Phoenixcry: A Reverse Harem Romance (The Rogue Witch Book 1) Read online

  “This can’t last, us, this is—it’s wrong, not allowed,” I said, but my protests were hollow.

  “Then walk,” Charlie said, sitting back, his arms loose around his waist. “Go. I won’t stop you. Call up your family, have them come get you. You keep fighting this, acting like you’re not ours, and we’re not yours, but you made up your mind when you came on this tour. You chose to save us, Darcy, and in doing so you stitched our fates together.”

  His words dropped into my mind like stones in a still pond, sending ripples and movement everywhere. I stared at him, and lifted my fingers to my lips. The skin was swollen from his kisses.

  “I know,” I whispered. “I know. I just didn’t want to say it.”

  “You’re scared to get attached,” he said, holding me close. “I get it. You lost your family, you don’t talk about it, but I see it in your face. I think the only person you’ve probably opened up to since you left home was Max, right? Kept yourself locked away in isolation so no one could ever hurt you again. What did they do?”

  I shook my head. That life was done, and gone. I’d shut the door on it.

  “Darcy, baby, you’re gonna have to tell me eventually. Or Finn, or Ace, he’s hard to say no to. Fucker always gets the last piece of gum because he gives me those damn puppy eyes.” Charlie’s words startled a laugh out of me, that was edged with tears. I wiped at my eyes, my heart not able to handle the back and forth of being turned on to melting into tears. He was right. I hadn’t loved anyone other than Max, and she was different. She was safe. A mundane with a boyfriend, and a normal dad, and a normal life, she’d been safe for me to befriend and entrust. But the guys? It was terrifying loving them, but it was happening whether I wanted it to or not.

  And I wanted it to.

  Charlie looked at me expectantly.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I’m good, really. It’s fine.”

  “That’s crap, but I haven’t had enough coffee to argue with you,” Charlie replied, but he cradled me against his chest. I tucked my head against his shoulder and sighed, letting his warmth sink into me. I’d noticed the guys all seemed to run hot, hotter than humans normally did. “You gonna trust me someday, kid?”

  “Stop calling me kid and I might. It’s weird.”

  Under my ear, I could hear Charlie chuckle.

  “Alright, babe, I’ll banish it from my vocab.”

  My eyes sank shut as a breeze wafted into the van and played with some of the hair around my face. We sat there for a long time, Charlie taking slow sips of his coffee, his hand crawling up and down my back.

  “My boyfriend was a guy named Creston Hailward, his family is on the council,” I said after the sun had moved a good few inches down my legs. Charlie made a soft, soothing noise, and his hand cupped the back of my head. “It’s the usual kind of story. A guy doesn’t understand what no means, or if he understands he just doesn’t listen—”

  Charlie stiffened.

  “He didn’t?”

  “No, I fried his balls,” I said, trying not to smile. That part of the memory was a proud one at least. He’d pushed and argued with me, telling me I’d owed him a good orgasm since I hadn’t let him touch me anywhere under my clothes the whole time we’d been dating. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him, because Creston had been the hottest guy I knew, but more that I wasn’t ready yet. Something had been holding me back. Now I knew that it was because I hadn’t loved him, not really. How I’d felt for him was like a candle compared to a volcano when I placed my feelings for him next to how much I cared for and wanted the guys.

  “You fried his balls. Huh. Remind me never to piss you off. I’m kinda glad you’re with us, if we run into any trouble. Hunters’d think twice about taking on a witch.” He shook his head. I bit my lip. It wasn’t like I could actually take on a human being armed with a weapon who wanted to kill someone. But he didn’t need to know that, especially if me being a witch gave him comfort. I imagined the snide look on my father’s face if he’d heard Charlie. My father would have laughed and said something like She’s no good for anything to do with magic. I brushed the thought away.

  “Yeah. I let him think he was getting a handy, and then gripped the jewels and—well, his family was pretty pissed. Called it assault. They’re on the council like I said, like my family is.” Charlie shifted under me as I talked, and I could tell he wanted to say something but he kept quiet.

  “They wanted me stripped of my power,” I said quietly, “although joke was on them, I might as well have been already.”

  “What?” Charlie sat up a little. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, if you’re bad, like really bad, they, the council, they can do something, I’m not sure what, but it drains all the power out of you. You’re left a husk. Like a mundane, except you know what it was like to be filled with energy, your powers. I’ve never seen it done, but I heard it drives witches crazy.” I shivered at the memory of wondering if they’d actually do that to me. The dread stole over me for a moment until I shook it away. That moment, and my family, were in the past.

  “That seems like a pretty stiff punishment.”

  “He had pretty bad burns, I guess.”

  “Still,” Charlie’s chest bounced for a moment, chuckling. “Shit, I bet his face was something else. But what did you mean, you might as well?”

  “I’m not very good at spells,” I admitted after a moment and pulled back from him to give him a brief smile. “Like, as in terrible. I can’t cast them.”

  Charlie frowned.

  “At all?”

  “Not even the littlest. I’d call myself a bad witch, but everyone would think I meant as in as in badly behaved, but no. I’m just really terrible at magic. I can’t do it. The most I can do is, you know, command with my voice a little bit, or spark somebody if they scare me or I really want it bad.”

  Charlie was looking at me as if I was crazy, and I saw a flicker of what looked like disappointment in his eyes. It was gone in an instant, I thought I must have imagined it.

  “Well. That’s that then,” he said, looking past me. “We should get on the road. We’ve got another five hours of driving before we hit the venue.” He gave me a gentle push and I got up, surprised at how quickly he shut the door on our conversation. Then I saw Eli and the rest of the guys making their way up the sandy bank toward us.

  It was sweet that Charlie had wanted to stop talking about what had happened between me and Creston, at least before the rest of the band got back to us.

  I got out of the van to stretch my legs, and Finn swaggered up to me, enveloping me in a huge, wet hug as I shrieked.

  He kissed me, his lips tasting of fresh-water and his own, subtle flavor underneath it.

  “I dreamt of you,” he said when we parted. The weight of the other guys’ eyes were on me, but this moment was for me and Finn.

  “Yeah?” I asked, my heart squeezing hard. “Good dreams?” He gave a dirty little chuckle.

  “The best,” he said, and bent down to nip at my ear. “You smell like Charlie.”

  “Sorry,” I moaned.

  “It’s good. One day you’ll smell like all of us, and you’ll be home.”

  I felt my cheeks flush at that thought. Home. I looked over at the van where Ace was rifling through his backpack, and Cash watched us with a smothered longing in his eyes. Eli and Charlie were on the other side of the van; I could just see them through the windows.

  “That sounds really good,” I whispered.

  Nineteen

  Being on the road suited me. There was an energy that hummed up through the tires on the highway, and I found myself scribbling in a journal for the first time ever. Max had made me take one, telling me that I’d want the memories from my first major career move.

  She was probably right. We’d been texting back and forth, although she was definitely more subdued than normal. I missed the old Max, my Max, but felt selfish because I knew her heart was breaking when mine was b
lossoming.

  Finn stayed in the back of the van with me, even when Charlie grabbed a guitar in the front and strummed to new tunes. I could feel that Finn wanted to sing, write lyrics, do something, but he felt bad about leaving my side.

  “You’re acting kinda broody,” I said as we pulled into another venue a few days later.

  “I’m not grumpy,” he protested. I snickered.

  “No, like, broody as in brooding. Like you’re a chicken and I’m an egg you’re trying to hatch.”

  The look on his face was priceless, half offended, half grouchy.

  “It’s true,” Ace said as he ducked out of the van when we rolled to the stop. “You stare at her like a love-sick puppy.”

  Finn made a sputtering noise and glowered down at me. He ducked to whisper in my ear, pinning me against the inside wall of the van.

  “I’m going to show you brooding later,” he promised. A shiver of heat in me answered his words, and he smirked, pulling away.

  Charlie made a soft clucking sound from the front and Finn gave him the finger. I caught my breath and pushed past him.

  “Work now, fun later.”

  We were falling into a routine. The guys would unload while I’d go check-in with the venue manager. We were still getting dicked around on our soundcheck at every venue. I’d tried bringing it up with Jake Tupper (and I didn’t tell the guys I’d talked to Jake alone. They hated him but kept it together for the sake of the tour), but he’d only talked down to my breasts about how Phoenixcry had better be grateful to get any soundcheck time at all instead of just a line check.

  Except half the time, all we got was a line-check, where the sound crew let the guys do a quick plug-in and strum before bringing up the house lights and letting the audience into the room. The guys barely had time to get backstage before the low rumble of the crowd swelled inside the venue. Frustrated, but with nothing that I could do about it, I spent time snapping pictures of everything and loading it up on the social media.

  Doing great kid, keep it up. Gonna make a photog of you yet, Chrissy texted me one night, after I got a clear image of the crowd bracketed by Finn’s denim-clad legs as he wailed through the ending of their finale, a haze of fog drifting through the air. The guys were happy with my work, and I never told them the real, secret reason to my dedication over documenting the tour: if a hunter showed up, and tried to attack the band, I’d have a better chance of IDing them after if I had pictures of the audience. Photos of kids, teens, and college students like me filled up my phone night after night. When I couldn’t sleep sometimes, I’d scroll through the photos, trying to find faces that showed up more than once. Nothing stood out, and I’d often fall asleep with my phone still in my hand.

  Every day was melting into the next, and even though the scenery was changing around us as the north faded into the south, time seemed to stand still. The only way I knew that we were moving forward at all was how many days Instagram said it had been since the first tour picture of Finn’s arm wrapped around me. Things were heating up between us, and I kept flicking my phone open and scrolling to that picture, feeling the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach at the sight of it. Everything had changed since then.

  “You’re obsessing,” Charlie said to me outside a rest stop in Arizona.

  “What?”

  “You’re staring at that picture. Why not go for the real thing?” His eyes shifted off me and over to where Finn was drenching his head with water from a spigot at the rest stop. He and Eli had been bickering all morning and they’d gone on a run to ‘work off their frustrations’ which was wolf-boy code for go somewhere private and punch each other until they got over whatever the hell they were mad at each other about. It wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the last.

  “Do you guys smell like wet dog when you do that?” I asked, motioning to Finn with the hand that held my phone. Charlie spat out a mouthful of coffee and laughed.

  “Bitch,” he said affectionately. He’d picked up the habit from me when I’d called Max a few times and he heard how we talked to each other. It didn’t offend me, but still I was trying to train him out of that habit.

  “No no, you don’t get to use that word unless?”

  “Unless I have a magic lady-cave and monthly bleeding,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.” I watched as Finn loped over to us from across the parking lot. “Especially cause I think he heard you.”

  “Charlie,” Finn snarled, reaching us in a few strides. In the next moment I was grateful we were the only people at the rest stop in the remote reaches of Arizona. Finn grabbed Charlie by the shirt and hauled him up on his toes, squaring his shoulders and bearing down on the shorter man. “The fuck you think you’re doing, talking to her like that.”

  “Easy, easy,” Charlie said as he held up one hand, the other going to the fist that was holding him half off the ground. “It’s a joke. C’mon Darce, tell him.”

  “Finn.” He looked over at me and I gave him a small smile. He swallowed, and let Charlie go, immediately walking over to me. “You okay?” he asked me. His hand came up to cradle the side of my face and I had to close my eyes for a moment. His closeness was perfect.

  “I should be asking you the same thing. You know Charlie likes to dick around,” I whispered.

  “Don’t like it.” Finn pressed his forehead into mine, a thing I’d gotten used to. I wondered if it was some sort of wolfy habit, or it was just Finn being Finn.

  “I’m okay, big guy,” I promised. “I’m a tough cookie. I can hold my own against someone like Charlie. He doesn’t even phase me.”

  “Hey,” Charlie protested. Finn ignored him and kissed me, his arms encircling me. I kissed him back, slicking my tongue over his lower lip until he growled and his grip on me became possessive and hungry. I heard Charlie’s footsteps walk away, giving us a moment. He’d hover, probably, they all seemed to do that when Finn and I got close like this. A hum of need buzzed in my stomach and when Finn pulled away, I moaned in protest.

  “Don’t,” Finn warned, his eyes glittering with heat. “You make that noise, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.” His threat made me want to test his restraint, because it was going on weeks now that the sexual tension had been burning between us, and the peripheral heat from the other guys was weighing down on me. It was like me and Finn were circling each other, waiting for the other one to flinch, neither of us quite willing to be vulnerable, not yet anyway.

  You been takin’ care of business on your own, then, girlfriend? Max had asked me when I’d explained the perpetual state of sexual anxiety and deprivation I was in.

  You know it. Guys never know what to do anyway, so I learnt to provide the good times for myself. He’ll probably suck.

  Yeah, right. A guy like that? He knows what’s down with going down. I have faith. You should have some too.

  The mental image of Finn going down? That had stuck with me for days, and right then, standing in front of him and knowing that he wanted me so bad that his self control was fraying quickly, I wanted to find out if Finn Gunner actually knew what was down with going down.

  I had a feeling that Max was right.

  “Let’s hit the road,” Cash came up behind Finn, eyes on me. His body was tense, and I wondered how much it was affecting him to have us fake-out-make-out all the time. Even Ace was getting edgy, and I’d catch him curled around my sweater sometimes if I left it in the van and he got back before I did.

  “Where’s the captain,” Finn asked, looking around for his brother. The ridiculous nickname for Eli had stuck as he guided us from one gig to the next. Of all of the guys, he seemed the least affected by my presence and the scent I had to be putting out. Charlie admitted in a quiet moment that it was nice, because I smelt like them, already, and there hadn’t been a female presence, a moderating presence in their lives like that since Ace had been just a kid.

  “Right here,” Eli said, �
��Where’s Ace?”

  He got his answer in a yelp, and the sight of Ace running out from behind one of the restroom out buildings at top speed.

  “Go go go go go go!” Ace yelled at us, sprinting full tilt. In a split second my guys, my indie rockers, turned into alert predators. Finn crashed into me, wrapping me up in his arms and shoved me into the van. Charlie and Cash piled in after us, and Eli dove into the driver’s seat. I couldn’t see anything as Finn covered my body with his. Fear thudded in my chest as the van doors slammed, and panting, Ace climbed into the front seat.

  The tires squealed, and I smacked my head as we took off out of the parking lot and hit a bump.

  “Ow, shi—”” I cursed as a bright split of pain erupted along one of my temples. The copper-scent of blood filled the air. Finn and Cash growled at almost identical times, and Finn pulled off of me.

  “What the hell was that?” Eli asked Ace, voice low as I sat up. Finn inspected my head.

  “It’s cut,” he said to me. “Charlie, get the first aid kit.” His face swam in front of me and I felt nauseous for one moment, my head throbbing.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick.” I reached out and Cash grabbed my hand.

  “No, you’re not, look at me, sweetheart.” He brushed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face. “You got any healing magic?”

  “I wish,” I grumbled, his warm fingers soothing some of the ache in my skull. Cash shot me a disarming smile, and crept up closer. He wrapped me in his arms, holding me steady as we pulled onto the highway.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Eli’s astonished tone made us all look to the front. I felt the drip of blood as it slid down the side of my face. Ace turned back to glance at me, guilt on his face.

  “Uh.”

  “You wanna tell them what you scared the shit out of us for?”

  “Not really.”