Storm Kissed (34 page)

“Reese,” he whispered, the word full of awe.

She exhaled softly, trying not to let it matter too much too soon. “Jesus, to think we could have been doing that all along. And that’s Ms. Sex Goddess to you, buster.”

He chuckled and eased back to frame her face in his hands and look intently into her eyes. His were warm and wondrous, sending new warmth through her system. She felt slippery inside and out, and even though he was still lodged inside her, softening and slipping free, she felt a twinge of greedy need, a stirring of new interest. “What does that make me?” he asked on a purr.

“The guy who’s about to get his ass paid back for making me beg.”

 

Dez held out for longer than he would have expected, but eventually he begged, and was damn glad to have done so.

Then, later, after they had raided his fridge and cabinets for a truly random collection of calories not unlike what they had scrounged as kids, he liberated the scented candles from his meditation area—given the nature of the magic, the gods would understand—and used them to give the bedroom a soft, incense-laden glow as he worshipped her, slowly and thoroughly with his hands and lips, until they were both shaking with the need to join their bodies. And even then it was slow and thorough, and when the end came, it was different than it had been, different from anything he had ever experienced before, to the point that he couldn’t even give it a name. All he knew was that it was different.
He
was different.

Gods help them all.

Afterward she lay curled up against him, with her head on his chest, as he idly stroked her arm. His body was finally sated—for right then, at least—but his brain had unfortunately come back on line, insisting on churning over the events of the past day, the past week, the past year, his whole lifetime.

He told her about the vision he’d had by the pyre. “I wonder what things would have been like if Breese was the one who lived, not Keban.”

“Don’t think about it,” she said softly, touching his mouth. “What’s done is done. What matters now is what we do next.” In other words:
Don’t bring down the room. Not tonight.
So he kissed her palm and murmured something behind her muffling touch. She moved her hand. “What was that?”

He surged up, locked his lips to hers, and rolled her beneath him in one powerful move, surprised to find that he wasn’t wrung out, after all. She squirmed and beat playfully on his shoulders for a few seconds, then stilled, her hands relaxing to splay across his back, travel down, grab his ass, and pull him closer as their kisses sparked and new heat built. Pulling away slightly, he grinned down at her. “I said, ‘If what matters most is what I do next, then let’s get busy. I’m pretty sure I’ve got this part right.′
”

She arched a brow in an “oh, really?” look. “You’re doing okay so far.”

He fell into the tease, finding her single small ticklish spot and playing his fingers over it until she shrieked and writhed beneath him. “Is that a dare?” he demanded. “I think that was a dare.” Then he pounced on her, laughing, and they wrestled like a couple of idiots, making way too much noise and not giving a crap because right then it was about the two of them, the heat they made together, and the way his name sounded in the back of her throat when she came.

Afterward, he finally slept.

In sleeping, he dreamed.

And in dreaming, he fell into the nightmare.

Dez walked the streets as rumors flew, whispered sightings of the king returning from captivity, bent on revenge.
Hood’s coming back
, the shadows gibbered.
He’s going to take his woman and kill the man who stole her.

That Reese had never been—would never be—Hood’s woman didn’t matter. All that mattered was reality as the
cobra de rey
saw it. He had the streets that firmly under his spell even after all the work Reese had done to break the gang’s hold, with Dez at her back, keeping her safe, protecting her. Despite what she seemed to think, that was all he was trying to do now—keep her safe. And after Hood was gone . . . Well, Dez’s plans weren’t set, but he was working up to a big score, something they could both be proud of and that would take the sad, worried shadows out of her eyes.

As he skimmed past Warehouse Fifteen, he avoided the tunnels and stayed visible, out in the open, partly hunting, partly waiting to be found. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as he turned down the alley beside Seventeen. His gut said that the bastard was very close by. “What are you waiting for, you sons of
—
”

On one level, Dez was snarling with rage.
Don’t you fucking touch it.
But on another, he was cold and calculating, watching as a second enforcer crossed in front of him, reaching too eagerly into his coat and paying more attention to the thought of adding another present to Hood’s stocking than he was to his positioning.

Then he got the buzz, hard and hot, as he locked on his enemy.
Kill,
something whispered inside him as Hood spun and took off, his mouth splitting in a yell that Dez couldn’t hear over the voice inside his head, the one that was saying
, Kill him and take what is rightfully yours.

Roaring, he lunged after Hood, taking him down with a tackle that sent them both sprawling. He recovered first and got a knee into the small of Hood’s back as the bastard scrambled and yelled, trying to get free, to get away, a schoolyard bully bolting when things weren’t going his way. Dez dug in the other man’s pocket and got the black statue, felt the kick of power and righteousness.
Kill him now.
He grabbed Hood’s forehead, bowed his head back with one hand and slashed his throat with the other. Then he held him there, the wound gaping, the arterial spurts jetting out and painting the warehouse floor as the bastard shuddered and went limp beneath him.

Dez smelled the blood, tasted it, felt it on his skin. It took him to another place, another time, and something whispered:
head and heart.
They were the seat of a mage’s power, the ultimate sacrifice to the gods.

“There’s nothing to be in on,” Dez said, aiming the words at Reese even as another part of him said,
Yes. This is what was meant to be.

“You two want to fix up the neighborhood, right? This is your chance. You’ve got the balls and the connections. Take the chain, step up as the new
rey
, and you’ll have the resources you need. We’ll back you.” He indicated three other guys, armed, holding back the shadows. One was Afternoon Bob from the pawnshop. Dez didn’t know the other two.

Take the chain.
The words whispered in his heart. His eyes dropped to the pendant hung around Hood’s neck: a silver cobra curled around a ruby the size of his thumb, its color that of blood.