Chapter 25
Tobias
It turned out that a cupful of hound blood was just what the doctor ordered, and every bit as nourishing as angel blood. Tobias thanked the beasts and pulled himself into a standing position.
All eight of Ngdugu and Yamamoto’s guards were dead, and four out of Marquez’s five. Lyla, in demon form, had pinned Ngdugu to the floor and was discharging her powers of winter into him. Yamamoto was down, but it didn’t look like he’d been staked in the heart.
“What the fuck is going on?” he asked in disbelief.
“The eighth lord’s influence hits us all differently,” Westergaard replied. “Marquez had seizures, Beaumont killed himself, and it looks like Ngdugu wants to kill everyone else.”
“I said let me go you, decrepit miscreant!” Kitty’s voice shattered the silence following Westergaard’s statement.
It took a while to locate her amidst the chaos.
Marquez had literally thrown his body on top of her in a bid to shield her from whatever else unfolded while Tobias had been out of action.
Her wings were splayed in a terrible position sandwiched between Marquez and the floor.
Both arms lay trapped beneath her body, her face an inch from the floor.
She could have flashed out, but she’d have had to take Marquez with her.
“Marquez…” Tobias called.
Finally realizing the worst had passed, the Floridian got to his feet. Kitty followed, muttering a string of coarse language in the process. She dusted herself off and found Tobias looking right at her.
“You’re okay…” she blurted, as if she’d expected him to be expired on the floor along with the others.
“I’m okay,” he repeated.
His attention fell upon the last mortal servant, trembling in his chair, and clearly traumatized by everything which had occurred that evening. Feeling a measure of guilt, Tobias left the dais and approached the male, who cowered with both arms shielding himself.
“I’m your master now, I’m not going to hurt you. I need you.”
The male started speaking rapid Norwegian. Tobias looked at Kitty helplessly.
“He doesn’t speak English, and he’s praying to the Norse Gods because apparently you terrify the ever-loving shit out of him,” she translated.
A booming laugh signaled Westergaard’s presence at Tobias’ side. He began speaking to the male. Kitty didn’t offer any enlightenment that time, but his attempt at reassurance was obvious.
He located a room for Marquez and his remaining guard to Fade in, and others for Westergaard and the conscious mortal servant.
Nobody was in any fit state to be dematerializing right now.
O’Brien found more comfortable places for Will and Rion to spend the night, while Althea and Derek helped Lyla move the two original kings to a pair of secure rooms, where they were not a risk to anyone else.
Tobias surveyed everyone that remained in the throne room.
“The angels will be okay,” Kitty promised. “As will your servants. I know you don’t like to leave them like this, but you need to take care of yourself first. The amount of blood you’ve already consumed and expended tonight is unsettling. You need to give your body time to process it all.”
“I know you’re right, but I should at least revive Lori and Vixen. It would not be wise to leave all my servants incapacitated while I Fade. Plus, it provides someone to watch over Will and Rion, just in case.”
Kitty sighed and threw both hands in the air. “All right then, you’re the king.”
Tobias roused the two females and gave them a brief account of the night’s events, as well as the location of the bedrooms Will and Rion had been taken to. They both hugged him.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Lori said. “I can’t believe you succeeded, but I’m glad.”
“Are you going to revive the others?” Vixen asked, pointing at the rest of the mortal servants.
He stroked the stubble at his jawline, reluctant to answer the question. “I’m sorry, they’re going to have to wait until after I’ve Faded.”
“He needs to rest,” Kitty chipped in. “We don’t want to risk everything we’ve achieved by sending him into the Fade without enough reserves.”
Sadness dominated Vixen’s expression but she nodded. “Okay.”
“It will be okay, Vix,” Lori said, hugging her.
“Go, be with your males,” Kitty told them. “I’m sure they will be grateful to wake up next to you.”
They nodded and set off down the hall. Tobias watched them go with a lead weight in the pit of his stomach.
The complicated web connecting it all kept expanding, leaving them no choice but to accept it.
They had signed up for this life voluntarily, but without knowing the full extent of where the journey might lead.
Hell, I don’t think I even knew where any of this was going to lead. We have got to reach a point where we can leave crisis-mode behind us. We’ve just got to.
Kitty slid her hand into his and laced their fingers together. “Let’s go to your bedchamber. We need to have that talk.”
He struggled to switch gears and drag his brain in this new direction. Holding hands with Kitty felt contradictory to the aforementioned talk. She was easily the most confusing female Tobias had ever laid eyes on. And yet, I still want her. What is wrong with me?
“Please?” She murmured.
“Okay.”
Once they were safely inside, with the door locked, she climbed onto the bed and drew both knees up to her chest. Her wings retreated, and her hair transitioned from long flowing locks to the black bob that had grown so familiar.
The Holy gown gave way to tailored trousers, a scarlet-colored stretchy tube of fabric around her upper torso, and a cropped jacket.
Tobias rather liked her mortal style. He kept his gaze upon her as he walked past the bed to the sitting area.
“The chair? Again?”
“I’m not coming over there until we’ve cleared the air.”
“Really, Tobias? For once, can’t we just talk like adults?”
“You tell me? You’re the one who made things weird when I was too far into the Fade to make sense of it, never mind able to respond.
I don’t even know what to do with these stupid damned feelings you’ve stirred in me.
Then, you were gone when I arose, and came back rocking an inappropriate attitude in one of the most crucial moments of a giant shit storm I never wanted to be in charge of.
Why can’t you see I’m doing the best I fucking can with really crappy circumstances? ”
“That’s how you interpreted all of that?” It was as if her heightened emotions suddenly deflated, leaving a lost and confused soul defeated by expectation.
His brow furrowed as he studied her. “I know I’m not the only one who is bound by circumstance. I know I piss you off, and I’m sorry for that. Everyone wanted me to be king. I have to do it my way, or it won’t work.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I need to trust you more and freak out less, but I can’t.
It’s my fault you’re Undead. It would have been my fault if you hadn’t survived that stake to the heart a couple of centuries back.
If you hadn’t survived last night, that would be on me too…
as well as the deaths of everyone you took down with you.
Don’t you realize I wouldn’t survive that? Fuck, if I lost you…”
Tears started to fall. She caught them with angry swipes at first, but they were coming too thick and fast. Her chest heaved with the inability to breathe and she became overwhelmed with gut-wrenching sobs.
He blurred forward, onto the bed beside her, in the blink of an eye.
His arms folded around her body in a protective embrace as she trembled and fell to pieces.
Cupping the back of her head and cradling her against his body, he said nothing, simply being present as she expended emotions too big to hold inside any longer.
Small arms found their way around his torso, gripping fistfuls of his shirt as if her life depended on it.
After several minutes, she calmed, and her fists softened into open palms at his back.
He stroked her hair gently, struggling to hold back emotions of his own.
The idea of loving anyone again after losing his wife terrified him beyond measure.
Sex with an endless stream of strangers over the centuries had been a subconscious attempt at preventing emotion from ever entering the equation again. Until now. Now the dam had been breached, and his heart lay open wide and exposed, vulnerable to whatever may come.
Her lips parted to release the softest of sighs. “You are so fucking amazing, and you have no idea. Even in the clutches of darkness and despair, you always find a way to rise from the ashes. Do you know how rare that is?”
The tracks of her tears glistened in the lamplight as her face turned up to his.
They sat there staring at each other in wonder, as if the love between them could not possibly be real amidst the chaos that had become their lives.
As if the very notion someone else felt the same way they did was impossible to believe.
As though such an intense feeling was somehow undeserved.
Her bejeweled cerulean gaze contained a vulnerability that mirrored his own. Something about that realization tore down the last of the walls he’d built around his heart.
With rational thought off the table, Tobias gave in to the desires building within. He took her face in both hands and kissed her long and hard on the lips. This time, she met his passion with a fire of her own.
She shivered as he brushed his lips against the tender flesh of her neck, leaving a trail of kisses on his way south. He dragged down the stretchy tube top, to expose her breasts, and licked at one of her pebbled nipples before taking it into his mouth.
A rush of air escaped her throat and she buried both hands in his hair to steady herself. The next thing he knew they were shedding clothes in a blur, a flurry of impatient kisses punctuating every available pause.
He teased her opening with the most gentle of fingertips, exhilarated by the way her body responded to his touch. Murmurs of pleasure soon turned into moans of delight as he pushed two fingers inside her. He worked them in and out, loving the way she writhed and clawed at the bedsheets.
His name spilled from her lips, an urgent and desperate whisper. With both her arms wrapped around his body, fingernails tearing at his skin, they tumbled into a horizontal position amidst a frenzy of limbs and stolen kisses. He dragged himself down her body, eager to taste her wet center.
Gripping her thighs, he gazed up the length of her body for a fraction of a second, to savor her lust-ridden expression.
She wanted him, and she wanted him bad. Smirking a little, he returned his attention to that sweet spot between her legs and plunged his tongue inside.
Kitty’s back arched instantly and her breathing grew shallow.
The taste of her drove him wild and his shaft ached in response.
When he could hold back his own desire no longer, he eased himself between her legs and thrust deep inside. She cried out with pleasure as her body swallowed his length, and wrapped both legs around his waist.
Giddy with ecstasy, he worked up a rhythm, groaning as her core gripped his shaft with each rolling thrust. It was an infinite moment, but also felt that it might never be long enough. As their bodies moved as one, he felt certain there could be no physical pleasure greater than this.
Their hips moved in sync over and over again as though they’d always partaken in this act. He could feel the pressure building inside of him and knew he was powerless to the effect her body was having on him.
Suddenly, a wave of lust crashed over them, pulling the release from his body in a moment of euphoria that straddled the line between pleasure and pain.
He caught himself with a palm to the mattress, unable to conceive rational thought as the greatest sensations he’d ever known hit his body in waves.
Beneath him, Kitty’s arched back and breathless moans told him everything he needed to know. She’d felt everything he had, and it was fucking incredible.
They clung to each other, reveling in the amalgamation of power their bodies had created together.
“Damn, Martelli…” She said breathlessly.
“Back atcha, Silverwood.”
He could feel her laughter reverberating against his skin and it made him grin from ear to ear. Who knew this was what we both needed?
“Sorry about projecting,” she said as she snuggled into him and got comfortable.
“Darlin’ you don’t ever have to apologize for that. You rocked my fucking world.”
“Right answer.”
With a chuckle, he turned his face to gaze at her. “I’m pissed I have to enter the Fade soon. I’m enjoying this.”
“Same.” She dragged a fingertip over his chest, drawing circles on his flesh. “I guess we’ll just have to do it again sometime.”
“Sometime? When the fuck is ‘sometime’?”
“Well, I mean,” she paused, as she realized he was teasing her. “You ass.”
He chuckled and kissed the top of her head. The Fade hovered like a blanket waiting to cloak him, but he didn’t mind. He’d survived what should have been an impossible feat and got the girl. What more could a male ask for?