Page 24

TWENTY-FOUR

Snap

Thorn came striding into our room from Sorsha’s looking oddly irritated and invigorated at the same time. His jaw was tightly set, his eyes as dark as ever, but he moved with an almost eager purposefulness.

Ruse looked up from the sagging armchair where he was mashing buttons on the little box that controlled the bigger box of the TV and raised his eyebrows at our companion.

“Have a nice chat?” he asked, managing with the lilt of his voice to imply that they might have engaged in all sorts of intimacies other than talking. I supposed that was part of his particular talent. It made me want to squirm where I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, even though he hadn’t directed it at me.

Thorn glowered at him. “We did, actually. And someone had to confirm her room contained no hazards. We’ve brought enough woe down on her head already.”

“But you have to admit she’s handled herself just fine.”

Thorn paused for a moment. “Yes. She has.” He swiveled on his heel abruptly. “I’m going to keep up a patrol of the nearby streets until we can leave in the morning. Stay alert and ready to defend yourselves and the mortal one if need be. And you , figure out how we can safely follow Meriden without our former vehicle.”

That last bit was clearly aimed at Ruse. If I’d had more experience with the mortal realm, perhaps I could have helped more with making plans, but as it was, I wouldn’t be of much use to any of them until we were right at the scene.

That was all right. I’d contributed my share, just as Omen had expected I would. I hoped when we found him he was in well enough condition to be pleased with his choices.

It did mean that at the moment I was left with little to do but stew in my thoughts. After Ruse had given Thorn a coy wave good-bye, the incubus’s gaze traveled to me. Another itch traveled over my skin. He was an expert in all things to do with bodily pleasure. Had he already picked up on a change in the energies between me and Sorsha?

I’d rather not give him time to notice if he hadn’t yet. I got up from the bed, shaking out my limbs as if stiff from staying in place too long, and said, “I think I’ll retire to the shadows.”

Ruse shrugged. “Up to you, but you’re about to miss some very excellent TV.” He gestured at it. “Late at night is when you get to observe all the things mortals think no one will want to see but feel the need to put on the air anyway.”

True or not, there was something I wanted to observe more. Or rather, someone. The strange vibe with which Thorn had left Sorsha’s room niggled at me. He’d been hard on her before—he was hard in general. Had his spirits been lifted because this time he’d managed to affect her with his criticisms?

I slipped into the shadows that lay here and there across the room, but then I hesitated. I’d gotten more of an eyeful than I’d been looking for the last time I’d peeked in on our mortal companion. But I knew where my two colleagues were now. I could retreat in an instant if need be.

With a tingle through my being, I leapt from the foot of the bed to the darkness that framed the adjoining door. Then I was peering from that space into Sorsha’s room, so much like ours.

She was lying on her back on the bed on top of the covers, one hand behind her head and the other resting on her stomach. Her coppery eyes were open, contemplating the ceiling with that haze I’d come to recognize meant a person was thinking of something farther away. She didn’t look upset, at least, only thoughtful. A crease had formed between her eyebrows.

Nothing about her appearance had changed that I could pinpoint. I’d always found her enjoyable to take in with that ruddy hair against her creamy skin and the vibrant glint that so often lit in her eyes. Much more interesting than a peach, as delicious as the fruit might be. But now, ever since that unexpected development during our hasty getaway…

My gaze veered across her body, over the curves of her chest and hips that drew my attention much more intensely than they ever had before. She shifted up on one elbow, and I couldn’t help following the sway of her breasts. Then the way her thighs slid against each other as she stirred again.

A strange, heated sensation unfurled through my being with the urge to find out if those parts beneath her clothes would be as soft to the touch as her hair was. To discover how her expression might change if I gave in to that urge.

I turned my awareness away, back to my own room. It was easier to master the emotions flowing through me when I couldn’t see her. Beneath the heat of the impulse, a chill shivered through my nerves.

Somewhere in the longing I could taste the start of a headlong fall. Would I be able to pull back from it if I let myself tumble?

If I couldn’t… The one time I’d careened past the point of control before…

My mind shuttered against the memories.

The new feelings hadn’t emerged out of nowhere. They’d risen from the physical body that let me interact with this realm. If I understood why, how it all connected, what it meant , maybe it wouldn’t be so unnerving.

Our bathroom door was already closed. I pulled myself out from the shadows there, the air settling more solidly around my form. Only a little city glow carried through the small window beside the sink, but I didn’t want to turn on the light and make Ruse wonder what I was doing in here.

The appendage between my legs lay flaccid in my pants now. I let one hand drop to it, but it didn’t stir at the contact. I hadn’t thought much about that particular part since we’d first passed over to this realm with Omen, other than the occasions when I’d spent enough time outside the shadows that I needed to relieve myself using it—and during Thorn’s initial, stern reminder that if we got into a physical fight, I should be careful not to take a blow there, or the pain would be temporarily disabling.

It had never become so taut before, or lifted the way it had in the car, even though Sorsha’s bottom had been pressing down against it?—

The memory of that firm yet pliant roundness, of my arm around her back and her hair grazing my cheek, rushed through my mind like the scent of her had filled my nose. And what a scent it was: sweet like the honey I’d sampled at the market but with a sharpness as biting as the flames she’d lit in the wake of our first escape. I wondered if I flicked my tongue against her cheek, not with any power but just to taste in the physical sense, would her flavor be as intoxicating?

And then that appendage, what I’d heard Ruse refer to as his “cock,” had twitched and stiffened with a flood of pleasure totally different from any I’d felt before, hot and hungry and unsettlingly forceful.

Like it was stiffening against my hand right now in response to those memories. I swallowed hard and ran my fingers over it experimentally. Thinking back to Sorsha lying on the bed as I’d seen her just now…

It rose even higher, straining against the fly of my pants. With each brush of my fingertips, ripples of pleasure and the hunger that came with it radiated through the rest of my body. I closed my eyes, caught again between the longing for more and the terror that quivered up from deeper within me.

There had been a sort of pleasure in my first—and only—devouring. A cold, bottomless hunger that sucked in and shredded, and a tight, icy bliss as that hunger was satisfied bit by bit. The two together had driven me on and on…

Nausea coiled through my stomach at the memory.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The devouring had been horrible and horrifying… and the part of me that had sunk in its ethereal jaws clamored to sate itself all over again.

My fingers had stilled over my erect member. With the thought of other acts, it was starting to wilt. I gave it another stroke, willing the distant past away.

This sensation wasn’t the same kind of pleasure. It wasn’t the same hunger. What I wanted when the heated tingles spread through my groin was not to satisfy myself so much as to create a pleasure that would satisfy her too.

She hadn’t been disturbed by the idea. Recalling her offer that I should come to her if I decided to pursue my desire brought an eager flush into my chest and cheeks.

I wasn’t sure I could control this sensation. I wasn’t sure where tumbling into it would lead me. But it felt like a kindling rather than an obliterating. It was possible, wasn’t it, that this unraveling could be different in that way too? That it might take us someplace good?

I could wait and see how things seemed by the light of day. Proceed with caution—until I couldn’t be cautious anymore, if I took that route.

My thoughts slipped back to Sorsha: to the warmth she’d shown me, to her laugh, to her enduring strength through all the danger we’d faced. If I did dive in, it would be with her. I knew already there was no one else who’d make it worth the risk.