Broken: Hidden Book Two (22 page)

I cried out, past any type of coherent thought, and felt myself nearing the edge again, and I moaned his name, begging.

“Yes, Molly,” he said, and he thrust, hard, into me while his warm palm pressed down on my abdomen, and I went over the edge, screamed his name, over and over again, senseless, my body unable to contain everything I was feeling. I heard him groan, curse under his breath. My orgasm seemed to last forever, as he continued to do whatever it was that he was doing to me, and he watched my face the entire time. The desire coming from him was almost frightening in its intensity, and it only added to everything else I was already feeling. When I finally came down, I was limp and trembling, and he kept pumping into me.

“You’re so damn beautiful,” he said, lowering his body, and I reveled in the sensation of his hard, heavy body covering mine. “Perfect,” he murmured. I wrapped my legs around him, and he held my hands, our fingers entwining, and he kissed me, and started moving his hips faster, harder, hammering into my aching center with an intensity that had me on the edge again, and I raised my hips to meet every hard thrust. His kisses became desperate, bruising, and I kissed him back with equal desperation. He moved his lips to my throat, kissing and biting the side of my neck as he drove hard into me, starting to lose control.

“Molly,” he growled against my throat, and I went over the edge again and when I clenched around him, he exploded, grinding hard into me as he rode out his orgasm, and I trembled, aching deliciously from the hard, rough way he moved as he lost control. The emotions coming from him washed over me, bringing tears to my eyes as I came down. We were connected, in every possible way, and the connection I’d made to his soul opened him to me in a way I’d never known anyone. His heart pounded in rhythm with mine, in rhythm with our writhing, exhausted bodies and I pressed my lips to his shoulder, overcome with everything I was feeling.

When he had finished, he rolled off of me, pulling me on top of him and holding me tightly. He kissed me softly, lips warm and tender on mine, and murmured how beautiful I was, that he belonged to me, in every way.

“I love you, Brennan,” I whispered, resting my head at the crook of his neck, breathing him in as my breathing returned to normal.

“I love you too, Molly,” he murmured against my hair. I smiled, and we drifted off to sleep.

♦ ♦ ♦

True to his word, he did a magnificent job of keeping me distracted for the next couple of days. I’d woken once to find him talking to Stone on the phone, telling him to follow any leads on lost girls the imps gave him. He was determined to prove a point, and, just this once, maybe, I was more than happy to let him do it. I also understood, at some level, that he was doing what shifter males do when they claim a mate, shutting us up alone together until we knew each other’s bodies, completely, intimately, until he’d made it clear that I belonged to him and him to me.

Considering I’d already claimed him in my own way, I could hardly fault him for doing the same with me.

Three days. Three days in Brennan’s house with him, and it wasn’t nearly long enough. It had been more than I could have hoped, better than my wildest dreams. I lost track of how many times we’d loved each other, all I knew was that my body ached in a way I never wanted it to stop aching. We’d gotten to know each other in every possible way, and between lovemaking and talking, Brennan fed me and just generally made a point of taking care of me. And even though it ran counter to everything I’d ever known about myself, I found myself doing the same for him. At times, it overwhelmed me how perfect it was, how his soul and mine were like two halves of a whole. In every way that I am prickly and mean and angry, Brennan is soothing, calm, and in control. In all of the ways I try to plan for the impossible, Brennan is an expert at living in the moment. When I confessed that I'd bound him to me, he simply smiled and told me he knew it, that he felt his bond to me strengthen when I'd done it. And then he'd loved me all over again.

It all felt too good to be true. Stuff like this, feelings like this, do not happen to me.

We were in bed, again, Brennan’s body hunched over mine under the cool sheets as he kissed me, nibbled my throat, my shoulders. I was, as always, almost drunk on the sensations running through my body when I was with him.

I was so distracted, so enjoying his lips on my throat and his hands on my body that I barely noticed when there was a distinctive fluttering sound and Eunomia appeared in the room, at the foot of the bed. I froze, moved to push Brennan off of me, but he gave a small shake of his head and kept kissing my throat.

“Don’t you people ever knock?” he muttered against my neck. I was blushing furiously, but he gave no indication that he was going to stop what he was doing.

“We do not use doors, shifter,” Eunomia said.

“Start. She’s busy,” he said, continuing to kiss my shoulders.

“Yes, so I see,” Eunomia said, and though I couldn’t see her over Bren, I could hear the humor in her voice, sense it from her.

“Go away,” he muttered, still focusing on me.

“Did you need something, E?” I asked, trying for some sense of decorum.

“I was trying to find you to see how you were. Obviously, you are just fine,” she said.

“See ya later, E,” Brennan said, and I could feel him getting irritated.

Eunomia laughed. “Oh, all right. Relax, shifter. By all means continue fornicating. I’ll talk to you later, Mollis.” And with that, there was that little fluttering sound again, her wings taking her into flight, and she was gone.

He shook his head and started kissing my stomach, and I smacked him on the shoulder. “That was so rude,” I said. He bit me, not exactly gently, and I gasped.

“It was. Your family needs to learn about boundaries,” he said. I was about to argue, but then his lips started working their magic and I promptly forgot what I was even going to argue with him about.

When it was over, he pulled me back onto the mattress with him and held me.

“You are kind of an ass,” I said, still out of breath.

“Am I?” he asked, nuzzling my shoulder.

“I can’t even be annoyed with you when you do that to me.”

He laughed, and held me tighter. “I didn’t mean to irritate you. I wanted to make a point with E and anyone else who can magically appear in our bedroom. You give yourself to the world, every single day. You sacrifice, almost constantly, for everyone else. When we’re alone together, you’re off limits unless someone’s dying. Does that seem fair?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He was quiet for a while, holding me. “You’re going to tell me it’s time to leave now, aren’t you?”

“You know me too well,” I murmured.

“Not as well as I want to.”

“Better than anyone else, though,” I said, and he squeezed my body to his. “I am supposed to be present at a meeting Hades is having later today with a couple of other gods.”

“Gods posturing is almost too stupid for words,” he said, and I laughed.

“It is. It’s all such a bunch of bullshit,” I said, feeling my eyelids get heavy. “I owe him. Supposed to make it look like I serve him, belong to him. As if I truly belong to any of them.” I closed my eyes.

“Who do you belong to?” he asked me, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Myself,” I said, smiling. He pinched my bottom, and I laughed. “And you, even when you’re being an ass.”

“That’s better,” he said. We dozed for a while, and, slowly but surely got ready to return to real life.

I was pulling one of Bren’s t-shirts over my head and I looked around. He was sitting at the foot of the still-rumpled bed pulling his shoes on. “I love this house,” I said softly, and he laughed. I glanced at him, and he shook his head. “I do,” I said, smiling.

“We’ll have to come back here. Often,” he said.

“You said ‘come’,” I said, and then I couldn’t stop laughing, and after a while I heard him laughing, too.

“Oh my god,” he said, shaking his head while I tried to get my giggles under control. “Nobody here or in the Nether would believe me if I tried to tell them how sophomoric your sense of humor is. Or that you giggle.”

“Shut up, Bren,” I said, still laughing a little. “That’s between the two of us.”

He came up behind me and folded me in his arms. “What about the noises you make when I–”

I elbowed him in the gut, and he laughed. He kept holding me, and we stood there for a while. “I don’t want to leave,” he said.

“Me neither. But Stone has probably destroyed half the loft by now, and Shanti’s probably running the streets eating innocents, and the city is probably being over-run with dumbass werewolves as we speak.”

“You’re such a pessimist. I’m almost sure Shanti wouldn’t eat anyone.”

I let out a small laugh, and he squeezed me tighter to him. Then he released me, reluctantly, and took my hand, and we left the house and drove back to the loft.

♦ ♦ ♦

We arrived back at the loft to find that while Stone had eaten pretty much everything in the house and was whining about how he was starving, Shanti had not, in fact, bitten anyone and there had only been a few minor issues, which the team and the Grosse Pointe shifters had taken care of easily. I kissed Brennan, then headed to the Nether to do my Fury thing and attend Hades.

I drove to the Packard plant and strolled through the gateway. The demon guards there saluted me, and I nodded to them and made my way to Hades' house. One of his demon servants answered the door and let me in.

“Your mother is in with him right now, my Lady,” the demon said in a low voice.

“I'll join them. I rarely see the two of them together,” I said, and he nodded, gestured toward Hades' closed office door.

I walked down the long hallway, paused in front of the office door when I heard my name.

“I am not losing her to some prophecy, Hades,” Tisiphone was saying. “I won't do it. I will not allow it.”

“We hardly have a say in that, now, do we?” Hades was saying in a tired voice. “She's here. She exists. It is what it is.”

“How can you be this way? Are you really so cold you feel nothing--”

“Cold? Are we really going to go there, Tis?”

I raised my eyebrow at the nickname. My mother did not seem like the nickname type.

Hades went on. “We'll do what we can. Her fate lies before her, just like anyone else.”

“May she be strong enough to give Fate a good kick in the ass, then,” Tisiphone muttered.

“I would expect nothing less from your daughter,” Hades said, and I heard a warmth, a familiarity, in his voice that made me blush. I was ready to hear more when Hades' wife, Persephone, bustled up behind me and knocked twice on the door, then opened it. I gaped at her.

“Your whelp was listening at the door, Fury,” she said, glaring at me. And then she flounced off again, her skirt rustling as she walked away.

“I wasn't,” I said, glaring at Persephone's back. Then I glanced at my parents. Ask them about what they were discussing, and reveal I'd absolutely been eavesdropping? Or play it off so I could get through the day and go home to Brennan?

“I am here for your meeting, Lord Hades,” I said, walking into the office. Hades and my mother both looked at me for a moment, maybe trying to figure out what I'd heard. They exchanged a glance, then Tisiphone excused herself, hugging me on her way out, and Hades started making small talk about the upcoming meeting.

I managed not to lose myself to my rage, and got through my meeting without rolling my eyes or otherwise disrespecting the self-aggrandizing deities in the room. Mostly, I did so by fantasizing about getting Brennan alone again. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the meeting was over and I made my way back to my own realm again.

As I drove back to the loft (looking forward to Brennan and a bed. Or a wall, or a shower, or a tabletop….) the imps filled me in on what had gone on while I’d been gone.

It was a little after midnight when I finally dragged myself up to the loft. Brennan was in the living room, and he got up and kissed me when I walked in. It would have gone on, except that Shanti was sitting in the dining room. I went and sat with her. I could sense that she was nervous about something, and the fact that she was sitting out in the main part of the loft instead of up in her room was definitely different. Brennan shoved a bowl of beef stew in front of me with a soft but stern, “eat” and then sat down. I stuck my tongue out at him and felt a little stab of desire from him, and I grinned.

“Behave yourself,” he murmured.

“Are you two going to be like this all the time now?” Shanti asked, shaking her head.

“We could go back to arguing all the time,” I said, taking a bite of the stew.

“No, we couldn’t,” Brennan said. “I have ways of distracting–”

“All right! Okay. Hey. Forget I said anything,” Shanti said over him, and we both laughed. She laughed, too, and shook her head. I could still sense anxiety from her.

“What’s going on, Shanti? You’re anxious about something,” I said.

She took a deep breath, looked at me. “I want to be on the lost girls and lost boys team Brennan was talking about earlier.”

“No,” I said.

“You can’t just do that,” Shanti said, raising her voice a little. “You can’t just write me off that way. I’ve been training with Brennan. I’m fast. I’m strong. And I have more reason to want to help than just about anyone else involved.”

“You’re too young,” I said.

“How old were you when you started finding lost girls, again?” Shanti asked, raising her eyebrow. Other than Brennan, she was the only one who knew my whole story, and I kicked myself for telling her that particular tidbit.

“I was…”

“Nothing more than a telepath who could self-heal at that point, right? I’m a vampire.”

“Then you should know that you have plenty of time. Not yet,” I said.

“You’re not listening!” Shanti shouted, and it startled me to hear her really raise her voice like that to me. “I need to do this. I am going insane here. I have this power, and I never goddamned wanted it. But I’m stuck with it, so I’m going to make it worth something. I’m going to make myself worth something,” and pink-tinged tears flooded her eyes, and I looked at Brennan helplessly. He shrugged.