“I let it slip to Adnan about your leg. You might want to talk to him? Or I can, if that’s easier?” I hedged, hoping to God he’d say no.
Naz just nodded and walked down the hall toward the bedrooms like he’d been here a hundred times. Maybe he had. Still so much of his life was a mystery to me.
Rouen still sat at my feet, one of his huge hands wrapped around my calf. He’d let go of my hand and all that remained of my cut was a slight pink line.
Hope grabbed my hand and stared. “Holy hell, Rella. That’s amazing.”
A wide smile stretched my face. It really was. “The power of gargoyle cooties.”
Charlie sat on the coffee table, silent. I guess if we were all here.
“Does the name Vladimir Rousevik mean anything to you?” I asked Hope, because it rang a bunch of bells for me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
“You mean the founder of the Shine Foundation?”
All the pieces snapped together in my brain and I reared back in shock. No fucking way. That’s why it sounded familiar.
Son of a bitch.
He ran an aid foundation that helped relocate refugees from war-torn or environmentally impoverished countries. Apparently, he helped relocate them right into slavery.
“Have you ever met this Rousevik?” I asked, but Hope just shook her head, frown lines creasing the otherwise smooth beauty of her face.
“No, he’s a bit of a recluse from what I’ve heard. Came from Bosnia or somewhere and got horribly disfigured so he never leaves his mansion. That's just a rumor though. I’ve met his public relations rep a few times. She’s a nice woman, late forties, kinda matronly looking. Why the interest in Shine?”
I sighed. I hated smearing her bright, shiny world with the filth of society's dregs. “Not sure if it's connected to Shine, really. It might just be a good way to launder his money for all I know. But Rousevik has been linked as the head of the people smuggling ring that snatched you.”
She looked like I’d slapped her. I felt her confusion, her disbelief, and the fear crawl up her bond like an insidious leech.
“Hey. They won’t get you again. I swear it on my life. Don’t you worry about Rousevik or Shine or any of that other shit. I’ve got you.” I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her close, sending her all my reassurance. I felt another set of arms wrap around me, squishing me between a hard chest and my sister. Hands patted Hope’s back.
I looked over my shoulder at Rouen, who had his face buried in my hair. He shrugged. “Her distress is your distress.”
I could feel Hope’s body tremble as she held back a laugh, but it bubbled through the bond anyway.
“You are in so much trouble, Rella,” she said, pulling back and giving Rouen her radiant smile. I expected to feel that rush of adoration through my bond with Rouen, the rush that everyone got when Hope smiled at them, or laughed at their jokes, or just listened to them speak in that way she had, where it felt like what you were saying really mattered to her. But all I got was a general feeling of polite respect, and he nuzzled my hair a little more.
Charlie was looking between us all strangely, but when I tried to catch his eye he looked away. I choked back the sigh that wanted to escape, squeezed Rouen’s hand and stood. We needed to go.
I kissed the top of Hope’s head. “We head out to Geneva as soon as possible, but when this is over, we are going to the diner near Time Square, you know the one? And we are gonna ice skate and get our nails done and go shopping, just like old times. I need girl time. The testosterone overload of the last few weeks is killing me, and I grew up in a household with seven dads!” I gave the guys a smile so the knew I wasn’t being serious. I gave Charlie a fake stink eye and hoped that he knew I was joking too.
Naz still hadn't reemerged from Adnan’s room, so I wandered down the hall to let him know we were going. He could stay. I wasn’t his keeper.
I could hear the raised voices from a couple of doors away and contemplated turning around. I’d leave a note with Hope.
“How can you defend it? Defend her? She fucking made you into a demon, Naz. I don’t know if I believe in heaven, but I’m pretty sure you can’t get there as a fucking abomination.” Adnan’s voice had reached a higher octave, which meant they’d probably been arguing for awhile.
“Would you rather I be dead?” Naz growled out, and I paused, unable to step closer, but unable to move away either. “She saved me.”
“She made you her slave for all eternity!”
“There's worse things to be than the slave to a beautiful woman, Ads. You don’t know the things I’ve done, the places I’ve been. You should be kneeling down and kissing her goddamn feet, because she’s saved me in more ways than one. In ways you will never understand.”
I heard Adnan’s bed springs squeak, and I guessed he was sitting down. “I have a purpose. For the first time in my life, I have a reason to wake up in the morning other than to kill some bad dude that some richer, not-so-bad dude pays me to kill. It might not have been a purpose that I willingly chose, but I’m going to work with it, to come to terms with this situation, and I suggest you do too.”
The door to Adnan’s room opened and he strode out, only to stop at the sight of me standing like an idiot in the hall.
Adnan stormed out after him. “Is that even you talking or has she…” Adnan stopped when he saw me too, shock and guilt making his eyes go round.
“Rella-” Naz started, but I waved him away.
“It’s okay, Adnan is right. I’ve had those exact same thoughts myself in the last twenty-four hours.” I looked at Adnan. “I’m sorry. I wouldn't have chosen it if there was any other way.”
Adnan screwed his face up like a petulant child. “He should never have been there.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t ask him to be. If I remember correctly, that was you.”
With that, I turned and walked back down the hall, blowing Hope a kiss and heading to the door.
Romanus and Rouen fell into step beside me, but when I reached the elevator I was surprised to see Naz right behind them. I was even more surprised to see Charlie as well.
He just shrugged and gave me a watered-down version of his famous Charlie grin. “I brought my car. No point catching the subway.”
The doors slid open, and we all piled in. There wasn't a whole lot of room in the tiny little lift, and the four guys took up more than their fair share of space. Romanus and Rouen crowded me just out of principle. The tension was almost suffocating. I leaned around Naz and hit the stop button. The elevator lurched to a shuddering halt.
We needed to get this all out in the open. Why not here, in an elevator where no one could escape?
Just last week, I would be doubting my sanity for voluntarily being stuck in an elevator with two demons, a mobster and a mercenary. Oh my.
“Let’s just talk about the elephant in the room.”
“You mean the Gargoyle in the Elevator, right?” Rouen corrected.
I rolled my eyes at him. “I know that none of us exactly planned on this happening, me becoming a Gargoyle Queen and turning Naz into whatever he is now. I didn’t mean to somehow acquire a pack and hurt my best friend in the process.” I stared at Charlie, who just stared back, his face impassive. “But it happened. It can’t be undone, and I wouldn’t want to undo it. But I am not forcing anyone to stay either. If you want to leave and go back to wherever it is you came from,” I looked between the Gargoyles and Naz, “then you have my blessings and no hard feelings. You’ve all paid enough for my vendetta.”
Rouen scoffed. “Like you could get rid of us that easy, Tiger. Sorry, but you are stuck with us.” His laughing face lost all its mirth. “If you want to be. We can’t ditch you, but it is possible for you to ditch us.” He didn’t say anything more, but I got the feeling that if I left it would be catastrophic for them, maybe even deadly.
“I’m happy right here,” I said, smiling. I was. I didn’t feel trapped, which was how I usua
lly felt if I committed to anything more permanent than a cellphone plan. It felt right. Charlie was the only sour note to my potential happiness.
Naz shrugged. “I meant what I said.”
“Charlie?” There was a fragile part of my heart riding on his answer.
He sucked in a deep breath, and his shoulders sagged. “I don’t know. But I’m not about to abandon you now. I’ve got your back until the end. As for the rest… let’s just take it one day at a time.”
Relief swelled in me, probably prematurely, but I couldn't help it. It wasn't a no. “That’s all I ask. Charlie isn’t pack. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
All of the other guys shook their heads.
“Good, because Charlie is mine, regardless of whether he is officially pack or not.”
Romanus shrugged. “I like the human. If he pulled his head out of his ass and just fucked you already, you’d be happy, we’d be happy and we wouldn’t have to have these touchy-feely conversations.”
My cheeks turned as bright red as Charlie’s. I leaned around and restarted the elevator. Rouen leaned into me. “I happen to like all the touchy, and definitely all the feely.”
The flush spread right down my body, and someone cleared their throat. I gave Rouen a stern look. “Not the time.”
He just winked. If I didn't have an invested interest in his lower appendages, I would have junk-punched him.
Chapter Eleven
The plane hit turbulence for the tenth time, and I contemplated throwing up. I wasn’t a good flyer, which was funny considering I sometimes sifted from place to place with Fallen angels, which had a far higher fatality rate than a normal plane.
Charlie grumbled under his breath in the plush leather seats, and I leaned forward to stare at his screen. I shouldn’t have bothered. None of the lines of numbers and letters on his screen made any sense to me anyway.
“What’s wrong?” I said, unclipping myself and walking unsteadily to the table where he had set up his mile-high tech hub.
“I can’t find anything on this Rousevik guy beyond PR spin released by his own company. Not a picture holding a baby, or a social security number or even a record of his birth. It’s like he appeared out of thin air.”
I chewed my lip. “Could it be an alias to protect his real identity?”
Charlie shrugged and scowled at his screen, as if it was being recalcitrant and not giving up the information we needed. “Maybe. But normally there’s a paper trail of some kind, or more likely a money trail that would lead back to the guy. But nothing. It’s just like an eternal babushka doll of shell companies that lead nowhere. Shine Foundation is very upfront with their financials, but it’s only on the surface.” He sighed and gripped the edges of the table. “Either he doesn’t exist, or he’s got a really good hacker who went in and deleted him from everything. No social media, no drivers license, no reference to him whatsoever outside of Shine.”
I could hear his frustration. Charlie prided himself on his abilities, and even Dad was proud of him. This would be a serious blow to his ego. I squeezed his shoulder. “Cast the net wider and see what fish we catch. You can do this.”
I walked up the aisle to the bedroom. The NRH, my parent’s charitable foundation, had a seriously fancy private plane. It had a full bedroom, bathroom and bar. Pretty much all you’d need on a flight to Europe and all privately paid for by Tolliver. We’d used it to ferry more than one group of people from nature ravaged areas.
I was exhausted, and the idea of lying in a bed that wasn’t infested with fleas sounded like bliss. I could sleep for a week, but I’d settle for sleeping through this flight.
I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my jeans and weapons holsters. I slid beneath the plush down quilt and sighed.
The door opened, and Naz walked in. He jumped a little when he saw me on the bed.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were in the bathroom. I was just going to catch an hour nap, but I’ll do it back in the seats.” He was already turning before he finished.
“It’s all good, Naz. There’s plenty of room for two.”
He gave me a hot look that had me swallowing my words.
“I think it’s best to go back out to the cabin.”
He was probably right, and I should just wave him goodbye. Instead I said, “Is that what you want to do?” And it came out all raspy. I was turned on just by him standing in the goddamn doorway.
“No.”
My stomach fluttered. “What do you want?”
“I want to go over there, flip you over, push those fucking sexy red lace panties to the side and fuck you slow and hard until you are nothing more than a trembling mess beneath me.”
I swallowed hard as heat rushed to my pussy. “How do you know the color of my underwear?” I asked as I watched him stalk toward the bed. There was no other name for the way he moved; slow, deliberate, graceful.
“They teased me by riding up above your jeans when you were stowing your weapons in the overhead lockers. As well as a section of that creamy skin that I just want to mark up.”
He was beside the bed now, his eyes roaming over my body with naked hunger, but he made no move to join me. I pushed down the quilt so it bunched at my hips, exposing just a hint of red lace. His eyes ran over my breasts, my nipples hard and begging for his lips. My tank had ridden up, gathering at the bottom of my ribs, exposing the flat expanse of my stomach. He growled as his eyes moved lower and ran into the barricade of the quilt.
His swirling mercury eye caught mine, and guilt hit me. Did he really find me desirable, or was it the bond at work? Would the other guys feel my pleasure under Naz’s gaze, and would they care?
“Is it the bond making you feel this?” I asked. I had to know. It felt wrong otherwise.
“Yes and no. I thought you were the fucking sexiest thing alive before you made me into this,” he pointed to his eye. “But I would never have acted on it without the bond. People like me, we don’t form attachments. And you weren’t some chick that I could love and leave. But now, for better or worse, we are tied together. So being able to do this,” he reached out and ran a finger down my stomach, over my pubic bone and beneath my panties, stroking his finger in wet folds of my pussy, “is the fucking best silver lining ever.”
He pushed his finger inside me, kneeling next to me on the bed, and I let out a long moan. He slipped between my knees and kissed me, his thumb finding my clit and rubbing it with the perfect amount of pressure to make me writhe against his hand. He leaned in and kissed me, his soft lips pressing hard into mine. The bond between us lit up and I gasped. I felt his pleasure at tasting me, at how I felt riding his hand, how desperate he was to replace his fingers with his dick. I felt all those sensations through the bond on top of my own and it was almost an overload. Double the pleasure, but it was hard to filter his from mine.
He tore his mouth away and kissed his way down my chest to my lace covered breast. Freeing one, he sucked my nipple into his mouth so hard I felt the sensation pull deep inside me. I moaned again, grinding against his hand. I didn’t know if it was his urge or mine, but I wanted him inside me. Now.
I grabbed at his shoulders. “Please, Naz.” I reached for his jeans, tugging at his belt, but he grabbed my hands, and held them above my head, manacling them with one of his own.
“Uh uh, I wanted to do this slow. I wanted to drive you to the brink so many times that you beg me to let you come, so slow that I get to taste every inch of you before I fuck you.” He let out a frustrated groan. “But I don’t think we have time and I don’t have the willpower. You’re just so sexy and it’s been too long.” He liberated my hands so he could kick out of his jeans and I tore at his shirt. I wanted to trace those tattoos with my fingers, then with my tongue.
I let out a disappointed moan when he flipped me onto my stomach, but it was short lived as his whole body pressed along mine, the hard bulge of his cock against my ass making me moan. He grabbed my hands again, raising them back over m
y head. I could feel the head of his cock pressed against my entrance, the lace of my underwear the only barrier between us.
“Don’t move these,” he whispered against my ear, and I sucked in a breath, complying as his hand ran down my body, and wrapping around one of my thighs. He spread my legs wider, settling his big body between them. His fingers slid up my thigh and hooked around the soaking wet fabric of my panties. I shuddered out a moan at the feel of his calloused finger against the aching flesh. He dipped a finger into my juices and my pussy clenched.
He groaned. “I want to tease you so bad, but I’d just be making myself crazy. I need to be inside you.” With that, he replaced his finger with the head of his cock, his body pressed right along mine. As he slid his way slowly inside me, his hand slipped under my hips, lifting them higher to go deeper. His pace was so slow, driving himself into me with complete control and hitting every sensitive spot on the way, until I thought I was going to go insane if he didn’t move faster. I pushed back, urging him to move, but his heavy body pinned mine to the mattress.
“Naz, faster. More,” I whispered on a moan, and he laughed. He drew back and slammed himself home, fast and hard, and a shout escaped me. I need more of that, more hard, fast fucking. I clenched my pussy tight around him, flexing my inner muscles and he sucked in a breath.
“Naughty. Alright, Princess, you get your wish.” He pulled back and pounded back into me. He had both hands on my hips, thrusting deep into me, the dull slapping of our bodies almost drowning out the sound of my moans that I was trying to muffle with my palm.
My orgasm burst out of me on a scream, but Naz wasn’t done, a small hitch to his breath the only way I knew he was even affected by my screams. He pulled out, flipping me over onto my back and hooking my legs over his shoulders, sliding back inside me with a grunt of satisfaction. He bent forward and kissed me, the angle hitting my g-spot and sending me back under a tidal wave of pleasure.
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 43
