He helped me into a pair of stonewashed jeans next, standing slowly and tugging them over the curve of my ass before buttoning them for me, tugging me forward a step by the waistband so that he could steal a kiss.
I moaned into his mouth as his hands caressed my breasts as he kissed me, tugging on my nipples just enough to make me ache before breaking our lips apart and pulling a long sleeved green crop top down over my head.
“I know what you’re doing,” I accused, looking up at him as he carefully pulled my long, dark hair out of the collar of my shirt.
“What’s that?” he rumbled, his lips brushing my ear.
“You’re trying to get me worked up so that you can force me beneath you again later on and you can go all Alpha on me.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it, Roxy. You always come the hardest when I have you pinned beneath me.”
He moved back before I could punch him, his deep laughter making me want to smile and battling against my desire to beat his big head in with my shoe. I decided on a nice midpoint and flipped him off instead, kicking my high-top sneakers on and striding out of the room ahead of him.
Darius only seemed more amused by my bratty behaviour, and I made a mental note to stop letting him get away with his shit with me so easily. But it was a lot harder to stay mad at him than it used be these days thanks to all the freaking orgasms he gave me. I’d literally been yelling at him, calling him a lizard asshole with an ego the size of one of Jupiter’s moons the other day, and he’d told me to keep insulting him while dropping to his knees and pushing his head beneath my skirt where he proceeded to make me forget why I’d even been angry with him in the first place. I was sure that I’d remember at some point and give him hell for it again, but as of now I was still blinded by the memory of that orgasm and couldn’t recall for the life of me why I’d been intent on calling him every name under the sun.
I pulled open the door to Darcy and Orion’s room and my twin looked around at me, rolling her eyes dramatically while I just shrugged like I was as innocent as pie and slipped into the room, taking a seat beside Caleb who was perched on the couch alone.
He gave me a smile, shifting his posture and dropping his arm along the back of my seat as the others all greeted us or muttered less than subtle commentary on how long we’d made them wait.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” Darius said with a shrug as he took a seat on the other side of the room to me beside Orion, his gaze flicking from me to Caleb as he growled a little warning which I was guessing was aimed at the arm which lay over the back of my seat.
Caleb ignored him, the corner of his lips lifting in amusement as he looked to me instead of the Dragon asshole. “We’ve just been discussing the issue we have with the Nymphs being tainted by the shadows,” he explained, pointing to Diego’s hat which Seth was currently sniffing while he sat cross legged on the bed. “Because if your little knitwear loving friend wasn’t an evil, mindless creature when his hat was helping him stay grounded, then it makes sense that the shadows are at least in part to blame for the Nymphs all acting so psycho all the damn time.”
“They’re still the bad guys though,” Max added, drawing my attention to him where he sat beside Geraldine. “Whatever way you cut it, they get their magic by stealing ours and they do so by killing us.”
“Oh of course your simple little sausage of a mind would see it as so,” Geraldine chastised. “But our dear Diego didn’t probe anyone while he was at the academy. He didn’t slip so much as a digit into any orifice of mine and I was in his company on many an occasion.”
“You were literally attacked by a fucking Nymph the night he tried to drug the twins,” Max said in outrage and Geraldine sighed loudly while Orion swiped a hand down his face like he was praying to the stars to give him strength.
“In that vision we saw of Diego getting his powers from that Fae girl Alejandro had locked in his murder shed, he felt the shadows and heard the call of the Shadow Princess for the first time. So what if him using his probes like that was kinda like us using our Order gifts for the first time? So it awakened that side of him and his connection to the shadows which gave her a way in?” I suggested.
Orion nodded thoughtfully, leaning forward and tapping his finger against the book which was laying there, the spine of it encrusted with what looked like emeralds. “Over the last few years while me and Darius have been out hunting the Nymphs, we have noticed them gathering dark objects – the kinds of things that could easily be linked to the shadows. Diego mentioned his family treating the Shadow Princess like she was some kind of deity, so what if they were answering her calls, using those objects to help link themselves to the shadows more firmly so they could hear her better? It would have brought them closer to the creature they’d chosen to worship while allowing her to gain greater influence over them at the same time as she tried to find a way to cross back into the Fae realm.”