by Jamie Magee
He liked to punish her with orgasms, not the fun ones where you had a partner, but the ones where he would throw a glance at her and she would have to use all her strength to swallow the wave of erotic energy he was sending through her. That, too, had gotten more intense since the spell. Before it was an,
“Ah, that feels nice.” Now it was, “Holy fucking shit I need to scream but can’t.”
The man constantly left her furious and wanting more. And that fucking smirk of his, he loved to use that, too.
Reveca looked up at the house once more, knowing there was a helluva library in there and there was bound to be a spell she could put on him to make him have walking orgasms. Then we’ll see whose smirking, Reveca thought to herself.
“Listen to me, Jamison. I have spent weeks locked up with internal affairs. Constant bullshit, then I get to come home to even more tension. I need my own space to find five fucking minutes of peace. On top of that I have Bastion bunking with Judge who’s on the same floor as Steele. Do you want me to explain that further to you?”
Jamison lifted a brow. “He’s not a boy. I’m sure he’s well versed on what couples do behind closed doors.”
“Steele doesn’t close doors, and I doubt Bastion was well versed on that madness.”
Jamison narrowed his eyes on her and did his best to not grin. “You’re trying to tell me you’re worried about how Bastion is being influenced?”
No, but that sure as hell sounded like a good excuse. “Yep. This gives Bastion a sense of home and it will be safely behind the gates of the Boneyard.”
“You and Bastion alone are going to live here, next to your home, where all your boys live. And how are you going to explain a house just appearing on your property?”
“A house just appearing is by far not the strangest shit my MC has witnessed. They know not to ask questions—and what’s wrong with me and Bastion staying in it?” Reveca asked, lifting her arms, so close to hitting him. She was not in the mood right now.
“I’m just trying to get a read on you. That was a hard battle with Blackwater. It’s not good to make rash decisions in the heat of strife.”
“No harder than the others,” Reveca said with a lifted brow.
Jamison knew that was bullshit. The Blackwater battle would forevermore be recorded in the history books of the coven. It was the first time dark angels, Escorts, fought side by side with them against Rouges, and it was the first time an original had been taken down. It was also the first time a member of the coven openly fed a Lord of Death.
Too much history was made that day in both mortal and immortal worlds for everything to be sunshine and butterflies in a few weeks time. Particularly since Jamison knew that was only the public side of the battle, not the emotional side, not what led to it, or how. Reveca looked weathered to Jamison and that said a lot. She rarely let anything get to her, at least not for long.
“Right, good thing Dagen and his boys were available to help us.” Jamison said with a nod, wanting to bring up King, but hesitating all the same. If Reveca thought you wanted her to do something she would sure as hell find a way to do the opposite. “How is King?”
“Fucking peachy, right at home at the Boneyard.”
He crossed his arms. “Are you running from him with this house?”
Reveca angled her stare at him. Jamison had no idea that she and Talon were done, over, finished, no more, doing their best to at least remain distant friends. From the outside looking in it looked the same at the Boneyard.
In the past Talon was always going his way and she was going hers, they met in the middle, usually late at night. These days Reveca was in her garden late at night while he was on some long highway.
“I can’t outrun him, Jamison,” Reveca admitted.
He tilted his head, almost smiled.
“Don’t give me that look. I’m still pissed at you, and you owe me this favor.”
“For no reason.”
“How the fuck can you say that?” Reveca asked with an icy stare.
Jamison lifted his chin. “If I came to you months back and said, ‘Reveca, I know where Kenson is, he’s trapped and you have to bargain with a Lord of Death to get him out,’ you would have told me fuck off, let him rot or would have charged forward.”
“Not the point.”
“What is your point?”
“That it would have been nice to have a fucking heads up. You can’t bring a man like King into my fold and not expect aftershocks, with or without a history.”
“He’s fighting with more than Cashton now, I assume.”
No he wasn’t. None of the boys were fighting. They were just fine, doing that guy thing where they could just shake shit off, act like it wasn’t going on.
“Help me move this house,” Reveca said.
“You swear to me that you’re not running from King.”
“Why do you care if I am?”
Jamison clenched his jaw. He couldn’t tell her even if he wanted to. When she fell for King again, surrendered herself, it had be because she wanted to. Someone as stubborn as her, as King, that would take some time, but it was still what had to happen if they had any hope of slaying the dark God Revelin.
He leaned down to look in her eyes. “How many tears did I see you cry for him? How many times did I watch you try to kill yourself, follow him? How many times did you throw the fact that he was gone in my face, in Saige’s, and now he’s here and you are still fucking pissed.”
“Anger is my color,” she said, not missing a beat.
“You’re all adults, immortal adults. Surely you can work this out and stay under one roof.”
“We’re all primal, Jamison. So let me play into your fairy tale. Say I just decide to tell Talon to fuck off, tell him to go chill in the swamp house and fuck any road whore he chooses. In your mind do you think King is going to crawl in his old bed? That he’s going to move in to Talon’s space and not go bat shit crazy because his scent is everywhere.”
Jamison leaned back and smirked, an ‘ah ha’ expression strapped across his face. “I see.”
“Fuck off, Jamison. That’s not my reason. I just said that to get you to help me,” Reveca said, looking away, knowing damn well deep down it was her reason. She just needed a start over, and this house had always given that to her in the past. Talon’s scent was nowhere in it.
“Right.”
“I want my own space. Bastion needs his. I still don’t know where the fuck Zale is, and every book in that library will help me figure that out, in some way it will.”
“You sure he didn’t pass over?” Jamison asked, losing his smirk.
She wasn’t sure of shit. Erio never saw him pass, which either meant that Windsome spelled Zale to go right to death, which King swore didn’t happen, or the Unclaimed latched on to him and pulled him in deep.
Reveca lifted a shoulder to answer. Her bigger problem was that even though there was hundreds and hundreds of names on Crass’s list, eventually he would want Zale and she wouldn’t have him to deliver.
Which was one of the very concrete reasons she wanted this house in her Boneyard. She was going to have to figure out how to kill Crass eventually. That was the only way to free King from his control and her from his constant barters. That was no easy task to accomplish. No one had ever slain a Lord of Death before.
“Any more leads on Black?” Jamison asked.
“We’re looking, it’s kinda hard to properly interrogate Devil’s Den fucks when the lawmen stay up your ass constantly.”
“Cartier said that was almost cleaned up.”
“Quiet, not cleaned up,” Reveca said, growing sick of his stalling questions. She wasn’t lying when she said she had spent that much time with internal affairs. They were trying to balance out Blackwater’s confession with what Reveca knew, wanting to ‘clean up’ their department. It was all a rewind of what happened years ago.
“Let’s roll, Jamison.”
“Witnesses?” he asked, lookin
g for another stall. He wasn’t sure they could do this, and quite frankly he didn’t want to hear Evanthe’s lip if they did happen to destroy this house.
Reveca pulled out her phone, seeing missed calls from Thames and few other guys. That wasn’t odd, though. They freaked every time she went off on her own. In the past, Talon always knew where she was, or what she was up to, so they would ask him when they needed something. Now it was downright impossible for her disappear for more than hour without someone tracking her down.
Reveca sent a text to Star and Taurus telling them to make sure everyone vacated the lot. Then she sent at text to Bastion and Gwinn to tell them to throw up a blinding shield around the exterior of the Boneyard and the foundation site.
None of them had a fucking clue what she was up to. Reveca had paid a crew to come to the Boneyard and work non-stop until that foundation was set in place. Those at the Boneyard surely thought she was building a house, not moving one.
Jamison stepped back all at once, feeling a surge of power dominating the air. That very second King appeared at Reveca’s side.
Slowly, in a bothered fashion, Reveca pursed her lips as she kept her stare on the phone, and King impishly glared down at her.
“King,” Jamison said with a nod. “You’re a little outside your boundaries.”
King leered and met Jamison’s stare. “Seems they have been expanded recently.” He moved his stare to Reveca. “The boys are looking for you, it’s important.”
Reveca looked up at him nice and slow, trying to find a balance inside. It was odd for her to hear him say that, something Talon had always said in the past. Only Talon would call her, leave a voicemail. King just tracked her ass down. Didn’t matter where the fuck she was, even in her Edge, he could get there now.
“And what did that cost?” Jamison asked as concern filled his eyes. He knew how hard it was to deal with Crass, that it was dangerous that Reveca had to do so in the first place.
“None of your business,” Reveca snapped. She lifted a brow. “As you can clearly see I spoke the truth. I’m not outrunning anything. It’s quite impossible,” she said with a nod to King at her side.
She elbowed King the second that smirk of his turned into a laugh, a dark one. “Why are you here?” King asked, lowering his head to meet Reveca’s eyes, loving the fact that she had a nervous glint in her energy.
“She wants to move out,” Jamison supplied, earning a glare from Reveca.
“Do you now?” King asked, somewhat surprised. Then again he wasn’t. He knew she had barely been in her own home over the last few weeks, long enough to shower and that was about it.
“I’m moving the house to the Boneyard,” Reveca said. “Its best, for Bastion, of course.”
“For Bastion,” King repeated as he bit his lip and let his ice blue eyes flow down her only to rise again.
“Don’t you dare,” she said under her breath.
King nearly laughed. “You want the house, love, so be it.”
“Love?” Jamison repeated, with clear shock in his eyes.
“One of his many new tricks,” Reveca muttered.
Jamison shifted his stare between the pair of them, dreading what was done to earn these freedoms, and hoping against all hope that it was something Reveca could handle.
“All clear,” Reveca said as soon as she received a text from Bastion and Star.
With her head held high, she walked in the front door and made her way to the center room. Ready to get this done and move on, a good day of Zen was what she needed, in a new house. Peace was on its way.
Chapter Four
Most of the inside of Evanthe’s home was stone with wide wooden beams, vaulted ceilings, and wide-open spaces—in effect it looked like the castle it once was before Evanthe altered it over the years. There were still stones within the home that were thousands of years old, stones that carried the energy of the past, both good and bad.
Reveca was standing before the massive staircase in the center of the lower level, slowly circling the stone floor when King approached her. It was so hard for her to meet his gaze now, to look at him and know what they’d shared, to remember the power, the emotion between them. Even harder knowing that even though her acts were selfless, the hardest thing she had ever done—he refused to see them that way.
“I can see the appeal,” he said quietly as he glanced around. There was a royal vibe to this place, one that Reveca fit well into.
“Where’s Jamison?”
“Putting his car in the garage.”
Reveca lifted a brow. “He went from not thinking we couldn’t do this to adding weight to the move?”
“Must have confidence in me,” King said, meeting her stare, knowing she caught the double meaning in his words.
Reveca looked away. “You’ll never understand.”
“These walls you put up? No, I won’t.”
Her stare snapped to his. “King, Windsome told me to relieve your restrictions.”
He lifted his chin, stared down at her over his sharp, chiseled, angelic features. “Did she tell you to seduce me? Blind me? To send me away?”
“Not the point.”
“You made it a point by blaming her.”
“I didn’t blame her,” Reveca retorted. “I told you why.”
He nearly laughed. “You did, but I’m not going to have this argument with you again. You were wrong and you know it.”
If there was one thing that Reveca could not stand it was someone telling her she was wrong. Even if she was. “How the fuck was I wrong? You have a vast army that needs you, a God to kill, and you’re not doing that now.”
“You’re impossible,” he said, barely holding his grin in.
“Me?” she said, pointing to her chest, completely appalled.
“Yes, you. You were furious at me for going with Revelin in the past and now you’re furious that I didn’t leave.”
She stomped up to him. “I’m furious that your timing fucking sucks. You have no idea what I went through. All you did was wake up and hang out with your boy then show up at the Boneyard again. It killed me to send you away.”
“Did it,” he asked, losing his grin and searching her eyes. She had never come that close to professing her emotions to him.
“Stop it,” she said, pushing his chest. “I’m sick of fighting with you.”
“Then stop.”
“Stop? How can I stop? You won’t tell me what Windsome said. You won’t even tell me if you’re still an Escort—how the fuck can you say love now? Why are you stronger?”
His glance moved over her body, a sinful wave of erotic energy right behind it. Reveca gasp, leaned in, and clenched his chest for balance as she squeezed her thighs together.
“Stopping fucking teasing me and answer my question.”
King moved his hands around her hips and pulled her flesh against him, making sure she felt the outright want he had for her.
His right hand slowly moved up her side whispering across her chest before reaching her chin and pulling her closer to his lips. Just barely he let his lips meet hers, tilted his head then deepened his kiss briefly with one cavernous sway of his tongue against hers, a movement that Reveca felt weaken her knees. “I am,” he breathed, against her lips, before he kissed her again, making her head spin.
His hand left her chin, and spread wide as it passed her chest then her stomach, before reaching the heat of her, Reveca gasped and went to push him back, but he held her closer. “You empower me, love. You awakened me.”
Reveca forgot her question and her argument and just felt his touch, the feel of his hands pushing her jeans against the part of her body that seemed to always ache now.
His lips whispered across her brow, her cheekbone, then her lips once more. “You want to know my answers, then you’re going to have to learn to listen.”
“To what?” she asked on a heated breath.
“Everything…every touch…every emotion,” he said, as his hand moved a
round her waist. “You have to let me in.”
“I let you in once,” Reveca said as she gained some clarity.
A deep, sinful laugh left his broad chest. “Too bad that spell stopped me. It would have been far more than once.”
Reveca pushed against his chest, even stepped back to try and find breath. “That’s not what I meant.” She flushed. “At one time you were the only one that knew me.”
His eyes moved over her energy that was all around her. He was still blown away at how powerful it had grown, that he had never known it to be as demanding before—nature itself bowed when she passed.
“What?” she demanded.
“I see you, love. Do you see me?”
Reveca looked away. She didn’t and she didn’t because he scared the fuck out of her, just like Talon said he did.
King had hurt her before; Talon had ripped her open days before. Right now Reveca was having a hard time trusting anyone, including herself. She wanted a clear head, and space. King had given that to her. At best this was their second conversation since the showdown, but just one touch of his had her head spinning again. He made her feel high as hell.
She was trying not to be a girl about all of this, but that was hard to do when King unequivocally made her feel like a woman.
In the silence before her answer they both heard Jamison clear his throat. “Should I come back?”
Reveca leaned to her side so she could see him around King. “Move it. I’d like to get some Zen sometime this century.”
King clenched his jaw. “Then we might want to stay here for rest of the night.”
“Do what?” Reveca asked as she flushed, not believing he said that in front of Jamison.
“I told you, the boys are looking for you.”
“Someone hurt?”
“No, and I think that’s the problem if I’m following them correctly.”
Reveca raised her hands to tell him to stop, this was her problem. Lately she never finished what she started, but she was finishing this. This house was going to move before she broke up any tiff the boys had gotten into or sat across the table from one more fucking lawman. “Let’s roll.”