by Anne Malcom
Chapter 11
“Well,” I said, collapsing onto my sofa with a margarita—Scott proved himself useful—in my hand. “That went well.”
Thorne gaped at me as he gripped his beer. “Well?” he repeated.
I shrugged. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?” I moved my gaze to the wolf, who was standing beside Sophie radiating tension and fury, while she radiated much the same, though she was holding her own margarita. “Though I am interested to hear about wolfy’s little part in it, considering he was more of a hindrance than a help,” I continued. “What’s their beef with you? Do tell.”
Sophie’s steely glare fastened on the wolf. “Yes, Conall,” she seethed. “Do fucking tell.”
I grinned.
He only had eyes for Sophie, obviously. And he bored into them with an intensity that saturated the room before he spoke. “I was—am their rightful king,” he said finally, his voice little more than a low rasp.
I gaped at him.
Even Thorne was painted somewhat surprised, and he’d really paid little notice to the wolf, mostly because he’d always had to focus on me bleeding or dying for them to bond over sports games or brands of beer or whatever it was that males bonded over.
“You’re shitting me,” I said after a long silence.
He glanced my way for less than a second before he wrenched his eyes back to Sophie, who hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t even moved. She still had half a glass of margarita in her hand.
“Check her pulse, wolfy,” I said, vaguely worried. Usually when faced with unexpected information, she drained a drink. This was bad.
His jaw hardened as he wrestled with some sort of turmoil that slung me backward in time. That desperation on a man’s face when he was admitting his betrayals to the one who was stupid enough to give him something irreplaceable.
Something heart-shaped and vulnerable.
I drained my glass in an effort to chase away the memories of the time in the throne room when Thorne had trampled all over mine with his truth.
And now the wolf was going to do the same to Sophie.
“Okay, we’re gonna need more information,” I said, standing. “And it better be good and quick, because I’m gearing up to throw you out of my apartment. And it won’t be out the door. These windows are strong, but if I throw a wolf hard enough, I’ll get to see if you can grow wings along with fur.”
My promise was very real, as fury I’d been pretending I didn’t have reared its head.
Thorne grabbed my arm, yanking me backward.
“Let me go, Thorne,” I hissed. “Unless you want to follow Conall down the fastest way to the lobby.”
His arms tightened. “You’ve already threatened to throw me out the window once,” he murmured in my ear. “I’m not scared.”
“You fucking should be,” I hissed, then looked to the silent standoff between Sophie and the wolf.
She still hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t moved. But power crept into the air, and a slight glow radiated from her fingers.
“I’d get to explaining,” I bit out from my Thorne-arm cocoon.
The wolf’s eyes zeroed in on Sophie’s palms before he spoke. “Werewolves guard our history and hierarchy fiercely,” he said, voice rough. “This isn’t something I could’ve just told you, not something I fucking knew how to tell you. I—”
He was cut off by a blinding burst of power that sent him flying across the room into the wall, shattering the frames on my very expensive artwork and ruining them with werewolf blood.
It was the only time I wasn’t annoyed at someone ruining my apartment, because this was my girl and I had her back.
Plus, I’d been waiting for this for months.
Air swirled around the room, all coming from Sophie as she sauntered toward the wolf, who was standing up and cracking his dislocated jaw back into place.
“You didn’t know how to tell me?” she repeated, her voice eerie and calm. “Well, isn’t that novel, since I don’t quite know how to tell you that I don’t deal well with being lied to.” The magic in her palms crackled brighter.
“Isla, you’ve got to stop her before she does something she regrets,” Thorne hissed, but not releasing me from his grip. I knew he sensed the power, and his instincts were telling him to protect me.
“She’s not going to regret anything, I’ll tell you that,” I replied, voice tight and with some of my own anger injected into it. And not just regarding the wolf.
Thorne’s arms flexed around me as if he could sense it.
“What I can tell you,” Sophie continued, stopping in front of the wolf, “is that you’re never going to get the chance to lie to me again.”
And then she raised her hand, glass shattering as she hurled the wolf out of the fucking window. With her power.
Without hesitation.
I blinked. Thorne’s arms dropped from around me.
Silence was like lead in the air. Sophie’s chest was heaving as she regarded the broken window and the breeze hurtling in from thirty stories up.
I idly wondered if even a werewolf would survive that drop.
“Holy fuck,” I said finally, breaking our stunned silence. “You actually hurled him out the window.” I gaped at Sophie as she turned.
Her face was blank, but her eyes flickered with a lot of power and almost equal amounts of pain. “I’ll pay for the repairs, obviously,” she said, as if she hadn’t quite possibly killed the man I was pretty sure she was in love with. More like her rogue toddler had broken some vase.
“Dude. You threw him out the window.” I repeated it because I wasn’t quite sure Sophie realized what she’d done. She was still herself, no scary magic, but she was kind of vacant, without passion that came with being heartbroken. She seemed… empty.
And that was bad. Because it meant the wolf had filled her up even more than I’d realized.
She shrugged. “He lied to me. Lying is betrayal. I don’t handle that well.”
I continued to gape, my beating heart bleeding for my bestie. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you do realize if you don’t go check on him, heal him, he might actually die?” I gave her a look. “I know you’re pissed now, but Thorne might’ve been right. You could regret this.” I hated that I was kind of quoting Thorne, but at that point I didn’t care—I only cared about Sophie. And I didn’t want her carrying around the knowledge that she’d killed the man she loved for the rest of her life. I wouldn’t let her feel that.
She narrowed her eyes. “I never regret revenge, Isla, you know that. And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out what to do with the witch in my office, since we’re still stumped on that one. I’ll call you. We’ll go shoe shopping tomorrow.”
And then she left.
Walked out the door like that hadn’t just happened.
I stared at the broken glass. So did Thorne. I wandered over to the window, glancing down at the street below, expecting to see the mangled body of the wolf. A siren echoed through the narrow streets as I spotted a car with the roof caved in, a cluster of people surrounding it, but no wolf corpse to be seen.
“Guess he survived,” I said, then turned to Thorne. “So now we know that lying is a hard limit with Sophie. I’m gonna have to make sure she never finds out that I’m the one who scratched her Jeep.”
“Okay, so I thought we should do something kickass and fun to celebrate Sophie getting us the magical form of birth control. A little belated, I know, since we’ve been doing the nasty again for a while now,” I said, lying tangled in Thorne’s arms, my entire body pulsating with utter satisfaction. A stolen moment of our own beautiful chaos removed from the ugly chaos of reality. We had all but pounced on each other after being confronted with the scene in the living room, pain we had only just survived.
Pain we were still kind of trying to survive.
Hence my idea.
Thorne stroked my back. “I think that was a kickass celebration,” he rasped, his voice saturated in sex.
>
I grinned up at him, my gaze hooded from being slightly drunk on multiple orgasms and the nirvana of his blood. “I’ll have to agree with you there. I was amazing.” His eyes twinkled at me. “You were pretty good too, I guess,” I added slyly. He kissed my forehead.
“Thanks,” he replied dryly.
“Sex is going to be heavily involved in this celebration,” I continued. “Well, technically after the celebration, but I’m pretty sure it’s necessary in order to make it legit.” I screwed up my nose. “Well, in our case, it’s definitely necessary. But I was thinking we get married.”
Thorne’s face, previously light and teasing, went hard and stiff and expressionless as soon as the words left my mouth. His arms tightened around me and a couple of my ribs cracked in protest.
I wasn’t worried about my ribs at that moment; I was more concerned at what was beating inside them, something that felt really fucking vulnerable right then. In the face of possible rejection.
I hadn’t even thought about rejection. To be fair, I hadn’t really thought about the whole marriage thing until moments ago, but a party all about me and a fabulous dress? Why the fuck not? And I had been itching to get the last wedding, the faux shambles it was, out of my memories and replace it with something that mattered.
Someone who mattered.
I would not let Jonathan hold the title of my husband when he not only didn’t fucking deserve it, but Thorne was the only man worthy.
And I had that girly urge I’d never admit to anyone that I wanted to be his wife. I wanted that stupid piece of paper and the not-at-all stupid diamond.
And I wanted Thorne to be my husband more than I wanted another diamond. That was a big thing to me. Huge.
But I’d never even considered that Thorne might not want to marry me. And his reaction, the way he wiped every ounce of previous joy off his face and the way he’d held me so tight he’d broken bones without noticing, told me that maybe he might not.
Eternity was a long time to spend with anyone. With me, it’d feel longer than forever. I thought that was a great thing, I thought Thorne would consider this a great thing, considering all his intense heartfelt declarations and the way he overreacted when I kept almost dying.
Plus, there was a prophecy saying that we were fated to be together and either save or end the world.
And I was awesome, and excellent in bed. How could he not want to marry me?
Every part of me curled in shame as I tried to wrench myself from his grasp so I could go back to that witchy cave in Albania and die of embarrassment. His arms didn’t let me do that.
“Or not,” I said quickly, when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to let me move. “It was just a suggestion, nothing—”
“Shut up,” he hissed, his voice almost animal.
I was so shocked at the brutal tone, at the fierce gaze in his eyes, that I did something I thought I’d never do on request.
I shut up.
He didn’t talk immediately, his eyes roving over every inch of my naked body with such force, such heat, that I had to follow them to be sure he wasn’t flaying the skin from my bones.
It took a lot for me to be still and silent in those moments when he continued to commit every single part of me to memory—at least that’s what it seemed like he was doing. All I wanted to do was tell him this was a big prank and Ashton Kutcher was actually hiding in the closet filming the whole thing, including our sex tape. That I’d been planning to become the Kim Kardashian of the vampire world and that he was my perfect Reggie.
My mouth stayed stuck shut.
And I also had the idea of running out the door—naked as I was—and not stopping until I reached somewhere my shame might not burn me. Like Antarctica.
Yet I wasn’t getting aquainted with penguins.
I was right there, in Thorne’s arms.
Because I couldn’t be anywhere else. Even if he was about to shatter my ribs along with my heart.
His finger trailed along the side of my face. “You realize that the man is supposed to propose, right?” he asked, voice thick. “Get down on one knee, present a diamond, have some sort of speech about how their woman is the best thing that’s ever happened to him?”
I grinned, though I feared it was lopsided. “Well I’m a feminist, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ll kill my own demons, and I’ll propose to my own boyfriend. Plus, I don’t need the speech, ick. I’ll have the diamond, though.” I paused. “If that’s a yes.” I hated that my voice was flat, shallow, thin enough to shred through with one simple word.
No.
His eyes searched mine, steel and liquid at the same time. Suddenly we moved so Thorne was not only on top of me but inside me.
I let out a rough gasp at his brutal and beautiful entrance. He held his body still as every vein in his neck pulsed.
“This moment doesn’t feel complete—I don’t feel fuckin’ complete—unless I’m inside you,” he ground out, voice heavy. His eyes weighed me into the mattress. “You’ve been mine since the second I laid eyes on you, and you’ll be mine for every second after this.” His lips pressed to mine. “So fuck yes, I’ll be marrying you. For now, I’m gonna fuck you.”
He moved, thrusting into me with enough force that my eyes rolled back into my head. His mouth stayed inches from mine, eyes never releasing me from their grip.
“That was a good version of yes,” I gasped through his thrusts. I let out a moan as my entire body pulsated in preparation for another climax. “But I’ll still be wanting a diamond.”
Thorne’s face was painted dark with desire, but his mouth quirked up in a grin. “I’ll get you anything you want, babe, since you’ve given me fuckin’ everything.”
And then he fucked me into oblivion.
I’d say that was a pretty good yes.
“Hey, witch bitch,” I called to the being clutching the bars of the cage in the middle of the room. Her black eyes were spiders on my skin, biting me with the mere gaze. I didn’t let that show, of course. “Did you do something with your hair?” I asked. “Add more dirt? Bugs? Whatever it is, it’s really working with the whole evil and ugly thing you’ve got going on.”
She hissed at me and a spider crawled out of her mouth.
“Now that’s just gross,” I muttered, turning away to walk into Sophie’s office. She was frowning at the computer behind her desk. “Hey, other witch bitch with much better hair,” I greeted.
She flipped me the bird.
I handed her a coffee cup and then settled down across from her, sipping from my own. “Ah, so I’m guessing you and wolfy haven’t made up?” I surmised as much from her general air of bitchiness—much more than usual—and the fact that she was wearing a tee shirt that was chopped to barely cover her boobs, leaving just enough room for the slogan ‘It’s werewolf hunting season.’
She glared at me while sipping her coffee. “Shouldn’t you be throwing a party right about now? I thought you hated him,” she snapped.
I grinned. “I do hate him,” I replied. “But I don’t hate you, and as much as I love it when you’re in a bad mood with the world and we get to commit general tomfoolery, I don’t like it when you’re hurt.” I held up my hand when it became apparent that she was about to argue with me on that score. “And yes, I’m aware you’re not hurt. You’re pissed the fuck off, and you want to skin him and make a new rug to put in front of your fireplace.”
“In my bedroom, actually,” she corrected.
“Much better,” I agreed. “But I’ve been there, done that, got the proverbial tee shirt.” I smirked at hers. “But to be fair, I didn’t go so far as to throw Thorne out the window. Mostly because I don’t think he would’ve fared well, or at all, from that particular drop, and secondly because we were in a time-sensitive environment and a smidge because I love the fucker, despite his betrayal. And I do actually remember us having somewhat the same conversation in a coffee shop before I met the original vampire and was almost killed by him. You
were the voice of reason then.”
I paused, put my hand up. “Can I just say, when I’m the voice of reason, I feel like that’s when shit needs to be reevaluated.”
The room crackled with the power of her magic and her fury.
“I’m not telling you to get back with him. In fact, you’re right, I’m happy enough to throw a party in honor of your timely breakup,” I said before she could zap me and ruin my blowout. “Well, it’s technically not because of that, but we can pretend it is to make you feel better, if you like?”
“I feel fine,” she hissed.
“Clearly,” I muttered. “Well, the party should make you feel better. Except it’s not really a party, it’s kind of a… wedding?” I squeezed my eyes shut, because telling your best girlfriend you were getting married right in the middle of her going through a breakup was a dangerous move even when your best girlfriend wasn’t a witch with the power to blow you off the face of the earth.
I waited a beat to open my eyes when I realized Sophie wasn’t roasting me like a marshmallow at a campfire.
She was smiling.
Kind of.
The best a girl struggling with world-ending heartbreak could offer, at least.
“You’re shitting me,” she exclaimed.
I couldn’t gauge whether her voice was excited or murderous. “Depends on your reaction. You going to kill me if I ask you to be my harlot of dishonor?”
That time there was a grin. “Only if you make me wear a dress you picked and tell me I can’t kill anyone.”
I sagged slightly and smirked. “I’d never say you couldn’t kill anyone at my wedding, Sophie. That would be just plain rude. And I wouldn’t dream of dressing you, despite the fact that such a feat is impossible. I’m rather interested to see what kind of formal wear a Metallica groupie wears to a wedding,” I teased.
She eyed the hand holding my coffee. “No ring?” she hissed. “And Thorne is still alive to be the groom at this wedding when he hasn’t even gotten you a diamond?” she commented.