The Darkest Surrender (11 page)

If he looked this sumptuous turned on, how would he look sated?

Mind, out of gutter.
This was clearly another attempt to distract her, to win her over to his side. She had to remain strong. “Well?”

“Did you make a play for her man?” he demanded. O-kay. Obviously he’d emerged from the dream.

Her cheeks flushed with color and that was all the answer he required.

He released her to scrub his hand down his face. “Damn it, Kaia.”

Without his touch, her skin cooled. She would not admit to her own stupidity, even acute stupidity committed so long ago. She would not admit she’d sought to prove her
self worthy to a mother who would never love her, and that she’d failed on every level.

“I saw him, I wanted him and I took him. End of story.” The truth muddied by his own suppositions. Strider would never find his way to the surface, and that was for the best.

“And she found out?” His voice snapped like a whip.

Yep. He was lost in the mire of her omissions. “She did.” Kaia nodded, her head bobbling. “That’s exactly right.”

“How?”

Her eyes widened. Why wouldn’t he let this go? “Excuse me?”

“How did she find out?”

“Oh, uh, she walked in on us,” Kaia said, gaze falling to the floor. Realizing what she’d done, she forced her attention back up. There were two things a girl needed when telling a lie. The first, confidence. You could convince anyone of anything as long as you believed it yourself. The second, details. The more details you supplied, the more credible the story. “We were in the middle of the act. Very hot and heavy. I wasn’t at all distracted with him.”

Strider was quiet for a moment. Then he said smoothly, “Is that so?”

Perhaps he wasn’t as blinded by the mud as she’d thought. What had given her away? Well, it didn’t matter, really. He could suspect the truth all he wanted, but he’d never know for sure. And hell, there might be another way to convince him of what she wanted.

She glared up at him. “Yes, that’s so. I had him flat on his back atop a pile of furs.” She pictured Strider in just such a position, and her desire reignited, adding a smoky note to her voice. “He was naked…I was naked. I straddled his waist, and gods, he was beautiful, so lost to passion. To me.”

Strider whipped around, as if he could no longer bear to face her. There. Done, she thought. He was utterly con
vinced of her slutty nature. Her shoulders sagged just a little. Part of her wished he would have continued resisting.

Better this way, she reminded herself. He’d already considered her promiscuous. Adding weak and dumb to the equation would have hampered her future progress with him.

Not that she’d really made any today.

S
HE WAS LYING
, S
TRIDER
thought, suddenly needing every ounce of strength he possessed to stop himself from grinning. Damn if she wasn’t ten times sexier as she spun her web of deceit. Maybe because she’d almost had him.
Would
have had him, if she hadn’t glanced down at her feet. So telling, that glance. When Kaia believed something wholeheartedly, her confidence was like a shining star. She did nothing to signal a back down.

Defeat liked that they’d figured out her game and was shooting little sparks of pleasure through his bloodstream. A victory he hadn’t anticipated, yet one that was as delicious as ambrosia-laced wine. Almost as delicious as Kaia’s kiss.

Don’t think about that right now.

He couldn’t help himself. Hell’s fire, that kiss…the woman was passion incarnate, so sensually giving he could have gorged himself on her forever and still found himself hungry. Her tongue had thrust just right, her nails had scraped just right, and her legs had wrapped around him better than just right.

She’d just…fit him. Fit his body perfectly. Every curve, every plane, every indentation. Two puzzle pieces locking together. And they’d still had their clothes on! If he ever stripped her, he’d— No. No, no, no. He couldn’t venture down that road again. The kiss had been a mistake.
A damn exquisite mistake, but one that could have done serious damage to his cause.

Already his mind was muddled by her.

And unfortunately, he couldn’t blame her skin this time. What was bared, she’d dulled with makeup, making her look like any other human. No, not true. She’d never look like a human, no matter what she did. Her features were too dazzling, too flawless.

She’d never kiss like a human, either. She was too bold, too lush, too damn eager.

Too mine,
he’d thought midway through, wanting to give her “all” as she’d said. Wanting to give her
everything.
Only then had he realized how lost he was, simply enjoying her, not even trying to please her. Just taking, giving and taking some more. There was nothing more dangerous for him. He
had
to please her, more than Paris had, or he would suffer.

Reining in his own desires had been the most difficult battle of his life, but he’d done it. He’d won. And oh, Defeat had loved him for it, sparking the same sense of pleasure that raced through him now. Which had made it all the more difficult to hold back, to measure each of his caresses, every single lick.

Except one moment she’d wanted all, everything, and he’d been willing to supply it, to take her over the edge, and the next she’d wanted him to stop. He recognized a challenge when he heard one, and ‘I bet you can’t stop’ was one-hundred-percent, raise-the-red-flag challenge.

What he hadn’t known—still didn’t know—was
why
she’d done it.

Didn’t matter, he supposed. What was done was done, and there was no going back. He had to forget the kiss and concentrate on the journey ahead. On the games, the Rod and ultimate victory. He had to forget the color that bloomed in her cheeks, the breath that sawed in and out
of her nose, the flecks of fury that had detonated in her eyes every time he’d spoken. Had to forget the fact that she was gorgeous when her emotions were roused, that she lit up like a firecracker, and he wanted so desperately to be burned.

Kaia cleared her throat. “Strider,” she began.

He held up his hand in a bid for silence. “Look, here’s how it’s gonna be. You don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you, but we are going to work together. So, you’re going to tell me about tomorrow’s battle, and then we’re going to scout the competition.”

Or rather, she would scout. He would search for the Rod. Much as he understood her plight, her pain, that understanding didn’t change the facts. No artifact, no box.

So, he
would
find and steal that Rod. Even at the expense of Kaia’s pride. He wouldn’t like himself afterward, he was sure, because victory required a betrayal of her trust, but nothing would sway him from this course.

“Got it?” he demanded, already fighting a wave of guilt.

A pause, heavy and unsure. Then she whispered, “Yes. All right. We’ll work together.”

“Good.” He cleared his expression and spun back around. He made sure to glare at her for good measure. “Now, start talking.”

W
ILLIAM THE
E
VER
R
ANDY
,
honorary Lord of the Underworld and a man so physically perfect he’d once been voted Most Beautiful Immortal of All Time—so what that he’d been the only judge of that particular competition; he would swear on what remained of his soul that the scores hadn’t been fixed—stood in the living room of a human residence.

Strider the Reneger should be here with him.
I must be rubbing off on him.
Strider had promised to be here with him. Instead the lucky bastard was spending time with the very Harpy William often dreamed of seducing.

William had been with vampires, humans, witches, shape-shifters and goddesses, but he’d never been with a Harpy. He wanted to be with a Harpy.
Whine, pout.

Maybe, when he finished here, he would give Strider a wee bit of competition for Kaia’s affections. The warrior liked to compete, after all, and William was
such
a giver, always thinking of others rather than himself.

That giving nature was the very reason he was here.

“Here” was an average home, with average rooms in serious need of a decorator. Beige furniture, beige walls and beige carpet, as if the owners were afraid of color. Oh, and had he mentioned the half-empty vodka bottles that were hidden inside vents, behind books and even in hidden cutouts in the mattresses?

This mundane, prisonlike alcoholic’s paradise was where his Little Gilly Gumdrop had grown up.

Gilly, a.k.a. Gillian Shaw. Human, brown-eyed, too sensual for her own good. At seventeen, she had known more horror and terror than most immortals experienced in an eternity. All because of the owners of this home in Nowhere, Nebraska.

William didn’t have many friends, so he took care of the ones he had. Sure, he liked the Lords of the Underworld well enough. They were fun to torture and damn entertaining to watch as they fell in love, one by one, like flies meeting the swinging net of a swatter. Case in point— Strider. Until William intervened, of course. Surely Kaia would at last succumb to his delightful wiles and forget all about the keeper of Defeat.

The entertainment alone was worth the price of his ticket into their Budapest Fortress: allowing the freaking (minor) goddess of Anarchy to hold William’s most treasured possession for ransom. He lay awake nights dreaming of ways to retrieve that possession, a book written in code that foretold how to save him from the curses the gods had heaped upon him. But he wasn’t going to think about that right now.

He was only going to think about his Gilly. He’d met her months ago, when the keeper of Pain’s woman brought her to the fortress, and he’d been instantly smitten. Not in a sexual way, she was too young for that—he would remind himself a thousand times if necessary—but in a white-knight kind of way.

She’d looked at him, and she’d seen a gorgeous immortal warrior who could give her body untold pleasure. Of course. Everyone did. She’d also seen a gorgeous immortal warrior who could slay her dragons.

He wanted to slay her dragons. He
would
slay her dragons.

A few times over the past several months, he’d returned to the fortress injured from battle. Gilly had taken care of him, always tender, sweet, ensuring he ate something, was tucked into bed and comfortable. She wasn’t intimidated by him. She laughed with him, joked with him, and when he pissed her off, she stayed and fought with him, rather than running away to hide from his temper.

She knew, soul deep, that he would never hurt her. Even if he didn’t always know it himself. There was a darkness inside him, a churning darkness sprung from the vilest pits of hell. A darkness he’d never loved more than he did at this moment.

Hardly anyone noticed his evil side. They saw the irreverent scamp he projected. And no, that image wasn’t a lie. William was irreverent to the bone, but there was more to him, and somehow Gilly saw that part, too.

And still she accepted him. Had never asked him to change. Had only thought to enjoy his company, to protect him.
No one
had ever tried to protect him before.

Now, he would protect her. Her family had hurt her in the worst possible way. Therefore, her family would die in the worst possible way. Vengeance was its own form of safeguarding, after all. Sure, time had passed and she’d had no recent contact with them. That didn’t change the fact that they’d hurt her in the most terrible way, forced her to brave the streets on her own—and that they could do it again, to someone else. He’d wanted to do this for a long time, and that hadn’t changed. In fact, the need had only grown stronger.

William walked around the room, lifting knickknacks, discarding them and smiling when they shattered on the floor. Gilly’s mother and stepfather were currently at work, and her stepbrothers no longer lived here, so he didn’t worry about noise control. When he finished that little exercise, he studied the pictures on the mantle over the fireplace.

There were none of Gilly.

Obviously they’d written her out of their lives. No afterthought, no concern for what had befallen her once she’d left.

What he did see: a thirtysomething bleached blonde with silicone-enhanced breasts and an average-looking thirtysomething male.

Stomach clenching, William thumped the man’s face. The bastard was going to pay for every illicit touch, every ounce of shame inflicted. The mother would pay for allowing it to happen. The brothers would pay for failing to save her.

Her family had given her no option but to run away at the age of fifteen. Fifteen. On her own, surviving as best she could, for over a year before Danika had found her and brought her to Budapest. But because of what had been done to her, because of what she’d had to do merely to eat, she no longer valued herself. She saw herself as used, dirty, unworthy. She’d never said as much, but he knew. When she stayed at the Lords’ fortress, she slept in the bedroom next to his, and he’d heard the way she cried out at night. He knew nightmares plagued her.

Her family would pay for every single one of those dark dreams, too.

His ears suddenly twitched, picking up the sound of the garage door sliding open. He grinned. Oh, goodie. The first contestant of Hurt, Suffer and Die was home.

When he’d first arrived, he had dropped his bag of “toys” on the floor and now bent to pick it up. Oh, yes, he’d never loved his darkness more.

This was going to be fun.

K
ANE
,
KEEPER OF THE DEMON
of Disaster, strode down the long, winding corridor inside the unfamiliar heavenly palace where he now found himself. The walls were straight
up weird, comprised of thousands upon thousands of threads braided and strewn together. Thick and colorful threads with animated scenes playing across them, as if the people he saw were truly living and breathing right in front of him, and he had only to reach out to touch them. It was the most awe-inspiring sight he’d ever beheld—and was that Strider and Kaia crawling along a moonlit hill, females sneaking up on them, weapons trained on their skulls?

He stopped and narrowed his gaze on them, his hands fisting. A head-exploding ache tore through his temples. Only when he peered straight ahead and forced the image of what he’d seen out of his mind did the ache lessen.

In and out he breathed. His thoughts fogged, then cleared. Then he couldn’t recall what he’d been upset about in the first place. Oh, well. In, out. In, out. Clearer and clearer. The air carried the sweet scent of ambrosia, he realized. To keep visitors pliant?

If only that kind of thing worked on him. But the goddesses who lived here could have pumped gasoline through the vents, and it wouldn’t have affected him. His demon loved all things devious, clandestine and potentially life-threatening. And maybe, just maybe, that love would prevent the bastard from cracking the floor Kane stood upon or from unraveling the ceiling above him, the need for calamity sated for just a little while.

A guy could hope, anyway.

Kane jumped back into motion. He had a purpose, didn’t he? Oh, yeah. The Moirai had summoned him. Why the hell had they summoned him?

Whatever the reason, he’d smile like a good little boy. He did
not
want to piss off the Moirai, and in his current what-the-fuck-is-happening state of mind, he had to be extra careful. They were neither Greek nor Titan—he didn’t know what they were—and yet, neither godly race
had ever raised a hand against the three females who lived here, and they never would. Because the Moirai were the weavers of Fate. They spun and they wove, and the scenes they created happened. Always.

No one approached them without a summons. Not even Cronus, the god king. And in all of Kane’s centuries, he had never met anyone who had received one. Until today. He, Disaster, was the lucky recipient.

He’d just returned from town, having spent the entire night searching for Hunters. Finding none—Strider must have killed them all before he left, the greedy bastard—he’d fallen straight into bed, still wearing his weapons, leather and boots. Before he could switch off his lamp, a glowing string had unfurled from his ceiling, a yellowed scroll hanging from the end.

He’d read the parchment, as confused then as he was now. A cross between a wedding invitation and a prescription medicine wrapper, the thing had been written in ancient Greek.

You are cordially invited to the Temple of the Fates. Failure to appear could result in decapitation or death.

Decapitation or death? Really? Then, an instant later, his surroundings had faded and he’d been standing inside this temple, those walls of thread all around him. He’d kicked into gear, thinking any hesitation on his part would result in that decapitation. Or death.

So while he knew
where
he was, what he didn’t know was why. Why him? Why now?

Guess he’d find out.

The wall tapestries seemed to go on forever, but finally—unfortunately?—he reached the end of the line and entered a…weaving room? Three women, hags really,
sat on wooden stoops, hunched over, long white hair frizzing over their shoulders. All three wore white robes, pristine and unwrinkled.

The one with hands spotted by age—Klotho, he knew from the legends surrounding them—spun the threads. The one with gnarled fingers, Lachesis, wove the strands together, and the one with pupil-less eyes, Atropos, snipped the ends.

Kane pressed his lips together, silent. He waited to be acknowledged, respectful of a power far greater than his own. And perhaps that’s why they had picked him, he thought then. None of the other Lords would have treated them with the deference they deserved and punishment would have had to be issued.

If they only knew the truth. He might know how to dish the respect, but really, he was the group’s biggest screwup. The one who couldn’t do anything right. The one left behind because he had a tendency to cause more harm than good. He never dropped his smile, though. Not here, and not around his friends. He didn’t want them to know the truth. He didn’t want them to know that, inside, he was just one big, steaming pile of mess.

For the most part, he operated on autopilot. When his demon became too much for him—the need to let go, the desire to obliterate, forget, pretend, filling him up—he…did things. Destroyed things.

Sabin, keeper of Doubt and the warrior Kane would have followed straight into hell, knew. But Sabin was the only one who did, and, not surprisingly, Sabin approved of his violence, even helped him channel it. Before taking off with his wife, Sabin had left him a little present. Part of him was eager to go back, to do what needed doing. The other part of him was content to remain here, waiting. He’d ignored that present to head into town, after all, thinking to resist the temptation. He’d even planned to nap
upon his return. Anything to save his soul from further damage. But how much longer would he have lasted?

He stood there, waiting to be acknowledged, for an hour, perhaps two. Usually inactivity provoked his demon to act, creating some disaster or another. Maybe it was the ambrosia as he’d hoped, or maybe the demon was as afraid of the hags as everyone else in the heavens, but Disaster behaved, not even humming in the back of Kane’s mind, though that sound rarely ever faded.

“Why are you here, boy?” Klotho finally asked, her voice a cackle of smoke. She never looked up from her task.

Uh, what now? “I received your summons. My lady,” he added. Gods, he was such an ass-kisser. But a guy had to do what a guy had to do. He was wearing his cup, yeah, but that didn’t mean he should hang a sign on his nuts, requesting someone kick him there.

“Summon you? Why, that was thousands of years ago,” Lachesis replied. “I’m sure of it.”

“Sure of it,” Atropos echoed. “Yet you never came.”

“And so your summons was revoked.”

“You may leave the way you came.”

He could only gape at them. They’d summoned him
thousands
of years ago? Why hadn’t they decapitated him, then, for his failure to appear? “I mean no disrespect, but I only just now received your kind invitation.”

“Not our fault.”

“You probably weren’t paying attention.”

“Perhaps you’ll learn to pay attention.”

“You may leave the way you came.”

Reverence was one thing. Not having his curiosity assuaged was quite another. Besides, if they’d brought him here to impart words of wisdom that could save him and his friends, or to issue words of warning, he damn well
wanted to hear those words. Therefore, he wasn’t leaving without them.

“May I purchase the information from you?” he asked.

“What information?”

“Who said anything about information?”

“You’re a dotty one, aren’t you?”

“You may leave the way you came.”

He flicked his tongue against one of his incisors. “If you didn’t wish to inform me of something, all those thousands of years ago—” he was careful to keep his ire out of his tone “—then why did you summon me in the first place?” The same question, asked in a roundabout way.
Come on, take the bait. Tell me.