Page 5 of Another Damned Storm (Another Damned #3)

NEVER

A horrible, sick feeling had been churning inside me since the moment I’d nearly plummeted into the lake of lava. The toe-curling fear that robbed me of my common sense left a sour taste in my mouth, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Not even close.

“Is this because of me?” I asked. The chaos on the islands, the crazy ass storms, Rue’s mysterious disappearance. It all added up to one thing. “Is this what Nerebis warned us about?”

Hook’s protectiveness flooded into me, pulsing through our connection. The longer we were connected, the easier it was to pick up the nuance to his emotions. The ones he let slip through, anyway.

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew he had way better control over what he let through that strange magical link than I did.

Now, sensing his need to cross the room and pull me into his arms, I held up a hand to hold him at bay. His scent and his irresistible heat had a way of clouding my thoughts.

“We don’t know that for sure,” he offered, keeping his distance .

It was a weak argument, so I shot him a skeptical look. “Do you have a better explanation?”

Leo and Hook exchanged glances but said nothing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I was the problem, and if things were this bad here…

Fuck me sideways.

“How bad are things in the human world? What if it’s worse there? Jesus.” I paced across the small space. “What if this,” I waved an arm, encompassing the recent chaos, “is all just bleeding through from my world?”

Hook had told me what Nerebis said to him when they had their little tete-a-tete months earlier.

My existence didn’t just upset the natural order of things, it was a threat to my world.

But that had seemed far-fetched at the time.

I was one person, and not even an important one.

I was just a big sister who’d done everything in her power to save her brother.

And I would do it again, dammit.

“I thought I had more time,” I said quietly. From the way Hook explained things, it should have been decades before my world was in any real danger.

Apparently, that wasn’t the case.

My moral compass was telling me the right thing to do was to throw myself on the mercy of the universe and find a way back to the Alius. My heart, on the other hand, was torn between staying in the Nassa with Hook and finding a way back to my world. Not that the last one was even an option.

We’d searched and researched for a way to get me home.

Not permanently. The real plan was to return to my world, find my brother, and bring him back to the Nassa.

With Petra neutralized at the bottom of the eddy, I wouldn’t have to worry about her getting her claws in him again.

And over time, the magic of the realm would seep into his bones.

Then I wouldn’t have to worry about his innocent soul being shuffled off to the Alius when his mortal body expired.

He would be safe.

But no one knew how to get me out of the Nassa. I’d tried picturing my world and flashing home. Hundreds of times. Nothing ever happened. There was no flicker of hope. No gentle give in the invisible force trapping me here. I was stuck, just like Hook.

If I couldn’t find my way home, that only left me one option.

“I have to turn myself over to the fates.” I didn’t know if that would fix whatever damage had already been done, but I assumed it would at least stop things from getting worse.

And who knew, maybe I could talk them into letting me sneak a peek at my brother on the way. You know, to make sure he was okay.

A girl could hope.

“No.” The single syllable came at me in chorus—with Leo’s alarmed voice echoing the emotional shockwave that crashed through the link.

Holy shit. No wonder my broody pirate kept his emotions under wraps. That one blast was like getting hit by a bus.

Leo shot to his feet, clearly ready to argue, but Hook just stood there, with his eyes burning, his jaw set, and his arms crossed over his chest like his pose alone would be enough to end the conversation.

“It’s not like I want to,” I admitted. “But I don’t see another way. We’ve already tried everything at least twice.”

The only real upside to my plan, besides not being single-handedly responsible for fucking up the future of humanity, was that I would see Matty again. Eventually.

In hell.

Now that’s a cheery thought .

“I can go to Luther,” Leo offered. “He might...” His words faded with the slow shake of Hook’s head.

“I tried that when the shadow followed Never back. Unfortunately, her inability to leave this realm is tied directly to my magic and my curse. It would require the help of someone powerful enough to pull her from this realm from the outside.” He said it all with his gaze on me.

“I am sorry for that, but not sorry enough to let you slip away again.”

“That’s why I need to summon Nerebis,” I countered.

The argument that ensued was brutal, and it felt like it went on for hours. At some point, Leo stepped out, leaving Hook and I to yell at each other.

I stormed out of the war room and to our quarters, throwing my boots in the corner as I went. Hook followed, slamming the door behind us with enough force to make the wall tremble.

“We are not done discussing this, Never,” he said, his too proper voice a mask for the upheaval he was trying to keep bottled up inside.

I wheeled on him. “Yeah, we are.”

“I shared my power with you. Do you not understand what that means?”

Oh, I knew. Nerebis was kind enough to spell it out for me. Hook and I were bound to each other. If I somehow managed to die, so would he. Which was terrifying when I first heard it, until Hook informed me I was immortal. Just like him.

Or so we both assumed.

I’d tested the theory by slicing my hand open, and sure enough, the wound had healed itself as I watched. It was cool as shit, not gonna lie, but it in no way guaranteed I would live through anything. It just meant I had better odds.

“Are you afraid you’ll die if I cross into the Alius?” I asked, loosing more venom with the question than I meant to.

He recoiled. “This has nothing to do with my survival. ”

I knew that. I could feel it. But the longer this argument went on, the more he let slip through the link, and the fucker was breaking my heart.

“What happens if I stay? Everything destabilizes, the worlds fall apart, and eventually you and I won’t be together, anyway.

” I reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes.

“We would be putting the universe at risk just to be together.” Saying it out loud made me realize how badly I wanted that.

Not the universe stuff, obviously, but Hook.

I’d spent a good chunk of my adult life looking out for my brother. I’d taken time to myself and dated here and there, but I never let myself get serious with anyone I dated because Matty was my priority. It was all about keeping him safe and fed with a roof over his head.

Hook was different. I’d fallen for him, head over goddamned heels. He held my heart in the palm of his broody hands, and what I wanted more than anything was to share the rest of my life with him, however long that might be.

A deep, inhuman rumble filled the space between us, and when I opened my eyes, the amber rings around his irises flared to life. A need so primal it made my breath catch poured into me, lighting me on fire from the inside out.

Oh, shit. I’d gone down that longing little rabbit hole when our connection was wide open on my end.

He surged forward, pulling me into a crushing kiss that sent my heart galloping through my chest. His hands were rough as they tore at my clothes, but his desperation for me spiraled around my need for him, driving it to heights I’d never felt before.

I’d heard people say they would die if they couldn’t have something, and now I finally understood what they were talking about.

I tore his shirt open. He yanked my jeans down.

One second we were in the middle of the room, and the next he had me pinned against the wall with my legs wrapped around his waist.

A mewl slipped out of me when he rocked his hips, dragging his hard cock along my center. I was already aching for him.

For once, he didn’t tease. Without a word, he settled his length at my entrance, then slammed home with a possessive growl.

A storm of goosebumps raced along my skin from the abrupt combination of pleasure and pain.

And when his teeth sank into my shoulder as he held me pinned—impaled—against the deeply stained wooden boards at my back, I couldn’t even scream.

All I could do was curl into the sensation and pray to the stars that I would find my breath again at some point.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I could die just like this, with this delicious man, pirate, god—whatever the hell he was—driving into me again and again, slow enough that I felt every inch of him stretching me, and hard enough that his thrusts and his fingers digging into my skin would have left bruises on my delicate human flesh.

With the battered emotions and relentless heat swirling between us, I could have ridden that brutal wave all the way to the end.

It wouldn’t have taken long. Hook knew exactly how to thrust and roll his hips to hit every sensitive spot inside me.

And I loved it when he played rough, because I got to see a side of him that he usually kept caged up. Wild and full of passion.

But I needed to be in control this time.

Gripping him tightly with my legs and arms, I flashed us to the bed and put all my strength into rolling him onto his back.

He let me do it. I wouldn’t fool myself into thinking I was stronger than him. He’d had countless lifetimes to train and hone his body and magic, while I was still stumbling around, trying to figure out how to access even a fraction of the strange new power he’d given me .

Straddling him, with his cock still buried deep inside me, I grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the bed. Where I expected a cocky little smirk, I was met with an intensity that made me feel like a goddess.

I could feel so much coming from him—passion, need, worry, hope—but what really got to me was that singular focus on me. Like I was all that mattered to him in all the worlds.

Rather than wither under the weight of his stare, I held it, keeping my eyes locked on his as I rolled my hips, grinding down on him in a way that made my inner walls clench.

The friction, the emotion, the connection—together they created a moment in time that would be seared into my memory no matter how long I lived.

I moved slowly, reveling in all of it, letting the pleasure build. The more it did, the more his eyes glowed, and the more emotion poured through our connection until I was drowning in him in the best possible way.

“Oh,” I gasped. The pressure and pleasure were almost too much. “Oh, fuck.”

Sweat rolled down my back. My legs trembled. And he watched me through all of it, pressing his hips up into me as I ground down on him, feeling him in every inch of my being.

Another wicked wave of pleasure washed over me, and my eyelids fluttered shut.

“Never,” Hook growled, the sound rumbling through me like a freight train.

He wrenched his hands free, anchoring them to my hips as I pried my eyes open to find him still staring up at me. His eyes carried so much raw emotion that I couldn’t hold on any longer. The dam broke, and I broke with it, shaking and writhing, wringing every last drop of ecstasy out of the moment.

He was right there with me, gripping my hips tight as he came hard inside me with a feral groan .

I collapsed on top of him a few seconds later, with my heart pounding and his magnificent cock still twitching inside me. His arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against him. His own heartbeat was like a steady drum of thunder in his chest, and I sank into the comfort of it.

But as I drifted off, caught up in the soft wave of bone-deep satisfaction, I didn’t miss the words he whispered against my skin.

“I love you, stubborn woman.”