by Stacia Kane
Greyson’s voice was so close to a growl it was barely recognizable. “Get out.”
The brothers moved fast when they wanted to. Or, in this instance, when ordered to; Megan had little doubt that they would have been happy to stay and watch. Not out of some voyeuristic need but because they wanted to make sure everything worked out okay.
Which it wouldn’t. And which she couldn’t care about just then either.
They raced out of the room. Greyson’s lips met hers again before the door had closed.
Another shock. More flames, racing around the ceiling as if someone had sprayed the walls with gasoline. Flames tearing through her body as if she was made of gunpowder. She gasped, said his name. Said it again as he laid her on the bed, pushed up her dress.
She sat up, shifted position to kneel. Finally she had access to his buttons. Finally she could open his shirt, peel it back off his shoulders while their kiss continued, hard and hot. They broke off while he slipped her dress over her head and she did the same for his T-shirt, then found each other again as she tugged at his belt, working the buckle with fingers that felt swollen.
“My arms are like the twisted thorn,” he murmured, quoting Yeats, breaking the last word off with a sharp gasp when she pulled down his zipper and reached inside, finding him swollen and slick. She curled her hand around him, stroked him, bathed in the hot orange light of the raging fire around them.
Her bra slid down her shoulders. His hands roamed over her breasts, over her ribs. Her skin leaped where he touched her; she almost lost her balance trying to lean forward, to push herself into his palms. Instead she fell against his chest, his bare skin tantalizingly hot and intensely gratifying. She kissed it, scraped her teeth over it. Curled her body down to kiss his stomach, down farther to take him into her mouth.
For the last time. She forced the thought from her head. It wasn’t welcome. Instead she focused on the feel of him, the taste of his smoky skin. On his hands tangling gently in her hair, the sound of his breath catching in his chest and his voice saying her name.
She was just getting lost in it when he pulled her up, flipped her back. Her panties disappeared with one quick slip. He nibbled the top of her right thigh, urged it to the side with gentle pressure.
Her back arched. Her entire body buzzed and spun, her head cleared of everything but fire and smoke. Smoke drifting from her mouth, fire burning everything inside her, all the sorrow and misery and fear. It all disappeared when his tongue found her most sensitive spot, when he used the tiny cleft at the tip to tease and shift it and make her scream.
Her second climax roared through her, leaving her shaking with tears in her eyes. He didn’t move away. Gave every impression of a man who intended to stay where he was for some time.
She grabbed him, twisting his hair in her fingers and urging him up. Enough. It was enough, it was too much, she couldn’t wait any longer.
His lips traveled over her stomach, up her ribcage, and were joined by his hands. She shivered when they slid over her nipples, when he took them each into the heat of his mouth with a deliberateness that threatened to make her lose the last vestiges of her sanity.
“Greyson. Greyson, please—”
His lifted his head. Their eyes met; it hit her like an explosion in her soul. She couldn’t look away, caught by him, held there as he rose and drove himself into her.
Her eyelids fluttered. She started to close them, to tilt her head back in a vain attempt to get more air. His hands stopped her, hard palms on each side of her face. She had no choice but to look at him, into his eyes, dark in the glowing gold of his skin.
One slow, careful thrust. Another. It was torture. She wriggled beneath him, trying to get him to speed up, she couldn’t handle it—
He kissed her again. With that kiss came more power, more than she’d ever felt before. She wasn’t just the flame. She was the only flame, burning, incandescent, swallowed by the heat, both of her hearts pounding frantically. It wasn’t just the tiny fires sparkling high on the walls lighting the room, wasn’t just the dull sunlight filtering in around the mostly closed curtains. She glowed. They glowed.
Maybe not for real, she couldn’t tell, but something inside her was lit up like fireworks, and he shone so bright she couldn’t look at him. Shone like the only light in a world gone cold and dark, and she was the moth desperately circling it, and somehow with that energy came a frantic, fluttering impression of his thoughts, and she realized he was thinking the same thing. Experiencing it the same way.
“Meg,” he whispered, kissing her again, nibbling her earlobe. “Meg . . .”
She responded by grasping him tighter and giving it back. All of it. Everything she felt, every bit of power she possibly could. All of her love and sorrow and passion. She held nothing back, and he shuddered beneath her palms and sped his pace.
Faster and harder. The bed shook. She shook, meeting his movements with her own. His arms circled her, slid beneath her, crushing her against him. Pressure built, the energy in her, the pleasure, the need—
His mouth took hers again, one final time. Power roared through her, a forest fire, filled with everything she’d given him and more that was just him. The same emotions, magnified, run through with helplessness and regret and desire and love like she’d never felt before, and she came, crying, opening her eyes in time to see him do the same thing.
His head fell to rest on her shoulder. She reached up, intending to touch his hair, to stroke his nape, but he lifted his head again. His dark eyes searched hers, as deep and sincere as she’d ever seen them, pink and slightly wet around the rims.
“Marry me.”
It would have been so easy to say yes. Easy because it was what she wanted. She wanted to, God how she did.
He must have seen her hesitation, her desire. “Megan, marry me. Please.”
What was her problem? Was her job really more important than spending the rest of her life with the man she loved?
But why couldn’t she have both, damn it? Why did she have to make this choice?
Not to mention giving up her humanity. That one she could have compromised on; she didn’t necessarily want to do the ritual, but she did want children, and if that was the way to get them, she’d do it. She didn’t even mind the idea of having them right away. The next day was her thirty-second birthday, and that seemed as good an age as any.
But why did she have to give up everything she’d worked for to be with him, in addition to her humanity? If she did that, she’d be . . . She didn’t know what she would be. She wouldn’t be equal anymore. She was proud of herself, of her achievements. Why did she have to give that up? If she did, what would be the point of having them to begin with, of all the work she’d done?
From the beginning she’d been aware of the disparity between them, the one thing she couldn’t get over or past. She’d stopped worrying that he didn’t really care about her, that she was just some infatuated girl, after the first few months. Once they’d both stopped seeing other people—or, rather, once he’d told her he wasn’t seeing anyone else, that he didn’t want to—she’d let that worry, that insecurity, go. At least as much as she could.
But she’d never wanted to have to depend on him in that way. Never wanted to find herself in such a position of weakness.
There were plenty of things she’d let him control. But her job shouldn’t have been one of them. It shouldn’t be a decision he made for her. If she let him do that, what was next? Would she have to ask for permission to go see Tera or Brian, to run out for an order of fries or something?
That was a bit ridiculous, she knew. But the principle was the same. She didn’t want to be his dependent, and she didn’t want him to think her life was his to control.
“I want to keep my job,” she said.
He sagged above her, then pulled away in one quick movement that left her cold and alone in the center of the bed. “I’m not enough, is what you’re saying.”
“No! No, I don�
�t mean it that way. Of course you’re—Greyson, I just want, I need to feel like I get a say in this too. Like I bring something to this, more than just being some kind of brood mare or something. I need to be your partner, not your employee, don’t you—”
“And you think that’s what you would be? This isn’t about— It’s too fucking dangerous. How many times do I have to say it?” He slipped off the bed, yanked his pants back on, and tossed her clothes to her. She was grateful too. The only thing worse than arguing was arguing naked. “I’m not taking any chances with your life.”
“But look at me now! I’m in danger because of my demons. Because of my position. It’s nothing to do with you, right? So couldn’t we—”
“Meg.” His shirt snapped as he pulled it back on, not bothering to button it. “Either you want to marry me or you don’t. If all these other things are so important to you that you’d rather have them than me, well, I guess that’s my answer, isn’t it?”
“I just want to be involved in the decision.”
“And it appears you are.” He covered his eyes with his right palm, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger as if he was trying to crush his own skull. “It’s not a complex question. It’s nothing to do with equality, damn it. This is about your safety. It’s about the safety of our children, when they come, and about how they’ll be raised. I’m not going to keep asking over and over. Will you marry me or not?”
“I just want to have something for myself! Something I achieved on my own, something I can keep. Is that so hard for you to understand? You said last night we could work this out. Can’t we?”
“Yes or no, Megan?”
She fastened her bra, pulled her dress back over her head, and stood up. “If we can’t discuss this, if you can’t stop pressuring me and trying to force me to do everything your way, everything you want, and you can’t even listen to my side, then . . .” She couldn’t say no. Couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I think I should go.”
Malleus had left his chair by the side of the bed. Greyson sagged into it, rested his head on his hands. “Fine. Go.”
“I just think . . . we can talk about this later. After we’ve calmed down.” It sounded so lame she cringed.
“Sure. Later. I’ll just sit here and wait, shall I? While you decide if you want to be with me. If I’m more important to you than helping a bunch of strangers with their problems.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Again. Life isn’t fucking fair, Meg.”
He still hadn’t looked up. She stood there, fighting the urge to go put her hand on his shoulder, to sink to her knees and put her arms around him. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, hesitating.
Greyson raised his head just enough to expose hollow red eyes. “I thought you were leaving.”
“We’ll talk later,” she repeated, and fled before she did something really stupid.
Chapter 27
Something attacked her the second she opened the door to her own room, a large beast with grasping arms that vibrated in her mind like a tuning fork.
Tera. Squeezing her.
Megan gasped and tried to disentangle herself. “Tera, what the hell—”
“Where the hell have you been? The meeting ended almost four hours ago. Nick and I were getting frantic. He’s out searching the hotel for you right now. For the third time.”
“Oh. Um, I was with Greyson. Talking. About the angel and stuff.”
“And you didn’t think to call and let us know? Nick’s supposed to be guarding you. You were supposed to call him when the meeting ended so he could come down and get you. How do you think he felt when you didn’t? What do you think—”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t think. The meeting wasn’t really very informative, and I needed to know some things, and I . . . no, I wasn’t thinking.”
Tera’s expression changed; her expertly made-up blue eyes widened, her perfectly glossed lips lost some of their tension. “Did you guys work everything out?”
“No.”
“Did he propose again?”
“Three or four times, I think. But he won’t give in, and now he won’t even discuss it with me. He just keeps saying if I really wanted to marry him, it wouldn’t matter, and he won’t even try to understand that it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that . . . oh, never mind. You understand. Why am I explaining it to you?”
They sat down on the edge of the bed. Tera reached into her designer bag and pulled out a couple of tiny bottles. “Here.”
“What? Oh. Thanks.” She suppressed a smile. Trust Tera to steal airline bourbon.
She knocked the bottle back in one throat-burning swallow, sighed as it blazed down into her stomach and loosened some of her tension.
Tera sipped from her own bottle. “Maybe he’s right.”
“What? How can you even think—”
“I just mean, maybe if you’re digging your heels in this hard, it’s because you really don’t want to marry him.”
“I do want to marry him. I love him. But I just don’t see why he won’t compromise with me on this. Why he won’t even discuss it.”
“Ha. So you do want to. I hate to sound like I know what I’m talking about here—I mean, you’re the one who does this for a living, I just listen to your show sometimes—but don’t you think maybe you’re looking for excuses because you’re scared of not being in control? Or because all those decisions you’ve been putting off are suddenly here, and you’re freaking out, so you’re trying to look for a reason not to do what—oh, shit, I don’t know. What would you tell one of your patients?”
Megan stared at her for a moment, open-mouthed . . . and not a little ashamed. She’d never given Tera enough credit. “I guess you’re right. Sort of. I mean, what would I be if I give up my job? Just some woman with a rich husband, who spends her days shopping and knitting or something. What if he . . . what if he got bored with me? Demons have mistresses, you know. They have their wives who sit home and their girlfriends who go out and do fun things, and . . . if we became that, and I couldn’t even work anymore . . .”
“Megan, I’ve known him for a while, although not as well as I did before you came along. But he didn’t even cheat on Lexie, and they weren’t really doing more than having sex all over the place. And I don’t want to get all mushy or anything, but the guy is crazy about you. Do you honestly think that if you got married, there’d be something you needed that he wouldn’t get for you? Don’t you think what he’s waiting for is just for you to be willing to give all that stuff up, and once he knows you would, he’ll make sure you don’t have to? This is how he operates. Always has.”
Her eyes were wet. She was going to have to take what little savings she had and invest it in Kleenex. “I thought you hated him.”
“I’ve never hated him. It’s just so much more fun to act like I do and watch him squirm.”
Megan stared at her.
Tera shrugged. “You have your fun, I have mine.”
“But that’s— Okay, whatever. Yes, you’re right. The part about him thinking that way, not the part about you having your fun, you weirdo. It’s still him giving me permission to have a fucking job.”
“Or it’s him trying to work with you so you can both be happy.”
“Jesus, will you shut up? Since when are you all rational and wanting me to do this? I’d have to become a demon, you know.”
“I know.” Tera grinned. “But you’re obviously never going to shut up about this particular topic until you just marry the guy, so you should go ahead and do it so we can move on already.”
Too bad the little bottle in her hand was empty. Not that more was a good idea. She did have a life-or-death struggle on her schedule for the evening, so getting drunk probably wasn’t the best idea. Damned life-or-death struggles, always getting in the way of a good drinking binge.
“You really think I should say yes,” she said.
“I really think you should think
about what makes you happiest and what you want out of life in ten years or twenty years or forty years and decide which option will—”
They both looked up when the door opened. Nick stepped through it, his face dark, until he saw her.
Then it got even darker.
“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve practically been dragging the fucking lake looking for you, and you’re—and you!” He glared at Tera, reddish sparks shifting in his eyes. “You were supposed to call me if you heard anything. How long has she been back here? What the fuck were you doing, that you couldn’t even let me know she was alive?”
“We were having mad, passionate sex,” Tera replied. “Aren’t you sorry you missed it?”
“I’m sorry, Nick. I’ve only been back for a couple of minutes, and I had to talk to her,” Megan jumped in, hoping somehow to divert the violence telegraphed on Nick’s face. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I was with—I was talking to Greyson.”
“Oh.” He subsided, but she hadn’t missed the pained expression on his face.
She took a deep breath. “Tera, can you give Nick and me a minute?”
Tera looked for a second as if she was about to make a joke, and Megan’s hand curled around the edge of the pillow at her side. If Tera said one word, she would smack her in the face with it.
She didn’t. She just nodded and stood. “I’ll be in my room. Give me a call, okay? To let me know what happened at your meeting and everything.”
Megan nodded. The door closed behind Tera, and she still had no idea what to say. Okay. She’d better say something. Anything. “Nick, I’m really sorry.”
He shook his head. “No, I—I mean, thanks, but it was my fault too. I should have stopped you, but . . .”
“You would have really hurt my feelings,” she finished for him. “Thanks. I mean it, really.”
“That wasn’t entirely it. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but it wasn’t . . . Shit, Megan, I am a man. I’m part incubus. It wasn’t pity or charity, is what I mean. But I still . . .”
