by K. F. Breene
“Keep that egging idea on the back burner,” I said, my natural fire and aggression coming to the surface. When life gave you lemons, find someone to chuck them at.
Even if that someone was a Demigod.
“What are you going to do?” Daisy asked.
“I’m going to tell a Demigod where to shove it.”
I grabbed a sweatshirt from my room and marched toward the door.
“Keep your clothes on this time,” Daisy yelled after me.
39
Alexis
“Any of them in the yard?” I asked Frank as I slung my purse, now misshapen as well as discolored, across my body.
“Yes, ma’am, there is. Right over there.” Frank pointed at the overgrown shrubs hugging the corner of my house.
They weren’t thick or extremely high, but if it hadn’t been for Frank, I never would’ve guessed some big guy lurked within them.
I stalked that way, Frank at my side. “Should I check in with the eyes at the rear?” he asked, clearly digging this bit of spy speak.
“No need.”
Donovan, with his perpetually tousled hair that worked so well for him, looked up with haunted eyes, his smile long gone. He wasn’t nearly as excited about his job as Frank was about leading my surveillance team. Then again, he had been kicked in the keister by a ghost.
He stood slowly, knowing the jig was up. He didn’t bother asking how I knew he was there.
“Tell your boss I’m on my way to meet him,” I said without preamble. “I assume the location in that envelope is good?”
Donovan looked down at his arms before shivering. His hairs were probably standing on end. He felt Frank’s presence. “Yes. He’s already there.”
“Is he, now? So sure I’d accept his offer?”
“Do you have any choice?” Donovan shrugged. “It benefits everyone. Why wouldn’t you take it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because he’s manipulating me? Because he’s trying to trap me into giving him what he wants?”
“If you want to beat the player, you have to learn how to play the game,” Donovan said with a smirk.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Kick him again, Frank.”
“With pleasure.” Frank rubbed his hands together.
I spun and stalked across the grass to my car.
The meet-up wasn’t far, on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. I parked as close as I could, next to his shiny Ferrari that sorely needed a key scrape down the side and a few eggs, before hiking up the hill toward the brick wall enclosing the magical zone. The paved path ended and a dirt trail took over, turning sandy as I wound around a couple of trees and along the steep cliff.
A mostly broken wood and wire fence leaned badly, warning people and dogs alike from going too near the cliff’s edge. Huge sections were missing, and others dangled down, falling as the cliff eroded away.
Not far in the distance, the non-magical fence sparkled silver in the late afternoon sun. Coiled barbed wire looped on top and little white signs hung at chest level, their words lost to the distance, but I knew they warned of a life-threatening shock should anyone touch the fence.
I checked the map Kieran had sent, then followed the curve of the cliff through another outcropping of wind-whipped trees. My shoes sank into the sand and the cold ocean breeze bit my cheeks. At the edge of the tree line the world stretched out before me, blue water reaching from one side to the other. Cold gray sky sank until it met the ocean in the distance.
A small green bench sat in the middle of a flat area overlooking the magnificent view. Ten feet beyond, the land dropped abruptly, and no fence stood in the way of that expanse of land and sky.
Kieran sat on that weathered bench, his large back bowed as though the weight on his shoulders was too heavy for him to sit up straight. And it was. His mother stood beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder in comfort, staring out at the sea with him. The memories of the lost were plaguing his mind.
The fire, and the frustration, the intense anger—it all dried up within me. My heart swelled…then sank.
He was a little boy in grief. A man traumatized by loss. A son pinned between the actions of a father and the suffering of a mother.
I remembered losing my own mother. Remembered getting that call from the hospital, and feeling the world come crashing down around me. I had been able to assist her through the transition to the other side, but Kieran felt helpless to do anything for his mother. I could see it in the droop of his large shoulders, and I’d bet there were grief lines on his face.
I was witnessing his personal Vietnam, just as he’d witnessed mine when watching me try to buy that blanket.
He was asking for a way out, in exchange for offering me a way out.
The scene before me swam in tears as his mother slowly turned toward me. Her sorrow-infused eyes pleaded with me more than any words could. “Help him,” she said, her voice like a bell, her tone aching. “Please. Help my son. He doesn’t deserve this.”
I turned to the side and blinked away tears.
This was why I hated getting involved. Because in these situations, saying no just wasn’t in me. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let someone drown in grief when I could help. I just couldn’t.
“Hey,” I said softly.
The effort it took Kieran to straighten up was obvious.
“Take your hand off him,” I told his mother. “You need to know when it’s helping, and when it’s hindering. Right now, it is hindering. He needs to be able to snap out of it so he can function.”
He spun around then, his eyes haunted and his face lined in grief, exactly how I’d predicted.
“Help him,” she said again, walking toward the cliff. With a last look behind her, she stepped off the edge and fell.
“Good…God.” I clenched my teeth. “Seeing that is hard. I mean, I know she’s already…” I cleared my throat. No need to remind the poor guy.
I gingerly sat at the very edge of the bench, trying to put as much room between us as I could. Even still, a delicious (though worrying) hum settled within me, responding to the electricity passing between us.
“Alexis.” His gaze roamed my face. He turned back to the ocean. “I knew you’d come. Angry, sad, desperate—I wasn’t sure which mood I’d get, but I knew you’d come.”
“Congratulations. You’ve manipulated me into getting what you want.”
Surprisingly, he shook his head and leaned back like his whole body ached. “I got the opposite of what I want.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “So…you didn’t want me to come?”
“I wanted you to come. I want your help. I want you spread and panting beneath me.”
Out of nowhere, heat roared through my body. I clutched the edge of the bench, fighting the impulse to run a hand up that defined arm.
“But I don’t want to coerce you,” he went on. “Not like this.” He blew out a breath. “My father trapped my mother. He met her one day, walking along the beach, and her beauty and her strength—both the strength of her magic, and her as a person—entranced him. Like you do me.” He paused for a moment, looking over at me. Fire lit his eyes and matched that of my body. “He wanted her for his own. To keep her. At first, she was more than willing. She forgot about her skin for a time, losing herself to the exotic pleasures of dry land. But to a selkie, the call of the ocean is impossible to ignore. One day, he woke up, and she was gone.”
“Which is how things usually go with a selkie, right?” I said quietly.
“Exactly.” He turned back to the ocean. “But my father is not a rational man in many things. Nor a forgiving man. I’m sure you know that.”
Everyone knew that, yes.
“As a Demigod of Poseidon, lord of the sea, my father had the rare ability to have her tracked down. To have her brought back to land. He couldn’t accept that the ocean had more power than he does. He rules the ocean, after all.”
“But…as his son, so do you, right? He’s not actually all powerful in that respect.�
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A brief smile pulled at Kieran’s lips. “Yes. As I said, my father is not rational in some things. He has a fragile ego.”
“Well…I mean…he is a man, after all.”
“Once she was back, he took her skin. Hid it. Which, at first, I think she treated like a game. She loved him, after all. She fell into a life of luxury and power, pampered and treated like royalty. But, as before, the ocean called.”
“And he wouldn’t let her go to it.”
“She was pregnant at the time, but even if she hadn’t been…” Kieran’s fist clenched. “His love is of power. Of complete dominance. When she begged to leave again, even promising she would return, his regard for her turned. She became a prisoner. A prisoner he no longer sexually desired. He banished her, kept her at arm’s reach. Kept her landlocked.”
“And you?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “One in ten children created from the union of a Demigod and a non-Demigod develop a Demigod’s power. My mother was a class five. That surely helped. My father has had twelve children, but only one Demigod materialized. I am the heir. Together, we can control more territory.”
“But…you lived with your mother, right?”
“Ah. I see what you’re getting at. I forget, you don’t think like the people around me.” His look said that was a good thing. “I was banished with her, yes, but just for safekeeping. He kept tabs on me my whole life, first to see if my powers would materialize, and then because they did and he wanted to groom me.”
“To sculpt you into a clone of himself.”
“Essentially, yes.”
His tone raised my small hairs. I swallowed a sudden dose of fear.
“He made sure I had excellent tutors,” Kieran continued, “who taught me about ruling and warfare. He invited me here after my mother died so I could expand the family business.”
“And you came to free your mother?”
His penetrating stare reached down into me, baring my soul to him as he was baring his to me. Silence descended between us and heat built, fueled by the passion and electricity burning between us.
He leaned my way slightly, and expectation washed over me. I licked my bottom lip, remembering the feel of his kiss. Of his hands on me, and the gloriousness of his body.
His gaze dipped, lingering on my tongue. His pupils dilated and he bent, cutting the distance between our lips in half. My body pounded and I couldn’t get enough air.
“Among other things,” he said softly.
40
Alexis
Shivers coated my body, and suddenly I wasn’t sure what he would do, and what I would do in reaction.
I needn’t have worried.
A wrinkle wormed between his brows, and with a surge of strength, he rose from the bench. He jammed his hands into his pockets, and my gaze snagged on the bulge between them.
“I may not have kidnapped you, but I forced you into this position,” he said, his voice pained. “I want you, that’s no secret. I want to fuck you so hard you forget your name.”
A small moan escaped my lips. When I was near him like this, feeling the electric chemistry between us, I wanted the same thing. I wanted to let go and give in to his awesome strength and power.
“And I need you,” he went on. “I need you to free my mother. Fate brought you to me. What were the odds that I’d meet someone with your rare ability in the place it would do the most good?”
I could barely feel confusion through the pounding in my body. Rare ability? Weren’t there plenty of Ghost Whisperers in magical San Francisco alone?
“I found your weakness, and I exploited it.” He glanced back at me. “Just like my father would’ve done.”
I unstuck my tongue from the top of my mouth and wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. “I came here to refuse your job offer.”
His head jerked my way before he turned slowly back toward the water. His brow furrow didn’t match his gorgeous smile.
“Did you?” he said.
“I did. Don’t get me wrong—you didn’t underestimate me at all. I would’ve caved in a heartbeat. But the kids don’t want your money. They’re convinced we can do this on our own.”
His stormy eyes assessed me, glimmering. His smile grew. “Strangely, I’m relieved to hear it.”
“But I will be taking the job.” A mental gut punch took all the breath out of me. I struggled to get it back, sheer panic trying to steal the moment.
He cocked his head, and his smile dripped away.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and beat on my chest a little. “I really don’t want to. If you can’t tell.”
He shifted, his back nearly to the ocean. “Then why are you?”
“Because of your mother. She pleaded with me to help you. And because I’ve lost a mother too. I can’t imagine how helpless I would feel in your situation. Actually…” I held up my hand, still struggling for air. “I can imagine it. It’s how I feel about Mordecai.”
He nodded slowly. “It is the same, yes. Exactly the same. Which I realized when I was sitting here, waiting for you. That’s why I called and made an appointment for Mordecai before you got here. The details will be delivered to you tomorrow. I’ve prepaid for the procedure, but everything’s in his name. I meant it as an apology, of sorts, for having forced your hand. But now…” His smile drifted back. “Let’s call it a nod of respect, for misjudging you…while still getting my way.”
An unexpected laugh shook me. I looked away, trying to get my bearings. This version of Kieran was the man his minions saw, I had no doubt. A real guy with a surprising sense of humor. If I was around this guy too much, I was liable to forget about his possessive, domineering side. And that was dangerous.
“You bought the blanket for Mordecai before you knew what I was,” I said, back to reality (except for the deep ache that would not go away). “Why? Or could you feel what I was even then?”
“Without assessing you, I never could’ve known the entirety of what you are.”
I shifted on the seat. This was the second time he’d alluded to my being more than someone who could see and work with/boss around spirits. But before I could ask about it, he’d already plunged on.
“My mother died a slow death,” he said. “The sickness of a selkie kept from her skin is like cancer. I watched her erode from the inside out.” He clenched his jaw, and rage burned brightly in his eyes. “Toward the end, we couldn’t rely on in-home care. We needed machines. Equipment. It was in those trips that I learned, firsthand, what it was to be poor and sick. What it was to see suffering people who couldn’t get help. At first, I shrugged off most of it. I ignored it. But one day, a child with a scarf on her head walked by, so weak she could barely keep upright. She was dying, but her parents couldn’t afford treatment to ease her pain. It…” He turned away. “It woke me up, to say the least. It struck me deeply. So when I saw you studying those blankets, trying to figure out a way to afford the one that would comfort him most…” He shook his head. “It was the least I could do. A tiny gesture.”
“It wasn’t a tiny gesture for him.” I shrugged and smiled. “Well, it wouldn’t have been if the situation hadn’t involved stalking and unresponsive mace.”
“We’ve already discussed my struggle to avoid being like my father.”
“Right, yes. Yes, we did. Anyway…” I clasped my hands and leaned forward, not really sure where to go from here. My perception of him was changing. Had changed.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, since now we’d be working together, or a really, really bad thing.
“Anyway,” he said, mimicking me, back to facing the ocean. “I’ll let you get your affairs in order and look over the contract. After Mordecai is seen to—if you haven’t changed your mind—then let one of my guys know. We can handle the paperwork and get started.”
Hearing the finality in his voice, I stood from the bench. “No one gave me their phone number. Besides, my phone is dead, remember? It’s sitting in
a bowl of rice, but won’t turn back on.”
“Just walk outside and let them know. They won’t be far.”
I froze in my turn. “Wait. They’re going to keep hanging around my house?” He didn’t answer, which I took for a yes. “But what about my free will? And this job being my choice?”
“Working for me is your choice. Sharing my bed is your choice. Setting up protection for you is my choice.”
“Protection? From who, random bored spirits who want to chat? The only person I need protection from is you.”
He turned and hit me with a hard stare. “You will never need protection from me. I hope I just proved that. But the magical world is not a kind place. You’ve drawn my interest. That will be noticed, despite my attempts to safeguard the knowledge. Your magic will draw more interest still, if someone pokes around. I’m being cautious. I told you, I protect what is mine.”
I put my hands out, my mouth hanging open, completely incredulous. All the soft warmth that had been building over our conversation flew out the window. “We literally just talked about this. You said you didn’t want to corner me into doing your bidding.”
“I’m not cornering you. I’m safeguarding you.”
“Yeah, until you browbeat me into submitting to you.”
Passion sparked in his eyes. A smile curled his lips. “I very much want you to submit to me, but I don’t need to browbeat you to do it. I must merely wait until you’re ready. You want me, Alexis. I can see it, even now. Even in your anger. You crave me, as I do you. One day you’ll give in. I was raised among the Irish. I know what it is to be stubborn. To dig in one’s heels and never say die. You don’t have it in you. Not in this. You’ll come around, and when you do, I’ll show you delights you’ve only dreamed of.”
Tight bands of desire squeezed my chest. My legs trembled. I didn’t dare speak because I wasn’t sure what I’d say.
“You haven’t asked what was in your file, Alexis. Are you not curious about your results?”
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish, fighting through the hunger boiling my blood.
