Page 67 of Ashes

I grab his arm and throw him back against the tree. Sparks bloom behind him, lighting up the trunk, then fluttering into the air.

He steps forward, attempting to move round me a second time.

Again, I throw him back.

This time, he waits. Air rising and falling in his chest. I look down and see an erection straining against his pants. My dick twitches in response.

Luther and I have fucked once before. Just once. The night I left to join the League. We were drunk. It was messy. We never revisited it.

I move toward him, squaring my shoulders, drawing myself up so I’m bigger and broader and meaner than he is. He looks at me, his eyes soften. “Fuck her out of me,” he says. “You do it for Tanner. You fuck the darkness away, like he takes yours.”

My jaw clenches at the mention of Tanner.

“Fuck me until she’s out of my head.”

I hesitate for just a moment then, in one swift movement, I take hold of his shoulders and spin him around. I look at the branches above us, flick my fingers, and pull two of them down to twist around Luther’s wrists and hold him in place.

When his pants are down around his ankles, I unfasten my jeans and take out my dick. He pushes his ass out for me. I spit into my hands, moisten my shaft, then ease into him. I go slow, in then out, a little further each time.

“Ready?” I ask, poised for one final thrust.

“I told you to fuck her out of me.” Luther slams back onto my shaft. I groan and lean back, watching my balls hit his ass.

As I pull him onto me, again and again, Luther tugs against his restraints. I know what he wants, so I wrap my fingers around his dick. I fist it in tandem with the motion of my cock, moving my palm over the metal ladder beneath his skin, creating a friction that makes him groan. As if he’s on a precipice between pleasure and pain, and doesn’t know which way he’s going to fall, he asks desperately, “Tell me what it’s like to fuck her.”

“You think I’m going to tell you what my girlfriend’s cunt tastes like?” I whisper in his ear.

Luther groans.

“You will never know what she tastes like.” I let his wrists go, and he slams his knuckles into the tree. A lightning rod of fire shoots down into the ground. It grows hot under my feet. My balls tighten. Waves of pleasure roll through me.

“She was wet for me,” Luther says, grinding back onto my dick as it stiffens inside him, pushing my tip onto his prostate and moaning at the pressure. “In the club. She wore crotchless panties. I felt her. She was wet for me.”

I pull back.

Luther clenches, tries to keep me inside, but I push him off and come on his ass instead. He’s trembling, desperate for me to return. Instead, I turn him around and take him by the throat. As I squeeze, restricting his airway just enough to make his head swim, he fists his own dick. Once. Twice. Three times. His body tenses, his muscles constrict. He cries out and braces his arm on my chest as he comes. “Fuck,” he breathes, shivers shaking his muscles, falling back to rest against the tree, looking up into the branches. “Fuck.”

I pull up my pants as he does the same. He opens his mouth to say something, but I return my hand to his throat and fix my eyes on his. “Don’t talk about my girlfriend’s cunt again, Luther.”

Then I leave him outside and stalk back to the cabin.

35

NOVA

It’s late morning when I wake. The light outside isn’t the misty early-morning kind. It’s brighter, warmer. For the first time in I’m not sure how many nights, I’m alone. The bed feels too large and too empty. But then Sam appears at the top of the stairs.

His hair falls over his face as he nods good morning. Brushing it back with his forearm, I notice he’s carrying two steaming coffees.

“The guys are outside. They said something about reinforcing a mask?” He hands me a mug and perches next to me.

“We masked almost the entire forest,” I tell him, blowing across the surface of the hot liquid. “The lake too.”

“How does that work?” Sam asks. “I mean, what would people see? A big black hole?”

I frown and try to remember how Mack explained it. “I think it’s a bit like creating an alternate version of what’s here. So, they’ll see the woods and the lake but nothing that would lead them to us. No cabin. Landmarks in the wrong place.”

“They’d get lost? A bit like a labyrinth?”