“Nor do I have the time to explain it. We’ll need to finish this conversation another time, Priestess. They’re closing in. Come.” He bends down closer to me and holds out his arms. “I’ll need to fly us out of here.”
Cautiously, I rise from the boulder on my good leg. This time, when we touch, it is not his old life on Earth I see, but glimpses of another place. He rises naked from a pool of silver. It drips off of him as he strides forward. Hair wet and body gleaming. He is a sight that, though I try internally to pull away from, I cannot. In the next glimpse, he is wearing his full armor and standing next to Pollock and two others. An angel that is larger and broader with red hair, and one dark, his black wings the biggest and set high over his shoulders, black but shimmering with gold.
The dark one turns as if sensing that I am infiltrating this moment, and he peers at me with eyes that remind me of the wheatfield.
Of the day that changed my life forever. They too are gold.
I am suddenly pulled out of the moment as Orán speaks. “The tattoo, the one on the back of your neck that they marked you with as a little girl. What is the meaning of the symbol?”
I know what he speaks of, the thought of sharing that with him—knowing that he is experiencing the same thing, small glimpses into my past when we touch—unnerves me.
“I don’t know.”
He picks me up gently and holds me for only a second before he walks to the edge of the cliff. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Probably because I do not put much effort into the lie. I am still reeling with all I have learned, and the last thing I want to do is reveal that I was hand-selected by our Order to defeat the very being who is saving my life.
Chapter Twenty
Uninvited Guest
Kahill
I’m mid-thrust when the flap at the entrance to my tent peels open. Light streams in from the roaring fires of the camp, casting dancing shadows over the bodies strewn across my bed. The man beneath me turns his head, but I tighten my grip around his neck in warning. He should be too goddamn busy taking me to pay attention to newcomers. And if he wasn’t, he will be.
I brand his ass with my handprint in rapid succession and force him to take me deeper. The heady slide of his channel squeezing around my cock pulls a groan from me because fuck if he isn’t the sweetest thing I’ve had in ages.
This is why virgins are my catnip. They’re so ripe. Plucking and pillaging a hole that’s never been breached—there’s nothing like it. Also, the thrill I get from being the one compelling them to fall from grace is an addiction I don’t wish to cure myself of anytime soon.
He succumbs to the pleasure, mewling unintelligible curses as he buries his face in my bedsheets. Three women occupy the bed beside us and are currently enjoying themselves as they trade places and please one another. My thrall has well and truly taken hold; neither their hands nor their mouths stay idle for long. They’ve also taken advantage of the many toys I’ve acquired and are making great use of them.
The heady pleasure wafting off them soaks into my skin. I breathe it in, not sucking, but letting the power simply sink into me and feed the demon who relishes such things. The one who lives vicariously through me.
It’s the same throughout the large tent. Different groups are paired off. The ones who’ve been here the longest are tangled in a pile of bodies on the floor, rutting like animals—so lost to the pheromones I’m exuding that they know only hunger. An itch no amount of bodies, drugs, or drink can satisfy.
I’d be right there in the thick of it if the tension riding me all day had been manageable. If my mind weren’t still partially engaged, searching for the answer to whatever has me feeling off-center.
The new recruit—with his baby face and blond hair so much like Pollock’s—was impossible to pass up. He wandered into the melee wearing that wide-eyed, innocent look that gets me every damn time.
I love breaking in the newbies, men and women like him, showing them all what they’ve been missing, and his shocked expression pulled a deep laugh from me. I instantly felt his nervous energy, which screamed virgin—so sexually inexperienced that this orgy scandalized his prudish sensibilities.
A large shadow draws over our group, and a presence, one I know well, his scent of winter mountain air, and the hunt, invades my senses.
“You joining in, or are you just here to ruin my fun?”
As if to disguise his visit, Pollock wears a black cloak and a mask to cover the lower part of his face. “Good Lord, the smell. I don’t know how any of them stand it.”
“What? Does the smell of semen disturb you that much? I know you’re a killjoy, but every man enjoys the scent of sex in the air.”
“I do, but not to this degree. It smells like you all haven’t left the tent for days.”
“Some haven’t.”
I run my hand down the spine in front of me and then grip his hip as I swirl mine. Pollock’s eyes venture down to where our bodies connect. It’s a glimpse, really, but having his gaze on my cock as I pull out and thrust back in does wonders for me. Quirking a brow, I watch him watch me and gauge his reaction.
He shifts on his feet, and his eyes stray to a dark corner of the tent. A safe corner. His stance has grown colder, a contradiction to that brief flash of interest and the acceleration of the stalwart heart that beats in his chest.
Hope grows from the smallest of things.
