Addison looked away and then back, then scratched the back of her head. “Harsh is better at this shit than I am, but here goes. Kynan’s been hung up over you for a long time.”
“You are a very young woman.”
Her mouth thinned, and her eyes turned bleak. “I’ve lived a lot.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She felt slightly shitty about the remark because Addison had endured more than anyone should have to. “Your life experience, however you decide to calculate it and find it superior to mine, does not give you the right to tell me what my feelings for Kynan Aijan should be.”
“Please. Have whatever feelings you like.” Addison let out a frustrated breath. “As long as they’re honest.”
“That’s awfully convenient, isn’t it? You don’t like what I did therefore my feelings are dishonest. Unless, of course, I agree with whatever it is you think.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Really?”
“What I’m saying,” Addison said, “is that Kynan has been in love with you for a long time.”
Her heart thudded all the way to her toes. Maybe she couldn’t protect herself from Kynan, but she could protect herself from Addison Marit. “The demonkind don’t fall in love.”
“Bullshit.” Addison flattened her palms on her thighs and pushed up, staring directly at Maddy. Her eyes were hot with anger. “I’m telling you to your face that Harsh loves me.”
She gazed back calmly. “I don’t believe anyone ever falls in love. Not humans, not demons, not anyone.”
“Baloney.”
“It’s all chemicals, and you, Addison, are a deluded addict.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I know how I feel about Harsh, and I know how Harsh feels about me. And before you go off about Harsh being some kind of exception, let’s talk about Nikodemus, or Durian, or any of the others. I was with Kynan, I cared about him, and I care about him now. I know how he feels about you.”
“I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”
“He figured he didn’t have a chance, and from what I saw, you weren’t ever going to give him one.”
On any other day, she would have no problem setting Addison straight. In fact, on any day but this one, she might not have cared enough to listen. But her emotions were too raw right now. “You do not know me.”
“No. I don’t.” Addison flicked her hair behind her shoulders. “I know Kynan, though. He has serious feelings about you, and I don’t want to see him suffer because you don’t care about him. No mistake, Maddy, when Nikodemus brought me along, I told him outright I’d happily put you down if you’d managed to take him mageheld and Durian didn’t get to you first.” Her expression hardened. “Unlike them, I totally believed you’d do something like that. I still believe it.”
“You were and are wrong.” She didn’t have it in her to be even remotely pleasant. “Therefore, I suggest that your opinion in anything regarding me is not well founded in fact.”
Addison didn’t mind burning bridges. Maddy respected her for that. She’d do the same for someone she felt strongly about. “Then I come here,” the other woman continued, “and you two are like matches who want to be on fire. I saw that oath-taking firsthand. I really hope I’m wrong about you.”
“You’ve demonstrated that you are.” She wasn’t, though. She didn’t dare feel anything for Kynan that involved her private feelings.
Addison spoke softly. “He’s suffered enough. Maybe there’s never going to be anything real between you. That’s none of my business. I’m just saying, you are the one person who could really fuck him over. Don’t. Don’t give him anything except your loyalty.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I don’t know for sure about you. Maybe you’re a cold-hearted bitch, and maybe you’re not. But I’m not wrong about him.”
“I don’t recall suggesting you were.”
Addison wasn’t ready to give it up. Her eyes turned an odd blue-green color, and Maddy shivered. There was an immediate lull in the noise level. Addison lifted a hand and called out, “It’s all good.”
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.
In a lower voice, Addison said, “He didn’t have to come to San Diego to help me. He could have left me there and not given a shit.”
“He wouldn’t.” The vehemence of her response surprised her. Across the room, Kynan glanced at them, and Maddy’s stomach took another tumble.
“He didn’t have to come himself.” Addison lifted a hand briefly. “Yeah, he also wanted to start something personal. He made no secret of that. Harsh was off being Harsh, and I wasn’t in a very good place. You have no idea what a mess I was. I’d still be a mess if it weren’t for him. A dead mess most likely.”
“I understand that.” She attempted a conciliatory tone and failed. “I do understand.”
“I’m not blaming anyone for whatever happened between you two. If you got to your limit, I respect that. I really do. I know a little about his side and not much about yours, so I’ll just say I can’t judge that.”
Addison was right. “Sometimes—” Maddy’s throat got thick, and she couldn’t speak. No one should’ve gone through what Kynan had. Centuries of enslavement. Centuries of not being in control of his life or will—the basic right of any sentient being. She couldn’t blame him for his condition after he was freed. She didn’t. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been damaged, too. “Sometimes it’s just too much, and I. . .cannot change that.”
Addison’s mouth thinned. “This is a fucked-up world.”
She managed a nod.
“For someone who’s been as screwed up and screwed over as long as he has been, he gets all my respect. All of it.”
Maddy’s resentment faded. Addison wanted the best for Kynan. She couldn’t begrudge that kind of loyalty and heart. She stared at her knees. Addison was a far better person than she was. “This is too new, all of it. Too new and too private.”
“I know this isn’t any of my business. I get that. I only wanted to say, don’t. Don’t do anything different because I don’t think you’re worth him taking a chance on. He is, and you need to let him find that with someone else.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “Thank you.” Leave, she thought. Just leave. Because this had ripped her heart to shreds. But Addison didn’t leave. Of course not.
“One more thing.” Addison flipped her hair over her shoulders again, and really, would anyone ever take her for a partially human demon?
“Go ahead.” She sighed. “You can’t get much more personal than you already have.”
Addison gave a short laugh. “This one’s personal for me.”
She could not find any words. Silence was all she could manage.
“I’ve never told you how much I appreciate everything you did for me. The lawyer stuff and all. Arranging the adoption. I owe you for that. It made a big difference that I didn’t have to deal with most of that.”
“You’re welcome.” She was too torn up to deal with Addison being nice to her. “However, it’s Nikodemus and Carson you should thank. I was only doing my job.”
“Not to mention everything you’ve done for the street contingent. I know that’s outside your deal with Nikodemus, but it’s important work. I don’t like you much, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give you mad respect about that. I was one of them. The women who’ve been disappearing.” She licked her lips. “Gray too. Lys. Wallace. We all know.”
She nodded.
“Sessani needs to go down. Hard.” Addison stood. Determined. Utterly confident. Kynan had had a hand in what she’d become. A woman, mostly human, in command of power she’d never wanted. “I’ll do whatever is necessary to make that happen. No matter what. Even if you fuck things up with Kynan and Harsh and I have to pick up the pieces.”
“I know you debriefed when Kynan and Harsh removed you, but you should talk with Nikodemus again. Go over anything you remember about the time Infante held you.”
; “Sure.” Addison nodded once then headed for the food. At the table, she helped herself to a slice of pizza and brought one to Tau.
She didn’t want to like Addison, and now she did. She didn’t want to be ambivalent about Kynan, and she was. More than sex between them? What if Addison was right, and she could hurt him more than she already had? Maddy put her hands on her thighs and stared at her fingers. She’d made the right decision about her oath of fealty. She knew that much and not much else.
She stood abruptly and walked out. She didn’t have a particular destination but when she ended up outside, that was fine. Outside was better. There was relief here under the shockingly blue sky. Away from Nikodemus and the others. Three of the kin watching the front of the house acknowledged her and returned to their sentry duties.
Once she put some distance between her and the house, her mind stopped spinning. With each breath of sea-salt air, another degree of her tension fell away. The afternoon sun continued its slide toward the Pacific. She walked farther from the house until she stood at the weathered fence between the lawn and the surrounding fields.
Kynan remained a persistent vibration in the back of her head. She wasn’t sorry it was him and not Nikodemus. Given the same circumstances, she’d make the same choice, but when she separated her emotions from the events that had brought her to this moment, all that was left was the unpleasant truth that she was afraid of the way Kynan made her feel.
She gripped the top rail of the fence and stared at the horizon. She wasn’t going to be safe ever again. In all her years on this earth, she had never been in love—not since she was a teenager and didn’t know any better. There’d been men, plenty of them. Men she’d liked and admired. Men who were damn good in bed and fun to be with. But she let them close and no closer. She was busy. She had too much to accomplish. She didn’t want emotion and dependence to derail her pursuit of a world free from the hatred tearing them all apart right now.
She knew when Kynan came out of the house, and she waited for him to join her. This was exactly what she feared. The kind of emotional storm that distracted her from what needed to be done.
“Winters.” His voice slid down her spine like liquid gold and settled in her belly. Lower. She didn’t bother hiding her response. Sexual attraction was not complicated. Attraction didn’t leave you dependent on someone else for your satisfaction or happiness. If she wanted great sex, she could have it with someone she was attracted to. This threatened to be a lot more complicated.
“When are we going after Sessani?”
“We start planning as soon as the other teams are here.”
“Good.” She turned so her back was against the fence, and she thought about what Addison had said. Accusations, really. She didn’t need to be schooled by a college girl. “I don’t regret anything.”
He moved so he was directly in front of her. “No?”
Again, that shiver of gold laced through his voice. He reached for her arm and drew a fingertip along the inside of her bare forearm. A sizzle of power followed. “Okay by you?”
“Yes.” One thing was true, she and Kynan had great sex together. That was simple to understand.
He brought her close enough for what he wanted to do. She tipped her head and one shoulder, and he got a hand underneath the mass of her hair and swept it over her shoulder. Her body tightened with anticipation. He did it for her, gave her all these feelings. Desire. Arousal. He really did. He knew what she liked, and he liked that, too. If they hadn’t met when they had, if they’d met later, maybe she would’ve fallen for him. Maybe they wouldn’t have been so screwed up.
He slid a finger from the top of her forehead down the middle of her face, over her chin and throat, and down the center of her chest, laying down power the whole way. Claiming her. Bringing her body to feverish arousal.
She kept her eyes closed. If it were possible to mainline magic, this had to be what it was like. Overpowering, alluring, entangling with every other part of her so she lost her sense of herself and hardly cared. This—this—was what it was like to be alive.
His mouth touched the side of her throat, lips warm, the dampness of his tongue there, sliding along the pulse of her throat, accepting what she offered even though they both knew he could have taken her arm. The beat of him drawing on his power moved through her, and it was the promise of pleasure settling in her. Nothing else. She wouldn’t allow it to be anything else.
The unnaturally sharp edge of a tooth slid across her skin, then through, and he was there, with her, part of her, the entire world compacted to just this moment. Damp tongue along the cut in her skin, the draw of his mouth, and then the blossom of him through her, around her. She could lose herself to the beauty of this. Him. Was losing. He spread a hand over the side of her face, and they were close, yet not nearly close enough.
He held her against him, and the pain of his bite turned sharper, sweeter, and she leaned against him, her fingers sliding through his hair. She wanted to wrap herself in his power.
He drew back. The air between them thickened. “Let’s go inside.”
She grabbed his hand and held tight. She needed to be distracted. Pulled free of everything Addison had made her feel about Kynan. “Yes. Yes, please.”
They went inside and passed the living room without stopping. By the time they reached the room she’d been using, he was a step ahead of her. They fell through the door when he opened it, a tangle of arms, mouths, and desire. Inside, he pushed her against the wall and reached out with his near hand to shut the door. Hard. The sound echoed through her.
“Everything we talked about.” He pinned her against the wall, and there was nothing held back. Magic swarmed through her, took her over, and she let it happen. He fisted one hand and pressed it to the wall above her head, leaning in. His voice turned to a growl. “Everything.”
She looked up, and her vision went off the way it had before. Colors swirled in the air around him, tiny rivers of sparkling movement. She couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to. She didn’t want to do anything that would stop this. This she could feel. Not the rest. “Yes.”
“Winters.” He said her name like he was desperate, but maybe that was her, desperate for him. His free hand moved to the buttons of her shirt, unfastening them, and she was nothing but longing for him to touch her. She got a hand between them and reached for the fly of his jeans. He shifted to give her access.
Yes. This. Her breath came hard, half groan.
She got the button unfastened. He peeled off his shirt and let it fall wherever the hell it was going to go, then finished pushing off his jeans. They were gone, too. He was beautiful. Beyond beautiful.
“This is us.” He grabbed her face and tilted her head so their eyes connected, and her heart thumped against her ribs. “This is how we are. How we should have been all along.”
Her oath to him vibrated, but it was the other bonds between them that reacted, coming to life. She put her hands on his chest and stroked, caressing him from throat to shoulders, and then without warning, she was on the verge of tears because Addison had reminded her of everything Kynan had lost, all the good in him she had denied. A sob rose up in her throat, suppressed without mercy.
He spread the fingers of one hand over her cheek and jaw and kissed her, mouth open, tongue. Demanding, and she returned demands of her own. While they kissed, he worked the rest of the buttons of her shirt and got his hand inside. Warm, warm fingers on her skin. He drew back. Inches, only inches between them. “My sworn.”
“Yes.” The word caught in her throat.
Their connection changed, widened, deepened until the ripple of all the lives he’d taken into himself to save them from Magellan echoed through her, too. She circled her arms around his waist, bowing toward him. She wept at the horror his life had been until Carson freed him, and then all the years he’d needed to stabilize, and even then there was really no way to recover from something like that. He was a miracle just as he was.
He pu
t a hand to the side of his throat, and she watched him, breathing hard, pulse thrumming, Colors swirled in the air around him, filled with sparks and bursts of color. He opened a cut and swiped his fingers through the blood that welled. He held his blood-smeared fingers to her mouth.
She closed her eyes and took his finger in her mouth. She savored the taste that spread through her, the heat of their arousal. She was drugged with pleasure. When she opened her eyes, he wasn’t human.
He grabbed her around the waist and spun her toward the bed.
CHAPTER 26
Kynan was bigger in this form, bipedal, winged, muscled in the same lean manner as in his human form. It flashed through her awareness that he considered that a convenient aspect of this form. With him like this there wouldn’t be a repeat of their first disastrous encounter because she couldn’t be on top.
His arm was around her, tight, so tight, still moving her through space toward the bed. Wherever he touched her, his skin wasn’t the smooth texture of human skin but rougher, thicker. The scent of sand filled the air, and she closed her eyes again as they fell onto the mattress. With a low growl, he covered her breasts, and she shuddered at the violence implicit in the tightening of his fingers. He stroked the length of her body, separating his hands at her hips to continue down her legs, pressing hard.
“Yes?” he said. Thought. Demanded. “To everything I want from your body.”
His power filled her, sparked her magic, and a thread of energy from him whipped through her and tangled with her magic. He growled again.
“Answer,” he said.
“Yes.” She pried open her eyes and connected with the creature he was. “Yes, warlord.”
His mind slid around hers, and she took in air, panic washing over her, and he fed off that for the few moments she needed to bring the reaction under control. Disbelief and anticipation bubbled up at the sight of him looming over her. The creature’s ribs expanded and contracted. Its—his—wings snapped once, extending outward, then returned to tuck nearly out of sight.
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