Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2 (42 page)

He took five large steps to the dining room table and swept off the dishes and silverware with one pass of his arm. He peeled me off him and flipped me over on my stomach, ripping my cotton lounge pants down around my ankles. I cried out as the cool air hit my inflamed lips, and suddenly he was there. The broad head of his penis penetrated me without apology, stretching me to the point where pain and pleasure converged, my natural lubricant so abundant that he slid home with one push despite my tight channel.

Hellion groaned and I began to push against him, encouraging him to find a rhythm that would help me get to the crescendo.

He didn’t give me a choice. Hands gripping my hips, Hellion began to move in a way that bordered on contained violence, pounding into me mercilessly. I grunted with each slamming stroke, and I could feel my orgasm building immediately. The dregs of magic seemed to swirl and stroke all my most private places, and he coaxed it with words I couldn’t understand so it seemed there were suddenly a dozen hands pinching and tugging at my clit and my nipples, stroking my lips and tracing down my spine. I couldn’t form intelligent words as I scrabbled with my hands against the wood to gain some handhold that would let me be more than just the recipient. But it was useless. Hellion rode me hard, fast and deep, his thrusts bruising my hips as they hit the edge of the table over and over. I screamed as my orgasm tore through me, lighting me up from the inside. I felt Hellion’s response and he thrust once more, buried as deep as he could get, shaking with the power of his release.

He kept making small mini thrusts, as if he couldn’t quite let go of the pleasure, and so long as his continued, so did mine.

I felt him slip from me, and I grunted in response to the sensation. Lifting my head, I was horrified at the state of the room. Broken dishes and food were slung across the floor where Hellion had swept them with his arm. Napkins and paperwork were all over the place, chairs were overturned and the chandelier was still swinging. I pushed myself to standing then bent gingerly to pull up my pants, only to find them in tatters around my ankles. I’d been going through a lot of clothing since I’d a) become involved in the supernatural world and b) started having sex with the supes. My mind closed off at the track that was taking, doing what it could to protect the few shreds of what I considered decency I had left. I blushed furiously, those last few shreds sending up the white flag of surrender.

“What is it,
a mhuirnín
?”

“What is it?” I choked out. “The entire household is going to know what we’ve been doing! Adelle was right. I’m a whore.” I shook my head, frustrated despite the lingering effects of mind-blowing sex.

“She said
what
?” Hellion stood and tucked himself back into his pants. He was white with rage, and I worried a little that I was going down a road I didn’t want to travel.

“Can we just go to the bedroom? Do that dematerialize thing and save me from having to face the coven just yet?” I pleaded.

Hellion dropped his head forward and placed his clenched fists on his hips. “You’re embarrassed again.” It was a statement of fact, and one I wouldn’t deny. “Maddy, the supernatural world has an entirely different take on sex than the mundane world. Sex is a natural thing between adults. We’re fortunate we’re very much in love, because it makes it better, and our species focuses on consent.”

My head whipped around and I said, “What do you mean ‘our species’?”

“You’re right.
My
species of magi is concerned with consent. For some creatures of the supernatural, taking by force is as reputable as taking by seduction.” His brows drew together, and he seemed to struggle with a question for a moment before asking, “Do you see us as so different, then?”

“No, it’s just the consent thing that stumped me.”

“You should have realized even dragons don’t always consider consent essential, Maddy.”

I groaned and thumped my head against the wall. “You’re right. Great super sleuth I’m turning out to be.”

He dropped a heavy hand gently to my shoulder and turned me around, offering me his opened arms, which I gladly accepted. He hugged me and set his lips just above my ear and whispered, “You’ve done an amazing job. Let’s get you cleaned up, and we’ll see if we can’t put an end to this.”

I nodded, tears inexplicably burning the back of my throat. Solving this case was going to put him in direct jeopardy because I knew the killer wouldn’t just accept judgment for the crimes committed against the presumably “inferior” mundanes. No, the killer would have guilt determined and be taken down outside the safety of a stone circle. It wasn’t going to be quiet or easy.

Hellion wrapped me in his arms and I clung to him, suddenly scared my time with him might be running out.

The day’s light was fading as we wandered downstairs to meet Darius when he rose for the night. We’d read the online news reports of the most recent murders, discussed the locations of the bodies as they’d been found in the tony neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park, and dissected every clue we’d uncovered in the course of the investigation. Nothing was gelling for me in the face of my blossoming fear that Hellion was going to end up fighting a bloody battle to see his vengeance served.

Mark and Stearns had been very solicitous in the wake of the dining room debacle, more impressed with Hellion’s borderline dark magic than the resultant orgasmic earthquake and the mess we’d made. I tried to find reasons to leave the room every time they were around until, finally fed up with my doorway sprints, Hellion snagged me around the waist and pulled me into his lap. I struggled ineffectually and finally just gave up.

Darius strolled into the room looking delicious in black leather pants, combat boots and a tight cashmere turtleneck, also in black. He was completely healed. I couldn’t help the once-over I gave him. Misinterpreting my careful perusal, he arched his brow and turned, striking a pose that gave me a perfect view of his ass. “Like what you see, Maddy?” His voice was teasing but there was still an undercurrent of something unidentifiable there, and it made me stop the easy rejoinder that was on the tip of my tongue and just make a noncommittal noise. “Hellion,” Darius said, inclining his head. Tensions between the men were still higher than when I’d first met them, and the only denominator their strange behavior seemed to have was me.

“So,” I said, desperately casting about for a way to direct the conversation. “Tyr pulled me into a little impromptu visit early this morning.” The vampire never took his eyes off mine as he poured himself a glass of wine, so I continued. “He said I ‘touched the killer’ last night, and it was important that I get this tied up quickly.” I swallowed the lump of fear building in my throat, and I closed my eyes, concentrating on keeping him out of my thoughts.

He looked at me hard, and I felt the fingers of his mind poking around mine.

I shook my head and the feeling subsided. “Do you remember who I touched? I’ve gone over everyone I met, but most supes don’t shake hands, and I was able to rule them out in groups. I’ve got Praen, who did shake my hand, Adelle, who went to slap me and I stopped her—”

“Come again?” Hellion demanded.

“Leave it alone. It’s done.” I ran my hand across his shoulder, and he trapped my hand with his, bringing it to his lips for a kiss. Remembering the way he and Darius had gone at each other only a couple of nights ago, I took my hand away and patted his knee, sliding off his lap to sit beside him. If it bothered him, he said nothing. “So there’s Praen, Adelle and who? Who else that fits with the clues we know to be factual and not speculative?”

“You’re forgetting me,” Darius said, his voice making me shiver involuntarily as I thought of silk sheets and whipped cream and… Obviously there were residual effects from this afternoon’s power surge. Hellion stroked my hand, and suddenly all I could think of was the silk sheets, whipped cream and these two men undeniably at my service. Darius’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and he took a breath. When he didn’t say anything, I realized he’d been scenting my arousal. Hellion must have suspected as much because he started to open his mouth, and I laid my hand on his thigh, close to his groin. He unconsciously shifted so my hand grazed his testicles, and they tightened in response. There was too much sexual energy in this room for this to be normal. Someone had to tone it down, and the way the men were looking at me made it clear neither of them would take the initiative.

So I cleared my voice loudly and said, “Who. Else. Someone throw in some ideas, now, before this pisses me off. And no, I’m not forgetting you. You aren’t doing this.”

Darius took a long sip of his wine and looked down, seeming to gather himself. “There are two others you’re dismissing, though one touched you and you touched one. The first is Aiden, Bahlin’s brother. When you stopped his mother from striking you, he grabbed your arm.”

“But does that count? I mean, technically, he touched
me
, I didn’t touch
him
.”

“Because only you spoke to Tyr, I believe we’re going to have to defer to your interpretation of his words to you,” Hellion said, sitting forward and reaching for his whiskey glass. I’d elected a Coke tonight in lieu of alcohol. I needed the caffeine.

“I’m going to say he’s not at the top of the list because he touched me, not the other way around.” I tapped my fingers against my teeth as I thought, and Hellion finally reached over and grabbed my hand to make me stop.

“Thanks, Hellion,” Darius drawled. “I was about to ask you to roast me again just to get her to quit.” And with that jab at my expense, the men seemed to ease down and things were back to normal.

“Sorry,” I murmured, watching them as they interacted. I envied the easy friendship that seemed to usually exist between them, and I hoped Darius and I would be able to develop that same comfortable familiarity over time. I thought we were well on our way. “Sorry,” I said again, stronger this time. “My mind was wandering.” I shook my head as if to clear the imaginary cobwebs, and I turned to Darius. “Who else, Darius? You said I was dismissing two others. Aiden’s one. Who’s the—” My stomach clenched and I grabbed it, bending over. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. I know who it is.”

Darius stood and stepped toward me, hand outstretched, but Hellion was closer. He swept me up in his arms and cradled me close to his chest. “Who, love?”

I shook my head violently, whispering, “No,” over and over under my breath.

“Just tell me, Maddy.” Hellion’s arms tightened around me and held me protectively.

Darius opened his mouth to speak the name, and I screeched at him, “NO! Don’t you dare say it, Darius.”

Darius’s voice cracked across the small room like a gunshot and was as effective as a physical slap to knock me out of my panic. “Madeleine Niteclif, you are not a coward, so stop behaving as such. Hellion, set her down.”

Hellion looked thunderous but I took a shaking breath and nodded, standing on my own feet as Hellion released me. Shaky, but I’d do. “I’ll thank you later.”

“Care to elaborate on why the name fills you with dread?” Darius looked pointedly over my shoulder at Hellion, who was still hovering.

I rubbed the tight feeling that was gathering between my breasts and nodded. “Hellion said…” I had to stop and breathe.

“Whatever I said, Maddy, it can’t be this bad.” Hellion wrapped long arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. I laid my cheek against his and he whispered, “We’ll handle it together.”

“But that’s just it. You didn’t know if we could handle it. You said, oh Hellion, you said that if it was…Gaitha, you didn’t know how we’d stop her.”

“The mad queen was at the park?” he asked, clearly confused.

“No, but if she would have been hard to stop, how hard will it be to stop her husband? Kelten’s our killer.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The house was a flurry of activity as phone calls were made and vampires came and went. We’d decided not to notify the Council because of Kelten’s connections. Praen was new enough that there was little way to judge what her reaction would be. If she wanted to forewarn her uncle, he could hide in the fae’s sithen until the end of time, and no one would be able to pull him out. From there he’d be able to coordinate my death among his loyalists or take care of it himself. A lifetime was a long time for me to be looking over my shoulder.

The men had been completely silent as I laid out what I was certain were the facts. The day I’d returned with Clay to the hotel, I’d seen someone in the hotel lobby who I thought I’d recognized. I’d been certain he was fae, but I’d been in enough pain, and had met enough of the fae over the previous weeks, that I wasn’t certain I’d know his name, so I’d dismissed the thought of calling out a hello. In civilian clothes of jeans and a T-shirt, and out of his spot in my mind, it just hadn’t dawned on me that it was Kelten.

The flowers had been from him. He’d stuck the hair inside the card to prove how close he had come to me while I was unaware of him, though how he’d obtained the hair from my head still stumped me.

The fight with Bahlin that resulted in his violent disappearance would have shown up on the Council’s radar, and probably the fae seer’s beacon. We knew that, at the very least, Sarenia’s seer had picked it up. How? Bahlin’s admission of Aiden’s frantic call to him.

Kelten would have known of our general movements around England and Scotland because he had watchers of his own. It had been his lackey who had followed us to Avebury Henge and the restaurant that day. Kelten had killed the waitress before attending the Council vote, believing me to still be in the area. In fact, I’d already been at Hellion’s London home or well seated inside the henge when the killing occurred. I regressed into speculation at that point, believing Kelten had had his wife, Gaitha, forcibly if not violently locked up and abused, hence the claw marks on his face and the scratches and bruises around her throat. She’d tried to warn me that night at the henge but I’d seen only what Kelten counted on me seeing when he brought her, and that was the countenance of a woman driven mad by grief.