Phoenixfire: A paranormal reverse harem romance (The Rogue Witch Book 8) Read online

  “Um, excuse me, are you Darcy?” A girl interrupted my thoughts, and I turned. She was holding a notebook tight to her chest.

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering if she was about to yell at me for corrupting the band, or if she even looked the gossip sites.

  “Would you sign this for me?” she asked, holding out her notebook to me. My heart melted.

  “Really?”

  “You’re amazing, going on tour with the guys and stuff, and-” she blushed scarlet as she spoke, and I realized she knew. “Are they good to you?” Her voice dropped to a soft whisper. I grinned. She was sweet. I hadn’t been expecting kindness from fans, and maybe I needed to reevaluate my internal prejudices before it got me in trouble. Not every fan was going to hate me.

  “Yeah, very,” I said. “What page? And who do you want me to make it out to?”

  “Mandy,” she replied, staring down at the notebook while I signed it for her. “Thank you so much; it’s so amazing to meet you.” She got back in line after a moment, giggling with a friend of hers. I leaned against the wall, my hands behind the small of my back as I tried to relax. The signing was going well. There were a lot of selfies, with the guys staying solidly on their side of the table. I guess that meant they were still hiding their erections. Honestly, I admired their dedication to their fans. I didn’t know what being in rut felt like, but given Finn’s enthusiasm when it had happened to him, if I were one of them, I wouldn’t have been able to wait.

  That thought had my cheeks burning, and I was glad the signing room wasn’t well-lit—most of the ambient light coming from wall sconces that cast light upward and strings of glass bulbs criss-crossing the ceiling.

  More fans entered the room, waiting for their turn to greet the guys. I noticed a rare male in the line was watching me. He kept looking at his phone and sneaking furtive glances back at me.

  The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I looked away. There was only one reason he was looking at his phone, as far as I could guess. He was trying to figure out if I was someone he recognized from online, and, given the little smirk that tipped up the corners of his lips, he’d figured out who I was. I pushed off from the wall, and walked quickly toward the signing table.

  “Hey, you’re dating the band, right?” He was in front of me in what felt like a split second, making me stop short. He topped me in height by about five inches, maybe more, and he had a signed t-shirt in his hand. “Can I get a selfie with you?”

  I didn’t get a good feeling from him, but I wasn’t about to say no to a fan of the band.

  “I’m Darcy,” I said, not confirming what he’d asked at the beginning, because if he knew who I was, then he already knew that I was dating the whole goddamn band. It didn’t need to be said aloud. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Wicked,” he said, scooping his arm around my shoulders. I tensed and took a breath to try to relax. He lifted his phone; I smiled as best I could. Then his lips pressed against my cheek, near the corner of my mouth. I yanked back in surprise.

  “What the hell?” I asked, staring at him. His smirk was broad.

  “Oh, c’mon, you’re getting it all from five guys, you can take it from one mo-” He never got to finish his sentence. Eli had him down on the floor, the phone sliding along the polished concrete, the guy’s arm pinned behind his back. There was a burst of noise, the chatter of shocked people all around me, and Cash had me pulled away and pushed behind his back, like he was expecting me to get jumped. Venue security were there a second later, standing around Eli as he got to his feet, eyes blazing.

  Someone stole up behind me, Ace, his arms wrapping tightly around me.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” he said into my ear, pulling me away from Cash and toward the exit door at the back we’d been told to use if the crowd got unruly.

  Eli had just assaulted a fan. My stomach was a knot of dread. The cops were going to be called, and we were in England, and oh god.

  Ace knew I was panicking, as he led me into the exit hallway, the door shutting on the scene of one of the security guards helping the fanboy to his feet.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” Ace said, “this isn’t the first time we’ve had to take out some dickbro at a venue for hitting on a girl who didn’t want it.” I stared up at him, my nerves frayed. “He’ll be too embarrassed about being dropped by Eli, and he’ll slink off to whatever hole he crawled out of.”

  “I guess I don’t want a repeat of what happened before,” I replied. Ace smiled.

  “Yeah, you’re not going on the run with Eli to save him from jail time. It’s fine. I promise you.” He kissed me slowly, his lips parting over mine when I sighed, relaxing into his touch. “I do need to get back into there, though, and make sure the rest of the band doesn’t try to tear that guy apart.”

  That reminded me-

  “How are you so calm when you’re on the beginning of a rut?” I asked him, reluctantly stepping away so he could go. Ace gave me a look so heated that I took another step back in surprise.

  “I’m patient,” he said. “I know it’ll be better if I wait. Plus, I don’t feel like getting my dick out in this hallway and having some rent-a-cop finding me balls-deep inside of you.”

  “Ace,” I gasped. He smirked.

  “What? You should be used to my dirty talk by now.”

  I pointed at the door.

  “Go finish your signing,” I said, “I’ll be on the bus.” Ace gave me a meaningful smirk.

  “You better be. The guys are going to be… expecting you.” He opened the door and disappeared through it. I swallowed hard. My pulse was racing, and my whole body felt warm. It was like I was getting some sort of residual energy off of the guys and their innate neediness. Lying down in the back of the bus and waiting for them to come seemed like a good idea. I ran a finger along the side of my neck, feeling the old, healed-over, barely-there mark of Finn’s bite, my first bond-bite. The skin tingled, and I sighed. Yeah, I needed to get to the bus before I did something totally inappropriate, like burst in on the signing and grind in one of the guys’ laps.

  9

  Darcy

  Waiting had been torture, and, apparently, not just for me. The guys burst into the bus like a tsunami, just as I was in the middle of undressing in the back.

  “Fuck, babe,” Finn said as his knees hit the bed. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me down, kissing and licking at the side of my neck.

  “Warning,” I gasped, “you gotta give me-”

  Ace was in the doorway, his eyes blazing with need.

  “Thirty seconds,” Finn said, “that’s all I need to get her ready, I fucking swear it.” Ace’s expression went feral for a second before he growled and looked away.

  “Fucking fuck,” he said, and the intensity of everything he was feeling seemed to darken the room. Eli snorted and grabbed Ace around the waist.

  “You gonna behave?” he asked. Ace growled at him, struggling against the bigger wolf’s grip. Finn kissed me, crowding me and blocking the rest of the guys out of my sight line.

  “Eyes on me,” he said. I blinked, my gaze shifting to him, my focus narrowing in on him.

  “I’m here,” I said, “I swear. Present and accounted for.”

  “Let’s get the rest of you present,” he said, fingers tucking into my underwear. Cash moved in beside him, reaching for my other hip, pulling at the fabric of my panties. In a coordinated move, they ripped at the same time, the cotton giving way.

  The air left my lungs in a rush and my skin tingled from being exposed to them. Charlie muscled his way to lay beside me, his broad, calloused hand landing on my belly.

  “This is the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen,” he said. Ace let out a noise that sent shockwaves through my system.

  “C’mon now, behave,” Eli muttered, and Ace snarled at him. It wasn’t fair to tease him, he was in rut, but the sight of him growling had me squirming. It was such a fucking turn on.

  “Yeah, you like that,” Charlie teased me,
giving me a wicked little smirk when I punched him in the shoulder.

  “It’s hot,” I said, without any shame. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “No, nothing at all,” Finn agreed. Ace grappled with Eli again. I moaned, reaching for him.

  “Let him go,” I begged. I just wanted to make him feel better. The ache that I knew had to be throbbing through his body made me want to fix it for him. Watching the way his eyes flared as he looked at me? It would make any girl melt. Eli snorted with amusement and released Ace.

  He jerked like a shotgun had gone off, shoving the other guys out of the way to get to me. I heard someone laugh, but it wasn’t cruel. Ace pressed his cheek against mine, his breath hot and ragged against my ear. I could feel the waves of need pulse off of him like a physical sensation. I was drowning in it. It was just like Finn had been during his first rut, but somehow… worse. More intense.

  Maybe it was because we were all connected now, tied together forever. I bit my lip and reached for Ace, even as he slid his hips between my thighs. His jeans had hit the floor a moment before, his shirt stuck to Finn’s shoulder where he’d thrown it.

  “This okay?” he asked, and I could tell he just wanted to fuck me, instead of waiting for me to be ready for him.

  I inhaled.

  “I’m yours,” I promised, and he sighed, a look of pure bliss grossing his face as he thrust inside me. I was surrounded by the guys, pressing up against me along all sides, Ace covering me with his tight, muscled shoulders. The feeling of having him inside me so suddenly robbed all the breath from my lungs, and I clung to him, my fingers biting into his arms.

  It felt so good. I lifted my hips to meet his urgent thrusts. Charlie licked up the side of my neck, triggering a wave of cascading shivers through me as he brushed over one of the many bonding bite marks there. They were still so sensitive, like they were newly healed and tingling still.

  Rough, broad fingers radiating warmth found my clit, sending me gasping, my whole body lighting up. I flew over the edge faster than I’d ever come before.

  Ace’s eyes closed, his hips hitching for a moment, a pause in his frantic thrusting, before he looked straight at me. A tilt in his head asked me a silent okay?

  I nodded, and he growled, doubling down, his forehead hitting my shoulder as he started moving again, thrusting even faster.

  Ruts were exhausting to get through. Dealing with just Finn in a rut was one thing, but… the whole pack? I could barely keep my eyes open, and I let out a long, slow breath. Someone was dragging their fingers up and down my spine, the soft touch relaxing me further. Sleep sounded good. Sleep for, like, five days, maybe. Someone else on the bed stirred, the mattress shifting under us all. One of the boys grumbled, a low growl of warning for whoever was rustling around to cut it out. The sweet, hazy, post-sex glow that had me sprawled out between bodies was perfect.

  It seemed like my guys were sated, at least for now; the hormones coursing through their veins had ebbed with the deep contact with their mate and close proximity to the rest of the pack. I let my eyes drift shut, determined to slide down into a swirl of purple-smoke sleep.

  Buzz.

  No. Sleep. I kept my eyes shut at the sound of a message coming through on someone’s phone.

  Buzz. Buzz.

  Eli groaned.

  “What the fuck, Charlie?”

  “Sorry,” Charlie replied. “I’ll just-”

  Buz-buz-buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  There was a rustling noise and a thud. The cell phone had fallen to the ground.

  “Shit,” Charlie muttered. Finn curled around me tightly.

  “Stop jostling our girl, you’re gonna wake her up,” his voice was a sleepy growl in his chest.

  “I’m still awake,” I said, reaching to cup his chin. “Don’t be grumpy.”

  “Butterfingers needs to learn to put his fucking phone on fucking airplane mode,” Cash said in the darkness.

  A light erupted—Charlie’s cell phone as he checked it—and we whined collectively.

  “Shit! Sorry, guys,” Charlie said.

  “I’ve never really felt all that murderous before,” Ace said, his tone part conversational, part deadly. “I’m sorta getting there, though. Is this how you feel all the time, Eli?”

  “Shut up,” Eli replied.

  “Well, now I need a drink,” Cash said, standing up. I squinted in the dim light, admiring the curve of his well-muscled ass.

  “Seriously, dollheart, you thinking about starting something again?” Finn asked, his lips close to my ear. I gave him a mischievous little grin.

  “Look, if you guys are gonna walk around naked, I’m gonna appreciate it. That’s just the way it’s gotta be. I don’t make the rules.” I returned to checking out Cash’s ass. He shot a smirk at me, but it was more tired than smoldery.

  “You thirsty?” he asked me.

  “Oooh, do we have any of that orange soda?” Ace asked, sitting up.

  “I wasn’t asking you, pup.” Cash stretched, and I let my gaze wander down the front of his body.

  “Guys,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, yeah, make fun of my age, that’s original and witty,” Ace said, the roll of his eyes audible in his voice. Finn sighed, letting his hand linger on my hip, dragging his knuckles back and forth. A tiny bloom of heat—totally disregarding the fact that I had been sexed six ways to the planet Saturn—began warming between my thighs.

  “Guys, shut up,” Charlie ordered, his voice hard.

  Eli sat up, running a hand through his hair. He glanced at me, then glared at Finn.

  “She needs to rest,” he snapped.

  “You need to shut the fuck up,” Charlie snapped back, turning to us. I blinked, sitting up too. Finn followed me, his arm banding around my belly and pulling me against his chest. “Gem got a tip-off. They’re running a story in the Mail tomorrow about our depravity as a band, and how we’re all fucking our tour manager.”

  My mouth went dry. Finn stiffened behind me, his muscles tense. Silence hung in the air.

  “Lemme guess, they’re going for the ‘think of the children, don’t let your kids go to this band’s shows’ route?” Eli’s voice was full of irritation.

  “The Daily Mail?” Ace asked. “Didn’t Gerard Way lead some sort of chant at one of his shows once where get got the crowd to yell, ‘Fuck the Daily Mail’? That Mail?”

  “That Mail.” Charlie’s face was lined with irritation and worry. I pushed away from Finn, crawled across Eli, and curled into Charlie’s side.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “There’ll be boycotts, probably; the purity police will be after us.” Charlie glanced down at his phone and sighed.

  “Good,” Cash said. We all looked up to see him standing in the doorway. “Everybody likes an underdog. This isn’t gonna stop our fans from coming. Let the prudes picket. Fuck ’em. Hell, let’s drop a sex tape.”

  “We are not dropping a sex tape,” Eli rumbled. I patted his thigh and smiled at him.

  “Calm down,” I said. He grumbled and pulled me in for a hug, burying his face in the crook of my neck.

  “My point stands. You don’t get to the top without pushing some buttons. The worst we’re doing is loving someone. How can anyone get mad at that? Seriously, fuck the prudes. Let’s put Darcy front and center in our social media. You think we’re the only ones having this kind of love? We’re gonna be embraced by everybody who doesn’t fit into the perfect little mold of one man and one woman. The world is changing, and you gotta adapt or get left behind. We know that better than almost anybody, don’t we?” Cash looked at each of us in turn, and I couldn’t help but let out the breath I’d been holding during his little speech. His eyes were blazing, like he was on fire from within. “Are we gonna shrivel up and pretend we don’t love the woman who saved us?” His knees hit the edge of the bed as he reached for me. Eli reluctantly let me go, and I took Cash’s hands as he held them out to me. “You okay with this, sweetheart? The attention, t
he criticism, all of it?”

  “I never wanted to stick out,” I said. “But you’re right. We’re not going to fall apart just because some major publication has decided we’re sex perverts.”

  “Sexy sex perverts,” Ace piped up; his comment startled a laugh out of me.

  “This is going to be harder than anything we’ve faced in the music world before,” Charlie said, because we all knew that the biggest battles were fought in the silence and the dark, where hunters came for us from all angles. What were a few boycotts and protests against our sexual deviancy? We’d survived multiple attempts on our lives, forest fires, and worse.

  “I think we can handle it,” I said, my voice soft in the quiet as the guys thought to themselves.

  “I don’t like anyone gunning for you,” Finn said, after several minutes of silence.

  “I’ve had a target on my back since we met,” I replied, making him flinch. I reached for him, trailing my fingers down the side of his face. He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch. “It’s not your fault. It never was. I wouldn’t trade this—us—for anything.”

  Eli sighed. Cash pulled a pair of boxers up his legs.

  “Sounds like we’ve reached a consensus. We go bravely forward. I’m down, as long as I can go get a drink.”

  “Orange soda,” Ace reminded him. Cash laughed and flapped a hand at him, disappearing through the door into the hall of the tour bus.

  I flopped back into the pillows. Charlie pushed by Eli to lie next to me, his nose inches from mine. He gazed intently into my eyes.

  “They’re going to tear you to shreds.”

  “I’ve been through worse,” I said, lifting my fingers to run them through his hair. His eyes closed and he leaned into my touch.

  “It’s different when it’s the whole world gunning for you, sweetheart. Our fans are one thing, keeping it in the family was one thing, just the music scene. But these are people who have no reason to like us, or give us the benefit of the doubt. At least our fans loved our music, they loved us, and it made it easier for them to accept that we were with you,” concern laced through his voice, soft and quiet as it was.