“Next,” I said to the imps after we’d returned the two little girls to their family. After the hugs, after the declarations that I was a miracle, a servant of God himself. After I returned two little girls, when so many more had never made it back home.
“No more tonight, Mistress,” Dahael said, taking my hand gently. It was caked in blood. I had not been gentle or merciful. “Enough.”
“Never,” I said. “Next,” I repeated, more forcefully.
Bash looked up at me. “Mistress needs to go home. People who love her,” he said, nodding sagely.
“Did good work tonight. Go home,” Dahael repeated, pulling me toward where we’d parked my car. “We will find more for you next time. And demon Levitt helps some too.”
“Does he?” I asked numbly, thinking again that I needed to check in on the demon. By all accounts, he was a valuable asset. Soon.
“Asked us how best to serve Mistress. Guards the gate, finds lost girls,” Dahael said. I nodded and we climbed into the car, and I roared toward home.
It was just after three. I let myself into the dark loft, only the lights of the city illuminating the main part of the loft. I went into my room, stripped off my ruined clothing, and stood under a shower that was so hot I gritted my teeth against the pain. It still wasn’t hot enough to make me feel clean again. I stood there until the water ran cold, trying not to think, and failing.
I pulled on my pajama pants and a Wonder Woman t-shirt Brennan had bought for me the previous Christmas. I went out into the dark living room, and sat in the chair Brennan usually sat in. I could smell him on it, and I curled up into it.
I felt the tears threatening, and, before long, I couldn’t fight them back much longer. All those girls. So much pain. And no amount of me destroying things would save them all. Soon I sobbed harder, biting my hand to keep the sounds to myself, not wanting anyone to hear me. I could hear Shanti’s stereo on. The last thing she needed was to see me losing my shit, falling apart. Not when she counted on me to be the one who chased the nightmares away.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop. The tears and sobs came, and I hated every second of it. So much weakness. And my anger just made me feel worse. I pulled my knees to my chest, and rested my forehead on my knees, and just tried to muffle the wracking sobs that I couldn’t stop.
I heard a door open upstairs, and I tried to take deep breaths, tried not to be heard. That was stupid, I knew. They would feel me. And I could sense Brennan, awake and coming closer. I wiped my eyes angrily, trying to make the tears stop.
And then he was there, standing in front of me. I wanted to stop crying. I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I’d missed him. But I couldn’t make the words come. I could barely breathe around the overwhelming emotions I was feeling.
Without a word, he scooped me up in his arms, sat down, and settled me on his lap. His arms were strong around my body, and my head rested on his shoulder. Eventually my sobs died down. He sat, calm and soothing through it all, his hand running up and down my back, his arms around me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said softly, holding me tighter. “I’m glad you’re home, but I want to destroy whatever’s doing this to you.”
“Life as a Fury,” I said against his neck as I rested my face on his shoulder again. It was all the explanation I could give without falling apart again, and all he needed. He knew. I felt the sadness, anger in him, for me. He squeezed me tighter to him. We sat in silence for a long time.
“Why did you sit down here alone like that? You could have come to me,” he finally said.
“Didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Weak.”
He put his hands on my cheeks, pushed me back so he could look in my eyes. “Honey there is nothing weak in you. You care so much, and you take everything the universe dishes out to you, and I don’t know how you do it. Being in pain is not weakness. You don’t have to be such a badass all the time,” he finished, gently brushing my remaining tears away with his thumbs.
“Yes I do. I need to be a badass. I need to be more of one. I need to protect–”
“Who? You can’t protect everyone, Molly,” he said, his voice warm, soothing. ”Not even you. As amazing as you are, one woman, goddess, Fury, whatever you are, is not enough to save everyone.”
“They need to see me as a badass. Those I need to protect and those I’m protecting them from. I can’t be weak,” I said. “I saved a girl tonight whose mother told me that she’d prayed to me. To ME. Do you know how crazy that is?”
“You give them hope,” he said softly.
“And I’m not worthy. Like you said. I can’t save them all.” I was quiet for a moment. “I need to be a badass. I need to pretend I’m strong. It’s like armor or something. I can’t explain it better than that. If you, anyone, sees me weak, I feel weak.”
He held me close again. “Be a badass, then. Wear your armor. But you don’t need to wear it for me. I know the woman inside. And I have more faith in her than I do in the persona she tries to present. I know how strong you are, how good you are. I know how personally you take every life you can’t save. Let me be the one to give you a warm place to go when everything gets to be too much, okay?”
“You already do,” I murmured.
“Good.”
We were quiet for a while, and, against all odds, I found myself dozing against him. He sensed it, picked me up and carried me to his room.
“Brennan?” I asked, nervous.
“Just to rest. You were gone too long, and you’re in more pain than you’ve been in in a very long time. I need you in my arms tonight.”
He reached the top of the stairs, opened his bedroom door, and kicked it closed behind us as he carried me into his room. He settled me on his narrow bed, and I watched as he climbed in beside me. On his bare chest, I could see the tattoo I’d noticed when he was sick. I traced it lightly with my fingertips, and he took my hand in his and kissed it. He pulled me close to him, and I put my arms around his waist, rested my cheek against his chest. Our legs tangled, and he rested his chin on the top of my head. My body was practically cocooned in his, and I still didn’t feel close enough.
We laid there for a while, and I thought I’d fall asleep. Instead, we started talking, our voices low in the dark bedroom. We talked about nothing and everything. We compared our favorite comic book characters when we were kids, our best and worst childhood memories, toys we’d had and music we’d liked. We talked about Ada and Stone, and how great they were. We talked about Shanti, and he filled me in on how well she was doing with her training. We did not talk about gods, or demons, or souls, or lost girls. We spent the night getting to know each other’s history, each other’s souls, by doing nothing more than talking about the little things.
As the room brightened with morning’s first light, I let myself drift off to sleep, Brennan beginning to doze beside me. I was still wrapped tightly in his arms, and I fell asleep marveling at the way he’d saved my heart, yet again, just by being Brennan. And he was mine.
♦ ♦ ♦
I woke up to Brennan’s lips on my neck, his beard tickling the delicate skin there. His arms were still tight around me, and his thigh rested between mine. I blushed at the intimacy of it, but became distracted almost instantly by the sensation of his lips on my skin, the scent of him surrounding me. He knew just where to kiss me, right where the side of my neck met my shoulder, and my heart started pounding in time with his. Soon his hands were roaming my body, tracing the curves of my hips and waist, the swell of my breasts, and I gasped when he gently cupped them in his hands. He kissed his way from my throat up to my lips, and I was lost in the sensation of his lips teasing mine, his hands on my body.
“I want you,” he whispered in my ear.
I kissed his throat, gently nipped the delicate skin just below his ear, and he moaned. I sucked his earlobe, and he literally p
urred against me.
“But,” he said softly, pulling back from me. “They’re all awake down there.” He kissed me. “Along with my first meeting.” He kissed me again. Then he looked down at me and grinned. “I want to be able to take my time with you. Without a potential audience or eavesdroppers.”
“Are you anticipating making noise?” I asked, laughing a little, still breathless from his kisses, his touch.
He leaned down and kissed me again. “I’m counting on it,” he said against my lips. “But,” he said, pausing only to kiss me, “I think it would be rude of me to leave you this way.”
“Yeah?” I asked, trembling a little.
He smiled, and his lips met mine again. I was so lost in the feel of his lips on mine, the feel of his body on top of mine, that I barely registered when his thigh forced my legs further apart, when his hand slipped under the waistband of my pajama bottoms. I gasped when his warm hand cupped the sensitive area between my legs. He held me, then his fingers parted me, and he started rubbing my throbbing, aching center with maddeningly light pressure. I whined in need, and he chuckled against my mouth as he kissed me. I arched my hips toward him desperately, his fingers only making me more needy. He increased the pressure, moving faster, and I lost myself in the growing ecstasy and desperation. I bucked against his hand, riding the edge of control. Then he slowly slid one long finger inside of me, and I came, hard, his mouth catching my cries as I rode what felt like an endless wave of pleasure. By the time it was over, I was whimpering against his mouth, trembling and breathless from the strength of what he'd just done to me.
He looked down at me and gave me what had to be the sexiest, cockiest smile ever. “That was fun.”
“For me,” I said, still breathless.
“For me, too,” he said, still smiling. “Just imagine what we could do with our clothes off.”
Then Brennan ran his hands over my body again, tracing my curves, squeezed my hip one more time, then got out of bed. I wanted to pull him back in with me, and he knew it. He threw a small grin my way before heading into the bathroom. I heard the shower start up, and I laid there for a few seconds, my body still thrumming, unable to stop picturing Brennan with soapy water sluicing down his body.
“Damn,” I groaned, sitting up. But I was smiling, and he’d done what he’d intended: I was distracted from the pain I’d been feeling the night before. Maybe, must maybe, it would be enough to help me get through another day in the Nether.
♦ ♦ ♦
Over the next couple of weeks, I got into a bit of a routine, a way of steamrolling through my days ensuring that I met my obligations both in the mortal world and in the Nether. I did the Fury thing, which always filled me with sickness, helplessness, and rage. And then I’d leave the Nether and hunt. It all became this kind of never-ending cycle of avenging, then saving those who needed to be avenged, then avenging some more. My duties in the Nether only spurred me to work harder in the mortal realm. And those I saved in the mortal realm inspired me to punish the souls I dealt with in the Nether harder, more ruthlessly, than I already would have.
Of course, something had to give. And as usual, it was anything that made me feel like a normal person. Back in the old days, when I’d done everything solo, it meant that things like cooking and eating didn’t get done very often. Now, with a team and a…I didn’t even know what to call Brennan, because “boyfriend” just didn’t seem to do him justice…now it meant that they took a backseat to my duties in the two worlds I straddled. Since he’d recovered from the illness the Nosoi had caused, Brennan had basically taken over leadership of the team, which was for the best and was what should have happened from the beginning.
I am really not a people person.
And the rest of the team followed him, happily. Shanti continued her training with Brennan, but had transitioned to an online high school to finish her graduation requirements, because I sucked so badly at keeping track of what she was supposed to do, and Brennan was stretched thin as it was without having to play teacher. Levitt kept doing whatever it is Levitt does, watched and given assignments by the imps.
How did I know all of this? Had I talked to Brennan or Shanti? Did I ever bother to ask them how their days were? Had I finally made the time to spend five minutes talking to the demon I’d taken a chance on? Hell no. My imps told me.
My imps knew more about what was happening with my friends and the man I loved than I did.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to. I wanted to sleep next to Brennan every night. I wanted to feel his hands on my body again, to have him inside me, finally. My body ached with it.
But my cravings, my needs, are nothing compared to what others need from me.
So I delivered vengeance in the Nether, and I rescued and destroyed here in the mortal world. I dozed, sometimes, at the Furies’ home, and I ate whatever food the imps shoved at me, ignored their pleas to just go home and rest for a while.
I’d thought being with Brennan would make everything better. And maybe it would have, for a while. But that first morning after sleeping next to Brennan, after he'd driven me so far beyond ecstasy I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, I got up out of his bed, and I went to the Nether, and I punished the soul of a woman who had kidnapped and sold little girls and boys. She didn’t care who she sold them to, though she knew why they were buying. I could see, in her mind, that she didn’t know or care how many children she’d destroyed in her lifetime. She was like the scum I had been so used to dealing with back when I’d started as the Angel, but on a scale that boggled the mind. I stood there, and I punished her, knowing that I was looking at the face of evil, and that there were many, many more like her out there.
And I could barely keep up with the pieces of shit in my own city, let alone what happened in the rest of the world.
It made me feel helpless, which made me feel angry…which resulted in me coming this close to destroying her soul. My mother and aunts had broken into the room just in time to stop me, pulled me away, and sent me home.
Where I’d immediately started tracking down lost girls. And, because evil is equal opportunity and so I have to be, too, lost boys as well.
I hadn’t been home in ten days.
I came out of the Nether, ready to hunt. My mother and aunt Megaera had given me my own set of uniforms like theirs, black shirts and tailored black pants, and I had cleaned up and changed into a clean set at their insistence. I’d tried to tell them I was only going to get them bloody again, but they’d both just stood there, blocking the door, and refusing to let me pass until I’d done what they told me to. Showered, dressed, and now thoroughly annoyed, I said good-bye to them when they finally let me pass.
I came out into the Packard plant, expecting to see Bash and Dahael waiting, as they always did.
Instead, it was Brennan. He stood there, about four feet in front of the gateway, arms crossed. Irritation, worry, frustration rolled off of him like a tidal wave, along with relief and love when I appeared on his side of the gateway. I stopped short, watching him. His gaze flicked over my face, down my body, then back up to my eyes.
“Nice to see you’re alive,” he said.
“The imps told you I was,” I said, trying to calm the way my heart raced at the sight of him.
“I don’t want to talk to the goddamned imps, Molly,” he said. “I want you. You can’t keep doing this. Didn’t we go over this that night?”
“But I am doing it, Bren,” I said.
He walked up to me and folded me into his arms. Still angry with me, still frustrated. “It doesn’t have to always be you,” he said softly. I put my arms around him, caught between wanting to be human for a while and wanting to hunt.
“Brennan, I have to…”
“No. You don’t. Not tonight. The imps had three leads for you, and Levitt and a couple of the Grosse Pointe shifters are taking care of it. They will report to you in the morning.”
> “But–”
“Don’t you get it?” he asked, raising his voice just a little in frustration. “This isn’t just me missing you, though I do. I know you. I get it. You can’t help yourself.” He stopped a minute, took a breath as he stepped back from me. “But you don’t seem to be able to get it through your head that you’re not alone. You have a team of super-powered people who love you and want to help you. You have allies. The Grosse Pointe shifters practically worship you for saving them from the plague. They’ve been helping. They’ve been in on patrols and busts and investigations and everything else. Because of you we’ve basically increased the size of the team by about fifty. But you don’t know any of that because you never freaking talk to me, Molly,” he said, and he turned away, rubbing his face in frustration.
I stood there, silent. I watched him. Let it sink in. He was right. I didn’t know any of that.
After a while, he went on. “You have to do this. I understand. Part of what makes me love you so much is that when you dedicate yourself to something, you mean it.” He looked at me. “But you come home, when you manage to remember you have one, and you have a deadness in your eyes that I can’t stand seeing there.”
“So what do you expect me to do, Brennan?” I asked him, crossing my arms. He came back to me, put his hands on my hips, and leaned his forehead against mine.
“I want you to remember that you are not alone. I want you to keep in mind that you don’t have to do everything yourself. We can do things. I bet if we asked, we’d easily manage to get a team together that does nothing but look for your lost girls.”
“And boys,” I said.
“And boys,” he added. “Think, honey. How much more you could do if you didn’t try to do it all by yourself.”
“This is just a sneaky way of getting me back into your bed, isn’t it?” I asked, and I was rewarded with a laugh.
“You saw straight through me. Yes. Cold showers and my hand aren’t cutting it anymore.”
I smacked him, and he laughed again and kissed me, and soon I started remembering what it felt like to feel something other than rage. He was still angry. I’d hurt him by staying away, and I hadn’t even stopped to think about that. I kissed him back, trying to tell him without words how much I’d missed him. By the way his heart pounded, I was pretty sure he got it.
Broken: Hidden Book Two Page 15