She’d never been a particularly patient woman. She undid the button of his pants, then the zipper, and pulled the length of him free. He was hard and heavy in her hand, the velvet skin an exquisite contrast to the iron shaft it covered. She closed her fist around him and pumped once, an experimental slide that had him jerking in her hand.
Then she figured what the hell, this might be the last time she ever got to have sex, and leaned down to close her mouth over the hot, swollen tip. The low, male sound that came out of his throat sent a deep pull of need right between her legs, and she answered it by taking him deeper, running her tongue along the underside of his shaft.
Then his hands were beneath her chin, pulling her up.
“Did I do it wrong?” She’d thought she’d been doing it right—goddess knew it had felt right—but she supposed a person could only learn so much by skipping to the sex scenes in romance novels.
“If you did it any more right I’d be dead. But if you keep doing it, I’m not going to last.”
“Shouldn’t you have more stamina where this sort of thing is concerned?”
He laughed. “I told you, love, I’m a year out of practice.”
Her heart stuttered, slammed back into rhythm. “You were serious about that?”
“Yes.” His hands cupped her face, kept her from looking away from eyes filled with an intensity that scared the hell out of her. “You’re all I want, Kyrie. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
She had to break that intensity or it would break her. “I take it that means you’re clean?”
He looked slightly startled at the sudden change in conversational direction. “Yes, but—” He quit talking when she stood up and slid her underwear off before settling astride him again, positioning him at her entrance.
His eyes widened and he gripped her hips, holding her back when she would have sank down onto him. “We probably definitely should not be making a kid tonight, love.”
“I got an IUD when you kept showing up at my house.” She’d known if he ever kissed her again it was a fifty-fifty chance as to whether she’d say no, or Goddess yes. And she’d wondered what it would be like to have nothing between them. “So we don’t need to—you know. If you’re okay with it.”
His answer was to ease her down, filling her inch by inch. When their bodies met, when he was fully inside her, he took her mouth with his, kissing her slow and deep as he gave her body time to adjust to him. He teased her with each stroke of his tongue, his hands skimming up to cup her breasts, until the multitude of sensations had her rocking her hips against him with pure need.
Her clit brushed the defined ridge of his abs and an electric jolt of pleasure had her gasping into his mouth. He swallowed it down, his thumbs stroking across her nipples, and though she felt his need he didn’t move, leaving the reins in her hands. As if he knew she needed the control right now.
She rose up until he was almost out of her and then drove back down, rolling her hips to grind her center against him again. She didn’t know if she could come like that but she damn well wanted to try. She settled into the rhythm, each rock of her hips building friction and tension, the deep seat of him inside her making her frantic with need.
She lost herself entirely to impulse, riding him faster, harder, her pleasure building and building until it hit a crescendo. Her orgasm shattered through her and Random finally lost control. He let out a hoarse cry and thrust up into her, his hands falling to her hips to hold her down on him as his entire body jerked and he spilled himself inside her.
Her head fell to his chest as the aftershocks coursed through them, their breaths drawn in twin, ragged inhales. She felt like her world had just been obliterated and rebuilt.
Goddess, she wanted to stay here. But she couldn’t. And the longer she did, the harder it would be to leave.
“We should go,” she said softly.
His arms tightened around her, pulled her close before finally letting her go. “Yeah.”
She didn’t look back at him as she rose and went to the bathroom to clean herself off and put her clothes back on.
She wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
She wouldn’t.
12
Valkyrie walked into Council headquarters, acutely aware of Random’s presence at her side, her body humming with his nearness, with the memory of what they’d just done. He shouldn’t be with her. Every instinct she had screamed at her to never let Elijah lay eyes on him again, much less in her company. But she’d promised Random she wouldn’t leave him behind, and she would keep that promise for as long as she could.
They descended the stairs to the Warded Room and she paused outside the doors, unable to make herself open them, to walk through into the room beyond. She found her gaze inevitably drawn to the left, to the small alcove where a faceless statue of Aspect Society’s goddess waited.
“That thing always creeps me out,” Random murmured, following her gaze.
If you had any idea what hides beneath it, you’d really be creeped out, she thought. Her left hand started to tremble, and she cursed the stupid dress she’d mechanically put back on for its lack of pockets with which to hide the flaw.
Random’s hand covered hers, his chest pressing against her back as he stepped close behind her.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
She shouldn’t depend on him like this, shouldn’t let herself grow accustomed to the safety his touch made her feel. He wasn’t safe with her. But she wanted him to be. She turned and kissed him, wrapped her arms around his neck and melded her body to his, trying to say everything with her touch that she couldn’t say with words.
He held nothing back when he kissed her—every emotion he felt for her that she’d tried to deny expressed itself in the glide of his tongue against hers, in the wrap of his arms around her waist. When she finally broke away, he rubbed his nose against hers, the simple act jolting for its intimacy.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
She nodded, broke away from him entirely, and opened the doors.
The Council rarely used the Warded Room. The symbols inscribed onto every surface, be it floor, walls, or ceiling, all joined together for a single purpose: to contain any power unleashed in this room, and keep it from leaving. It took the perception of a very large threat for them to bother with its use.
The last time they had bothered was when Siren Savage had petitioned to join Aspect Society. Valkyrie wasn’t sure what it said that they had opened it for one of their own councilors. That Elijah had the raw power to warrant the caution, there was no doubt. She was simply surprised they’d been ballsy enough to offend him by insisting on the protocol.
She kept her shoulders back, her head high, her face its careful mask, and walked into the room. The Council sat behind the table that rested on the dais on the far side of the room. Of the five of them, the only one who looked unruffled was Random’s great aunt, Ella Tremayne. Then again, it took a lot to ruffle the Queen of Death.
Theodore Bronte had an air of quiet suspicion, Kara Barrow one of tight-lipped unease. Julian Astor, who was only an acting councilor, a stand-in for Elijah in the true councilor’s absence, was the only one of the five foolish enough to look irritated.
He’d clearly thought, given the length of time Elijah had been missing, that the position would become his in truth. In all fairness to him, according to the Council by-laws, the seat should have gone open to vote months ago. But Random wasn’t the only one who could use the law’s loopholes to his advantage, and Valkyrie had pressed for an extension on the vote. It was the second such extension she’d managed to secure, one largely driven through by the approval of Martin DuPont. The head of the Council himself was currently sweating and fidgeting and trying to hide both. He looked precisely like what he was—a puppet leader whose master had unexpectedly returned.
That master sat at the petitioner’s table facing the Council, his back to Valkyrie.
Walking forward was l
ike dragging each foot out of nearly-dried cement. Yes, she’d intended to find Elijah. She’d made a public show of being desperate to find him—and she had been desperate. But she’d always meant to find him alone, so she could put an end to the horror, once and for all. If his body was ever found, no one would suspect that his devoted daughter had had a hand in it.
Now...now she didn’t know how things would play out.
She stopped at the end of the table where he sat, Random’s presence behind her a solid, comforting weight.
Elijah Winters turned to look at her and she took an involuntary step back, bumping into Random. His right hand settled on her hip, steady and supportive, and she needed it.
Her father looked as if an artisan had decided his exterior should finally match the monster within. His face, once handsome and striking, was a hell-scape of scars and pieces that looked as if they had been torn apart and put back together with more care for haste than appropriateness of placing. His lips were oddly slanted, his right eyebrow higher than the left and his hair, once jet black, was streaked through with coarse gray.
The only thing about him that hadn’t changed was his eyes. A cold, acerbic blue, they took her in with the same icy detachment she’d endured her entire life.
“Not quite as you remember, am I?” he asked, and even his voice was different, rougher. “But then, neither are you.”
His gaze drifted over her, cataloging the makeup she hadn’t washed off. The necklace at her throat. The dress. Random’s hand on her hip.
His eyes lingered on the last, and even through the odd new shape of his lips she recognized the sneer that twisted them. It took everything she had not to rip the dagger from her boot and slit his throat, witnesses be damned.
She forced herself to turn and look at Ella Tremayne. “It’s really him?”
There was always the chance, however small, that Danvers had chosen to come wearing Elijah’s visage.
“I have confirmed his identity, Miss Winters.” The Queen of Death had not missed her nephew’s hand on Valkyrie’s body any more than Elijah had. But where Valkyrie understood what her father’s expression meant, Ella’s was unfathomable to her.
“Good,” was the only response she could manage.
DuPont found his voice. “It seems your father was in Danvers’ captivity, as Siren suggested was the case. We had reasons for believing this improbable, but it seems we were incorrect.”
It was fortunate, Valkyrie decided, that in addition to not having a loving relationship with her father, he’d never insisted on the outward pretense of one. On her devotion? Yes. But that devotion had always been detached. No one expected her to burst into tears and hug Elijah.
Truthfully, she didn’t know what anyone expected. They all waited in the silence that followed DuPont’s explanation, as if they’d expected Valkyrie’s arrival to make the situation made sense. Because they all seemed to recognize that something wasn’t quite right, but no one could put their finger on what the not-quite-right thing was.
Valkyrie could. It was in the fact that all of Elijah’s wounds were months healed over, that his clothes were clean, that his demeanor was not that of a man who had recently escaped imprisonment.
“Is he free to leave?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ella said. “Though he will not be formally reinstated to his duties on the Council until he has undergone a psychological evaluation, and a Truthfinder of sufficient talent can verify his statements.” She turned a dragon-like smile on Elijah. “Not that your testimony is in any doubt, of course. Formalities, you understand.”
“Of course.” The coolness in Elijah’s voice told Valkyrie all too well that he had fully expected to be swept back into his place without incident. He probably would have been, if it wasn’t for Ella. She was the only councilor Valkyrie thought Elijah had ever truly feared. He stood. “I think I would like to go home now. Valkyrie?”
Frustration bit at her—she was missing something. Why would Danvers give up Elijah now? Yes, he obviously understood the effect Elijah’s return would have on her, and she’d pissed him off at StellaMia’s, but that couldn’t be the whole of it. She couldn’t see him doing this unless there was another reason, another advantage.
He wanted the Council destroyed, and to that end, he needed the Council’s adnexus.
It hit her, then. He wanted the Council gone. And no matter the preachings of anarchy to the contrary, people who sought to destroy the structure of power typically wanted to slide something new into its place. And Elijah could be that something, because he wouldn’t die with the adnexus’s destruction: Valkyrie would.
Valkyrie, who could take the fall for everything. Valkyrie, whom no one liked. Valkyrie, who had always been so devoted to her father. Devoted enough to want to place him as the only power in Aspect Society?
She could see precisely how it would play out. If Danvers destroyed the adnexus, then with the councilors and Valkyrie dead it wouldn’t be hard for Elijah to spin the tragic tale. No one outside of the Council knew about the adnexus, so it would be a simple case of how Valkyrie had killed them all, and died in the doing.
Elijah would be appropriately heartbroken, while at the same time admitting how her fanatic loyalty had frightened him at times. How is iron control over her life had been necessary to curb her dangerous tendencies. How he had thought she would grow out of it, into her own person, but she never had, and his return from captivity had driven her into a manic state.
“Valkyrie,” Elijah repeated, her name a warning, as if he understood she was on the precipice of diverging from the path he wanted her to follow. “Take me home.”
The path he wanted, the expected path. She had come here to keep up public appearances, because she had thought that publicly being at odds with him was the thing likely to cast suspicion on her. And he had known that, expected that, when the opposite was true. When letting the Council have a hint of how she truly felt about her father was the only thing that might save her after all.
“No,” she whispered. A whisper was all she could manage. She hadn’t told him no since he’d first threatened Jace. But Jace wasn’t here. He was in Ireland, he was safe for the time being, and Random—Random wasn’t leaving her sight. Not until he was somewhere safe, and she could finish this.
“Valkyrie.” Elijah’s voice had lost any pretense of affection. “Take me home. Now.”
“No,” she repeated. Her voice was still soft, but it was strong, and she might as well have shouted for how loud she sounded in the stillness of the room. “Take yourself home, Elijah. I don’t live there anymore. And I’m never going back.”
He advanced on her. She was all too familiar with the threat that hovered in his eyes, and she didn’t have to feign the fear that thundered through her veins, an instinctual response born from years of helplessness. She stepped back again, flush into Random, whose arms came protectively around her. For a moment, she thought it would be enough to shred Elijah’s razor-thin temper in public.
Then he stopped, a ripple-like shiver running through him as he took control, smoothed his voice into something patronizing, something that told her she’d been precisely right about the light he’d have cast her in once the Council was gone.
“Valkyrie, you’re hysterical. You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Everyone save Ella looked unsettled, but they didn’t look unsettled at Elijah—no, they looked unsettled at her—and she understood that he must have laid the groundwork concerning her for years. In case getting rid of her ever became a necessity. An offhand comment here and there, a father concerned about his daughter’s mental state.
“She understands exactly what she’s saying.” Random’s voice rumbled in her ear.
Elijah’s gaze turned as cold as she’d ever seen it, then, his voice the special level of calm it had been when he’d broken her left hand.
“You don’t understand what you’re tangling with, boy.” Elijah closed the distance between them. Only
Ella stood when he advanced, only Ella’s Aspect readied to act, but Valkyrie held no illusions that the Queen of Death would interfere on her behalf. No, she would interfere on behalf of her nephew.
“I understand everything,” Random said. “And you’re never touching her again.”
Elijah reached for her. Random’s Aspect blanketed her in a thick mist. The pattern it wove itself into was like nothing she’d ever seen before, felt like nothing she’d ever experienced. It closed tight around them both like a cocoon and everything just...dissolved.
13
The world swam into focus slowly, like the blurred image on a television screen coming together pixel by pixel. It resolved, not into her father’s face, or those of the Council, or the room they had been standing in, but into Random’s living room. She stepped out of his arms and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. Sectional sofa, coffee table, entertainment center, open floor plan that led into the kitchen, and Random.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, his jaw clenched, fury an amber blaze in his dark eyes. He didn’t look at all surprised by their new surroundings.
“You teleported us,” she said, and she didn’t think she’d ever sounded that incredulous in her entire life.
He gave a short, sharp nod.
“From inside the Warded Room.”
Another nod.
“You actually teleported us. How?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only done it once before. And you know wards have never been a problem for me.”
Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to accept what had just happened. The Warded Room was one of the oldest parts of Council headquarters, a room that had been built centuries ago. It contained thousands of runes, all drawn and formed together for a single, specific purpose: to contain any Aspect used within its bounds. To ensure that Aspect did not escape the room.
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