Sharpest Sting

by Jennifer Estep

  “Is she dead?” Wynn asked in a high, nervous, breathless voice. “No one is going to like it if she’s dead.”

  I frowned into the grass. Someone wanted me alive? Who? Why?

  “Better her than us,” Vance growled. “Let me check and make sure she’s dead before you call it in.”

  The giant crept even closer, and his shadow engulfed me like a black cloak. I curled my fingers into a fist and kept waiting.

  “Hey,” Vance muttered. “I don’t see any blood—”

  Before he could finish his thought or shoot me again, I surged up and onto my feet and cracked my Stone-hardened fist against his chin.

  Vance yelped and staggered back. I darted forward, reached out, and grabbed hold of the barrel of his gun. I curled my Stone-hardened fingers around the weapon, getting a firm, concrete grip on it, then yanked the gun away from him.

  “Wynn!” Vance yelled. “Shoot her! Shoot her, you idiot!”

  Wynn dropped his phone and snapped up his gun, but before he could shoot me, Owen charged out from behind the other side of the statue, lowered his shoulder, and plowed into the giant. The two of them went down in a heap on the grass, rolling, rolling, rolling all the way down the hill to Fletcher’s grave. Owen landed on top of Wynn, knocked the giant’s gun out of his hand, and started punching him in the face.

  I would have raced down the hill to help Owen, but I had my own giant to battle. Before I could flip the stolen gun around and fire it, Vance growled and charged forward. He wrapped me up in a bear hug, lifted me off my feet, and then threw me down. I barely had time to grab hold of my Stone magic and harden my skin into an impenetrable shell before my body slammed onto the cold, frozen ground.

  THUD!

  I landed hard on my back side. The blow rattled me from head to toe, but thanks to my Stone magic, the damage was minimal, and it didn’t do much more than bruise my ass and my ego. Vance threw himself down and forward and reached out, trying to wrest his gun away from me. I fumbled with the weapon. Somehow I managed to flip the gun around so that it was pointing at him. Then I pulled the trigger—

  Crack!

  Vance yelped again and dropped on top of me like a tree felled by an ax. His heavy weight punched the air out of my lungs, as well as bruising a little more of my ass and my ego. I tensed, expecting the giant to try to punch or strangle me, but Vance remained limp and still.

  I sucked down a breath and grabbed his shoulder. It took me a few seconds, but I managed to shove him off me and over onto his back. Vance’s arms and legs flopped out to his sides, but his face didn’t so much as twitch. Blood had already covered his shirt from the wound in his chest, and he stared up at the night sky, his eyes fixed and frozen in death.

  One giant down, one to go.

  Still clutching Vance’s gun, I scrambled to my feet and started down the hill. I’d only taken a few steps when my boots slipped on a patch of grass, and I fell on my ass. My hand slammed into the ground, and I lost my grip on the giant’s gun, which tumbled away. Rather than waste time chasing after the wayward weapon, I surged to my feet and raced down the rest of the incline to where Owen and Wynn were still fighting.

  Wynn had gotten to his feet and was reaching for one of the shovels propped up against Fletcher’s tombstone, although Owen had latched onto his leg and was trying to pull the giant back down to the ground with him.

  I scanned the grass around them, searching for Wynn’s gun, since I still needed a weapon to shoot the giant. Where was it? Where was it?

  There.

  I darted forward and snatched up the weapon. Wynn finally broke free of Owen’s grip, stumbled forward, and grabbed one of the shovels. The giant snarled, whirled around, and lifted the tool high, intent on bringing it down on top of Owen’s head.

  I moved forward, snapped up the giant’s gun, and shot him in the chest.

  Wynn screamed and pitched to the ground, still clutching the shovel. He moaned a few times, but he quickly went quiet and still and bled out just like Vance had.

  When I was sure the giant was dead, I lowered the gun to my side and looked over at Owen. “You okay?”

  He got to his feet and dusted some of the dirt and grass off his coveralls. “Yeah. You?”

  “Fine.”

  Owen stared down at Wynn’s body, then peered up at Vance’s, which was still at the top of the hill. “Why did you kill the giants with their own guns? Why not use your knives? Or your Ice magic?”

  “Because the giants have to be working for Mason. Otherwise, why would they dig up Fletcher’s grave?”

  Understanding flashed in Owen’s eyes. “You don’t want Mason to know that we were here, that you killed the giants.”

  “Yeah. Right now, my only advantage is that I know who he is. I need to hold on to that for as long as possible. Once Mason realizes that I know he’s the leader of the Circle, he won’t have a reason to hide anymore. Then all bets are off, and there’s no telling what he might do in order to get what he wants.”

  Owen focused on Fletcher’s grave. “What do you think Mason wants? What do you think the giants were looking for?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, they didn’t find it. Even Fletcher couldn’t cheat death long enough to bury something in his own grave, which means we still have a chance to find this mystery item before Mason does.”

  Owen gestured at the dead giants. “What are we going to do about them? Call Sophia?”

  Sophia Deveraux was the head cook at the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland. In addition to making delicious sourdough rolls, Sophia was also the best body disposer in the city. She could make a corpse vanish into thin air, and I’d used her services more than once as the Spider.

  I shook my head again. “No. If the giants disappear, then Mason and Tucker will suspect that I was involved, and Mason will start wondering what I was doing here. I’m not ready to face him. Not yet. So we need to make it look like the giants killed each other.”

  More understanding flashed in Owen’s eyes. “That’s why you wanted to shoot them with their own guns.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not that simple. We need to set the scene—fast. The giants were probably supposed to report to someone about what they found here.”

  Owen and I trudged up the hill and grabbed Vance, along with his gun and Wynn’s phone. Vance was heavy, but we managed to pick him up and haul him down to where Wynn was lying close to Fletcher’s grave. From there, it was just a matter of wiping off my fingerprints and putting the guns in the giants’ hands to make sure the ballistics matched. I also used the giants’ hands to fire two more shots into the air so their skin would be covered in gunshot residue. Mason might have such a test—or others—performed to find out how his men had died.

  The only problem was that I had killed Vance and Wynn with their own guns, instead of the other way around. I couldn’t fix that mistake, so I just had to hope no one else would notice that minor detail.

  Once the giants’ bodies were arranged, I patted down their pockets and pulled out their wallets. Vance and Wynn were both carrying driver’s licenses and credit cards, but I didn’t recognize their names. The giants were just hired muscle.

  I also looked at the giants’ phones, but the devices were locked with pass codes, so I slid them back into the giants’ pockets. If I took anything, even the loose change from their wallets, it would be a sign that someone else had killed the giants, instead of them offing each other. And that was something I couldn’t afford.

  Not yet. Not until I’d put my own plan in place to deal with this unexpected, unwanted complication.

  Once we were done arranging the bodies and the guns, Owen and I walked back up the hill to my family’s graves and smoothed down the scuffs and divots in the grass from the fight. I also grabbed the brittle vines and draped them across my father’s tombstone, hiding Tristan’s name from sight again.

  Oh, I doubted my crude gardening job would fool anyone for more than a few s
econds, and the wind could always blow off the vines, but I hoped the tendrils would keep anyone from looking too closely at the tombstone—or wonder what secrets might be buried in my father’s grave.

  Owen picked up our two shovels and hoisted them onto his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to dig up Tristan’s grave?”

  My gaze dropped to the spot where my spider rune was carved into my father’s tombstone. I had covered the rune with vines just like the rest of the marker. As much as I wanted to see what secrets Fletcher might have left behind, I couldn’t risk it. Not tonight. Digging up Tristan’s grave would be a sure sign that I had been here and killed the Circle giants.

  “No. We’ll come back and do it another night. We’ve already been here way too long—”

  A phone rang, cutting me off. It wasn’t my phone, and Owen shrugged, indicating that it wasn’t his either. I palmed a knife and whirled around, thinking someone else was in the cemetery, but no one was lurking among the trees, shadows, and tombstones. I cocked my head to the side, listening. The ringing was coming from…Wynn.

  I tucked my knife back up my sleeve, hurried down the hill, and fished the device out of the giant’s pocket. I expected the phone to cut off, but it kept ringing and ringing. Whoever was on the other end definitely wanted to be answered. I flipped the phone over so I could see the screen. And that person was…

  Hugh Tucker.

  The vampire’s name and number filled the screen. I yanked my own phone out of my pocket and snapped a photo of the screen so that I would have Tucker’s digits. Then I showed the device to Owen. His face tightened with worry, and he started scanning the cemetery.

  The ringing finally cut off, the sudden silence seeming even louder and more ominous than the phone’s cheerful chimes.

  I slid the device back into Wynn’s pocket, then stood up. “Time to go.”

  We hurried away from Fletcher’s grave and quickly reached the woods on the edge of the property. Owen stepped into the trees, but I stopped and looked back over my shoulder, staring at the giants’ bodies in the distance, still lying where Owen and I had arranged them.

  I might have sold Owen on the idea that everyone would believe the two giants had shot each other, but Mason and Tucker were both smarter than that. I had made a grave error tonight, and I couldn’t help but wonder when Mason would realize my mistake—and retaliate.

  Chapter Three

  Owen and I made it back to his car with no problems. Twenty minutes later, he steered the vehicle up a long, bumpy gravel driveway. The car crested the top of the hill, and a sprawling, ramshackle structure came into view.

  Fletcher’s house—my house now—was a mishmash of styles and adorned with everything from white clapboard to brown brick to dull, gray, weathered tin. Owen parked in the driveway in front of the house and threw the car into gear, but he left the engine running.

  I scanned the front yard, along with the surrounding woods and the steep ridge that dropped away on the other side of the house, but I didn’t see anyone skulking through the trees or hiding among the rocks. I also reached out with my Stone magic. The driveway gravels chirped of the churn of tires across them, the rocks in the woods grumbled about the icy leaves piled on top of them, and the bricks in the house murmured sleepily about the cold night air that had crept into their cracks and crevices.

  “We’re clear,” I said.

  Owen killed the engine, and we got out of the car and went inside the house. I locked the front door behind us, then toed off my boots and stripped off my coveralls and silverstone vest, revealing my pantsuit underneath. Beside me, Owen did the same.

  “I need to get cleaned up.” He showed me his dirt- and grass-stained hands. “Then maybe we can have that fire, food, and wine?”

  “Why wait?” I murmured.

  I gave him a wicked grin, then grabbed his hand and tugged him along behind me. We ended up in one of the downstairs bathrooms. I shut the door behind us, then turned the shower on a warm, slow trickle so I could wash my hands and bring a bit of heat to the chilly tile room. Owen rinsed and dried off his hands as well.

  We faced each other. He stared at me, and I looked right back at him. Then, with one thought, we both surged forward and came together.

  I pressed my lips to Owen’s, even as I unbuttoned his suit jacket. He kissed me back just as fiercely, even as he unbuttoned my own jacket. Our lips and tongues dueled, darted, and stroked together time and time again, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to feel, touch, taste more of him. Steam rose up from the running water, but it was nothing compared to the liquid desire scorching through my veins.

  Once our jackets were out of the way, we went to work on our shirts, undoing the buttons and peeling them off each other as fast as we could. I stepped into Owen’s arms, and he cupped my face in his hands and gently stroked his thumbs over my cheeks. I splayed my fingers across his bare chest, feeling the thump-thump-thump of his heart, beating hard and fast, just like mine was.

  Owen leaned forward and pressed soft butterfly kisses to my eyelids, nose, and cheeks. I drew in a breath, drinking in his rich, metallic scent, which was somehow made even more intense by the hazy steam slowly filling the bathroom.

  “I don’t say this nearly enough, but you mean everything to me, Gin,” he whispered in a low, husky voice between kisses. “Whatever happens with Mason and Tucker and the Circle, we’ll face it together. You and me.”

  His words, his certainty, his devotion filled my heart with even more love, and I reached up and curled my arms around his neck, drawing him closer still. “You and me,” I promised, staring into his violet eyes.

  I leaned forward and kissed him again. I licked at his lips, and Owen opened his mouth, his tongue darting out to meet mine. I trailed my hands over his broad shoulders, then down his chest, enjoying the flex and quiver of his strong, hard muscles under my searching fingertips. My heart beat faster, and that liquid desire burned even hotter as it trickled down into my stomach and pooled between my thighs.

  Owen nuzzled my neck, and his hands snaked around behind my back and unhooked my bra. My hands darted lower, and I undid his belt. Still nuzzling my neck, Owen slid my bra down my arms and tossed it aside. I did the same thing to his belt, then unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. He reached around, grabbed his wallet from his back pocket, and drew out a condom. I took my little white pills, but we always used extra protection.

  Owen stepped out of his pants, socks, and black silk boxers, then covered himself with the condom. I peeled off my own pants and socks, along with my underwear.

  “Now,” I whispered in a breathless voice. “I want you inside me right now.”

  Owen grabbed me and picked me up. Our mouths crashed together again, and he set me down on the edge of the bathroom counter. I hissed at the feel of the cool tile against my ass, but then Owen moved forward and thrust inside me, and I forgot about everything else.

  We both moaned. I kissed him again, raking my nails down his back, even as he surged inside me again.

  “You feel so good,” Owen murmured against my lips. “You always feel so good, Gin.”

  I would have told him that he felt the same, but I was too busy kissing him and gasping for breath every time he slid inside me.

  We plunged into a quick rhythm, and the sensations crashed over me one after another. Owen’s breath rasping in my ear. His scent filling my nose. His warm, strong hands locked on my hips as we moved together. So wonderful, familiar, and overwhelming all at once. My head fell back, and my hands left streaks in the steam on the bottom of the mirror behind me.

  The pressure and the pleasure inside me built and built, and it wasn’t long before I was leaning forward and digging my nails into Owen’s back as the orgasm ripped through me. He surged forward again and cried out, finding his own release. We stayed like that, locked together, every single part of us tangled up, and both of us riding the waves of pleasure cascading through our bodies.

  Sometime later, Owen shuddered ou
t a breath and drew back.

  “What do you say, Grayson?” I asked. “Was that fire, food, and wine worth the wait?”

  He pressed a kiss to the top of my bare shoulder. “It’s always worth the wait with you, Gin.”

  Owen got rid of the condom, then reached down and dug another out of his wallet.

  I arched an eyebrow. “What are you up to, Grayson?”

  He picked me up off the counter, and I looped my arms around his neck and locked my legs against his waist.

  With one hand, Owen held me tight against his body. With the other, he opened the glass shower door. “Showing you that I’m worth the wait too.”

  He grinned and carried me into the shower. I laughed and kissed him again, even as the warm water cascaded down on our intertwined bodies, and more steam rose up all around us.

  * * *

  After a very nice interlude in the shower, Owen and I actually did light a fire in the den and have some food and wine before going to bed.

  Owen quickly drifted off to sleep, but I stared up at the ceiling, replaying the events in the cemetery over and over again in my mind. I came to the same worrisome conclusions as before, so I slipped out of bed, put on some clothes, grabbed my knives and phone, and went downstairs to Fletcher’s office—my office now.

  I flipped on the lights, walked past the metal filing cabinets and the bookcases along the wall, and sat down behind the old, battered desk in the back of the room. Instead of the usual office clutter, only a few things were perched on the surface—a bottle of gin, a couple of glasses, a framed photo of Fletcher, and a single manila folder.

  I poured myself a glass of gin and used it to make a toast to the old man’s smiling face. Then I opened the folder and started reading through the information inside.

  I had already reviewed the file a dozen times, and the documents said the exact same things as before. Fletcher had kept tabs on all the major criminals in Ashland, as well as anyone else he thought might be a threat to us, given his past as the assassin the Tin Man and my activities as the Spider.