Brie shook her head, a crease forming in her brow. “I like it…it’s just.” her eyes fluttered open, watery tears threatening to spill. “It’s a little more intense than I expected.”
“Do you need me to stop?”
“Opposite.” her hands dug into my back with primal need. “Please, move faster.”
My eyes widened, and I sank my head into her shoulder, growling as I obeyed her demand, deep thrusts working inside her. Her body shook with new tremors. She continued to mewl and claw at my back until she shouted out, hot tears streaming down her face. As her climax took her, her legs quivered around me. I bared my fangs, my own release trying to chase after hers. I gripped her tighter, burying my nose in the scent of her hair, breathing deep as my shaft pulsed violently.
She pressed her nails into the sinew of my shoulders, pleading with me to come inside her. My knot swelled to its full size and it became damn near impossible to remove myself. Instead of thrusting, I ground deep inside her, rocking our bodies together in a frantic rhythm. I moaned and shuddered, my breath hissing through clenched teeth, and I emptied myself all over again. I rocked harder, digging my fingers into her hip as I came, murmuring her name. When I finally collapsed against her, she ran her hand through my hair, caressing it away from my face. I rolled us to our side and pressed my forehead against hers. Feeling content and boneless as we laid in each other’s arms.
My body hummed with sated pleasure and the power of the botched spell began to fade from my mind’s grip. I let it go, watching the black tendrils fade into nothingness. Brie shuddered beneath me. We laid there for a moment, breathing hard.
In the dim light of the afternoon sun, Brie’s skin glowed an almost bluish hue. Illuminated by a light sheen of sweat and contentment. It reminded me of countless days spent back home watching Ro paint. The elder orc would spend days in his study, crushing gems into fresh paint and crafting masterpieces out of thin air. People from all over Volsog would come to him asking for portraits and murals. When his hands became too old and pained to crush the gems into powder, he’d enlisted my services. Said it was payment for letting me dally around his study all the time. It was a job I took happily. No matter how hard he tried to teach me, I had no talent for painting. But it felt good to be a part of his process.
He told me once that the proper way to bring out the light in the people he painted was to never pick just one color similar to their skin tone. But instead, layer different hues of paint over each other. Each swipe of a new color brings out something new in the ones before. I didn’t understand him then. Even as I watched him, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how he was able to create such detailed works out of seemingly randomly selected colors. But looking at her now, I could see it. He’d start out with a deep lapis blue, then move on to shades of red and oranges, then back to lighter shades of blue. Blending them together until they formed something magnificent out of nothing.
I wished he was still around to paint her for me. Lapis blue was by far the hardest color to make. Each time he’d ask for it, I’d spend the day griping. But every time, he’d simply smile and tell me it was worth it. ‘You can’t skimp out if you want something perfect.’ As usual, he was right. Some things were just worth the effort.
Chapter 6
Brie
Well, that did not go as planned. Felix squeezed me tighter to him, twitching in his sleep. I squinted, but the dark of the night left me mostly blind. Carefully, I untangled myself from his arms and slid off the bed. My fingers traced the edge of my nightstand until they brushed against the lantern I kept for midnight snack guidance. Once lit, the room was filled with just enough light to move around comfortably.
It didn’t matter how late in the night it was, there was no way I’d be able to fall back asleep. My mind was far too jumbled with terrible things, like emotions. I slipped on a plain green chemise, made my way downstairs and slid out the door into fresh air. The cool wood of my porch against my bare feet acted as an anchor back into reality.
“OK. So. That was probably a mistake.” I said to the night. Felix wasn’t just different dick. That was…I wasn’t even sure what that was. But I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to function in polite society after.
I took a deep breath and rested my hand on my knee. “Fuck.”
That was amazing. My body still tingled from the places he touched. So everywhere, basically. I tingled everywhere, and it was making me think of stupid things, like taking him up on his offer to spend the day together in a flower field or going back to bed and asking him to do it again. “Damn it Brie, get a hold of yourself.” The porch creaked as I paced its length. “You’re just a little dickmatized. It happens. You can still keep your head about this.”
But my mind was a backstabbing beast, and it flooded with images of Felix’s soft whispers, his gentle hands as they worked another orgasm out of me after we woke up on the floor of my living room. Or how I screamed out his name as he took me bent over my bed, his hand fisted in my hair, growling salacious quotes from Rejected Princess.
When did he even read it?
Normally, I’d never let a man grab my hair during sex. It just wasn’t worth the work of re-doing the twists in the morning. But damn if Felix didn’t make the effort worth my while. I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to wrest the memory away. It didn’t matter. It was just sex and I couldn’t afford to let myself get swept up by him. I still had no way of knowing how much of his behavior was being dictated by the love potion. I growled and paced faster. That stupid bottle of pink disaster was messing up my whole life. Anything Felix did could be a complete lie. It would be stupid to let myself grow attached to someone whose feelings could evaporate in a week or so. If I wound up broken-hearted at the end of this, Jack was getting a foot to the throat.
Goosebumps raced along my arms, and I shivered. My stomach was in knots, twisting tighter every time I tried to bury down the butterflies dancing in the shape of the man in my bed. “I need to talk this over with someone.” Cin’s home was close by. But the little turd just got married, and I wasn’t sure how her fire breathing husband would react to being woken in the middle of the night.
Fucking Cin. Getting married right before I had an existential crisis.
Kitty was the only other friend I was close enough to wake up in the middle of the night, but she lived down by the ocean, and that was an hour’s walk at best. A quick jaunt if I took my horse, but Chronic was an ornery beast if he didn’t get his beauty sleep. I rubbed my temples in frustration. “You know what? I’m going to Cin’s. I knew her first, and Fallon will just have to learn to sleep through our bullshit.” We’d been having impromptu sleepovers since we were little. There was no rule that said we had to stop now.
Mind made up, I donned boots and stomped my way down the road. I had a bone to pick with her, anyway. She should have warned me these demons were a different breed. It didn’t take long for the winding oaks to fade into cinnamon trees. The comforting spicy smell eased my nerves a little. Rows and rows of pepper plants weaved their way in between the precious trees. They acted as a natural barrier to most vermin, so she made a point of spreading them around her farm. I still remember hiding in between cinnamon trees as we watched a young deer make the grave mistake of trying a ripe bright red cayenne. The poor thing reared back so fast we thought it might break its neck. It didn’t come back after that.
I sucked in a breath and made my way up the hill where her cottage sat, but when I stepped past her nameplate, a wave of purple shimmered its way up a dome like shape before coming to a stop just above her house. The strange light doubled back out, showing a massive barrier surrounding the property. I turned around to see the bottom of the barrier crackling angrily along the floor. I stepped back, almost stumbling over to avoid touching the strange magic. My back hit something hard, and I whipped around to see Fallon. The dragon shifter grabbed my shoulder to steady me before covering a yawn.
He gave a slow blink, as if trying to stay awake. “Brie, I didn’t expect you. Is something wrong?”
“I…What is that?” I said, pointing to the fading shimmer.
“It’s an alert barrier. Hold out your hand, I’ll attune it to your energy so it won’t go off if you enter the property.”
Hesitantly, I raised my hand to him. Quicker than my eyes could track, he pricked the tip of my pointer finger with a needle. A small drip of blood rose. Fallon took my hand and his and held it above my head. He took a deep breath, then exhaled. I watched on in fascination as a plume of purple and black smoke lifted down from the invisible dome and sucked up the small drop. The red of my blood blending into the swirling smoke before it receded back into the barrier.
“There.” he sighed, releasing my hand. “Now you can come and go without setting it off.”
I rubbed at my wrist. “Oh, um. Thanks?”
