by Zoe Forward
Aside from that, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He swallowed. Her hair, pulled into a quick up-do, drew his attention to the long angle of her neck and the raised tattoos. There was a new, raised, pink mark on her neck, small and geometric.
Magic comes at a price.
It’s why Dom was covered in marks. The more powerful the magic, the more likely to develop a mark, or something worse. Perhaps her spell to help him caused it? Or the one to activate the car key?
Her thick hair fought to escape its pins in the breeze, a few strands brushing over the new mark. The dress she’d picked out with its lacy sleeves by some miracle didn’t look like she’d survived a bomb in it.
The shower to remove residual dust and the smells of explosive off him helped, but his mother would pick up the scent.
“You doing okay? You seem…I don’t know, tense,” she said.
“These dinners can be unpredictable.”
Nova acted so casual, as if she wasn’t short-circuiting his brain with the way the dress hugged her ass. Did she know what she did to him? Her sidling up to stand close, smelling all fresh, made his jaw clench. Did she really have no clue how un-fucking-believably sexy she was?
“Stop staring at me. I look hot. I get it. You staring opens that whole can of worms about you lusting but not acting on it.” She watched the horizon where the sun almost kissed the water in its descent.
Shoes against the wooden boardwalk echoed behind them
She turned abruptly, her body sliding against his arm and thigh. The smallest touch sent fire through his veins and made his teeth grit to hold back a groan. He didn’t need to look to know who arrived. He’d known the second their new arrival parked his rental car.
But he did look. Impeccable white shirt and black suit, Flynn’s eyes darted between them, settling on Roman with a double eyebrow raise.
“This ought to be interesting,” Flynn said to him. He gave her an appreciative once-over. “Nice dress, Nova.”
His gut churned. Guilt about Nova ate through him. No way could he sit through dinner with his disturbingly perceptive mother and his brothers without them knowing how much he was in a bind over her. How much he wanted to keep her safe, the king’s order be damned. A burning sensation, as if someone ran a blowtorch on his skin, started in his wrist and channeled up his arm. I get that you want me to kill her. That I was ordered to do it. But he refused to commit to it. He inhaled deeply and cleared his mind, blocking out the pain and all thought, focusing on the horizon. Air in. Air out.
The scorch receded but didn’t entirely disappear, reminding him not to forget his orders. The curse detected his conflict. Not for the first time, he wondered if it could actually kill him if he disobeyed.
“You brought her.” Flynn’s statement carried a huge subtext, starting with Nova shouldn’t be here.
“Safest option.”
“For who? Her or you?”
He shrugged but didn’t deviate from his necessary fixation on the water. The red hues of the sky, the gulls floating on the breeze, and the white froth of the choppy waves…beautiful.
“So, the bomb? Was that you guys?” Flynn asked.
“An assassination attempt. Guess they escalated from kidnap to kill order,” Roman said. He’d filled in Flynn earlier via web video about the kidnap attempt on Nova.
“You get the guy?”
“Someone else did.” Roman met his brother’s concerned scrutiny.
Flynn frowned. “You see who else was there?”
Roman shook his head.
“This keeps getting weirder. And we still can’t find Ky.” Flynn consulted his watch. “They’ll be here any minute.”
Flynn practically vibrated with open anxiety verging on dread. None of them missed this once-a-month family date. Ever.
They always spent the full moon in the safety of one of their mother’s bunkers.
Flynn whipped out his phone and started texting. “Maybe it’s time to involve Gerard. He might be able to figure out where the hell Ky is.”
“Does Gerard know this burner phone’s number?” Roman snagged the phone and held it up.
Flynn nodded.
Roman crunched it beneath his feet. “No mistakes. We can’t be traced, especially not by him right now. I don’t trust him.” He picked up the dead device and chucked it into the sea.
Gerard might allow them this once a month night to “disappear,” but he’d want to keep tabs on them and track them however he could. He knew the battle they fought on full moon nights was personal. They let Gerard think they disappeared to some private hole in the ground on these nights. But no one, especially the Crown and Gerard, knew his mother was still alive. He and his brothers worked hard to keep her existence under wraps. Mom had many houses and bunkers around the world, so they went to the one closest to wherever their most recent mission had taken them. They made certain to erase their tracks.
Flynn said, “I wish Ky were here. She’s going to freak out when he doesn’t show. We all know she loves him best.”
“I thought I was her favorite,” Roman said.
Flynn rolled his eyes.
A burgundy-colored powerboat slid into the dock, driven by two male lycans in dark tactical clothes. They grinned, regarding Nova like tomcats around a cat in heat.
She laced her fingers with Roman’s, moved in close to his side and whispered, “Why do I feel like I’m on the menu?”
“Knock it off.” Roman growled to the guys.
They bowed their heads in submission.
One ordered, “Get below.”
The three of them headed inside and huddled into the small, contained middle section behind the steering wheel. Roman settled Nova on top of him to keep her from touching Flynn. If even the tip of one of her fingers contacted Flynn, he’d know. Then he’d rip his brother’s head off for it.
Wow. This feeling was new, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He had no clue how to deal with it.
Moon madness. That luminous full moon was less than an hour from starting its rise. The second it started, this fantasy of touching her smooth legs, spreading them and…
No.
Sex between them would have to be a one-night thing. He didn’t want that. Not with Nova. And they didn’t have a future.
He took deep breaths and counted to twenty to calm his racing heart.
Her butt wiggled against his crotch.
He bit back a groan. Was she trying to kill him?
She either wore a thong or nothing. Those were the only two options based on the feel he just got. He sensed the curve of each cheek of her ass as it brushed against him.
She asked, “Do you guys always get picked up to meet your mother via henchmen on a powerboat?”
“Not always,” Roman said hoarsely once his brain processed the question on a few seconds’ delay. “She moves around a lot.”
“Secretive comes with the genes, huh?” She darted her eyes back and forth between the two of them. “Does she work for the king, too?”
“No,” they both said at once.
She squeezed his hand, which sent pulsations up his arm. Was she unaffected by sitting on top of him? Did she not feel this insane drive to get naked?
“How many of you brothers are there?” she asked.
“Four. Well, three.” He glanced at Flynn. The pain in his brother’s gaze smacked him in the gut. “Shane, our youngest brother, is dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“That lighter…the one you had…it was his,” Flynn said hoarsely. “We thought it lost along with him.”
The boat’s hum permeated the heavy silence that had descended.
She broke the silence. “I assume Ky is the brother who’s missing tonight. Is it typical for you guys to go off on your own or work as a team?”
“Ky going off isn’t normal. We work together,” Roman said. “Flynn does technical logistics like surveillance and computer shit. Ky handles weapons, especially guns. I do the specialized magic when needed and play front man when we interact with humans. We all employ magic to some degree. Shane used to…” He couldn’t finish.
Flynn added softly, “Shane was the glue. He kept us in line ethically and emotionally. Always cracking a joke at the right time or calling us on curse words… Man, he was funny about cussing. He was the captain of the language police. He lived by a code of integrity that was sometimes annoying as hell. Kept us remembering that. He never shied away from honoring others for their accomplishments or sacrifices. It’s never been the same without… Fuck, I miss him.”
“Yeah.” Emotion choked up Roman. He lifted his pendant of the archangel Zadkiel and kissed it, saying a silent prayer for his brother’s soul.
Nova said, “I hope Ky is okay.”
The boat stopped. He wondered if they’d eat dinner on the yacht or submarine tonight. That was a good direction of thought. It distracted him from her.
Knock. Knock.
He pushed out of the small quarters. As he helped Nova stand in her spiky heels, he got a flash of a view up her firm calves.
Flynn stood and hit his shoulder against Roman’s with a suppressed grin. “It’s a bad night to be juiced up like you are. You’re falling for the target.”
Too late. “She’s not a target. We’re going to prove to them she’s innocent.”
“You think they care? Seems like someone has a hard-on to kill her.”
Roman watched Nova, who hadn’t heard but was leaning over to look at something in the water, which outlined her perfect ass. Jesus, she had to be doing this on purpose. He might spontaneously go up in flames before they even met his mother.
Flynn chuckled and hit him with his shoulder again before he left the boat first.
Catching up to Nova, Roman helped her through the entryway onto the yacht. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.
She smiled at him and didn’t look the least bit worried, which scared the hell out of him.
The yacht—sleek, modern, and uber expensive—housed a buttload of staff, a combination of her personal mercenaries and domestics. Each worshipped his mother. Of course, any who turned on her didn’t live long. Although it looked like a luxury boat, it was a fully equipped battle station complete with anti-missile defense and ballistic command center that monitored hacked channels of governments and some private mercenary groups around the world.
His mother came topside to greet them. Her white-blonde hair styled in a bob made her look closer to thirty than the many hundreds of years old she was. She came off conservative in her white A-line dress, but she’d probably found the strappy, ultra-high-heel red shoes on a shelf labeled “Pure Sex,” which shattered the image.
With arms wide, she engulfed Roman in a hug and kissed him on each cheek. She said, “How I missed you, darling.” Then she embraced Flynn. “And you, love. Is that a new eyebrow piercing?” She glanced around. “Where the hell’s Ky?”
“We don’t know.” Flynn adjusted his suit jacket and shirt as if they chafed. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“I know you’ll find him. It’s bloody unacceptable to lose another one of you to that despicable curse.” She compressed her lips into a thin line. “Yet, you’ve brought me a visitor?” She looked between the two of them. “Roman, you could have spared a moment to send me a message you’d found a girl.”
“She’s not…we’re not…” Roman trailed off.
His mother’s eyebrows slowly rose.
Too perceptive. This was about to get embarrassing.
“I’m Evie.” His mother held out her hand to Nova. “It’s short for Evangeline, but if you attempt to use my whole name, I’ll kill you.” All of this was delivered in a pleasant, would-you-like-some-tea tone.
Nova shook her hand with a smile. “Nova. I don’t think it’s short for anything.”
Evie tapped her lip. “You look familiar.”
Nova’s face lit up. “You know me? I can’t—”
“That’s it,” Evie interrupted. “A contract offer is circulating for you.”
Roman yanked her behind him and glared at his mother. He wasn’t sure if he could take her down if she attacked, but he’d try.
“Jesus, Roman. Stand down. She’s with you, love. She’s safe from me. I didn’t know she was one of us when the job came through. Besides, they didn’t offer enough to pique my interest.” Evie waved her hand dismissively. “I can see this will be a complicated story, one not for public consumption. Inside.” She spun and led them into the main cabin.
“Nova has amnesia,” Roman rushed to say as he entered.
Flynn said, “Roman was ordered to kill her by King Douche, who was the one that put out the contract on her. But we can’t find anything on who she is or where she’s from.”
“Balls.” Evie burst into laughter. “So of course Roman got himself in a twist and brought her to dinner for me to sort out. We need drinks. Hard liquor.” She snapped her fingers. Staff carrying trays with brown liquor in short glasses and filled champagne flutes appeared as they were ushered into a formal dining room with its table already set.
Evie hooked Nova’s arm, handed her champagne, and dragged her away from Roman. “What do you remember?”
Roman tensed, watching his mother’s every move.
“Nothing,” Nova said. “According to Roman, I was some sort of killer for hire and took out a few people.”
“You were an assassin?” His mom drawled out the question. She broke out into a Cheshire cat grin.
“No,” Roman called across the room. Why she’d bothered moving away when she knew he could hear her whisper at five times that distance was beyond him. “Get the thought out of your head, Mom.”
“Posh, love, I work alone.” Evie waved at him. Then muttered, “Most of the time.” She pulled Nova tighter to her into a small hug and released her.
“You work?” Nova asked, taking in the yacht’s expensive interior.
“Do I look like I need money?” She waved at her opulent surroundings. “Their father left me well-off when he got himself killed during one of his do-gooder schemes. The poor love didn’t remember the one truism of our existence: never trust humans, especially the rich ones.”
Roman scratched his cheek, unsure where this was going.
Evie shrugged. “I get a bit restless sometimes. It’s a long life to drift along alone and bored.”
“Restless?” Flynn snickered before he swallowed his entire glass of liquor.
“I take a contract here and there.” Evie picked the cheese knife up off its board and waved it around. “Keeps me entertained to rid the world of a bit of its filth. The boys don’t care.”
“You’re a hit man?” Nova asked. “Er, I mean hit woman?”
“I prefer to be called an assassin or hired gun. I know most in the business and don’t recall another lycan female as competition. Few of our kind have escaped being locked up by males in the name of protection.” She lowered her voice to be conspiratorial with Nova. “More like they’re scared shitless of our mental strength, so they confine us young to keep us as naive as possible. No one’s locking me up ever again. Been there and done that. Fortunately, my husband was a rather enlightened sort, and my boys wouldn’t dare. If anyone else tries…well, I’ve discovered that knowing all manner of ways to kill tends to keep people from getting any ideas about confining me against my will.”
“You don’t know me, then?” Nova’s lips pressed into a grimace.
“We’ve never met. Tell me how you ended up with these lads,” she said, gesturing with her chin toward her sons.
“I woke up in a car with a text telling me to get Roman out of a club before the cell phone’s coun
tdown timer went off.”
“My name is tattooed on her wrist.” Roman moved in closer, since listening in from across the room was a pain in the ass. Plus, they were next to the bar.
Evie grabbed Nova’s arm and examined the ink. “It’s nice work.”
Roman poured himself another Scotch while she relayed her version of events up until they left Berlin, leaving out the vampire. Which was good. Last thing he wanted was another discussion about Antonio. There’d been too many dinners where they tried to tease out the vampire’s motives for lurking nearby during many of their missions. He never interfered, but they’d round a corner and there he’d be. They’d once concluded he might incite some of the non-humans to attempt the insane world domination plans they enacted.
“What did that to your face?” Evie asked.
Nova skimmed her fingers over a few of the almost-gone lesions. “I went through a windshield after someone tried to abduct me from Roman’s flat in London.”
“Well, you can hardly tell, and from the looks of things, they’ll be gone by tomorrow. I hope the other guy’s dead?”
Nova nodded.
A small bell dinged.
“Hold on, honey,” Evie said. “Boat’s about to take off. We don’t stay still for long.” After a small lurch and hum of motors, Evie ordered, “Sit. Let’s eat.”
A place had already been added at the large dining table for Nova. The moment they found their seats, more staff appeared and deftly set food on the shellacked wood table, which was anchored onto the floor to prevent movement.
After several silent minutes while they dug into the gourmet meal of beef, his mother said, “Have you found out anything about her or why she was sent to you, Roman?”
Both he and Flynn shook their heads.
Flynn downed his entire glass of wine and held it out for a refill. This had nothing to do with their conversation right now and everything to do with getting drunk at the full moon rising. Passing out was one way to survive the night.
“Who did she supposedly kill that was serious enough to warrant you being sent after her?” Evie asked.
“FenCor execs.”
Evie whistled. “That’s a death wish. Sorry, sweetie,” she said to Nova. “Never get into business with that group. I almost did once on a job. The second I realized who funded it, I withdrew.”
