Page 13 of Icy Reception (SOS HOTEL #9)

CHAPTER 13

Zee maneuvered to the front of the restaurant to enthusiastic applause. His audience was made up of... well... us. Several Victors stood out in their suits or Dracula costumes. Plenty of Zees sparkled and bounced, their strap-on wings, tails, and horns jiggling and pointing in all directions. Several average-looking guys with messy blond hair loitered... they could have been Adams, or maybe they had no idea what was happening and had just showed up for free pancakes.

“It is rather a universal joke that Vlad was the worst of us, and yet the fool now represents vampires throughout this world,” Victor grumbled, side-eyeing a Dracula lookalike.

“Dracula was really a vampire?” I asked.

“Dracula and the cliché outfit is a work of fiction, but Vlad was unfortunately real and has been giving vampires a terrible reputation for centuries.”

“I think maybe vampires have been doing that themselves,” I told him with a playful smile.

“Point conceded.” He smiled back.

Zodiac revealed his wings and gave them a shake, making the most of their spritzing sparks. His crowd oohed and ahhed , fawning over him—which of course, he adored.

“Hello, SOS Hotel fans!” Zee announced. The rowdy crowd cheered and whooped . “You are gathered here today to celebrate all things SOS Hotel... and pancakes!” More cheers went up. Zee began to pace, knowing that his every step commanded the attention of everyone here. “But we are here for different reasons... important reasons. As official heroes, we’re here to help people, but right now we need your help.”

“He is good at this,” Victor admitted.

“He’s an entertainer.”

“You love the SOS Hotel like we do, but what if there was a different hotel, a hotel that trapped its guests? A hotel with a deep, dark secret?” Boos bubbled. Zee spread his arms. “Welcome to the Stephanie Hotel, and believe us when we say, this hotel does not offer a supernaturally safe stay.”

One of the staff who had been dutifully bringing out more pancakes turned on their heel and ducked out a back door. Our plan was in motion.

“You have been duped!” Zee said. “Trapped, and even drugged, some of your fellow guests have been taken and turned to ice!”

Gasps and discontent rippled through the crowd now.

Zee hopped up onto a table, arms and wings spread, glittery eyes sparkling. “But does the SOS Hotel management take it lying down?”

“No!” someone yelled.

Zee grinned and winked. “Not unless we want to. Payback’s a bitch, and so is the ice witch in the basement. Today, you will all be heroes!”

“How?” someone called out.

“By doing what we do best.” He waited, building the anticipation to its breaking point, and then said, “Creating chaos! ”

Cheers and applause erupted. He had them all on our side, fighting for what was right.

“Go forth my minions and misbehave!”

The crowd went wild, chanting, “Down with the ice witch! Freedom for guests! Chaos crew! SOS! SOS!”

“I often forget he was a legion warrior, but at times like this I am reminded how remarkable Zodiac is.”

“Just at times like this?” I teased.

Victor’s soft smile was his reply.

After five minutes of directing the boisterous crowd, Zee eventually made his way over to us and handed Victor a curved, foreign-looking sword. “Not Shareen, but close enough. You think you can take her head off with this, Vic, while Adam and I distract her?”

Victor weighed the sword in his hand, getting used to its feel and balance. “Without a doubt.”

“So what happens now?” Zee asked me.

“Now we shake the frogs’ nest and see what falls out.”

He grimaced. “Frogs have nests in fuckin’ trees?”

“Oh, for sure. That’s why you never see baby ones.”

An alarm bell rang, and then the familiar ding-dong of the hotel announcement system chimed. “Emergency! For your own safety, please return to your rooms. Any guest found outside their room will be... extracted.”

The crowd turned toward Zee, waiting for his command. Tension crackled in the air, thinning it, making my heart race, and probably the hearts of everyone else here too.

Zee raised the Shareen lookalike. “Resist!”

With a unified roar, the Adam Vexes, Zodiacs, and Victors surged out the door.

“I do believe we’ve started a small hotel revolution,” Victor said.

“Wind ’em up and let ’em go,” Zee said, grinning with pride. “That should keep creepy concierge Larry busy.” He scooped up my hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Victorveus, Adam is going to fuck me half blind using his mouth, and I am more than ready for it.”

Victor’s smile turned smug. “How will I know when you are... complete?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Zee purred, then pulled me after him, out of the restaurant and down the corridor, deeper into the back of the hotel. My heart raced harder, thumping behind my ribs. Not just because of what Zee and I were about to do, but because we were about to stand against an ancient fae who had the potential to hurt all of us.

Stephanie was not going to make this easy.

Zee flung open the door into what looked like a narrow storage room, and in we dove. Inside, he spun me against the wall, plastered himself close, and peered into my eyes. The light wasn’t on, but we didn’t need it when he was already glowing. “I may have been thinking about this for a really long time.”

We could have talked some more, but we were short on time. I grabbed his face in both hands and dragged him down into a desperate kiss. Excitement, fear, and a whole lot of lust rushed through my veins, setting me ablaze all over again. I couldn’t ever get enough of him.

He broke away, brushed his cheek against mine, and breathed hard against my ear. “You make my heart sing, Kitten.”

Shivers spilled through me, like tiny sparks. “I’m not sure I’m that good at blow jobs, though. What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’s not the what, it’s the who. It’s you, baby, who makes me shine.”

I grabbed his hips, tried to pull him closer, even though we were already as close as two people could get. Too many clothes chaffed between us. I wanted to rip off his T-shirt, dismantle the tiny shorts, wreck the fishnets, and then devour all of him. That was the beast in me coming out to play. The hunger was dangerous, but thrilling too.

I shoved him back, slammed him against the opposite wall between two racks of shelves stacked with towels and cleaning equipment, and attacked his mouth again. Zee’s hands ran up my back, scooping under my shirt so he could feel me, skin on skin.

“You’re already blinding,” Zee whispered, as I broke away to take a breath. I didn’t glow for everyone to see like he did, but his incubus sight saw my power blaze whenever I was fired up.

“Think you can handle me?” I panted.

“Oh Kitten, nobody can handle all of you, but I’ll take what you got.”

The hotel alarms still screeched, doors slammed, footfalls hammered down the corridor outside, but all of it was muffled behind my savage need to swallow Zee and power him up into god mode.

“Safe word?” I grunted, sinking my hands into his shorts and scrabbling to unbutton them.

“Indigo...” He stroked my face. “I ain’t ever gonna use it with you.”

Maybe, but just yesterday I thought I’d hurt him. “The last time... you passed out.”

“Not this time. I’m ready. Trust me... trust us. We are meant to be—you, me, and Victor. Call it destiny, fate, whatever... this is right. I feel it all the way down to my balls, and those bastards are never wrong. Nothing has ever been righter.”

A smile crept back onto my lips. I popped the last of his buttons, dropped to my knees, and swallowed him deep. All of him... somehow. Maybe dragons didn’t have gag reflexes... It kinda made sense that we wouldn’t, and it made swallowing Zee’s generous dimensions a whole lot easier .

His fingers speared into my hair, and the purple halo around us throbbed brighter with every thrust.

“Ugh, fuck yes.” Zee grunted, then spluttered. “Wait, wait...”

“What?!” I shot to my feet. “What is it? Is it too much? I can stop. We’ll find another way?—”

He smooshed a finger against my lips. “No, Kitten. It’s this.” Zee knelt, and after his quick hands went to work, he had me between his lips, his sparkly purple eyes peering up at me as his tongue and mouth sucked and lavished attention on the hardest part of me. I wouldn’t have minded if this had been all about him, we were on the clock after all, but Zee was too much of a giver to take all the attention.

I could have been distracted by the alarms, or the location, or the hundred other things going on in our lives, but here in his hands there was nothing else, just the way he delivered sweeps of pleasure that rode up my back and had me at his expert mercy.

I didn’t stand a chance of holding back, not with him driving the pace. “Oh, I’m going to?—”

He knew, and swallowed deep.

Pleasure licked all the way through me, and when I opened my eyes Zee was there, wings out, their huge leather canvasses squished into the tiny storage room, aglow and eager. I dropped my gaze... Very eager.

A little lightheaded and still abuzz, I gobbled him down again, working my hands and mouth together, lost in the feel of him, the way he rocked, the sound of him, how he moaned and mumbled for more. And then the moment came—well, he came—and a blast of a thousand tiny lightning strikes scattered into every nook, cranny, and corner. Zee froze, hands lodged in my hair.

I pulled off and looked up, and wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. Purple fire licked off his wings and horns, and beneath the skimpy clothes, his veins swam with glittery purple blood. He was magnificent.

“Holy fuck. I’m literally on fuckin’ fire,” he slurred.

And also pretty high.

“Uh...” Standing, I tried to look into his eyes, but they glowed all purple and bright, like looking into a star. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay? I’m a thousand okays. I’m the best of okays, and I’m about to go fuck up an ice bitch.” He tugged on the door, flinging it open. “I have arrived!”

“Zee, wait!”

“Huh?”

“Your uh... your fly?” I gestured down, where his arrow tattoo pointed at everything on display.

“Oh fuck, right.” With a swift flick of the wrist, he’d tucked himself away. “Whoohoo! God Zee is back, bitches!”

What had I unleashed?

He strutted down the hallway, raining sparks, lit up like... well... like a glowing purple incubus. He was supposed to dial the glowing down so Stephanie didn’t see him coming, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“Zee, hold up . . .”

I hurried after him, and spotted Victor waiting in the foyer at the foot of the patched-up staircase, next to the barrier with a no-entry sign slung over it to stop guests wandering into the cellar.

Zee tossed aside the sign, and the flimsy barrier.

“Zee, wait.”

Victor saw me—my panic—and Zodiac aglow, and stepped in front of our runaway freight train of a sexed-up incubus. “A moment, Zodiac.”

Zee grabbed him by the face and plundered his mouth in a kiss that almost tore Victor off his feet .

“No guests allowed!” Larimer’s tight thin voice rang from behind us. “Did you not read the sign?!”

The tall slim beanpole of a man stepped out from behind his desk and glowered, making that single eyebrow do the work of two. His thin mouth was pinched so tightly it puckered like a... you know.

Zee dropped Victor, leaving him braced against the panels under the staircase, and turned, stalking toward Larimer. “You think you can boss us around? Huh? What even are you, because you ain’t human? You are not even a teensy bit aroused, and right now I could turn the straightest of arrows all the way to gay.”

“Adam, we have to reel Zodiac in or he’s going to alert Stephanie too soon,” Victor said, making it to my side and clutching my shoulder to keep himself upright after Zee’s sexual surprise.

“I know.” But now that Zee had focused on Larimer, the concierge was our immediate concern.

I scooted around Zee and Larimer, both of them locked in a glaring match, and snatched up the phone. Just needed a few seconds while Larimer was distracted... I dialed a familiar number.

“Welcome to the SOS Ho?—”

Larimer snatched the handset from my fingers. “What are you doing?! No guests behind the desk!”

Had Larimer gotten . . . bigger? Golem big?

“Oh uh . . .” I shrank back, hands up. “I was just calling an . . . Uber?”

“I do believe you three are bad guests .” His voice sounded very growly for an apparently normal human.

Yeah, he’d definitely gotten bigger... still tall and thin, but when he turned to face me again, his height had him arching over my head.

“And bad guests must be expelled ! ”

Bigger still. Now he matched Zee’s height—overtook it.

“Hey! Larry!”

Larry spun at Zee’s voice.

“Choke on this,” Zee thrust a lollipop between Larimer’s tight lips and smacked it home. The concierge choked, stumbled. .. and dropped the handset. It clattered to the floor, and to the sounds of Larimer’s wheezing, plumes of static black smoke bellowed from the handset to form a distinctive Tom Collins outline.

“If anyone is going to yell at these three embarrassments to the hospitality industry,” Tom began, striding toward Larimer. “It’s me.” And with that, and despite being ghost-like, he grabbed Larimer by the head and slammed his face down into the reception desk. Sparks and bits of metal and dirt, like brick dust, sprang from cracks in Larimer’s skull.

“Fuck me sideways with a Wiggly Wizard,” Zee gasped.

Tom Collins slammed his face into the desk a second time, then pinned him there and leaned in. “You hear that?”

We all listened.

“I said... you hear that?” Tom let Larimer go and straightened. He tugged at his burgundy silk vest and swept a hand over his impeccable hair. “Must I do everything myself?”

Wait . . . we were supposed to do something?

What was I missing? “Erm . . .”

“The bell?” Tom said. “You do have it?”

“Oh! Fuck. The bell. Right.” Zee reached behind him, produced the silver bell, and tossed it to Tom.

Our overqualified bartender snatched it out of the air, and— ding! Beside Larimer’s head. Larimer twitched. Sparks buzzed from his ears. His hair fizzed. “As concierges go, you are the worst I’ve seen, and that includes the extremely low bar from when Zodiac attempted it.”

“Excuse-moi? ”

I gawked, watching all this, Tom absolutely and literally killing it. Tom was badass.

“Are you three going to stand there and gawk while I keep Larimer busy, or are you going to head down those stairs and stop the fae from freezing this entire hotel with everyone in it? I can escape—phone lines don’t freeze—but you can’t.”

Grinding Larimer’s broken, twitching face into the reception desk, Tom Collins smiled and plucked the lollipop from the broken golem’s mouth then slotted it between his own. Even though he didn’t technically have a body to uhm... suck with. “I should get out more,” he said with a smile.

“Ew.” Zee icked.

Right. Okay then. It seemed Larimer was in Tom’s capable hands, and as I turned back toward Victor, I noticed some of the other SOS Hotel cosplayers had stopped in the foyer to admire our barman’s spontaneous arrival.

“Now may be the opportune moment to distract Frostweaver,” Victor suggested, as events had taken on their own momentum.

“I am on it!” Zee announced, then poofed away.

“Did he just go straight to the cellar without us?”

Victor sighed. “I suspect so.”

We had to get down there, and fast. “Everyone, we need you to distract Stephanie. Head on downstairs with us. Confuse her with your uh... costumes.” I gestured at a nearby pretend Zee and Victor, the contrast between bubbly, colorful demon and grouchy, gray-suit-clad vampire might just be enough to distract the fae without much fuss. “We’ll do the rest. Please know... this is just an ask. You do not have to do this. We will not be offended if you choose?—”

“SOS Hotel! Supernaturally safe for all!” they chanted.

Oh-kay then. We headed down the secret staircase, with Victor in front .

We spilled into the ice-cold cellar.

Vapor crawled across the floor, hiding our feet as we moved through the room. The chambers were empty of their frozen occupants... and of Zee.

No Stephanie either.

This wasn’t good.

“Where did they go?” I whispered to Victor between chattering teeth.

A metal hatch dropped from the ceiling with a great clang, blocking the stairwell entrance and sealing us inside. Icy, brittle laughter filled the cellar.

“A cold dragon is a dead dragon,” Stephanie’s sharp, jagged voice announced, coming from all around but also nowhere. “Enjoy your final moments at my hotel.”