witchesintheweeds_GEN Page 20

  Looking at her now, Harris was surprised that he’d mistaken the woman in the water for Nim—Trajan was right, her arms and legs were marked by large swaths of black skin. She was completely naked, her dress and panties puddled on the floor at her feet. She was facing away from them, and the smooth white expanse of her upper thighs, butt, and back was startlingly pale compared to her marked limbs. She stood with her hands pressed against the stone wall at the rear of the cave.

  “It’s not right,” she said.

  “Lady, lady,” Trajan crooned. “It’s okay. Why don’t you take a step back? It’s too cold to be naked. Come here and I’ll warm you up.”

  “I’m warm enough.” She dropped one hand from the back wall of the long, narrow cave.

  “Nimue,” Trajan barked. “Do not remove the needle.” He didn’t look away from Nim, but waved Harris forward. Harris didn’t know what was going on, but he mirrored Trajan’s movements, coming up on her other side.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Harris.”

  Nim turned, her eyes bright with what was probably fever. “Harris. You’re okay.”

  “Yes, I’m okay. We’re all okay.” He held out his hand.

  For a moment he thought she’d take it, but she turned back to the rock. He could now see that her hand was holding the end of the gold pin she’d pierced into the skin below her belly button.

  “It isn’t right,” she said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “This.” She patted the stone with her free hand. “This isn’t how caves form.”

  “Why don’t you take a step back and explain it to me?” Trajan said.

  “I need to know what it is, because it isn’t right.”

  “It’s fine.” Trajan sounded a bit frantic.

  “Touch it,” she told him. “Make it glow. I showed you how.”

  “If I do that, will you take a step back?”

  “Yes.”

  Trajan stepped close enough to Nim that she was in arm’s reach, and with his other hand he touched the stone.

  Nothing happened.

  He frowned. “I must have done it wrong.”

  “No. This stone is wrong.” Nim yanked the needle from her skin. It clinked against the stone when it fell.

  “Fuck. Grab her!” Trajan wrapped his arms around Nim, but not before she pressed both hands against the stone, her power exploding in a blinding flash of white light.

  Harris wrapped his arms around both of them, yanking them back. He braced himself for something horrible to happen. He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Harris raised his head from where he’d ducked it against Trajan’s, and opened one eye. The sight that greeted him rendered him speechless for a moment. He blinked, then said, “Uh, guys?”

  Trajan had pulled Nim protectively against his chest. Seeing them together like that, Nim’s head tucked under Trajan’s chin, his arm wrapped around her, made Harris’s chest ache, but it was a happy ache.

  Trajan opened one eye, looking at Harris, who pointed at the back of the cave. At the place where the smooth stone had been.

  “Fuck,” Trajan breathed.

  Nim lifted her head. She was trembling and would have been swaying if Trajan hadn’t been holding her. He loosened his grip enough for her to turn and look at the new wonder her magic had wrought.

  She stepped away from Trajan. They followed her, all of them stunned by what was now revealed. The rear stone had disappeared as if it had never been there, and they were looking out at a massive cavern, easily the size and roughly the rectangular shape of a football field. Muted gold light emanated from the interior of the massive cavern—it had its own internal light source.

  The floor of their small, dark cave ended in a thin shelf of rock that extended out into the larger cavern, the floor of which was ten feet below them. They were standing on the equivalent of the fifty-yard line, and nearly a story up, as if they were on a ballroom balcony looking out over the dance floor.

  The ceiling of the cavern soared several stories, the two sloping, longer side “walls” meeting in an almost triangular apex that mirrored the ridge line above.

  A dozen massive stalagmites and stalactites had grown together, forming support columns. In some places the walls of the cavern were smooth, in others rough.

  The entire cave glowed. Where the walls were smooth the glow came from the exposed veins of gold, silver, and platinum—the precious metals were the source of the light. Piles of water-smoothed gold nuggets were heaped on the floor around the base of the stalagmite columns. Massive clusters of quartz, some spears as big as Trajan, protruded from the rough sections of wall. They reflected and amplified the light from the precious metals. Massive geodes that would have been the size of refrigerators were broken, exposing their glittering interiors.

  “Nim, did you do this?” Trajan asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.” She shook her head, and then swayed.

  Trajan wrapped an arm around her. “Come on, you’re in bad shape. We need to find someplace to hole up for the night.”

  “What about in there?” Harris had been examining the cave, and now that he had stopped staring at it in slack-jawed lust, he was able to actually see what was there. Off to the right there was an area where an L-shaped row of quartz spears thrust up out of the floor, one end touching the wall, creating a small three-sided room within the larger cavern.

  “We’re not going in there.” Trajan started tugging Nim back.

  “Why not?” Nim asked.

  “I’m with her—why not?” Harris asked.

  “Are you two kidding me right now? The instant we touch anything in there, something bad is going to happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. I mean, look at it. After the day we’ve had, you really think a magically appearing cave full of gold and jewels is a safe place to be?”

  “Yes,” Nim said.

  “Better than out there in the forest,” Harris said. “I don’t love the idea of being underground and surrounded by solid rock with no access to anything growing, but this is better than being out there.”

  “What if there’s some other weird spirit in this cave? Another Huntsman, or river woman.”

  “River woman?” Nim asked.

  “I’ll explain once we get somewhere safe,” Trajan assured her. “It’s time to go.”

  “Trajan,” Harris said, watching Nim’s face carefully.

  “We have to get to someplace that won’t surprise us.”

  “Trajan.”

  “Because if I have to rescue either of you one more time…”

  “Tray!” Harris shouted. “First of all, that’s just rude. Second, she’s going to pass out.”

  Nim, whose eyes had been flickering, dropped. Only Trajan’s quick reflexes stopped her from hitting the ground.

  “Fuck,” Trajan whispered. “Damn it. How the hell am I supposed to keep you two safe?”

  “We’ll keep each other safe. But first, we take care of Nim.” Harris raced back to the entrance to the cave. He didn’t exit, but instead picked up a handful of loamy soil spilling in between the boulders and carried it back. Before Trajan could stop him he sat on the ledge, turned around, and dropped down, landing with his knees bent. He still had the handful of soil.

  Trajan, still holding Nim, watched grimly as he walked over to the quartz room he’d seen from above. He tossed the soil onto the floor. It wasn’t much more than a handful, but he poured power into it, into the tiny seeds hidden within. A carpet of pale green vines, soft yellow flowers, and springy moss grew over the stone, thread-fine roots clinging to the minute crevices and variations in the floor.

  Once he was done, Harris went back to the entrance and reached his hands up. Trajan knelt, holding Nim under her arms, and lowered her off the ledge. Harris was able to reach up high enough to grasp her hips and accept her weight, taking her in his arms as Trajan dropped down beside them. Trajan looked around warily.
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  “It feels safe,” Harris told him.

  “It feels like a trap.”

  “No, it seems like a trap, but just take a minute—it feels safe.”

  Trajan paused, inhaling and exhaling slowly. A faint wind made Harris’s hair dance into his eyes.

  “Maybe,” Trajan conceded. “But if we are eaten by a dragon, I want everyone to remember that I said this was a bad idea.”

  “If we’re eaten by a dragon, your last words can be ‘I told you so.’”

  Trajan grunted in apparent satisfaction. They’d reached the quartz room. Harris laid Nim on the bed of vegetation he’d made. He was still wearing Trajan’s jacket, and stripped it off, covering her with it.

  He looked down at her for a moment. “She’s been through a lot.”

  “We all have,” Trajan said. “But her more than us.”

  “I think…I think we should hold her hands.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “No, not in a weird way.” Harris felt like an idiot as he tried to explain. “I just have this feeling like…if we both touch her, she’ll be okay.”

  Trajan reached out and brushed his knuckles down Harris’s cheek. The unexpected and tender gesture made his heart lurch. Trajan’s eyes were intensely blue. “All right, we’ll do that. I’ll take first watch.”

  They settled on either side of her, Trajan on her right, Harris on her left. They used the hands that bore the white mark of her power to touch her, lacing their fingers with hers. When the marks touched, faint light glowed—pale green-gold from between her left hand and Harris’s right, and pale blue between her right and Trajan’s left. The lights in the cave started to dim but didn’t go out, only fading to a twilight brightness. As if the cave knew they needed to sleep.

  Harris lay down. Trajan was sitting up, gaze on the entrance.

  “You need to rest,” Harris said.

  “I’ll wake you up when it’s your turn.”

  “Okay.” Exhaustion weighed on Harris, and he closed his eyes.

  Later, though he didn’t know if it had been one hour or three, he woke. He lifted his head to see Trajan asleep on the other side of Nim, their hands still linked. Harris adjusted his position and lay down, keeping his hand twined with hers.

  Together, they slept.

  * * * *

  She was warm. Deliciously, wonderfully warm. There was faint gold light suffusing her eyelids. She’d slept in. Since she’d been living in the forest in her little bunker, she’d been waking up at dawn, her body defaulting to a rhythm tied to the sun. This light felt more like mid-morning, which meant she’d slept in by several hours.

  She started to stretch and realized several things all at once.

  First, she was naked.

  Second, she was holding hands with someone. Someones. Multiple.

  Third, the heat was coming from two large, naked bodies.

  Harris. Trajan.

  Nim’s eyes popped open.

  She glanced to one side and then the other. Harris and Trajan were asleep on either side of her. They were both naked from the waist up. Trajan’s jacket was draped over her like a blanket, covering her from chest to thigh. They each held one of her hands, though their grips were slack with sleep. There was faint light emanating from between their fingers where the marks they’d left on one another met.

  They weren’t outside, they were in the cave. She had an uneven memory of finding the cave last night, though most of what had happened felt like a fever dream. What she’d taken to be midmorning light was instead the wondrous glow of the cave.

  She felt…she felt amazing.

  All the little aches and hurts that had been building up, starting with the scabbed-and-now-itching punctures from the night she’d kidnapped Harris, were gone.

  Trying not to wake them, she raised her right leg. Yesterday her skin had been nearly solid black from just above the knee all the way to her toes, and been marked by lacerations. Now the skin was no longer dark, though it did seem a bit pinker than it should have been, as if it were freshly healed.

  But where the blight vines had sliced her skin, the cuts had healed black, almost as if tattoo ink had been embedded in the exposed flesh. Thin black lines slashed across her knee, spiraled down her calf, and zigzagged along the top of her foot.

  “You’re healed,” Harris whispered.

  She lowered her leg at the same time she turned her head to look at him. “I am. Thank you.”

  Harris used the hand not holding hers to brush the hair off her cheek. He looked sexy and rumpled. Nim licked her lips to wet them. He tracked the movement with his gaze, then rubbed his thumb on her lower lip. “I didn’t heal you,” he said.

  “Trajan?”

  “Not exactly. I think when we put our marks together we were able to heal you.” He unlaced his fingers from hers and held up his hand to show the bleached skin on his palm.

  Nim frowned. “How?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How did you figure out that would work?”

  “I had a…had a feeling.”

  “It was a good guess. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting until now, until it didn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Same. After being possessed and almost drowned I was sporting a few bruises. Now I feel fine.”

  Nim’s eyes widened and she tightened her hands into fists, which meant she squeezed down on Trajan’s fingers. He grunted and started to wake.

  “Harris! I’m so sorry. Yesterday, last night…I wasn’t feeling right. I didn’t get a chance to say…”

  “Say what?” Trajan asked.

  Nim had felt him stirring, so she didn’t bother to turn over. Harris’s gaze shifted from her to Trajan, who was leaning up on one elbow.

  “To say thank you. Thank you for trying to stop the Huntsman.”

  “And getting possessed,” Trajan said dryly.

  Nim elbowed him in the stomach. His breath came out in a puff of air, and a blast of cold wind smashed them. Nim yelped as the warm jacket was blown off her, leaving her naked.

  Naked.

  Between Trajan and Harris.

  She held her breath, which meant inhaling. Which meant her chest rose. Harris’s gaze dropped to her breasts, and under his regard her already tight nipples hardened further, rucking into aching peaks.

  Trajan made a sexy growling noise that was part want, part warning. “This is a bad idea.”

  “What is?” Nim asked.

  “You know what,” Harris said.

  “Maybe, but I want to hear you say it.” She looked between them. “Either of you.”

  “You want me to tell you what a bad idea it would be for the three of us to have sex right now?” Trajan’s already deep voice had gone down half an octave. His blond brows were lowered over his blue, blue eyes.

  Harris shifted, scooting closer to her. “I don’t think it would be a bad idea.” He was speaking to Trajan, but his gaze roamed over her naked body, unashamed and possessive.

  Instead of making her self-conscious, Nim wanted to arch up, offer herself to him, part her legs so his gaze and hands and tongue could touch her there.

  Trajan shook his head, and the stubborn man kept his gaze above her neck. “The forest may be influencing our feelings.”

  “Maybe it’s the magic, maybe it’s the situation,” Nim agreed. “Does it matter why we want one another?”

  “Have either of you even had a ménage?” Trajan countered.

  “No,” Nim said, “but—”

  Harris kissed her.

  The kiss was hard and rough, his tongue pressing into her mouth, demanding access, and when she gave it to him he rewarded her with a nip to her tongue and lower lip.

  A hot, wet mouth closed around her nipple—Trajan.

  Trajan’s hand trailed down her stomach, the touch light enough that goose bumps pebbled the skin of her abdomen. He stroked his way down her thigh to her knee. Then he hooked her knee and pulled her leg up, wrapping it over his hip. He reached do
wn and did it again, throwing her other leg over Harris’s hip. Now she was spread open, her upper body held in place by their hands and torsos.

  Cold air brushed against her pussy and she realized that she was wet—very wet. Wet and incredibly close to orgasm.

  She wiggled her hands free from where they were trapped between her own thighs and their hips. Sliding them a few inches down, she found the lengths of their cocks. Each of them was hard, ready. She wanted them to fuck her.

  Nim nipped Harris’s tongue, hard enough to make him break the kiss for a moment.

  “Fuck me,” she gasped. “Please.”

  They both started to move, but Trajan was faster. He had his pants around his thighs and was between her splayed thighs within second.

  “We don’t have protection,” Harris said roughly.

  “I have an IUD. No kids,” she gasped. “And I’m clean.”

  “Me, too,” Harris said.

  Trajan angled his hips. “I’m clean, and I want to be rough.” His cock slid down to the entrance to Nim’s body. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I don’t care,” she practically sobbed. “Just fuck me already.”

  Trajan thrust in, sinking in nearly halfway. It had been a long time, and Nim gasped. It hurt just the right amount. The ache just enough to make her feel full and penetrated.

  Trajan thrust in the rest of the way, and Nim sobbed out, “Close.”

  Harris slid his hand down her belly, between her body and Trajan’s, finding her clit. Once, twice he stroked the small bundle of nerves, and Nim came apart, mind shattering under the force of an orgasm so intense that she didn’t have the breath even to scream.

  Trajan pounded into her, prolonging her climax as he tunneled into her orgasm-tight body.

  Harris leaned out of the way and Trajan dropped his head to Nim’s breastbone, groaning as he came.

  “My turn,” Harris rumbled.

  Trajan pulled out of her, and Nim made a sound of protest. It felt too good to be full.

  She wasn’t empty for long. Harris fingered her pussy, brushing two fingers over her clit. Sensitive as she was from her orgasm, Nim gasped at the shockingly intense sensation, hips arching up. Harris grunted in pleasure, slid two fingers into her, toying with her while Trajan lay down beside her, resting his head on one breast and cupping the other, thumb casually flicking her nipple. Trajan was in post-orgasm lounging and nipple-play mode, while Harris was ready to fuck.