No, I wanted to incite the passion in her just for the carnal satisfaction of it. To be inside her again—to feel her eager slickness around me—to know she wanted to be that close to me despite everything else…
A chill cut through the flames of my desire. That last longing, to be embraced fully by her not just in body but mind and heart as well—I had no business thinking that way. That kind of desire had nearly wrecked me before.
I’d learned my lesson. I damn well better have.
I pulled back, leaving Sorsha flushed and breathless against the wall. A faint glint caught in her eyes in the darkness—a shimmer of tears that had formed before I’d taken her mind off her injury.
“No one’s coming,” I said. “I think it was just an accident, not an attack. We should do something for that wrist. I mean, something more permanent than my immediate efforts.”
I winked, and she managed to grin at me, her mouth twisting as the pain must have caught up with her again.
“I can still do my part in the ambush,” she insisted in a strained voice as we crept out of the stall. “I’m not letting any of you tell me otherwise.”
How was my heart supposed to be still when she talked like that, all ardent defiance? But I hadn’t spent centuries dealing in desire to fail at curtailing my own, even if it wasn’t quite the desire I was used to. I made a flourish with my hand for her to leave the barn ahead of me, as if this had all been a bit of fun.
When Omen returned, he didn’t even try to argue with Sorsha. He knew battle wounds well enough to fashion a rough splint for her wrist, glaring at the limb the whole time even though I’d made it clear she hadn’t been remotely careless. But it turned out none of us had any parts to play. The hour of the supposed hand-off arrived and passed, and another hour after that, until each passing minute left my stomach balled tighter.
“They’re not coming, are they?” Snap said finally.
Omen scanned the farmyard, his expression grim. “No, it appears they aren’t. Let’s hope that means they got scared off by our last ambush and not that they have something worse planned. Time to move out—and make sure that as far as they can tell, no shadowkind were ever here.”
11
Sorsha
My nerves stayed jittery the whole way back to the cabin. I didn’t like that the Company had apparently changed their plans, not at all. They’d never been the fickle type before.
Omen took the windingest of winding routes, and every honk or laugh that carried from the street around us had me jerking around with a hitch of my pulse. Which wasn’t great, because every sudden movement took my probably-broken wrist from the deep but dull ache it’d settled into back to sharp, stabbing throbs for the next few minutes. I couldn’t even bring myself to ponder the mystery of the car’s smoky-savory-minerally car smell.
But even though the eerie stillness of the farm had been supremely suspicious, we made it back to the New-Age retreat unobstructed. I wouldn’t have minded popping into a hospital on the way, but Omen seemed determined not to make any more stops tonight, and I wasn’t going to tell him I couldn’t take the pain.
“First thing in the morning, we’ll find a quiet little clinic where I can ‘encourage’ a doctor into giving you a proper cast,” Ruse assured me when we got out by the cabin.
“I might have a better solution than that,” Omen said curtly, and didn’t follow up that proclamation with any further detail. Just Bossypants being super helpful as always.
I yawned and considered both the makeshift splint and my exhaustion. “Well, I think I’m tired enough to sleep as long as I don’t put any pressure on it.” I paused, eyeing both the incubus and Snap. “So, I’ll need the whole bed to myself, no company. Just FYI.”
Ruse let out a chuckle that sounded oddly emphatic. “Have no worries on that score, Miss Blaze.”
“Do you need anything else?” Snap asked, as if he could have produced whatever I asked for out of the woodlands around us.
“No, rest and a doctor in the morning sounds perfect. But thank you.” I gave him a quick peck for good measure. When I glanced at Ruse, meaning to offer him the same gesture, he averted his gaze and turned as if to inspect the trees. All righty then. I could recognize a brush-off when I saw one, even if I had no idea what bee had gotten into the incubus’s bonnet.
Picturing Ruse swapping his baseball cap disguise for an actual bonnet and taking way too much amusement from the image, I headed into the cabin. By the bunk bed I’d been using, I stopped to fumble with my cat burglar outfit’s belt. Maybe I should have asked one of my lovers to join me for just a little platonic action. Undressing one-handed was pretty tricky.
I settled for only removing the belt with its dangling tools and stuffed all that into my backpack with a sharp tug of the zipper. At the sound, Pickle came scampering out of the bathroom. I’d barely had time to give him a scratch under his chin when the world went to hell around me.
A crash split the air, then a thump and a volley of shouts, most of them voices I didn’t recognize. My heart stopped. No time for that rest right now after all, unless I wanted to be doing it six feet under.
I snatched up my backpack and my purse—and, shit, Pickle. Scooping up the little dragon one-handed, I tossed him into the purse with so little grace he squealed in protest. As I wheeled around, pawing at the backpack for the tools I’d just put away, a figure in silver-and-iron armor crashed through the cabin window.
Shards of glass pelted the arm I raised to protect my face. Thankfully, my fighting instincts kicked in, honed by the self defense classes Luna had made me take—I sent up a silent apology to her spirit for ever complaining about those. The guy lunged at me, and I knocked his feet out from under him with a swipe of my leg. As he caught himself on the post of one of the bunk beds, I groped with my good hand for any hard object I could turn into a weapon.
My fingers collided with a big, jagged hunk of rose quartz on the tiny dresser. Time for it to do something other than look pretty and emanate loving vibes.
The guy swung at me again, but his weapon—one of those blazing whips—wasn’t much use in the tight space. Before he could fling it at me, I walloped him in the head with the pointy end of the crystal. He swayed but managed to throw a punch that clocked me in the jaw.
I reeled backward, my head spinning, and he smacked the crystal out of my hand. I grasped hold of the next nearest object, which turned out to be my lovely lawnmower candle. Thank goodness for thick glass jars. I mashed that right into his nose, hard enough that blood spurted from his nostrils.
As he swore at me, I fled out the cabin door. Pickle squeaked in distress at the bumping of my purse against my ribs, but I didn’t have a chance to steady him, especially when my one functional hand held my only means of defense.
Outside was even more of a shit-show. The moonlight glinted off protective helmets and vests all across the clearing. Thorn let out a bellow as he thwacked a few of our attackers off him, but their weapons had slashed across his bulging arms deeply enough that even in the darkness I could make out hazy mist trickling out of the wounds.
Shadowkind didn’t bleed like we did, not that red liquid mess. Sever what should have been a vein or an artery, and their essence wisped out as black smoke.