by Jax Garren
EJ glared at the mask like he hated it too. “I’m real sorry, babe.” He put a hand around her neck, curling his fingers lovingly into her hair. “But it’s going to be okay. I got money now. We’re free of that horrible place. I can really take care of us.”
He looked like he was about to cry. For some odd reason, he shot Coyote a panicked look before turning back to her. “I wrote you a song. You’ll hear it, and you’ll know how I feel—I know you love music. I been learning to play piano too, for you, though I ain’t much good yet. Teacher’s pretty bad. But I’ll get you another guitar. We can play music together, okay? Just like you love to do. And you’re gonna love my song—I worked real hard on it. Just gimme a chance.” He pressed his forehead against hers with all the desperate need of a drowning man, and she tried not to squirm in discomfort.
If her life could be called bad, his could be termed absolute shit. She believed him without a doubt in her heart when he said he loved her and wanted her to be happy. Hell, she wanted him to be happy too, happy and healed inside: no more screaming nightmares, no more memory gaps, no more sudden outbursts that seemed out of his control.
But the careful dance she had to perform around him—the pressure of feeling like she was the last door between him and the abyss—frightened her sometimes and exhausted her all the time. She didn’t want to live like that anymore.
Coyote’s heel tapped a rapid staccato against the floor, like he could barely contain his need to start yelling again.
She pressed her foot against his, praying he’d just stay quiet until they were alone.
EJ took a hard, shallow breath and pulled her face against his into a kiss. With automaticity she’d learned through the years, she kissed him back. He groaned and said, “I missed you.”
She couldn’t truthfully say the same back. Luckily, he didn’t wait for an answer, just pulled the mask over her head, and then his footsteps jogged from the room.
As soon as the door closed, Coyote ground out, “Are we alone?”
Chapter 30
“PRETTY SURE,” GISELLE answered—not that she could see, but there’d been no one but EJ when he’d pulled the mask over her head.
“Good enough for me. What the fuck? Why do you let him say that bullshit?”
The sound of him struggling, with the occasional grunt of pain, made her jaw clench. She tried to grasp the knots of the rope holding her to the chair, but EJ had done an unsurprisingly good job of keeping them out of her reach. “What else am I going to do? Piss him off until he throws you overboard? We don’t exactly have the upper hand here.”
“Nobody should talk to you—”
“Yeah. I know. And it’s wonderful that you grew up in a happy world where you don’t need to take that shit to survive. But I’m alive because I know when to shut my face.” Unable to do much with her own ropes, she dropped low in her seat, seeing how far she could get her hands backward toward Coyote. Why was he suddenly quiet? “Turn around. Lemme see if I can reach your knots. I know you’re cuffed, but maybe I can at least release you from the chair.”
Slowly, the other chair turned, squeaking and grinding as it went. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely repentant.
“For what?” She clutched at the air behind her, unsure if she was anywhere near his hands. This was stupid.
“For assuming you were submissive out of weakness.”
Pressing her back as tight to the chair’s back as she could, she swiped one more time for Coyote’s rope as his words sank in. Then she chewed on her lip in nervous frustration, realizing the full futility of stretching out blindly for a small target she wasn’t even sure she could reach. “Of course it’s weak. I do it because I’m not strong enough to do anything else.”
“I got shot at on my own ranch one time.”
“What?” Maybe there was another angle she could go for. She tried swiping across instead of down, hoping her hands would magically land on him.
“I was camping on the back forty with some of my friends who were ranch hands—all of us were brown—and some drunk, trespassing idiots decided we were ‘illegals’ and started shooting.”
She paused in her swiping. “That’s crazy.”
“I know. I kept yelling at them who I was, but thankfully my friends convinced me not to march over there like the wrath of the gods because while that might have worked, if it didn’t I’d get my head blown off.”
“What’d y’all do?”
“Called my family, but it was going to take them near an hour to get to us. Started to call the police, at which point one of the guys admitted he was here illegally. He’d been here since he was two—so, sixteen years—spoke perfect English, and didn’t know anything but America, but that doesn’t matter, of course.” He sighed roughly, old anger surfacing.
Another swipe and she touched his fingers. He latched on, and they hooked index fingers. The stretch that took proved she’d be unable to do much else from their tied-up positions, so she just held on and let him speak.
“Point is, we eventually surrendered to those idiots—on my family’s ranch—and they took us to an ICE box.”
“ICE box?” She squeezed his finger.
“ICE detention; this one was in a motel the agency contracts with. Once I was allowed to do anything, I proved who I was, then filed false imprisonment charges—which they got out of—and trespassing, which stuck. Those idiots got fined a couple grand and spent a week in county. My friend, who was supposed to start on his geoscience degree at Trinity University in the fall, got deported back to Honduras, along with his parents.”
“Fuck...”
“But hey, nobody got shot, so...” He grunted, the sound full of guilt. “I think maybe you could reach my godstone. I can get closer to you in that direction.”
She blinked, the subject switching so quickly she could barely follow. “Huh? Oh! Where is it? Your pocket?”
His finger squeezed her harder. “Under the waistband of my jeans, right hipbone.”
“Oh.” Her face heated at the thought of sticking her hand down his pants.
“I’m going to turn and get my lower half as close to you as I can. The way I’m tied, I can slide forward pretty far. Is that okay?”
“Yeah.” She was not randomly sticking her hand down his pants. This was business. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
His fingers unlocked from hers, and after a moment she patted his knee. Slowly, he slid forward, and she lifted her hand so she wasn’t dragging it up his thigh. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, sometimes you cave a little because you have to. I just hate what he’s doing to you—what he did to you. You deserve better.”
“He treats me a helluva lot better than he was ever treated. It doesn’t make it okay, but he’s been hurt too.” She reached backward again, and her hand did not land on Coyote’s hipbone. She froze in embarrassment.
“That’s, uh, my dick.”
She yanked her hand back. “Sorry!”
“You’ll get no complaints from—fuck, I’m sorry. That’s inappropriate.”
With a relieved chuckle she reached for him again, aiming farther back and to the right. “You know, making me laugh makes me feel better, not worse.” This time her hand landed on the sweatshirt they’d stuck him in, and she bunched it up. “At least, when you make dirty jokes I laugh and feel better. Not everybody.”
He was quiet for a moment as she found the edge of his sweatshirt, then he said softly, “I don’t always like it when people talk to me like that, either. But I like it when you do.”
Underneath the sweatshirt was a T-shirt. She swallowed heavily as she traced that down, looking for the top of his pants.
“I know it’s worse for women than for men,” he continued. “I wasn’t trying to compare our experiences or anything.”
There, the waistband over his right hip. But reaching backward down his pants wasn’t going to be easy. “I hate to ask this, but can you lift your hips any? I’m having trouble getting my han
d...”
He lifted his hips up out of the seat, and her hand slid back up his abdominals, which were pretty damn impressive for not being god-powered. “Damn, you do work out.” Her face heated. “That was out loud.”
He chuckled low. “Like I said, I like it when you talk to me like that.”
Face flaming, she was glad they couldn’t look at each other. It was way too interesting to slide her hand down the taut flesh of his pelvis and against the hard ridge of his hipbone. His skin was warm and soft against the backs of her knuckles. “Good thing no one’s here to see...” Her hand brushed an even harder ridge of obsidian. “Found it. Gimme a moment.” She tried to hook her finger around the shard but couldn’t get the angle right, instead brushing the back of her hand farther down his pants and closer to more personal territory. “Sorry. One sec...”
“Please tell me your godstone is in your bra and I can dig it out.”
“Fuck you. And do you normally forgo underwear?”
His voice turned a shade embarrassed. “I’m behind on laundry. It’s been a busy week.”
“Don’t you have people for that?” Almost had it... and, crap, her left hand, attached to her right but outside his pants, was brushing against his growing hard-on. She curled her fingers into a fist, trying to keep them away from his bits. Not that it seemed bitty. More like... Shit, Giselle, quit thinking about his dick and grab the godstone.
“I know it’s hard to fathom, but I do my own laundry, and I cook my own food. I can one hundred percent feed and dress myself.” His voice was tight and a little high, like he was hanging on to casual conversation by force of will. “I’m glad we’re friends because otherwise this might be awkward.”
“Got it!”
The door opened. Giselle’s hand froze down Coyote’s pants as she turned to the sounds. And saw nothing because she still had the stupid mask on.
“What the fuck is going on here?” EJ practically screamed.
“End’s sharp. Puncture me,” Coyote ordered.
Without thinking about it, she jammed the edge of the godstone into his pelvis. He gave a painful grunt as blood seeped around her fingers. “I think he’s got mine,” she informed Coyote. Behind her, magic sizzled through the air as Coyote came rushing back in and his godstone disappeared. A gun cocked.
Coyote vanished from her reach.
“You helped him? By sticking your hand down his pants?” EJ grabbed her shoulders and shook her so hard her teeth knocked together.
Anger ripped through her, and she lost her ability to be nice. “You kidnapped us!”
“Kidnapped...?” He yanked her mask off, scratching her face in the process. He looked dangerously livid, but at the moment she didn’t care how dangerous he was. “I didn’t kidnap you! You came over to my house!”
“And now I’m on a boat that I never chose to get on!”
“What was I supposed to do? Leave you unconscious on the floor?”
“Better than bringing me in to your drug deal.”
EJ hopped up and shot her a cold, dead look. “This isn’t a drug deal. And unlike your new boy toy, I won’t desert you at the first opportunity.”
She blinked, realizing he’d just assumed Coyote had left.
And she’d just assumed Coyote was in the room somewhere, bug sized, working some angle to get them out of here.
Which was... absolutely unlike her. Fear rose up in her chest so strong she nearly choked on it.
“Yeah. He’s gone, just left you here. But I’ve never done that, and I never will.” He kneeled back down, getting into her face. “But it’s gonna take me a long damn time to get that image of you with your hands down another man’s pants out of my head.”
She tried to stop her jaw from quivering. “It’s where his godstone was.”
“That what he told you? How stupid are you?”
Rage rolled in his eyes, sparking fear in her chest. Her hands were tied behind her back. She didn’t have her godstone. And Coyote might actually be gone.
No. He was here somewhere. But even godpowered, he couldn’t take EJ in a fight. She was literally fucked. “Did you not see him become Coyote when I stabbed him with the stone?”
“They don’t work like that. You have to cut yourself.”
“His is obsidian. It’s sharp.”
“Or you were giving him a hand job fifteen feet away from me—”
“Do you not know the difference between your hip and your dick?”
His hand came back, and she turned her head, slamming her eyes shut as she waited for the blow.
Chapter 31
RAFAEL’S DRAGONFLY wings buzzed with greater intensity as he stared down at the cluster of terrified humanity on the deck, then up at a giant catamaran making a slow approach, as if to meet up. A horrifying realization crossed his mind.
This wasn’t a drug ship.
And now they had a bigger problem than escaping one asshole because there were another—he counted—ten people they needed to get off the ship.
Ten people and a cat? A slinky, gray-and-orange animal with large ears was clutched in the hands of one of the youngest kidnapping victims. It looked up with intelligent eyes, caught his gaze, and blinked once.
Sekhmet. Somehow she’d gotten on the boat—clever woman, thank gods. He needed to get her and her claws into the room with Freyja. The child grasping her—fuck, she looked about eleven—startled as he dropped beside her. The cat gave her a head bump, as if reassuring her, and then nodded at him.
Feeling more awkward than he ever had with Freyja, Rafael landed on her shoulder and let his magic flow between them. The child gasped as Sekhmet transformed into another dragonfly. But there was no time to waste—he immediately led her to Freyja.
EJ’s back was to the window, blocking Freyja from Rafael’s sight. What he could see, though, was the man’s hand raised, about to strike. Sekhmet buzzed right for him, and Rafael let his magic fall away from her. Her goddess form appeared, and she grabbed EJ’s hand with a lioness-worthy growl.
Meanwhile, Rafael used the dragonfly’s crazy-good vision to scan EJ. The back right pocket of his jeans had a godstone-shaped lump. He buzzed to it.
As EJ turned to deal with Sekhmet, Rafael transformed and reach into that pocket.
“What the—” the asshole yelled.
“Turn me!” Freyja yelled. She’d spun the chair to give him her arms and pulled her knees up in front of her face. From his vantage, he saw pale, unpolished fingers and a messy French braid of light brown or dark blonde hair—it was hard to tell in the dim lighting of the cockpit.
His Freyja. Gods, he wanted to see her face.
EJ spun back to him, fists swinging. Rafael dropped to the ground and lunged for his partner, fumbling for the knife in his pouch as he went. “Keep him off me?” he yelled at Sekhmet, feeling lame asking the woman to fight for him, but hey, she was better at it than he was.
Sure enough, EJ went reeling as Sekhmet yanked him backward. “I don’t want to hit a—” he started whining.
“You were just about to hit a woman, so come at me, bro,” Sekhmet purred.
Knife finally out, Rafael cut Freyja’s bonds and put the godstone in her right hand. “Forearm,” he warned before slicing a shallow line across the top of her left arm.
She hissed in a quick breath at the pain, then brought both arms around in front of her. Her power shimmered as she came to life and spun to face him with a grim smile. “Thanks.”
He winked. “Just promise next time I get to dig through your bra.”
“Keep your fucking hands off her, you pervert!” EJ yelled back at them, dodging Sekhmet’s claws. The bruiser could no doubt take her in a punching contest, but he seemed unsure what to do with her razor-tipped fingers.
“EJ!” Freyja called out in a firm voice.
The man shot Sekhmet a look as he turned furious eyes on Freyja. “Why are you fighting me? I just want to fix us! I would’ve let him go.”
She stalked toward h
im. “You can’t decide how we work. You can’t tie me up. I shouldn’t have to manage you. Hell, I shouldn’t be on a drug-running boat in the middle of the ocean!”
“We’re not running drugs!” he yelled.
“They’re not running drugs,” Sekhmet echoed behind him, her voice cold as hell’s innermost circle.
Freyja faltered. “What? What are they—”
EJ pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at Freyja, expression flat. Everyone froze. “Just sit back down and let me finish this. We can all get back to shore in one piece.”
Freyja slid a foot toward him. “EJ, you’re not going to shoot me.”
Rafael stared at the gun, then Freyja, his mouth going dry in fear. He wanted to yank her behind him but didn’t want to startle her psycho ex into getting trigger happy. “Freyja, he really might. This is how women get shot by crazy ex-boyfriends—they believe in them a little too much.”
“Shut the fuck up!” EJ roared, then turned the gun on him. “You’re right, I won’t shoot you. But I will shoot him.”
Trying to stay calm, Rafael narrowed his gaze at the barrel as fear turned him cold. “You know you won’t get away with that.”
“And your identity will be exposed. Your... friends will go down for your ownership of a godstone.”
Breathe... He ignored the real fear of dying and just talked. “My friends know nothing and will be exonerated. Plus, dying young is a fantastic sales pitch, so what I’ve left behind will let them print money. Meanwhile, I will haunt your ass for the rest of your miserable life.”
EJ cocked the gun.
“And she can bring me back to life, so... there’s that.” He tipped his head at Freyja.
The gun faltered. “She can... what?”
“This isn’t a drug run,” Sekhmet spit out, and EJ swung the gun around toward her. “It’s a slave ship.”
Without Coyote’s extraordinary vision, the next moment would’ve been a blur. But thanks to Huehue, he admired with detailed clarity the crisp way Freyja whipped a bow and arrow from her holster like the damn goddess she was, drew, and fired in one smooth motion. Before EJ could get his gun back up, he slammed into the wall, his shoulder pinned to a thin line of plastic between windows.
