“You obviously need one. So, yeah.” His mouth quirked up on one side. “If I promise to behave myself, will you share a room with me? I’d normally suggest you room with Quinn, and Nick and I could share an adjoining room, but…”
“Yeah, no way he’s letting her out of his sight. That’s obvious.”
Nick’s window squeaked as he rolled it down. “Get your asses in the car!”
“We’ll split the cost of the room, okay? That should help both of us, too.”
It hadn’t occurred to Riley that Sam might not have much money, either, despite the crappy bar he’d worked in and the fact that he drove a used Saturn against his will. But she wondered if his reasons could be excuses, and hoped they were.
Chapter Eleven
Recent surveys have indicated that sexuality may be complicated by power use, as well as connection to or distance from power sources. This is a private and personal aspect of most people’s daily lives. However, the Society has made counseling available should any goddess or her partner feel a need to work through any issues that arise.
—The Society for Goddess Education and Defense, monthly newsletter
Sam stood in the middle of the tiny hotel room, listening to the shower hiss on the other side of the bathroom door. He was worn out, yet charged by the low hum of energy from the transfer. He suspected that energy was boosting his awareness of Riley, too. Dinner had been mild torture, starting with the full-body hug when she’d first gotten out of the car. Her warm-honey scent had soaked into him through dinner. Whenever he spared her a glance, all he could see was glistening lips and smooth, graceful hands.
And now she was in the shower. Naked. Tilting her head back to let the water soak her hair. Raising her arms to run her hands over it, lifting her breasts. Nipples stiff from the spray…
He jumped when a triple knock sounded on the room’s gray-painted steel connecting door. His body went hot from embarrassment. Jesus. He swiped a hand down his face and hoped the lust didn’t show when he opened the door a crack.
Quinn stood there, a blanket around her shoulders. “Hey. You okay?”
“Fine. Are you?”
She waved off his concern. “Yeah, just chilly. How are Riley’s wrists? Does she need me to take a look at them?”
Sam frowned, not getting what she meant.
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Her wrists. She was very careful not to put pressure on her lower arms while we ate dinner. She didn’t touch the table with them at all and had trouble cutting her meat. She winced a few times, too. You didn’t notice?”
He hadn’t. He’d been so wrapped up in everything they were talking about and his own issues.
He was such an asshole.
“She’s in the shower,” he told Quinn. “I’ll check on her.” He probably shouldn’t go barging in. A full-body image popped into his head again, and he ground his teeth. Why the hell had he thought it was a good idea to share a room?
“Can I come in?” Quinn didn’t wait for an answer. She pushed the door open and slipped past him. When he turned around, she’d already sat in the desk chair and propped her feet up on the foot of one of the double beds. “Not a bad place, huh?”
Besides the hideous maroon, gold, and brown pattern swirling across the polyester bedspreads and curtains, the chipped pressboard furniture, and the crack across the bottom of the bathroom mirror? Sure. The carpet didn’t crunch when he walked on it, he hadn’t found evidence of bedbugs, and the bathroom was free of mold.
Sam shrugged and sat on the second bed. “Better than some of the places we’ve stayed in. I’m sure Nick’s seen much worse.” Nick used to spend all his time on the road, and whenever Sam complained about a crappy motel during the weeks they’d chased after Anson, he’d called Sam a diva.
“How are you feeling?” he asked her. “And tell the truth. I can see it’s not good.” She’d seemed to rally after the last stop they’d made for her to sleep a little, and the food had given her more energy. But she looked wan and pale now, and moved even more gingerly than before.
“I pulled the energy apart, and it isn’t very happy.” She twisted and stretched with a grimace.
“You talk like it’s sentient,” Sam accused. “Is it?”
But Quinn waved a dismissive hand. “I’m anthropomorphizing. It’s just energy. No sentience or emotion.”
“But.”
“It won’t stop churning. It’s like when you drink too much coffee and get all hyper, but it’s deeper than that. It’s making me nauseous. Like I have the flu.” She gave a chuckle that turned into a cough, and checked her hand not surreptitiously enough. She realized he’d caught her and shook her head. “No blood. And don’t worry, Nick is watching me hard enough for all of you.”
“He knows all this?” He felt a little better when she nodded.
“If we finish this,” he asked, “give Tanda and Chloe their powers back, will it settle?”
“I think so.”
Sam thought about Beth. Quinn couldn’t give her power back, and had said she couldn’t return Marley’s, either. So what would happen when they were all done, and that remaining bit warred with Quinn’s natural capacity?
He was too scared to ask her right now.
“So tell me about Riley.” Quinn folded her arms and slid down in her seat to rest her head on the back of it. She looked tired but not as ill as she had earlier.
“You know about Riley.”
Quinn snorted. “I want to know about your Riley. You like her.”
“She’s likeable.” He tried not to fidget under her stare, but his fortitude crumbled in seconds. “I was trying not to.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “She’s young.” Of course Quinn laughed, and even he had to smile. “Younger than I was,” he tried, but he couldn’t keep it up. “Okay, the age doesn’t matter.”
“Not unless you want to be a hypocrite.” She bounced her knee to rock the chair. “I talked to Marley about her. She’s tough. Riley, I mean. Pretty strong considering all she’s been through.”
“Yeah.” He told Quinn about the night they’d met and everything that had happened since. “I think she’s still not sure who to trust, especially anyone tied to the Society.”
Quinn grinned. “And yet she followed you there, and you’re the first person she called when she was in trouble again.”
“Well, I convinced her to give them a chance. That’s all.”
“Nick would say it’s your puppy-dog eyes, but I know it’s more than that.” Her eyes twinkled, and she briefly looked less tired. “The attraction’s not one-sided.”
Hell, no, not according to the way she’d kissed him back in Boston. But things had changed with the first transfer. Sam didn’t think it was fair to let things deepen with Riley when he had no idea what he was in for, but he wasn’t having any luck resisting the attraction, either. Riley had been in the shower a long time now, and he didn’t want her to overhear them talking about her. “Maybe. But it’s complicated,” he warned. “The last time I fell for someone I thought needed me was a disaster.”
“That’s harsh.” Quinn pushed to her feet. “It’s okay to take it slow. But don’t lose out on something great because you’re overcautious.” She winked at him as she disappeared through the connecting door. The bolt clicked just as the shower turned off.
He dug a first aid kit out of his bag and laid it on the desk. A few minutes later, Riley emerged from the bathroom fully dressed. She played with her towel as if planning to fold it, but kept it positioned so Sam couldn’t see her arms.
Not that he looked that hard. The steam rolling out of the bathroom behind her caused the thin, gray tank top to cling to her upper body, while the soft, well-worn cutoff sweats hugged her hips and ass. Her nipples pressed against the fabric, her breasts so round and perfect Sam’s mouth went drier than sand. A bolt of lust gave him the hard-on he’d been fighting since they’d hugged.
The lust had a hard edge to it this time. A cra
ving hunger too close to what he’d felt during the power transfer. He swallowed and stood, his feet taking him across the room, his hands tingling.
Riley glanced at him from the corner of her eye and turned away to hang the towel on the bar. “I’m beat,” she said. “I’m gonna hit the hay, if—hey!” She spun toward Sam when he grabbed her hands and twisted her arms up.
The haze of need vanished when he saw the red, raw rings on her skin. They were much worse than he’d assumed. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you say something?”
Riley shrugged. “There were more important things going on. They didn’t bother me much.”
“Bullshit. These have to hurt like a son of a bitch. I can’t believe you acted like nothing was wrong.” He pulled her across the room and pushed her down to the bed while he sat in the chair. “What the hell happened?”
Riley sighed and pulled her legs up under her, resting her elbows on her knees so her forearms hung in open space. Sam looked more closely at the stripes twisting around her delicate skin. Some of it was merely red, some glistening with blood in a dashed pattern carved—no, burned through the first couple of layers of skin. “Were you chained?” He looked up at her, aghast. “Did Anson chain you?”
“No! I told you, he let me go without trying to stop me. I did the chaining.”
Sam released her hands and unscrewed the cap on a tube of antiseptic cream. “What are you talking about?” He carefully dabbed ointment on the raw wounds while Riley explained about needing constant contact with metal to draw on while she was at Millinger.
“I’ve never held contact and drawn energy for that long. Not even before I knew what I was doing. I’m not sure if it was the constant draw that was the problem, or if I just pulled too much at once, or a combination of the two. Once it seared the skin, any time I tapped energy, it hurt.” She rotated her arms to give him better access. “No one told me doing this could damage me.” She sounded resentful, and Sam couldn’t blame her.
“No one knew,” he said apologetically. “Remember, we don’t have a lot of goddesses who use it.”
Riley winced and shifted her arms again. “So…other sources don’t give this kind of backlash?”
“Not that I’ve heard. But any energy can generate heat, and metal is a conductor.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “Especially the kind I wrapped around myself. And I thought I was being so smart.”
“You were.” He stroked carefully, barely touching the wounds, but his fingers brushed undamaged skin and Riley hissed in a breath. When he looked up, she was biting her lip.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She met his eyes, and instead of the pain he expected to find in them, he saw desire.
His lust spiked again. His cock filled, twisting uncomfortably under the fly of his jeans. He ignored it—or tried to. Somehow, he managed to operate on two levels. In his head, he kissed her and pressed her back onto the bed, covering her body with his. She wrapped her luscious legs around his hips, and he buried his face in her breasts. His nostrils filled with the scent of soap, and he could feel the pebble of her nipple on his tongue.
In reality, he wrapped gauze around her wrists, smoothing it with just the pads of his fingers so he didn’t touch her skin and risk hurting her more. He peeled off strips of tape to secure the gauze and popped a couple of analgesics from a blister pack to help her with the pain.
“Quinn could heal these,” he offered at one point, but Riley shook her head.
“She’s probably sleeping and looked like she needed it. I’ll ask her tomorrow.”
Her voice had gone husky, low, and it dragged through Sam, driving his need higher. His pulse throbbed in his neck, his ears, his groin. He had to have her. Had to.
His hands shook as he collected wrappers and bits of trash and dropped them into the tiny can next to the desk. Heavy breathing rasped, and he was appalled to realize it was his.
“Sam,” Riley whispered, and God help him, he turned to face her again instead of getting up and locking himself in the bathroom like he should have.
“What?” he managed to say, but it was thick and guttural instead of the impersonal tone he was going for. Riley tilted her head back and met his gaze, her eyes dark with need.
No, dammit, they were dark with pain. He’d irritated raw skin. He was the one with need blazing in his expression, judging by the way Riley… Oh, God.
She leaned forward, mouth open and glistening, tongue sweeping quickly over her top lip. Long lashes came down over those burning hazel eyes. Her hands tugged his knees, and the chair rolled an inch closer. The last rationally operating cell in Sam’s brain said, “Dude, she wants you.”
So he took her.
He slid his hands under her hair to cradle her skull and kissed the hell out of her. No gentle lead-in, no tasting or tentative moment to let her get away if she wanted to. He devoured her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, moaning at the taste of her, at the smell of sex that filled the air. She wrapped her arms around him and dug her fingers into his shoulder blades, arching her body against his torso. Her tongue met his stroke for stroke, and her own breathy moans made him shudder with need.
He spread his legs wide and rolled closer, leaning forward and running his hands down Riley’s back, slipping one into the shoulder opening of the tank top so he could touch her skin. He knew she wasn’t wearing a bra, but feeling it, that she was completely unhindered, fed his hunger.
And then his fantasy became reality. He covered Riley on the bed, grunting with satisfaction when she tightened her thighs around his hips. Her body writhing under him, he sucked on her neck, nibbled her collarbone, and buried his face between her spectacular breasts. She gasped and clutched his head, arching her back. He accepted the invitation and closed his mouth over her nipple. She convulsed, and the pressure of his zipper on his cock became unbearable. He had to get free, had to take her, to fill her, to fill himself, to—
He didn’t know what triggered it—maybe when he twisted to reach for his belt buckle, he caught sight of the moon outside the window—but sanity returned like a punch in the gut.
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t normal. He could hurt her.
The chair got in his way when he reared back and scrambled off the bed. He tripped and fell against the desk, panting, staring in shock at Riley, who looked confused and fucking delicious sprawled across the bed like that.
“I’m sorry,” he ground out before she could say anything. “I’m so sorry.”
And he bolted.
Chapter Twelve
Today, my brother watched me heal a dove that had hit our window and broken its wing. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face made my heart ache. He no longer courts the girl who sells flowers downtown, and he stopped tutoring his students after school. I fear for what’s to become of him.
—Meandress Chronicles, compilation of family diaries
Sam felt no relief when the bathroom door closed between him and Riley. Nausea washed over him, and the overly bright room spun. He gripped the sides of the sink and gagged, blinking hard, trying to get everything to settle. Parts of his body were on fire, other parts so cold the sweat beading on his skin could turn to ice.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He’d been lost in Riley, but this wasn’t typical lust. At some point he’d been so far gone he wouldn’t have been able to tell whether she’d been right there with him or struggling to get away.
His gorge rose at the thought of what he could’ve done. He whirled and got the toilet lid up in time to lose his dinner. It didn’t make him feel better.
Worse, the need wasn’t gone. His erection was as hard as ever, and the craving kept getting stronger. Already, it nearly overwhelmed his revulsion. But he couldn’t go back out there. Couldn’t face Riley like this.
Everything in the room had a pink tinge to it, and the edges of his vision were darkening to red. He stripped off his clothes and yanked on the shower, getting under the
spray without regulating the temperature. There was only one thing he could do now to ease the pressure.
Sam braced his left hand against the wall under the showerhead and let the water pound down on his head and back while he wrapped his other hand around his cock. He was harder than he’d ever been before, so fucking sensitive his first grip sent a wave of pleasure through him that abated the awful, biting hunger.
Relief gusted out in a breath, and he went to work, concentrating on his goal, focusing intently on sensation, not imagery. But control eluded him. With each stroke, he saw flashes of Riley. Tasted her skin, her nipple. Smelled her. Felt her body cradling his. Heard her cry out. Thrust into her, and—
He grunted and came violently, pleasure in a dozen concentrated bursts. He gulped in air, his muscles relaxing, tension slowly draining away. He sank onto the floor of the tub, exhausted, and held his head in his hands, his elbows against upraised knees. The water pelting him gradually cooled, and he felt more normal as the minutes ticked by.
He didn’t know what to do. The power transfer had obviously triggered this in him. Why had it taken so long to manifest? He’d had the itch when it first happened, but then nothing until…well, until he stormed out of the motel when Riley called, and he let a small surge of energy burst out of him. But he’d done so little, and it triggered this? What if it got worse with each transfer?
But he couldn’t stop. They still had Chloe and Tanda, and Sam couldn’t back out. He couldn’t deny them what was rightfully theirs. Especially since Quinn was sick and hurting, too. The only cure for her was finishing the job. But God, he was terrified of what would happen next time. Every transfer could affect him more strongly. Leave a greater residue. And put Riley in more danger.
He could send her back to Boston, but she wasn’t some pliant, obedient flower. She wouldn’t stay put now any more than she had the last time, especially with everything else they knew now, and not with Jeannine withholding information. That probably reinforced her mistrust of the Society, reversing any progress they’d made when she first arrived.
Heavy Metal (A Goddesses Rising Novel) (Entangled Select) Page 17