He moaned before his mouth captured mine, and his tongue took command of my own. My breasts rubbed against his chest, hardening my nipples into beads and sending a jolt of pleasure to my inner core. I shifted side to side, up and down, gasping as every little movement made both of us vibrate and convulse against the other. Tristan’s muscles tightened and undulated underneath me, his arms and shoulders and back muscles hard as rock. I slid my hands up his neck and into his hair, grabbing it in my fists, and pulling him closer as we kissed until we both became dizzy.
His legs shook, and he dropped to the mattress. I slid down harder and deeper over him, making us both cry out. I lifted up to my knees and dropped down again. Pleasure rocked through my body. This was what I needed. To lose myself, my mind, my heart, everything, to the moment. To focus only on the physical, on the taste and smell of my man, on the feel of his skin and muscles under my touch, on the way he felt inside me, throbbing and pulsing.
His hands clamped onto my hips, and his thumbs dug into the tender area at the top of my thigh, making me squeeze him and utter another moan. Then he lifted me, and I rose up on my knees until I almost lost him before sliding down again.
“Oh, Lex,” he groaned. “Again.”
His hand slid forward, and his thumb circled over my center, teasing the nub of nerves as he lifted me again. I whimpered his name as I came down and he thrust upward, and then I rose again, my movements becoming faster and harder as his thumb pressed deeper and worked quicker. The sensation started in my belly, like the feeling of falling, and bloomed downward and out and in, all at the same time. My skin tightened over my breasts, and I grabbed at them to release the ache. But the pressure was really building below, making me convulse around him as I started to lose control.
“Tristan,” I gasped. “Oh, God, baby.”
I dragged myself up and slammed back down, once, twice, and a third time, and I was about to soar over the edge when he flipped us over so I lay on my back. Then he drove into me, again and again, and I completely lost it. Lost myself in the moment. In the physicality. In the complete bliss. I left this godforsaken world for our own private one, floating into oblivion, screaming my lover’s name as I brought him with me. Leaving my body, with every muscle clenched down to my curling toes, if only for a moment of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.
Tristan continued pumping into me, though, and my belly trembled, my spine tingled, and my toes clenched as he sent me soaring over and over again. He plunged into me one more time as his mouth said my name like a dirty word before he exploded inside me. I grabbed him, squeezing tight with both arms and legs, milking every bit out of him. Then he collapsed on top of me, and I wrapped myself around him, melding my body to his, becoming one with him.
“I love you so much,” I whispered.
“I love you more than life, sexy Lexi,” he said against my ear, and then he rolled off of me. I missed him immediately and rolled over to press as much of my skin against his as I possibly could.
“I needed that.”
He chuckled. “I’d say so. Not like you to let go like that.”
“You know, the first time you had Owen do that, I was so embarrassed. But it’s necessary, right? Like on days like today.” I trailed my fingers over his chest and abs, making his muscles tighten under the light touch.
“Lexi, I didn’t have Owen do anything.”
My hand froze. “He didn’t muffle and block our room?”
“Not this time. I hadn’t expected you …” His voice trailed off, and his head turned slightly toward me. He stared at me with sparkling eyes, but they dimmed as the seconds ticked by. “You can’t hear me?”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“In your head.” He tapped his finger against my forehead.
I sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! I can’t! I can’t hear or sense anyone. You’re sure you don’t have the room blocked?”
“Even if I did, you’d be able to hear me.”
I groaned. He was right.
“That explains why you didn’t share everything with me like you usually do when you let go. I missed that.”
I pressed my face into the soft area where his shoulder and pectoral muscle met. He meant how I could mentally share my orgasm with him and he could share his, but this development was far worse than that. I’d lost touch with my ability before, but not so thoroughly. And something as intense as that orgasm should have broken through the obstruction the sorcerers had apparently lodged into my brain.
“My telepathy is our advantage,” I said. “What if it doesn’t come back this time?”
He brushed a hand over my hair, pushing it back over my shoulder. “It will, ma lykita. The Angels gave that gift to you for a reason. They wouldn’t take it away.”
I hoped he was right. But I couldn’t help but think that maybe this was my punishment for being such a failure. If the Angels planned to fire me, to throw me to the other side, they wouldn’t allow me to keep such a powerful gift, would they?
Had the Angels given up on me? Had God? I couldn’t blame them if they had. Maybe this had been their plan all along, and one by one, the good people of my team would make it to Heaven before it all ended. Maybe all of our bad luck really was part of the apocalypse that the Normans theorized about.
Was this really the beginning of the end?
If so, my ancestors apparently didn’t want me to know, because they remained completely silent about everything.
* * *
“We have to stick with our plan, which means going to Virginia,” I told my team, which had gathered in the cafeteria the next morning after breakfast had ended and everyone else had moved out. I’d called them together for a meeting to regroup on our plans. “That’s what Solomon would want.”
“And you want Owen to open a portal right to the DoD building?” Vanessa asked.
“No, of course not,” I answered. “For one, I’m not taking Dorian into what will surely be a fight.”
“So the safe house?” Blossom asked.
“We have no idea if it’s really safe,” Charlotte said. She sat on the edge of a table, showing no signs of being shot yesterday. Vanessa must have given her a good dose of blood to help her heal.
“Kristen said there are a few cells of A.K.’s Angels in the U.S.,” Tristan said. “One of those is probably the safest place we can go first. They might panic when we arrive, but hopefully they’ll see Alexis before they fire.”
“We only know the exact location of two.” Ammi’s voice came from the opposite side of the bunker, spoken softly but carrying to our ears anyway. “Sorry, but I can’t help but hear you.”
“Why don’t you come here then,” I said, and the mages, the only ones who couldn’t hear her, gave me strange looks, wondering to whom I spoke. Ammi appeared in the doorway a moment later, her dark eyes wide.
She wrung her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I’m still getting used to these new ears.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We need your help. Tell everyone what you just said.”
She nodded and relaxed as she came farther into the room. “We only know where two of the cells’ exact locations are. There was a cell in Washington, D.C., which I think is right where you want to go, but the last we heard, they hadn’t found a permanent, or even semi-permanent safe place. They’d been moving around every night. We don’t know if they’re even still a unit.”
“Where are the two you know about?” Tristan asked.
“One’s in California and the other in Florida. I think Florida is nearer to Virginia? Sorry. I don’t know my American geography very well.”
“Florida?” I mused out loud. “Where in Florida?”
“On the left side. Cape something … it began with an H. I’d never heard of it before. I think it’s a really small town.”
Tristan and I exchanged a look. What were the odds?
“Cape Heron?” I hedged.
“Yes! That’s it! How did you—oh, wait.
That makes sense you would know. They said you wrote your first book there. That’s why they went there.”
I pressed a palm to my forehead and blew out a soft snort. My fans were lovely, but a little weird. Who goes to a town an author once lived in because they thought it would be a safe place? Especially when said author was Public Enemy Number One, or whatever ridiculous name they’d christened me?
“I guess we go there first?” I asked Tristan.
“Anywhere will be risky, but when we show up out of thin air, your supporters will be less likely to shoot at us. We’ll just have to make our way up to Virginia.”
“First, we have to hope they’re still there and not overtaken by the Daemoni, or worse, a Norman farm,” Sheree said.
“Cape Heron’s too small for the Daemoni to worry about, and full of retirees,” Tristan replied, and he didn’t need to explain further, but the visual came to me anyway of what the Daemoni did to old people.
“You’re okay to move on?” I asked Charlotte one more time before we made our final decision.
She smiled. “Good as new. Probably better than I was before I got shot. And trust me, that’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Your mom would …” She trailed off, and her smile faltered. “We had some interesting times, she and I. I’ll just leave it at that.”
I threw my arms around her neck, and she wrapped hers around me. “You’re the closest thing I have to a mom now, Char. Don’t leave me, too.”
“Like I said yesterday, I don’t plan on going anywhere any time soon. You and Owen and this whole lot need me.” She gave me a final squeeze, then grabbed my shoulders and pushed me away. “Now, let’s get back to work and win this war.”
Chapter 20
I mentally called out for Dorian, but my head still refused to function properly. That bitch Jeana may as well have cut off my arm. She would’ve wished she had if I ever saw her again, because I’d be assaulting her with lethal doses of Amadis power. I didn’t know if such a thing as too much goodness existed, but I could hope so for someone like her and Merrick.
Once we were ready for our next adventure, we said goodbye to Ammi, Kristen, Olivia, and the rest.
“As soon as we’re gone, seek out the other Amadis,” I told them. “They’ll most likely be on sacred ground, but probably more on the outskirts of the city. They’ll sense Ammi is one of them when you’re near, and you’ll feel them, too. Give them this.”
I pressed a folded up note into Ammi’s palm, and she closed her fist around it. The encrypted message inside would ensure they knew the note came from me, with an order for them to come help my Angels here and train them.
“Be safe, Alexis,” she said as she wrapped me in a hug. “I hope we’ll get to see you again.”
“Trust me, so do I. You’re one of mine now, you know.”
Her face broke into a huge smile, as if she’d just realized what her transformation and conversion really meant.
Tristan had figured out the coordinates to the address Ammi and Kristen had for the Cape Heron cell, and Owen opened a portal. The other side—a dark and dingy interior—didn’t look like anything in Cape Heron I remembered, but I stepped through first anyway, hands up and ready to fire in case someone shot at me. Four surprised faces stared at me instead, two of them quite familiar. Now we knew who had told everyone A.K.’s real name.
“Alexis!” one of them squealed, and the young woman launched herself at me. I couldn’t help but return her embrace, holding her close, happy to see her alive. And still human.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Heather,” I said.
She squeezed me tighter while trying to jump up and down. “I can’t believe you’re here! You found us! Did you find Dorian? Oh my God, Tristan! Blossom!”
She released me and flew over to tackle Blossom with a hug, while her sister strode over to me and hesitated.
“How are you, Sonya?” I asked. “Still good?”
She nodded vehemently.
“Always,” she said, and I swallowed her into a hug. When she stepped back, she indicated the other two young women who’d been sitting on the floor with them. The quintet had been gathered around a cardboard box with two cans of food sitting on it. “This is Teal and Teah. They’re cousins, and big fans of yours, too. Not like Heather and me, though. A lot less creepy.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Sonya had once been one of those fans who had my publicist worried that she’d kidnap me and break my foot so I couldn’t escape. Heather wasn’t quite as intense as a fan, but when she figured out we could help her sister, she’d stalked our house until I agreed to do what we could for the vampire. Sonya’s initial conversion failed because of a stone Kali had given her that had been the precursor to the ones in the Summoned sons now. During our search for Dorian, we’d been able to remove the stone and convert Sonya completely. We’d lost touch with the girls when the Daemoni decided to take over the world.
The cousins unfolded themselves and rose to their feet, both tall, with brown hair, bright blue eyes, and warm smiles. They stood with shoulders touching each other, staring at us shyly. I reached my hand toward them, and when they shook my hand, I noticed their tattoos, similar to the ones everyone had in London. The taller one, I thought she was the one named Teah, caught me looking at the ink, and lifted her wrist for me to see better.
“We all have them,” she said, and the other girls showed off theirs.
“They have them in London, too.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe—”
“Wait,” Sonya said, stopping me, “you found the London group? A.K.’s Angels?”
“They were the ones who told us to come here,” I replied.
“What are you doing back in Cape Heron, anyway?” Tristan asked.
“Who would have thought, right?” Heather said. She looked around the small apartment we had piled into, her nose wrinkled. “We used to live here with our asshole dad. Our mom …”
She bit her lip.
“She didn’t make it,” Sonya finished for her, and my heart broke for them. “She was showing a condo at Fort Myers Beach the night the Daemoni came out. If I’d known, I could have protected her.”
I slid my arm back over her shoulders. “Their evil is not your fault. Not anymore.”
She nodded, her only reply.
“What brought you here?” Tristan asked again.
“The Amadis all left Captiva,” Heather said. “They said the war was starting, but Sonya wouldn’t leave me.”
“Some of them started acting really weird, talking about converting to the Daemoni, and no way would I take Heather into such chaos, so we stayed behind. When we saw Lucas smack-talking lies about you on TV, we knew what we could do to help. We got online on the forums and helped start A.K.’s Angels,” Sonya said. “Teah and Teal had been here on vacation, and got stuck. They found us on the forums, too, so we picked them up.”
“Thank God,” Teal breathed. “We would have been dead if we’d tried to go home.”
“This was supposed to be our meeting place for lots of people,” Heather said.
“Where are they?” I asked, knowing another body couldn’t possibly fit in this apartment now that we’d arrived.
“Some took off. Others …” Sonya frowned. “It’s been really hard here, Alexis. We expected part of our group to be back three days ago. We were going to give them one more day, and then we were gonna take off.”
“Where did they go?” Owen asked. Sonya looked at him as if realizing for the first time that he stood among us. Her lips twitched with a smile, but then she saw Vanessa and looked away.
“Looking for survivors. And food. There was a lot of gunfire the other night, though. I’ve been out searching, but haven’t found them. I didn’t want to get too far away, in case the gangs came back here.”
“Gangs?” Blossom asked.
“Yeah,” Heather said. “The gangs have been worse than any supernaturals around here. They come in and loot all the businesses
and houses, stealing our food and anything else we need. That’s why a bunch of our people left. We had this whole apartment building full of A.K.’s Angels, and now they’re all gone.”
“All except us,” Teah said as she plopped down by the box-table. She looked at a can of food longingly, and then her gaze swept over us.
“Go ahead and eat,” I encouraged. “We’re all good.”
“Mom,” Dorian said quietly from the back of our group.
I rolled my eyes. “You just ate, Dorian.”
“Dorian?” Heather asked, pushing her way through to him. “Oh my God! Look at you!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, and her face flushed a bright pink. Then she threw her arms around him.
“I’m so glad you’re okay! I’d been so worried about you,” she cried.
His return hug appeared awkward at first, but they eventually must have remembered that they’d been each other’s best friends for a while, and they both relaxed. They went off to a corner of the kitchen together, jabbering away as they caught up with each other.
I looked at Tristan. “What do you think?”
“I think we should look for their friends, then we’ll take off.”
I nodded my agreement.
The scene greeting me when we opened the door about knocked me to my knees. The apartment building sat on the corner of a side road that intersected with Fifth Street, the main business district of the town. Looking a little to the right from here, I could see all the way down Fifth until it ended at the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. Immediately to the left of the apartment building, a residential area of low-income housing spread out. This part of town had been occupied by some elderly who’d lived in Cape Heron for decades, but mostly by the blue-collar service personnel who’d served the snowbirds and tourists at the restaurants, bars, shops, and hotels.
Everywhere I looked, windows were broken out, and some doors hung ajar from their hinges. Cars sat abandoned on the side of the road, some with jags of glass shards where their windows and windshields used to be. An older model truck was completely burnt out, nothing more than a shell, and a VW Bug sat crumpled into the trunk of an oak tree, its driver side door still open. One business’ picture window had been boarded up with plywood with the words “No Food or Water” spray-painted in big red letters on it. Next to it, another piece of plywood said, “We stoled theres and its gone” with an arrow pointing to the first one and a crude image of a hand with the middle finger sticking up.
Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) Page 24