The Lightning Bearer

by April Zyon

  Lincoln squeezed her closer and whispered something that suspiciously sounded like a curse. Several curses, actually.

  Thomas’s jaw looked ready to pop from how hard he appeared to be gritting his teeth. He took several deep, slow breaths through flared nostrils before he cracked his jaw, and gave her a hard look. “You should have told Kasper,” he said quietly. “I get why you didn’t want to, or at least I can guess at why, but that’s in the past. Right now, we need to get you out of here, and sooner rather than later.”

  Ares was shaking his head when Thomas looked his way. “She’s shielded. Ain’t going to work.”

  “Seriously?” Thomas let out a vicious string of curses she definitely understood. “If I ever get my hands on that fucking bitch goddess.”

  “Get in line,” Ares said in a dry tone. “On the upside, you guys will have time on the road with her to tell her the rest of it before reaching the Farm. And unlike her, you two I can find, so if you get into any shit give a yell. I will be on standby. I will even forgo my weekly tournament for you two so that I’m not delayed. Oh, and I fixed her car, as well as ensuring there were no transmitters on it. But you should likely get out of here tonight. Find another motel to stay in so you can all rest, and then hit the road first thing.”

  “Fixed my car? Transmitters?” Pepper had thought she was a fairly intelligent person. However, that obviously wasn’t the case, because the smallest of words were tripping her up. “I know I should have told Kasper, but she has enough on her plate as it is. Besides, if I wasn’t this key or whatever, would you have really come for me?”

  “And that would be my cue to leave.” Ares wiggled his fingers before disappearing.

  Lincoln leaned back to look at her with a frown. “I can’t believe you actually would ask that question. Of course, we would have come, Pepper. You’re not only Kasper’s family, but you’re someone we like, and wanted to get to know better. Which means you are important, to us in particular, but also to everyone else we know.”

  “But why am I important to you two in particular?” She cocked her head to the side and frowned. “Kasper said that Thomas was a consummate flirt and you were his sidekick, so that’s why I thought that it was just you guys trying to make me feel more comfortable or whatever. Because if we are destined to have a hot threesome going on, I would have jumped on that boat a long time ago.” She was surprised, laughing as she continued. “I can’t believe that I could have called you guys a couple of years earlier and you would have been in my life before now. Man was I blind, and an idiot. Maybe both.”

  “Thomas is a consummate flirt,” Lincoln said. He threw a dirty look to the man when he protested. “Shut up, you know you are. It comes as naturally as breathing for you. It was also an extremely useful tool when we were in the military, and saved our hides more times than not. Except for the one time, but that’s a story for a much later date when we both have a lot of alcohol in our systems so we’ll give you the unfiltered version. Bottom line, you should have called. We all would have dropped everything to be there for you, Thomas and I especially. Gods, if anything had happened to you,” he whispered, pulling her in tight again. She felt the shudder that shook his large frame.

  She wrapped her arms around Lincoln and held him tightly. For a moment she closed her eyes and buried her face in the curve of his neck, then opened them to look up at Thomas. “I never knew. I honestly didn’t. If I had known I wouldn’t have spent the last four years alone.”

  “We know,” Thomas said. He pushed up from the chair to sit on her other side, and drew her in for a hug when Lincoln loosened his hold. Pressing a kiss to her hair, Thomas gave her a squeeze. “You will tell us absolutely everything that happened, in detail, later. If you tell us now or while on the road we won’t be responsible for our actions. Later, when we’re at the Farm, then you can tell us everything. Right now, you need to grab everything that’s loose, stuff it in your bag, and we need to hit the road.”

  “Okay.” She gave their hands a little squeeze and walked away so that she could grab the toiletries that she had put out in the bathroom and the clothes she had folded up in there. “I was about to take a shower,” she explained. “Having you guys here with me is so much better than a shower though,” she confessed and put the items into her backpack. “I’m ready if you guys are.” Her suitcases were in the trunk of her car.

  They both stood, and Thomas took her backpack from her. Lincoln held out his hand to her. “Keys, please,” he said softly. When she dropped them into his palm, he caught her fingers, and lifted her hand to give her knuckles a quick kiss. “Stay put for a moment with Thomas.” After slipping a weapon free from the holster she’d only just noticed, Lincoln eased out of the door of the room.

  Thomas urged her closer to the door, but moved so he was between her and the gap left open by Lincoln. A moment or two passed before he swung it open, and urged her out. Lincoln had the car on, and the trunk open. He caught the backpack Thomas tossed him to drop in, and shut it quickly before he slid behind the wheel. Thomas opened the front passenger door for her, and once she was tucked inside he slipped into the backseat. “Hit it.”

  Pepper turned so she could see Thomas in the backseat. “Why did you get in the backseat? I would have gotten back there, you know. You didn’t have to get back there and be alone.” She couldn’t stop herself however from reaching out and laying her hand on Lincoln’s and twining their fingers together.

  “Because, despite Ares’s suggestion, we’re not going to be stopping for more than an hour at another motel. We’ll stop so you can grab that shower, and so that we can eat. Then we’ll be back on the road again. We’ll take turns behind the wheel, and whoever is in the back seat will be sleeping while the person in the front passenger seat is there solely to ensure the driver doesn’t fall asleep, and calls a halt when the driver looks tired. I’ll be napping the first shift, so I need to be in the back to catch some zees.”

  “Ah, well that makes sense. We won’t bother you with our talking, will we?” she asked while her fingers toyed with Lincoln’s. “There’s so much to learn about each other.” Now she was not angry at them for not coming sooner. She had been a little hurt, but she understood it, at last.

  “Hell, no,” he said with a grin. “I can sleep through pretty much anything. It’s a learned trick, but it works well. I’ll likely still hear everything you talk about, but it won’t actually wake me up. So you two can chat all you want. Up on the right there, Lincoln.”

  “Yup, I see it.” Lincoln slowed her car a little, and took the turn into a motel parking lot. He pulled up to the office, and Thomas hopped out to jog inside. “Oh lordy, we’re about to get a free room,” he muttered.

  “Okay, as long as you are good with it.” Pepper giggled and looked at Lincoln and then Thomas, who was talking to the woman behind the counter. “He oozes charm, doesn’t he?” Oddly enough, even though he was flirting with the woman, she felt no jealousy. “Is it weird that I’m not jealous that he’s talking to her or touching her hand?” He had reached out and touched the back of the woman’s hand and had her blushing profusely.

  “Nope,” Lincoln said shaking his head. “You know well and good that he sees no one else but you. Be nice if the rest of us had some of that though. It really is extremely unfair he got it all,” he muttered. Squeezing her fingers, he turned his head to look at her. “You do know that he uses it automatically, right? That in cases like this it’s like breathing, and he can’t even seem to turn it off.”

  “Yeah, I do now. I didn’t before, and it bothered me a little. I felt like I was a challenge to him when I saw you all last time, but now I realize that’s just part of him.” She leaned her head back and watched Thomas and then grinned. “So, are you guys from the gods as well? If so, he has to be from the God of Love.”

  Lincoln snorted, and shook his head. “Dionysus actually,” he told her. “God of a damn good time, and so forth. Which actually makes a lot of sense once you meet D
ionysus. The big guy oozes a lot of the same natural charm. Personally, I want to put them in the same room with, like, twenty women and see how it goes. There would be betting of course.”

  “Oh lordy, that’s something that will cause a serious uproar.” She had to giggle again. “I think that Mardi Gras with them would be a good time. Can you imagine the party that would happen?” She had never met Dionysus, but she had read all about the Greek gods in her studies so she was brushed up on what and who they were.

  “According to Brooklyn he’s a hoot to take to Mardi Gras. Dionysus was her watcher for her life, and around for a lot of it from what she said. I think when this is all over we should get the gods together, and do it as a group. Might be fun,” he said with a smile.

  “Either that or it would be them blowing up the world because they are all together.” She saw Thomas coming back with a grin on his face and looked over at Lincoln. “So, do you think he will tell us or should we ask him?”

  “He’ll tell us. Believe you me, he will tell us.”

  Thomas slid into the backseat, and leaned his elbow on the back of her seat. “So, I scored us a free room for the next hour. It could have been two hours, but she was going places I really wasn’t comfortable with. Basically, we need to be the fuck out of here before she gets off shift.”

  Pepper looked over her shoulder at Thomas. “We will make sure that we are out of here before she gets off shift because I’m not going to share you. Now I have you in my life, I don’t want to share you with anyone else.”

  Leaning forward, Thomas kissed her quickly, and then sat back with a grin. “Glad to hear it, darling. I feel the same about you. Now then, decide on dinner, and some snacks for the road while you shower, and change into super comfy traveling clothing. Preferably easy access, but that’s optional, of course.”

  “Super comfy traveling clothes is good. I don’t know about easy access and all that fun stuff, but comfy clothes sound good.” She was happy to spend this hour with them.

  Parking the car, Lincoln got out. Thomas slipped out of the back, and opened her door for her. “We’ll grab your bag and our packs before heading in. Just in case you need anything from one of ours.” The way he said it she wasn’t thinking he meant a shirt, or a granola bar.

  “What do you keep in your packs?” She asked the question before she had a chance to stop herself. “What would I need from them? I’m just curious.” She didn’t know what she would need from them, although if she had to be honest, the thought of wearing one of their t-shirts made her all kinds of happy. Weird thing, that.

  “Clothing, medical kits, MREs, weapons of a variety of sizes and types for different amounts of damage,” Thomas told her. He pulled her bag from the trunk before hefting out his own pack. Waving her to the door, he plucked the room key from her hand to open the door. Lincoln wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her outside while Thomas swept the room with a weapon she hadn’t even seen him pull free. “Clear.”

  “How did you know that you would need those things?” She didn’t know if this was just a typical day for them or not. “I don’t think that I ever want to try an MRE. I’ve never held a weapon before in my life, so I would rather not have to touch one of those.”

  “We always have a go-bag ready,” Lincoln told her as he shut the door behind them. “It’s part of training when you work the special ops teams. You never knew when you’d be called out so you needed to be ready at a moment’s notice. As for the MREs, they do in a pinch when there’s no other options. I personally prefer Mik’s cooking by a long shot. No weapons for you unless the world goes to hell in a handbasket and it’s necessary. Which it won’t be, so quit looking all panicky.” He tossed the car keys to Thomas.

  “I’ll fill it up on my way back so we don’t need to make a pit stop.”

  “Good idea. Grab some water, and anything for a snack that won’t need cooling,” Lincoln said as he dumped his pack onto the end of the bed.

  “Can do, any special requests from the pretty lady for snacks?” he asked looking at her curiously.

  “Nothing with nuts please. And no licorice. Especially the black kind. Hate that stuff,” she told him and then after a moment added, “Oh, I love Jolly Ranchers. If you could get some of those, please?”

  “I can do that.” He came over to her, cupped her face, and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “I’ll call on my way back. Get your shower in now in case we need to bug out sooner rather than later.”

  Reaching up, Pepper stroked her fingers over Thomas’s cheek and leaned into him. “Thank you.” His light kiss had been fabulous to her. She could see herself kissing him often. “You should kiss me again, just for the sake of doing it.”

  “Well, if you insist,” he teased, making it sound like a chore. Kissing her again he took his time with it, drawing it out until she started to go slack in his arms, and then lifted his head. “Go and shower. I will be thinking of you in there naked, all wet and soapy. It will make walking very difficult.”

  “That sounds like a good time to me.” She leaned against Thomas, a boneless lump against him. “Your kisses.” She looked at Lincoln and asked, “Will your kisses leave me just as weak in the knees as Thomas’s did?” They hadn’t really kissed before, and now she wanted that. Now she wanted to know what it felt like to have both men touching her or kissing her.

  “Dunno, come on over here and we’ll see.” Lincoln held out a hand to her and grinned when she stumbled a little. He caught her around her waist to pull her close. “Easy now. There is no need to go falling at his feet. His head’s big enough already.”

  She didn’t see what Thomas did, but she could guess given the laugh Lincoln let out before sticking his tongue out at his friend. “I’ll be back soon,” Thomas called before she heard the door close behind him.

  She looked up at Lincoln and licked her lips. “So, you are going to kiss me, right?” She certainly hoped so. She was looking up into his eyes and saw his need for her. “I think that you should kiss me before my shower so that I can think about you while I’m in there. What do you think?”

  “Excellent idea,” he told her. His hands slid lower on her back to press her in closer to him before he dipped his chin to take her lips with his. He teased her a little before tempting her to open up with the brush of his tongue as the enticement. Then the kiss went to a whole new level, fast.

  Lincoln’s kiss was more than a kiss. It was a stamp of possession, and she knew it. She kissed him back and held onto him. Her fingers were wrapped around him and holding him close. She let out a little moan and then pulled back. She looked up at him and licked her lips. “Wow. I’m sorry, but that’s the only thing that I can think of.”

  “It works,” he assured her. Smiling, he brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Go and have your shower, sweetheart. I’ll be right here when you get out, promise.” Another kiss and he drew back a little, his hands helping to keep her from falling over due to mildly weak knees.

  She was shocked at how she responded to both men. Their kisses had been absolute heaven to her. She walked away from Lincoln and went to the bathroom so that she could shower. Opening her pack, she pulled out the things she needed and took a very quick shower. When she walked out she nodded. “Your turn if you want.”

  He checked his watch, and shrugged. “Yeah, I might as well be all pretty smelling for the ride. I’ll leave you with my cell for when Thomas calls in case I’m not out by then. Anyone knocks you don’t answer the door, right?” he asked. Sitting, he undid his boots, and pulled them loose along with his socks. After shrugging off his jacket he undid the holster strapped to his leg, and pulled the gun loose to tuck at the small of his back. He handed over his cell phone. “Only answer for him. Anyone else let go to voicemail for the moment unless it’s Ares. That you definitely want to answer and come get me.”

  She nodded and accepted the phone from him. “Do you have Candy Crush on this thing? I’m totally hooked.” She hoped not because if he minded she
would have to pull her phone out of her and play. Boredom really sucked when a sexy male was getting naked in the shower next to you.

  “Go right ahead. The current password is the year of your birth,” he told her as he walked into the bathroom with a change of clothes. “I’ll be five minutes, tops,” he added before easing the door mostly closed. He left it open about two inches, and she had to wonder why.

  She was shocked that his password for his locked phone was the year of her birth. She was more than a little stunned to be honest. She looked into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of him in the shower. Her eyes went wide and her mouth watered when she saw the way that he looked. “Oh, my. You are…” She flushed and turned away from the door. Maybe he didn’t hear her.

  “Peeking is allowed you know,” he said loud enough for her to hear. Oh yeah, he’d heard her. His laugh, and the glimpse she caught of him looking at her in the mirror, proved that. “We’re yours as much as you’re ours, Pepper. And after a few years in the military we’re not as body conscious as we were going in. You learn pretty quick that most everyone has the exact same bits and pieces.” He chuckled again before ducking out of sight under the flow of water.

  “Yeah, but they don’t have your bits.” Pepper was talking to herself, and she knew it. She certainly didn’t think that anyone would hear her. Well, that Lincoln wouldn’t hear her. She was certain that the water would drown out her words. She flipped on the television and flipped through the channels as she did so. Seeing nothing she wanted to watch, she opened up the phone and began to play Candy Crush, laughing because Lincoln already had been playing it as well.

  The water shut off a couple of minutes later, and she heard him getting out of the shower. In the mirror she could see him toweling off, but nothing good was in view from her position. He bent out of sight before the door swung open to reveal him with only a pair of worn jeans on, and his pack and dirty laundry in his hands. “Enjoy the show?” he asked with a wink.