House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City) (90 page)

Her arms came around him. She was slender—on the taller side, but with a delicate frame. And insane curves. Lush hips, full breasts that pushed against his chest with tantalizing softness. That sweet, tempting ass.

She murmured against his pec, “I never told you the ending of the story from the other night.”

“With the witch-turned-monster?”

“It didn’t end badly.” He didn’t dare breathe. “As the witch fell to the earth, the prince’s arrow through her heart, the forest transformed her into a monster of claws and fangs. She ripped the prince and his hounds to shreds.” Her fingers began trailing up his spine. “She remained a monster for a hundred years, roaming the forest, killing all who drew near. A hundred years, so long that she forgot she had once been a witch, had once possessed a home and a forest she loved.”

Her breath was warm against his chest. “But one day, a warrior arrived in the forest. He’d heard of the monster so vicious none could kill it and live. She set out to slaughter him, but when the warrior beheld her, he was not afraid. He stared at her, and she at him, and he wept because he didn’t see a thing of nightmares, but a creature of beauty. He saw her, and he was not afraid of her, and he loved her.” She released a shuddering breath. “His love transformed her back into a witch, melting away all that she’d become. They dwelled in peace in the forest for the rest of their immortal lives.”

“I like that ending much better,” he said, and she huffed a soft laugh.

He dipped his head, kissing her neck, breathing in the subtle scent of her. His cock instantly hardened. Fuck yes. This scent, this female—

A sense of rightness settled into his bones like a stone dropped in a pond. Her hand began stroking up his spine again. His balls tightened with each trailing caress.

Then her mouth was on his pec, flaming lips grazing over the swirling tattoo there. The pierced nipple on his left pec. Her tongue flicked at the hoop, and his brain went haywire as he realized he was naked, or had somehow willed his clothes gone, because that was his bare skin she was touching, kissing.

And she … He ran his hands over her waist again. Smooth, velvety soft skin greeted him.

“You want to do this?” he ground out.

She kissed his other nipple. “Yes.”

“I’m not even sure we can have sex like this.”

“I don’t see why not.” Her fingers skated down to the top of his ass, taunting.

Ruhn’s cock throbbed. “Only one way to find out,” he managed to say.

Day huffed another breathy laugh and lifted her head. Ruhn just took her face between his hands and kissed her. She opened for him, and their tongues met, and she was as sweet as summer
wine, and he needed to be in her, needed to touch and savor all of her.

Ruhn hoisted her up, and she wrapped her legs around his middle, his cock dangerously close to where it wanted to be. But he carried her to the fainting couch, gently laying her down before climbing atop her. “Let me see your face,” he breathed, sliding a hand between her legs.

“Never,” she said, and Ruhn didn’t care, not as his fingers slicked through her soaked sex. Utterly ready for him.

He spread her knees and knelt between them. Dragged his tongue up her center—

He bucked, like his cock had a mind of its own, like it
needed
to be in her, or it was going to fucking erupt right there—

Ruhn fisted himself, pumping slowly as he licked her again.

Day moaned, her chest heaving, and he was rewarded with the sight of her breasts. Then her arms. Then her stomach and legs, and finally—

She was still crafted of fire, but he could clearly see the body now. Only her head remained in those flames, which shrank until they were no more than a mask over her features.

Long hair cascaded down her torso, and he ran a hand through it. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

“You haven’t seen my face.”

“I don’t need to,” he said. He laid a hand on her heart. “What you do, every minute of every single day … I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“I’ve never met a male like you, either.”

“Yeah?”

“
Yeah
,” she said, and he punished her for the sass in her voice by licking her again, drawing another gasp. “Ruhn.”

Fuck, he loved his name on her lips. He slipped a finger into her, finding her mind-meltingly tight. She was going to drive him wild.

She tugged on his shoulders, hauling him up. “Please,” she said, and he hissed as her fingers wrapped around his cock and guided him to her entrance.

He halted there, poised on the brink. “Tell me what you like,” he said, kissing her neck. “Tell me how you want it.”

“I like it true,” she said, hands running down his face. “I want it real.”

So Ruhn slid home, crying out at the sheer perfection of her. She groaned, arching, and Ruhn stilled. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she whispered, hands framing his face as he hovered above her. “No. Not at all.”

The pressure of her around his cock was too much, too gloriously intense—“I can go slow.” He couldn’t. He really fucking couldn’t, but for her, he’d try.

She laughed softly. “Please don’t.”

He withdrew nearly to the tip and pushed back in with a smooth, steady thrust. He nearly leapt out of his skin at the rippling pleasure.

Her hands dug into his shoulders, and Day said, “You feel better than I even dreamed.”

Ruhn smiled into her neck. “You dreamed about this?”

He thrust again, sinking to the hilt, and she gasped. “Yes,” she said, as if his cock had wrung the word from her. “Every night. Every time I had to …” She trailed off. But Ruhn claimed her mouth, kissing her as deeply as he fucked her. He didn’t need her to say the rest, the part that would smash something in his chest.

Ruhn angled her hips so he could drive deeper still, and she reached up above her to clutch at the rolled arm of the chaise. “Ruhn,” she moaned again, a warning that she was close—and echoed it with a flex of her delicate inner muscles.

The squeeze had him grabbing her hands in his and slamming home. Her hips undulated in perfect rhythm with his, and nothing had ever felt so good, so real as their souls twining here—

“Come for me,” he breathed against her mouth, as he reached between them to rub the bud of her clit in a taunting circle.

Day cried out, and those inner muscles fluttered and clenched around his cock, milking him—

Release barreled through him, and Ruhn didn’t hold back as he pounded into her, wringing the pleasure from both of them.
They kept moving, one orgasm rolling into the next, and he had no fucking idea how it was even possible, but he was still hard, still going, and he needed more and more and more of her—

He erupted again, hauling her with him.

Their breaths echoed against each other like crashing waves, and she was shaking as she held him. He lowered himself so his head rested upon her chest. Her heartbeat thundered into his ear, and even the melody of that was beautiful.

Her fingers tangled in his hair. “I …”

“I know,” Ruhn said. It had never been like that with anyone. Sex had been good, yeah, but this … He was fairly certain his soul lay in splinters around them. He kissed the skin above her breast. “I should have asked you if you had anything to report first.”

“Why?”

“Because my mind’s too fried to remember anything after this point.”

Another one of those soft laughs. “All is quiet. No word on Pippa Spetsos after she eluded capture at Urd’s Temple.”

“Good. Though I guess we could use a distraction to keep attention elsewhere.”

“From what?”

Ruhn toyed with the strands of her long hair, trying to make out the texture, the color. All was pure flame. “I’m coming your way.”

She stilled. “What do you mean?”

“We need to get into the Asteri Archives.”

“Why?”

“The vital intel Sofie Renast possessed is likely in one of the rooms there.”

She pushed up onto her elbows. “What?”

He pulled out of her and said, “Any intel on the layout of the crystal palace or the archives, since you’re so familiar with them … we’d appreciate it.”

“You’re going to break into the crystal palace. Into the archives.”

“Yes.”

“Ruhn.” She grabbed his face in her hands. “Ruhn, do
not
go there. They will kill you. All of you.”

“Hence the need for attention to be elsewhere while we break in.”

Her fingers dug into his cheeks, and her heart pounded so wildly he could hear it. “It’s got to be a trap.”

“No one knows except people I trust. And now you.”

She shot to her feet, again wholly veiled in flame. “If you’re caught, I cannot help you. I won’t be able to risk saving you. Or your sister. You’re on your own.”

His temper began simmering. “So you won’t tell me anything useful about the layout.”

“Ruhn, I—”

Again, that awful hiss of surprise and pain. That glance behind her.

To him. The male.

Ruhn grabbed her hand, like she could stay with him. But she began panting, wild and frantic. Terrified. “Ruhn, they know.
I
—” Her voice cut out for a moment. “The dungeons—”

She vanished.

Like she’d been snatched away.

68

“We leave for the crystal palace tomorrow,” Ruhn snarled at Hunt in the great room of Bryce’s apartment. “At dawn.”

“Let me get this straight,” the angel said with maddening calm. “You’ve been meeting mind-to-mind with Agent Daybright—and dating her?”

Bryce sat at the dining table as she nursed a cup of coffee—which she needed desperately, since Ruhn had burst in at four in the morning. “Banging her, apparently.”

Ruhn growled at his sister. “Does it matter?”

“It does,” Hunt said, “because you’re suggesting that we break into the crystal palace not only to get into the archives, but to save your lady love. That adds a shit-ton of risk.”

“I’ll get her myself,” Ruhn shot back. “I just need to get in with you two first.”

“Absolutely not,” Bryce countered. “I get that you want to play rescuing hero, but what you’re talking about is suicide.”

“Would you hesitate to go in after Athalar?” He pointed to the angel. “Or you to go after Bryce?”

“You’ve known her for a month,” Bryce protested.

“You knew Athalar for barely more than that before you offered to sell yourself into slavery for him.” Ruhn snapped before they could speak, “I don’t need to justify my feelings or my plans to you. I
came here to tell you that I’m going with you. Once we’re inside the palace, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“See, that’s the part that bugs me,” Bryce said, draining her coffee. “This whole ‘separate ways’ thing. We all go in, we all go out.”

Ruhn blinked, but Bryce said to the angel, “Honestly, you should stay here.”

“
Excuse me?
” Hunt demanded.

Ruhn kept silent as Bryce said, “The more of us go in, the better the chance of getting noticed. Ruhn and I can manage.”

“One, no. Two, fuck no. Three …” Hunt grinned wickedly. “Who’s going to level you up, sweetheart?” She scowled, but Hunt plowed on, “I’m going with you.”

She crossed her arms. “It’d be safer with two people.”

“It’d be safer not to go at all, but here we are, going,” Hunt said. Ruhn wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself as the angel crossed the room and knelt before Bryce, grabbing her hands. “I want a future with you.
That’s
why I’m going. I’m going to fight for that future.” His sister’s eyes softened. Hunt kissed her hands. “And to do so, we can’t play by other people’s rules.”

Bryce nodded, and faced Ruhn. “We’re done playing by Ophion’s rules, or the Asteri’s rules, or anyone else’s. We’ll fight our own way.”

Ruhn smirked. “Team Fuck-You.” Bryce grinned.

Hunt said, “All right, Team Fuck-You.” He stood and patted a hand-drawn map of the crystal palace on the dining table. “Fury dropped this off earlier, and now we’re all wide awake, so time to get studying. We need to create a distraction to make the Asteri look elsewhere, and we need to know where we’re going once we’re in there.”

Ruhn tried not to marvel at the commander mode Athalar had slipped into. “It has to be something big,” he said, “if it’ll buy us enough time to get into the archives and find Day.”

“She’s probably in the dungeons,” Hunt said. He added, as if reading Ruhn’s worry, “She’s alive, I’m sure of it. The Hind will be dispatched to work on her—they’re not going to kill her right away. Not when she’s got so much valuable information.”

Ruhn’s stomach churned. He couldn’t get the sound of Day’s panicked voice out of his mind. His very blood roared to go to her, find her.

Bryce said a shade gently, “We’ll get her out, Ruhn.”

“That doesn’t give us much time to plan something big, though,” Hunt said, sliding into the seat beside Bryce.

Ruhn scratched his jaw. They didn’t have time to wait weeks. Even hours might be lethal. Minutes. “Day said that Pippa is lying low—but she has to have something planned. Ophion has taken enough hits to its numbers and bases lately that they’ll likely let her do whatever she wants, either as some final-stand effort or to rally old and new recruits. Maybe we can prompt Pippa to do whatever she’s planning a little earlier.”

Bryce drummed her fingers on the table. “Call Cormac.”

Bryce was fully awake when Cormac arrived thirty minutes later, Tharion in tow. She’d called him, too. He’d started them on this bullshit—he could damn well help finish it.

Yet Tharion … something was off about his scent. His eyes. He said nothing when Bryce asked, so she dropped it. But he seemed different. She couldn’t place it, but he was different.

Cormac said when Ruhn had filled them in, “I have it on good authority as of last night that Pippa is planning a raid in a few weeks on the Pangeran lab where the Asteri’s engineers and scientists work—where they made that new mech prototype. She wants their plans for it, and the scientists themselves.”

“To build the new mech-suits?” Tharion asked.

Cormac nodded.

“And you were going to tell us this when?” Ruhn challenged.

Cormac’s eyes blazed. “I heard at midnight. I figured it could wait until morning. Besides, you lot haven’t bothered to loop me in on anything since the ball, have you?” He directed this last bit at Bryce.