Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

They all shut the hell right up, even though Ella doesn’t seem to mind it when I speak. She carries on, finishing up at last, then I turn away when I realize what she’s about to do.

  Then…Kya sneezes.

  Ella’s growl doubles, and Kya dematerializes. I hear a sneeze somewhere off in the distance, then hear the telltale sign that Ella has resumed the task I turned away to miss.

  “Holy hell. She’s pissing on the remains. Hashtag, nasty territory marked,” Dice says, then a loud snapping sound emerges from behind me, accompanied with a shrill scream, and I roll my eyes as I turn around, seeing Ella shifting now like she’s ready to punish the onlookers who disturbed that entire ritual.

  That’s when I dematerialize over to her, pulling her to me just as she finishes her shift back into flesh, and drag her away from them, dropping us in my cabin.

  Her hands go to my neck, pulling me down, and my mouth crashes against hers violently. I groan because she still tastes like that terrible blood, but at least that keeps me from doing something stupid.

  She seems to relax against me, even as her growls turn into little rumbling purrs.

  She suddenly sags, which confuses me, until I realize she’s passed out. A little panic hits me, and I pull her chest against my face, listening to her heart.

  When I hear the steady thrum of it, along with a soft little purr again, I roll my eyes. Damn girl got so drunk on the high she passed out.

  “Immortal cardiac arrest has been added to your long list of offenses against me,” I tell her as I carry her to my bed and place her on it.

  It’s hard to ignore the fact she’s naked, but just feeling her skin against mine seems to put my own beasts to rest after getting more riled than they have in centuries.

  I put my head back over her heart, needing to hear it as closely as possible, then close my eyes, enjoying the peace my mind gets when it’s not busy searching for her.

  I’m not even a little bit tired when I start drifting off to sleep.

  But I startle awake when Ella moves under me.

  I lean up, realizing belatedly I never bothered to put any clothes on, and just the slight stirring of her is awakening the parts of my body that want to blow centuries of planning all to hell for baser urges.

  Her eyes flutter open, and she groans as she clutches her head like it aches. I bite into my wrist without hesitation, and stop short when the first drop of my blood lands on her lips.

  My eyes widen, and I think to stop her too late as she licks it, then moans as her eyes shut again. Instincts having already fucked me and damage already done, I say nothing as I hold my wrist over her lips, letting my blood drip to them to ease her hangover.

  Her hands fist in the sheets under her, and she keeps her eyes closed as she licks up the drops, her body unconsciously arching into me.

  Considering I’m halfway draped over her already, and we’re also naked, it takes a large amount of effort not to let myself notice the intimacy of what it feels like to be naked in bed with my mate while she feeds from me.

  It makes all the wrong instincts stir to life. Some primal and some that have me looking at a future I know better than to think will exist. I’m tired of fighting, but my death will have purpose.

  There needs to be a purpose to it all so I can die in more peace than I was ever in while alive.

  Letting my head get muddled by the bonnie creature beneath me, who is running her hands up my chest and consistently fucking with my control, is both stupid and embarrassingly naïve.

  The door opens, and Ella jerks as we both look over at Kya limping in, sneezing with one red, familiar pigtail on her head, and half of a dress that looks exactly like the one the incubus is still wearing.

  Also, one rosy cheek and one set of blue eyelashes is also on her as she sneezes three more times, her eyes remaining screwed shut with the effort.

  The bite I made on my arm heals, the last drop of blood falling to Ella’s lips just as Kya’s eyes open and widen as she takes in the scene.

  Ella naked on my messy bed, me naked on top of her, my arm hovering over her mouth as Ella licks the teasing drop of blood from her lips, and Ella’s hands on my chest…

  “Oh, wow,” Kya says as she spins around, putting her back to us, which brings my attention to the skirt on one half of her body and the ridiculous shoes.

  My eyebrow quirks as I study her more, seeing the stuff spreading, slowly turning her into a Polly dopple ganger.

  Ella snorts, then snorts again and again before she starts laughing.

  “Sorry,” Kya says insincerely, “for bursting in during whatever it is you two are doing, but I have—” She sneezes, and it forces her to hop back a step as the magic seems to spread like a contagion, before finishing. “—a crisis, and there’s no way I can let Ella’s family see me like this. They have a sense of humor.”

  “You’ve seen me naked before,” I point out absently, my brow furrowing as the contagious spell continues to spread, making her look more ridiculous by the minute.

  “But not with a girl.”

  “Actually, you have,” I point out, trying not to smirk when Ella growls then blushes like she’s embarrassed by the slip.

  “Yeah, but that was different, and I didn’t look then either,” she adds.

  “What the hell is going on with you? How did you piss Polly off?” Ella asks, getting back on topic like it’s crucial to do at the moment.

  It’s nice to know the irrational jealousy isn’t one-sided.

  I find solace in the fact she’s as tortured as I am by trivial things.

  “I haven’t pissed—” Another sneeze and more spreading of the magic interrupts what she’s saying. “Polly off. I don’t even know who Polly is. But Polly better fucking fix this. How do I get in contact with her without going into those damn woods?”

  Ella answers, “I have her number. She gave it to me when she dropped off Dice, and I had to memorize it since my phone went missing that night.”

  “What is it?” Kya asks, not turning around as she taps her foot in matching ridiculous shoes now.

  Ella gives her the number, and Kya immediately starts dialing.

  It seems like the contagion is complete, and the sneezing in the background has stopped. I’m unnervingly fascinated by how amusing this entire situation is.

  “Hello, how can I service your big cock today?” comes the unusual and slightly disturbing greeting from the other side of the phone.

  Kya pulls the phone back, stares at it, then brings it closer again.

  “I’m actually calling because you cursed my sister’s boyfriend to look like you, and apparently you like red pigtails and rosy cheeks, along with skirts that will never work well in a battle. Somehow I got infected, and I need you to fix it asap.”

  There’s silence for a beat, and I find myself smiling for no particular reason, mostly because I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Kya actually embarrassed like this. So embarrassed she’d rather face me in this ludicrous situation than face Ella’s circle.

  “Hmm, that would be an injustice to your sister,” Polly says dismissively.

  “Excuse me?” Kya says, her voice deepening.

  I glance down at Ella, finding her eyes on my lips instead of the scene at hand, even though she’s usually one to enjoy amusement such as this. Her eyes flick to mine, and she reaches up, touching my lips in a way that momentarily distracts me.

  When my smile falls, she drops her hand and clears her throat, returning her attention to Kya, but not moving away from me.

  I should move away from her, but—

  “Well, that spell can’t spread unless you’re betraying your sister by getting dipped into by the cursed diddle stick. In other words, if you don’t want to be spelled, stop being a home-wrecking sister whore. Have a nice day, and goodbye.”

  Kya gasps as she glares at her phone, then angrily starts redialing.

  “Hello, how can I service your big cock today?”

  “Everyone has caller ID, so
I know you know it’s me again,” Kya bites out. “I have not being getting diddled in by that damn annoying incubus, and you’d better fix this, or I will rain hell down on you. I’m half demon so that threat is literal.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Kya says, pulling the phone back, then she throws the phone across the cabin, and it shatters.

  I’m smiling again before I can help myself, and I don’t even care. Usually this would annoy the hell out of me, so I’m not particularly sure why I’m smiling.

  “That psychotic bitch just hung up on me after accusing me of having sex with that deranged sociopath my sister insists on loving,” Kya says, whirling around, looking furious, and I choke back some foreign sound that barely evades my lips.

  It almost confuses me when it happens again, and Kya stares at me like I’ve sprouted a second head when the sound finally escapes.

  Her cheeks are both rosy, the tip of her nose is uncharacteristically red, and the usually very serious general of my army glares at me through obscenely long blue lashes. Her messy red pigtails jut out from her head and stay stiff, awkwardly pointing outward. The entire thing is positively ludicrous.

  “Are you seriously laughing?” she asks incredulously as I stare at her in the fluffy poodle skirt and overly inflated chest.

  My chest starts shaking with the force of the laughter, and my side starts hurting as something somewhat cathartic rolls over me. It’s almost like the same freedom I feel when I shift and run wild in the woods.

  “I can’t remember the last time I actually found something funny,” I manage to say, unable to stop it now that it’s started.

  Ella is shaking with laughter under me—though, I’m not sure if it’s my laughter shaking her or her own.

  Kya just continues to gawk at me.

  “So many years I’ve known you, and you don’t crack a grin that isn’t terrifying, but this makes you laugh?” Kya asks in an unusually shrill tone that only makes her seem all the more absurd.

  I laugh harder, until my eyes are watering and I feel completely ridiculous. It almost pisses me off to laugh like this.

  “Give me some reason as to why that crazy woman just accused me of having sex with Dice,” she snaps.

  “You’re twins,” Ella offers.

  “You also did that rather unusual bonding thing not too terribly long ago,” I add, unable to keep a straight face. “Maybe that has something to do with it. Some sort of bond you share.”

  Not even talking about twin bonds sours my mood the way it should.

  I work to clear my throat, but she shakes her head, grabbing something off my table.

  “What are you doing?” I ask through my lingering laughter.

  “I’m going to take a cue from our current arch nemesis, and I’m going to possess a damn witch until she fixes this shit.”

  She storms out, and I hear silence for a brief second until rancorous laughter suddenly erupts all around the camp.

  The door slams shut, sealing out the sound from my freshly applied soundproofing spell that works better than the old one.

  Ella stirs under me, and my eyes fall back to her, finding her gaze once again on my face, just watching me the way I’ve often watched her. This is a fucking mess now.

  She feels comforted by the taste of my blood in her veins, even though she shouldn’t have come down from that high so easily.

  My blood helps her. Hell, kissing her did something to her. Maybe soothed the beast that was still so close to the surface.

  I still can’t seem to pry myself away from her, so instead, I decide if we’re going to be naked in bed, we can at the very least remain focused.

  Clearing my throat, I ask, “So you think Hannah wants to invade the Lokies with her small army and steal their power the way she’s done others?”

  Chapter 17

  ELLA

  When you’re comfortably lounging intimately with a guy who usually puts immediate distance between the two of you, and for once he doesn’t? You do something stupid…like hope there’s been a change.

  Then he asks about Lokies because he’s apparently been eavesdropping with his stalker mind. I suppose that’s how he showed up to start fighting Adam with me.

  “What happened with Adam?” I ask instead.

  “He’s thoroughly dead and pissed on, but I’m not sure what she did to turn him into that. I am, however, almost positive she sent him to target you,” he tells me, his grip tightening as his silver eyes come up and dart around the room.

  I’m not sure what thoroughly dead and pissed on means, but I’m sure everyone is fine if Kya was in here focusing on a contagious spell.

  Right now I feel oddly settled, which is an unusual experience after losing myself. My muscles are loose, and the headache is gone, staved off by his incredibly tempting blood.

  “I think shifting actually helps tamp down the some of the darkness in you,” he says as he pushes off me, clearing his throat.

  He gets up, and I let my eyes rake over his body as I roll over to my front and watch his back as he walks to the far side of the room.

  “It’s harder to shift into lycan or wolf form,” I tell him, watching his ass as he bends over and picks some jeans up from the floor. “But I always feel freer when I shift. I fly a lot with Thad. Or did. We’ve been hypervigilant lately and not risking flight.”

  He shakes the jeans, and I practically feel the magic buzzing in the room as he ensures the denim is clean and starts dressing.

  “You’re not usually a commando guy, are you?” I muse as the jeans cover his bare ass.

  “I’m not entirely sure what that means,” he says absently.

  My lips twitch. “Never mind.” He grabs a shirt, repeating the process as he pulls it down over his head.

  My eyes scan his cabin, since he’s not distracting me with hostility for a change, and I gauge some of the many papers of equations that have fallen to the floor.

  “You like math, I assume,” I say as I gesture toward the ground when he turns back to face me.

  His eyes drop to the papers scattered there, and he shrugs a shoulder.

  “It’s a necessity. It’s actually science. I’m deconstructing the prison I made by reversing the equations that helped me create it.”

  He manages to say that without sounding bitter, even though Alton stole his revenge by being too willing to take the punishment when the time came.

  “You created that weird place using science instead of magic?” I ask, confused.

  His eyes seem to spark with that new humor he’s recently found, and his lips tug up in one corner.

  “There was a time when people believed a pot of boiling water to be magic. Magic is only for the unexplainable or a generic term of phrasing when speaking to other immortals who don’t understand there’s a logical foundation for our genetic makeup,” he says as he pushes off and goes to kneel to the ground, scooping up some of the papers. “Everyone has different equations and variables to sort through their abilities. It’s how I learned to control my abilities.”

  Sitting up, I tug the sheet over me and lean against the wall, since he has no headboard.

  “It’s a rather large leap from boiling water to expelling orbs from one’s hands,” I point out.

  “Your mind is more advanced, and your body has different needs from humans. Benign molecules humans see as insignificant become fused together and volatile in the palms of our hands, because we know how to draw them forth.”

  “Explain immortality to me then,” I say, admittedly a little entranced by how complex his mind is.

  “Our bodies aren’t inherently immortal, and in truth, we’re never immortal. We just stop aging and are more resilient than humans. Because we were created from humans, they become the base of reference, but in no way are we like them, other than for appearance’s sake, after turning,” he goes on. “The aging stops when we turn, and the math gets rather complex. It’d take a few days to break down all the equations,” he says as
though he’s answered this question before.

  “Explain my genetic makeup and why it’s royal,” I state a little quieter.

  “Our entire existence revolves around the premise of our baser human instincts that have long been forgotten—survival of the fittest. However, we’re more evolved than savages, so we’ve adjusted and adapted, but there’s always one stronger. You come from a bloodline that is inherently stronger, based on copulations over the centuries. You could be replaced though. Make no mistake.”

  I don’t particularly like that explanation.

  He continues talking as he sighs. “Your mother is more witch-mannered than she is anything, and she relies heavily on those powers. Your father is more night-stalker mentally. You, however, seem to be more animalistic in instinct.”

  I bristle at that. “Why do you say that?”

  He looks over at me. “You hate being caged. You hate being indoors, but you force yourself into a box of expectations. Your animals need freedom, and you deny them that. So when released, you feel free at last, and it helps stave off the darkness that usually hijacks you when you use power.”

  His lips purse like he’s thinking something over.

  “I’m more animalistic in instinct. My brother is more witch-mannered. Being caged should have been worse on me than him, yet I was the one who wouldn’t break.”

  It’s almost a tragic reminder that he doesn’t believe he’s broken, even as he chases his own death. Absentmindedly, I rub my hand over my heart when a dull ache starts there.

  “Explain this bond between us that I’ve felt since that day I woke up in a deserted cabin with the distinct feeling I already missed you,” I say on a rasp.

  His head pops up, silver eyes meeting mine.

  “I can’t. That’s still magic,” he answers as his jaw tics and he turns away.

  “I’ve seen my mother and father. It’s more than magic. It’s two souls intertwined in a way that I envy. And—”

  “I have to go see if we’ve made any progress on pinpointing locations, and I have to tell them about the night stalker Hannah turned into a power-sucking monster that even I struggled with. I should have already done that,” he says as he walks out, still barefoot, without another word.