Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (32 page)

“I need you,”
I said, my voice thick with desire, as I slid down, over and around
him.

He moaned before his
mouth captured mine, and his tongue took command of my own. My
breasts rubbed against his chest, hardening my nipples into beads and
sending a jolt of pleasure to my inner core. I shifted side to side,
up and down, gasping as every little movement made both of us vibrate
and convulse against the other. Tristan’s muscles tightened and
undulated underneath me, his arms and shoulders and back muscles hard
as rock. I slid my hands up his neck and into his hair, grabbing it
in my fists, and pulling him closer as we kissed until we both became
dizzy.

His legs shook, and he
dropped to the mattress. I slid down harder and deeper over him,
making us both cry out. I lifted up to my knees and dropped down
again. Pleasure rocked through my body. This was what I needed. To
lose myself, my mind, my heart, everything, to the moment. To focus
only on the physical, on the taste and smell of my man, on the feel
of his skin and muscles under my touch, on the way he felt inside me,
throbbing and pulsing.

His hands clamped onto
my hips, and his thumbs dug into the tender area at the top of my
thigh, making me squeeze him and utter another moan. Then he lifted
me, and I rose up on my knees until I almost lost him before sliding
down again.

“Oh, Lex,”
he groaned. “Again.”

His hand slid forward,
and his thumb circled over my center, teasing the nub of nerves as he
lifted me again. I whimpered his name as I came down and he thrust
upward, and then I rose again, my movements becoming faster and
harder as his thumb pressed deeper and worked quicker. The sensation
started in my belly, like the feeling of falling, and bloomed
downward and out and in, all at the same time. My skin tightened over
my breasts, and I grabbed at them to release the ache. But the
pressure was really building below, making me convulse around him as
I started to lose control.

“Tristan,”
I gasped. “Oh, God, baby.”

I dragged myself up and
slammed back down, once, twice, and a third time, and I was about to
soar over the edge when he flipped us over so I lay on my back. Then
he drove into me, again and again, and I completely lost it. Lost
myself in the moment. In the physicality. In the complete bliss. I
left this godforsaken world for our own private one, floating into
oblivion, screaming my lover’s name as I brought him with me.
Leaving my body, with every muscle clenched down to my curling toes,
if only for a moment of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

Tristan continued
pumping into me, though, and my belly trembled, my spine tingled, and
my toes clenched as he sent me soaring over and over again. He
plunged into me one more time as his mouth said my name like a dirty
word before he exploded inside me. I grabbed him, squeezing tight
with both arms and legs, milking every bit out of him. Then he
collapsed on top of me, and I wrapped myself around him, melding my
body to his, becoming one with him.

“I love you so
much,” I whispered.

“I love you more
than life, sexy Lexi,” he said against my ear, and then he
rolled off of me. I missed him immediately and rolled over to press
as much of my skin against his as I possibly could.

“I needed that.”

He chuckled. “I’d
say so. Not like you to let go like that.”

“You know, the
first time you had Owen do that, I was so embarrassed. But it’s
necessary, right? Like on days like today.” I trailed my
fingers over his chest and abs, making his muscles tighten under the
light touch.

“Lexi, I didn’t
have Owen do anything.”

My hand froze. “He
didn’t muffle and block our room?”

“Not this time. I
hadn’t expected you …” His voice trailed off, and
his head turned slightly toward me. He stared at me with sparkling
eyes, but they dimmed as the seconds ticked by. “You can’t
hear me?”

“I’m
talking to you, aren’t I?”

“In your head.”
He tapped his finger against my forehead.

I sucked in a breath.
“Oh, no! I can’t! I can’t hear or sense anyone.
You’re sure you don’t have the room blocked?”

“Even if I did,
you’d be able to hear me.”

I groaned. He was
right.

“That explains
why you didn’t share everything with me like you usually do
when you let go. I missed that.”

I pressed my face into
the soft area where his shoulder and pectoral muscle met. He meant
how I could mentally share my orgasm with him and he could share his,
but this development was far worse than that. I’d lost touch
with my ability before, but not so thoroughly. And something as
intense as that orgasm should have broken through the obstruction the
sorcerers had apparently lodged into my brain.

“My telepathy is
our advantage,” I said. “What if it doesn’t come
back this time?”

He brushed a hand over
my hair, pushing it back over my shoulder. “It will,
ma
lykita
. The Angels gave that gift to you for a reason. They
wouldn’t take it away.”

I hoped he was right.
But I couldn’t help but think that maybe this was my punishment
for being such a failure. If the Angels planned to fire me, to throw
me to the other side, they wouldn’t allow me to keep such a
powerful gift, would they?

Had
the Angels
given up on me? Had God? I couldn’t blame them if they had.
Maybe this had been their plan all along, and one by one, the good
people of my team would make it to Heaven before it all ended. Maybe
all of our bad luck really was part of the apocalypse that the
Normans theorized about.

Was this really the
beginning of the end?

If so, my ancestors
apparently didn’t want me to know, because they remained
completely silent about everything.

* * *

“We have to stick
with our plan, which means going to Virginia,” I told my team,
which had gathered in the cafeteria the next morning after breakfast
had ended and everyone else had moved out. I’d called them
together for a meeting to regroup on our plans. “That’s
what Solomon would want.”

“And you want
Owen to open a portal right to the DoD building?” Vanessa
asked.

“No, of course
not,” I answered. “For one, I’m not taking Dorian
into what will surely be a fight.”

“So the safe
house?” Blossom asked.

“We have no idea
if it’s really safe,” Charlotte said. She sat on the edge
of a table, showing no signs of being shot yesterday. Vanessa must
have given her a good dose of blood to help her heal.

“Kristen said
there are a few cells of A.K.’s Angels in the U.S.,”
Tristan said. “One of those is probably the safest place we can
go first. They might panic when we arrive, but hopefully they’ll
see Alexis before they fire.”

“We only know the
exact location of two.” Ammi’s voice came from the
opposite side of the bunker, spoken softly but carrying to our ears
anyway. “Sorry, but I can’t help but hear you.”

“Why don’t
you come here then,” I said, and the mages, the only ones who
couldn’t hear her, gave me strange looks, wondering to whom I
spoke. Ammi appeared in the doorway a moment later, her dark eyes
wide.

She wrung her hands in
front of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
eavesdrop. I’m still getting used to these new ears.”

“It’s
okay,” I said. “We need your help. Tell everyone what you
just said.”

She nodded and relaxed
as she came farther into the room. “We only know where two of
the cells’ exact locations are. There was a cell in Washington,
D.C., which I think is right where you want to go, but the last we
heard, they hadn’t found a permanent, or even semi-permanent
safe place. They’d been moving around every night. We don’t
know if they’re even still a unit.”

“Where are the
two you know about?” Tristan asked.

“One’s in
California and the other in Florida. I think Florida is nearer to
Virginia? Sorry. I don’t know my American geography very well.”

“Florida?”
I mused out loud. “Where in Florida?”

“On the left
side. Cape something … it began with an H. I’d never
heard of it before. I think it’s a really small town.”

Tristan and I exchanged
a look. What were the odds?

“Cape Heron?”
I hedged.

“Yes! That’s
it! How did you—oh, wait. That makes sense you would know. They
said you wrote your first book there. That’s why they went
there.”

I pressed a palm to my
forehead and blew out a soft snort. My fans were lovely, but a little
weird. Who goes to a town an author once lived in because they
thought it would be a safe place? Especially when said author was
Public Enemy Number One, or whatever ridiculous name they’d
christened me?

“I guess we go
there first?” I asked Tristan.

“Anywhere will be
risky, but when we show up out of thin air, your supporters will be
less likely to shoot at us. We’ll just have to make our way up
to Virginia.”

“First, we have
to hope they’re still there and not overtaken by the Daemoni,
or worse, a Norman farm,” Sheree said.

“Cape Heron’s
too small for the Daemoni to worry about, and full of retirees,”
Tristan replied, and he didn’t need to explain further, but the
visual came to me anyway of what the Daemoni did to old people.

“You’re
okay to move on?” I asked Charlotte one more time before we
made our final decision.

She smiled. “Good
as new. Probably better than I was before I got shot. And trust me,
that’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
Your mom would …” She trailed off, and her smile
faltered. “We had some interesting times, she and I. I’ll
just leave it at that.”

I threw my arms around
her neck, and she wrapped hers around me. “You’re the
closest thing I have to a mom now, Char. Don’t leave me, too.”

“Like I said
yesterday, I don’t plan on going anywhere any time soon. You
and Owen and this whole lot need me.” She gave me a final
squeeze, then grabbed my shoulders and pushed me away. “Now,
let’s get back to work and win this war.”

I mentally called out
for Dorian, but my head still refused to function properly. That
bitch Jeana may as well have cut off my arm. She would’ve
wished she had if I ever saw her again, because I’d be
assaulting her with lethal doses of Amadis power. I didn’t know
if such a thing as too much goodness existed, but I could hope so for
someone like her and Merrick.

Once we were ready for
our next adventure, we said goodbye to Ammi, Kristen, Olivia, and the
rest.

“As soon as we’re
gone, seek out the other Amadis,” I told them. “They’ll
most likely be on sacred ground, but probably more on the outskirts
of the city. They’ll sense Ammi is one of them when you’re
near, and you’ll feel them, too. Give them this.”

I pressed a folded up
note into Ammi’s palm, and she closed her fist around it. The
encrypted message inside would ensure they knew the note came from
me, with an order for them to come help my Angels here and train
them.

“Be safe,
Alexis,” she said as she wrapped me in a hug. “I hope
we’ll get to see you again.”

“Trust me, so do
I. You’re one of mine now, you know.”

Her face broke into a
huge smile, as if she’d just realized what her transformation
and conversion really meant.

Tristan had figured out
the coordinates to the address Ammi and Kristen had for the Cape
Heron cell, and Owen opened a portal. The other side—a dark and
dingy interior—didn’t look like anything in Cape Heron I
remembered, but I stepped through first anyway, hands up and ready to
fire in case someone shot at me. Four surprised faces stared at me
instead, two of them quite familiar. Now we knew who had told
everyone A.K.’s real name.

“Alexis!”
one of them squealed, and the young woman launched herself at me. I
couldn’t help but return her embrace, holding her close, happy
to see her alive. And still human.

“I’m so
glad you’re okay, Heather,” I said.

She squeezed me tighter
while trying to jump up and down. “I can’t believe you’re
here! You found us! Did you find Dorian? Oh my God, Tristan!
Blossom!
”

She released me and
flew over to tackle Blossom with a hug, while her sister strode over
to me and hesitated.

“How are you,
Sonya?” I asked. “Still good?”

She nodded vehemently.

“Always,”
she said, and I swallowed her into a hug. When she stepped back, she
indicated the other two young women who’d been sitting on the
floor with them. The quintet had been gathered around a cardboard box
with two cans of food sitting on it. “This is Teal and Teah.
They’re cousins, and big fans of yours, too. Not like Heather
and me, though. A lot less creepy.”

I couldn’t help
but laugh. Sonya had once been one of those fans who had my publicist
worried that she’d kidnap me and break my foot so I couldn’t
escape. Heather wasn’t quite as intense as a fan, but when she
figured out we could help her sister, she’d stalked our house
until I agreed to do what we could for the vampire. Sonya’s
initial conversion failed because of a stone Kali had given her that
had been the precursor to the ones in the Summoned sons now. During
our search for Dorian, we’d been able to remove the stone and
convert Sonya completely. We’d lost touch with the girls when
the Daemoni decided to take over the world.

The cousins unfolded
themselves and rose to their feet, both tall, with brown hair, bright
blue eyes, and warm smiles. They stood with shoulders touching each
other, staring at us shyly. I reached my hand toward them, and when
they shook my hand, I noticed their tattoos, similar to the ones
everyone had in London. The taller one, I thought she was the one
named Teah, caught me looking at the ink, and lifted her wrist for me
to see better.