Soul Resurrected (Sons of Wrath, #2) (42 page)

She gave a soft grunt as he threw her naked body down on the bed. Logan grabbed hold of her thighs, flipped her over onto her belly and shoved her body up toward the headboard, lifting her hips up and her ass in his face.

“Grab the bars,” he said hoarsely. “You’ll need them.”

Her trembling beneath his palms only goaded his body to take her. Shaft in hand, he held his crown at her wet entrance, but his lip tugged into repulsion, and a shudder had him withdrawing from her, wanting to curl in on himself.

The woman lay before him, ass high in the air, gripping the bedpost. “Fuck me,” she whispered. Her long red hair tumbled around her shoulders.

How many years had she sat drinking with his mother at the kitchen table while he played? She’d watched him grow, calling him ‘handsome prince’.

His mother’s best friend, always there to get wasted and have a good time.

And now he was fucking her for cash.

His body tensed at the thought of being inside her, his stomach turned at her bucking and moaning against him. He covered his eyes with his hand, choking back tears.

“Come on, my little prince.” Her ragged whisper brought forth bile from his churning stomach.

He gripped his stomach, bent forward and threw up on her backside.

“What the fuck?” She twisted around, her eyes glaring. “Look what you’ve done to my sheets, you little bastard!” Her hand swiped the remains of last night’s dinner away. “Disgusting!” Her lip curled. “Get out, you dirty …”

The kid wiped his arm across his mouth, picked his clothes up off the floor, and raced out of the apartment, down a flight of stairs to the small shadows beneath the staircase where he’d always hidden. Resting his head against his arms, he sobbed.

His mother would surely hear about this. She’d been relying on him for the money.

Calla turned to the side. “Logan?”

He shook his head.
Can’t do this.
Not Calla. Gods, not Calla. Clean and pure. Virgin. Not something to be ravaged with greed. Fuck, what was he thinking? He’d almost become the rotten piece of shit that hurt her.

She deserved better than that.

Not the guy covered in tats, who fucked in back-alleys and fought in cages to pay rent. He gripped her hips and turned her over onto her back. His hand hovered over her skin, wanting to touch her, to stroke her softness just to be sure his actions hadn’t tainted that magic of her flesh.

Instead, he sat at the edge of the bed, inwardly cringing at the likelihood that she’d have questions.

She moved beside him. Her fingertips drifted across his shoulder and he shrugged away from it.

Don’t hurt her. Don’t you fucking hurt her, you dirty prick
.

“Logan? Did I do something wrong?”

Nothing about Calla was wrong. Only the thought of her being with him. Violence had always been too much a part of him. Too many skeletons.

Thing about skeletons was, they remained beneath the flesh and blood.

Before he could protest, she climbed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. Even as his body stiffened, Logan wanted to fall into her, slip into that warmth and never come back.

Her gaze diverted to the side. “Look. You don’t … have to say it back.” Her hands drifted down to his biceps and a tightness formed in Logan’s gut. “I think … well, I’m pretty sure that I’m falling in love with you, Logan.”

Love?

Christ, was she out of her mind? Of course she was. She had to be to think she loved a bastard like him. Some abused child syndrome that, truth be told, Logan could kind of understand.

She traced his shoulder tattoo. “I know you don’t believe in it. But as a human, it’s all I know.” Her lip curled into her mouth, her nibbling taunting Logan to suck and kiss it. “To be honest, I’m kind of scared telling you this. So, if you could just say something, even just tell me that I’m stupid and naïve …”

His heart hammered rabbit-style against his ribs like the bastard wanted out. A rush curled like a wave in his veins, threatening to crash and leave him struggling for breath. Good thing he’d been sitting. “Calla, I don’t know how to be with you.” He frowned, keeping his gaze downcast. “I don’t know how to touch you the right way. Without …”

“Are you serious? No one’s ever touched me the way you do.”

“I want it to be different with you. I want you to
feel
me, the real me, and know that you’re something special, something more than just some cheap fuck. But I don’t know how.”

Calla held either side of his face and forced him to look into her eyes. “I do feel you.” The kiss she left on his lips must’ve been laced with some crazy black magic because Logan’s whole body tingled from it, and damn, he almost slipped the L-word into the space between when she broke away. “Only you can give me what I need, Logan.”

His muscles seized, confusion swirling in his head like a farm full of animals and shit picked up by a massive tornado.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
.

She’d broken him. Punched right through him and found the soft, dark place inside that he’d sworn off to everyone. Little Calla, the seemingly meek and fragile human female, had somehow fought her way through his defenses with every intention of conquering his heart.

For the first time in his life, Logan felt fear. Giving himself back to her would mean exposing his insides. Breaking open that shield that’d always kept him protected from the world and its bullshit. As if he stood at the edge of the cliff without a parachute, contemplating the jump, his mouth opened to speak.

No words.

In those seconds, the silence became deafening. Her eyes, filled with anticipation, practically begged for his response.

Rather than risk fucking it up with words, he kissed her with so much need and violence, like he could split her in two with his lips.

As if to undo him further, her whisper breezed across his opened mouth. “I’m ready, Logan.”

CHAPTER 32

No more guessing games. Time to tease the fucking mouse out of hiding. Gavin was prepared to burn down every building in the city to find Zeke.

He hunched beside Zayne and Ferno in the back-alley of Moonshines. He hadn’t bothered to say anything to Logan. No doubt, even at the order to stay back, his brother would’ve disobeyed.

The plan served two purposes in Gavin’s mind, though: it kept Ferno from sitting in his room all night getting cut-happy with a knife, and it kept Logan out of the picture because Gavin had a bad feeling that his brother’s female might play a bigger role than he cared to admit.

In fact, the nagging sensation bugged him from the moment the nephilim had revealed that Ryke was after a female.

Why had the hunter taken Calla to begin with? If it was one of the brothers it wanted, Calla could’ve gotten away without capture, and knowing Zeke, he’d have done his damndest to give her the opportunity to flee the scene. No, Gavin suspected Calla had been taken because that was exactly what the hunter’d intended.

Better to keep her back at the mansion where she could be watched just in case Gavin’s suspicions were right.

“The fuck we sittin’ out here for?” Ferno’s raspy voice echoed in the empty alley. “Let’s go beat the shit out of something.”

“We sent a bloody telegram earlier this morning.” Gavin shot a glance back at Ferno. “Every nephilim in the joint is going to take off the moment we set foot inside. Better to hunt them out here.”

“Blowjob alley, Brother.” Zayne toyed with his blade.

The swing of the door brought all three brothers to attention. A lanky male with ear-length black hair and silvery eyes emerged first, lighting up a cigarette. A human female followed behind in a short mini, and a breast-baring top that’d probably leave her nipples stiff as ice cubes after a few minutes in the winter air. Behind her, another male, looking like a twin of the first, grabbed himself, eyes aimed toward the female’s ass.

“Speak of the fucking devils,” Zayne whispered.

The first nephilim, cigarette hanging from his lip, dropped his leathers and the second male pushed the female forward, her head resting against the stomach of the first for a standing blowjob, while he unfastened his pants as if he prepared to take her from behind. No doubt, she’d been enchanted. Not even the most eager female would’ve tag-teamed in the fucking cold.

“You ready?” Gavin spoke low over his shoulder.

“Nah, I thought we’d sit and flog our dicks to this shit.” Ferno pulled his dagger. “Let’s go.”

“Get this shit over with.” Zayne rose to his feet. “The smell of fried human food is making me sick.”

Keeping to the shadows, Gavin led his brothers closer to the back-alley orgy.

Moans hit the air as the males upped the pace. Her muffled screams intensified.

Head tipped back and a smile on his face, the nephilim froze as Gavin propped a blade to his throat.

Flanking him, Ferno and Zayne pointed daggers at the first nephilim.

“Evening.” Gavin watched the first nephilim’s eyes widen with terror.

The slurping sounds of the female pulling herself off the nephilim’s dick turned Gavin’s stomach.

Her breath hitched. Yeah, apparently she woke up. Tugging her panties back up, she scampered out of the alley and inside the bar.

“I don’t suppose you assholes know where we’ll find Ryke?”

“No, Brother. I’m afraid we don’t.” It was the second nephilim who answered.

“Don’t … don’t call me brother.” Gavin’s blade broke skin as he pressed it into the male’s throat.

Ferno lowered his dagger and yanked the first nephilim into his body, mirroring the way Gavin held the second. “What do you say we have Zayne disembowel these fuckers in front of each other?”

“Oh, I’ve got a better idea.” Gavin resisted the futile tugging at his arms as the male protested. “See, I’ve not been myself since my brother Zeke went missing.”

Zayne’s eyes flared red as if the mere mention of his twin set his kill switch into overdrive.

“You get the message we sent?” Gavin whispered in the second nephilim’s ear.

The male nodded. “I don’t want trouble with Wrath.”

“Where’s Ryke’s underground scene?”

The nephilim in Gavin’s clutch shook his head.

Gavin gave Zayne a nod and the swirl in his eyes set into motion. It kept the second nephilim in a trance while Gavin chanted the spell he’d drudged from his library. Every half human nephilim feared his own mortality—so Gavin gave him a glimpse of exactly how he’d die.

“Wolves,” the nephilim muttered, wriggling like a captured snake in Gavin’s arms.

The nephilim’s muscles stiffened, and mouth gaped, he exhaled a breath and exchanged a glance with his comrade. “He … has cages … where he tortures …”

“What the fuck is this?”

The voice arrived from behind, and Gavin craned his head to get a look at the burly male. Dressed like a biker, he stood in the alley alongside the female from before. Over a dozen other males filed out of the building into the alley behind them.

“Ain’t that some shit?” Zayne broke from his trance. “Save the bitch and she runs off to tattle.”

“Talk.” Gavin slid the knife against the nephilim’s throat, ignoring the males congregating at the door.

“Fuck you,” the male answered, as if suddenly more confident in the presence of what clearly smelled like wolves over the funk of hamburgers.

“Let him go.” The biker crossed his arms over his chest.

Zayne stepped toward the stranger. “Don’t think so, dipshit. Demon business. Walk away before you’re carried out in pieces.”

“Since when do lycans give a shit about nephilim?” Ferno asked.

“That’s lycan business.” The biker shifted in his stance. “This is twice you’ve gotten in the middle of my shit.”

“You referring to the kid lycan?” Gavin pushed his blade into the nephilim’s neck to keep him from squirming.

“Where is he?”

“Good fucking question.” Gavin’s tone remained flat, in spite of the silver whirling in the biker’s eyes. “When you find out, let us know.”

A growl echoed in the alley and the biker burst into form and rose up onto his haunches. Black fur covered his almost eight-feet-tall body.

The female beside him squealed and darted back inside the building.

A brown and a red wolf moved in front of the black, snarling as they approached.

“Christ,” Gavin muttered. “Always an interruption.”

The brown wolf leaped into the air, and Zayne jogged forward as it came down on its front claws. He thrust his dagger and sliced a chasm up its middle.

Gavin shot Ferno a nod. He released the nephilim in his arms and met the red wolf with a dagger to its left flank. The demon’s wielding of a dagger, slow and fluid, and unfettered by the swiping claws and snapping teeth of his opponent, demonstrated his years as a mercenary.