He mumbled a noise of confirmation, stroking a finger down my side and over the gorgeous fox tattoo, still obscured by my blood.
“This is probably some of my best work,” he murmured, and I felt his finger trace over that fucking negative space on my hip where Caleb had pointed out that Austin had hidden his name. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling him out on it, but I was too tired and revenge was a dish best served cold.
“We should go,” he mumbled almost reluctantly, placing a gentle kiss against my back where his face lay. “Before someone finds us in here covered in blood with a dead body on the floor.”
“Hmm,” I sighed my agreement, but neither one of us made any move to get up. Or at least, not in the sense of getting up to get dressed. Still deep inside me, I felt Austin’s cock twitch and begin to harden once more.
“Austin.” I gasped but couldn’t stop my back from arching like a damn cat in heat, pressing my ass back onto his hot shaft.
“Shh, baby girl,” he breathed in my ear, rolling us gently so we were both on our side, with his cock penetrating me from behind still. “You’re still drained; I can feel the magic begging to be back in you.”
“True,” I groaned, sliding my hand down his naked side to grasp at his hip and hold him tight against me.
“We have a few more moments; just take as much as you can.” His hips stroked a smooth, gentle rhythm, his cock barely withdrawing before pressing back in. My body relaxed into it, letting him do what he would without demanding, or even needing, anything different. It was like he knew exactly how I wanted it, and he was giving it to me without complaint.
“Fucking hell, Princess,” he swore in a breathy voice. “I thought once would be enough to get you out of my brain.” His fingers dragged over my flat stomach, stained with dried blood, and down to my pussy. Gently, he slid one long finger the length of me, wetting it in my own fluid before teasing at my clit. My head dropped back onto the pillow, turning slightly to meet his solemn gaze.
“And it’s not?” I finally replied, after letting him work me into a panting mess again. I halfway dreaded his answer, not totally sure what I wanted from this. Obviously, one awesome fuck under extreme circumstances didn’t erase the already established animosity between us. Nor did it change the fact that we simply loved to hate each other.
But it was a start, wasn’t it?
In lieu of an answer, he leaned forward and sealed his lips to mine, kissing me deeply as we both came in shuddering, groaning waves of pleasure.
“Well, this is unexpected,” Caleb’s sarcastic voice snorted from somewhere in the direction of the demolished door. Neither Austin nor I bothered trying to spring apart like we were guilty. Why bother? It was pretty damn obvious what we’d been doing, and I already knew from Caleb’s not so subtle hints that he fully supported his brother and I getting together.
Caleb’s smug grin faded from his face as he took in the scene in the room, and his nostrils flared.
“Shit,” Austin swore, untangling from me and leaping from the bed to grab his pants. “Princess, get dressed quickly. Caleb, wait at the bottom of the stairs.”
Caleb seemed to barely register his twin’s orders, as his wide eyes took in the copious amounts of blood splattered all around the room—both mine and Mr. Gray’s.
“Now, Caleb!” Austin shouted, and Caleb’s attention snapped back to us as he nodded slowly.
“I’m going to wait at the bottom of the stairs,” he murmured and quickly disappeared back through the ruined door.
“What was that about?” I asked, frowning after Caleb then turning back to Austin curiously.
“Nothing,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Cal can explain later. Here.” Austin tossed my ball gown over to me, and I shimmied back into it, sans underwear, and he deftly zipped it up. Good thing it was already a bright hue of scarlet, as it hid a lot of the blood and gore that had ended up soaked into the soft layers from the mess that was my former nemesis.
Austin hurried into the small attached bathroom and ran a wash cloth under water before handing it to me.
“Try and get as much blood off as you can,” he murmured. “Just until we can get back to the hotel to shower properly.”
He retrieved his torn shirt and pulled it back on while I scrubbed some of the rust-brown marks from my skin.
“Ready?” he asked, holding out a hand for me to take.
“Wait.” I picked up the full skirt of my dress and picked my way through the chunks of gore to what remained of Mr. Gray’s corpse. It was really just arms, legs and a head, with a soupy pool of blood and entrails between. The rest of him lay splattered around the room. Bunching my dress in one hand to avoid dipping it in the bloody soup that was his liquefied insides, I crouched low and yanked my Ban Dia ring from his pinky finger.
“Is that—?” Austin remarked, and I nodded.
“Yep,” I confirmed, snatching my beautiful, red satin stilettos from where they’d been tossed and sliding the ring onto my left ring finger. “Fucking bastard used it to hit me.”
Austin paused me in the doorway with a gentle hand on my waist, and I turned to look at what we were waiting for. He raised an eyebrow at me and nodded to the room that was splattered wall to fucking wall with blood.
“They wanted your blood for something. It’s too dangerous to leave so much of it lying around.” He drew a sort of symbol in the air, then recited a string of words in another language. At the end of his spell—if that was the right word for it—there was that same pop of magic, and every smudge, smear, and puddle of blood in the entire room burst into a blue flame, searing in one hot burst, then dying off and leaving crisp, blackened patches in lieu of blood. Including Gray’s corpse.
“Let’s go before Caleb loses it,” Austin said quietly, wrapping his hand around mine and tugging me down the stairs to where his twin waited.
As I followed, I let my fingers tighten on his. For all I knew, the second we reached the others, everything would fall back to the way it always had been between Austin and I. Hell, maybe I’d imagined the connection we’d just had thanks to some sort of trauma induced delirium.
Either way, I wanted to savor this moment of nearness with him while it lasted.
28
The gods—or god or whatever the fucking higher power was—must have been smiling down on us because the three of us made it back to the hotel without any further disasters. Caleb had assured me that Cole, River, and Vali were already back there with Wesley, Lucy, and Elena, but that was the extent of the information I’d been able to get from him.