by DB Reynolds
KATO MOVED FIRST. That was good, because Grace wasn’t sure she was capable of movement. And if it came right down to it, he was strong enough to carry her upstairs and dump her into a bed . . . where she’d probably sleep for the next two days, twitching and moaning until this endless orgasm was finally finished with her.
Good God, the man was potent. Maybe it was all that magic burning in his blood, firing up his muscles and bones, not to mention that perfectly fine cock. Long and thick and. . . . And that wasn’t helping any. She was already on the verge of yet another climax, just because he was stretched out on top of her, his cock flexing in the aftermath of what she was pretty sure had been a blazingly hot orgasm for him, too.
Kato shifted on top of her, rolling to one side and wrapping a strong arm around her waist, pulling her into the heat of his body. He dipped his head and kissed her sweaty shoulder where he’d bit her. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.
She gave a little laugh. Hurt her? Only in the sense that he’d ruined her for any other lover. She couldn’t imagine another man making her feel the things that Kato did. She’d felt sensuous and seductive, daring and erotic, and, of all things, she’d felt desired, treasured. She wanted to stay in his arms forever, and that was a dangerous thought, because while she had no idea what Kato’s specific plans were, she didn’t think they included hanging around L.A. He had to find his fellow warriors, especially the ones still trapped. And there was his leader and hotshot sorcerer Nicodemus Katsaros, who it seemed was probably still alive somewhere. That’s where Kato’s heart would take him, not hanging around here with her.
“Grace?”
She forced her thoughts back to the present, to the sensual feast that was Kato. Maybe he wouldn’t stay forever. Maybe this was nothing more to him than a giant fuckfest to make up for all those years he’d been trapped in stone. But if that’s all there was, then she was going to savor every minute. She stretched languidly in his arms, sliding her body along his in a blatantly carnal invitation. “The last thing I’m feeling is hurt,” she murmured, then licked the sweat from his neck.
He palmed her ass, pulling her even closer. “I need a shower,” he growled, rubbing his still-rigid cock against her pussy, setting off sparks of pleasure that had her groaning against his skin.
“How about a bath instead? It’s a big tub.”
“A quick shower first, to wash off the blood.”
“Deal. There’s just one problem. I don’t think I can move.”
An inquisitive grunt was his only response. His mouth was too busy sucking the tender skin behind her ear, sending shivers of desire coasting over her breasts, leaving them heavy and aching, her nipples almost painfully hard.
She cried out when he licked his way down to her breasts, his teeth closing over one firm peak.
“Kato,” she gasped.
He growled, and she cried out when he pinched her other nipple hard enough to send a shock of pleasurable pain right to her clit.
He lifted his head, and grinned down at her. And then without warning, he was standing with her in his arms, striding across the room, and climbing the stairs, as if she weighed nothing.
“Oh, my,” she breathed, wrapping her arms more firmly around his neck. “Problem solved.”
He chuckled, a dark sound full of erotic promise. “You can thank me later.”
GRACE REMEMBERED that exchange as she lay in the big tub, deliciously hot water lapping at her breasts, teasing her nipples, while Kato’s cock nestled between the cheeks of her ass where he lay behind her. She wondered if she should thank him now, or wait until they were no longer naked. Two more orgasms—and that was just the shower—and she still hungered for him, still felt desire quivering over her skin, and her pussy quaking and wet with need.
Kato slid deeper into the tub, his arms tightening around her, the rough hair on his forearms scraping the underside of her breasts. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever felt, and it made her want to get up on her knees, spin around, and take him inside her.
A growl rumbled through his chest, vibrating against her back, as his cock flexed against her ass. She shuddered, nearly swamped by a wave of pure lust that seemed to be her gut reaction to him, and she felt suddenly out of control, driven by a desire that she wasn’t sure he returned. She wondered again if he felt anything more for her, or if she was just a convenient fuck.
She reached for something to talk about, something that didn’t involve sex. Anything to prove she was wrong.
“What happens to a person who’s been possessed?” she asked abruptly. “I mean, after he’s . . . exorcised, or whatever.”
She felt Kato stiffen—and not in a good way. He relaxed after a moment, but it seemed more forced than natural. “You’re worried about Ryan,” he commented.
“Well, yeah. I feel guilty. I’m the one who got him involved in all of this.”
He shrugged, sending small waves over the water. “I don’t think he was possessed long enough to suffer permanent damage. He seemed fairly coherent when we left.”
“I guess.”
“Of course, you know him better than I do.”
That old light bulb clicked on in her head. Fishing expedition, anyone? Kato clearly wasn’t buying the college study buddy story anymore. Not after she’d shot Ryan point blank as if it was nothing they hadn’t done before. And Ryan’s quick acceptance of what was a truly bizarre situation, of their need to bail, while he suffered a sudden and convenient bout of amnesia . . . yeah, that had probably blown the study buddy story right out of the water. So to speak.
Grace cleared her threat nervously. This was something she never talked about, something she and Ryan never talked about. They’d never come right out and discussed the decision not to talk about what they’d experienced, it was understood. It was a time that had shaped them both, something they didn’t regret. But they didn’t particularly want to revisit it, either.
Kato knew something was missing in the story, though. And if she didn’t tell him what it was, he’d fill in the blanks on his own, which could be much worse. And all for nothing.
“You were friends at university?” he asked.
It was a leading question, but filled with such skepticism that it hardly qualified as such. He was telling her, in so many words, that he knew her story was bullshit, and he was giving her a chance to ’fess up. What he didn’t say, but what she understood, was that if she didn’t take that chance, the lie would hang between them like a rotting carcass, until neither one of them could tolerate the smell and they drifted apart.
The thought of losing Kato made her heart ache and the breath squeeze from her lungs. She didn’t want to drift apart, she realized. So what if they couldn’t get enough of each other? If all they wanted to do was fuck? They’d just met. There’d be time for long, meaningful discussions when they were old and gray, sitting on the deck, watching the grandkids play on the beach. She blinked in shock at where her musings had taken her.
Guess she liked him for more than sex, after all.
“We did go to the same university,” she said finally, offering some small defense. Was that a resigned sigh she heard coming from him? “But that’s not how we met.”
He was definitely paying attention now, so still that if their bodies hadn’t been touching, she wouldn’t have known he was there.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said bluntly. “Do you know what nine/eleven is? I know you haven’t been—”
“I know of it. Your museum colleagues talked of little else for days afterward.”
“And the war that followed? Did they talk about that?”
“Less, and not without disagreements, but war is something I understand far better than most.”
She could hear the puzzlement in his voice, probably wondering what any of this had to do with her and Ryan. She didn’t blame him.
“I was recruited right out of college. Hell, they didn’t even wait for me to graduate. My family lived all over the world when I
was growing up. My dad works in international banking; his whole family does, going back a few generations. Anyway, as a kid, that meant a new language, a new culture every time we moved, which was a lot.” She shrugged. “Kids learn languages more easily anyway, but I have a gift. And after nine/eleven, when the war started, they—”
“They?”
She winced. This flirted with events she wasn’t supposed to talk about. But who was he going to tell? Hell, his friends were all older than any of the languages she knew. “The government,” she said finally. “Military, CIA, NSA . . . if it has an acronym, they were probably involved. And that’s just the ones in the U.S.”
He flattened his hand on her belly. “They wanted your language skills.”
She nodded. “They were desperate for reliable translators, but I have a unique specialty. A lot of what they were doing involved villages or tribes who were isolated enough that their spoken language had experienced little modernization. It’s a dialect, but one that throws back to the original language, rather than evolving from it. That’s where I came in. The war was taking place in the same part of the world where so much of early human history took place, which meant that those ancient languages I’d been studying were suddenly relevant.”
“You were a soldier?”
“Oh, no. I mean, yeah, they put us through a modified boot camp. Military training,” she explained. “But I never expected to be anywhere near the war.”
“Is that where you learned to handle your gun?”
“No, actually. That was from a bodyguard when I was eleven, and my brother thirteen. He said if we wanted to stay alive, we needed to be a part of the solution, not the problem. So, he bought us guns and taught us how and when to use them, along with the basics of what’s called SERE. Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.”
“You’ve kept up your training?”
“I do. Not live-action simulations like he did for us, but I go to the range, and I stay in shape.”
“This boot camp they gave you . . . is that where you met Ryan?”
She nodded. “We were in the same working group. I don’t know exactly what he did for them. Something to do with algorithms or whatever, targeting or drones, maybe. You’d have to ask him. Don’t count on an answer, though. He’s way better at keeping secrets than I am.”
“You worked together?”
“Only once. The one and only time I got sent into the field. It was supposed to be a meeting of allies. The leaders of some tribe wanted a face-to-face meeting—a matter of respect, they said. Our guys had a local translator, but at the last minute they got some intel—information, that is—that made them question their local guy’s reliability. They decided to bring their own translator along, and I was the only one with a chance in hell of knowing the dialect. So, off I went, with Ryan and a bunch of other spooks—um, spies—not to mention a small army of our own for protection.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I was scared. Mind you, my family lived in some risky cities when I was growing up, the kind where we traveled everywhere in bulletproof limos with armed bodyguards—including the one who taught us to shoot—so this wasn’t the first time I’d been in a dangerous place. But this was different. I was bundled up so no one would notice I was female, praying I wouldn’t be expected to translate on the spot, and terrified that if I did, I’d fuck up and get someone killed. Ryan was sitting next to me. We didn’t know each other, except to nod in the hallways, but he must have seen how nervous I was. He took my hand and held on to it the whole trip. It was a small thing, but it grounded me. Reminded me why I was there. And ultimately, I saved his life, along with a lot of others.”
“Your new allies played you false,” he said knowingly.
She leaned back against his shoulder, smiling when he kissed the side of her head. “They did. Their translator was making shit up, saying what our guys wanted to hear to keep them talking, while they put a plot in motion to kill most of us, and kidnap the rest. Including the CIA officer in charge of our mission. I alerted him as discreetly as I could, and we tried to bug out gracefully. But their translator figured out why we were leaving, and things got messy. It was the first time I’d ever fired a gun at a real person. People still died. But they weren’t our people. I don’t know what it says about me that I’m still glad about that.”
“War is about death, Grace. Those men would have killed your entire party, and celebrated afterward, so I, for one, am glad it was you who were alive to celebrate instead.”
“I didn’t cel—”
“Of course not. But you were glad to be alive.”
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Anyway, Ryan and I stayed in touch. Everyone else that day was military, or with some agency or other. We were the only two civilians, so to speak. I guess we bonded.”
“Bonded,” he repeated flatly.
She slapped at his hand on her belly, succeeding only in splashing water. “We did not have sex! We went out once, a single date, but there was no attraction between us, no spark.”
Kato snorted. “And yet he seemed like such an intelligent man.”
She grinned, feeling all warm and fuzzy. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? That he could have resisted wonderful me?”
His stomach growled suddenly, loud enough that it vibrated against her back.
“Oh my God!” She sat up, splashing more water as she turned to face him. “You need food. It’s been hours.”
He shrugged. “It would be—” His stomach growled again, making its wishes on the matter very clear.
“You’re way too polite. Come on.”
A half hour later, slightly damp, but clean and warm, they sat at the big island in her mom’s kitchen and chowed down on a pile of sandwiches and pickles, along with some tortilla chips and salsa. Feeling in a celebratory mood—after all, they’d rescued Ryan and finished off all three demons freed by the scrolls—Grace was having a glass of wine, while Kato had chosen a darker ale from her dad’s beer selection.
“My boss at the museum, Gabler—you met him—doesn’t approve of the work I did during the war. It’s the reason he doesn’t like me,” she said, picking up on their earlier conversation. “Or, maybe, doesn’t trust me is more accurate.”
“Because you translated? Or because you saved lives?”
“He calls it my ‘military background,’ as if that’s a bad thing. He pretends it’s because I’m not a pure academic, that I sullied my research by helping kill the very people I should have been studying. But I think it’s just because he resents the fact that I come from money. Old money is the term he’d use, going back generations on both sides. My dad’s family investment firm was established more than a hundred years ago in Europe. The main offices are here now, but they still have branches all over Europe, and their clients have serious money. Gabler lusts after that kind of wealth, being part of the old money crowd. Either that or he just resents the fact that I’m more butch than he is,” she added with a chuckle. “He puts on a prissy accent, but the truth is that he’s blue collar all the way. He put himself through college and grad school, working the whole time.”
“He’s ashamed of his hard work?” he asked in disbelief.
“I know, right?” She pointed with a pickle, then took a bite. “He should be proud of what he accomplished on his own. He’s a very smart guy, and really knows his stuff. But he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder, always making snide remarks about my family money, and how I got the museum fellowship because my parents made a big donation. That’s not true, by the way. My parents didn’t even know I was trying for the position until after I got it.”
“It’s pointless for him to deny where he comes from. I’ve learned that lesson very well.”
“Uh, yeah. Although not everyone’s mom can curse her son to suffer forever just because he left home.”
He toasted her silently, and she continued.
“That’s why I’m so careful about how I dress and act when I’m at work.
I know you noticed the difference between the real me, and what I think of as the museum me. Sometimes I feel like a monkey at a séance when I’m there. I want to talk to ghosts, just like everyone else, but it’s so fucking boring sitting there holding hands!” She laughed. “The people I work with are so smart and so dedicated, and they all speak in hushed voices, as if there really are ghosts listening and judging every step we take in studying their artifacts.”
“Ghosts can be quite real,” he commented.
That shut Grace up for a moment. Ghosts were real? She shook the thought out of her head, filing it under “topics for another day.”
“I was surprised when Gabler gave me the scrolls to work on. It was a plum assignment, and one I thought for sure he’d give to someone more suitable than me and my gunpowder-tainted fingertips.”
Kato picked up her hand and kissed her fingers. And her heart melted. She had to swallow twice before she could go on.
“I found out later that it was Mr. Sotiris who—”
She couldn’t continue because Kato was suddenly on his feet, his hand on the grip of his sword, as he turned to scan the room and the ocean beyond. Adrenaline spiked as Grace followed his gaze, searching for whatever threat had made him react, wishing she’d followed the advice of her long-ago bodyguard and kept her gun handy.
“What is it?” she whispered, but he’d already moved around to her side of the island, and was gripping her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him.
“Sotiris. You said Sotiris.”
She nodded, still not understanding his reaction. “He’s one of the museum’s biggest donors. Hardly anyone knows that, because he’s always anonymous, but my parents—”
“We have to get to the museum. Now.”