Page 111

SEVENTEEN

Sorsha

Ruse had only gotten in a few—incredibly delicious—kisses when Bow’s voice carried through the bedroom door. “Thorn! Good to see you again too.”

The incubus let out a stifled groan, teasing his lips from my jaw down my neck before raising his head. “Interrupted again. I look forward to the day when sphinx and Company alike have been tossed out with the trash so I can enjoy you at my leisure, but for now I think we’d better find out what the lunk has come back with.”

Every part of me except the heat pooled between my thighs agreed. I stole one more kiss for good measure, and then paused. “You know, if you ever need to feed, all you have to do is?—”

Ruse held up his hand to stop me. His mouth flattened at an odd angle for a second before he recovered his usual smirk. “I have no problem speaking up. Trust me, you’ve kept me quite satisfied, my lovely thief.”

But would I always? A strange sensation ran through my chest, twinges of concern and jealousy clashing. I swallowed down the latter. Ruse was what he was, and I accepted that. I wouldn’t ask this man to starve just to indulge my human notions of fidelity. And really, who was I to fuss about fidelity in the first place, when I’d been canoodling with three other men right here in this RV?

“If I ever don’t—I mean, if you need more than one woman’s energies to keep you sated—I understand. Cubi kind have got to cubi and all that.”

Maybe I hadn’t shoved that jealousy down quite far enough. Despite my attempt at nonchalance, Ruse’s warm eyes softened as he took me in. He trailed his fingers down my cheek and drew me into a kiss so deep it took my breath away.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he murmured against my lips afterward. “But you don’t ever have to worry about that.”

Because I really was enough or because he’d be discreet enough that I’d never know? I guessed it didn’t make much difference either way.

“Good,” I said, and twined my fingers with his on our way out into the Everymobile’s main room.

I stepped out expecting to see both of our stalwart wingéd looming in the hallway, but it was only Thorn’s considerable bulk filling the space, no sign of Flint. While Thorn’s expression was often grim enough to send lesser creatures fleeing in terror, now his chiseled features held shades of pain and shame as well. My stomach twisted at the sight.

“—decided to stay with them and continue the search,” he was just saying to Omen. “But my first responsibility is to you—I wouldn’t be mortal-side at all if not for your mission.”

A crackle of flame rippled through me. I managed to hold it in as I marched over, but I couldn’t keep the searing sting out of my tone. “Those asshole wingéd tried to make you think you owed them more?”

Thorn’s head drooped like I’d only seen once before—after we’d first gotten Omen out of the Company prison, when the shifter had laid into him for not orchestrating that jailbreak sooner. Oh, my dearest warrior. Tearing heads off was more his style than mine, but right then I wouldn’t have minded dropkicking a few wingéd skulls into the stratosphere. I loved his loyalty and his sense of honor, but sometimes they didn’t serve him well.

“The remains of one of my closest comrades were stolen by a pack of griffins,” he said. “I attempted to locate it on the request of my brethren. I came upon several griffins and did battle, but I could not discover the object I was looking for in their midst. It remains adrift.”

No doubt he had fresh scars to add to those that mottled his face and body from that battling. My hands clenched. “They should be grateful you did even that much for them. How is it your fault that they didn’t take good enough care of this dude’s ashes or whatever? Why don’t they go fight a horde of griffins if it means so much to them?”

Even more strain crept into Thorn’s voice. “As I related before, the wars of long ago dealt permanent damage to their forms.”

Omen let out a dismissive growl. “That doesn’t give them carte blanche to appropriate the one wingéd I actually like. I hope you told them to shove it.”

The tensing of Thorn’s stance told me he hadn’t stated his refusal in terms quite that blatant. “I informed them that my duty required I return to you and discuss the situation.”

And then possibly leave to go back to them? The emotion that shot through me at that thought wasn’t just anger but a jab of cold-edged refusal. I didn’t want to go into the battles we faced ahead without our warrior by my side.

“If those pompous asses think they have any claim—” the shifter started, clearly building up to a full-on rant complete with houndish snarls, but his tone had already made Thorn turn even more rigid. Lambasting Thorn’s people wasn’t the way to reassure him—it’d only make him feel he was betraying them even more if he stayed.

I strode right up to the wingéd, nudging Omen to the side with my elbow to cut off his spiel before he could get any more of it out. “Take a walk with me?” I said to Thorn. “I think you’ve had enough people telling you what to do today. I’d like to listen to what you’re thinking.”

Omen muttered something disparaging under his breath but didn’t outright protest. Thorn hesitated and then offered me a smile that was small and tight but at least there . “Perhaps that would help me sort out my thoughts, m’lady. I would be glad of having your ear.”

I followed him out of the Everymobile. We meandered into a stretch of parkland, patchy with weeds and holding a playground no one could actually use thanks to the broken ladder on the slide, the swing tossed over its support beam, and a teeter totter that had toppled right over. Tonight was cooler than past nights, the stars and moon clouded over. I walked close to Thorn to soak up the warmth his brawny frame exuded.

“It may be that I was right in questioning our wars of the past,” the warrior said after a stretch of silence. “But that doesn’t absolve me of all responsibility for my actions. I did leave at a time when others ended up falling in battle or meeting similarly harsh fates… My doubts meant leaving them to suffer.”

“They might have met the exact same fates even if you’d been there,” I pointed out. “You can’t know how much of a difference you would have made. They were all just as strong and fierce as you can be, right? Maybe it’d have happened the exact same except you wouldn’t be here to feel guilty about it either.”

“That is possible. I won’t deny it.” The breeze hissed tauntingly through the leaves of a nearby tree, and he frowned at it. “I cannot say how much of a difference I’m making to Omen’s cause either, though, can I? Why should he deserve my aid more than my brethren of old?”

“It’s not just for him, is it? What good does it do chasing after the remains of someone who’s already dead ? Tackling Tempest could mean saving millions more lives than were lost way back when.”

“But if I take the time to make up for past failures now, perhaps I can bring new allies to that cause as well.”

“Okay, when you put it that way, I can see it’s not an easy dilemma.” I stopped in a clearing between the scattered trees and glanced up at Thorn. In the faint light that traveled this far from distant street lamps, his white-blond hair looked closer to silver, his tan skin duskier, his dark eyes utterly black. A furrow had creased his forehead. An ache squeezed my heart, watching him struggle.

He gazed down at me. “I have other reasons for wishing to stay, of course. Reasons that are much more selfish.”

When he took on that low, impassioned tone, my pulse fluttered with giddiness despite my concern for him. “And I have plenty of selfishness too. But I wouldn’t want you to stay because I put the screws to you and then have you feeling guilty about it.”

“So you aren’t going to make an argument on your own behalf?”

I inhaled sharply. “I want you with us. I want you with me . But I’ll muddle through this either way. What I’d really like is for you to figure out what you think is the right course of action for you . Not what will make anyone else happy. What you’ll be able to look back on that will let you know right in here that you made the best decision you could.” I gave him a gentle poke to the middle of his chest.

Thorn caught my hand and curled his fingers around it. His touch and the intentness of his gaze sent heat coursing over my skin. “I suppose I haven’t considered that factor often in the past. What I think is best. What orders I would give myself, if it were up to me.”

“It is up to you, you know. You’re always the boss of yourself in the end, as much as I’m sure Omen—or those other wingéd—would like you to think otherwise.”

“But how does one untangle one’s sense of responsibility to others from one’s own judgment?”

“Now you’re getting into the hard questions,” I teased, and lifted my other hand to caress his square jaw. “I can think of a few ways you seem to be different from the average wingéd. Maybe getting in touch with the more selfish side of yourself will help you figure things out?”

Thorn hummed as if in agreement and leaned in to kiss me. The passion of his lips claiming mine reverberated through my body. I gripped the collar of his tunic, pushing myself up on my toes to meet him with all the enthusiasm I could offer in return.

He drew back just an inch, his breath washing over me with his musky scent. “If you asked me to stay for you, I would, you know. You have proven yourself the most loyal comrade I could ask for, and so much more than that as well… I don’t think I could bring myself to deny you, no matter what else was at stake.”

I swallowed hard, the vehemence in his words ringing through me and waking up an answering devotion. “And if you told me you had to leave to believe you’ve fulfilled your purpose, I wouldn’t ask you, as much as I might want to. I’d rather have you at peace somewhere else than torn up by guilt right next to me. Obviously if I can have both the peace and the proximity…”

He chuckled and kissed me again. Then he murmured, “I want to show you something, m’lady.”

Before I could ask what, his body shifted against mine. His chest expanded, his body enlarging to even greater heights of brawn. A ruddy glow like embers still smoldering in a fireplace lit in his eyes. His great black wings unfurled from his back, their feathers warbling in the breeze.

He captured my mouth again with a smoky edge beneath his musky flavor, and at the same time he caught me in his arms, one solid mass of corded muscle across my shoulder blades and the other around my ass, lifting me against him. With a majestic flap of his wings, his feet left the ground too.

Between the kiss and the sensation of soaring upward, dizziness washed through me, but I was more than happy to embrace it. As the wind licked sharper over us, I kissed Thorn hard through the stutter of my heartbeat.

He hefted me higher against him, and my legs came up instinctively to wrap around his waist. A firm bulge there was no mistaking came to rest against my sex. I dragged in a breath shaky with desire, gripped the thick strands of his hair, and let my tongue slip from my mouth to tangle with his.

Our bodies rocked together with each sweep of his wings, creating a torturous friction that brought a gasp to my lips. Looping my arms around Thorn’s neck, I dared to glance down. The view knocked all the air from my lungs.

Holy mother of meteors, we were really flying. The city sprawled below me in a vast spread of twinkling lights, some of them coursing along roadways and others blinking off even as I watched as people turned in for the night.

Who needed stars when you could have a vision like this below you?

My life had never been more literally in Thorn’s hands. If I’d slipped from his grasp, no spurt of fiery power could have stopped me from making an excellent impression of a pancake, splat on the ground below. But even as my pulse beat faster while I took in the scene we were soaring over, not a hint of that adrenaline was panic. I had a hell of a lot more faith in the warrior’s strength than in my hocus pocus.

“It’s spectacular.” I brought my gaze back to my lover, to the smoldering wingéd visage that was even more awe-inspiring to me than the sights beneath us, and my throat constricted.

I didn’t want him to leave us, for however long he might feel he needed to—now or ever. This brutal, valiant monster was like no one I’d ever met or would again. And despite the turmoil he’d been going through, he’d offered up this moment just for me.

I touched his face, tracing my thumb over his lips before meeting his eyes again. I wasn’t trying to sway his choice, but he deserved to know exactly what he was choosing between, didn’t he?

“I love you,” I said.

The words came out so quietly I was afraid they’d be lost in the wind. But the flare of the glow in Thorn’s eyes left no doubt that he’d heard them. Even with the unearthly reverb that came into his voice, his response came out ragged with emotion. “And I you, Sorsha.”

He kissed me so hard my head spun—or maybe it was that we really were spinning with another flap of his wings, spiraling even higher into the sky. A waft of chilly air licked across my neck, but it only created a perfect contrast with the heat coursing between us.

Thorn’s lips traveled from my mouth to my jaw and down the side of my neck, sparking pleasure everywhere they touched. His resonant voice sent giddy tremors over my skin. “You would not hate me instead if I left?”

I shook my head against him, soaking in everything I could of the being that held me. “The fact that you wouldn’t let love stop you from fulfilling your responsibilities is part of what makes you who you are. It’s an honor to mean so much to you that I’d factor in at all.”

He made a rumbling sound low in his throat and managed to maneuver his hand to stroke over my breast. Bliss quivered through my chest with the swivel of his palm against my nipple. “How could my absence not wound you? It’s hard enough for me to think of it.”

“It would hurt, but that’s okay.” I thought of that moment in Omen’s cave when I’d jumped between him and Thorn and thrown my life on the line to save them both. “Sometimes the right thing hurts. It’s just that the wrong thing would hurt more. And whatever you do, I know it’s a measure of what you need to be the man you believe you should be, not how much you care about me. You’ve proven all you need to about that already.”

I pressed a kiss to the edge of his jaw with a little smile and sang, “Because I’ve had the climb of my life, no, I’d never melt this way and more.”

Thorn let out a huff that sounded more amused than anything. “You and your ridiculous songs,” he rumbled, and then he was kissing me again, pulling me flush against his muscle-packed body at the same time. His thickly corded erection rubbed against me through the layers of our clothes, and it was a miracle I didn’t spontaneously combust from that.

If I ever went down in flames, that’d be the way to do it.

A needy whimper slipped from my lips, and my warrior knew how to answer it. Without hesitation, he wrenched at my jeans with a rasp of tearing fabric. I fumbled between us to undo the lacing on his trousers. Fuck the cool night air against my suddenly bare ass or any concern about where we’d find a new pair of pants to prevent a very revealing walk of shame back onto the RV—I wanted my lover inside me, filling me with all the power his body could offer.

Thorn whirled us in the air again and settled me over him with incredible steadiness that clashed with the storm of hunger in his eyes. As I sank onto him, we groaned together.

His cock was even more massive in his shadowkind form, but the burn of it stretching me felt so fucking good, like he was both splitting me in two and the only force in the universe holding me together. Every particle in me quivered with desire for more.

Our mouths crashed together, no room for tenderness left in our hunger for each other. I swayed against the warrior, slowly as my body adjusted to his girth and then faster as I could handle more.

Each burst of friction sent a rush of pleasure roaring through my body, along with noises wilder than I’d known I had in me. Thorn gripped my ass and the back of my head, moving with me, his strength radiating through every facet of our joining.

He plunged deeper still, and a moan spilled from my mouth into his. His wings sent us careening higher. I’d never felt anything like this, racing toward my peak inside while my body hurtled upward in unison.

The tingling of ecstasy washed through me from my core out to the tips of my fingers and toes, swelling sharper and harder. With one final thrust, it exploded inside me with such force that all I could do was cling to Thorn and shudder.

Thorn came too, with a ringing bellow that wrapped around me in its passion. His arms squeezed tighter, as if he never meant to let me go. I did melt into him then, flying high and yet perfectly grounded by this monstrous man who was still mine for at least one more moment.