“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How bad is it?”
“I’ll live.”
Dave was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Daniela once told me that Rogan hated feeling helpless more than anything. He would go to any length to avoid it. My going into Rynda’s house while he was across the city made him feel helpless and scared. He needed to let it out. He needed to hurt someone, and Dave had presented himself as a threat to me. Rogan broke him and would’ve kept on breaking if I didn’t stop him.
The Belize War had changed Rogan. It changed everyone, but it had torn him apart and he had to remake himself to survive. He served as the army’s ultimate weapon. He would walk into a city, reach into the deepest part of his soul, where the magic was wild, and let it out, and the city would crumble and fall around him. He inspired fear. They gave him scary names. The Butcher of Merida. The Scourge of Mexico. Huracan. As if he weren’t a man but some terrifying legend come to life. And then he ended up in a jungle, miles into enemy territory, with soldiers depending on him for their lives. Using magic would’ve saved him but his soldiers wouldn’t survive. So he didn’t use it. He walked them out of that jungle, but very few people knew what those weeks in Belize had cost him. He would never again fit into the civilian life. Rogan would never be “normal.” He left the military five years ago, but it made no difference. He was still in.
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t have to go toe-to-toe with him.”
“Yes, I did.” Understanding dawned on him. “Wait. You were scared for me?”
“Yes!”
“I’ve seen him fight. When he armors up, he can’t sweat. He has a limited time frame before he starts overheating. The more he moves, the hotter he gets.”
“It was still dangerous.”
“I didn’t rush into the fight. It was a calculated risk,” he said.
Oh well, that makes everything better, then, doesn’t it? “You could’ve picked up a tree and smashed him with it.”
“That would take care of Dave, but not his family. House Madero doesn’t understand telekinesis. They understand brute force and broken bones. I sent a message and I made it simple enough so even they won’t misinterpret it.”
Well, he had a point. They wouldn’t misinterpret it. They wouldn’t work for Victoria Tremaine again.
“There is a difference between self-defense and torture. I understand why you broke his arms. But there was no need to break his legs.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Occasionally there will be times when I’ll be in danger,” I said.
“I know.”
“There may not always be a Dave handy.”
“I know . . . I’ll learn to deal with it. But I will protect you, Nevada, no matter what it costs me.”
He simply stated it as fact. Oh, Connor.
“I’m glad you stopped me,” he said. “I wasn’t when I was doing it. But now I’m glad.”
I was probably the only one who could. If it was one of his guys, he would’ve just kept going. And the next time, if I wasn’t there, he would break Dave’s legs.
I understood why Rynda was trying so hard to ingratiate herself to him. She was in panic mode and she knew that if Rogan cared about you, he would stop at nothing to keep you safe. If he and I ever had a family . . .
Children? Was I really thinking about having his children? I pictured what Rogan’s children might be like. Smart, and beautiful, and deadly. And impossible. They would be little demon children, getting into everything, trying everything, and not understanding the word no.
His eyes had iced over again. When Olivia Charles had killed his people, Rogan went into a grim place. There was nothing there except the absence of light, ice, and revenge. I had dragged him out of that darkness, and I would never let it have him again.
We passed the checkpoint and I parked the car in front of his HQ. He released his seat belt and studied me. The air in the car vibrated with his tension and energy, all of it dark.
“Some things I can’t help,” he said.
“I know.”
“But I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
I looked into his dark eyes and saw the edge of a storm brewing. He was focused only on me. Nothing else existed. I had the dragon’s undivided attention. Breath caught in my throat.
He leaned forward. He was going to kiss me.
Anticipation gripped me, mixed with a hint of instinctual alarm.
His lips touched mine. His kiss scorched me. I gasped and let him in. His tongue claimed my mouth and I tasted him, the unique flavor that was Rogan, male, harsh, and irresistible. His hand cradled the back of my head, his fingers sliding through my hair. He drank me in, possessive and seducing.
Magic touched the back of my neck, its velvet touch pure ecstasy on my skin. It slid down my spine, setting every sensitive nerve on fire.
My seat belt slid open. I sat there, dazed, as he got out of the car, walked to my door, and opened it. Rogan held out his hand. I took it. His fingers wrapped around mine. He led me into the building, through the downstairs, usually filled with his men, but now empty, up the stairs to the second floor, past Bug’s observation station, a crescent wall of computer screens, past his own office, to the back, where another stairway led up to the third floor. We walked up, he opened a metal door, we walked inside, and it clanged shut behind us.
An open space spread before me, a wide stretch of sealed concrete floor. A big bed stood on the left, on which someone, probably Rogan, had thrown a grey wool blanket. On the other side, to the right, a glass screen curved, probably hiding a shower and a bathroom.
The right wall was normal drywall, painted deep grey. The left wall was glass. Heavy three-foot squares of smoky glass climbed up thirty feet to meet at a sharp angle above us. I’d seen this building a dozen times and I’d never realized that the glass cap on top of it was transparent. It seemed solid black from the outside.
I walked to the window. Outside, the evening had birthed a night. The stars spread above us, glowing sparks of jewel-fire against the velvet blackness. A hoard that was the envy of any dragon.
Rogan wrapped his arms around me, my back to his chest. I heard him inhale the scent of my hair. His long hard length pressed against me. I leaned into him. He made a rough male noise that spoke of hunger and need. It made me weak in the knees. He brushed my hair aside and kissed my neck. Tiny electric shocks dashed through me. Magic danced over my skin, hot, slow, and deliberate. The muscles on his arms were tight under my fingers.
His hands slid over my breasts, caressing, teasing. A jolt of pleasure rolled through me. I gasped. I wanted more.
The zipper on my dress slid down. It fell around my ankles. His warm hand slid down over my stomach. Lower. Please.
My bra came unhooked. He slid the straps over my shoulders, eased the cups off my breasts, and I let it fall to the floor. His fingers slid over my nipples. The sudden burst of sensation was so intense, I jerked in his embrace.
He kissed me right below my right ear, setting my nerves on fire. I looked down on to his hands gliding across my stomach and saw dark smudges. Summoned creature’s blood.
“Rogan . . .”
“Yes.”
He kissed my neck again. I could barely talk.
“I’m covered in blood.”
He stopped and spun me around. “Are you hurting?”
“No. I’m just dirty.”
He looked down at the dried blood on my stomach. “I can fix that.”
He took my hand and we crossed the floor to the glass screen. A shower waited, three walls of tile bristling with faucets. He turned the knobs, and crisscrossing jets of water erupted from the walls. Steam rose. I slipped my underwear off and walked into the wall of water. It felt like heaven. Instantly I was soaked. The water dragged my hair down, plastering it against my chest and back. It ran
dark, then almost immediately clear. I scrubbed my face, banishing the last traces of makeup, and turned around.
He stood in front of the shower, watching me, as if mesmerized.
I stepped through the water toward him, letting the jets spray my breasts and my stomach. Water ran down between my legs, wetting the curls of hair where they met. I was already wet inside.
Rogan swore.
“What?”
“You’re so beautiful.”
He pulled off his shirt and dropped it. He was big and golden, his body all hard muscle, honed to lethal efficiency. His broad shoulders and powerful chest slimmed down to a flat, hard stomach. I wanted to run my fingers across the hard ridges of his abs. His pants followed the shirt, revealing muscular legs. He was erect and ready, the full length of him massive and straining. He stood naked in front of me, towering, all brutal power and strength. His eyes were full of lust.
I opened my arms.
He came through the water for me. We collided. Magic whipped around me, swirling on my skin, a hot velvet pressure that flowed like liquid over my neck, my breasts, into the creases of my butt, gliding between my legs . . . He kissed me, hard and possessive, his arms around me. Our tongues tangled and I tasted him again. It was like being drunk.
I wrapped my arms around him. The cables of muscle on his back were steel-hard under my fingers. His hands roamed my body, stoking the fire. A wet ache hummed between my legs, a heavy pressure that demanded him. I kissed him back, desperate for more, and pushed him against the wall.
He grinned at me, a male smile, not just sexy, but carnal. He was like a dream come to life. I slid my hands over his chest, over his abs, down, over the thick girth of him. He groaned. The ache between my legs was unbearable now. I needed him inside me.
I pumped, squeezing, draped myself against him, my nipples pressing against his wet chest, and slipped down. My mouth closed around him. He barely fit. I sucked. Rogan growled and hauled me upright. His hands gripped my butt and he heaved me up, onto his hips. His hand slipped between my legs, dipped into the wet heat, and stroked the sensitive bud. Pleasure shocked me. His magic spilled over and joined his fingers. It was too much. I arched my back and rode his hand.
He pushed my back against the cool tile. I felt his thick shaft press against me. He thrust all the way, right into the center of the ache, and we were one.
He thrust again and again, in an unrelenting, maddening rhythm. Climax burned through me, wiping out everything. He kept going, as he drove himself into my heat. I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me. I clung to his shoulders, kissing the strong column of his neck, his jaw, his lips. A shudder rocked him and he emptied himself. The tidal wave of his release reverberated through his magic, sending me tumbling into ecstasy again. I draped myself over him, boneless and limp. The pleasure was so intense, I almost cried.
“You’re everything to me,” he said into my ear.
I wanted to tell him that he was everything to me, that I wouldn’t let the darkness have him, that he never had to worry that I would give up and walk away. But the echoes of our shared pleasure stole the words, and so I said it the best I could.
“I love you.”
Something was beeping. I stirred and raised my head. Next to me Rogan swore, gently lifted my arm off his chest, and rolled out of bed. We had collapsed there after the shower, barely bothering to towel off, and I had dozed off on his chest, exhausted, happy, and safe, with his arm around me. Sleeping next to him was like coming home.
I blinked until my vision was no longer blurry. Rogan fished his phone out of the pile of his clothes by the shower and answered it.
“Slow down.” He moved back to the bed and held the phone out a couple of inches from his ear.
Rynda’s high-pitched voice emanated from the phone, punctuated by a child wailing. “. . . can’t calm him down. Please. Please. I need your help. Please, Connor.”
I groaned and collapsed back on the bed.
“I’m busy,” Rogan said.
“If you just talk to him, he’s only four, please . . .”
Rogan looked like he wanted to throw his phone against the wall. “I’ll be right there.”
I slapped a pillow on my face.
The pillow disappeared and he leaned over me. “Wait for me.”
“Let me guess, it’s another crisis only you can solve?”
“Kyle is panicking. I put her and the kids in the building north of us. It will take me thirty seconds to walk over.”
“We just had sex, and now you’re taking off to see your ex-fiancée.”
“I’ll be back. We’re sleeping in the same bed tonight. I mean it.”
I waved at him. “Go.”
He pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt. “Wait for me.”
He opened the door and left.
I exhaled. It’s not that Rynda was consciously manipulating him. It was more that she relied on other people to fix her problems. First her mother, then her husband, and now Rogan. She was the kind of person who would see a pot overflowing on the stove and come and tell you about it, instead of picking it up and moving it off the burner. And then she would be proud of herself for acting quickly in a crisis.
Rogan, on other hand, would solve the problem. That was what he did.
I checked the small digital alarm clock on the nightstand: 10:03 p.m. I thought it was much later. I must’ve just fallen asleep when Rynda called. Except now I was wide awake.
I studied the starry glass ceiling above me. The night was so beautiful from here. It would’ve been even more beautiful if Rogan was here with me.
I’d left my phone in my car. I had meant to grab it but so much had happened.
The room spread in front of me. No shelves, but a stack of books sat on the floor near the window.
10:10 p.m.
I got up and snagged the top book off the stack. Monsters Inside Us: A Case Study of Magically Induced Metamorphosis. Well, that was a mouthful. I dragged the book with me to the bed, turned on the lamp, and leafed through it. Magic did strange things to human beings. A century and a half ago, when the Osiris serum was first developed, it was given out like candy. Nobody knew exactly how the Osiris serum did what it did. Some thought it created new powers. Some said it awakened the dormant talents we had repressed. But how it acted was less important than the results. Some people took it and gained great power. Others turned into monsters. Those magic-warped had to be destroyed.
Now, years later, the instances of monsters were rare. I’d met one, Cherry. She was a junkie and she sold herself to some institute run by a House. They had exposed her to something and now Cherry spent her days in the murky waters of the Pit, a nasty flooded area of Houston, eating frogs. Part of her was more alligator than human.
10:19 p.m. Thirty seconds, huh.
I wrapped the blanket around myself and flipped through the book. I knew a lot of these cases. The case of German Orr, the real-life minotaur. German was a sicko, who could transform himself into a bull-like beast. While in his minotaur shape he was extremely well-endowed, and he used his talents to star in some seriously gross porn. He was arrested on bestiality charges and went to court, arguing that this was magical discrimination and his rights were being violated. He lost, was jailed for six years, and then left the country.
Jeraldine Amber, the Bangor Banshee. When Jeraldine used her sonic magic, she transformed into a strange pale creature with black eyes and watery white hair. She was normal in all other respects, and while her talents passed to her children, the ability to metamorphose didn’t. Or so they claimed.
10:35 p.m. Seriously, Rogan?
I turned the page. The Beast of Cologne. I knew this story so well, I could write a book on it. Misha Marcotte, a Belgian woman, discovered her talent in her early twenties. She could assume the shape of an enormous beast, a creature out of a nightmare. She was practically indestructible in that shape, but she had no control over it. Once she metamorphosed, she would go berserk. The Belgian
Armed Forces in cooperation with the French Légion de Sorciers, the Sorcerer Legion, had tried to evaluate her skills, and during her third transformation, she permanently lost her humanity. She crossed the Belgian-German border and rampaged through Cologne, nearly leveling the city, until they finally contained her. How exactly they managed to do it was a secret, but the dominant rumor was that the Germans drowned her in the waters of the Rhine. She was a cautionary tale for anyone with the power of metamorphosis.
There were rumors that she had reverted to her human form, survived the drowning, and was being kept alive somewhere under constant sedation. I believed it. The Primes would never throw a talent away, not while they hoped to glean some knowledge or increase their power from it.
I slapped the book closed. 10:48. I’d been waiting for him for almost an hour. Enough was enough. I couldn’t just sit here, pining in the dark by myself, naked. I had family to check on.
I got up off the bed. The thought of putting on my blood-smeared dress turned my stomach. No, thanks. He had to have some clothes around here.
I searched the room. The glass curve of the shower extended a few feet past the shower itself, and behind it was closet space. Shelves supported stacks of neatly folded T-shirts and sweatpants, and a rod held a couple dozen hangers, offering everything from shirts to ridiculously expensive suits, precisely organized and quickly available. Military habits were hard to break.
I grabbed a T-shirt. It came to mid-thigh on me. I stole a pair of sweatpants. Predictably, they were a little tight on my hips and way too long. I rolled them up. Good enough. I kicked the remnants of my dress, my bra, and my underwear into a pile on the floor. I really liked that bra, but there was no way I would be walking out of his place with my bra in my hands. With luck, nobody would see me, but I didn’t want to take chances.
I slid my feet into my beat-up sneakers and padded out the door and down the staircase to the second floor. Bug sat in his chair, absorbed in the glow of nine computer screens arranged in three by three formation on his wall.
He blinked at me. Bug always looked like he’d lost his sandwich and needed desperately to find it, because he was on the verge of hunger jitters. Before Rogan enticed him to come to work for him, Bug had been in bad shape. The swarm the military pulled out of the arcane realm and bound to him was supposed to have killed him in eighteen months. Only volunteers became swarmers, usually for a big payday. Bug never shared why he did it or what he spent the money on. Somehow he survived past his time. When I met him, he lived in an abandoned building, which he had booby-trapped. Skinny, dirty, paranoid, trading surveillance for an occasional hit of equzol, a military-issue drug and the only thing that would “quiet” the swarm according to him, Bug had one foot in his grave. Napoleon, a bastard son of a French bulldog and some adventurous mixed breed, was the only thing that kept him grounded.
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