Rock Hard And Wet (BBW Paranormal Romance) (Nymphs Of New York) (8 page)

Callie wandered down the sidewalk with
her sketchbook clutched to her chest and her messenger bag stuffed with the
shredded remains of her original outfit. She didn’t know why she’d taken the
garments out of the trash.

The agony in her chest ripped and shredded her heart. Breathing
tore the muscles in her belly and lungs. Pain ripped through her so hard, she
couldn’t even cry.

None of which made sense. How had this happened?

She collided with a man coming from the other direction, their
shoulders smacking into each other almost turned her around in a circle. The
sketchbook flew from her hand and skittered down the walk until it hit the toes
of a couple of business women striding toward her. They didn’t slow to pick it
up and offer it to her.

Maybe that was Theo’s problem. Living in this city with all these
rude people changed you. But all evidence pointed to a male who harbored his
kind nature behind a gruff, scarred exterior. No, he wasn’t mean. At least, not
normally.

“Hey there, gorgeous girl.” The man she’d bumped into held her by
the elbow and ducked his head to meet her eyes. “Watch where you’re going. This
city is dangerous.” He smiled and flashed small pointed teeth. His green eyes
obscured for a moment by cloudy, vertical membranes.

Callie gasped and froze, afraid to move. “P-please, forgive me.”
Of course she’d manage to offend one of the most dangerous beings in creation.
Herodes.

He inclined his head, the light brown strands reflecting the sun
in a way that dazzled the eye. She inched forward, caught by the power of the
enchantment in his aura.

“Ah-ah-ah, Callianira.” The light touch of his palm over her face
tingled, and when he removed it, the urge to follow him, to obey his every whim
disappeared. “Now then, off with you. I need to catch my dinner, and you’re not
on the menu.”

“Thank the gods,” she muttered. Disbelief that Herodes had
remembered her after three centuries followed by relief at being released
shoved her grief over Theo aside for a moment. The male had never been known
for being picky about his food, and the one time they’d met, Poseidon had
barred him from the castle. Of course, Herodes had stretched the limits of
hospitality by consuming a member of the palace guard.

“No. Thank the grotesques,” he smirked. “They’ve agreed to let me
hunt in their city in exchange for cleaning up a nasty gang of humans that are
giving them problems.”

At the mention of Theo’s people, the crushing weight in her chest
returned and she nodded. “Oh. Well, in any case, thank you for not eating me
Hero—”

He cut her off by chucking her under the chin. “Don’t thank me.
I’m a selfish creature and am not given to altruism.” He straightened his shirt
cuffs. “Your sketchbook is going to be trampled.”

The book was indeed in danger of being destroyed. She threaded
through the people around her to retrieve the item and found herself yanked off
her feet and into the mouth of an alley.

Old moss and wet stone smells invaded her nose. Hard, tight
fingers dug into her upper arms. Pain exploded in the back of her head when it
collided with the wall. She slumped to the ground, the sticky wetness of blood
flowing down the back of her neck.

A man’s face appeared in front of her, and the cold, calculation
in his gaze reminded her of a cobra about to strike. She lay splayed out on the
ground, unable to move. Fear surged and boiled, becoming a churning weight that
crushed her.

His irises coated over with the red haze she’d seen in Theo’s
eyes. Callie attempted to take a breath, to scream for help, but he clamped his
hand over her mouth. Searing, white hot agony erupted from her belly, followed
by a horrible, noxious stench.

The pain increased as he jerked his fist through her torso once
more.

She managed to flail at him, an ineffectual fist bounced off his
right shoulder, but he gave it no more attention than he would a bug near his
ear.

“You will not defile the aerie. It cannot be allowed.” He leaned
down toward her, his thin lips compressed into a tight line. Weak light
reflected from the bare skin of his skull. “I knew he would do it. Disgrace us
again. I should have killed him when he was a pup.”

The scrabble of her feet on the old asphalt blended in with the
cacophony of the surrounding city. Callie rolled her eyes to the right and
left. They were behind a dumpster. The alley dead ended not far away. She
managed a fist with her left hand, pounded him on the back, and tried to bite
into his palm. Her teeth did nothing to penetrate his skin. It was too hard.

This man was a grotesque like Theo. She coughed and gurgled as
blood filled her lungs. He must have sliced into them when he shredded into her
belly. Muscles in his shoulder flexed and the river of fire in her abdomen
increased. He held up his free hand and showed her the long ropes of her
intestines before dropping them to the ground.

“Are you quite finished yet? I’ve yet to catch my dinner. I can’t
stand guard all day, you know.”

Callie knew the voice, but lacked the strength to turn her head or
eyes to see him. Herodes. Why had he done this to her?

The grotesque snarled at him and gave a vicious yank that bowed
her spine. More bloody ropes wrapped around his fist.

“You can eat this thing. Consider it a gift.”

Tears slid from her eyes and she raised her hand once more.

Herodes shook his head. “Such a waste.” The dragon gave the male
who tortured her a look filled with disgust. “Finish it, Booker. Even I don’t
play with my food. I stick to criminals these days.”

Booker. She knew that name. Theo said Booker had been waiting for
him on the roof.

“Only because we force you to.” Booker stared down his nose at her
for a moment, the hatred and venom in his expression so acute if she’d been
able to sink into the ground, she would have. A few large puddles of old muddy
water stood nearby, but all she managed to do was splash him with a weak
spatter. “If our ranks did not dwindle so, I would kill Theo. But I cannot.”

“I find your vehemence strange, Booker. Are you not a half-breed
yourself?” The smell of ash and fire filled the alley for a moment. Callie
tried to plead with Herodes, tried to fill her eyes with something that might
sway him to help her, but he ignored her. “You have found a place among your aerie.”

“What would you know about it? The blood in your veins is pure.”
Booker surged to his feet and snarled. “You know nothing of my life.” He sank
back to his haunches in front of her. The muscles in his chest bunched under
his shirt and he raised a hand with elongated fingers tipped with huge claws
coated with chunks of flesh. Her flesh.

Herodes cocked his head to the side and shrugged. “Perhaps you are
correct. It was nice to see you again, Callianira.” He lifted two fingers to
his brow in a small salute and strolled away.

“The aerie must be protected.” The grotesque eyed her with a
critical expression. “You are an attractive female. I can see the appeal.”

In a flash of movement, the claws gouged into her throat, and the
tiny amount of control she’d been regaining over her body ceased. A hot gush of
blood pumped out of the slashes. Her vision dimmed and faded, Booker’s angular
face the last thing she saw.

Despite
the hour and danger of being seen by humans, Theo longed to burst free of the
confines of his human skin and climb to the top of the tallest building in the
city. If he still had wings, he’d take to the skies and soar on thermal
updrafts until frost formed on his body.

From
that height, he’d be able to spot Callie, keep watch over her while she
remained in the city. He stripped the bedding off the mattress, brought it to
his nose to fill it with her scent, and then threw the wad of linens at the
wall.

The
memory of her gathering her things, stuffing them into her oversized purse
would haunt him forever. A new, fresh disaster to add to his mental gallery.

He used
his knee to shove the bed back a foot to its rightful place. The entire frame had
moved from the force of him yanking the ruined sheets and blanket off.

Fear
stabbed its way into his chest. He crouched and spun in a fast circle. The
emotion faded away and he fell onto his ass, confused by the episode. No one
else in his apartment. The sounds of the buildings around him were normal.

The
feeling came back again, stronger this time, and then the back of his skull
exploded in a flash of torture that sent white light searing across his eyes. He
clutched at his head, nauseated and overcome with pain. Confusion and anxiety
began to overshadow the sensations swamping him. The pain didn’t belong to him.

“Logan!
Brother!”
He
opened their link as wide as possible, panic overtaking common sense.

“Theo?
What’s wrong?”

“Are
you harmed? What has happened?”
A
fresh wave of sensation ripped through his guts and he doubled over.

“I’m
fine. I’m with Petra.”
Logan’s
confusion added to his own.
“My god, what is that? What’s happening to you?”

“Not
to me. I thought—”
Theo severed the link, tried to rise from the floor beside the bed. It made no
sense. Only the bond he shared with Logan allowed such things to pass from one
twin to the other.

He
flopped to the floor and the carpet ground into his cheek. He breathed through
the worst of the pain and stretched his arm beneath the bed toward a crumpled
piece of paper. When his fingers made contact with the castoff, the river of
agony coursing through him tripled. A familiar male face swam into view.

Booker,
eyes filmed over with a red so dark it approached black. The male’s hand
appeared next to his face, coated in blood and viscera.

If it
wasn’t Logan he’d connected to, then who?

He
maneuvered onto his side and smoothed the paper out on the floor. It was a
partial sketch of the building across the alley on one side and a close up of a
young female holding an infant on the other.

A
terrible growl started in his abdomen and crawled its way to his throat. It
erupted in a roar, a scream of sound he projected on the telepathic pathway
shared by all of his kind. They’d ignored his pain, his loneliness for
centuries, but they would know now what one of their own cost him.

Callie.

The
connection with her began to fade, and he sprang to his feet, fueled by terror
and helpless rage. The bricks of the buildings could be any of hundreds in the
city. He grasped for her with his mind and held on as tight as he could to the
frayed, barely formed threads between them.

“Callie.
Don’t give up. I’m coming. Breathe, damn you.”
The T-shirt he wore didn’t
survive being stripped off over his head. His boots hit the wall with dual
thunks. He jerked his door open and splinters embedded in his chest from the
door frame busting, one hand popping the button on his jeans at the same time.

The
fucking cannibal stood on the other side. Tiny rust colored spots dotted the
collar and cuffs of his pinstripe three-piece suit. Callie’s scent clung to the
monster in the hallway.

Theo
snatched him by the shirt front and hauled him into the apartment, slamming the
door behind him. The slab bounced out of the broken frame and hit the monster
in the back.

“Where
is she, Herodes?”

The
dragon hissed and used his arms to break Theo’s hold with a single downward
strike on his extended arms, connecting at the elbow joint so hard Theo’s hands
went numb. “Do you always greet visitors this way? It’s not only rude, but
terribly barbaric. My father used to say no grotesque could ever be properly
housetrained and I begin to—”

Theo
punched him in the mouth, snapping Herodes’s head back. He turned to face Theo,
blood coating his lower lip.

A
single, triangular tooth was stuck in Theo’s second knuckle. He plucked it out
and threw it at Herodes, who caught the projectile.

“Funny
thing, that. My teeth are one of the few natural substances on the planet hard
enough to penetrate your mangy hide.” The dragon removed a handkerchief from
his breast pocket and dabbed at his lip. When he cleared the fluid away, the
rent in his skin was gone. “They’re also one of the only things that can cut me.
Don’t tell anyone. Little dragon secret.”

“Where
is Callie?” The room swam in front of him and he fought to remain standing.

“Very
nice piece of furniture you’ve got here, Theo.” Herodes moved past him into the
living room and sat down on the couch. “You see, the thing is, I need something
from you.”

If he
didn’t change to his Hunting Form soon, he’d never manage it. Desperation to
find her kept him standing when the physical manifestations of her pain through
their link would have taken him to his knees. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you
now for leaving her alone to die instead of helping her.”

“I am
bound by the agreement to your aerie. I cannot harm a member of the aerie or
any humans besides those deemed to be in need of culling from the herd. If I had
interceded, I would have been executed.”

More of
the aerie fucking up his life. He would not lose Callie. He could not lose her.
“Just tell me where she is, now lizard.”

“I
will. But first, I need you to promise to help me find my mate.” The reptile
grinned, a cold fire springing to life in his eyes.

He
didn’t care what the dragon wanted, or what consequence the action might bring.
His only objective was to save Callie. “Done.”

Theo
scaled the wall of the building—chunks of masonry raining, spattering the
sidewalk below—driven by the need to reach Callie before it was too late. Using
his hunting form during the day when humans could spot him would guarantee he’d
never be admitted back to the aerie. He no longer cared.

He had
to reach her before it was too late.

When he
crested the wall, he galloped for the far side of the roof and launched himself
to the next building. Navigating this way was faster than trying to use the
streets below. The wounds in his back reopened and the cement Booker had mashed
into them the night before flaked off and fell away. His heart thudded in his
chest, not like the flight of a hummingbird, but with the methodical beat of a
being focused on a singular objective.

The
stench of Callie’s pain, fear, and blood rode the updraft from an alley only a
few buildings away. He huffed the scents from his nose and roared out his
agony, gave voice to the transgression with his ferocity.

When he
reached the building forming the left side of the alley she lay crumpled in, he
slithered over the side head first and leapt to the ground beside her. Horrible
ruin greeted him. Half-congealed, sticky blood coated most of her body. A pile
of organs sat on the ground next to her.

Theo
screamed out his anguish again in a sizzling jet of flame. No heartbeat to
detect in her chest. Without their bond, he’d have believed her dead.

If ever
he’d needed his wings, it was now. In this form, he could not carry her while
running. He’d be naked if he shifted, as though transporting a woman covered in
blood wouldn’t draw enough attention.

“Theo?”
The pounding of running footsteps approached. He spun and roared, the huge
length of his body extending from nearly one side of the alley to the other.

“It’s
me, Theo. Your brother.” Logan held his hands out to his sides, palms up. Petra
came to a stop behind him, her face pale in the afternoon sunlight. “Let us
help.”

Every
instinct told him to keep them away from her, from his mate. He fought it down,
shot a warning last of flame in their direction and returned to Callie.

Petra ignored
his rampaging and slid to her knees at his female’s side, stuffing organs back
into her abdominal cavity.

Theo
growled and bumped her hands with his head, knocking her sideways.

“I have
to do this, Theo. You understand? It will help her heal.”

“Theo,
I have to take her to the water.”
Logan strode up behind Petra in his hunting form, his wings folded to his back.

“You
cannot. They will expel you as well.”
Theo
sank to the damp ground and hung his head in shame.
“I’ve already cost you
so much. And now, I’ve killed another innocent.”

“You
did not kill her. She is still alive.”

Petra completed
her gruesome task. She removed her shirt and wound it around Callie’s shredded
flesh. “There isn’t anything I can do for the neck or head wounds. You must get
her to the ocean, fast. At this point, I don’t know what else could heal her.”
Tears pooled in her crystalline blue eyes and tracked over her cheeks.

Logan
gathered Callie in his massive paws and lifted off the ground with two pumps of
his wings.
“Theo, this is not your fault. Following your heart is not a
crime.”

Unable
to do anything but watch as his brother carried the female he loved, he screamed
and thrashed his tail into the wall. Bits of brick chipped off and flew through
the air. Impotent and stranded on the ground with nothing but his fury to keep
him from stumbling into a chasm of pure despair, he latched onto the boiling
cauldron of his anger and embraced it. The nubs of his wings blazed to life,
molten heat and a terrible stretching blazed in his back.

He
careened into the wall and fell to the ground, panting for breath around the torture
pulsing through his frame. Images and thoughts bombarded him. The channels of
his telepathic link overloaded with the members of the aerie. The voices called
and blended together into a dissonance of crushing sound until they blended
together into one command.

“Get
up, Theo. Get up now and protect her.”

The
muscles in his legs quaked. He thrust his way upright, only to fall to his
stomach and smack his face on the ground. The calls intensified, and he struggled
until he gained his footing and stood. Something wet and slippery coated his
back.

“Fly,
Theo. Fly now.”

Fly? He
shook his head, tried to clear the confusion from his head and the burn in his
muscles.

Petra
shouted, and he swiveled his head. She had one hand clamped over her mouth, her
gaze turned toward the sky.

Logan
plummeted toward them, out of control, a dark grey mass attached to his back.
With Callie clutched to his chest, he had no way to defend himself from the
attack.

The aerie
screamed at him, and he flexed the muscles that controlled his wings, shock
reverberated when he realized what they’d done.

His
mate and his twin continued on their out of control descent toward the ground.
He gathered every resource he had left in his body and clambered up the wall of
the building. Once on the roof, he raced for the far side, shoved off with his
hind legs, and unfurled the new wings. The wet, bloody membranes snapped out to
catch the wind, but his back muscles had atrophied and weakened from lack of
use. He doubled his efforts and ignored the pop of muscle fibers snapping with
a deep, singing burn. Holes ripped through the new, weak skin and he faltered.
Magic funneled into him from the aerie and he doubled his efforts, unwilling to
lose his brother or his mate to senseless hatred and fear.

Later
he’d wonder why they lent him their aid. Now, he trained his eyes and efforts
on intercepting death.

Angling
above and to the left of his brother, he folded his wings in tight and arrowed
for the attacker ripping at Logan’s back and wings. A fellow grotesque perched
on Logan, tearing at and pummeled him. Theo collided with the assailant in a
terrible crash. He gripped the villain with his claws—gouged at the male’s back
and legs with his talons until the attacker released Logan.

Logan’s
wings had suffered immense damage, and his haunches wept streams of blood. Theo
caught a cross current and flared his wings to send him into a sharp turn, but
the grotesque that had attacked Logan crashed into his rib cage and sent him
into an uncontrolled barrel roll.

He
tucked his wings in tight to his back, sank his talons into his attacker, and forced
the other grotesque to bear the brunt of their weight if they were to stay
aloft. They smashed into a building and slid down its side to the bottom,
landing in a dank puddle with bricks and sheets of concrete raining down.