by Jane Kindred
His face clouded, but he shook his head. “What is that?”
“A spectral hunting party that roams the night in the weeks between All Souls and Yule. It’s mainly found in Norse and Germanic folklore. At least, I thought it was just folklore. Until I saw it.”
Leo shrugged. “What has that to do with me?”
“I think that’s where your hugr goes at night.”
His quizzical look turned into a scowl. “It’s not my hugr. It’s his.”
“Right. Well, that’s what he’s doing when he leaves the ‘skin’ to you. He’s out riding, hunting people—murderers and oath-breakers, I guess.”
“Bully for him. Sounds right up his self-righteous alley.”
“I believe he rides with Kára. I saw her last night, flying off with someone she’d hunted down.”
Leo shifted restlessly, wrists chafing against the bonds. “I don’t want to hear any more about Kára.”
“But if she’s a Valkyrie and she controls him, I’m just trying to work out why—”
“Enough!” Leo punctuated the shout with a swing of his foot, sending the rolling worktable beside them spinning across the room and onto its side with a bang that made her flinch. “I said I didn’t want to hear any more about her.” He seemed slightly subdued by Rhea’s reaction, but his eyes were flashing a warning.
“All right. Sorry.” Rhea picked up the table and the scattered supplies from the shelf it had collided with and closed the cover on the tablet. “Maybe I should go.”
“Please don’t.” Was it her imagination or had his voice shaken a bit? “You have no idea what it’s like sitting here for hours waiting to die.”
“You don’t actually die, Leo.”
“It feels like dying. He has the days, and his miserable soul has the freedom to fly where it will at night, hunting the profane, while I sit imprisoned. This is my entire life, dusk to dawn. And then I’m gone, snuffed out. Reborn again the next night but knowing each night that I have one less before I die again for an entire year.”
She was tempted to tease him for being melodramatic. It wasn’t as if he was actually gone when the other Leo was awake. Like a split personality, he was integrated once more with the whole. At least, that’s what she assumed. But it had to suck sitting here by himself. If she were tied to a chair even for a single night, she’d probably go a little bit bonkers.
“All right.” Rhea pulled up the wheeled stool once more and sat beside him. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
The sudden urgency in his eyes was intense. “Stay the night.”
Rhea laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “And we’re back to that.”
“That wasn’t a proposition. Although I’m up for it, of course. Always.” The smirk was back. “Just stay. Keep me company.”
“I have to sleep sometime, you know. I don’t disappear with the sun.”
“Oh.” He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side dramatically, as if she’d struck him a sudden blow. “She has a heart of stone.” Leo peeked at her out of one eye and laughed at her dry expression. “If you get tired, you can share the chair with me. It’s quite comfortable.”
She shook her head at him despairingly. “So you don’t sleep at all?”
Leo shrugged. “It seems wasteful when I have so little time. But I confess to having fallen asleep out of sheer boredom on occasion.”
“Then I’ll do my best to keep you entertained.”
“I can think of a few ways.”
Rhea groaned. “You never stop.”
Leo winked. “You don’t want me to. But let’s set that aside for the moment. Tell me about this gift of yours. This reading tattoos.”
“I’m not reading you again.”
“Too much for you last time, was I?”
Rhea looked away, trying not to think about the truth of that statement.
“No worries. I’m not asking for a reading. Even if you do hand them out to him like candy.”
“You do realize you’re the same person, right?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Are we? At any rate, I’m curious about how it works. Have you always had the ability?”
“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”
“Must everything have an ulterior motive? I’m simply trying to pass the time. You said you would entertain me.”
“God, I did, didn’t I?” Rhea leaned back on the stool with her arms folded, debating how much she ought to tell him. It wasn’t as if he’d remember any of this once he’d gone dormant or whatever it was he did. The idea that, in a few days, this Leo would be gone gave her more than a twinge of regret. “All right. Why not? All of my sisters have gifts—”
“How many do you have, anyway?”
“Gifts?”
“Sisters.”
“Oh.” Rhea swallowed the familiar irritation. “Well, that depends.”
Leo looked amused. “It doesn’t usually.”
“There’s nothing usual about us. There were four of us. But, recently, Theia discovered we have three half sisters.”
“Seven sisters. Like the Pleiades.”
“In this case, the Titanides. Each of us is named after one of the original female Titans.” It was sufficient for the story. “And each of us has a gift corresponding with our namesake. Although mine’s a bit off. Rhea is associated with wild music and ecstatic rites, and a chariot pulled by a pair of lionesses—”
“Is she really? You know, the goddess Freyja rides in a chariot pulled by two cats. She’s the Norse goddess of love and war. Sex and death, intimately intertwined.”
“Okay. Charming and weird.”
“You don’t think sex and death are intertwined?”
“Well...I didn’t until just now.”
Leo laughed, his eyes crinkling with pleasure. “Sex is generative power. Death is a kind of birth, a passage from one life to the next. And of course there is the little death.”
Rhea cleared her throat. “Moving right along. For years, I tried to figure out what my ‘power’ was. Ione is a powerful witch. Phoebe can talk to dead people. And Theia—” Her chest tightened at the thought of Theia. “She’s always had visions and prophetic dreams. But I never had anything. Until I started doing tattoos. Then the visions just came to me.”
Leo studied her with a secretive smile. “And do they always come true, your visions?”
“Ah-ha-ha.” She waggled her finger at him. “There you go again.”
His eyes twinkled. “I have so little to occupy my thoughts. What with not having a mind. I’m nothing but will.”
“You seem to have more of a mind than Leo the—” Rhea stopped before she finished the epithet. She hadn’t meant to call him that.
“You see? He is dull, isn’t he? A complete bore.” He made a little motion that encompassed his shoulders and hips, almost a shimmy. “I can’t help that I have all the best attributes.” The shimmy set off that tingling in her extremities again.
“Except modesty.”
“If I had any, it would be false modesty.” He winked one sparkling blue eye. “So where do these gifts of yours come from? Did your parents have them?”
Rhea chewed her lip. “I haven’t told Leo this. The other Leo.”
He leaned forward in the chair. “Ooh, a secret. Just between you and me.”
“Supposedly, we have demon blood. From the first demoness, Lilith.”
“That, my dearest dove, is...” He shook his head slowly, letting his gaze roam over her. “Fucking hot.”
She wasn’t sure whether it was the endearment or the hungry, appreciative gaze or the unexpected “fucking hot” that was melting her pussy like the well of wax around a candle’s flame. Probably all three. His biceps were flexed, hard and well defined beneath his sleeves a
s his fists clenched and unclenched in unconscious chafing against his bonds. He was at her mercy, as he’d said. She was sitting here with one of the hottest guys she’d ever seen—who wanted her with a refreshingly naked lust—resisting his tacky, relentless come-ons. And suddenly, it seemed absurd that she was sitting a foot away from him.
Leo’s eyes widened as she pushed herself off the stool and swung her leg over the chair to straddle his hips. The seat was too wide to straddle comfortably, so she balanced her knees on the vinyl cushion on either side of him.
“If I’d known vulgarity was all it took—”
“Shut up, Leo.” Rhea gripped his shoulders—good lord, the muscles—and silenced him. He tasted of cardamom and caraway and a bit of mint from the Indian food they’d eaten earlier. She supposed she tasted the same. His tongue teased as he alternately nipped and licked at her lips, humming softly into her mouth when she grew impatient with his teasing and pressed in closer. The vibration of sound made her damp between her thighs. Relaxing her hips against his, she felt his answering appreciation pressed firmly against her.
It wasn’t quite her vision—they weren’t naked, for one—but there was definitely something to be said for having a man at her mercy. In past experiences—admittedly not many and pretty much exclusively with horny undergrad dudes with one single-minded collegiate goal—this part, the kissing and sensuous grinding, was usually swiftly eclipsed by artless groping and undressing. The simple art of “making out” had been sorely lacking in those past experiences. She lost track of time, just kissing and moving with Leo in his lap in a gently rolling and perfectly synchronous wave, enveloped in his captivating scent.
Leo groaned when she pulled away at last, his hands grasping uselessly at the air. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She took off his glasses—daytime Leo had kept them on to play Scrabble—and set them aside, settling back in his lap to look at him. His lips had reddened like cherries, wet and swollen. She could relate.
His tongue slid languidly across his bottom lip, making it slicker. “That was unexpected. And quite pleasurable. I wish I had my hands free.” He stretched his pinky out to stroke one of her thighs, barely reaching. “Just one, perhaps?”
Rhea let go of his shoulders finally, letting her hands glide down his chest, feeling the hardness of his pecs, the sharp little peaks of his nipples beneath the fabric, his heartbeat.
She traced the outline of his pendant through the fabric. “You could at least pretend not to be using me just to get free.”
The vibration of his laughter rumbled beneath her hands. “I’ve not pretended to be a saint. But I do have to object to the use of the word just. There is no just about you. You’re very complex. As is my desire for you. Do I want to be free of these damn shackles? Of course. But if I had to choose between freedom and having you in my lap, it would be a very difficult decision.”
Rhea withdrew her hands and folded her arms. “And what would you choose?”
Leo leaned back, observing her, deciding, no doubt, whether she was worth his freedom. “How much freedom would I be bargaining? All of it? Or a single night?”
“Would your answer be different?”
“Of course. It would be no hardship at all to remain bound for another night if it meant spending that night with you.”
“Now you’re just trying to flatter me.” Rhea grinned. “But I’ll take it.”
“No flattery at all. You make me forget I’m here against my will—in the most literal sense of the term.”
Rhea uncrossed her arms and rested a hand on one of his. Leo threaded their fingers together. They sat that way, oddly comfortable in each other’s silence and company, until the text notification on her phone broke the spell. He tightened his grip on her hand to keep her from letting go as she slid off his lap and dropped her feet to the floor.
She tugged against him. “I need to grab my phone.”
“Do you? I’m not sure you’re well enough acquainted with need to make such an assertion.”
“Leo.” She pried at his fingers with her other hand, and he released her reluctantly, his mouth drooping into a pout. “I’m only going two feet across the room.”
She snagged the phone from the counter and opened the message. Phoebe had sent a picture of Puddleglum, her fat Siamese tabby, wearing a tiny sombrero, with the caption “We’re going to party, karamu, fiesta...all night long.” Rhea stifled a snort-laugh and switched off the screen.
When she looked up, Leo’s expression resembled Puddleglum’s resigned glower. “Are you leaving?”
Rhea tucked the phone into her back pocket and slid onto his lap once more. “I said I’d stay, didn’t I?” She found the pedal beneath the chair and lowered the seat back, to Leo’s pleased smirk.
“You might have let me know the chair reclined.”
“Sorry, I hadn’t even thought of it.” Rhea rested her crossed arms on his chest.
“So this demon blood of yours—that’s what gives you the power of...?”
“Pictomancy. But we’re done talking about me.”
“Are we?”
Rhea silenced him once more. While they kissed, her hands roamed over his obliques, stroking the taut muscles. With a shiver and a sudden jerk, Leo began to laugh. His skin twitched beneath her touch.
“You’re ticklish.” Rhea grinned. That was unexpected. And adorable. “You really are at my mercy, then.”
“Cruel mistress. You wouldn’t dare.”
She tugged his shirt from his pants and moved her hands over the hardness of his abs, flirting with the edges of his waist to see where he’d twitch. Goddamn. It wasn’t as if he’d been hiding much beneath the tight shirt, but he was even more ripped than she’d imagined. His abs formed a sharp V dipping down into the waistline of his pants. He wasn’t ticklish there.
“Careful.” The tone of his voice made her look up from unbuckling his belt. His eyes were intense. “There’s only so much teasing I can take.”
“Am I teasing you?”
“Aren’t you?”
Was she? Rhea paused to consider. Was she really prepared to have sex with Leo right now? A man who was tied up and not in his right mind? The sincerity of his obvious desire notwithstanding, there was something more than a little unsavory about the circumstances. If the situation were reversed...
Rhea let go of the belt buckle and lowered his shirt.
Leo sighed. “Not quite the response I was hoping for.”
“It wouldn’t be right.”
Leo dropped his head back against the headrest and rolled his eyes. “This is what it comes to. The absolute petty pointlessness of having a soul.” He fixed his gaze on her. “Every part of your body and your mind desires me, wants to ride me with abandon and give yourself over to passion and lust as you did in our vision. But your silly little soul insists ‘it wouldn’t be right,’ and so you deny yourself. You don’t think he’s going to give you the opportunity, do you? He’d just as soon wear a hair shirt and castigate himself for his impure thoughts.”
Rhea sat up, glaring at him through the errant lock of hair. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.” She regretted her choice of words immediately, given where she was sitting.
But Leo ignored the double entendre. “I’m not saying he doesn’t want you, just that he’s too pathetic to act on that desire. Me. I’m that desire. Right here in front of you, telling you to take what you want.” Maybe he’d only been waiting to act on the wordplay. He punctuated the phrase with a movement beneath her that made her breath catch.
She managed not to show it. “People who take what they want regardless of anyone else’s feelings are the reason the world is so messed up. I happen to care about Leo’s feelings. Your feelings, as much as you like to think you’re not him. And I wouldn’t be able to look him in
the eyes tomorrow morning if I acted on pure desire for my own selfish reasons without any thought for how he’s going to feel about it when he’s back in his own skin.”
He studied her, his chest heaving with anger or passion—or both—and looking so hot she wanted to cry. And kick herself for not just saying “screw it” and going for it.
“He doesn’t have to find out.” The soft, hopeful tone in which he’d said it was so absurd she had to laugh. Leo gave her a reluctant smile and shrugged. “You can’t fault a munr for trying.”
It only made her laugh harder, tears springing to the corners of her eyes from the release of tension. She wiped them away, shaking her head, and let herself melt against him—moving subtly aside to avoid the frustration of continued friction. She’d almost gotten herself under control when Leo spoke again.
“Well, that was fun.” The resignation in his voice rumbled through his chest beneath her ear where she’d rested her head. “What do you want to do now?”
Rhea buried her face in his shirt and laughed until the tears were flowing down her cheeks.
Chapter 14
The click of the locks woke him with a jolt. Something was different. Leo opened his eyes to find Rhea snoring softly on his shoulder. She’d lowered the seat back and curled up next to him on the chair. Or on him, mostly—one leg draped over his lap. Leo narrowed his eyes. His shirt was untucked and his belt buckle was open. What in the name of the gods had his alter ego done?
He was afraid to wake her, afraid to find out, but his bladder had no intention of being so accommodating. Leo turned his right wrist under the leather and worked the strap out of the buckle. Reaching over Rhea to unstrap the other woke her.
She glanced up with a quizzical look, stretching sleepily as if not quite aware of where she’d awoken, and he watched the realization dawn on her face.
Rhea scrambled up, wiping a bit of spittle from the corner of her mouth. “Leo, I...” She looked around helplessly, as if an explanation might show up somewhere in the room. “You wanted me to stay, so I—”
“Would you mind holding that thought?” Leo swung his legs over the other side of the chair, avoiding her eyes as he tugged his shirt down over the open belt buckle, trying to act like he didn’t notice. “I really need to use the bathroom.”
