Chapter 22 Killian
KILLIAN
“Killy, did you hear what I just said?” Lyra pouts, stroking my chest.
No, you fucking harpy, I did not.
“Kind of hard to focus on what you’re saying when you’re touching me like that,” I answer with a lazy smirk that quickly mollifies the Princess of Greed currently draped over my legs.
She giggles, drawing up her leg up enough to reveal her lace panties before she purrs, “I could do so more than just touch.” Luther scoffs into his glass at her blatant proposition and I kick his ankle under the table, which coincidentally dumps Lyra off my lap.
Oops.
Before she can complain—or worse, try to crawl on top of me again—I signal for the waitress to bring another round.
As the alcohol flows thanks to our bottomless tab, conversation drifts from the latest gossip, who’s fucking who, to what everyone’s wearing to the Masquerade.
Cynthia’s given up on waiting for Luther to respond with anything more than a grunt after the last twenty minutes of talking at him, while Calanthe and Lyra have turned their attention to the crowd of plebs worshipping at our altar, whose adoration feeds their power and their bloated egos.
Thane, the lucky little shit, ignores them completely as he hides behind the shroud of smoke that separates him from the rest of the world.
And thank fuck, too. He’s been a right pissant since he came home smelling like absolute heaven the other night.
Him and Luther both—the former’s been twitchier than usual and the latter’s given us the silent treatment for two days.
Which—rude, honestly. I mean, when I saw her buck ass naked, I described in excruciating detail how fan-fucking-tastic her tits were. And that ass.
I’m getting a chub just thinking about it.
Shit, think of something else. Anything else.
Xaphan mutilating a fresh kill.
Roth calling me “puppy”.
Lyra’s panties.
Yep, that’ll do it.
When the conversation drifts to yet more shoes, Luther abandons me without so much as a backwards glance.
What a dick.
Although, when I finally realize why, it’s not like I can blame him.
Not when Nyx is grinding back on his dick like that.
She doesn’t even know it’s him. If she did, she sure as shit wouldn’t be riding his hand, either.
I probably shouldn’t be turned on watching them. I really shouldn’t be turned on by the scene that plays out behind my eyes: her pinioned between us, looking up at me with the fucking eyes, tears streaming down her face as Luther works his monster of a cock into her tight, little cunt.
Hoooolllyyyy shit.
Okay, nope. Can’t think about that here.
When I attempt to discretely adjust my dick, I accidentally jostle Thane out of his little cloud of happiness.
He looks around, trying to reorient himself and I clock the moment he realizes why our grumpy gray giant hasn’t reappeared.
His back goes ramrod straight, blue eye flaring as his demon surfaces from the depths of his mind.
No one else notices Roth shifting his leg under the table to ground him, but there are more than a few wary side glances at Thane’s sudden change.
They should really be much, much more afraid.
Very few people have seen Thane’s demon.
Even fewer have survived the privilege.
It’s hard to comprehend the sheer scale of a monster the size of a football field.
Just as he starts trembling with the effort to contain the immense power inside of him, Roth’s voice breaks his focus.
Thank fuck, we really don’t need to add the headline, “Small town leveled by gigantic magical snake” to our list of problems.
“Thane. Get me another drink, will you?” Thane nods and swallows, fighting his way through the relentless groupies.
I clasp his shoulder when he passes by and without missing a beat, launch into another rendition of after-parties long past to keep their attention on me, and not my precariously unbalanced bestie.
But when I see him approach Nyx as she’s dancing a few minutes later, it’s my composure that nearly crumbles.
He winds his arms around her waist, pulling her with him as they retreat into a dark corner of the dance floor.
Through the flashing lights and writhing crowd, I can see his lips trail down her neck.
A surge of sudden jealously makes my stomach churn when he holds her against the wall.
I want a fucking taste.
I want to run my hands over her tits like that.
I want to feel her body pressed against mine and rut into her—
Wait—shit.
Shit shit shit shit.
“Gotta take a piss—need anything from the bar?” I ask Roth, darting my eyes to where Nyx is struggling in Thane’s hold across the room.
He waves me off before making an offhand comment in response to whatever the fuck these assholes are talking about now.
And because he’s the Roth Kovacs, they all hang off his every word like it’s gospel as I slip away.
I move through the crowd, dodging groping hands and glancing fingers as quickly as I can without drawing any more attention to myself than usual. I get there just in time to hear Nyx trying to talk him down. “Thane, hey, hey it’s okay—it’s okay, we’ll get you home.”
Fucking Fate, what’s he done now? I grab his shoulder and wrench him away from where he’s pinned her against the wall.
“Thane, you have to let her go.”
“Killian?”
“I’m here, I have you.”
“I want to go home, Kill—”
“Okay man, let me go get the keys—”
“She was gonna help us get home and now she’s never gonna help me and I don’t wanna to be lost anymore, Kill, I’m so tired of being lost—” he rambles, slumping and leaning into me.
“I think he’s overdosing,” Nyx’s breathless voice comes from behind me as I grip his face in my hands and check his pupils.
“What did you take, dude?”
“I only took half ‘cause I thought you’d wanna try some for the next batch—” he slurs, handing me a silver case of glass vials. The tainted magic swirling inside is dangerously unrefined, and when I find out who made this, whoever gave it to him, they’ll never find what’s left of the bodies.
“Come on, we gotta go,” I say, throwing his arm over my shoulder and looking for a way through the crowd that minimizes the chances someone will see how fucked up he is.
“This way,” Nyx says as she appears from Thane’s other side, looking nothing like the girl who just came all over both my friend’s fingers in the last forty-eight hours. Fuck, of all the people to see him like this, it had to be her.
I shove her off. “I got it, just go back to dancing or whatever—”
“Killian,” she grabs my shirt to stop me and points across the room.
“there’s a hallway right off the bar, they usually have a break room or something down there.
Come on,” She takes off, and as loathe as I am to involve her any more than she already is, one look at Thane barely clinging to consciousness makes the decision for me.
Hugging the edge of the dance floor, she weaves through the crowd like a snake through the grass, and by some fucking miracle, no one stops us, no one gawks, gropes, or gets in the way.
She nods to the man behind the bar who waves like they’re old friends, which I know for a fact is impossible because we’ve made sure she doesn’t have any friends.
“Down here,” she says over her shoulder, and sure enough a nondescript door appears when we round the corner.
It opens when she jiggles the handle, revealing an empty stockroom.
Thane stumbles and she quickly reaches out to support his other side, leading us between two shelves that smell like dirty dishrags and chemicals.
I prop him against the wall, but a moment later his eyes roll to the back of his head and he collapses.
She swoops to break his fall so the idiot doesn’t brain himself on the concrete floor, and ends up trapped beneath his weight with his face in her crotch.
She sighs and tilts her head back against the wall. “So, this is fun.”
I can’t help but snicker as I join her on the floor on his other side.
“Is he going to be okay?” she asks, putting the back of her hand to his clammy forehead while I check the pulse in his wrist.
“He’s a big boy, he’ll be fine.” He fucking better be.
“What did he take?”
“I don’t know, but whenever I find out who made it I’ll rip their spine out through their throat.”
She stares at me blankly, before shaking her head. “Still not used to that shit.”
“What, causal violence?”
“The fact that it’s actually a possibility for you people.”
“You people? What do you mean, you people?”
“… Are you seriously quoting Tropic Thunder to me right now?”
“Are you telling me you don’t like Tropic Thunder? I don’t know if we can be friends now.”
“We aren’t friends.”
“Now that’s just quitter speak.”
“You’re actually delusional.”
“Hey, I don’t drop character till the DVD commentary.”
“Oh my God, please stop,” she deadpans, even as her fingers begin to run lightly through Thane’s buzzed hair. I peel back his eyelids to check his pupils, and for a moment, I just watch her, watching him.
“If only we had some Ass-Water, that’d bring him around. It’s a cure all.”
I gasp in fake outrage. “You fucking hypocrite,” and she laughs. Actually laughs. “So you can smile. I was beginning to wonder if your frowny face was just stuck like that.”
“Only when I’m around you.”
I flutter my eyelashes. “You say the sweetest things.”
She huffs and looks back down at Thane, who’s now drooling in her lap, and her smile slowly disappears. “Do you actually make drugs for him?”
I nod after a moment.
“Why?” she asks, crooking her eyebrow.
“What, you’ve never drugged your friends before?”
“Not the one’s I liked.”
I rub my jaw before looking back at her, and my best friend who’s now snoring into her belly button. “His demon is dangerous.”
“Uh, thanks Captain Obvious, kinda figured that out on my own.”
“Well, you clearly haven’t figured out that you shouldn’t mouth off to the worst of them.” I snark back.