November Reign (Northarbor Coven #3)

20. The Plan

The Plan

Thyme

Satisfied with our plan, we left the room for the kitchen. Over the last few days, our meals had been pretty basic, the stir-fry aside. I wanted to get into the kitchen and make something hearty. I think I needed the distraction that cooking gave me. Plus, I had to make sure the others hadn’t ruined my kitchen. Yes, I was claiming it as my domain.

Oak followed closely behind me. I went to the fridge to check out what we had, and he crowded close, then pressed a kiss to the top of my head. In his arms, I felt so safe and secure.

“Better make the most of being able to do this,” he grumbled. It was rather cute.

“If it buys us time to form an attack on Basil, then it’s just what we have to do.” I tried to sound reasonable, though I felt irritated by the situation. My brother really was the bane of my life.

Both of us, me and Damon, had lost so much to Basil. Damon, his mother, me, my best friend. Basil had taken Toth’s freedom and tried to take Cody’s life. Damon had lost his childhood in the foster system. He’d grown up without learning about his magical heritage. He’d lost years of magic training, of love from his family and coven. All because Basil had wanted to lead the coven. Then it wasn’t good enough just to lead. He had to go a step further and cause harm to the shifters. His plans for the demons made me sick.

“I still hate it.” Oak backed off, taking a seat at the bar to watch me cook. I assembled all the ingredients under his watchful eye.

“Me too.” I shrugged. “Anything for peace. We’ll have nighttime.” I added a layer of suggestion to my tone. Oak would be sharing my bed every night. There was no chance I was going back to sleeping alone.

“Thought I’d grown out of sneaking around. I don’t want to hide what you are to me, Thyme. I want everyone to know.”

It was such a relief he felt that way. I didn’t particularly want to hide our relationship, either.

“What are we?”

“Boyfriends. Partners. Whatever word suits best. Just you and me. No one else.”

I couldn’t help my grin. “Can’t believe I hooked a younger man.”

Our ages didn’t matter. I was only just into my fifties, despite looking about twenty-one. Witch life spans meant I looked thirty years younger than I was. I’d basically stopped aging when I did the transition spell with Fern and her friends.

Oak was thirty-five and looked about a decade younger, so to most people we appeared to be the same age.

“Like age matters. You look younger than me,” Oak said, mirroring my thoughts.

I bet that once we’re able to go out in public together that we would make a striking pair. There was our height difference for a start, then the contrast of our skin tones. I was as pale as ash and strangely, Oak was a golden oak color. Had his parents done that deliberately? He didn’t speak of them often, and I hated to bring them up. All I knew was that they had died when he was in his twenties.

My mother had vanished after my father’s death, not strong enough to hold her position in the coven once Basil had taken over.

It was pretty common for witches to strike out on their own in new covens and treat them as their family. Unlike shifters or demons, we weren’t closely tied to our parents. Maybe they had it the right way around. If we were closer as families, maybe there wouldn’t be all the power struggles so common in covens or territories.

“Okay, I’m going to text Basil. What do you think of “need more time. Damon’s avoiding me.” Is that enough?”

“Sounds good to me. I really can’t guess what Basil’ll make of it.”

“Me neither. Okay, sent.”

While we waited, I worked on our dinner, a stew that would cook slowly over a few hours. I also made a homemade tomato soup we could have with grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Oak’s phone dinged with a reply. “Basil says that’s fine. I’m to keep him informed and he’ll be watching me. He’s heard there’s more training.”

“Wow, Damon moved fast!”

“Let’s just hope this works.”

We spent the rest of the day with lingering touches, secret smiles, and inside jokes. The others joined us for lunch and dinner, but seemed to get that we just wanted to be alone to make the most of the time we had left before we had to pretend we didn’t love each other.

“No! Put power into the punch. Don’t rely on your shield,” Oak yelled at the trainees.

“Damn!” I whispered to Cody, who elbowed me in the gut. There were a couple of witches standing together on his other side who weren’t likely to overhear, yet we had to be careful. “Sorry!”

“I get it,” he mouthed back, his face turned towards me so they couldn’t see.

Keeping my distance from Oak was proving to be incredibly difficult. If I didn’t know how his skin tasted, or how he felt against me, or how soothing his voice was when I was in his arms, then staying clear might have been easy.

Catching us chatting, Oak sent a glare our way. He was much better at acting like there was a rift still between us.

“Fuck!” Aster muttered. “Hate to be on the end of that look. What’s Oak’s beef with Thyme?”

“Heard Thyme took Damon’s side over kicking Oak out. Damon didn’t want him back but felt like he had to take him after the beating Oak took from Basil’s people.” I wasn’t sure of the guy’s name. Still, it impressed me that the rumor mill was working overtime already.

“Well, to be fair to Thyme, he’s stuck between both his brothers there. I heard Thyme feels responsible for Damon growing up in foster care.” Aster was getting bolder, her voice louder.

How did she know so much?

“Can the peanut gallery give it a rest?” Oak barked before turning his back on us to focus on the witch he was teaching.

“Your form is sloppy,” Damon said with an air of authority as he peeled himself off the wall to step into the ring. “No wonder the shifters got the better of you.”

Ouch. I knew this was playacting, but that had to have stung. My first instinct was to step in. Cody took a step back, boxing me in.

“So it wasn’t sheer numbers?” Oak sneered.

Damon tilted his head to the side. “Pretty sure if it’d been me, I would have taken a few down with me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Oak waved him off, “you’re a superhero. Come teach us, oh wise one.”

The tension in the room was stifling while Oak and Damon bickered and baited each other through the training .

Many of the assembled witches vanished, hopefully to report to Basil about the animosity, not only between me and Oak, but Damon and Oak, too.

In fact, there was a clear distance between us all. Cody was polite, the demons barely looked at Oak, Parker was nowhere to be seen. We all kept him at arm’s length.

It was exhausting. I hated any minute of rejecting Oak.

After the last coven member left, Oak and Parker did a full sweep of the mansion. Not just the areas we knew other witches had been in, but every room, just in case someone had wandered.

“We’re clear,” Parker announced.

“No magic,” Oak added. He came to me and wrapped me in his arms. I took the first full breath in what felt like all day. Being apart from him was too hard. I hoped we didn’t have to do it for long.

“Sorry about today,” Damon offered a quiet apology to Oak. “You didn’t have a chance against that many. I might have, only because Magnus taught me to fight shifters at the start.”

I remembered Damon telling me about Magnus. He was the shifter who had trained him and Parker. He was actually listed as his and Parker’s adoptive father, thanks to the new identity Parker had forged .

“It’s fine. We’re going to have to ignore anything we say during the day and only apologize for the things we truly meant. If we keep score it’ll only hurt more.” Oak rested his chin on the top of my head. Considering some of the things Damon had fired at Oak, that was pretty magnanimous of him.

After so long pretending to hate each other, I’d felt cold. I soaked in his warmth, not wanting to leave the safety of his arms.

“I’m cooking tonight. Why don’t you come to the kitchen in an hour?” Damon gave me a significant look.

Ooh, time alone with Oak.

“See you in an hour!” I grabbed Oak’s hand and pulled him after me towards my bedroom.

As soon as the door was closed, Oak had me pinned against it, hoisted up by his magic, his mouth fused to mine.

“I missed you,” I got out as Oak trailed kisses along my jaw. He nipped at my earlobe and my cock went from semi to hard in an instant. The lack of blood flow to my brain made me dizzy. “Oak! Please.”

We shed our clothes and made our way to the bed slowly, unable to stop kissing and touching for long.

Not wanting to wait, I pushed Oak back onto the bed using a bit of magic, then crawled into his lap. I took our cocks in my hand and stroked them. The dry friction was borderline painful, so I spat into my hand rather than waste time getting the lube.

Oak chuckled. “Here,” he gave me a generous blob of the lubricant onto my hand.

I kissed him in thanks, then rocked my hips. The slide of our cocks in my fist rubbing together was divine. I tossed my head back in a moan.

A bite to my Adam’s apple had me opening my eyes. Oak looked up at me with a devilish smirk.

“Missed you, too, angel.” He took a firm grip of my hips to control my movements. We moved together, our pleasure spiraling higher and higher. “Tomorrow I’m going to fuck you and plug you. Had a toy sent here just for you.”

A filthy sound tore from my mouth at just the thought.

“Hmm, you like that, don’t you? Do you think we can sneak off so I can fill you up at lunchtime?”

That was game over for me. I came all over my hand and Oak’s dick with a whine. I caught my breath and leaned down to take him into my mouth, tasting myself and his precome. The taste of us combined was heady.

When he came, it was with a shout before he collapsed back onto the bed.

I flopped down next to him, then was pulled onto his wide chest .

“Do you think today worked?”

“Won’t know until Basil contacts me. Hope so.”

“Me too. Not sure how long I can pretend to hate you.”

“Maybe you should miss tomorrow’s session. You could do a potions class or something. Work on things to stop a shifter attack.”

I thought about that idea. “It’d be better than being in the same room as you and not being able to touch you.”

I felt his smirk against my hair. “Can’t help being irresistible,” he teased.

“No, you can’t.” Unlike Oak, I wasn’t joking. “Oak?”

“Yeah?”

“No matter what you hear, I want you to remember I love you, okay?”

“Thank the goddess you said it first! I’ve wanted to say the words since I first kissed you, I think. Thyme, I love you. No matter what, I’ll fight for what we have.”

I snuggled closer. “Good, because I’m going to give Basil a hell of a fight so we can have a happy life together.”