by Stacia Kane
Flames appeared, dancing along the top of the window, hovering above them. They were in a different world now, the one where he ruled, and the knowledge of his domination forced the word from her lips.
“Yes…”
Megan reached behind her, forcing her hand between them to caress the hard ridge of his cock.
He bit her neck, so hard she felt her skin dent and bruise beneath his teeth, and it was as if he’d flipped a switch, set her free. She spun around and tried to wrap her arms around him, but they were still trapped by her dress. She shoved them forward as far as she could, managing to grip the firm muscles of his ass in her hands before his lips found hers and sent her flying into the burning sun.
His growl rumbled against her lips, into her mouth. Their tongues tangled, fighting a war Megan didn’t think could be won, as he shoved her hands away and freed them from her dress, pushing it down over her hips to fall on the floor.
She yanked at his tie, pulling his shirt open, dragging it up from his waistband. Her panties disappeared. She thought she heard them tear, thought she felt the tug against her skin as they did so, but didn’t care.
Together they fell onto the bed. Megan thrust his shirt away, desperate to feel his bare skin beneath her palms, beneath her nails. She wanted to bury them in it, to see his blood dark against the tawny flesh.
The thing inside her, the demon or ghoul or simply a part of herself she’d never known before, still raged and ripped at her with sharp, terrible claws, roaring in anticipation when he unfastened his belt with one quick, decisive movement and removed his pants.
He shoved himself inside her with more force than finesse, and Megan screamed his name, her back arching, her legs spreading wider. His answering cry was lost somewhere in the waves of pleasure crashing over her, drowning her. She dug her nails into his skin and felt it break; she smelled his blood in the air. The scream erupting from her mouth didn’t even sound like her voice. She was gone, lost, trapped in a body too small for the tumultuous emotions inside it.
His fingers twisted in the hair at her nape and yanked, pulling her head back so far all she could see was the opposite wall. It didn’t matter. His face was seared into her brain. She focused on it, seeing him, feeling him burning deep inside with his every rapid, forceful thrust.
“Go on, Meg,” he gasped. The pressure on her neck relaxed as he pulled her face closer. His eyes glowed like traffic lights, redder than she’d ever seen them. “Whatever you want. I can take it.”
Her hand moved before she even realized it, before she thought of it, striking out at him with the same unreal speed she’d noticed when Maldon had tried to touch her hair.
Not fast enough. Greyson caught it before it hit him, his fingers making the bones in her wrist grind together painfully. Sharp tingles ran up her arm and blossomed into something stronger in her chest.
She tried again, harder, faster, wanting to hurt him, wanting to feel that power, but he caught her again and slammed her wrist down onto the bed. She wanted to cry, but instead of disappointment, instead of anger, she felt relief. She couldn’t hurt him. He’d beaten her. He would beat her every time, and for some reason that knowledge made her feel safe. She could let her rage go, let it take over. Permission was granted. Her heartbeat sped up.
As if he sensed this—and he probably did—he let go of her hand and took her lips again, plundering her mouth, not stilling or slowing his movements inside her.
“Just…just fuck me,” she managed. “Greyson…”
She hadn’t thought he could go faster, harder, but he did. He gripped the edge of the mattress, using it as leverage while he reared up over her and slammed into her. The smooth perfection of his chest hovered only inches from her mouth. She lifted her head and sank her teeth into it, twisting her fingers in his hair and pulling as hard as she could while the fingernails of her other hand made fresh gouges in his back.
His voice echoed in the small room, mingling with hers. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t control herself. Flames filled her body, filled her vision, destroying everything else. All the memories of the last few days, all the memories of this house and her childhood, her father’s betrayal, eradicated in a second by the voracious fire, mixing with the rage and pain and turning into something so pure she wanted to live on it.
“Greyson!” Her back arched as the first waves of her climax rolled through her. Megan rode it, letting it wash her clean, until nothing was left of her but her bare, stripped soul wrapped around him.
His final thrust almost pushed her off the bed. He swelled inside her, impossibly large, wringing one last scream from her throat to almost cover his, until the walls of her childhood bedroom shook from the force of their release and he collapsed on top of her.
Chapter 17
The room looked as though a lecherous hurricane had blown through it. Papers covered everything, the comforter had somehow ended up bunched on the floor, and the sheets had come away from the corners of the mattress. Droplets and streaks of blood decorated them, visible sins on the snowy white.
It smelled like smoke and sweat and blood and sex, mingling together like a bordello carpet.
All of this Megan observed when she sat up and found the remains of her panties, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. The room could be cleaned. Her mind was not so easily erased.
Greyson entered holding a pie plate and a bottle of water, which he handed to her without comment. The icy liquid cleared some of the cobwebs in her head, but when he sat down shock replaced them.
“Oh God…did I do that?”
The wounds were already healing, which made them look worse. Deep, angry furrows covered his back from shoulder blades to waist, surrounded by blood dried almost black.
He nodded, sticking his fork into a piece of her mother’s famous apple crisp. His gaze traveled from the top of her head to her feet. “And I did that to you.”
She hadn’t even looked at herself. Bruises like dark roses blossomed on her wrists, on her upper arms and hips. Her neck was tender enough where he’d bitten her to make her suspect she’d be bruised there too.
She’d never enjoyed or expected pain in the bedroom. He’d never indicated he did either. But God help her if it hadn’t been one of the most amazing experiences of her life. Was there nothing about her that was still the same?
“This is pretty good,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of crisp. “Do you have this recipe?”
“She wouldn’t give it to me.”
“Shame.” He forked up another mouthful.
“Greyson…I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Look at you.”
“I’ll heal.”
“But—”
“Meg.” He turned to her. “At the risk of sounding like some…hmm. At the risk of sounding like I do your job, negative emotions affect demons oddly sometimes. It’s no big deal. You’ll learn to control it.”
“I’m not a demon.”
He paused. “But you have demon in you, so that’s going to change your reactions to things. You haven’t noticed anything different about yourself? Anything you find strange?”
Damn it. How much did he know, how much had he been able to feel?
“No,” she lied. “Nothing.”
He watched her for a minute, while she forced herself to stare calmly into his eyes. Just why it was so important to keep it hidden she didn’t know. He could help her, if she told him.
But he would also encourage her to do the Haikken Kra ritual, and she was afraid if he really put his considerable powers of persuasion behind it, she would agree. The prospect of losing a part of herself terrified her. The thought of admitting she wasn’t like everyone else—aside from her psychic abilities—made her feel a little sick.
She’d already fed off Gerald’s sister in her office. She’d gotten high off the sadness of the mourners at her father’s funeral. If she did the ritual…she’d become a parasite.
Finally he shrugged. “
You should really try to get this recipe. Did your dad have an office here in the house?”
“I doubt she keeps it in there, if he does.”
“We need to photocopy those documents. But you should look for this too. We’ll copy it. And then you can make it for me.”
“I didn’t know you liked apples.”
“All demons like apples. You’re slipping if you didn’t get that joke.”
“What—oh. Right.” She couldn’t help smiling, whether out of relief that he’d dropped the subject of her unorthodox urges or simply because it was the sort of joke she would make. Exorcist jokes about his Georgetown upbringing, Robert Johnson jokes about his CD collection…she should have caught the apple thing a mile away.
“Why do we need to copy them?”
“I want to look into it. See if it was a Meegra purchase or a personal one of Temp’s. Speaking of which…” He picked his watch off the small scratched-up wooden nightstand. “We don’t have a lot of time, and we still need to get back to the city for the funeral tonight.”
“What—tonight, really?”
“Has to be done as soon as possible. You’ll need to come—all the Gretnegs will be there—but the ceremony after is for Sorithell only.”
“Ceremony?”
“When I become Gretneg,” he said, and before he kissed her forehead she saw the triumph in his eyes.
The policeman held out his hand. Megan shook it, glad they’d gotten dressed and cleaned the room in plenty of time, but uncomfortably aware that she was going commando under her dress.
“Your mother, she asked me to come along—”
“To make sure you didn’t steal anything,” Diane finished coldly. “Please wait, Officer Dunkirk, while I finish checking the bedrooms.”
Officer Dunkirk blushed. Megan didn’t. She’d known when she heard the unfamiliar voice downstairs what her mother had done. She didn’t care. No matter how long this little burst of euphoria lasted, this new feeling of confidence, she’d at least been able to go back to her indifference to the moods and petty cruelties of her mother. She’d done just fine without the woman for years, and she could keep on doing so.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Dunkirk said. “Everything checked out as far as that fire complaint last night. Sorry we troubled you about it.”
Because we used supernatural trickery to get it to. But the police didn’t need to know that, so she just smiled. “Thank you.”
Maldon had indeed given their names to the police—omitting everything but his “idea” that he “might have” seen them on the street right before the fire. Not so brave after they’d escaped and he knew they were meeting with his Gretneg tomorrow.
After which—oh please—they would leave for the cabin and a solid week of relaxation.
They spent a few more uncomfortable minutes standing there. Megan tried not to look around at the walls that had once housed her, the furniture she’d crawled onto as a child, but she couldn’t help it. Over there by the kitchen door was where she’d spilled a glass of Kool-Aid and gotten sent to her room for a week. The darkened Christmas tree in front of the window, where it had been every year. She’d broken an ornament when she was eight and hadn’t been allowed to help decorate it again for three years.
It had never felt like home, not that she could remember. It had been a prison, as cold and impersonal as any other, as lonely as that damned hospital her father had conspired to put her in. A few years of closeness and happiness, when she was so young the memories existed only in a haze and then…nothing.
She would never be in this house again. When her mother died she wouldn’t be back, if anyone even bothered to tell her about it. As for Dave…she had to admit that made her a little sad. Dave hadn’t given up on her as quickly as her parents had.
But he’d given up just the same.
Greyson had been right. She didn’t need these people, not for anything. The thought buoyed her despite her worries.
“You stole my apple crisp.”
“Excuse me?”
“I made a crisp,” Diane said. “It was in the refrigerator. And a bottle of water. You stole them.”
Officer Dunkirk looked completely lost. Megan could read his thoughts without even needing to lower her shields. Was he supposed to arrest them over a dessert and a bottle of Evian?
Greyson pulled out his money clip and held out a bill to her mother with the air of a king paying a leper to go away. “Here. To cover your inconvenience.”
Diane’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I like you, Mr. Dante.”
He shrugged. “Come on, Meg, let’s go.”
Megan looked at Diane, with her chic silvery bob and her impeccable black dress. Almost like a mirror image of herself, aged and viewed through a lens of ice.
“Good-bye, Mother.” Should she offer her hand? She certainly wasn’t going to give the viper a hug.
“What did you do to your neck?”
Megan’s hand flew to the tender spot on her throat. By the time Greyson put his shirt on, his scratches had started to shrink, but they’d forgotten her bruises. “I…I stumbled on the stairs.”
Diane watched her for a minute. “You always were clumsy.”
She turned and walked back to the kitchen, the conversation clearly over.
“I know this has been a…busy week for you,” Rocturnus said. “So I haven’t wanted to bother you.”
Megan lifted her face from her hands to look up at him. This was not the way she wanted to spend the hour she had free between finally arriving home and heading for Greyson’s Iureanlier for the funeral. “But you should have. This is something I need to know.”
“You haven’t been very interested so far.” It sounded like a reprimand—she knew it was—but the delivery was obviously calculated to put her at ease.
Too bad it didn’t work.
“I don’t understand this. I went there not even a week ago and showed them—”
“Being powerful doesn’t mean you know how to lead them. You need to lead them. I know you don’t like it, but…this is the way it is.”
Shit. Shit shit shit. Megan looked around the little office with its dark wood and comfortable flowered-chintz furniture. Her demons had a taste for the quaint; she assumed it was because they were so small.
She’d assumed a lot of things.
Whatever was happening to her wasn’t going to just go away. Roc wanted her to do the ritual. So did Greyson. Because both of them felt she wasn’t connected enough, that she wasn’t keeping the needs of her demons in mind. And maybe they were right. Her plans for a newer, gentler Meegra weren’t going to go very far if she treated them the same way she wanted them to treat their humans.
They wanted her, needed her, to be something different. And she didn’t have a choice but to be it.
“Bring him in,” she said, steeling herself. John Wayne would know what to do here. Joan Crawford would know how to get those little buggers in line.
So Megan Chase could do it too.
Rocturnus left, returning a few minutes later with Halarvus. She’d seen him before; he was one of the demons who’d grumbled and snickered in the back of the room last time she was here.
His black eyes regarded her coldly. She could feel his indifference. It pissed her off.
“Halarvus, do you know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“What difference does it make? I don’t answer to you. I’m not going to be one of your little demons of light, spreading joy and happiness to all the kiddies. Our mother is offering us a chance to be what we are.” His black eyes widened in his dark blue face. “To feed.”
“I let you feed.” She wanted to smack herself. Why was it so easy for her to take the lead with people, with her clients, but dealing with her demons made her so nervous and unsure of herself? Like a child trying to tell adults what to do.
If she lost them all, she could die. She could lose all of her power a
nd become like a flower with no petals. Nothing.
Come on, Megan…you can do this.
“Not the way we want. Not the way we should.”
God damn it, why was nothing in her life simple anymore?
Her power was always stronger here, always seemed to come more readily to her call. Keeping her face impassive, she lowered her shields and let it go, not all of it, just enough to knock Halarvus across the room.
“You’re not going anywhere.” She stood up, hating herself, hating the tiny flare of pleasure in her chest. If she did the ritual, would this be easier? Would she be able to accept it? Or would it be worse, putting her more at war with herself than she was already?
Maybe this would be a good test run. See exactly what she could handle.
Halarvus got back to his feet. Dark blood ran from his nose. Megan forced herself to look at it as he wiped it away, making a thin streak across his face.
No desire to taste it came to her, no crazy urge to lick it from his papery skin. Maybe that had ended?
“Just because you’re angry—,” Halarvus started, but Megan interrupted him.
“I’m not angry.” She willed it to be so, knowing he could sense it. “But I’m keeping what’s mine.”
She turned to Roc. “Take him into the hall.”
The others waited for her, the white light from the high ceiling bouncing off their multicolored heads.
Their silence followed her as she stepped up onto the little dais and took the seat that had once belonged to the Accuser. Now it was hers, a heavy, ornate gold thing that looked like Louis XIV had designed it in an opium haze. Knobs and carved leaves dug into her skin when she sat; she’d had the original cushion burned and kept forgetting to get another one.
Another reminder, if she’d needed one, of how far she’d been letting things slip here. She should know better than that. Problems and complications didn’t go away simply because one wished they would.
Rocturnus brought Halarvus to stand before her, in the center of the space cleared by the others, and climbed up himself to the chair beside her. She couldn’t get out of this one by lashing out at all of them and running away, which was exactly what she’d done the last time no matter how much she didn’t want to admit it. She needed to take charge, to really and truly show them she could protect them, could help them, could be to them everything Ktana Leyak was promising to be.