Page 114

TWENTY

Sorsha

I braced my legs to keep my balance on the swaying dock and eyed the seafaring vessel Omen had pointed to. “ This is the ship you got us?”

The boat was big enough—that wasn’t the problem. But more of the hull’s white paint had been scratched or worn off than was left on, which made me wonder just how intact the wood was beneath that. Aged beams jutted every which way around the small cabin, making the ship look like a mutated narwhal.

“She’s an old fishing boat,” Omen said, aiming a pleased glance at his find. “Outfitted with a modern motor, but still with all the other trappings. I thought we should make use of the time we’ll be at sea to get in some more training, and props are always useful for that. Unless you’ve got something better to do?”

I dragged damp, salty air into my lungs. I guessed if there was anywhere I could safely practice my fiery skills, out in the middle of an immense body of water would make the top of the list. “I suppose you’ve already named her?”

His lips curved upward, and he waved down the length of the boat. “I didn’t need to.”

Curling lines of blue swept through the patchy white paint, the letters spelling out Penelope . I had to admit it was an Omen-esque name if I’d ever heard one. I cocked my head at him. “Now I see the real reason you bought her.”

He waved off my remark and motioned me on board in one smooth movement. “Let’s get going, Disaster, while you’ve still left the harbor in one piece.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and darted across the plank that led onto the ship. Not wanting to draw attention in case Tempest’s lackeys or some other member of the Company asked around, the other three shadowkind in our crew had leapt on board out of sight in the shadows.

We were back to our original quartet, leaving the equines and Antic back in Athens with the Everymobile. If we hadn’t returned from Crete within three days, they were meant to launch a rescue mission. I’d expected Antic to complain about being left out, but she’d danced around with so much joy at the thought of being a potential rescuer that she might even have been hoping we were heading into a trap.

It was going to be a long voyage, but Omen had vetoed any talk of planes for this final part of the journey. “Too many records, too tight a space.” As if we had a whole lot of places to flee to out in the middle of the sea. I definitely couldn’t have gotten in any training on a flight, though, and maybe the rhythm and hiss of the waves would settle my nerves more before the confrontation ahead.

Omen cast off, and I gamely raised my hand in greeting to the other boaters we passed to show we were perfectly normal people off on a pleasure cruise, if on a somewhat unusual ship for that job.

When the harbor had dwindled into blobs in the distance, Ruse, Snap, and Thorn materialized on the deck. Snap leaned over the metal railing that was mounted along most of the starboard side and drank in the sea scents with a blissful expression. Thorn immediately clambered up to the top of the tallest post with its bedraggled sail still wrapped around it, where he’d get the widest view for surveillance.

Ruse flopped into one of the deck chairs, his face slightly greenish and his hand resting on his stomach. “Never been a huge fan of water travel,” he admitted.

I sat down next to him, tipping back my head to soak up the Mediterranean sun. “You could stick to the shadows. Plenty of them around.”

“That actually makes it worse. Which is a pretty mean feat considering I barely have a stomach in that state.”

“I suppose that means this picnic lunch is all for me, then.”

As I rifled through the large bag of edible supplies we’d brought for a bottle of lemonade, Snap hustled over with a sound of mock consternation. “ I’ll take Ruse’s portion.”

The incubus felt well enough to laugh. “That’s no surprise.”

The devourer gave me the sly look he was starting to perfect, turned adorable by his beaming grin. “You’d make yourself sick too if you tried to eat all of it, Peach. I’m simply keeping your best interests in mind.”

“Of course you are,” I said with a playful swat. “But it’s hardly lunchtime yet. We just had breakfast.”

The next sound Snap made wasn’t so joking in its consternation, but he settled for only plucking a plum out of the bag. He perched on the railing, long legs dangling over the water, and hummed happily as he bit into the fruit. “ I like the sea.”

“You’re welcome to it,” Ruse muttered, but after a stretch of calm waters and the soothing rumble of the motor, he’d come back more to his usual color.

For the first few hours, Omen focused on sailing, which apparently he had some experience with, and left the rest of us to lounge—or, in Thorn’s case, to broodingly eye the horizon. I knew that reprieve wouldn’t last. Not long after we’d dug into our picnic lunch, the hellhound shifter emerged from the cabin, considered the vast sprawl of endless blue all around us, and snapped his fingers at me.

“All right, Disaster. Let’s see what we can do to mitigate that catastrophic nature of yours.”

I licked the last few flecks of icing sugar from my custard bougatsa dessert off my fingers. “I’m not the canine here, dog-breath. How about a ‘please’?”

He glowered at me and dipped into a little bow. “Would Her Highness kindly allow me to continue teaching her how she might avoid incinerating herself?”

“That’s more like it.” I got up, stretching my arms and then cracking my knuckles—and trying not to notice that three other gazes had focused on me with varying levels of concern.

Snap sprang from the arm of the deck chair where he’d been cozying up to me. “If there’s any way I can help?—”

“I’ve got this,” Omen said dryly. “She isn’t going to leave your sight, so you can ensure I leave her in one piece.”

Was the devourer worried about what Omen might do to me or what I might do to myself? At this point, it was hard to say which of us was a larger threat to my well-being. Ruse might have even straightened up a tad as if preparing for some kind of intervention, and Thorn was peering at me instead of the horizon now.

I folded my arms over my chest. Okay, so I’d let loose a few more flames than usual in the last couple of days, but we did have a psychopathic, immensely powerful shadowkind who might be launching a double-genocide any moment now, so who could blame me for being a smidge wound up?

How immense a genocide would we be facing if I didn’t get those powers completely under control?

I shoved that question aside and nodded to Omen. “Got some more bits of paper for me to charbroil?”

“I thought we’d try something different for a change. We’re just going to spar. And by ‘just’, I mean fists and feet only. No supernatural powers. You let your fire out, you automatically lose, no matter how pissed off I made you. Oh, and to add a little challenge…” He leapt up onto one of the railings with a nimbleness I wouldn’t have expected from his well-built frame. “Touch the deck with both feet, and you also lose. Should we make it the most wins out of five, or do you need more chances than that to get warmed up?”

As I climbed onto a wooden beam that crossed the stern, I raised my eyebrows at him. “You’re assuming I’ll even need five. I’m the one who spent most of the past few years scrambling across rooftops and through windows.”

Omen smiled at me with a gleam of his teeth. “I suppose we’ll see.”

He didn’t give me any more warning than that. The next thing I knew, he’d launched his muscular frame right at me.

I dashed down the pole protruding from the stern, swayed, and hurled myself upward to grab one of the salt-gritted ropes so I could swing over the hellhound’s head. Ruse let out a whoop of appreciation, but all I’d done was flee, not land any blows. I spun around, ducked the fist speeding toward me, and managed to jab my heel into Omen’s calf before he dodged.

I stalked after him along the pole, both of us over the open water now. “What’s the rule about wet dogs? Does that count as a loss too?”

“I guess it’d better,” Omen said, and threw himself at me.

I nearly did perform a spectacular belly flop then. It was only by a hair’s breadth that my fingers snagged on a ridge on the upper hull, giving me just enough leverage to toss my leg back over the railing.

As I scrambled back up, the hellhound was already barreling toward me. I dashed along the railing and hefted myself onto a rope near the bow.

My foot skimmed Omen’s face, just shy of a strike—and he caught my ankle. With a yank, he sent me tumbling onto the deck. I hit the worn wooden boards ass-first.

Sprawling on my back, I waggled my legs in the air. “Technically my feet didn’t touch it.”

Omen snorted. “And here I thought the spirit of the rules was clear. But if you’re determined to be a cheater as well as a thief…”

The words should have rolled right off me. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been called worse—hell, he’d called me worse several times over. But something about that accusation struck a spark inside me, and I had to clench my hands to will back the flare of heat before it burst from my skin.

All the more reason to play along with this training. That inner fire had damn well better learn to stay tamped down until I called on it with a purpose.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll just have to whoop your ass the other four times.”

Omen’s icy eyes glinted. “Come and try me.”

I had to say I didn’t think the rules were exactly fair. Omen might not have been bringing out his own hellish fire, but his speed and dexterity were several cuts above mortal standards. Not that I was going to complain that I couldn’t keep up with him to his face. A gal’s got to have some self-respect.

I’d just have to be more tricksy.

We exchanged more feints and parries around the edge of the boat until I saw my opportunity. I dropped low, hooked my arm around the railing, and heaved both of my feet into the side of Omen’s legs.

He groped for balance, but not fast enough. This time the smack of flesh meeting wood wasn’t my own. I pushed myself up straight, grinning down at him, as he dusted himself off.

“We’re just getting started,” he promised. “You need to be able to hold yourself in check and bend those flames to your will when you’re face to face with Tempest, and she isn’t going to be half this easy on you.”

“Bring it on,” I shot back, but something—maybe the mention of Tempest—sent another jolt of heat through me. This time it coursed up through my ribs and into my shirt before I quite got a grip on it. With a hitch of my pulse, I slapped my arms against my sides to smother it.

Omen didn’t comment, but a flicker of tension passed through his face, his mouth tightening into a brief frown. Before I could do more than take a breath, he sprang at me again.

The momentary loss of control must have rattled me. Omen threw his swipes and punches with brutal fury, and each time his knuckles clipped my body, another spurt of anger threatened to break the surface of my composure.

Stop it! I thought at the fire searing from my gut up to my chest. He wants to rile you up. He’s not really a threat. Chill out already.

My mental commands didn’t have much effect. I banged my knee against a board while dodging a roundhouse, and a sputter of flames licked over my hand, blistering my fingers.

Omen didn’t see—my hunched torso had hidden the lapse from view. Not again. Stay the fuck inside me, I ordered the roiling energies.

Both to distract myself and to annoy my opponent, I danced backward with a little musical accompaniment. “And if you only scold and spite, we’ll be holding on forever. But we’ll only be faking a fight?—”

Omen growled and charged at me, cutting me off as I had to fling myself at the ropes to escape. My feet skimmed the deck by mere inches, but I wrenched myself up and around fast enough to clock him in the back of the head.

He teetered but caught himself and whirled around to leap after me. The singing hadn’t boosted my spirits as much as I’d hoped—or really at all. Gritting my teeth against another waft of flame, I scrambled across the netting. I kicked Omen in the shoulder, let out a hiss when he hauled on my leg so hard he almost dislocated my hip, and finally made it within jumping distance of the opposite railing.

“Come on, Disaster,” the hellhound shifter said, hurtling after me. His voice was taut, his face set in an expression that looked as uneasy as it did fierce. “Is this how you’re going to fight all those Company bastards and the sphinx who’s egging them on—by running away? Didn’t they kill your guardian? How many more are you going to let them murder?”

“I’m not running away,” I snapped, and reversed course to throw an uppercut he neatly avoided. My sneakers squeaked on the metal bar. “Isn’t it called fighting smart?”

“Doesn’t look so smart to me. We don’t have time for pussyfooting around the problem now, do we?”

“I know that.” Holy humping harpies, was he pissing me off. Even more fire crackled through me. Every muscle in my body went rigid, holding it in. “I’ll be ready.”

“Are you sure? You’ve got to tackle it head on, before we come right down to the wire. Maybe I shouldn’t expect any better from a being who’s only half?—”

Before he could even finish that sentence, the fire blazed up so sharp and sudden my vision hazed. All I could see was the glare of the flames; all I could feel was every inch of my skin sizzling and charring. The pain shocked the air from my lungs.

A solid force slammed into me. I crashed into the placid ocean head first, salty water bubbling to a boil around me for an instant before it doused the flames.

I came up sputtering—and feeling the prickle of raw patches all across my skin. My ponytail drifted over my shoulder into view, its tip burnt black. Nausea pooled in my stomach.

Omen had tossed himself into the water along with me. He shook the moisture from his hair in a gesture that was undeniably dog-like and glanced over me with a gaze that was all man, lit with his own orange heat. His mouth twisted.

“That was a low blow,” he said. “It should have been beneath me.”

It took me a second to process that he was apologizing and another to realize the apology was for the comment that had provoked my inferno, not for the unexpected swim. I glanced up at the boat, taking in the scorch marks streaking across the mottled paint, and my stomach lurched again.

I’d almost burnt up our sole mode of transportation with no land in sight, and Omen was apologizing to me .

My tongue turned leaden in my mouth. I’d failed. I’d been a fucking disaster.

But what was the point in talking about that when Omen knew it just as well as I did?

After a fumble for words, what fell from my mouth was, “Well, now we’re both beneath the boat. Maybe we should fix that?”

Thorn had flown down from the mast. As he leaned over the railing, the smoldering darkness cleared from his eyes and his wings vanished. A moment later, Ruse and Snap joined him, looking equally worried. Now we had a whole party celebrating my ineptitude. Wonderful.

Omen swam closer to me. The damp darkened his eyelashes, making his gaze even more piercing, but it wasn’t chilly right now. Treading water, he examined one of my forearms and then the other.

The red patches were already fading back into their usual pink. “Your healing abilities are heightening as quickly as your fire is,” he remarked.

“Oh, joy. More time to burn alive if there’s no convenient ocean to throw me into.”

His eyes met mine, stormy with an emotion I couldn’t read. “Maybe I’ve been going about this wrong.”

“What do you mean?” What fresh hell did he have in store for me now?

But he brushed his fingertips over my soaked hair, sparking a much more welcome heat, and it occurred to me that he might be worried about me too, however much trouble he had showing it.

“I’ve been trying to push you to the brink,” he said. “Get you used to the sensation so you can control it. But maybe this power isn’t something you can control that way. Maybe the answer isn’t suppressing your anger but making sure it’s focused on the right target.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Trying to keep it off of you, hmm?”

This once, he didn’t rise to the bait. “No,” he said, all seriousness. “I’m trying to keep it off of you . Whatever the Highest or Tempest or anyone says, there’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t deserve the shit they’re trying to put you through, so you sure as hell shouldn’t be putting yourself through even more. You’re incredible.”

“I’ll second that motion,” Ruse called from the deck.

“Fantastic,” Snap murmured in eager agreement.

A smile stretched Thorn’s lips. “I couldn’t have expressed it more eloquently.”

In the face of that deluge of admiration—prompted by the being who’d once been my biggest critic, no less—I didn’t know what to do with myself. My mouth opened and closed and opened again only to sputter sea water back out. One thing I definitely had to keep doing: treading this damn water. No matter how distractingly tender my hellhound shifter had unexpectedly become.

Omen glanced up at our audience and then back at me, his hand lingering against my jaw. “I’m not sure just saying that is quite enough. It could be that you don’t avoid destruction by ignoring everything that’s against you—you do it by remembering everyone who’s for you. So how about instead of tossing you around, we try grounding you instead?”

I blinked at him, and a snarky response fell out before I could catch it. “That might be a little difficult considering there’s literally no solid land in sight.”

One side of Omen’s mouth quirked up. “Then it’s a good thing I had a more metaphorical ‘grounding’ in mind.” He motioned overhead. “Thorn, could you toss a net down—one that’s fixed well to the ship. And then the rest of you can toss yourselves in. Our mortal deserves a group effort.”

Was that the first time he’d ever referred to me as theirs ?

I didn’t have much time to puzzle over his unexpected compliments or his intentions before the warrior had heaved a heavy length of net over the side of the boat. As Omen drew me through the cool water over to it, the others leapt in after us. No big deal for them if they left their clothes on—they could rematerialize them from the shadows dry the second they got out. Although from my glance at Snap, it appeared he’d decided to simply chuck off all garments right from the get-go.

Omen tugged my attention away from the pale gleam of Snap’s naked body with an insistent press of his fingers beneath my chin. He looped one arm through the net. “To make sure Penelope doesn’t go astray,” he said with that same crooked smile, and guided my mouth the rest of the way to his.

I felt all kinds of naked with my body coming to rest against the hellhound shifter’s in the water, our clothes plastered to our skin, his lips branding mine. The traces of sea salt that lingered on those lips gave the kiss an extra tang—and so did the knowledge that this was the first time he’d ever made a public display of his affection in front of his companions.

Ruse let out a low chuckle. Three other bodies drifted around mine, their warmth encircling me in the cool water. Omen released my mouth, keeping his head tipped close to mine. “You’re ours. We won’t let you lose yourself, Phoenix.”

Ours . The word tingled through me, too sweet for me to bother with protests about whether I belonged to anyone at all. I knew him well enough by now to be sure he didn’t mean it that way. I belonged with them, and I had no arguments about that at all.

And they were all here with me—the men I loved.

Naturally, the incubus took the initiative to move things along first. As Omen brought his mouth to the crook of my neck, Ruse leaned in to capture my lips. The shifter eased to the side to give him more room.

Thorn’s massive form had come up behind me. He circled my waist with his hands and trailed one up to cup my breast. His fingers flicked over my nipple one by one, drawing it to a stiffened peak through the wet fabric with quiver after quiver of pleasure.

Another hand, slender and lithe, traced the curve of my thigh. Snap pressed his mouth to my shoulder, with a little nip to shift my shirt collar so he had access to more skin.

I didn’t know if this would ground me the way Omen had hoped, if it would do anything at all to calm my inner flames when I needed them under control, but I couldn’t have imagined a more enjoyable strategy. All of my lovers had joined together to share and adore me. The fire coursing through me now held only bliss.

They stayed clustered around me, their mouths marking my skin with their own heat, their fingers teasing every inch of my skin with giddy waves that echoed the rocking of the sea. Thorn wrenched off my shirt and bra and flung them over the hull onto the deck; Snap pulled me higher in the water to slick his forked tongue over my breast. As Omen sucked my other nipple between his lips, Ruse’s hand glided between my legs to stoke the sharpest blaze my body was capable of when they had me like this.

My hips swayed with his caress, pleasure pulsing through me. Omen swallowed my gasp with another kiss. Thorn ran his fingers down my spine and nibbled my shoulder blade with startling delicacy.

I fumbled with Ruse’s shirt with one hand, refamiliarizing myself with Snap’s lean chest at the same time. The incubus paused just for an instant, and his clothes vanished as the devourer’s had. When he flicked open my fly, Omen helped him peel off my pants.

Too much desire was flowing through me and around me to leave room for patience. I hooked my legs around Ruse’s to pull him closer. As he teased the tip of his cock over my clit and farther downward, a needy whimper slipped from my mouth. Snap caught me in a kiss, and the incubus plunged right into me with a rush of the headiest delight.

Thorn was fondling my breasts again from behind, holding me in place to meet Ruse’s thrusts. Omen grazed the sensitive skin of my throat with the tips of his houndish fangs. I reached down his body, now nude too, and wrapped my hand around his erection. The shifter groaned against my neck.

My hips bucked with Ruse’s, my mind glazed with the pleasure—so much of it—they were conjuring across my entire being. As the incubus hit the perfect spot inside me, Snap dipped his hand between us. His fingers found my clit. The devourer kissed me again, circling that nub of nerves in time with the delicious pounding of the incubus’s cock.

Thorn pinched my nipples. My fingers squeezed tighter around Omen’s cock, jerking it faster as I careened into the breathless surge of my orgasm. A cry broke from my throat with the force of the release, which crackled through me with a brilliance no flames could match.

The hellhound shifter thrust into my hand, his own breath stuttering. Ruse spilled himself into me with a groan. I was still floating on the bliss of that first release when he withdrew and Snap pushed in front of me with all his possessive determination.

“My peach?” he murmured in a tone that left no doubt about what he was asking.

I squeezed his shoulder. “Please.”

He penetrated me so swiftly and deeply that a fresh gasp propelled from my lips. A gust of heat against my wrist and the crush of Omen’s mouth on mine told me another of my lovers had reached his own peak. I groped behind me, and Ruse guided my hand through the water to Thorn’s groin with a knowing hum.

“Sorsha,” Thorn rumbled as I clutched his rigid thickness. His mouth seared against my cheek. I twisted my head so I could receive his kiss where I wanted it most.

No, I didn’t feel grounded at all. I was soaring as much as I had that night with the wingéd, buoyed now by all of the four monstrous men who offered up their fondness in such different but delectable ways. My body arched and rocked between them with the shifting currents, Snap drove deeper still with a hungry panting, Omen’s tail flicked across my ass, and I was coming again, ricocheting up to the clear blue sky.

Snap buried his face in my neck and shuddered with his own release. Thorn followed with a groan moments later. We drifted there, twined and sated, our own circle of ecstasy in what might as well have been an otherwise empty world.

Would this extraordinary encounter tame my fire? I didn’t know, but right then the bonds between us felt too potent for any sphinx or murderous mortal to tear them apart.

* * *

It was evening by the time we docked the boat and started up the rocky terrain to the location Ruse’s hacker had pinpointed. By the time Ruse pointed out the shabby cabin from which Tempest’s mortal lackey had been doing his work, night had fully set in.

“From what we’ve gathered,” the incubus whispered as we crept toward the building, “she’s had this fellow investigating ruins that were constructed with protections to repel shadowkind. Looking to see what secrets the ancients might have wanted to keep from monstrous eyes.”

I studied the thin glow that seeped from the cabin’s one dingy window. “She must think whatever he could find will be important to completing her plan, or she wouldn’t have him still poking around out here rather than behind Company building walls.”

Thorn reappeared next to us, back from a quick scouting. “There are plates of silver and iron in the walls of that place, but it’s fragile enough that I should be able to smash it with only minor discomfort.”

“Not exactly subtle,” Ruse said.

“We don’t have time for subtle—and if this mortal is as wrapped up in Tempest’s affairs as it seems, he might contact her at any sign of interference before we have a chance to carry out a longer plan.” Omen wiped his hands together. “So, let’s see some crashing.”

Thorn gave us a grim smile, squared his massive shoulders, and hurtled toward the cabin. I’d seen him smash through concrete walls, so this wasn’t a surprising feat. Adrenaline hummed through my veins all the same.

The warrior rammed into the side of the cabin fists first. The weathered wood creaked and crumpled. Jaw clenched against the toxic effects of the metals around him, Thorn grabbed the startled middle-aged man standing inside and wrenched him out from under the teetering roof.

The rest of us were already hustling over the hillside to meet them. I spotted the gleam of a thin silver-and-iron-twined band on the man’s index finger and pushed myself faster. As soon as I reached him, I snatched his hand and tore the ring off.

The man flinched with an oddly faint cry. A second later, Ruse was at his side. The incubus fell into his cajoling tone. “Hello, friend. We’re here to help you escape the fiend who’s held you in her sway.”

The usual glaze didn’t come over the man’s gray eyes. He attempted to shove away, but Thorn still gripped his shoulders firmly.

A momentary frown crossed Ruse’s face, but he soldiered on. “We only want what’s best for you. We’ll sort this all out—you don’t have to worry about a thing.”

The man thrashed in Thorn’s hands again, totally unaffected. Then he made a desperate gesture at Snap, as if assuming the sweetest looking figure among us was most likely to be on his side.

Something about the movement of his hands struck a pang of recognition. Understanding clicked in my head.

A rough chuckle fell from my lips. “Tempest didn’t bother to hide him for a reason. She knew no shadowkind could charm him with a little sweet-talking.”

Omen shot me a sharp look. “What are you talking about?”

I motioned to the man. “I’m pretty sure that gesture he just made was sign language. He can’t hear a thing Ruse is saying—he’s deaf.”