Red Blooded: The Gods of Midnight Series, Book 3.5 (Paranormal Romance)

by Deidre Knight

  “And more blah. I know, I know. A big job, but somebody had to do it. You’re a good man for stepping up and taking that burden off of River’s shoulders.” She patted the top of his head. “I’m sure you woke up today wondering what comes next. Ares being out of the picture is the ultimate career changer for a demi-god like you.”

  Nikos reached for the sugar and let far too many healthy teasponsfulls slide into his mug. With a grudgingly humorous glance at Shay, he reiterated the reality of his situation. “Once again—I. Am. Not. A. Demi-god.”

  She ignored him completely, pouring herself a cup of coffee as she went on. “Cheer up, Ari. I’m sure someone with your supernatural skillset will always find a job, even in this struggling economy. Ares’s gift of power is one that sticks around, sure, but you’ll find a use for it.”

  “Yeah, I’m the Great and Powerful Oz, all right. Can’t even mend my own bloody shoulder.” Aristos stretched and tried to work out some of the stiffness. “Hells bells on a Trisket.”

  “Ari, that is so not a southern curse. I keep on telling you.” Shay lined a Sweet’n Low packet on the marble countertop, flicking it at Ari’s forehead with Beckham-like precision. And nailing him so hard, ole Becks himself would’ve approved.

  “Ow! I don’t care if that is pink. It hurts like a mother when I take it between the eyebrows.”

  “Distracted you from the shoulder, though, right?” Shay planted a sloppy kiss right between his brows, patting his cheek. “You’re a Greek man and you’ll always be a Greek man, so just talk like yourself, huh? And stop butchering my southern heritage while you’re at it.”

  Ari retrieved the pink packet from the floor and tore into it. “It was so much easier when we lived in Britain,” he muttered, pouring the sweetener into his coffee.

  Shay’s eldest brother Jamie Angel sauntered into the kitchen, freshly showered and looking as if he were ready for a round of golf, not as if he’d participated in the most epic demon battle of his hunting career less than a day ago. “Try ‘Butter my biscuits,’” he offered with a jovial grin. “Speaking of, Sissy Cat, how’s about baking up a few buttery biscuits for a celebratory brunch?”

  Shay frowned up at him. “I wasn’t aware we were hosting a brunch today, James.”

  “Shayanna, you’re the mistress of this kitchen. Shouldn’t be too hard to whip up a good grits casserole, maybe some of your famous jalapeño scrambled eggs. Top that off with a few pitchers of mimosas—no biggie—and, of course, your buttermilk biscuits: flaky, hot, dripping with butter.”

  “Dripping with cholesterol.” Shay gave her big brother a stern look. “I heard from Sunny that your doc said to lay off all the smothered and covered crap you love so much.”

  Jamie frowned. “Sunny’s such a narc.”

  “Don’t you suppose,” Shay said, handing him a cup of coffee, “that it’s because she loves you and wants you to live a long, healthy life?”

  “We only got today. And today is about your biscuits. Period. ’Sides, you owe me because I got you out of working the family shop when I hired Juliana.”

  Ari’s wife had taken over the Angel family store not long before—specializing in spiritual trinkets, holy water, Bibles made from cedars of Sinai…and every manner of herb or protective spiritual item. Most tourists saw it as a charming, quirky low-country shop, but better-knowing patrons understood the Angel family’s powerful gifts when it came to fighting demons and dark magic.

  Shay sighed and walked to a big ceramic canister on the countertop. Lifting the lid, a cloud drifted upward like culinary fairy dust. “Plenty of flour,” she proclaimed. “Surely a few biscuits won’t hurt you too bad. And you’re right, y’all all earned it yesterday.”

  Ari perked right up where he sat on his barstool. Shay’s biscuits were indulgences of the gods—they all swore it. “I, for one, can vouch that my brothers would finally get their collective arses out of bed for a spread like that. The minute that aroma starts wafting through this house, kapow! Those boys will roll their worthless ballocks right out of bed.”

  “You make your Spartan comrades sound so freaking gluttonous, Ari!” Shay laughed, and took a sip of her coffee.

  “Not at all,” Ari said. “Post-battle hunger is always massive, even for our great leader, King Leonidas. It’s way more than the physical demands—more something to do with how we tap the supernatural powers and all.”

  Ari discreetly picked up another Sweet’N Low packet, and when Shay had turned toward the coffee pot, pinged her smartly on the back of the head. She spun on him, fire in her clear blue eyes. “Your time is coming, Aristos Petrakos.”

  “Come on, Shay.” He rubbed his belly, stretching so his T-shirt lifted, exposing his flat abdomen. “I slayed about three dozen demons yesterday. Least you can do is fill me tummy since I saved the world.”

  A growling roar filled the doorway behind Ari, and he snapped his shirt back down, sitting up tall. “So you saved the world, did you?” His younger brother Ajax glared at him. “And then you showed my wife your hairy abdomen just now, to what? Woo her? When she’s already a married woman? And you a well-married man?”

  Ari blushed despite himself, making a great show of blowing on his steaming mug of coffee. Why did he always get so carried away? He knew he was being a horse’s ass, but it seemed he simply couldn’t filter or stop himself sometimes. He gave a shrug. “I wanted a biscuit.”

  Jax’s black eyebrows cranked right up to his hairline. “You’ll leave my wife’s biscuits to my own eager hands, brother.” And with that, Jax swooped in on Shay like the hawk-shifter he would always be, even now that Ares had lifted the curse that had bound them to the god for more than twenty-five-hundred years.

  Watching Jax nuzzle Shay, Ari wished his own wife would come down for breakfast, and soon. She’d crashed here at the Angel home, too, instead of going back to the Spartan compound, having made camp here throughout their battle at Cornwall. Once she’d known for sure that Ari lived and that all their friends were safe, she’d curled up in the library and fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep. Ari hadn’t dared wake her, not when she looked so innocent and happy—more than he’d ever seen her now that she knew he was finally free of Ares.

  Shay shook her head. “I haven’t even been to the store since last week. Besides, other than you two”—she kissed Jax again, then glanced at Ari—“all the Spartans are out at the farm. And Mason’s out on a run, but he said he can’t even get Nik to answer a text. Apparently that boy’s just dead to the world after yesterday.”

  Ari couldn’t help mumbling under his breath, knowing full well that Nikos had made a beeline here to Mason’s room—and shower—before heading home. Why he’d even bothered staggering out the door at four a.m., Ari wasn’t sure, apart from the fact that Mason and Nik remained a bit closeted about having become lovers. Of course, if they had any idea how noisy they’d been about six hours ago, they’d realize that sneaking out before dawn was an absurd pretense. No wonder Nikos was laid out flat—he’d played around for most of the night.

  “Sucks hooking up with millennially older man,” Aristos muttered, mostly to himself.

  Shay shot him a look, obviously having heard his comment. “What?” Ari held his palms up with exaggerated innocence. “I’m just saying it was the after-party, the private one with your bro, that did ole Nikos in, not the battle itself. Or I guess it was the one-two punch of both together that flattened him out.” Ari waggled his brows. “If you know what I mean.”

  “How about you don’t give my brother any of your crap? Not when it comes to Nikos?” Shay said tartly, and for the first time all morning, Ari was concerned that she seemed genuinely ticked at him.

  “I got no problem with it.”

  She moved in closer on him. “It?”

  “They’re good together. Hell, I like them together, and Nik…I haven’t seen him this happy since—” Aristos slammed his mouth shut. No way would he enlighten Shay about Nikos having lost a lover at Thermopylae, or
how the Spartan had grieved Doros for endless centuries until meeting her brother.

  He hunkered down over his coffee mug. “Mason’s the one for him. It’s obvious.”

  Shay nodded, and he hoped she was satisfied, but that rainbow-happy wish flitted right out the window when she quietly asked, “This is the happiest you’ve seen Nikos since when?”

  “Oh, Zeus’s balls!” Ari slammed the counter so hard that his coffee sloshed out of the mug. “Jax, brother, tell your wife to leave me alone.”

  Jax gave him a grudging grin. “You’re on your own there,” he said, then began slowly, methodically working his long black hair into a ponytail. Did that mean an arse whipping would come next?

  Shay moved much closer to Ari and settled on the barstool beside him, her voice becoming conspiratorial. “Something happened while you and Nik were held hostage downtown, didn’t it? Something when you were kept in that cell? Mason brought Nikos home, took care of his wounds, but the way they were together… I don’t know. It was just a weird vibe. Something had changed. And I think you”—she poked Ari in the chest with a finger—“know what that thing is.”

  Ari held both palms up and out. “Oh, no you don’t. That’s for you to talk to your brother about. Or even Nikos. I’m not butting in there any farther than I already have.”

  “Than you did when? How?” She studied him keenly over the rim of her coffee cup like the demon huntress that she was.

  What he would’ve said, if he’d not already realized the foolhardiness of flapping his gums, was that Shay was right: he had butted his big head into matters during that time in the cell with Nik. The two of them had been kept down on the waterfront for hours, unsure if they’d ever get out of captivity alive, and had turned to matters of the heart. He’d urged Nikos to make a real confession of his intentions to Mason, reminding him just how fleeting love could truly be if one wasn’t careful—or was so careful as to not say a word.

  He said nothing now about marriage proposals or deeper commitments. “Shay, this really isn’t my territory. Not when the lovers in question keep skulking around like a pair of naughty puppies like we don’t all know they’re lovers. Dude.”

  “Who are lovers?” came Mason Angel’s husky voice from the doorway. He’d propped himself against the jamb, and good gods above, there was no telling how long he’d been listening.

  Ari groaned, bounded to his feet, and opened the fridge in search of his own damned breakfast. “Talk to your sister and brother,” he said with a growl. “Shay’s the one with all the questions.”

  “Hopefully she’s got one answer. The only one I really need, actually, since I’ve been told by my lover,” Mason said pointedly and in a loud voice, just dripping with southern charm, “that he would haul his ancient ass across town for some of my sister’s biscuits.”

  Shay gave Mason a gentle smile. “Well, if it will get Nikos over here, then I’ll oblige happily.”

  Mace pecked her on the cheek, reaching for his iPhone. “Boy howdy, he’s gonna be happy when he gets this text, Sissy.” He hesitated, eyeing Aristos sharply. “But lucky for you, Ari, you dumb nuts, I won’t text that comment about us being—what was it? A pair of naughty, skulking puppies?”

  “Skata!” Ari rose to his full, lumbering height. “Here’s a southern phrase I have mastered: ‘Can’t win for losing ’round here.’ Guess I’ll go shower before this mimosa-sipping hoedown.”

  Mason kept tapping the text into his phone as he spoke. “Hoedown isn’t a true southern term either, buddy. Unless you want the name ‘dumb nuts’ to stick, I’d punt it from your vocab.”

  Jamie turned the page of his newspaper, then glanced at them over the rims of his reading glasses. “But I kinda like the idea of ‘sister’s biscuits’ as a sexual metaphor. So let’s do add that to the general lexicon.”

  Shay spun from the fridge. “James, you are so sick.”

  Mason shrugged, still texting. “That only works if you’re straight. I have no warm, buttery biscuits to speak of.”

  Jamie snorted. “Watch it, Jimmy Dean. I seriously doubt you want me to anatomize the breakfast menu any further.”

  Ari smiled, his heart full. Maybe it was because defeating Ares had left him a little scrappier than usual this morning, or simply the act of standing in the kitchen, trading barbs with his extended family was fun, but whatever the cause, as he lumbered out of the kitchen in search of Juliana, he turned back to fling one last quip, the only one that would really matter once he’d fired that particular volley into their familial fray.

  “By the way, the answer to your question, Shay, is totally simple.” Ari’s gaze flitted between Jamie and Shay significantly. “Nikos told your brother he wants to marry his sorry ass. That’s what. Down by the river, apparently, right here on your family’s plantation. And, oh yeah, he wants Leonidas to do the honors.”

  Mason’s green gaze snapped up, the iPhone practically falling from his hand.

  Ari gave a shrug. “Whether Mason said yea or nay, I’ve no idea. Only he can give up those deets.”

  Before the marine could lunge or even sputter an answer, Ari sprinted from the room with a shout. “Closet that, Mason Angel, my brother, my friend.”

  Get lost in the Gods of Midnight series and connect with Deidre!

  THE GODS OF MIDNIGHT SERIES:

  Red Fire (Book One)

  After twenty-five hundred years as an immortal protector, Ajax Petrakos has nearly given up on finding his prophesied love. Tasked with a mission in Savannah, Georgia, he hardly expects the tidewater town to shelter his destined mate.

  Red Kiss (Book Two)

  Cast into the Savannah River by his darkest enemy, River Kassandros becomes trapped as a dagger for several endurable months—until one mortal with a rare gift hears his mute, supernatural plea for help.

  Red Demon (Book Three)

  When the only woman who ever claimed Aristos Petrakos’s heart reaches out from beyond the grave, the long lost lovers’ reunion could prove deadly—to everyone.

  Red Mortal (Book Four)

  When Ares strips the Spartans’ beloved King Leonidas of his immortality, the cadre’s last hope falls upon the shoulders of the one henchman who tortured them for centuries—the demon who has now fallen in love with one of their own.

  THE PARALLEL SERIES:

  Parallel Attraction (Book One)

  Parallel Heat (Book Two)

  Parallel Seduction (Book Three)

  Parallel Fire (A Novella)

  Parallel Desire (Book Four)

  “Red Angel,” short story in the On the Hunt anthology

  Want to gab about all things Gods of Midnight with Deidre? Like her Facebook page, follow her on Twitter @DeidreKnight, or visit her online home www.DeidreKnight.com!