by Nora Roberts
“Oh.” Shit. Now Riley’s hands found their way into her pockets. “About that—”
“Need some help bringing in the supplies? Annika’s up with Bran, and—I don’t know where Doyle is.” Choosing a knife, Sasha made diagonal slices on the loaves. “Just let me cover these to rise, and I’ll help.”
“We didn’t actually get supplies.”
“What? Why? Where have you been?”
“Annika’s in the tower, right? Sawyer wanted to bag some stones for an engagement ring, so—”
“Sawyer!” Tossing the dishcloth aside for the moment, Sasha raced over, hugged him hard. “This is so . . . Stones? Not an actual ring?”
“See, I was thinking you could help me design one, then maybe Bran—”
“Oh! That is the best idea!” She hugged him again. “She’ll love it. I can’t wait to start. Tell me what you have in mind.”
“Actually, we need to wait a minute on that. Right?” He appealed to Riley.
“Right. When we were in Dublin, we—”
“Dublin?” Sasha gaped, actually gave Sawyer a little shove as she stepped back from him. “You went to Dublin.”
“Long story short. I had a contact, so we zipped there, got the stones, and we were having a drink when . . .”
When Sasha held up a finger, Riley trailed off. “The two of you went all the way to Dublin—it doesn’t matter how quickly you got there and back—” Sasha said, effectively cutting off Riley’s main argument. “You didn’t tell anyone you were going. Then you stopped for a drink?”
“Maybe you had to be there. And okay, I bought a sweatshirt. I needed a sweatshirt. It wasn’t like we were trolling Grafton Street.”
“Anyone who leaves the property needs to make it clear where they are. Obviously something happened while you were gone. I’ll get the others, and you can explain yourselves.”
As Sasha carefully covered the loaves with the towel, Sawyer shifted his feet. “Can we leave out the why we went? At least when Anni’s around?”
Sasha sent him a cool stare. “All you had to do was tell me, or Bran or Doyle. We know how to keep a secret. I’ll get them.”
Alone with Sawyer, Riley let out a long breath. “Mom’s very disappointed in us.”
“I feel like an idiot. How did she make me feel like an idiot without raising her voice?”
“Skills. I’m opening wine. We never finished that pint, and I have a feeling we’re going to need some adult beverages.”
“We didn’t get the supplies either. How did we forget the supplies?”
“We were in a little bit of a hurry to get back,” Riley reminded him. She opened a bottle of red, set out glasses. And prepared to face the music.
Annika danced down the back steps—sulks long forgotten—as Doyle came in from the outside.
“Are we having wine? Bran and I have been working very hard. Wine is good.” Annika wrapped arms around Sawyer, snuggled in. “So are you.”
Stroking her hair, he shot Riley a wan smile over Annika’s head.
“Show some solidarity,” Riley said to Doyle before he could go for a beer. She poured six glasses.
Before he took one, he studied her face. “What’s the deal?”
“All at once, everybody at once.” And she noted from the look on Bran’s face as he came in with Sasha he’d already been partially briefed.
“Okay, here’s the deal.” To fortify herself, Riley took a glass, took a gulp. “Sawyer and I shifted to Dublin.”
“What is Dublin?” Annika asked.
“The capital of Ireland.” Doyle’s gaze hardened. “On the east coast of the country.”
“That’s very far for food supplies. It’s a city?” Annika continued, drawing back from Sawyer. “But you didn’t take me?”
“No, I . . . Well, we—”
“He needed to go there to do something for you. A surprise for you.”
Far from mollified, Annika frowned at Riley. “A surprise for me? What is it?”
“Anni, a surprise means you don’t get to know yet. I went to help him with it.”
“Regardless,” Bran interrupted, his tone as dismissive as Sasha’s had been. “Traveling that far, for any reason, without telling the rest of us, is directly in opposition to everything we’ve done and become.”
“It’s my fault—” Sawyer began, but Riley cut him off.
“No, we’re in it together. And you’re right. I’m going to say we got caught up and leave it at that. Sawyer can grovel later.”
“Hey.”
“I just think you’d be better at groveling than me. We can keep talking about how stupid or irresponsible or whatever we were. Or we can tell you what happened that’s a hell of a lot more important.”
“You suck at groveling,” Sawyer muttered.
“Told ya.”
“Nerezza. It was Nerezza.” Sasha stepped forward. “I can feel it now.”
“Alive and in person. Or in the person of a waitress at this pub off Grafton.”
“You went for a pint?” Doyle demanded.
“Oh, like you wouldn’t have done the same. We finished our . . . business, went for a beer before heading back. And I’ve barely gotten a good start on my Guinness when the waitress comes over. At first, it was her own face and body, her own voice. But the words?”
Riley closed her eyes a moment to bring it back. “She said: ‘When I’m done, and this world is dark, I’ll drink your blood.’” Riley glanced down at the red wine in her hand, considered, then drank it almost for spite. “And if you don’t think it’s a jolt to hear some pretty young waitress say that in an Irish accent, let me tell you, it is.”
“People are just going about their business,” Sawyer added. “We can’t go at her. She’s just a girl. Nerezza’s using her, so it’s not like we could knock her on her ass.”
“Or shoot her, as Sawyer pointed out to me. She said we were weak, and she was growing stronger.”
“To prove that, she showed us. The girl changed, and there she was, standing in this crowded pub. Her hair’s not all gray now. It’s got black streaks through it, and she’s got some age on her, but not like she did when I had a grip on her over Capri.”
“She’s healing,” Sasha murmured. “Regaining her strength and powers.”
“Riley dissed her. Pulled the ‘bored now’ bit.”
“Bad Willow. Buffy reference.”
Doyle gave Riley a light shove. “Do you mind?”
“Look, seeing as it was, in reality, some innocent girl, dissing was all I could do. All we could do.”
“She said maybe she’d make Riley a pet, give her to Malmon.”
“As if.”
“Don’t toss that off,” Sawyer argued. “For whatever reason she’s gunning for you right now. When she got pissed at Riley, the pub shook. Bottles, glasses rattling around. Nobody noticed.”
“Then Sawyer took a solid dig at her, said maybe she could get us some beer nuts. Pissed her off more, so then it was all peeling our skin off, feeding it to dogs. Since we couldn’t go at her, we shrugged it off. The last thing she said was: ‘The storm comes.’ Then the waitress was back, looking dazed and confused.”
“She didn’t try to harm you.” With a nod, Bran finally picked up the wine, passed one glass to Sasha. “She had you down to two, in an enclosed, public space where you’d have hesitated to use force or violence, but she didn’t strike at you.”
“Because she couldn’t,” Sasha concluded. “She’s not strong enough for that yet. For illusions, for using other means. But not striking out herself.”
“She wasn’t actually there. Do I have that right?” Doyle turned to Bran. “The illusion of her only.”
“That would be my take on it, yes.”
“If she had been stronger, we wouldn’t have been with you.” Annika stepped over to Sasha—away from Sawyer. “We wouldn’t have known you were far away. And if you were taken or hurt, we wouldn’t know.”
“We weren’t.”
Sawyer felt it vital to point that out. “I’m sorry, bad judgment, but we weren’t taken or hurt. And all of us are alone or with only part of the team all the time.”
“Not alone or in part in bloody Dublin,” Doyle snapped.
“Hence the bad judgment. It was the wrong way to go about it, but we pulled in some information. You can keep slapping us back for the bad judgment, or we can use what we brought back.”
“You suck at groveling, too,” Riley commented.
“Apparently. Look, what I went to do was really important to me. I went about it wrong, and I’m sorry. Mea culpa squared, sincerely. That’s it.”
“Maybe we should all just cool off a little, then we can talk about this more reasonably.” Sasha moved over to stir the sauce. “And we still need those supplies.”
“You didn’t get the buggering supplies.”
“We got a little distracted,” Riley snapped back at Doyle. “We’ll go get the buggering supplies now.”
“No, Annika and I’ll go get them.”
“Yes.” Annika linked her arm through Doyle’s. “We will go, and I will get cool so we can talk again.”
She held her hand, palm up, to Sawyer. “You have the list of what we need to buy.”
He pulled it out of his back pocket, handed it to her. Said, “Balls,” when she sailed out beside Doyle.
“She’ll get over it. You’re all going to have to get over it,” Riley said. “We did what we did, copped to it. If you’re going to scold us some more, I want more wine.”
Sasha glanced back from the stove. “It was unnecessarily risky.”
“It didn’t feel like it.” Riley shrugged.
“Until you were waiting for the dark god to bring you beer nuts?” Bran suggested.
“Even then. It was clear intimidation, Irish. Did it give us a jolt? Sure. But what was she going to do? She doesn’t, or hasn’t, come to fight on her own. We should have told you guys—sans Anni. Not doing that was stupid, just stupid. I can only say I guess we were so into the secret mission we didn’t think of it.”
“Shortsighted, impulsive. And understandable.”
“Under—” Shocked nearly speechless, Sasha swung around, gaped at Bran.
“A ghrá. A man in love often thinks with heart instead of head.”
Sawyer tried a winning smile in Sasha’s direction, patted his hand over his heart.
She sniffed. “Riley’s not a man in love and should’ve known better.”
“For friendship one also does the foolish.”
“Foolish isn’t— I’ll shut up,” Riley decided. “Come on, Sash, all’s well that ends with everybody breathing. And you know you want to see the rocks. You really want to see the shinies Sawyer bought for the ring.”
“I really don’t— Damn it, of course I want to see them.”
Grasping the reprieve, Sawyer pulled the pouches from his pocket. “This one’s the big kahuna.”
He poured the stone into his hand. Perfectly round, beautifully blue, it gleamed there like a small pool.
“Aquamarine.” Smiling, Bran rubbed a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “As legends say the mermaids once prized the stones.”
“Blue sea—the name means blue sea, so it fits,” Riley added.
“It’s lovely, Sawyer. Can I?” Sasha lifted it, held it up. “Oh, look how many shades of blue in the light. You couldn’t have chosen anything more right for her.”
“You think? I’ve got these little stones.” From the second pouch he poured a stream of tiny diamonds, pink sapphires, more aquamarines. “I was thinking you could come up with something, and I got these.” From a third pouch he took two bands of platinum. “And then maybe Bran could put it all together.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“And I’ve already got a couple of ideas.” Sasha took another study of the stone, handed it back. “That doesn’t mean I’m not still annoyed.”
“Down to annoyed’s progress.” Sawyer re-pouched the stones, the bands.
“In the name of progress, I’d like to add one thing. When the bitch said a storm’s coming, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.”
Sawyer looked at Riley. “You, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Something there, something big. That wasn’t just bluster. For me, it was slipped in out of pique, but it had weight. Maybe it’ll springboard something for you.”
“Not right now,” Sasha told her.
“Something to think on. I’m going to think on it while I hit the books. That’s my penance.”
“Researching isn’t penance for you. Making a salad, however—”
“I’m better at that; she’s better at the books.” Sawyer tried that winning smile again. “Let’s play to our strengths.”
“Good plan. I’m in my room, digging in if needed.” Riley escaped while she had the chance.
Maybe she didn’t like having Doyle and Annika still pissed, but she figured Annika wasn’t wired to stay mad for long. And she had a plan where Doyle was concerned.
As she had her balcony doors open, she heard them come back. Biding her time, she continued to work, take notes. It didn’t take him long.
When he walked in, she sat at her desk. Wearing nothing but his shirt.
He closed the door with a decisive snap. “That’s your research outfit?”
“This?” She swiveled in the chair. Yeah, still pissed, but . . . interested. “I figured you’d get around to wanting your shirt back. Just wanted to have it handy.”
“You think you can distract me with sex?”
“Sure.” She rose. “I get wanting your shirt back, but it seems a little redundant when you’re already wearing one.”
While he stood, she took off his sheath, stood the sword beside the bed. Came back and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’re that sure of your allure?”
“Allure? Please. I’ve got all the necessary girl parts. That’s allure enough, especially with a man who’s already cruised them.”
She tossed the shirt aside, gave him a little nudge toward the bed. “Sit down, big guy, and I’ll get you naked.”
“It didn’t trouble you that Sawyer or Bran might have walked in rather than me?”
Another nudge. “First, I’m covered. Second, you’re the only one who’d walk in without knocking. Sit,” she repeated.
“I didn’t come in here to have sex.” But he sat on the side of the bed.
“Life’s full of surprises.” She pulled off his boots, smiled as she unhooked his belt. “Surprise.”
“I can have sex and still be pissed at you.”
“Handy for both of us.” She gave him a shove to push him onto his back. Moving quickly, she tugged his jeans down, kicked them across the room.
Then climbed on to straddle him.
“What do you say we talk later?”
He gripped her hair, none too gently, to haul her down. As her mouth met his, he flipped her onto her back.
She expected him to simply take her, just pound away—and wouldn’t have objected. Instead he changed his grip from her hair to her wrists, yanked her arms over her head.
Instinct had her trying to tug free. “Hey.”
“Shut up.”
He ravaged her mouth, spinning her system into overdrive. She struggled—not in protest, but in the desire to get her hands on him.
She’d have to say no, tell him outright to stop, or she’d take what he gave her. Temper still burned in him, and burning with it was a scorching lust. She thought she could play him—and by God she had—but she’d know the full force of what he wanted from her before he was done.
He liked her helpless, for once, pinned under him, her hands cuffed by his. Her body quivering and bucking when he closed his mouth over her breast. When he used his teeth to hint at pain.
She could tie him into knots with those eyes. Now she’d know what it was to feel choice dissolve in outrageous desire.
He yanked her arms down, kept her wrists clamped in his hand.
And moved ruthlessly down her body. She cried out when he used his tongue. Arched and writhed and cried out again when he didn’t relent.
But the word she cried wasn’t no.
It was yes.
She knew what it was to burn. Knew what it was to give in to needs, however feral. But this, now, spurred her beyond the known. He shoved her over the edge only to whip her onto another. And again until her lungs seared and her heart beat to bursting.
When he released her hands so he could use his own on her, to press and grip and plunder, hers could only grip the sheets and let what he did rage through her.
Everywhere, everywhere those rough hands moved shuddered, as if her nerves lived over her skin now.
When he jerked her up, her head fell back. Her body quivered, every inch, at the threat of more. At the welcoming of it.
“No, no, you’ll look. You’ll open your eyes and look at the one who takes you as you’re meant to be taken. Look at me, damn you, look at the one who knows what lives in you.”
She opened her eyes, looked into his, so fiercely green they were nearly blinding. But in them she saw that need and that knowledge. For her, of her.
She gripped his hips. “I see you.”
Half mad, he thrust into her. He plundered her as his blood burned and his heart leaped where it had no business falling. Because he saw her, he knew her, and she him.
And so he feared both of them were damned.
Taken over, she thought when they’d both gone limp as wax. That one step she’d never allowed with another, she’d allowed him. To take her over—body, mind, and all she was.
Once that step was taken, how did she go back?
How could she go back?
When he rolled away, to lie on his back beside her, her instinct was to curl in. But she quashed it, stayed as she was.
Keep it light, she warned herself. She knew how to address facts and keep it light.
“Maybe I’ll keep that shirt. It obviously works on me.”
“You can have what’s left of it.”
Puzzled, she looked down, noted the torn remains of it at the foot of the bed. “We keep this up, we’ll both be walking around mostly naked.”
He rolled, grabbed the bottle of water from her nightstand, drank half of it down. Almost as an afterthought, he offered her the rest. “I’ve marked you.”
She took stock. Bruises on her wrists, a couple more here and there. “Nothing much.”
But he got up and brought her jar of balm back to the bed.
“You pissed me off,” he said, even as he stroked the balm onto the bruises.
“Bitch at me all you want because nothing’s going to reach the level of Sasha’s stern disapproval.” Now Riley hissed out a breath. “It flattened me. We