her harm.”
A sharper rush of joy whipped through me. I had to swallow hard to contain the emotion. I hadn’t told him to say that. It wasn’t part of the official ceremony. But the other guys had added it in during theirs. One of them must have told him, so he could become a part of our group in exactly the same way.
The bond between us snapped into place alongside my joy. Every nerve in my body rang with the magic of it. Heat pooled in my chest and low in my belly, and a pleased laugh fell from Gabriel’s lips as he must have felt the same sensation. Then I was wrapping my arm around his neck and pulling him into a kiss.
There wasn’t any need to wait this time. No need to hold back from the whirlwind of passion that our joining had stirred between us. I gave myself over to my desire without hesitation.
“Rose,” Gabriel murmured against my mouth, and then he was kissing me even harder. We stumbled to the edge of the clearing, my back hitting a tree. He pressed me against it, his lips scorching along my jaw and neck, his hands tugging up my dress.
I wrenched his shirt off of him with the pop of a snapped button. Oh well. I could buy him a new one. Right now I wanted—Ineeded—to feel all that hot hard muscled body beneath my hands.
He groaned as I explored his chest. His fingers dipped inside my panties to stroke the most sensitive part of me. I gasped as he flicked his thumb over my inflamed clit.
My spark was searing through every part of my body now. All I could think of was joining with this man completely, in the most physical possible way.
He yanked my panties down, and I fumbled with the fly of his jeans. Then he was pushing me up against the tree again, hefting my thighs around his hips, his mouth crashing back into mine. The rough bark rasped against the bare skin at the top of my back, but that hint of pain only brought the pleasure of his touch into brighter relief.
His cock filled me with one hot thrust and a wave of deeper pleasure. I moaned, bucking my hips to meet him. With every stutter of his breath, every caress of his hands, every plunge deeper inside me, magic twined between us even more strongly.
“My Gabriel,” I murmured. “My consort.”
He let out a choked sound. “From now until always, Rose.”
He picked up his pace even more, our bodies coming together at an almost frantic rhythm. His hand closed over my breast with a flick of my nipple through the dress’s fabric, and somehow that was what sent me over the edge.
Pleasure spiked through my nerves. I cried out, and Gabriel closed his mouth over mine, drinking in my release with a few more jerks of his hips. Then he came too, with a rough gasp. He rocked against me, his rhythm slowing, until we came to a stop braced against the tree, breathing hard, lost in the hazy afterglow of bliss.
Footsteps whispered over the grass. My other consorts came up around us, touching my shoulder, my face—forming a tighter circle around us. An embrace, all six of us together, as if we were just one body, one being. I leaned my head to the side against Seth’s shoulder, squeezed Jin’s fingers, and slipped my other hand around Gabriel’s neck to keep him close against me.
It was done. Whatever else the Assembly threw at us, whatever else lay ahead, no one could shake the ties I’d formed with the guys who’d always felt like my destiny.
Chapter Twenty
Rose
“Oh, youabsolutelyhave to try Tilda Carrington’s regencies,” Naomi said between bites of breakfast croissant. “If you like Cadence Marsten, you’ll love Tilda’s stuff.”
I laughed around my own mouthful of buttery pastry. “Well, how can I say no to a recommendation like that?”
“And there is one author I’ve read who writes about women with multiple partners… Who was that again? Oh, I’ll have to look through my collection to find it. But maybe that would appeal?” My cousin raised her eyebrows.
Warmth crept into my cheeks, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking that scenes in those books might give me a little inspiration in certain areas. Inadvertently, my gaze drifted to the guys sitting around the table with us.