Wildfire Witch (The Cursed Coven of Spells Hollow)

13. Nix

NIX

Once, in my first life, the mechanics of flight for wingless fae had fascinated me. I’d peppered Ceridor with questions until he finally asked, “Would you like to try it for yourself?”

Foolishly, I’d agreed, and after a minute in the air, he’d set me back down so I could vomit in the grass. Thank the goddess that I hadn’t thrown up on him; I don’t think even being fated mates would’ve gotten him to overlook how gross that would be.

Flight was not made by cutting through the sky, parting the natural air currents like a knife. Especially not for wingless wind fae, who had to work some precise magic to keep themselves afloat. Wind magic buoyed their bodies, but without wings to stay upright, they spun on the whims of air currents.

Fascinating to me as a young alchemist, who documented the experience extensively. But also not something the human body was made to do without consequences, as we weren’t built for that kind of speed or motion. Modern people had cars, a barrier of metal and glass between them and the outside world when they went at top speeds. All Ceridor created was a thin film of magic to ward away the worst of the turbulence created by the swiftness he flew with.

I tried my best to remember the old days with him, when we’d take joyrides through the sky by evening. We’d built up my tolerance a few minutes at a time until I didn’t even notice that we were rotating in the air. It helped that I’d grown so enamored with him that his face and beautiful fae eyes were my full focus, rather than the flashes of the earth and sky as we spun together.

But this body, this life I was living, had never flown. The unseasoned breakfast Rusty had fed me threatened to come back up as Ceridor read the sky and tilted our momentum. “East toward the sunrise, and Spells Hollow,” he murmured.

I closed my eyes tight. Don’t throw up on him. You loved that breakfast so much, you just want to keep it all to yourself.

He chuckled. “Do we need to land so soon?”

“No,” I said weakly. “No, I am totally fine and?—”

He kissed me. Horrible decision, I thought dryly, but he tasted like pure air with how much magic he was exerting. It tingled on my tongue and left behind a sensation of ice melting in my mouth. I breathed easier, distracted by how he made me feel.

Those past joyrides had been for another purpose, one I remembered as I ran my fingers up his lithe body and squeezed his chest. Wind fae conceived more often after making love in the sky, he’d told me.

Had I thought that was a completely fictitious theory? Absolutely.

Had it ever stopped me from fucking my husband high in the sky, away from prying eyes? Not even once.

I tangled my legs with his, lower body pressing to his tentatively. I wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go straight to this after the last time, when he’d pushed me out of his lap. To ask would probably doom this moment to another round of awkward conversation about the distance of time and memory between us.

I rolled my hips against the growing bulge pressing to the front of his jeans. His breath quickened as he sucked on the sensitive skin below my ear. It then hitched with pain. “Ver?—”

I froze. “Oh, no. You were hurt,” I blurted.

“The bullet missed everything important. It grazed my thigh,” he explained. He gripped my chin, angling my head. “Look at me, firefly.”

I cracked open my eyelids. Ceridor was stabilizing us somehow, as the backdrop of fluffy clouds behind him didn’t rotate into a flash of the ground below. His gaze was intent, darkened at the edges by lust. “Do you remember me as your husband now?” he asked, searching my face.

“I remember a time that I miss, a lot, where you were my husband,” I answered.

He kissed me again, like he couldn’t resist it. “No matter who you’ve become, Ver, you are still my wife. It would mean everything if you’d bind yourself to me again.”

“Yes,” I breathed. I wanted the symbol of our handfasting back more than anything now. But I tried to nudge him away, saying, “I have a theory.”

He parted from my lips, just to take my earlobe in his teeth and tug gently. “Yes, lady alchemist?” he said, cool air washing over the shell of my ear. I shivered, sucking on my bottom lip.

“You may have noticed the other men represent the other elements.”

He slipped a hand under my shirt, running his fingertips up the curve of my belly. “Hmm, yes. Though I would rather forget about them. I had you first, and it’s only through my grace that they would be allowed to be second or third.”

“Right, right,” I said, distracted. He cupped one of my boobs and freed it from the confines of my bra. Rolling its weight through his long fingers, he gave it a loving squeeze.

“Your theory,” he prompted, his lips taking a wicked curve.

Well, if I wasn’t mentioning the other guys right now, the meat of the theory would have to stay in my head. “Um. I think I will be able to call on the air element in you if we make a proper connection. You’ll help bring me back into balance.”

“All of my air is at your disposal, firefly. Come and take it,” he invited. And by his grin when I tackled him, sending us spinning slightly off course, he knew exactly what I was going for. I held a handful of his curls and melded our mouths together, tugging on his shirt to free it from his pants.

It gave me easy access to the planes of his chest hiding under the fabric. His muscles were a little more defined than I remembered, and layered with several scars that he’d gained since we’d been apart. When we weren’t flying, I’d have to strip the shirt off and ask him about each. For a fae as agile as him, each scar was a story or a lesson.

“Wait,” I said, reluctant to pause for anything else. “Airplanes didn’t exist back when we used to do this.”

“They’re up there.” Ceridor pointed toward the clouds. “We’re not giving any ordinary human a show.”

“What about down there?” I pointed in the general direction of the ground, getting dizzy when it slipped out of sight. On reflex, I met his gaze to shake off the vertigo, just to find the silver pools of his eyes dancing with amusement.

“We’re about the size of a pinprick to them. Any other concerns?” he chuckled.

“No.” I tore at the rest of his clothes and he did the same with mine.

So no pants or underwear went sailing away on the breeze, few articles of clothing came off. His magic helped tug off my shoes, jeans, and panties, which were carried by a special wind he controlled to keep them flying along behind us. Once my hot skin was freed to the autumn day, those deft fingers of his cupped my pussy. He lidded his eyes and explored. Rolling and tugging my sensitive folds, caressing my clit with a reverent touch. One finger pressed inside and I whimpered. The ever-present chill on his skin felt like bliss in my heated core.

“So tight,” he murmured, wiggling a second finger in with the first. He spread them like I used to like, and if we weren’t flying, I’d have gone weak at the knees.

“I’m a virgin,” I stated. However, the way I freed his cock and molded my hand to its length and shape made that a false statement. I took my time remembering his body. The heft of him hadn’t changed. His breath still hitched when I squeezed his balls just so. And when I slicked my thumb over the head of his cock and tasted the bead of liquid there…still my husband.

He hid a wicked smile against my neck, but I felt it. “I get to be your first again.”

“Break my maidenhead, oh amorous suitor,” I teased.

He snorted, holding me closer with a shake of his head.

“Deflower this warm and willing maiden,” I said more dramatically, complete with a small swoon.

Ceridor looked me in the eye, head tilted. “Go on,” he invited. “Do you have any more euphemisms?”

I put a finger to my chin. “I would also say defile my purity , but I think we can both agree I lost that a long time ago,” I said thoughtfully. “If you think about it, the old ways of talking about a woman’s virginity were wrapped up in a lot of misogyny. A bunch of focus on the value of innocence and abstinence?—”

“Please focus, lady alchemist,” he interrupted.

“I am awaiting my second deflowering, sir,” I said playfully.

He sighed fondly, framing my face between his hands. “I love you. I have loved you for all but a small sliver of the beginning of my life, and I will love you through the rest of it.” It felt like another vow, which he sealed with a kiss.

I hooked my hand around his neck. “I love you too. And when this is all over…when my curse is gone, I want to settle down with you again. I want to live the life with you we never got to finish,” I vowed back. We shared another kiss while he angled my hips and I wrapped my legs around him.

His length brushed through the slickness of my pussy lips and he drew in a sensitive hiss. “So hot, firefly,” he murmured.

I only felt the pleasant chill of the fae magic that clung to every inch of his skin. “Not too hot?” I asked, biting into my kiss-swollen bottom lip.

He sheathed himself in one long, sure stroke, holding my hips to his. Those lust-darkened silver eyes rolled as we groaned together. “Not too hot,” he confirmed.

The world spiraled lazily by while he ran his hands through my hair, moving slowly at first, before my body loosened up for him. I focused on his face to keep me grounded, watched the pleasure and relief that played over it and the single-minded devotion that sparked in his eyes when our gazes met.

Once I was ready, we came together with the same clothes-pulling urgency as his old returns from the Wind Court. Fucking like each length of time away was an unbearable parting. It was still our truth. Only this time, I felt our magic also intertwining. Motes of air spiraled through my core, circulating into my bloodstream while he pumped into my willing heat.

Air pried its way to my heart and the phoenix spirit, who had hunkered down and shaded her awareness of what I was doing, to be polite. Aodhnait grasped Ceridor’s magic with gentle talons and threaded it where it needed to go.

I came with Ceridor, trembling from the cool liquid rush that filled me on his last thrust. Then my back arched, and I cried out, clinging to him through a wave of electric pain-to-pleasure that lit me from head to toe. My sensitive skin burned, then tingled, then took on the chill of the sky and I went limp in his concerned hold with an exhilarated laugh.

“Firefly?” he asked, panting.

I lifted my right arm and showed him the back of my hand, sure without looking that it now bore the bold black triangle and line symbol of the air element. “We’re connected.” I grinned and his face broke into the broadest, most excited expression I’d seen since my first life with him.

He took my wrist and pressed a kiss to the mark. “Properly handfasted once more.” He removed the glamor from the half sleeve of fae and elemental symbols gracing his arm, which were dark like new ink, except for the occasional mote of air or fire that gave the lines a multicolored bubble that traveled through them. They pulsed, alive with an infusion of energy.

“We are more stable. You should be able to use some magic that combines fire and air without us overheating,” Aodhnait reported.

“We should try it,” I thought back to her with excitement.

She raised an invisible brow. “And electrocute your new yet old mate?”

Oh. Well, she had a point. I gathered up Ceridor’s arm, pressing a kiss to my favorite mark, the cloud on the inside of his wrist, before tracing it with the tip of my tongue. His eyelids fell into a smolder, promising a lot more pleasure if I kept this up.

He ran his thumb over my cheek. “Now that we are properly bound once more, there’s something I need to say.”

His tone had taken a turn towards serious, though he still held me with one hand splayed on my lower back, our legs casually twined. He pulled me in further and I tucked my head under his chin and relaxed my eyes. We pirouetted gently with the relatively calm drafts through this section of the sky.

Ceridor held me like he never wanted to let me go. His cool, soothing voice vibrated through me. “When you died the first time, I had no idea what happened. The marks that symbolized my binding to you flared up with agony for the duration of your immolation and went dormant afterward. But they remained, faded when you were too young to be handfasted, and darkening when you came of age. Every time you died, I felt it.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “You suffered so much because of my curse…”

“Don’t be, love. It’s through no fault of your own that Morfran was a coward and cursed you while I was away. In the meantime, I sought all the help you could imagine. Healers, wise men, and finally a seer, who read my palm and our handfasting marks and told me what was happening. She explained your curse, and that I was one mate of several that you would need to achieve stability. She said most of your men hadn’t even been born yet.” He released a small, self-conscious laugh at the thought.

“You’ve had some time to come to terms with all this,” I murmured.

He brushed his hand over my hair. “I didn’t need time to come to terms with anything. However many men I must share you with, I will, be it the two you’ve now met or ten more. Whatever it takes to keep you safe and whole by my side.”

“Ten?” I giggled, flustered at the very thought. “I’m not trying to out-do Melisande.”

“I know. Selfishly, I hope you stop at Seth and the dragon…Rusty, I think his name was. I’ll even attempt to get along with the egotistical lizard.”

I laughed again, and this time, he joined me. “Thank you, Cer. For real. That’s a lot to ask of you, as my husband,” I said.

We spun a few more times before he responded. “You’ve died forty-six times. I’ve never blamed you, not once, when I felt the pain of your many passings and rebirths. The count will not become forty-seven, I swear it. I give thanks to my past self, who had wanted to immortalize his love for you in the universal language of the fae, because it gave me a way to find my place back at your side. I have known all this time that I would find you again when you needed me most.”

I sniffed, swiping under my eyes. “And you have.” My gratitude overflowed. His devotion had spanned lifetimes, all to save me.

“And I have,” he said with pride. He released me from his tight hold and guided me back to his lips, letting the tangle of our mouths share the depths of his feelings where words weren’t sufficient. My pussy pulsed in time with my heartbeat, and I was already raring to go for another round.

I nipped his sharply pointed ear while he kissed on my neck. “I’m going to climb you like a tree once we land,” I warned him, to a warm chuckle that ghosted over my skin.

“Perhaps we should land, then. There’s a nice forest below us right now. Plenty of privacy?—”

A dragon roared nearby, drowning out the rest of his words with an explosion of sound. We startled apart and, cursing, Ceridor tucked himself away and shoved his clothes back to rights before slowing us to face our pursuer.

A brilliantly scarlet fire dragon arrowed in our direction, pumping a wingspan of nearly thirty feet. He was moving much faster than he seemed, about to overtake us within a couple of minutes or less. When he opened his fanged maw, it was Benedict’s voice that emerged from his throat, magnified to a furious boom.

“I will have my father’s treasure back! The vessel and her phoenix belong to the Fire Brotherhood!”