The Dread King: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (The Harbinger Book 3) Page 5

  Shit. With all this, Faith had temporarily forgotten about the missing boys. She leaned her head on the wall, wanting to slap an X on the stone and label it bang head here. Did it make her selfish to forget about all the missing Academy students? She felt like a terrible person. A terrible person and an even worse Harbinger.

  Too down in her own self-pity, Faith neglected to notice she was no longer alone. She was about to tell Cam to go away, but when she slowly opened her eyes and stood straight, no longer slouched on the house, she realized it wasn’t Cam; it was Finn.

  What in the hell was Finn doing out here? Trying for another kiss? He’d get a knee in the groin this time, and she wouldn’t pull it at the last second.

  “Before you jump down my throat,” Finn spoke as he examined her expression, “let me say that I’m…I’m sorry for what I did.” His words came out rough, like it was painful for him to admit he was wrong. Faith hoped they were like razor blades on his tongue. “Will you stop looking at me like I’m the devil? I’m trying to apologize here.”

  Faith glanced down at the mug in her hand, at its half-empty contents. “You’ve apologized. Now go.”

  “Pretty sure it only counts if the wronged party accepts it.”

  “I accept it,” she spoke through clenched teeth, alerting him to the fact she did not, in fact, accept it. She needed to learn how to be a better liar…not that being a good liar was something to be proud of. “Now go.”

  “I could go, or I could—”

  Faith splashed the contents of her mug at his face. It wasn’t much water, but it was enough to startle him and get most of his hair wet. The look in his green eyes after he wiped his face was one of pure murder. He looked like he wanted to strangle her.

  She started laughing. She couldn’t help it. Getting on his nerves was just so fun.

  “You didn’t even know what I was going to say,” he spoke, the water dripping down his face causing him to spit a little with each word. He ran a hand backward, through his hair, causing its blood red lengths to stick up. When she kept laughing, he added, “It’s like you’re five years old. Ridiculous.”

  Faith moved a hand to her stomach, the muscles there sore from laughing. “I wish I was five,” she finally said, wiping fake tears from her eyes. “Then I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit.”

  “Yeah, but then you also wouldn’t have your boy toys.” Finn rose a single brow. “You’re willing to lose them to go back to school, color, and take naps?”

  Ooh, naps. Faith could go for a nap. Then again, she could always go for a nap.

  She thought about Light, Jag, and Cam. “No,” she begrudgingly said, meeting Finn’s stare. The murderous expression wore off, and something else took its place. An expression she couldn’t place. Here, with all the flowers glowing around them and the bugs lighting up the sky, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. “I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

  “You really like them?”

  Faith shot him a glare, though it lost its muster as she recalled the sweet, sublime feeling of tossing the water at his face. “I do, not like it’s any of your business.”

  “You know,” he spoke, leaning on the house near her, less than two feet away, “if I had multiple girlfriends, some would call that cheating.”

  “If you have them and they don’t know about each other, yes. It would be cheating.”

  “So it’s all right then if everyone knows about each other?”

  “As long as they’re consenting adults, why not?” Faith shrugged. “Just let me be, Finn. I’m probably going to die here, so let me have them. I don’t need you constantly nagging me.”

  He looked…sad? “Is that why you’re with them—because you think you’re going to die?”

  “I don’t think,” she whispered, suddenly feeling chilly even though the air was warm and humid, even without the sun. “I know.” She didn’t want him boldly proclaiming he wasn’t going to let her die, so she carried on, “And it may have started out like that, but now? Now it’s…it’s not like that.”

  “Well, just let me know what to put in my reports, because I’m going to have to write about this. Tullie will have my ass if I leave anything out,” Finn spoke the truth.

  Faith grinned. “You don’t think she’ll want to read about my sexual experiences with my fellowship?” The thought of Tullie reading such a report made her chuckle. Tullie would probably have a heart attack at the so-called indecency of it.

  “I guess it depends on how in-depth I get.”

  “You’d get no depth. No depth at all. The shallowest of the shallow.”

  “Hey, you never know. Tullie might be a kinky freak behind the suit and her I’ll-kill-you expression.”

  Kinky. If anyone was kinky it was Faith.

  “And to think,” Finn said with a dramatic sigh that was very much unlike him. Was he trying to be friendly? It didn’t suit him, even though it was sort of nice, getting along like this. “All these years I’ve sort-of known you, and I had no idea you were into this stuff.”

  “This stuff?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, you know. Threesomes, foursomes.” He hid his smile.

  Faith elbowed him on the side, though she put no strength behind it. “No threesomes, or foursomes.” She found herself trying not to laugh as she whispered, “And no fivesomes.”

  “What about sixsomes? And sevensomes—are those out of the picture, too?”

  Nodding along, she said, “Once we get to eightsomes, then we’re talking.”

  “Where would that many dicks go?”

  Faith burst out laughing, unable to hold it in any more. “I don’t know. Should I tell you once I find out?”

  “I think I’d prefer to stay in the dark on that one. Thanks, though.”

  She felt the bizarre urge to…to hug him, or something. Ew. Gross. Finn was her idol and her crush years ago. Not now. Now he was just the unwelcome tagalong, the tattle who told on her unsanctioned hunt, the reason why she didn’t spend time with Cara in the apothecary’s. He…

  Her eyes widened.

  He was the reason she spent the week with Light. Growing so close to Light in such a short time—it all stemmed from Finn.

  Faith didn’t know what to make of this revelation. If she told him, he’d probably want her to thank him or something else just as stupid. Finn was like that. A complete moron, through and through.

  Instead, she said, “You’re not so bad, Finn, when you’re not being an ass or trying to kiss me.”

  “You’re not too bad yourself, though you’re pretty dumb if you think I’m doing this to be nice.”

  Dumb? She wasn’t—wait, what in the world was he trying to say? Faith stared at him. Did he mean he was being nice so she would start to like him? That was never going to happen. Not this time, not again. She would swear up and down on it.

  Dumb old Faith thought it best to ask, “Doing what? Why—”

  Finn said, “I think you can figure it out, Faith.” Then he did something so shocking, so unbelievably strange, and he walked inside the house.

  He winked.

  She watched him go with an open mouth, incredulous. Just when she started to feel closer to him, when he began to not get on her nerves, he went ahead and did that. He winked like some kind of bad boy love interest that made all the tween girls swoon in the movies. Well, he had another thing coming, because this wasn’t a cheesy TV show.

  Nobody winked. Not in real life.

  The bastard.

  Chapter Seven

  Faith sat in her desk, nibbling on the end of her pencil. An unsanitary habit her mother hated, which in all honesty was why she did it so often.

  The Academy was full of tests, wasn’t it? Test after test. She grew tired of them…although, she glanced at the paper before her, this particular test was not in English. The letters swirled together, looking very pretty but very useless on the page.

  She was slow to withdraw the pencil from her mouth, glancing at the clock. Arou
nd her, the other desks sat empty. The windows on the left side of the classroom showed a fake scenery of fall foliage and the beginnings of a sunset. The Academy was mostly underground; still had to have the ambiance. Nothing but the best for New York’s brightest, right?

  “Miss Blackwell,” Tullie spoke from behind the teacher’s desk. She had her legs propped on the particle board top—wearing jeans, strangely enough—and her silver hair down. Had Faith ever seen her like this before? She didn’t think so. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m…” She started to explain she wasn’t finished with her test yet, but when she looked down at her desk, she found its flat top empty. “I don’t know,” she settled for saying. Wasn’t a test sitting there a minute ago?

  “Get out of here,” Tullie said. Only it wasn’t Tullie anymore; it was her mother, Penelope. Penelope’s dark eyes locked with her daughter’s. “They’re all waiting on you.”

  Faith thought about asking who, but a nagging suspicion in her gut told her that her mother wasn’t going to give out any more hints. She slid out of her desk and hurried from the empty classroom, down the sterile white halls and to the elevator.

  When the stainless steel doors opened, she stepped inside, beside Finn. He wore his hunter’s uniform, his red hair slicked back and his mask attached to his face, covering his cheekbones and his eyes, a miniature computer, complete with night vision and the works. She’d always been jealous of those masks.

  “Going up?” Faith asked, fingers hovering before the button that would take them to the ground level.

  Finn shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just here for the ride.”

  “Oh…that makes sense,” she said, mostly to herself as she pressed the G button. The doors closed and the elevator began its ascent. Slightly out of tune, old-fashioned music started to play, the very type of music Faith always imagined would play on long, uncomfortable elevator rides.

  Only this wasn’t long and uncomfortable—Faith glanced at Finn, finding he was now maskless and shirtless, two things he wasn’t two seconds ago—okay, scratch the second part. Definitely uncomfortable.

  She eyed his muscles, eyes falling to the v-shape near his crotch. She shouldn’t look there, but it was like her eyes fell of their own accord. Faith couldn’t stop them. The strength implant had only made his body more perfect. “Where,” she swallowed, “are your clothes?”

  “Where are yours?”

  When she brought her eyes back up, she stared into the blue, playful irises of Jag. No more Finn. At least he wore pants. “I’m wearing clothes,” she said, double-checking just as the elevator’s doors slid open. Yep. T-shirt and pants.

  Wait. Where was her jacket? And her bracelets? Why did she even wear bracelets? She wondered the last question as she wandered out, right into a forest whose trees were much thicker than those in Central Park. Her wrists were mark-free. Odd. They felt so naked.

  Without hesitation, her feet landed in the grass. The elevator behind her dinged as it closed, and Jag gave her a wave.

  Faith’s eyebrows went together as the elevator slid into the ground, no buildings around. Did all elevators do that? For some reason, she had an awfully hard time remembering. Moving a hand to her head, she surveyed the area, the sudden urge she was late settling in her bones. She started walking.

  It didn’t take long for the forest to give way to a pool. A gigantic pool—side lights, chlorine, ladders, concrete steps—the whole shebang. So large it could hold an entire city block’s worth of kids, but only two people were in it: Light and Cam.

  Cam gave her a small smile, and Light gestured for her to come in. “We’ve been waiting for you,” he said, looking at his brother, whose flesh was still painted grey, as if the water couldn’t touch the paint itself.

  “But I’m not—” Faith’s argument was invalid, because she suddenly wore her bathing suit. Weird. She didn’t recall changing. With a quick shrug of her shoulders, she hurried into the pool, not thinking anything of the looming forest around them, how the trees seemed to darken and grow larger with each passing moment.

  Cam moved to her right and Light on her left. They each picked up one of her hands and brought it to their faces. They kissed her wrists, their lips soft on her tender flesh. A tingle coursed down her spine even though the blue water was warm.

  Light slowly dropped her left hand, moving to her back as Cam moved to her front. The hair was swept from her shoulders, gathered to one side. Light’s lips on her neck made her moan as Cam’s fingers roamed down her stomach, toying with the elasticity of her bathing suit bottom.

  “You should take this off,” Cam whispered, his amber eyes more forceful than ever.

  Nuzzling her neck, Light agreed, “Yes. Take them off.” His fingers worked to untie the straps that held her top together. Faith couldn’t argue with either of them. After Light undid her top and sent it floating away in the clear water, his hands snaked around to her breasts, cupping them and pulling her against him, her back on his chest as he lifted her up. Cam deftly yanked off her bottoms, tossing the suit behind him as he watched Light lower her back into the water.

  “Much better,” Cam whispered, glancing to Light for backup.

  “Oh, yes. Much better,” he agreed, once more kissing her neck and causing her to breathe in rapidly. “Doesn’t she make the sweetest sounds?”

  “She does.” Cam moved before her, and she was in a sandwich of men, of brothers. Their hands felt far too good on her body for her to stop and think about how strange this was, how she should not be naked with a set of brothers.

  Her skin tingled anywhere they touched. Light nipped at her shoulder as his hands caressed her breasts, tweaked her nipples. Cam simply stared down at her from his superior height, watching her writhe and listening to her moan as he touched her hips before moving to the space between her legs. The pool gave everything an extra notch of feeling, and as Cam touched her down there, his fingers gliding along her, she found herself whispering his name.

  “Cam,” she spoke, more moaning it out than speaking it. She’d never heard herself sound so…feminine.

  Cam smiled. “She wants me, brother.”

  “No, I…” Faith tried to remember something about threesomes. Was it that she didn’t want one? That she’d never had one before? Or, on the flipside, that she did want one? Her memory was so foggy and so unreliable at the moment. “I want you both.” Logistically, she wasn’t sure how it would work in a pool, but they’d figure it out.

  Light, in a show to one-up his brother, spun Faith to him and crashed his mouth to hers. Rough and wet, he took her breath away. She drew her hands up his arms, giggling when Cam let out a growl and pulled her off him, spinning her and holding her against his chest. “You should know,” Cam whispered into her ear, hands hard on her sides, his arousal tight on her stomach, “I can get very wild.”

  Somehow, it didn’t surprise her. If anything, his words only served to further excite her, to further warm her lower stomach and the aching apex between her legs.

  She let out a long, low breath before saying, “I’m ready.” And she was. If she wasn’t in the water, she’d practically be dripping with anticipation. She didn’t want to wait any more. She wanted him, every part of him, and she wanted him now. She wasn’t certain if she wanted to do it in the pool, though.

  “Hold on,” Light said, splashing at the water. “There’s something she needs to see, first.”

  Cam nodded. “Right.” He let her down, and she stood on her own two feet, the water up to her chest. “It’s right under here.” And then, without another word, he sunk down into the pool, along with Light.

  Faith grunted. What could possibly be so important it would interrupt their time together? She swore there better be diamonds at the bottom, breathing in deep and holding her nose before she went under.

  Keeping her eyes open in water was always tough; she’d long given up on trying to stop the water from coming into her nose by using her tongue to block it off. Swim
ming lessons weren’t something an Academy would-be grad had. Faith couldn’t even remember the last time she was in a pool.

  Still, she was curious enough to see what Light and Cam were talking about, so she kept her eyes open. Cam and Light looked as though they were a hundred feet away in the water. No one was that fast of a swimmer, especially not two men with hard-ons. Frowning in the water, Faith kicked at the bottom and shot herself up, ready to yell at them when they resurfaced.

  But…they didn’t resurface. They weren’t there are all. Even their shadows in the water were gone. Faith was alone—she looked around—in a ruin? Who the hell would build a nice pool like this in the middle of a dilapidated castle? The forest she’d been in was a distant memory.

  The ceiling was at least four stories high, all stone and vine and crumbling dust. The windows on the wall held no glass or screens, perfect for bugs and birds to fly in and out. Talk about unsanitary.

  Ready to give the guys a piece of her mind, Faith’s head flicked around in search of her bathing suit. She was still naked, after all. Didn’t want to give them a beatdown while she was naked as a baby. They’d like it too much. Her bathing suit was gone, and the pool seemed smaller than it did minutes ago.

  “Okay,” Faith said aloud, “what is going on here?” Her voice echoed in the dim, decaying castle, bouncing off the walls and hitting her eardrums loudly. All right. Then she wouldn’t speak at all until she got out of here.

  No problem.

  Moving towards the steps, Faith hoisted herself out of the water. She did her best not to shiver, but failed spectacularly. She needed clothes, a towel, something to dry herself off with and cover her very pointy nipples. Damn that Light and Cam. Getting her all worked up only to disappear before anything happened.

  She was going to kill them when she found them. Have sex with them, and then kill them.

  Moving her hands to her chest, Faith held onto herself as she glanced around. No towel racks, unsurprisingly. Who would’ve thought a fine, clean, up-to-code castle such as this wouldn’t have towel racks? She shivered again, closing her eyes and willing a towel to appear before her.