Page 32 of All Hallows Fate

“We’re gods, my salvation,” Madde said, the light in his eyes shifting to something softer, warmer. “No one will see you unless we let them.”

I swallowed, scrambled around for a reason. “Pain’s right, you already—”

“Made you come so hard your legs shook?” Madde offered when I didn’t finish.

“Yes,” I agreed. “That.”

“No problemo.” Madde scrambled off the floor and beamed at me. Gods, he was pretty. And utterly crazy, and sweet, and loyal and—okay, fine, I liked my husband. “That’s an easy fix.”

He kissed the top of my head and manoeuvred me across to the hill where Pain sat. I didn’t fight, mostly because I was amused by Madde’s antics, and because it made me forget about the black hole of missing memories.

“Lie back,” Madde told Pain.

“You don’t have to,” I said quickly, meeting Pain’s eyes before I remembered how useless that was. I reached for a tendril of power and sent it across the small distance between us, brushing his arm. “Madde can’t tell you to do anything you don’t want to.”

Pain’s laugh was quiet. Rolling. A thunderous sound that made my breath hitch. “Do you know how much effort it takes me, every minute, to not touch you? To not grab you close and never let go, so I know you’re safe, and you didn’t leave me? I would kill to feel your heartbeat, to feel your pulse against my fingers, to feel the warmth of your breath so I know that monster did not take you from me. And you think I don’t want you closer? Cat, I need you as close as I can get you. Ride my face, ride my cock, take anything you want. I’m desperate.”

“I didn’t know,” I breathed, struck by his confession, by the emotion in his words. “Pain, I’m sorry. I should have realised.” The memory of him masked, so lonely, tugged at my chest.

Pain’s expression morphed into something mischievous. “Make it better by letting me eat your pussy?”

“Not you, too,” I groaned, peering down at him, draped so prettily over the hill in a flowing black shirt and trousers that would be far too easily to untie. “Madde’s corrupted you.”

“Hey, he was like this before I ever touched him. Not that I’ve touched him like that,” Madde added, ducking closer to kiss my head. “Unless you want to… I’m not opposed to kissing pretty boys, and our lioness would like to watch, I’m sure.”

“Leave me out of this,” I protested, my cheeks stained with heat. I would have said something else, but shadows grasped my ankles, wound up my thighs, and when they tugged, I found myself astride Pain.

“We need to find iron,” I protested, but my fingers sank into Pain’s curls as a clever shadow pulled at the seam of my pants, unravelling the stitching until I was bared to him. “We can’t keep delaying.”

“Five minutes, darling woe,” Pain murmured, making my breath catch with a kiss to my inner thigh, the area so sensitive that I shivered, nudging my pussy closer to his mouth. “Maybe ten,” he amended with a kiss to my other thigh, dragging a deep breath of my scent into his chest. “Fifteen, tops.”

“Pain.” Now I was here, fingers in his hair, his breath teasing my most sensitive spots, all my protests fell away. They weren’t real anyway; I was just self-conscious of how badly I needed these men I hadn’t even known days ago. But I had known them, and it was time to stop denying it. And to stop denying what I wanted. Needed.

The second Pain’s kisses found my pussy, I rolled my hips and rode his face, his tongue lapping against my clit until I was moaning, uncaring that my other husbands watched. No, their eyes on me heightened every sensation until I was floating, flying.

I reached out my hand to Death, the few steps between us making my heart scrunch up tight. Instead of binding our fingers together, he dropped to his knees beside me and kissed me. The taste of him was a homecoming, the feel of his impassioned, fervent kisses something I’d been searching for without knowing.

I climaxed like that, with the taste of sugar and aniseed in my mouth and Pain wrapping me in ropes of magic so he could taste me, consume me, drown himself in me. And I didn’t feel the empty void of my memories for one second. For once, I felt whole.

22

Cat

“That’s where we’ll find a coil of iron?” I demanded in a quiet hiss, flattening my stomach to the cliff we peered over. The mountain opposite us was a solid sheet of black stone with drips of fog like everything else in the domain, the surface broken only for the gaping mouth of a mine. Within it was total darkness, and I had no desire whatsoever to go inside.

“That’s the only place left,” Death confirmed, his voice a gentle rumble that soothed the anxiety spiking my chest. Something had settled in me now, my uncertainty burned away on that hillside clutching Death as Pain made me see explosions of stars. “Everything else fell into the fog.”

“This mine is where evil spirits are sent to toil as punishment for their sins,” I said, because it bore repeating. “And you want us to go inside.”

“If you want iron, we have to,” Tor input, his shoulder brushing mine as he angled towards me. “Or we could forget all about it, find a lovely glade to settle for the rest of our undead lives, and just have amazing, endless sex—”

“I need the iron,” I interrupted with a sigh, glancing at the list in my hand. “If we don’t get it, the gates can’t be fixed. If the gates aren’t fixed, he keeps all the power. This is how we weaken him, and reclaim power for Death.”

It had become a more personal goal than it was days ago. Then, I knew he was my husband, but now he felt like my husband. And that memory of him holding me, comforting me, making me feel safe when I was terrified. It made everything real.

So we were going inside the dark, scary mine.

I slowed my breathing and reached within, cupping a handful of death magic and encouraging it to flow out of me, to drape me in a shadowy cloak. I didn’t have a death god form like the guys, or at least I hadn’t yet found it, but this would do as a shield.