Unchained Beauty (Deadly Beauties Live On Book 5)

by C. M. Owens

  “We spent twenty-four hours doing that,” I remind her.

  “We still have time,” she says, repeating my words from yesterday that she doesn’t truly understand.

  Unable to help myself, I fucking kiss her once more, ignoring the little content growls in her chest when her fingers tangle in my hair. Then I dematerialize and land on the other side of the room, putting my back to my biggest temptation.

  She groans from behind me, and I smirk as I start dressing.

  “Put on something of mine. We’re going to train you today,” I tell her without turning around.

  I hear her sit up with excitement, then suddenly she’s at my back, running her lips along my shoulder. “Anything of yours? Because I kind of like the shirt you’re wearing right now,” she says, kissing my shoulder blade through the shirt I just pulled on.

  She’s torture of her own kind, but it’s a torture I’ve waited so long to feel.

  Without hesitation, I pull my shirt off, and her hands run up my bare back as I hold it out for her. “You’re being sweet again. I expected you to tell me to find my own fucking shirt.”

  I wipe my bloody smile away as I continue to hold the shirt out for her, and her hand wraps around mine as she takes it.

  “Where did you get this non-extensive wardrobe of yours, anyway? A nineties punk rock band?” she goes on.

  “No idea what that even means,” I tell her absently, my eyes scanning over some of the formulas I’ve recently started putting to use.

  “So there are some things you still don’t know, other than how my mother created a haunted forest,” she chirps.

  I glance over my shoulder, finding her smirking at me, and I arch an eyebrow as I go to pick up my journal, opening it. My eyes scan it quickly, finding the contents quick to open to me, since the memories are still fresh from reading it this morning.

  I know exactly how that forest was created. I just forced myself to forget, because it’s not a useful variable. But she doesn’t need to know that.

  “Are you going to explain the forest or just taunt me with it?” I ask when she peers over my arm at the journal she can’t read.

  “You literally like to know everything, don’t you? And what language is that?”

  “The language is a dead language no one uses anymore. I don’t like to know everything, but I like to learn.”

  My arm moves behind her back as I put the journal down, closing it. I should probably spend some time away from it, because the memories are taking longer and longer to go away, making this all twice as dangerous.

  “After purgatory released,” she starts as I begin guiding her toward the door, “it was like Pandora’s box being left open for too long.”

  “Clearly,” I state dryly. “The anointed are alive again, and I distinctly remember the one and only celebration in the rings being the fact someone told us their very lineage was locked in purgatory forever.”

  She bristles, since Leah is one of her family members now, and indeed one of the most powerful types of anointed—and a fucking night stalker, because life wasn’t already complicated enough.

  I guide her outside, finding the dim light of the approaching evening, and she rests her head against my chest.

  Several pairs of eyes swing our way, and I immediately release her while hopping off the porch. Everyone looks away again, like they know better than to assume anything, but Ella…looks at me like I just slapped her.

  “I can’t look to have any weaknesses,” I tell her so quietly that only she can hear.

  She rolls her eyes while dematerializing ahead of me, and a few eyes dart to her as she walks ahead in nothing but my shirt that hits her mid-thigh. It’s rather distracting, since I know she’s naked underneath it.

  I never pulled on another shirt, so my uncovered scars—per the usual—draw some attention.

  “Anyway,” she says, not looking back at me as she walks to the bottom of the field, leaving me to trail her as my eyes watch her bare legs, internally reminding myself what’s important so I don’t push her down to the grass and pick up where we left off. “Pandora’s box doesn’t go back together so well after it’s been unleashed.”

  “Not sure why we’re discussing things that I do know,” I point out as she turns around and cocks her eyebrow at me.

  “It’s amazing how you go from sweet to normal just by walking outside,” she quips.

  I’m in front of her in the next instant, grabbing her at the waist and shoving her against the closest tree. She just smiles when I press against her, caging her in against the tree as I rake my gaze over her face.

  Her hands run up my chest, and I start forgetting we have an audience.

  “I’m not sweet, Princess. Lose that word from your vocabulary,” I tell her dryly.

  Leaning forward, she presses a kiss to my chest, then drags her lips up to my neck, moving to her tiptoes.

  “You never let anyone else touch you,” she says quietly. “That much I’ve learned.”

  Suppressing a groan as she continues to torment me with her touch that I want to simply enjoy for as long as possible, despite the fact there’s a war we’ve ignored for too long already, I let my forehead drop to hers.

  Her eyes stay fixed to mine, even at the odd angle. “And I like touching you,” she adds. “It soothes something inside me—the darkness. It pushes it all back.”

  “You were smart to use your beasts to push it back, but I’m going to teach you a less painful way. It’ll take longer to harness the control—”

  “How much longer?” she asks, frowning. “I need to be ready real damn soon if we’re going to stop Hannah from opening that portal.”

  “I’m going to stop her from opening the portal. You won’t be able to master control soon enough for that, but you will have a tool at your disposal that will keep you from hurting anyone you don’t want to hurt.”

  “Oh?” she muses. “I thought I had that tool already. You.”

  Fuck. She has no idea how frayed my control is at this point where she’s concerned.

  “Can you take this seriously?” I ask her, glaring down at her in a way that has her clearing her throat and removing her hands from me.

  “Sorry. You’re right.”

  Pushing away from her, since it’s my damn fault we’re this close to begin with, I exhale harshly.

  “You can clearly summon just pieces of your shift, so do that. Summon the claws, give your instincts free roam—”

  “I don’t want to do that, because they’ve weirdly been soothed since we spent twenty-four hours skin-on-skin, and this is the first day I’ve felt like myself in months. My instincts, as you recall, almost had me try to dominate a dragonite I had very little information about. I could have started a war, even talked the others into it, and I was positive I was right to—”

  “Summon your instincts, Ella,” I bite out as she starts to glare back at me. “Trust me. And the only one of your friends you talked into it was the incubus. The others went straight to Kane to find a medium ground.”

  “You,” she volleys while gesturing toward me. “You were the medium ground.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” I point out curtly.

  “I want to go back to bed so you can say sweet things like how you don’t want to close your eyes and shit,” she grumbles, stepping back as my lips restrain the smile I shouldn’t give her.

  Her jaw grinds for a second as she growls a little, then she closes her eyes. I glance over my shoulder, seeing everyone outside.

  “It’s dormant right now,” she says as she opens her eyes.

  “Figure out a way to provoke it,” I say as I turn around. “I need to check in on the camp while you work on retrieving it.”

  She fortunately doesn’t argue, and I walk through camp, spotting Kya with her pet off his leash, since dragon eyes are swirling and fire is blasting from his hands.

  “Will his fire destroy the earth?” I ask her, causing her to startle and her brow to furrow.
>
  “What?” Chaz asks, confused.

  “The dragons have to plant some fucking flower because of the way their power destroys the earth. It’s what happened to their home whenever that flower was no longer able to grow.”

  “A flower?” Chaz asks incredulously.

  I swing my impatient gaze to Kya, and she shrugs. “Doesn’t seem to be an issue. The ground chars, but fresh, pure soil is underneath. Maybe it’s because he’s not full dragon?”

  “I remember a time when you were more definitive in your answers. It was before you had him,” I tell her, gesturing to the daft fool who takes a threatening step toward me, eyes narrowed in challenge.

  “Please tell me you’re just stupid enough to do it,” I say to him dismissively.

  “I really expected you to be in a better mood,” Kya states flatly. “It almost makes me miss my Polly attire.”

  Damn her.

  When my lips struggle with the effort it takes to keep a straight face with that image in my head, she grins like she’s achieved something. I point a finger at her.

  “They ruined you.”

  She just continues to smile as I walk away.

  “All accounted for,” she calls to my back. “No casualties from the massacres.”

  “Great. Now find out if Kane has planted those damn flowers yet.”

  “Never pictured him as the type to be so bent out of shape over some fucking flowers,” Chaz says behind my back, causing my eyes to roll in exasperation as I keep walking.

  My eyes flick over the sets of paired-up sparring partners and those just pushing their power to the limits in private, trying to strain out that extra blast.

  I keep straying from the path, so it’s hard to be upset at everyone else doing the same thing. I’m still pissed at everyone who strays, obviously, but now I just feel more responsible for it. And clearly that pisses me off even more.

  At least I don’t feel the urge to read my journal for the first time in hours. Just a little bit of space from Ella has helped wrestle my own beasts to be just under the surface.

  “Holy shit, is she crazy?” I hear Hank whispering to someone.

  My eyes dart to him and narrow, and he pales when he sees me, cutting his eyes away as he stares at the ground. I look over my shoulder, curious what Ella is doing to draw—

  It takes me less than a split second to realize he wasn’t talking about Ella.

  A growl rumbles in my chest when my eyes land on Ella battling Simone.

  Ella’s lycan claws are out, and her eyes are flickering silver as she launches out power, sending Simone sailing backwards with a yelp. The suicidal female snorts and shakes her head, then lets out a battle roar before charging Ella.

  I dematerialize to be right in front of her, starting to shift and finally end her the way I should have done when—

  My breath is knocked out of me when I’m shoved from behind, but Simone has already dropped to the ground to her belly, her throat exposed like she’s showing submission.

  Swinging my legs up, I jump to my feet. Ella shoves at my chest this time instead of slamming into me.

  “What the hell are you doing? It was working,” she snaps.

  My eyes narrow on her, then dart to the broken girl on the ground who is shivering in terror, then back to Ella.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I snap, causing Ella to roll her eyes.

  “You said to provoke my instincts, and what better way to do that than with Simone?” she snaps, then looks down at Simone, and her eyes soften when she sees her still trembling uncontrollably. “What the hell have you done to her?” Ella adds softly, then turns her glare back on me.

  “Less than I should have,” I bite out, giving Simone a look she would understand, but she misses it, because she’s busy staring at the ground.

  “Whatever you’ve done, undo it now,” Ella snaps, eyes back on me and furious.

  “You don’t get to dominate me, Princess,” I remind her coolly as I step into her, staring directly into her eyes as she starts to growl.

  Simone’s fucking shivering triples.

  It seems to only piss Ella off at me even more. I’m entirely unsure how I became the bad guy in this particular scenario. Usually it isn’t lost on me.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, she left you to become enslaved by a Type A incubus.”

  “And she just apologized,” Ella says like that’s some sort of defense. “Then I realized how to bring my instincts forward, since they were immediately present in her presence, since you’ve slept with her. She offered to let me use her like a punching bag just to get help bring them all the way to the surface. I’d say she’s earning forgiveness.”

  “It doesn’t really matter what you’d say. She’s simply lucky to be breathing at all,” I growl.

  She gives me a pitying look. “She was a prisoner too, Slade. However cruel and misguided her actions might have been, it’s nothing compared to the cruel and cold things you’ve done to my people. And I forgave you.”

  I point at my chest. “I haven’t asked for forgiveness, because I regret nothing,” I snap, my chest vibrating with a growl.

  Her eyes narrow, and she looks at me like she’s trying to figure me out. “How did we walk out here and you turn back into the enormous asshole you are to everyone else? I thought things had taken a turn.”

  “No, you think you can still dominate me. You don’t get to judge this, Ella. This is my army.”

  “I’m sorry,” Simone says to me. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” I growl, and she quivers again.

  Ella looks like she’s ready to throttle me.

  “Slade, you can’t—”

  I turn and walk off, needing immediate distance before I rip Simone’s head from her shoulders and punt it like a bloody ball of some sort. One of the round ones, not the oval kind.

  Scrubbing a hand through my hair, I stop once I’m just at the edge of the woods and exhale harshly.

  Then I wait on the daft girl to catch up so she can be the one to apologize to me.

  Chapter 25

  ELLA

  “I can’t believe he just stormed off like a five-year-old,” I say quietly to myself, eyebrows up as I resist the urge to laugh, mostly because Simone, poor girl, is still shivering to death.

  I say poor girl because my instincts want her as dead as Slade seems to, and she has no clue, because I’m perfectly aware of how wrong that is. I’m not that kind of monster.

  Just knowing she’s had sex with him now seems like a much bigger offense than it did before I slept with Slade. It’s like those twenty-four hours just sadly became the best in my existence, and now she’s threatening that by even breathing.

  “He’s right,” she says as she stands. “I shouldn’t have even approached you.”

  “You’re trying to make amends,” I say dismissively. “It’s not like I was going to let you off without bloodying you up a little,” I add in confession.

  Her lips curve in a smile on one side of her mouth, but I only notice from my peripheral because I’m staring at Slade as he stares out the woods. Just standing there with his hands on his hips, not moving or making a sound.

  “But he’s right,” she says again. “I disobeyed him, and I knew when I joined him that he’d bring me revenge, but that I’d have to obey his rules because they were law.”

  “Arrogant ass,” I mutter under my breath, wondering if he hears it, since he turns his head to the side just a little to let me see his jaw tic.

  “I really was jealous,” she goes on, her voice quieter.

  I turn and arch an eyebrow at her.

  “You left me to die because you envied me? That was a terrible time to envy me, if we’re being honest with each other,” I decide to point out.

  Her sad smile looks so weighted as she shrugs. “You’re beautiful even by immortal standards,” she says, and I stand a little taller while my expression grows incredulous.

  Her hand comes up,
eyes on my hair down by my shoulder. “And I hated you because of how perfect you are,” she goes on, withdrawing her hand before she touches my hair.

  Her eyes come back up to meet mine. “I had sex with him because pleasure in that hell came in only one form, and he never hurt me or demanded it. It has admittedly taken me a while to realize things are different out here, and I can want more things. They put us together for their viewing pleasure, and for the sake of trying to procreate, so they rarely let us be with other women.”

  I’m really confused for another second or two before my eyebrows lift in confusion.

  “I was given leniency because he knows how broken my animal is on the inside because of what was taken from me for so long. Slade very likely knows exactly how big of a line I crossed, and I’m lucky not to be dead. We all know you’re his, even though he’d never admit it. I had no right to want you, and I hated you, because I saw the way you only looked at him. You even thought it was because I was hung up on Slade. It’s him I was jealous of, because it was clear you wanted him as much as he wanted you. It was petty, and I should have been killed, and I’ve regretted so much since my broken animal instincts calmed down.”

  She says all this as though it’s no big deal that she had a fatal-attraction crush on me, and since I didn’t reciprocate, she left me to die. Then she lowers her eyes before walking away.

  “Maybe that will change one day,” she adds from beside me, and I stare straight ahead.

  Well, then. I so did not see that coming.

  “Hashtag, stalker alert,” Dice says from out of nowhere, startling the hell out of me. “Karma used to have a thing for the crazy ones. I wonder if she and Simone ever—”

  “Not now, Dice,” I say while dematerializing to Slade.

  I’m not really sure how I feel about almost dying because of a crush, now that I have all the details.

  “You might have clued me in on some of those details when I was defending her, because I think I just reignited whatever spark had finally died, and now I wonder if she’s the reason I feel the urge to close my curtains every night.”

  His lips twitch just slightly.

  “You close your curtains because you feel me watching,” he decides to point out.