Page 30 of A Heist for Filthy Rivals (Mythic Holidays #3)

Devilry wakes me up by kicking me in the shins.

“Up,” she says tersely. She’s in full gear again, brimming with impatience. “We’ve had enough rest. Time for action.”

I sit up, blinking, my mind utterly blank. I’ve never been the kind of man who can spring into action straight out of a dead sleep.

“What’s wrong with you?” she seethes. “Get up.”

“Give a man a minute, gods.” Squeezing my eyes shut, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I need time to wake up.”

“Well, we don’t have time, so…” She grabs my chin, jerks my face up, and bends down to plant a vicious kiss on my mouth.

The touch is fire to the fuse of my entire nervous system, like an alarm ringing through my brain. The plush heat of her lips coats my mouth like burning honey.

She pulls away with a faint grimace. “Your breath is awful. You awake now?”

“Fuck yes.”

“Good. Get dressed.”

While I’m gearing up, she explains the two options we could pursue.

We could climb up to the observation room again. That’s if we want to be cautious, if we want to have eyes on some of the rooms before we descend into the subterranean level. But that option carries a greater risk of encountering the beast, who’s likely prowling the main levels of the house.

The other option is to enter the basement blind, and hope for the best.

“I’ve been awake for a while,” she says. “Haven’t heard anything from the monster.”

“It could be lying in wait nearby.”

“True.” She wedges her fingers into her left pocket, then withdraws them, as if she’s assuring herself that something important is still there. I make a mental note to inform myself about the contents of that pocket.

“I say we head straight for the treasure.” I fasten the last buckle of my gear, then pick up my pack.

“I’m leaning that way, too. I’d rather not get trapped in the tower again.”

“Maybe we’ll find Grisly along the way.”

“And how do you think he’ll react to sharing the treasure with someone who stuck him full of iron shards?”

“Not well. But he’ll have to get used to it.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

I shrug, adjusting the various straps of my gear. “Then I guess it’ll be you and me.”

She’s watching me, a torn hope in her eyes. “You’d choose me over him?”

“Easily. Without question.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a piece of shit, and you’re—” I hesitate, fearful of repeating my blunder of comparing her pussy to a knife sheath. “Here’s how I look at it. There’s gods up here, and then the Fae in the middle, and then humans below, right?”

Her eyes are hooded, suspicious about where I’m going with this. “And?”

“You’re up here, right under the gods and above the Fae.”

She presses her lips together tightly, like she’s trying not to smile. Then she says, “I’m not sure I understand your rubric.”

“These are things I fear, things that are beautiful and dangerous and wonderful.”

“And you’re saying I’m more beautiful and dangerous than the Fae?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re an absolute idiot.” But her tone is warm, indulgent. It feels like she hugged me instead of calling me a fool. I can’t help grinning at her.

“Stop it.” She pushes against my injured shoulder, and when I vent a little exclamation of pain, she gives me a tiny smirk.

Despite the stiffness of my muscles and the tug of bandages against blood-dried wounds, I’m gleefully ecstatic and thrumming with energy. All I want is to get this job done, get back to the mortal realm, and find out what’s next for me and Devilry.

I have no idea if she’ll even agree to see me again once this is over. If she doesn’t want to, I’m afraid I might resort to stalking her. I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away.

My mother once told me that she was hooked on hessen from the moment she tried her first pipe.

Nothing else compared to the feeling she got, and from that moment on, her entire life was centered on achieving that feeling again, as often and as intensely as possible.

Nothing else gave her joy. Everything she did was a path toward her next pipe.

Until last night, I never truly understood her addiction.

Fucking Devilry was my first pipe of hessen.

My fascination started back when I met her that night in the Puzzled Coin, and sleeping with her only intensified the craving instead of dispelling it.

What I felt when she begged me to come inside her, the euphoria I experienced in that moment and afterward—it was astonishing.

Miraculous. Beyond anything I ever thought was possible.

If I never get to have that with her again, I fear I will become a dark and desperate addict, forever in search of something that only she can give me.

She hands me a bowl of food—leftovers she has scavenged from the pantry—and a cup of water. As I take them from her, she peers at me, like she’s reading my emotions.

“We’ll be all right,” she says. “We’ll get this done and go back to our lives.”

I want to say, That’s what I’m afraid of. But I only nod.

After finishing the food and water, we work together to clear away the makeshift barricade we constructed. I volunteer to venture out first, and Devilry doesn’t protest. I’m fairly sure she likes me now, but perhaps she still doesn’t trust me enough to let me watch her back.

When we emerge from the kitchen, the hallway is dead quiet and shadowed, with only a single Fae light-orb bobbing near the ceiling.

Cautiously, I sidle around the broken staircase, heading toward the giant hole in the floor. Everything between it and the front door is rubble, with great slabs of the ceiling slanting down amid cracked beams and crumbled plaster.

The sentient ooze is nowhere in sight. Nor do I see or hear any razor-winged bats.

When I glance back, Devilry is in a half-crouch, prowling along like a wary black cat. She shoots me a rebuking glare and motions for me to watch my front.

I peer down into the gloom below. Light glows from the subterranean hallways, faint but reassuring. At least we won’t be in total darkness.

After seating myself on the broken edge of the floorboards, I flip around, lower my body into the opening, and drop down into the subterranean level.

My boots slam onto stone pavers. I whip my dagger out, holding it ready while I scan my surroundings.

I’m in a shadowed stone hallway, illuminated at distant intervals by more of those floating orbs of light. Near my feet lies the giant hand cannon Devilry used to blow up half of the first floor. I don’t know enough about its mechanics and appearance to tell if it’s broken. Looks intact to me.

There’s nothing else to be seen in either direction except a few closed doors. The air is cool, stirring as if there’s a current or a breeze somewhere.

Devilry lands lightly beside me, her boots barely making a sound. She’s better at stealth than I am, but I’m not about to tell her that.

The moment she spots the cannon, she makes a little coo of excitement, like she’s seeing an old friend.

When she picks it up, I clear my throat loudly, and she shoots me a rebellious look. “What?”

“I have qualms about you using that thing again,” I say.

“Qualms?”

“Yes. Some fairly serious qualms.”

“I thought you liked explosions.”

“I do, but if that thing knocks out the wrong walls, it could bring the entire fortress down on top of us. If we’re not squished like bugs, we’ll be buried in a shit-ton of rubble.”

“But this thing could destroy that beast,” she counters. “We should bring it along just in case.”

“Then I’ll carry it.” I reach for the weapon, and she fucking hisses at me. I back off, palms out in a deprecating gesture. “Just trying to help. You can barely lift it.”

She hoists the cannon defiantly. “Men always think they deserve the biggest weapons.”

“I don’t like to carry huge weapons. They slow me down. I was trying to do you a favor.”

“You’re trying to control when and where it gets fired. You think I’m careless, but I’m not. Everything I do is calculated, Ravager. It’s all part of a plan.”

She starts down the hallway, trying to walk normally despite the bulk of the weapon.

“What about fucking me?” I ask. “Was that calculated? Part of a plan?”

“Yes. I needed relief from the stress of the day. And I’ll admit, I was curious how sex would be, with you. I needed it done, so my head could be clearer.”

She pauses, peering down a side passage, and I come up behind her, bending slightly to murmur in her ear. “And is your head clear, sweetheart?”

“Clear as crystal.” But there’s the faintest little catch in her breath.

“And now that we’ve fucked—”

“We don’t have to discuss it again.” She moves farther along the corridor.

“Bold of you to say that, walking around this place with my cum inside you. You told me it wouldn’t be the only time we fucked. Did you mean that, or were you lying?”

“Are you saying I owe you more sex?” Her tone is deadly calm. “As if you have some sort of claim on me now?”

“A claim on you?” I savor the words. “A claim on the pussy of the exquisite and talented Devilry. A debt of sex owed to me, Ravager, to be collected when and where I choose. I won’t lie, sweetheart, I like the sound of that.”

It’s a joke. A stupid one, because there’s a thread of truth in it that she senses immediately, and it makes her whole being revolt.

She whirls so fast that I instinctively raise my hands. She’s aiming the cannon at me, her teeth biting at the swollen part of her lower lip.

I look into her stormy gray eyes. “Are you going to kill me, love?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

She’s seriously thinking about it, having a moment similar to what I went through yesterday, when I slid my knife between her ribs.

Among people like us, there’s a visceral terror of trusting someone too far, of becoming pathetically vulnerable.

Sometimes it’s easier to destroy the thing we want rather than risking the pain of its loss.

“Kill me, and you’ll have to face it all alone,” I say calmly.

“I’ve been alone before.”

“So have I. It’s not something I would choose.”

She stares at me, teeth clenched, the fire of indecision raging in her gaze.