by Amy Sumida
Stone me? What the fuck? Was I suddenly in a Bible story?
A man blew golden dust at me, but I had sensed him coming and dove into his belly, taking him down before his dust could hit me. I rolled and came up on my feet, grinning. It was almost as good as telepathy. I may not have known exactly what they were going to do next, but it was like watching an opponent's shoulders and hips; once you know how to read body movement, you get an idea of where they're directing their sword. My awareness of Varcan and his men pushed and pulled at me like ripples in a pool. I was quickly learning how to read those ripples, translating them into clues that were far better than the shift of a shoulder or hips. To put it simply, I could sense their attacks when they were still several feet away.
I laughed and twirled on my toes, slicing a man's throat before coming to a stop and facing another. Three of them thought they'd gang up on me, and I wove thorns around them to keep them busy until I finished dealing with their friend. I had removed my magic from the ring of thorns I'd made earlier and it had crumbled to ashes, leaving a black line in the snow. Beyond it, I felt another presence, but it didn't approach, only stood in the shadows, waiting. Creepy bastard.
“Don't you want to come and play too?” I called to the hidden presence.
Varcan's stare shot in the direction I'd shouted and his eyes went wide and panicked. He growled something in a language I didn't recognize, and the men around me disappeared in showers of embers. A shadow shot forward from the woods, powerful tingles announcing its approach, but Varcan grabbed the sleeping Balidet and vanished before it reached him. Him, not me.
Then I saw who it was.
“Damn them all!” Astar cursed as he came to a stop in the snow. “That's what I get for enjoying the show.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“What the hell?” I shouted at Astar.
He winced. “Watch the cursing, Your Majesty.”
“Cursing?” I blinked at him. “Oh, right. You think I'm pure. Let's clear that up right now; I'm not. And neither are you. In fact, you're a bit of an asshole for standing there, twiddling your thumbs while I was being attacked.”
“Cursing has nothing to do with purity, and you hardly needed my help,” Astar drawled as he looked me over. “How did you fight them like that?”
“Who are you?” I countered.
“I told you who I am. How did you do that? You fought like a . . .”
“Like a what?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Finish a fucking sentence. Give me something here, Astar.”
A low growling slipped past his lips as his gaze shot over my shoulder. The inner gold in his green eyes began to burn and his nostrils flared like one predator sensing another. “I'm sorry, Seren, but I've to go. We'll continue this discussion later.”
“No, wait!” I shouted.
But Astar was gone in a swirl of embers.
Behind me came shouts and then bobbing lights. I turned to see my husbands running through the woods, expressions anxious.
“Over here!” I shouted as I dropped my sword and went to Eliane. “We're here!”
My men reached me first, pulling me into relieved hugs before I could check on the hunter. But Nightblade got there seconds later and knelt beside Eliane.
“Is she all right?” I asked Nightblade.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Nightblade said as he scooped up the hunter. “She's breathing. It appears that she was put to sleep.”
“That's what Varcan said,” I admitted.
Raza pulled his jacket off and helped me into it. Even in his glamour, he still smelled like himself—smoky and sweet, like roasting marshmallows—and I breathed in his scent deeply. It gave me nearly as much comfort as the warmth he'd left in the jacket.
“Yes, we heard it all,” Wayne said as he stepped up. “I told you not to engage him.”
“I didn't. He fried some poor guy in the bathroom, then grabbed me while I was distracted,” I grumbled.
“We need to get her out of here,” Daxon said in a low, dangerous tone as he scanned the trees. “I don't like this.”
“I don't either,” Raza agreed as he tucked me into his side. “Come, mo shíorghrá, enough hunting for tonight.”
Hunting. Right. I just wasn't sure if I had been the hunter or the prey.
“Astar showed up too,” I said as we headed back the way they'd come. “He didn't help me, though. He just watched and then demanded how I could fight as I did.”
“Was there something strange about your fighting style?” Tiernan asked sharply.
“I was using that sense I have of them,” I said, suddenly gleeful as I remembered it. “I could feel where they were and when they moved. It was like knowing how they were going to attack me before they did. I was one step ahead of them the entire time.”
“Nice,” Killian declared. “Like telepathy.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Then I remembered that I had used one of their swords. “Oh! Kill, there's a sword back there that I took from one of them.”
“On it!” Killian ran back to retrieve the sword and, hopefully, get something from it.
We kept walking a few feet before we realized that Killian had gone quiet.
I stopped and looked back. “Killian?”
My husband was on one knee in the snow, his glamour gone and his face set in the blank expression of a psychic having a vision. I let go of Raza and went to Killian, but I didn't speak to him; I didn't want to interrupt whatever he was seeing. I just kept watch over him until he was finished.
Finally, Killian took a deep breath and blinked. He looked up at me, the sword still in his hand, and whispered, “They're fucking monsters.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
For some reason, my nightmare flashed through my mind with Killian's words. The one with the Sluagh. I had this crazy thought that Varcan and his men, even Astar, were members of the Sluagh, somehow free on Earth, either shapeshifted or under glamours. But then Killian continued.
“I'm going to bite that bastard's head off,” Kill growled as he stood. “The things he was thinking of doing to Seren.” He jerked his head as if trying to get the images out. “I can't even describe them, they're too disgusting. Too terrible. Those men are monsters.”
Raza growled, low in his chest and dangerously.
I laid a calming hand on Raza's arm. “It wasn't Varcan's sword.”
“And that makes a difference how?” Raza snarled.
“Yeah, okay,” I conceded. “We'll find them and then we can kill them. Better?”
Raza rumbled petulantly but nodded.
“Good, now let's get out of these woods,” I said. “I'm in heels, standing in the snow.”
Raza scooped me up like a bridegroom and carried me past the group of hunters and extinguishers. Everyone had come to help me. I nodded to them as we passed by, as if my husband carrying me in his arms was a normal occurrence. Which it kinda was, come to think of it. Raza took me through the trees and out of them, to the side of a road. A line of vehicles was parked on the shoulder, all of them ours.
“He took me here? Right next to a road?” I frowned at the dark street; there were hardly any streetlights.
“We're just down the road from the club,” Tiernan said as he opened the side door of the SUV for us. “It looks as if he was jumping back and forth.”
“Trying to find me,” I confirmed.
“Yes, we heard,” Tiernan reminded me.
“Right, Wayne said that. Sorry.” I climbed in, Raza setting me down so my feet touched the floor, and settled on the bench.
“Don't apologize, babe,” Killian said and slid the sword beneath my seat. “You just kicked ass and you're still coming down from the high.”
I grinned at him as Raza climbed in and moved past me to sit by the window. I loved that Kill thought like a soldier and assumed the same of me. I wasn't distracted because I was distraught; I was distracted because I'd just kicked ass. I love that man.
“Did you get anything else from the sw
ord?” I asked Kill as Wayne climbed into the driver's seat.
“Nothing much. That guy's thoughts were too strong, they wiped out practically everything else,” Killian growled as he slid across the back bench. His expression shifted to pride as he added, “I only got a few glimpses of you, but they were damn impressive, babe. I'm not surprised that guy wanted to watch awhile.”
“Thanks.” I grinned at Kill before asking everyone, “What about the club? Did we get anything?”
“No,” Extinguisher Lance Sloane said as he took shotgun. “If they're selling Dark Kiss, they're not doing it there. At least, not tonight.”
“So, we're back to investigating my new properties,” Drostan said as he slid onto the bench beside Kill.
The side door closed, and we took off. I stared out the window at the dark woods as we passed by, replaying recent events in my mind. “Balidet,” I murmured.
“What's that?” Daxon asked.
“The man who Varcan called Bal,” I clarified. “His full name is Balidet.”
“Weird fucking names,” Killian muttered as if he were offended by them.
“Astar started to say that I fought like something but trailed off. I got the impression that he was going to equate my fighting style to one of his people.”
“Or a tiger,” Killian teased me as he leaned over the back of my seat to kiss my cheek and growl playfully.
“I just want to know who they are,” I grumbled.
“Maybe they are aliens,” Killian said as he sat back. “It would explain why that guy was watching you. He was studying you for his research.”
“I can't tell if you're joking or not,” I said over my shoulder to him.
“Only partly.”
Raza made a scoffing noise.
“What?” Killian asked as if it were perfectly normal to suggest that aliens had abducted me.
“You don't hear hooves and think zebras,” Tiernan said drolly.
“You do if you live in Africa,” Killian shot back.
Drostan snorted a laugh. “That was good.”
“Thank you very much,” Kill drawled. “I'm here all week.”
“Yes, but what does it mean?” Daxon, sitting on Kill's right, asked.
“There are zebras in Africa,” Killian started to explain slowly, as if Daxon were daft.
“No.” Dax rolled his eyes. “What are you implying by saying that?”
“That we're technically aliens.” Killian shrugged. “Fairies are from another planet, thus, we are aliens. So, if we're here, why is it so hard to believe that another race has found their way to Earth?”
Well, that shut us up. We drove in horrified silence for several minutes, processing the fact that fairies were aliens and there could be more alien races secretly inhabiting Earth.
“Fucking aliens?” Lance finally exclaimed. “No fucking way.”
“There are billions of solar systems out there,” I mused. “It would be improbable that only two hold intelligent life.”
“And even more improbable that we are the most intelligent lifeforms in all those galaxies,” Drostan added in just as thoughtful a tone. “Huh. Aliens. That would explain a lot.”
“I'm still trying to get over Killian classifying us as aliens,” Tiernan muttered.
I chuckled. “I'm an alien queen. I should probably keep an eye out for Sigourney Weaver.”
“If you start laying eggs, I want a divorce,” Killian said dryly.
There was a three-second pause and then the vehicle erupted into laughter.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“What's going on?” I asked as I came out of the bathroom to find my husbands waiting for me in the bedroom. Naked.
We were back at Drostan's, everyone had gone to bed to get a good night's sleep since we'd be checking out the rest of Drostan's properties in the morning. The teams Sloane and Nightshade sent out earlier had only made it through a third of the list. Now that my sense of the aliens—we decided to call them aliens until we knew what the hell they were—was proven to be accurate and strong, we decided that I needed to do a walk-through of every property.
“You were too tired your first night back,” Tiernan said gently. “But we were hoping you'd be—”
“We're dying here, sweetheart,” Daxon cut him off and swept me up in his arms.
My bathrobe was gone in seconds under Daxon's deft fingers, disappearing as I groaned into his possessive kiss. Hands lifted me and then lowered me onto the bed, making me feel as if I were floating. The scent of sweet smoke, spicy amber, sandalwood, and men wrapped around me, sending me into a lust haze.
Being with all my husbands at once should have been difficult, or at least complicated, but the men and I moved together with the ease of people who had loved each other for a long time. I knew them by touch, could tell that Raza's wingless body was beneath me, cradling me as he kissed my neck, and Tiernan was to my left, his mouth at my breast, tongue hot and insistent as his hands wandered. I had my left arm around Tiernan's shoulders but my right reached for Killian, in particular, that piece of glorious flesh rising between his legs. And all while Daxon laid over me and kissed me as if he never wanted to stop.
“Mo shíorghrá,” Raza rumbled in my ear before he nipped my shoulder. His hard shaft was nestled between my bottom cheeks and his wide hand kneaded my right breast.
“Oh, sweet Goddess, you're already wet,” Daxon growled as he broke away from our kiss. “I don't care; I want to taste you.”
Daxon was straddling Raza's legs while spreading mine—a position he'd perfected. I let out a soft sigh as he settled at my sex, his lips brushing against me softly, glorying in that bare skin before nestling closer. The tip of his eager tongue flicked out to taste me just as Killian leaned over to replace Daxon at my lips. Daxon's ministrations had me crying out into Kill's mouth, and Kill groaned in response, cupping my cheek and drinking the vibrations of my pleasure.
With one fist around Killian's pumping shaft and the other gripping Tiernan's silky hair, I lifted my hips to Daxon's lapping tongue, needing even more. His fingers parted me and slipped inside as the sounds of his eager licking tickled my ears along with the groans of a happy Dragon-Djinn. My hands shifted, moving over slick muscles, gripping and sliding across the hard bodies of the men who belonged to me.
“Just relax, Seren,” Tiernan said as his hand slipped between my legs to help Daxon.
I let my head fall back onto the pillow beside Raza's as Daxon lifted my hips and moved his wet kiss lower. His tongue delved into that other place, making me squirm, while Tiernan lazily worked that bundle of nerves at the top of my sex. I writhed between my husbands, head spinning from the pleasure of all those hands and mouths. Of hard muscles and wet tongues. Smooth skin and silken hair. Tiernan started kissing me, his kiss softer than Kill's or Daxon's—gentle and tender. His long hair fell over my cheek like a veil, and I would have sighed dreamily if not for his deft fingers that twirled me below. Instead, I moaned and clutched at his shoulders.
“That's it,” Daxon growled as he drew my liquid desire down to my little hole below. “Nice and wet. Slick.” He pumped his finger in gently, working me open for Raza.
I tore away from Tiernan's kiss to cry out, “Oh, sweet Goddess, someone get inside me now!”
Raza growled as he slipped a hand between us and angled himself at my back passage. I gasped as his thick head slipped in, my body closing around him eagerly. In and out, gently easing me open, Raza finally got his entire rod inside me. Daxon waited until Raza was in place before rising to his knees and slamming home. I was so wet that he slipped inside with one movement, his hips hitting my thighs as he groaned in bliss. Dax started a slow pumping to counter Raza's, one going in while the other pulled out.
“You're beautiful, baby,” Killian said softly as he drew his hand down my side. “Your body rolling in pleasure, your face soft with it. So fucking beautiful.”
I turned toward Killian, angling myself off Raza, and stared up the musc
led plane of Kill's mouthwatering chest. “So are you, now give me that cock.”
Killian chuckled as he held the thick length of his flushed shaft out to me, rubbing the tip teasingly over my lips before pushing forward. His hand cradled the back of my head, supporting my weight as he gently slid in and out of my mouth. I groaned at the feel of that smooth skin over my tongue and the taste that was purely Killian. A wondrous ache was building between my thighs, combining with delicious tingles from my back channel. In and out, Daxon then Raza, a see-saw of ecstasy. I felt so wondrously full, nearly complete. I spun away from Killian and went to Tiernan.
