by Romi Hart
Victor became a different man in that Pavilion. He became a leader, a ruler, a judge. He became hard as iron, but he could still be merciful. He became something so much more than the wild man she first met in the bayou.
He conducted her through the crowd. He introduced her to people and she hugged the people she already knew, but she existed a million miles away. She needed to take some time to adjust to all this.
She spotted Victor studying her on the side. He squeezed her hand. “Are you all right? Are you upset that I expelled Bryce?”
She looked down at her hand in his. Not even that seemed real. “No.”
“Do you think I should have killed him instead? I don’t think I could do that—not to my own brother. I’m not even sure I could kill him in a challenge.”
She heard her voice coming from a long way off. “No, I don’t think you should have killed him.”
“What do you think I should have done with him, then?”
“I don’t know.”
He cocked his head to study her. Then he compressed his lips. “Let’s go home.”
She spun around to stare at him. “What? You can’t! You have to stay here and…..officiate.”
He cracked a grin. All at once, they were back in the woods with no one around to bother them. “They don’t need me. They’ll party for a week. They don’t need me to do that. Let’s get out of here.”
She looked around. He was right. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them now. They were all far too busy enjoying themselves. “Where will we go?”
“Back to Ogru-Kuche. Back home.”
“Home?” She didn’t understand. “What home?”
“The apartment. My parents’ apartment where we’ve been staying since we got here.”
She frowned. “That’s your mother’s apartment. We can’t stay there. We need a place of our own.”
“It’s my apartment now. If she doesn’t want to stay with us, she’ll find her own place.”
Riley gaped at him. “Are you serious? What about…. what about Courtney and Malachai?”
“They’ll stay there as long as they want, too. If they don’t like it, they can go anywhere they want. The apartment belongs to the Crest and that’s me.”
She blinked. All this time, she thought she was his parents’ guest. She thought she and Victor would eventually move to their own quarters and leave the place to his family.
The Crest. He was the Crest. That made him lord and master over all Ogru-Kuche and even all Anarock. That’s what this wedding and this ceremony really meant. The truth hit her for the first time.
He gave her arm a tug. “Are you coming or what?”
She wandered out of the park. No one ran after them to stop them. They walked all the way back to Ogru-Kuche and Jules let them inside. They found the apartment empty exactly the way Riley knew they would. Tessa and Courtney and Malachai were all out at the celebration.
He led her into their same bedroom, the room they shared since she first arrived in Anarock—his bedroom. He shut the door behind her.
He came up behind her and lifted her veil headdress off her hair. He draped it over a chair. Then he unzipped her dress down her back. A quiver of lightning ran down her spine and set her whole skin aglow.
He raked the sleeves over her shoulders. The dress sloughed to the floor and she stepped out of it.
She stood before him in her underwear and stockings, but she didn’t turn around. She closed her eyes and let the dizzy power of his presence sink into her bones. His necktie whistled through his collar when he pulled it off.
She waited on breathless tenterhooks for the mind-bending touch she knew would come. Her inner flesh bubbled and swelled with rising heat. Moisture oozed between her legs with the pulsing hunger for him inside her.
He laid both hands on her shoulders. She gasped in naked lust. She couldn’t stand the intensity of her feelings for him. His presence overpowered her almost to the point of orgasm just standing before him.
His breath breezed into her hair and she heard the hitch in his throat from buried tension. He wanted her. He stiffened. Every brush of his fingers blasted power and dominant strength into her. His being crushed her to a tremulous mass of nerves. Nothing could stop him from taking what was rightfully his.
He combed her long hair aside to expose her neck. A rain of sparkles poured down her skin and she shuddered in strained agony. She needed him so hard, so deep, so hot. She knew she would experience all the raging passion of him. Any second now, the tornado would unleash on her and sweep her away.
He dropped a kiss on her neck. His fingertips trailed down her arms to her hips. He followed her curves to her ass, but she still didn’t dare open her eyes. She didn’t know if she could cope with the cataclysm looming before her. It would destroy her and leave her ruined.
Her breath rasped between her teeth. She needed to break out of this suspense. She needed to release her wildness on him. She needed to scream on him and taste the drunken fruit of her own delight. She needed to go to the brink and never come back. As long as he took her there, she wanted it.
He caressed around her ass. His fingertips dallied between her thighs and she groaned. Her body ached to bend over, to flail against him, to pour her essence over him, but he wouldn’t take her. He just stood there breathing on her and driving her out of her mind.
He hooked his thumbs into her stockings and eased them down. He dragged his maddening touch down her thighs and she almost buckled. She tottered and caught herself.
The next minute, his hands appeared on her shoulders again. He turned her around to face him. She staunchly clamped her eyes closed against the tempest threatening to decimate her.
He cupped her chin and raised her face. Against her will, her eyes drifted open. She moaned at the rush of orgasmic agony that seized her when she looked into his eyes. She couldn’t survive in there.
Then his lips descended on her mouth and she plunged into the vacuum where only the two of them existed. The part of her that feared catastrophe evaporated. She floated into pure being, pure rapture, pure soul with him.
The End.
Bryce (Anarock Shifters, Book 2) - Special Preview
1
Malachai Griffin looped an embroidered silk band around his brother Victor’s wrist. He twined it over Riley Strickland’s arm to tie the pair together. He intoned the oath of loyalty for the hidden community of shifters and outcasts known as Anarock. “Life for a life. Blood for blood against all others.”
“Against all others,” Victor repeated.
Riley swallowed hard and repeated those momentous words. “Against all others.”
The assembly gathered to witness their new leader’s marriage erupted in cheers. Thousands of New Breed shifters and anomalies of every variety thronged the lawn at Peristyle Pavilion in New Orleans’ City Park.
None of these refugees thought of it as New Orleans anymore. They dwelt in a shadow world apart from normal humans. Ordinary people didn’t see the strange creatures transfigured by Louisiana’s polluted waters. They didn’t see because they didn’t want to. They wanted to believe everything was normal.
The people of Anarock occupied the same neighborhoods and used the same streets, but they lived apart. The two populations never merged and they never would. The human population didn’t even seem to notice when the military invaded to wipe out the evidence of their own mistake.
Alexa Weeks hovered on the periphery of the ceremony. She propped her shoulder against a tree and crossed her arms over her chest. This wedding united all Anarock under Victor’s new reign, but she curled her lip in annoyance. The beauty and splendor irritated her beyond all endurance.
Victor and Riley turned to face their adoring admirers and Alexa couldn’t stand it a second longer. She snorted, pushed off the tree, and stormed off.
She walked out of the park and hit the city streets. She only got a few blocks before she came up against a much bigger, deeper problem. Where
could she go? She couldn’t return to Ogru-Kuche, headquarters of the Prometheus Crest where she lived with her father and sisters.
At least, she used to live there. She was born and raised in Ogru-Kuche, but she could never call it home again. She hated it. She never wanted to see it again.
Victor and Riley would go back to Ogru-Kuche. They would take up residence there. Alexa wouldn’t be able to ignore them. She would see Victor every day. Riley would almost certainly start working for the Crest, too. That meant Alexa would have to deal with her, too.
The idea turned Alexa’s stomach. Riley disgusted her, but thinking about Victor brought a lump to Alexa’s throat. She and Victor kept company, in a manner of speaking, for years before he hooked up with that trifling-ass girl from the ass-end of nowhere.
Correction: Victor and Alexa kept company off and on for years. They were never anything serious. Victor meant a whole lot more to her than she did to him. Alexa always knew that in her heart. She went along with the casual affair and let him think it was just that.
She never told him point-blank she wanted more because she already knew he didn’t want that. She was always happy with the little of him that he was willing to give her. If she pressed for something more serious, she would lose him altogether. She knew that without him telling her.
Now she’d lost him completely. He went and got himself married to some outsider he dug up out of the Quag. Who the hell did she think she was, anyway, taking Victor away?
If any other woman had come between Alexa and Victor, Alexa would have ripped her fucking eyes out. Alexa would have tortured that bitch so she never walked again. She couldn’t do that to Riley, though.
For one thing, Riley and Victor were married now and Victor was head of the Prometheus Crest. That made him effectively in charge of all Anarock. He proved himself a ruthless leader just like his father before him. If Alexa looked sideways at Riley, he would lash out.
Besides, Victor was already gone. She recognized that the minute he came back with his new piece of ass. Alexa didn’t want to believe it when she saw him holding hands with Riley in the halls of Ogru-Kuche. She wanted to believe she still had a chance.
The very first time she threw herself at him and touched him and rubbed her body against him, she knew it was all over. He didn’t respond to her the way he used to. That whore cast some kind of spell over him. He would never want Alexa again. He would never want any other woman again. He belonged to Riley and no one else.
Alexa swallowed down the lump in her throat and set off through the streets at a rapid clip. What the hell did that trash have that she didn’t have? Why should Victor bond so deeply with her? Alexa was the one who loved him and took care of him and gave him everything he wanted all these years.
Her footsteps naturally wended back to Ogru-Kuche, but she couldn’t go back there. Riley stole that from her, too. Alexa would never feel at home there again. Where could she go? She had nowhere else in the world. She couldn’t even stay in Anarock without seeing them together. She would keep hearing about them and seeing that wretched adoration in everyone’s faces when they talked about the happy couple.
All those admirers at the wedding would become loyal subjects once the ceremony ended. They would become Victor’s eyes and ears on the street. They would report anything and anyone who spoke or planned against Victor’s rule. Word would get back, and not just to him. Alexa’s own father headed security for the Prometheus Crest. Colonel Weeks would be the first to turn against his daughter for speaking ill of Victor.
The farther she walked, the closer she came to Ogru-Kuche. She could not and would not go back there. That left only one option. She had to leave Anarock.
She belonged to the Quag as much as any other New Breed. She was a dragon shifter like her sisters. She could fly or swim anywhere in the world. Their kind sprang out of the toxic waters. She could return there. She would always have to return there. It called to her to cleanse herself in its black reaches.
She would leave Anarock. She still didn’t have a clue where she would go, but she wouldn’t leave Louisiana. She was born and raised here. She belonged to her people even if she didn’t belong in Anarock.
Once she got away from Victor, she could go anywhere. She could hook up with any of the changelings living out in the Quag. They’d be happy to see her.
By the time she got to Ogru-Kuche, she carried her decision a little easier. She didn’t have to linger around here getting stabbed in the heart every time she turned around. She had options.
She approached the big locked gate. She put out her hand to the chain when a small boy materialized out of thin air on the other side. Tattered cut-off shorts hung around his spindly black legs. Tiny curls dusted his chocolate-brown scalp.
He lunged for the chain and snatched the lock away. “Hold up, Ma’am. Let me get that for ya.”
“Thanks, Jules.” Alexa slipped into the compound and he locked the gate behind her.
His haunted dark eyes darted to her face. “You ain’t at the wedding ceremony, Miss Alexa?”
She shrugged, but she couldn’t exactly express her feelings to him. “I just came from there. See you around, Jules.”
She hurried into the building, stepping over broken bottles and drunks lying unconscious in the corridors. She made her way through debris and shattered glass to a concrete stairwell.
She exited on the third floor. No stinking remains of humanity blocked her path here. She emerged into a carpeted hallway lined with doors. Cut crystal light fixtures shone on oil paintings along the walls. Potted plants and ornate furniture decorated every corner.
She entered her family’s apartment. She didn’t look right or left at the wide living room or the immaculate kitchen with its modern gas stove and double fridge.
She went straight to her room and shut the door. She wanted to get this done and get the hell out of here before she met or talked to anyone.
She opened her closet and surveyed her wardrobe. She compressed her lips at the dresses, heels, skirts, and blouses hanging there. She hated them all of a sudden. She didn’t want to look good. She wanted to look anything but. She didn’t want to be attractive to anyone ever again. If she couldn’t have Victor, she never wanted to touch a man again as long as she lived.
She stripped off the snug-fitting dress she’d worn to the wedding. She turned it right side out and hung it on the hanger where it belonged. She stood before the closet in her bra and panties thinking things over. If she was going into the Quag, she needed functional.
She kicked off her heels and set them on the shelf with the other pairs. Then she took out a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a beaten brown leather jacket.
She carried everything to her dressing table. She stood behind the chair and scanned herself up and down in the mirror. She had nice, smooth, supple black skin. That was her greatest asset. She had firm, round hips and a shapely ass, so maybe she wasn’t doing too bad after all. When she hauled on her jeans, they showed off her curves.
Men certainly liked her tits and she considered herself pretty in a smoky, sultry, New Orleans kind of way. Her delicate cheekbones and narrow chin made her look feminine, not brutish or crude like some women she knew.
The t-shirt and jacket didn’t do much for her, though. They covered her chest and disguised her waist. She kicked her feet into an old pair of hiking boots she hadn’t worn in years.
They felt heavy and cloddish on her feet after wearing heels for so long. They made her look tough and dangerous which, in a way, she was. They made her feel that way, too.
She tugged the jacket over her chest and gave herself one more critical inspection. Tight cornbraids ran back from her forehead and ended just above the nape of her neck. She thanked the stars she waited on those extensions she wanted. These braids would last weeks before they had to be redone. She didn’t look as good as she could, but she was ready for the Quag. That was the most important thing.
She turned her back on the mirr
or and scanned the room. She didn’t see anything else she wanted to take. She left the apartment without a glance right or left. She didn’t care if she ever saw it again.
Once she let herself out, she put on speed. She wanted to get well and truly gone before anyone came home from the wedding. She didn’t want anyone talking her out of her decision or telling her how happy she should be for Victor and Riley.
She headed for the stairwell, but before she got into it, she happened to glance through an opening in the wall. It afforded a view of the yard outside. She caught a glimpse of Jules unlocking the gate for Victor and Riley.
Riley wore the flowing lace gown that belonged to Victor’s mother. Victor’s black tux contrasted perfectly with her white train and gauzy veil. He kept one arm behind Riley’s back in a protective gesture. They were sneaking home before the party ended.
Alexa gulped. She should be the one wearing that dress. She should have been the one to pledge her allegiance to Victor against all others. Now he was going home with her.
Alexa waited until they entered the building. She stayed where she was long enough for the happy couple to climb upstairs. She gave them more than enough time to get to the Griffin family apartment and stow themselves inside. Only then did she descend.
Jules let her through the gate and she never looked back. She mapped out the quickest route away from the city. She couldn’t take the Crescent City Connection bridge to cross the Mississippi River. Riley destroyed that during the latest military incursion.
Alexa passed into that hazy realm where she became invisible to humans passing on every side. She hopped a bus across town and over the river at the Huey Long Bridge. No one noticed her. Her existence became nonexistence, not only to these oblivious humans but to all her own people. No one knew and no one cared if she disappeared without a trace.
She hopped another bus to the outskirts of town. The last bus let her off near Bayou Segnette State Park. She stood on the sidewalk and measured her next move. Dense trees separated the suburbs from the deep Quag beyond. How clean and pure and untouched those distant swamps and marshes felt from here. She could forget all her troubles out there.
