King of Gods (Vampire Crown Book 2) Read online

  “I need your fingers in me,” she spoke.

  Elex slipped two fingers in my channel and pumped.

  I was becoming senseless.

  The man’s hand slipped between her legs, and though we couldn’t see it, the groan and gasp of the woman let us know he had slipped his fingers inside her channel.

  I wondered if he worked her as thoroughly as Elex moved his fingers in and out of my pussy. I could imagine if they were new to each other, it was even more intense.

  He would know exactly where to push and pull and press and twist.

  The fingers in me were confident, as Elex pushed a thumb against my clit.

  The orgasm took me by surprise, and I barely had the presence of mind to bite my lip. I had to stop the yell I wanted to let out. I couldn’t see for the sheer delight that blinded me. My sex greedily pulled his fingers. It wanted him deeper—I wanted him deeper.

  He chuckled as the woman on the bench came as well, her pleasure escaping on a breath that probably took all of her effort to keep mostly silent as well.

  “My cock is so hard, Kimber.” Elex’s words weren’t loud enough to be carried away.

  I was still coming down from the mind-blowing orgasm. I glanced down at the bench and saw the man was now sitting next to the woman, stroking her calf as she also calmed.

  “I want you inside me,” she breathed.

  “Good, because that’s where I want to be.”

  I tore my eyes away from the couple on the bench and found Elex’s gaze over my shoulder. “Fuck me, Elex. Right here.”

  Hot breath caressed my cheek. “Oh, baby, yes.”

  Surprising me, Elex pulled my robe closed and cinched the belt at my waist to hold it there. He moved his hands to my backside and started inching up the fabric in the back.

  The woman on the bench rolled over when I had looked away for just a moment. She was on her hands and knees now, and her partner was smoothing his hand over her rump appreciatively.

  “Lean forward,” Elex whispered. I swore I heard the same words from the bench below.

  I placed my hands on the railing, and he nudged my legs apart as the man below did the same to his woman.

  There was something so deliciously filthy in knowing they wanted us to watch them.

  It was magnified again as I felt Elex nudge his erection against my pussy. He moved through the cleft, spreading my cream on him and me.

  “Oh, sweet lord and lady,” the woman hissed—and I knew he had slid into her.

  Elex slid into me just a moment later, pushing my body, causing me to tremble in pleasure. This was so right and so wrong at the same time.

  The man below thrust against the woman, and I knew Elex was watching—because his cock slid in and out of me at the exact same pace.

  I whimpered.

  “You like watching.” His words dusted over the shell of my ear and his teeth nibbled there a moment.

  “I do. I shouldn’t.”

  “Why not? They want us to see them.”

  Elex mimicked the man’s movements, thrust for thrust, and stole my thoughts.

  His words took my breath.

  “See how she’s enjoying his cock. She loves the feel of his thick erection moving in her quim. He’s moving faster and harder now because he can feel his own climax in his balls, churning. He wants to fill her with his cum, to make her orgasm one with his…”

  Elex was describing himself as well.

  His hips slapped against my ass, driving himself deep, deep inside. I wanted to come again. Between the thick shaft driving me, and the erotic scene in front of me, it was only another moment.

  “Oh, gods, yes!”

  Her orgasm was quiet but potent and happened at precisely the same time as I fell off the cliff to my own built-up desire.

  I dropped my forehead to the railing and bit down on my thumb to keep from screaming my climax across the courtyard.

  Both Elex and the man came at the same time—the grunt of release and the moan of pleasure from him floating up to us as Elex’s cum bathed my walls deep inside.

  Just as my legs were about to collapse, he banded an arm around my waist. Elex pulled me up from the railing, turned my head, and plundered a brutal kiss from me as he slipped from my sheath.

  I tried to catch my breath, glancing back at the couple on the bench. They’d fallen forward, his head resting on her waist as they panted, trying to catch their own breaths.

  Sweeping me up from the balcony, Elex turned and walked inside.

  “Come, the aftermath of that should be theirs alone, as ours should be.”

  I put my head on his shoulder.

  My pussy throbbed in satisfaction, and I realized I never would have thought in these terms before. Never would have let him take me on the balcony while we watched—and were watched in return.

  There was no way that couple didn’t know we were there.

  Elex was right.

  Things were changing.

  Chapter Four

  ~ Kimber ~

  I’d never owned a black dress.

  Lunella chuckled and brought me one from her closet.

  “We’ll get you plenty more. I’ve made a few when I couldn’t find something that worked.”

  “Do we always have to wear black in public?”

  “Oh, no, not at all! Black is our… hmm. I guess you could say our working color. Just like the style we wear is our working style. No one expects you to wear a dress while you’re at the carnivals!”

  “A relief,” I mumbled.

  She poked my shoulder. “I’ve seen your closet, Kimber. You also need to spice up your regular clothes as well. How did Elex put it? Every exciting shade of beige you could imagine!”

  “That bastard…”

  But I was grinning. He might be a bastard, but he was my bastard, and having him around was a lot of fun.

  I picked a few stray hairs and threads off the robes of the station—they were nothing more than a fancy embroidered stole with a hood—and brushed them flat.

  Again.

  I was nervous. More nervous than I had ever been before. The black dress hid most of my tremors of fear, but I had clenched my hands to keep them from shaking.

  The private ceremony at the temple a week before was really just a ritual breakfast. There was a small short ceremony where I signed my name to the Roster of Masters and the others sealed it with their magic.

  After, everyone got drunk at the usual breakfast and wandered off at some point. The word anti-climactic was probably not strong enough.

  But the ceremony I was preparing for now? That was the real deal. The one where the people of S’Kir were introduced to their new temple mistress. Where I had to sit on the council and hear complaints and make judgments with the others.

  Being new, I wouldn’t be charged with hearings on my own for a few years yet. I was required to sit when the council was impaneled.

  “You’re still shaking,” Mistress Maurielle said, grabbing my hands.

  “I’m being announced as a master. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I dreamed. Teaching was always enough for me.”

  Mistress Sora put a hand on my shoulder. “You will be fine. It’s because you are a teacher that the people will be overjoyed to find you here.”

  “There are only three cases we will hear today, ceremonially,” Mistress Ophelia said from her seat. “We’ll be there less than an hour.”

  I shook my head. “And then I get to go to the training garden and have Master Dorian beat the shit out of me again.”

  Lunella chuckled. “It’s not Dorian this time. It’s the five of us.”

  “We are all unique,” Mistress Maurielle said. “And if you watch each of us, you will slowly find your own unique brand of magic.”

  Lunella straightened my stole one more time. “The only person I have ever seen with magic as intricately woven as a female’s is Master Dorian. I fully believe his first teacher was a woman, be it mother or wife or sister.”r />
  Drawing a sharp breath, I jerked toward her. “Wait. So the bending I saw in Master Dorian’s magic—”

  Mistress Sona nodded. “Is not the way men wield power at all. He is unique.”

  I chuckled. “That’s why the other men have trouble fighting him. They can’t work magic like he can.”

  Ophelia nodded. “It’s why they don’t like fighting us.”

  Lunella laughed. “They can’t figure out our knots and bends and loops when we use it. Every woman is shown how magic works by not less than three other women.”

  “The Triium…”

  My teaching was already handy in sorting myth from fact. The Triium was a mid-schooling history lesson, about three female magic wielders who had taught Mistress Eiorenne—one of the oldest, most beloved temple masters. She had died centuries ago in a terrible rock fall from the southern Spine.

  Before her, females were never as strong as males. The simple, brute force males used to wield more powerful magic wasn’t possible for a woman.

  The Triium, a set of three women whose names were lost to time—or maybe never even known—had each defeated the temple masters on their own to reach Eiorenne, the daughter of Master Wilkes.

  They took Eiorenne to the Southern Sea to show her how they had learned to wield magic and she found her own, different way to do it.

  To return to the temple, she had to defeat each of the fourteen masters there, including her own father.

  She did. Easily. And the fifteenth seat of the council was created.

  Lunella waggled her eyebrows. “Did you think they stopped with just Eiorenne? Oh, no. They taught every woman they could how to wield their power. And of all of the men who watched and tried to mimic what we could do, only Dorian was able to learn it.”

  Ophelia nodded sagely. “And now, we own half the council. As it should be.”

  “As it should,” the others chorused.

  These women were powerful and were nothing to be trifled with, and they were willing to teach me to be just like them.

  Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I started to want that. I began to want to learn, to be more than a teacher. More than just the naïve friend who had no clue about the giant spy network that her friends were part of.

  More than just a simple magician who entertained with a dancing flame in her palm.

  More than the girl who walked into that cave.

  More than the woman who took the robes.

  More.

  Sona smiled at me. “I think she gets it.”

  * * *

  Strings and strands of magic hung from Carolee’s hand.

  “Balance,” Mistress Ophelia said. “For every strong man, there must be a strong woman.”

  It was fascinating to watch Mistress Carolee control her magic. She used it so differently from Master Dorian and completely different from every other male I’d seen so far.

  There was subtlety in her weavings, a play with the strings that Vitus and Master Argo had never shown me. They were right about the blunt force.

  “Men are straight lines.” Lunella drew a line on the ground. “They are linear. Not more than one string of magic, not more than one line of thought, not more than one goal at a time.”

  Mistress Sona took the stick from Lunella and carved the line into five pieces. “Yes, it is true that men make plans. Complex ones that can see five, ten, twenty steps ahead. In no way are we saying that men are incapable of complex thought. But in the execution of the plan, they are linear.”

  “Women,” Mistress Maurielle said, taking the stick, “think in clusters. Act in clusters.”

  She drew bubbles in the dirt as she slowly turned in a circle. “We don’t just think ahead. We think to the side and to the past. We keep tabs on all of those things as well.”

  “In most cases,” Mistress Sona took the stick again, “the way we think about things connects the thoughts too, and we are surrounded by our thoughts.”

  There was a full cloud around Mistress Maurielle.

  “That is where your strength comes from,” Lunella said. She traveled around, pointing at the cloud that surrounded her fellow temple masters. “This ability to surround yourself and think—and work—non-linearly.”

  I stared, amazed, at the ground around Mistress Maurielle. There was a cloud drawn in the ground that went all the way around her. Hearing these other women talk about how I thought, how I always had more than just one idea in my mind was… comforting.

  As I watched, Mistress Maurielle brought strings of magic around the edges of the cloud, outlining it. She brought more, and there were diaphanous clouds of power between the strings as they rose from the ground.

  The magic spun and looped lazily around her, creating almost a fog of colors and powers.

  It was entrancing.

  And then she nailed me right in the chest with it.

  My feet left the ground, and I sailed through the air, backward. The wall I was going to hit would hurt my back all over again.

  Time seemed to stop mid-flight.

  They had just shown me how they used the magic. They had shown me a cloud around them.

  If I could do the same thing with the magic behind me, pillow it out, I wouldn’t hit the wall and might actually be able to stick my landing.

  The magic was there on instinct, and I pulled two threads apart. The power floated between them and pushed on it.

  It didn’t have time to pillow as much as I had wanted, but it was enough to keep me from slamming my entire spine against the brick.

  I felt the bricks, but the hit was soft. I slipped down to gravel and managed to stand up and step away from the wall.

  “Well.” Mistress Sona folded her arms, satisfied.

  “Well done,” Mistress Ophelia said, not looking up.

  Something about all this bothered me. “Are all women who have power taught in Triium?”

  “If they are strong,” Lunella said.

  “And if they are dedicated to the temple.” Mistress Sona added.

  “I’m not strong, though.”

  “You are a temple master now,” Mistress Carolee said. “You are also the Breaker of the Spine. You need to know.”

  I walked over to a bench and sat down. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  The five women in the garden exchanged looks.

  “Think about it,” I offered. “I’m not strong, but I’ve been tutored by males and women who were trained by males. I never thought to approach magic differently.”

  Mistress Maurielle raised her eyebrows. “Huh.”

  “Isn’t it possible that all these women we have dismissed as weak are victims of the male way of teaching?” I shuffled my foot against the ground. “I know we try to keep men and women equal, but you’ve just said yourselves, we don’t think the same.”

  Mistress Carolee stroked a thoughtful finger over her bottom lip. “This makes sense. It would account for the large disparity in the magic wielders.”

  I twisted my lip. “Wait. No one thought of this before?”

  “The Triium is kept as a legend for a reason, my dear.” Lunella sat next to me.

  “But how is that fair to us? We’ve been assumed the weaker magic wielders for all these years. Centuries.”

  Mistress Sona raked a look over the side of the dormitory building. I felt a brush of her magic over us and knew no one could hear the words that followed. “There are eyes everywhere. Let’s adjourn somewhere the ears that go with them cannot hear us.”

  The others nodded. I was lost.

  Lunella took my hand. “Come. We will go on horseback. It’s time for some riding. It’s healthy for us to go for a ride in the countryside.”

  Now they were being secretive.

  Still, I was included in their intrigues.

  Less than twenty minutes later, six of the temple masters had mounted on horses from the stables and trotted down a canopied path toward the Spine. The mountain peaks loomed so largely in my mind. The magic cascaded in wate
rfalls down the jagged, terrible rock faces.

  Even since early in the week, the magic was more visible to me. To the point where I had to ask for help with not seeing it. I was afraid I was going to end up walking through a forest of magic, unable to see more than a few feet in front of me.

  Mistress Sona had chuckled and handed me off to Master Vitas, who was the most magic-soaked of all of the masters, save Master Dorian.

  “Tell me what you see out there.” Master Vitas had pointed to the valley that stretched out beyond the back of the temple grounds.

  “Crawling strings of magic. Everywhere. There are some trees, which are also draped in strings, and just a few open patches of grass.”

  “Hmm. I can see why they asked me. Do you know why they asked me?”

  I shook my head.

  “I want you to close your eyes and let the magic well up, dig in. Take over a bit. I can feel you’re holding it back to some degree.”

  Nodding, I let out an even breath. My eyes shuttered, and I pulled in some of the magic. It rushed in, nearly overwhelming me. I staggered under the onslaught and couldn’t gain control of it again. It swirled and pushed and pulled and yanked—

  “Whoa! Whoa!”

  A bubble of calm settled over me, and a masculine chortle filled the once-again peaceful night.

  “Yes, they were right to ask me. I want you to slowly open your eyes and look at me. Tell me what you see when you do.”

  A little afraid, I opened my eyes.

  I saw Master Vitas painted with magic, outlined with it, colored in with it. There was so much of it, not a bit of him uncovered.

  “You see everything coated, don’t you?”

  “Do you see the world like this, Master?”

  “First. Stop with the master. I’m Vitas. I’m only twenty years older than you are, and I shouldn’t be a master any more than you should. It’s only because I have so damn much of the magic that I’m here.

  “Second, yes. I can see the world this way. The rumor you’ve heard about me being born using magic isn’t far from the truth. I saw the world painted with magic when I was just eight. It took me years to learn to control it. You won’t take nearly as long.”