Tradition Be Damned (Last Hope Book 1) Read online

  It didn’t take long for him to really wind me up. I grabbed the sheets on the bed. I was close. I needed this, but I didn’t want to come alone. “Kieran, please. With me. Please.”

  He stopped what he was doing, a slight whimper as he did. “Anne, I would love to make you come. It would be such a gift. Don’t worry about me.”

  I patted the bed next to me. “Come here.”

  He did as I instructed, and soon we were side by side. I reached out to stroke his hard cock, and he pushed into my hand. “You can’t know how good that feels.”

  Actually, I could. His finger stroked over my clit, again and again. With his cock hard and throbbing in my hand, I could let go. I needed him with me. This wasn’t about my pleasure; it was about our pleasure. He wasn’t inside of me, not yet. But this was its own kind of intimacy.

  I loved it. My orgasm hit me with a wave of pleasure. I cried out and felt his wetness drench my hand. Stars crossed my vision, and the world might have shifted on its axis. He pressed his forehead to mine, and otherwise we just breathed together.

  Eventually, he pulled me to his chest where I could hear his pulse. I closed my eyes. My powers still rode me hard, but I was exhausted. I had to sleep. Sisters had to sleep. We had to recharge so we could do it all again the next day. Demons were always there. I faced them moment after moment and did it the same way again when I was done. I had to sleep. I had to sleep. More than I had been.

  Kieran rubbed my back. “Turn it off.”

  “I’m not in charge. Power does what it will.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “I don’t believe that. I mean, I guess what I think doesn’t really matter. You’re the miracle. But this is your gift, in your blood, what you were born to do. I can feel your need to sleep like it’s my own. You are my own. Sleep. Please. Tell your powers they’ve done enough. Whatever they needed to do, they did. Sleep.”

  “It’s never enough. Not even when they’re off. It’s like I’m missing something, the ability for rest.” I’d never told anyone that before.

  “Well, you will tonight. You’re going to sleep until you wake up. I’ll see to it. Wait a second.” He got up from the bed; I wasn’t exactly sure where he was going. He walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him. I listened to the sounds of the house. He’d woken someone in the other room, which made my heart clench. I wished Kieran hadn’t done that. I sat up in the bed, pulling the sheet over myself. What was going to happen now? They couldn’t make my powers shut down or force me to bed.

  Kieran came back in, shutting the door quietly. “All taken care of.”

  “What exactly did you do?”

  He climbed onto the bed and under the covers with me before he answered. “Trust me, beautiful. Okay?”

  I snuggled back down. “Okay.”

  He kissed my forehead. “Close your eyes.”

  I did as he instructed. It was still a while before I fell asleep, but when I did it was in his arms.

  I woke up slowly, feeling like my bones and muscles ached. Kieran had his arm slung over my body, his breath warm on my neck. I blinked; the sun was well into the sky. What time was it?

  I darted upwards. The women would be waiting to paint and dress me. I needed my hood. They couldn’t find me hoodless with the guards. It would be a breach and …

  “Sshh.” Kieran squeezed me tighter. “You’re fine. All is well. You’re not late for anything.”

  “I am.” I struggled, but he didn’t let up. “I’m sure my three ladies are waiting for me.”

  He shook his head. “They’re not. Bryant took care of it. Things have changed, so as you get to know us differently and we get to know you outside of the hood, you’ll soon discover that Bryant gets everything done. If you give him the chance, he accomplishes any task handed to him. I told him you needed to sleep in today and every day. He worked on it.”

  “But they have lives and schedules. They can’t be held up like this.” Kieran let me out of his embrace this time. “They’ll tell Sister Superior, and then I’ll be punished.”

  “They’d be very foolish to do so.” He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. Still, there was a look in his eye that had me staying still.

  I cleared my throat. “What do you mean?”

  “A couple of things. First, they love you. Those three women haven’t blinked at the idea that they need to wait. All Bryant did was explain it. They even offered to bring you homemade tea if you weren’t feeling well. And second, anyone who complains about you to Sister Superior will have to deal with us. We protect you. From any and all threats.”

  I crossed to him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He held me tightly and spoke again. “You’re ours to protect.”

  “For the next few years anyway.” I didn’t know what made me speak the way I did. Why bring up something that would be five years away with Kieran? Four with Bryant and Mason?

  He tugged back to look at me. “We’ll worry about the future later. For now, I’m so damned happy.”

  For now, I was happy too. I smiled at him and kissed his nose.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Bryant stuck his head in. “I heard talking. You’re up?”

  “Yes. Thank you for letting me sleep. It was so kind. I don’t think I have to have leisurely wakeups all the time. I’ve just been drained.”

  Something I couldn’t read crossed his face. “It was my pleasure, Anne.”

  Mason popped his head over Bryant’s. “Morning, gorgeous. We made you food. Well, Milo did. Turns out he has a knack. Come on. Come eat.”

  Kieran was right. For now, there was happiness.

  Eight

  “Trains?” I repeated the word three times before I officially believed it.

  Milo grinned at me, a wide, toothy smile before he spoke again. “There’s no way for us to get you all the way to the northern Deadlands in that carriage. The trains are the only reliable form of transportation.”

  “How will we know which trains to take?” I looked down at the map he’d spread out on the floor in the main room of my residence. We were all staring at it.

  Bryant looked up at me. “Milo here is a train genius.”

  “Is that so?” I nudged him with my foot because I liked to see Milo blush a little bit. “I didn’t know being a train genius was possible.”

  Milo shrugged, as though it was no big deal. “My father was one of the coal-men. He shoveled the Black Death into the fire and made the train move. After my mother was possessed, I travelled with him for a while. Saw the whole country that way. It amazed me. I know the routes.”

  “That is amazing.” The trains were a dying form of transportation. The nobility rode them and shoved everyone else in cargo, if they were lucky enough to even get that, in with the cargo like the cows. I’d never even seen one. There was a train that was about half a day’s ride from here. The guys would have all arrived on that train. The training center was right by the train depot. Men were either selected at that point and eventually sent on to be guards or returned from whence they came.

  “Our best option would be to leave tomorrow morning. We won’t miss connections that way. If we delay …” His voice trailed off.

  Kieran, who had been quietly tapping his foot and slightly bouncing where he sat, leaned forward. “I hear something.”

  He did? A knock sounded on the door. Mason shoved the hood onto my head. I quickly adjusted it, immediately hating the restrictions. The world was darker inside my hood. My three ladies came inside. Bryant stood to greet them. “Sister Anne, we asked your staff to come show us how they paint your symbols on you every day. We’re going to have to do it.”

  “Highly unusual,” Bonnie chirped, crossing her arms over her chest. “She has to be naked. One of us should come with you …”

  I placed my hand on her. I couldn’t converse with her, but I’d grown to respect and like her just the same. I couldn’t take her into the mines. What l
iberties I was taking with my guards, I couldn’t do with Bonnie, Maxie, and True. They had families, and they’d worked for the sisterhood for a long time. They liked me, that was for sure, but if I really pushed it with them, they would report me. I knew it. Despite the fact they’d let me sleep in this morning.

  She sighed loudly. “It’s not for me to say what’s right and wrong. You’re going to minister to those poor people who never get help. All of the greater good and all that. Clothes off, Sister.”

  The room was silent around me. They’d either not considered the fact I would be naked doing this, or they had and still didn’t know how to deal with it. Mason, Garrett, and Kieran had all seen me naked—at least partially if not all of them wholly. Bryant and Milo had not.

  True came behind me and undid my dress from behind. I stepped out of it, my heart sounding in my ears. This was a lot. It was one thing to be nude one-on-one, another thing in front of all of their eyes. It didn’t make me feel cherished, sexy, or wanted. This was discomfort in its truest form. My cheeks heated under the hood, and for once I was glad for the covering.

  My undergarments were removed next, and naked, in sunlight from the windows and the unforgiving factory lighting of my common room, I faced away from the men as True began to paint my back in black makeup that didn’t smudge unless the full blast of the shower got it.

  “Mason?” Bryant spoke low. “Copy the images into the book.”

  “Already on it.” The low whish of a pencil scratching against a paper became background noise. The women picked up their chatter like they did every day, as though the men weren’t there. Occasionally, one of the guards would ask them a question about the symbol—if the direction they painted it mattered—an angle of a line. Mostly it was Garrett who spoke. He’d been interested in the symbols when we’d been in the shower. His curiosity had not waned.

  “Some of them we have; some we don’t.” He spoke to Bonnie. “Any idea why? When they gave us the shields, they told us they had our Sister’s specific symbols on them. When we came from Sister Beth to work for Sister Anne, we changed shields.”

  That was a piece of information I hadn’t had before. Bryant, Mason, Garrett, and Kieran had all been together prior to being with me? Milo was new so he had only been with me. I knew Sister Beth. She seemed nice enough. Quiet, easygoing manner, middling on the power scheme. She had lovely cheekbones and blond hair that stayed put so it didn’t have to be chopped at like mine. Why had they taken four guards from her at the same time?

  My heart sped up. Could they do that to me? Would they? Had she called them to her bed? Had they made love to her?

  She and I barely spoke …

  “All right now, we’re done.” True’s voice reached me, and I stepped back, as I always did, into my gowns. I listened to the zipper travelling upwards until it reached my neck. I extended my arms forward and the jewelry that matched my gown and some of my symbols was adorned onto my body. I turned. The three women curtsied and left the room as they always did.

  I ripped the hood off my head, afraid I was about to start hyperventilating. Embarrassment rode me hard. I nodded to them fast and took myself quickly into my room before gently closing the door. I hoped they understood. I needed a minute.

  And how on earth was I going to let one of them—or, by the Divinity, all of them—do that to me every day? Maybe this had been a terrible idea?

  A few minutes later, a knock sounded on the bedroom door. What did they want? I took a deep breath and forced myself to sit up. “Yes. Come in.”

  Milo poked his head around and then stepped in, closing the door behind him. I’d known him the least amount of time, and he’d once called me weird. Still, he was part of the group and he’d rolled with how strange things had gotten pretty well. He hadn’t made a sound the entire hour I’d been painted.

  He plopped down on the bed next to me and then lay flat on his back. “That was painful to watch. How badly does that stuff itch?”

  His question so surprised me I could hardly think to answer for a moment. “What?”

  “That makeup? All over your skin? Does it itch? You’re all pale and freckled. You probably burn easily and have sensitivities even worse than I do. Does it itch?”

  I was all pale and freckled; he was right. He’d stared at my naked backside for an hour. He’d know how horrible it looked back there even more than I did. Was my rear end attractive or a major turn off? Why did I care?

  “It used to itch. But I’ve adjusted. I hardly think about it now.” He looked comfortable, lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. The guards shouldn’t have been with me; it was the middle of the day. Yet we needed to plan for the big trip, so exceptions had been made.

  I lay with him, staring upwards, too. There was a crack in my ceiling, but it had always been there, a flaw to the otherwise well put together room. I used to wonder about it during my early days living alone in these quarters. Would it spread? Would it make the ceiling come down on me? If it had extended at all in the two years since I’d moved in, I hadn’t noticed it. Perhaps it was so small my eyes couldn’t detect it. Or maybe it had cracked and would never move again.

  In any case, it was my crack. Seeing it here gave me comfort that sometimes things didn’t change, even after an event so strenuous as to have knocked plaster apart on my ceiling. There could be peace after chaos.

  Or maybe I was just crazy.

  “It looked like it would itch.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Whether it itches or not, I have to do it.”

  “Why?” He turned his head to look at me. He needed to shave. Milo and I didn’t have the kind of relationship, even with him lying on my bed, where I could simply touch his chin. I wanted to, yet I wasn’t sure he’d like it.

  “The symbols are a source of my power.”

  He scrunched up his nose. “How does that work?”

  “I have a certain natural ability. I was born with it. The seers saw my birth, and the sisterhood came and got me. Then when I was thirteen, my powers turned on. They’re uncontrollable, difficult. The initiates spend most of their time in the basement learning to handle themselves. It takes years and years. Then when we’re twenty, we emerge. The symbols are part of that control.”

  Milo rolled onto his side to face me. “So when you were kicking that Incubus into yesterday, you used those symbols?”

  “I …” That was a good question. “I don’t really remember using them then. That doesn’t mean I didn’t. They’re like second nature to me. I draw upon them, and they feed or control the power. Hard to explain.”

  He nodded. “It’s interesting.”

  I supposed it was to other people. To me, it was like trying to explain to someone my bedtime routine or why I chewed a certain way. There were things I did because I did them. Using the symbols was one of them. They enhanced my body’s natural demon-fighting power given to me by Divinity.

  “So you didn’t want to continue to work the trains?”

  He closed his eyes, and I thought for a second he wouldn’t answer. “They weren’t hiring twelve-year olds.”

  Twelve? He was barely out of childhood. “Then what did you do?”

  “Nothing good. When they came looking for people to try out for this, it seemed like a chance to live a good life. So here I am. It’s not exactly what I expected.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t have to say anything else. I could have left it like that. But I spoke because it seemed like I had to. “It’s not what you expected, or I’m not what you expected?”

  “Is there a difference when it comes down to it?”

  I shook my head. I supposed not. Of course, he’d not told me he liked it with me, which was what I hoped would happen. Why did I ask questions that only brought me pain? A knock sounded, and Milo jumped up. He crossed to the door in two seconds. I stayed where I was, staring at my crack on the ceiling. Maybe it did seem bigger …

  “Sister Anne,” Mason called from the
door. “Sister Katrina wants to see you.”

  I sat up, groaning. “Thanks.”

  I didn’t know what she wanted, but none of it could be good. Two conversations with the Sister Superior in two weeks? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  Milo shut the door, leaving Mason on the other side. “Do you want me to tell her you’re not feeling well?”

  “No.” I stood up. “That is the very last thing I should say. I don’t want to spend the night in the infirmary. She probably wants to make sure we have what we need.”

  His gaze met my own; the hard, steady set of his eyes flashed with something I couldn’t decipher before it passed. These men would always be a mystery to me. “Okay.”

  I sat in Sister Katrina’s chair and waited for her to speak. After I was ushered inside, she hadn’t said a word to me. Protocol dictated I wait patiently until she decided what to say. I had heard stories of her keeping Sisters waiting hours, but I’d yet to face that myself.

  “I went back and forth about whether the Divinity wanted me to speak to you on this matter or not.”

  I nodded. Considering how easily I had lied about the Divinity speaking to me, I couldn’t really blame her for pulling it out to make whatever point she wanted to as well. We all knew how to speak the lingo of Sisterhood when we had to.

  I shifted in my seat. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to be good.

  “When I was young, just out myself, I made similar mistakes to you.”

  Mistakes. What had I done? I tried to think of anything. “Can you be more specific, please?”

  “I had the standard five guards, and I believed them to be the best of men. How could I not? I knew nothing of men. I’d never spoken to one. They were like mysterious gifts from the universe. Handsome and devoted to my safety.” She stood and walked to the window. “We always stick a guard that’s about to leave into the group to make sure the others are well trained, and he came and went for me. And there they were, my five. I’ll admit to you, I fell in love with each of them.”