by Billi Jean
Her aunt exhaled heavily into the phone. “Didn’t you just whine about not being in on the deets? This, Tabbie-cat, is the deets.”
Whine? “Listen, I see the traps. Tag along for the ride, I don’t want to—”
“Well, too bad,” Trouble snapped. Voice softening, she said, “I’m kind of tied up at the moment, Tabbie-cat. I need you to go scope out the luscious Aeros, hottie captain of the Spartans.”
“Tied up? What does that mean?” She wasn’t touching any hottie captain comments. Eyes on her nail polish, Tabithia waited for Trouble to respond and considered the black colour she’d chosen. She turned it bright red for fun. Naw, black suited her. Short nails bled back to black except for the tips, creating a bloody-looking effect. “Waiting patiently for your answer.”
“Nothing, it means nothing.” Trouble didn’t even bother to make up a lie—not a good sign. “But, look, just have some fun, and cut the guys some sympathy. They did actually die very bravely. It wasn’t like they had a choice coming back to work for that loser Ares.”
“Loser Ares? Is this personal?”
A snort, then her aunt said, in an exasperated tone, “Please, I waste my time on men who can make a woman scream in delight, not over-greedy gods wanting theirs first. Please.”
Yep, personal. Sometimes Tabithia thought her aunt might have gone through more immortals than Hugh Hefner went through blondes. Something didn’t ring true, though. Trouble hid from the world in ways Tabithia could sympathise with. Heck, she excelled at hiding. Hiding was a tricky technique, but Tabithia felt she’d mastered it pretty well. Right up there with her spells.
“So, I’m texting you the addy. Do the meet-and-greet, get the scoop and then we’ll see from there. I got a good vibe, though, and they’re offering a great deal of money. So…” Tapping sounded through the line. From experience, Tabithia knew her aunt was tapping her nails on the steering wheel. This must be big. Trouble did that when she was planning a big job—or two big jobs. Trouble loved to double-dip. Tabithia swore they’d get killed or worse than killed one day.
She was so not doing this one, though.
Her aunt startled her by laughing suddenly, another bad sign. “Yeah, you hit the dark boys up and I’ll see into something else. We’ll check in tonight. ‘Kay?”
She was not doing this, was she? Resignation settled around her like a blanket of nettles. Exactly how could she say no? She had whined to be more onboard. This was onboard. Hell, this wasn’t onboard, this was running the show.
“Tabbie-cat?”
“Right. Later.”
How did she get into things like this? Back-seat driving was her favourite sport. She didn’t take the wheel and drive the damn car.
She practically knocked the clothes off their hangers getting up from her bedroll. One silky, black shirt fell, and she grabbed it, tucking the garment under her arm, and rolled her blankets up, trying not to panic. She could do this. A pow-wow. How hard could it be? Careful not to knock any more clothes down in the closet, she tucked her blankets and pillow into her wooden chest and closed the lid.
Under her palm, the intricate design of Gaelic lettering and flowing trees and small, very small vines all tracing the heritage of her family back to the roots soothed her. She took a moment to linger over the carved words before shrugging off her unease. The chest had been a wedding gift to her mother. Now it sat here, hidden, like so many other facets of Tabithia’s life. Her mother had been brave, a fierce witch who’d died with her father trying to save Tabithia. Such was her legacy—pain and death. Her mother never shrank from her destiny. Tabithia brushed cold fingertips over her parents’ names and blew out a long breath.
She could do this. Besides, if Trouble needed her, Tabithia had to be there.
She owed her aunt that much at least.
The good thing about Trouble? She never came over. Tabithia always went over to her aunt’s flat or wherever her aunt called home. Tabithia had made it clear when she’d left the coven that she lived alone. All alone. Her elder aunt, Sorcha, had pushed for more from the first day. Trouble had merely nodded, gripped her shoulder once, and walked off.
Yeah, she owed Trouble. Paying up might kill her, though.
The meet-and-greet was only a few hours off and on the other side of town. Unlike some witches, she didn’t have the transfer, or shifting, ability to jump from one place to another merely by imagining the new location. There were no shifting spells within her home, and no shifting hubs near enough to utilise. Just as well—Tabithia liked it that way.
She’d drive. Not that driving was a big deal, but it did take time. Choosing a pair of black pants, a cropped leather jacket, her black combat boots with the silver clasps up the sides and a black, extra-soft, long-sleeved T-shirt to go under the one she already had on, Tabithia was half ready to hit the door for her first meet-and-greet.
She should have been in a full-blown panic. She didn’t feel like she was in a panic. She felt… She caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror and froze. She looked excited.
A grin formed on her lips. Yeah, hell yeah, she was excited. Maybe she could do better as a front-seat driver. Maybe even better than Trouble.
Chapter Four
Aeros pulled into the small immortal pub, The Happy Cat, still worrying over the brightness of that damn rose. The Happy Cat looked a hopping place. Just far enough from LA so the city appeared like a dim blur of light in the distance, the place pulled in immortals living in or near the City of Angels, as well as any immortal with a travelling spell. Cars crammed the extensive parking lot, ranging from expensive to ridiculously expensive. None of them appeared to contain a woman waiting for him, though.
Arriving just shy of ten minutes until their rendezvous, Aeros had time to park and wait. The thieves would meet him in a few minutes if all went according to plan. Or one of them would, at least. He’d got a number for the little duo from a friend, along with the heads-up that the witches charged a fortune. The texts he’d exchanged with someone calling herself ‘Trouble’ had been brief and to the point. Someone would meet him here. If the gig met their standards, the liaison would then tell him the price.
He found a spot off to one side with a clear space around his gas-guzzling SUV to see anyone else who drove in. He didn’t want to chance missing his target, but he also wanted to see her coming. Whoever had left that flower had to mean something to Aeros. But what he couldn’t pinpoint.
The rose had been on his mind. When he’d discovered the thieves were women, well, his brain took off down paths he was certain Ares didn’t want him going. And if Ares didn’t want him wondering who the hell these women were, why did the ass have to offer such dire warnings? Fuck, the god might as well have waved a red flag. Aeros could think of nothing besides who the women were, what they meant to Ares, and why that fucking flower had been so bright.
Ares enjoyed playing with Aeros and his men. Was this just another game designed to give his spoilt god of war something to do?
The possibility had Aeros simmering.
The witches. They posed more questions. For instance, why would they meet him? They had to know who he was, and, more importantly, who he worked for. Why meet with the man who worked for the man you had just stolen an artefact from?
Maybe the women didn’t know who he was. But could they be that out of the loop? Most, if not all, immortals knew the Spartans and their history. Or thought they knew.
Not many understood the real deal. Once brought back from the afterlife, he and his men had sworn their alliance to the god of war. Ares ruled them loosely, requiring little more than their worship and, of course, their defence of his honour and their service on all immortal councils in his stead. In exchange, he’d given them immortality.
Aeros fought evil much as he had thousands of years before. Only now, instead of battling neighbouring Persia, he fought Death Stalkers or the other evil immortals. Such combats weren’t a hardship. Spartans survived on honour, and serving the
ir god alongside other immortals bent on protecting the innocent, the weak, and the unsuspecting was a worthy duty. Aeros had simply exchanged his loyalty to his once-beloved Sparta for loyalty to a cause. If need be, he supposed he would serve for eternity.
Now if that wasn’t depressing, he didn’t know what was. Shifting the vehicle into park, he worried that cheery thought like a sore tooth.
Yeah, eternity was craved by many, but none understood the reality – until they were immortal. Hell, as it was, his life had taken on a dullness he couldn’t seem to shake. Battles didn’t break up the monotony. Battles were simply another facet of the never-ending struggle of each day, each week, each fucking decade.
Eternity spanned ahead like a dark road with no end, but Aeros had to believe whatever deal Ares had made to bring him and his men back from the dead, eternity was now theirs. The problem with eternity? It went on for fucking ever.
Aeros slumped back in the seat and examined the parking lot for the tenth time. No new cars, no sound of people, nothing. The club was subterranean. He wouldn’t hear the live band down there unless the band headed up the ten floors and hopped out into the parking lot with their equipment and started singing.
When was the last time he’d gone to a club? Drunk a beer? Hung out with the men?
Hell if he knew. The thought should worry him, but, like everything else in his life, worry didn’t occur much any longer. Worry was distant, like the sound of a storm a hundred miles away.
If he did have immortality, would this be the way of it?
A sports car pulled up next to him. Two passengers. They stumbled out of the open wing-back doors and loudly headed off.
There were benefits to the job. He’d not lost a single man under his command since their return to this world. Could he? Lose a man? Some of his men had suffered from deadly blows. Some had had the very flesh burned from their bones, while others had lost limbs only to regenerate and survive.
Aeros fiddled with his keys, disquieted over such thoughts. It was as if seeing that white rose had somehow ripped a grey mist from his vision he hadn’t realised had obscured his sight. His men meant a great deal to him. What if he’d neglected their well-being because of his own impenetrable ennui? There used to be laughter amongst his men. They used to joke at the smallest things. They used to…live. He’d not spoken of his own struggle. But he no longer sat on the beach of his homeland and watched the sun sink, a glowing orange ball, into his beloved, cerulean sea.
The sound of a motorcycle pulling up next to him drew him out of his thoughts. Hands still holding his keys in the ignition, he turned the idling engine off, glanced over, and froze.
His breath lodged in his throat, and he blinked over at the fantasy facing him. He wasn’t certain whether he should be happy—the woman knocked his breath away—or scared to death because she did.
Cutting the low purr of her bike, she was easily the most vibrant thing he’d ever seen. Red hair the colour of a burnt summer sun, gloriously kissed by the blondes and golds of a whimsical paintbrush, brushed along the top of her delicate shoulders and down her back in a mass of breathtaking silken strands against the black of her leather jacket. She lifted a trim leg and slid off her bike to stand sideways from him, presenting him with a view of the lushest, roundest backside he’d ever seen. He swallowed a groan when she bent to adjust something on the bike, displaying the curve of each cheek and the shadowed line between.
Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he had to reach up to brush it off before it his eyes. No way could he blink and miss even a second of her.
She glowed. Every inch of her glowed in colour so bright it hurt his eyes. She bent a little lower, and he discreetly shifted his hard-on so it wasn’t strangled by suddenly too-tight jeans.
She stood, reached up with both hands, and removed her helmet. His breath whooshed out as if someone had sucker-punched him in the gut. She had to be the most beautiful woman ever created. She shook her head slowly and brushed her hair back from her face with a slim hand before turning to look around the parking lot. She spotted his SUV and grinned.
Aeros forgot to breathe. He stared at her. The cream of her face contrasted perfectly with the pillow-soft pinkness of her full lips. Her eyes were a green that would make any emerald ever formed pale in comparison. Her hair was a combination of burnt cinnamon and golden meadows. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and then travel down the line of her body to dive between her slender thighs.
She was beauty.
His cock swelled to the point of pain. He took a breath and reminded himself to calm down. She was one of the two witches. She’d broken into a god’s palace and stolen an artefact that could get him killed. Her beauty might simply be a ruse to get him to do things he wouldn’t normally agree to.
Somehow, that logic simply didn’t affect him as it should. He’d lost more than the ability to see in colour over the years. He’d lost the urge to sink into a warm, willing woman. Those urges—fuck urges, demands—hit below the belt with a vengeance now, making him squirm in his seat like some teenager.
She quirked a finely shaped, arched brow and tilted her head slightly to the side to study him, a faint smile on her lovely face.
Gods help him if she knew he’d just adjusted his aching cock. His mouth went dry. She gestured with a rolling motion of her hand to put his window down.
After fumbling with the window lock twice, he managed to get the window down while he attempted to clear his throat and think of something reasonably intelligent to say to her that wouldn’t squeak out of his damn mouth.
She didn’t wait. Instead she said, “Uh, okay. So this is the pow-wow, huh?” She gave the dark parking lot a glance, before tossing her hair back and facing him with a curl of her pink lips. “No biggie, we don’t need to chat over drinks, we can cut the deal in the parking lot just fine. So, what’s the scoop? Whatcha want fetched and carried, big guy?”
Chat over drinks. Fuck. He wanted to chat over drinks. He wanted to see that snug leather jacket off and get a clear idea of the treasures she hid underneath. She would have rounded mounds for breasts. But what colour would her nipples be? Redheads, gods, he loved the idea of seeing—
“Hello?”
He blinked. “We need the godhead you stole from Ares.”
And there went the information he didn’t want her to have. Fuck! “I mean—”
She shrugged, cutting him off with a wave of her hand and a grin that hit right between the eyes before shooting down to join the pulsing party he had going on in his jeans.
Green eyes sparkling with mischief, she said, “Huh, well, that’s cool, as long as there’s no hard feelings, dig?”
Before he could do more than open his mouth, she went on.
Hand on shapely hip, she said, “Look, I’ll give you the lowdown, Sparkie. We work for money. Big money. We don’t take sides, and if you have something someone else is willing to pay us to retrieve? We do it. Now, if you’re willing to pay us to retrieve something that fits into that category, we’re willing to play.” She paused, eyeing him closely as if expecting a response, but then brought her hand up and started ticking off points. “We charge more if it takes longer. We charge more if we are harmed in any way. We charge if the item gets…well…destroyed. And we charge even if the item is not exactly what you thought you were getting. So if you’re game, and don’t hold any, you know, hard feelings over the acquisition of the item”—she grinned and tossed her hair off her shoulder and lifted a brow mockingly—“then game on, you dig? But you have to agree to our terms first.”
He struggled to follow her unique logic, but stalled over what she was actually saying. She did this all the time—stole artefacts for immortals. The risks had to be enormous. But treating something as dangerous as a godhead as just another job? And her theft as a simple business transaction? Amazing.
“Acquisition?” he asked.
She walked over to his SUV, erasing the distance between them, and leaned a slender s
houlder against his door, arms crossed and green eyes curious. Her eyes had a slight tilt at the outer corners, he noticed. Like a cat’s, he thought, as she mesmerised him.
When he took a deep breath to calm his pounding body, he caught a hint of her sultry scent. She smelt like jasmine with a hint of peppermint. The scent reminded him of home. Perfect. As if he needed more proof she had his body on autopilot, his balls drew up tight and hard. His body felt nearly ready to burst from the one little whiff of her.
She glanced away to examine her nails. He glanced down, following her gaze, and he clenched his jaw. She had slim, graceful fingers tipped with short black nails. He could picture—no, he could feel—those fingers running up and down his cock. He bet she had warm hands.
After a heartbeat, she looked back at him. Her lips were shimmery, wet-looking with some sparkling glitter mixed in with the soft, plush lines. He wanted to kiss her. The urge was so powerful, he had to sink his ass deeper in his seat to keep himself still.
She gave him a small but devastating smile and laughed softly. “Well, call it what you will, but… Hey, are you all right? You look a bit off.” She straightened, and he swallowed hard to get his throat working.
“No, don’t go.” Gods help him, he might actually like the torture, because he didn’t want her to move one inch, except perhaps to climb in the SUV with him. Just that brief thought made him want to squirm, and he felt the head of his cock grow wet with pre-cum.
He was way off. He’d not had a hard-on in decades, and now he was one second away from coming in his jeans. His body pulsed, hot, tortured and aching. All for her.
“Uh, listen, if you’re not up to this…”
Up? One look into her green eyes and he cleared his throat. Best she not realise just how up he was for her.
“We agree to the terms.” His voice sounded like someone had rubbed his throat with sandpaper, but he met her eyes steadily, watching her closely to see if any awareness of his level of arousal filtered over her expressive face.
