by S. M. Reine
“Soft? I’m soft?” Deirdre laughed harshly. “I’m the one who killed Gage.”
“I pushed you,” he said.
“But I pulled the trigger. I’m not as soft as you think. I’m just as bad as you are in so many ways.” More ways than Deirdre was prepared to think about.
Alone in the darkness of her room at Chadwick Reynolds’s high-rise, taking hits of lethe while sending vampires out to raid blood banks…
Yeah. Deirdre was just as bad as Stark on every level.
“What have you done in my absence?” he asked.
“You haven’t been absent,” Deirdre said. “Everything’s gone on without you.”
“Because of you,” Stark said.
Her knees trembled as she finally reached the top of the throne room. Gods, Deirdre shouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction to the heat in his tone. Not now, not when they were in such a cold place. Not after everything he had done to her.
They were so alone in the throne room above the ocean of ice, surrounded by the ruins of Niflheimr.
“I thought Rhiannon died in Genesis,” Stark said. “I thought there was no hope for me after that. I thought that I would be…alone.” He circled the throne, stepping nearer to her warmth. The tint of her flame warmed his skin. “You came back for me.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to.”
“Your dangerousness extends far beyond your potential abilities as a phoenix. It would be too easy to forget everything else and enjoy that danger.”
“You sure didn’t act like you wanted to enjoy me,” Deirdre said, lifting her chin in defiance. “All the times you’ve smacked me around—talk about mixed signals.”
“When I hurt you, Tombs, it was because nobody could see me show favoritism. It was to protect you from the likes of Jacek. Most importantly, it was to make sure everyone knows that I am the Alpha, and that nobody can defy me, or else they would die. And they would have.”
“Is that supposed to make me sympathize with you?” Deirdre asked. She poked a finger into his chest. “You had to beat women to make yourself look good. Poor baby. My heart bleeds.”
He walked into her finger, forcing her to drop her hand. They stood chest to chest in front of the throne of ice.
But there was no passion in his eyes.
The expression drained out of his face, leaving nothing but stone behind. “It was for her, for the girls. And now…”
Deirdre was losing his attention. She grabbed the hem of the hides, tugging him back. “Hey. Focus, Stark. Rhiannon’s not dead. You’re not alone. We’re on the brink of finding your daughters. What do you want to do when you have them back?”
“I want my family,” Stark said.
“And if you want them, you’re going to have to live in the same world as the rest of us. The world that’s been screwed up by Rylie Gresham. Remember that? How screwed up the system is? The schools I had to live in—the schools your daughters attended? That hasn’t gone away, and it’s going to be waiting for you when you take your daughters back to Earth.
“What could you do for them as Alpha?” Deirdre asked, tugging him closer still. “Make the world a better place for them, Stark. Take down Rhiannon. Become Alpha. Have your family, have your power. Have every damn thing you’ve ever wanted!”
Stark’s fingers curled around hers. He lifted her hand and its flickering flames, as though savoring its warmth. “Will I have you?”
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
It shouldn’t have sounded like an appealing idea.
Alpha mates ruling the country together.
He wouldn’t want her once he realized that she could disobey him. As soon as they got back to Earth, he was going to find out that she had put him in the running for Alpha against his wishes, and he was going to hate her.
Stark would kill her.
He must have seen her drawing back internally. He clasped her hand tighter. “Look at me, Tombs.”
She stared fixedly at the throne. “What are you going to compel me with this time? Tell me to go brain-dead if I mention your least favorite musicians where you can hear it?”
“Tombs.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about unless it’s making you Alpha. All right?”
“Deirdre, look at me,” he said. Surprised, her eyes lifted to his. His voice deepened. “I release the last compulsion I gave you. You won’t die if you disobey me.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in something that might have been the beginning of a smile. “You’ve never called me Deirdre before.”
His brow creased with annoyance, but not anger. There was no sign of anger in him. “That’s what you took away from that? I just released you from my compulsion. I don’t want you to die.”
She waved him off. “Yeah, thanks. I saved your life and you’ve saved mine. Whatever. So are we on a first-name basis now? Do I get to call you Everton?”
“I wouldn’t like that.”
“It doesn’t suit you anyway,” Deirdre said. “Everton sounds like a guy who goes to Yale and wears sweater vests and throws boat parties.”
“Princeton.”
“Excuse me?”
“I went to Princeton,” he said. “Not Yale. I was an economics major.”
“I thought you were a Marine.”
“Yes, that too,” Stark said.
“How’d you have time to do all of that and teach horses how to dance all pretty?”
Now he was angry. “How did you—?”
“I visited Stark Estates,” Deirdre said. She took the picture of him on horseback out of her pocket, lifting it so that he could see. “Your book wouldn’t open itself, so I went online and read spoilers. Gonna put the compulsion back now?”
He reached for the photo. She kept it away from him.
Stark gripped her waist, pulling her against his chest. His other hand clamped down on the hand that held the photo. “I don’t need compulsion to kill you. I could snap you in half.”
He lowered his lips to her clavicle, but she pushed his head back before he could make contact. “Stop it.”
“Because I’m unseelie?”
“Because I don’t kiss guys who think death threats drop my panties. I don’t care what you are or what we call you.”
His tone was feverish in the way that his skin was not. “What do you want from me, Tombs?”
“I want you to want to help people, even if your idea of how that needs to happen is messed up. I want you to think about the future. I want you to think about what the world needs, and then I want you to give it to them. I thought that we wanted the same thing, Stark.”
“Of course I want that,” he said, voice harsh.
“Then what’s the problem? I don’t understand. Make me understand.”
He ripped the photo out of her hands. “You’re right. I’ve been pursuing a vision for years. And now the vision has changed. I don’t know who I am or who you are.” He advanced on her, forcing Deirdre to back up until her legs bumped the throne. It started sweating at her proximity. She was too hot for the Winter Court, and only getting hotter. “Do you want me, Tombs? Or what I represent? Are you using me, like Rhiannon, or are your motives purer?”
“Back to last names, huh?” Deirdre asked.
He slammed her into the throne, hands braced on either side of her head. “What do you want?”
She pushed him. He slapped her hands away.
He hadn’t hit her hard, but the faint sting of his hands on her arms made her bitterly angry.
“I’m not Rhiannon,” Deirdre said. “She wants power more than she wants progress. You know what I’d pick in her position? Do you know what my priorities are?” She clutched his hide cloak in both fists. “Not only am I nothing like Rhiannon, I’m far better than she ever was. I’m a better person. And I’m better for you, too.”
Stark gripped her hands. Her bones creaked. It hurt.
“Better for me?” He scoffed. “You don’t know any
thing. You don’t know me.”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you think,” Deirdre said.
She smashed her lips to his in a graceless kiss, forcing him backwards. She only got away with it because he was surprised. He yielded to her an inch—only an inch.
As soon as Stark realized what he was doing, he tangled his fingers in her hair and ripped her away.
“I’m better than Rhiannon,” Deirdre said. “I’ve seen your worst and chose you anyway. I’ve got your back.”
Stark glared. “You’re not backing me. You haven’t listened to a damn thing I’ve said for weeks.”
“I am, even if you don’t recognize it. I know what’s good for you better than you do.”
“Difficult woman,” he said.
But he kissed her again, even harder than before, crushing her against his body. He molded Deirdre’s hips against his. He gripped the curves of her back as though trying to squeeze her into himself, as though he couldn’t touch enough of her to satisfy himself.
Stark was greedy in his movements, acquainting himself with all of her parts. Deirdre didn’t try to stop him. She wanted him to get to know her body and know that she was the best thing he could ever hope for.
She wanted him to know that she was the best.
Gods, but she wanted him to love her so much that he would come back to Earth and piece back together everything she had broken.
Stark was graceless and confident and harsh, tongue stroking against hers, invading her mouth the way his hands invaded her body. He shaped the cheeks of her rear, squeezing them until it almost hurt.
Deirdre climbed him. She pressed his back against the wall and spread her legs over his and climbed his body as though she couldn’t get enough of his touch.
When he drew back for air, he was still breathing hard, and some of the consciousness had gone out of his eyes. All shifters had a duality to their nature—man and beast—and Stark had always seemed a little closer to his beast than to his man. But now he was closer to beast than ever.
“And what do you think is good for me?” Stark asked.
“You’re smart,” Deirdre said. She nipped his jaw with her teeth, tracing a line to his earlobe. She sucked it into her mouth. “You’re ruthless. If you put your mind to it, you could play the system from the inside without having to kill a single person.”
Stark turned his head to capture her lips with his. “Everyone plays the system. People act like they agree with me while working against me from behind my back. You can’t ensure loyalty unless you extract it with blood.”
“There are other ways to get what you want,” Deirdre said, scraping her nails down his hairy chest.
He responded by kissing her again. It was as though he couldn’t taste her enough, couldn’t bring her close enough to his body. He was as addicted to her as she was addicted to the drugs he supplied.
“Charisma, Stark.” Deirdre’s lips brushed against his as she spoke. “You’ve got charisma. You can make people loyal without violence.”
“You want me to be weak.”
“I want you to be stronger than your fists.” She fisted his hair. “You don’t have to settle for being a radical. You could be a revolutionary. You’ve just gotta come back to Earth with me and fix everything. We can fix it together.”
“Woman, you don’t know when to shut your mouth,” Stark said.
He tried to silence her with a hard kiss, shoving his tongue between her lips, consuming the breaths that she exhaled.
“Don’t you want your daughters to live in a world that’s safe?” Deirdre asked.
“I want them to live in a just world.” He shoved her against the throne of ice. The icicles dug into her back through her shirt. “Safety is never more than an illusion.”
Deirdre had always been vulnerable to cold, as though she were a flickering flame that would only take a few drops of water to quench. But now the cold didn’t make her ache as it once had. Her fire was more powerful than that. She wasn’t a candle fluttering in the wind.
She was a blazing wildfire, and Stark was the wind to make her consume entire cities.
He spun her around. His arms clamped around her, curving around the heavy curves of her breasts.
“Now shut up, woman,” he growled into her ear. “I’m done talking with you.”
Deirdre arched back against him. “Don’t call me woman. That’s ‘Beta’ to you.”
Stark’s growl could have been annoyance or appreciation. It was hard to tell.
He pushed her face-first into the throne, hands fumbling around the front of her hips to find the buttons. Stark ripped them off. Tried to wrench her pants down to expose her body.
Deirdre drove her elbow backwards into his gut. The blow was hard enough that it sent him stumbling.
She wouldn’t be taken like that—like they were animals.
Stark slipped on the ice and landed on his back. When he tried to get up, she planted a foot on his chest.
“Don’t even think it.” She shimmied out of her pants, tossing them aside. She stood over him in her underwear, exposed to the cold, but untouched by it, blazing with the fire of her phoenix.
His hungry eyes roved over her body.
“You’re so damn difficult,” Stark said.
“I know,” Deirdre said.
She pulled her shirt off over her head and dropped it.
The moment she was unbalanced, Stark leaped out from under her foot. He was almost as fast as when he was shapeshifted. Funny what lust could do to a man.
He pushed her onto the throne of ice. It grew slick with her body heat, melting instantly, leaving a crystalline puddle underneath her.
The cold couldn’t touch Deirdre. She was fire.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him tight against her. Stark was erect and straining. It seemed like it must have been painful.
But he didn’t try to relieve the pressure, nor did he kiss her again. He braced his hands on either side of the throne and glared at Deirdre from inches away.
“I don’t like being manipulated,” he said.
Her body was burning in more ways than one. She pushed against him harder, digging her heels into his back. “Is it manipulation if I’m telling you exactly what I want?”
“Yes,” Stark said. “You think you can get me to obey you by taunting me with…this.” His hand raked down her breast, her ribs, clutched her hip. He groaned when she writhed against him.
Deirdre nipped his bottom lip. “What I want you to do for our people and what I want you to do to me are two separate things. Trust me on that.”
“Would you kill me afterward, the way that you killed Gage?” Stark asked.
The name was a shock of pain, colder than any ice.
“I need you alive,” Deirdre said. “And I need you on Earth. I’m not going to kill you.” She shoved the stolen skins off of him, exposing his flesh to the chilly throne room, to the heat of her burning arms.
Stark buried himself deep inside of her, his teeth sinking into her neck, as though claiming her from all sides.
It shouldn’t have felt so good.
It shouldn’t have felt so right.
He was inside of her, as he had been inside all along, owning her body as he’d owned her mind for too long.
She dragged her fingernails down his back, digging deep, unafraid of hurting him. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to know the pain that she felt, that she had been feeling for years.
Judging by the sharp intake of breath, Stark felt it.
He turned his head, biting at her chin. She caught his bottom lips between her teeth and pulled it back, stretching as far as she could go.
Stark liked that.
He kissed her harder. They tasted faintly of blood, and it was hard to tell if they were fighting or making love because there was no real difference.
Everything that built inside of Deirdre—the tension, the need, the pain—it was the same either way.
He
r back and legs were soaking. Her leaping flames were melting the throne of ice around them, and it left them drenched, but not cold—warm as blood. When their bodies collided, they slapped together wetly, not unlike the sounds made when knuckles met face.
Deirdre scratched at every inch of him, squeezed him between her knees, maybe hard enough to crack ribs. She wouldn’t hold back. Not with anything.
He didn’t hold back either. If she hadn’t been a shifter—a powerful shifter, a phoenix—he might have been capable of breaking her pelvis.
The hurt was good.
Great, actually.
She was doing this. With him. She was actually screwing the terrorist who had made her kill Gage and walked her through the murder of Dr. Landsmore and broken Rylie Gresham’s neck.
Crazier still, she liked it.
Deirdre was so far beyond the point of return that she wasn’t sure that point existed. She didn’t want it to exist. She lost herself in his embrace, finally taking on the last bit of Stark that she had yet to possess. She had taken his lethe habit. She had taken his thirst for violence. She had taken his pack. And now she took him inside of her as his spine arched and his muscles tensed and he came with an ear-splitting roar.
He slowed for a moment—only a moment.
Stark had met his climax, but he wasn’t done. He kept moving within her.
It didn’t take long.
When Deirdre came, it was with a scream like she had never made before—so loud that it must have been audible throughout the entire Winter Court, echoing over the frozen landscape and shaking ice off of all the trees.
Her orgasm was also accompanied by a pillar of flame.
It flared around her, oven-hot, like being tossed into the incinerator below the asylum again.
In an instant, the throne was gone.
Stark screamed.
That was not a scream of pleasure.
He wrenched away from her, splattering in the puddle that used to be the throne.
“Oh my gods!” Deirdre fell beside him. The shock had made her fire go out again. She was suddenly very cold, naked without her fire, but the cold was the farthest thing from her mind as she ran her hands over his scorched chest. “Stark! Everton! What the hell am I supposed to call you? Are you okay? Are you dying?”