Etched in Bone (Maker's Song #4)

  “Don’t you tell me what Simone would want! She doesn’t want anything anymore. She’s dead! Nothing but ash!”

  Fire scorches her lungs. Blackens her skin. Devours her with relentless teeth.

  Throat tight, Dante forced the image and the pain it carried down below. He could only imagine the images Simone’s death had seared into her brother’s psyche. He leaned over Trey, held his furious gaze.

  “Her body’s ash, yeah, but Simone ain’t. I fucking refuse to believe that. She’s here.” He touched his left hand to Trey’s T-shirt-covered chest, felt the slow pulse of his heart beneath his fingertips. The fading body heat. “And here,” he added, lifting his right hand and brushing the backs of his fingers against Trey’s temple. “Toujours.”

  Trey sucked in a ragged breath. A muscle spasmed in his jaw. He closed his eyes. “I don’t feel her,” he said, his voice rough. “But I still hear her screams.”

  “Aw, fuck, cher.” Dante straddled him and wrapped him up in a tight hug. Buried his face in the thick coils of Trey’s dreads. Smelled bitter hunger and raw grief. Felt Trey slipping away from him even as his cold body rested within his arms.

  “Von told me once that what you say from the heart has power to reach the ears of the dead,” Dante whispered, his lips beside Trey’s ear. “Told me that a spoken thing or a wished-hard thing takes a shape within the heart. Takes shape and becomes real.”

  Trey’s muscles trembled. “But it won’t bring her back.”

  “No, it won’t. But you can shape her within your heart, mon ami. Bring her back from pain and ash. Give her a place to dwell.”

  Trey laced his arms around Dante, hugging him back, then he cupped Dante’s face between cold hands and looked into his eyes, his own as reflective as black ice. His pale face was composed of sharp planes and angles, all grief and hunger.

  “I’ll feed, Tee-Tee. I’ll regain my strength. Then I’m gonna feast on the heart of Mauvais’s fille de sang before I feast on his. I’m only asking one thing of you.”

  A muscle flexed in Dante’s jaw. He nodded. “Ask, cher.”

  “If I decide to stop living, if I decide to take what’s left of Simone in my heart with me, then I’m asking you to let us go.”

  Dante drew in a tight, painful breath. “Trey . . .”

  “I’m asking, Tee-Tee.”

  “Fuck you. No.”

  “Fuck you back,” Trey said, voice coiled. “You’re asking me to live. You’re asking me to avenge my sister. Well, all right, you, but those are my terms.”

  Dante grabbed hold of the words if I decide. He searched Trey’s eyes, searched for something beyond his icicle gaze, but only found more ice glittering in the depths.

  “If, yeah?” Dante said. “If you decide.”

  “Oui. If.”

  Not knowing what other choice he had, Dante nodded. “Fuck. All right. Agreed.” He’d just have to make damned sure he gave Trey plenty of reasons to keep living even after they’d put an end to motherfucking Mauvais.

  Dante bit into his wrist again, the first bite having closed already. Blood pooled in the fang punctures. Without urging, Trey’s cold fingers latched around Dante’s arm. Hunger had expanded his pupils until they’d swallowed the icy color of his eyes. He fastened his mouth on Dante’s wrist. And fed.

  32

  LIKE WHITE-HOT STARS

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 28

  PALE TENDRILS OF STEAM curled out from the partially closed bathroom door. Heather heard water drumming from the shower. She crossed the room to the cracked-open bathroom door spilling light and heated air and the clean scent of soap into the room, and slipped inside.

  Dante’s leather pants were tossed on the slate floor in front of the tub/shower and his boots stood underneath the towel rack. His lean silhouette moved behind the white and silver striped shower curtain as he braced his hands against the tiled wall and tipped his face up into the spray of hot water.

  Heather stripped off her clothes, leaving them in a semi-neat pile on the toilet tank, her Colt on top. Grasping the rubber edge of the shower curtain, she stepped cautiously into the tub and into water that was hot enough to pleasantly pink her skin and massage the knots from her muscles, but not so hot that it made her squeak and back pedal out of the tub in self-defense.

  “That good, catin?” Dante asked.

  “Perfect.”

  She moved up behind him. Water glistened on his white skin, streamed in rivulets over the hard muscles of his back and shoulders and down to his firm ass. He started to turn around, but she stopped him with a hand to the small of his back.

  “Stay put,” Heather said. “You fell asleep on me, Baptiste.”

  “Yeah, motherfucking dawn. That sucked for true and not in a good way. Sorry about that, chйrie. Let me make it up to you.” He reached back, his hand sliding over her hip to her ass, his fingers trailing liquid fire along her wet skin.

  Electricity arced through her belly and farther south, a multiple lightning strike. As much as Heather wanted his hand on her ass and everywhere else he could reach, she slapped his hand away.

  “Nope. Stay put and keep your hands to yourself,” she said, her heart racing as the sudden image of Dante doing just that—his hands slide over his own taut flesh—flared behind her eyes. “This is payback. I’m going to be doing all the touching.”

  Pushing his wet hair from his face with both hands, he glanced at her from over his shoulder. A heated smile smoldered on his lips. Blue flames flickered deep in his eyes. “Yeah? Ain’t making no promises about staying put or keeping my hands to myself, catin. I want you.”

  Heather sucked in a breath, her knees weakening at the raw and primal intensity of those last three words—I want you—both promise and threat in his husky voice, pouring molten through their bond.

  “Too bad,” Heather managed to say, pleased her voice was steady, if a little breathless. “You’ll just have to wait.”

  “In case you ain’t noticed, waiting and patience ain’t my strong suits.”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed, Baptiste. Put your hands on the tile.”

  Dante complied, slapping his palms against the slick tiles. She brushed her fingers over his shoulder blades, searching for the outline of his wings, but not feeling anything but satin-smooth skin over steel muscles.

  “It’s like you have mini-gates in your back for your wings to fold into,” she mused aloud. “Is it still hurting?”

  “Nope.” He chuckled. “Mini-gates?”

  “Sounds better than pouches.”

  Dante laughed. “For true.”

  The memory of her flight a month ago with De Noir through the night-chilled air, tucked tight against his heated body as they flew from Ronin’s house, played through her mind. To do the same with Dante . . .

  “Wings.” Heather shook her head, then pushed her wet hair out of her face. “Never saw that one coming.”

  “Me either. Still ain’t sure how I feel about it.”

  Seeing a few remaining streaks of blood staining his skin, Heather scooped the soap up from its sudsy dish and lathered up her hands. She stroked them over Dante’s back and across his shoulder blades, massaging the hard, knotted muscles underneath her palms. Even wet, his skin was hot to the touch. His breath hissed in.

  But it wasn’t pain drawing in his breath. Pleasure funneled through the bond. Heat pooled low in Heather’s belly.

  Dante bowed his head. “C’est bon.”

  “Good,” Heather whispered, gliding the heels of her hands across his soap-slick back. She felt some of the tension drain from him—but only for a moment. She suddenly felt the muscles beneath her hands bunch and cord again.

  Alarm prickled along her spine. Just as she was about to ask what was wrong, she felt Dante’s broken past scrape against her mind like the splintered bow of a ship, pain trailing in its wake. The room took a slow, lazy spin around her.

  “Boy needs a lesson,” Dante whispered, his Ca
jun accent twisted thick. “Boy always needs a lesson.”

  Grabbing onto Dante’s hips for balance, Heather closed her eyes against the dizziness. Imagined steel around her mind. “That was never true. Papa lied.”

  Heather felt another shift, another splintered scrape, but no pain this time. Her shields were holding. She layered on another circle of steel, then opened her eyes. The twirling had stopped.

  “Ain’t letting them touch you. Ain’t letting them take you. I promised.”

  Dante’s words, low and harsh, determined, trailed ice down her spine. For a moment she wasn’t sure if he was actually speaking to her or from the past.

  “Give Chloe kisses for me, you,” Dante whispered. “Au ’voir, Orem.”

  “No good-byes, Baptiste,” Heather said. “You’re not there.”

  She molded herself against him and held him tight. And poured a cool rush of white silence through their bond.

  “You’re in New Orleans. At Club Hell, and in the shower with me. Come back, Baptiste. Come back to me, cher.”

  Dante shuddered within her embrace, his muscles rippling against her. The tension thrumming beneath his skin vanished. The past-storm gusting and shifting and scratching against her shields stopped.

  Dante sucked in a breath. “J’su ici, catin,” he said.

  Relief flooded through Heather. “Welcome back.”

  “This has gotta stop,” Dante said, strain and a desperate undertone Heather had never heard before edging his voice, “this fucking flipping between then and now. It’s too dangerous to you—to everyone near me. If I ever fucking hurt you . . .”

  “It’s dangerous to you too, Dante.”

  “There’s gotta be a way . . . wait. Do you still have the Bad Seed flash drive that prick Lyons gave you?”

  Heather opened her mouth to say yes, then remembered that it had been in the pocket of her jeans. The jeans she’d left at the house just before the fire.

  “No,” she replied. “Not anymore. It was at the house.”

  “Fuck. I was thinking maybe if I looked, if I knew, I could piece it all together.”

  “We’ll figure something out. De Noir had some of the file, maybe he still does. And we can both tell you what we know, what we saw.”

  “Yeah, c’est bien,” Dante sighed. “That’d be a good start, catin.”

  “So let it go for now and stay right there.” Heather slicked a soapy hand up Dante’s hard abs to his chiseled chest. His breathing quickened. “I’ve got all manner of naughty things in mind for you.”

  “I like naughty.”

  “Really?” She tugged on the ring in his collar. “Never would’ve guessed.”

  She traced a finger along the raised scar the Morningstar had seared into his chest. Memorized the sigil that she’d felt burn like ice against her own heart.

  She traced her finger in a wet and lazy circle around his nipple. “Think you can manage to keep awake?” she purred, pinching the hardened nub.

  Her only answer was a low, deep growl that sent heated shivers down her spine.

  Heather trailed her other hand in a soapy downward glide across Dante’s flat belly, inching ever lower. Grasping him, she stroked his velvety, diamond-hard length, her pulse racing. He burned against her palm. His breath caught in his throat.

  Fire pulsed through Heather’s veins, fluttered through her belly. All thought ashed as she continued to stroke him, her wet, soapy hands sliding back and forth with increasing speed. She kissed his muscle-corded shoulder, the nape of his neck. Tasted soap and water and burning leaves.

  A shock wave of pleasure—Dante’s—rippled through their bond in ever-expanding blue-flamed rings into her mind, swirling heat through her body, before boomeranging back to him. Song pulsed between them—hungry and dark and passionate—a song of deep and mutual need.

  I want you.

  Heather didn’t know if Dante whispered those words in a rough voice or sent them fevered into her mind. But they blazed within her like white-hot stars.

  “Turn around,” she said. And started to drop to her knees on the porcelain.

  He moved, slipping free of her hands and spinning in a heated blur of motion. His hot hands gripped her hips, lifted her up. His arms wrapped around her, cabled steel. Without even thinking about it, she scissored her legs around his waist.

  “You’re supposed to stay put,” she whispered.

  “Fuck that. Ain’t happening.”

  Dante looked into her eyes, his dark, gold-flecked gaze drinking her in, then with one hard, urgent thrust, he was deep inside of her, his momentum knocking them both back against the wet, slippery tile.

  Heather cried out, pleasure coiling through her in hot, honeyed loops as Dante drove into her with long strokes. She laced her arms around his neck, twisted her fingers into his wet hair, and yanked.

  With a low growl, he kissed her, his tongue slipping between her parted lips, claiming her mouth. She kissed him back with equal intensity, claiming his. Savoring the taste of his amaretto lips.

  She felt Dante slip one arm free from her waist so he could brace his hand against the wall as his rhythm deepened, keeping time with earthy song cascading between them like a heated waterfall. Blue flames licked and kissed their wet skin, slid along their entangled limbs.

  Dante was here with her, here and now, and Heather would do whatever it took to anchor him in the present, to see him free of the past. To keep her promise to him.

  It’s quiet when I’m with you. The noise stops.

  I’ll help you stop it forever.

  Their breath mingled, harsh and panting, rough with fevered need. Dante’s lips slid along Heather’s throat, his fangs scraping the skin. With a soft yes-yes-yes moan, she arched her neck. His fangs pierced her flesh and she felt the heated pull of his lips as he drank in her blood. He pounded into her with a feral, primal urgency.

  Pleasure spiraled through Heather in tighter and tighter loops, spinning her to the cliff’s edge. She decided not to plunge into pleasure’s deep pool alone.

  She was taking Dante with her.

  Heather surrendered to his pounding rhythm and poured every skin-tingling sensation in her body—the feel of him inside of her, his scent, the taste of his lips, the slickness of his sweat-and-water glistening skin—back through their bond and into him as an intense orgasm throbbed throughout her body in pulsing waves.

  she sent.

  Heather locked her arms even tighter around Dante’s neck as his muscles stiffened, spasmed, caught in pleasure overload. He came with a low, ragged moan. His movement gradually slowed and, wrapping both arms around her, he rested his fevered face against her shoulder.

  “Fuck, catin,” he whispered. “Je t’aime aussi.”

  Heather smiled into his wet hair. “Payback, Baptiste.”

  “T’es sыr? Two can play that game.”

  Easing her off him, he trailed molten kisses from her lips to her breasts and licked each hardened, aching nipple, one after the other.

  Then he dropped to his knees, his hot hands curving around to her ass.

  Heather sucked in a breath, realizing he was going to make her pay too.

  Over and over and over.

  33

  REAL FUCKING CLEAR

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 28

  “SO THE ASSHOLE MESSED with Annie, huh? Brainwashed her?”

  “I don’t know for sure, of course, but that’s my guess since she knew two names she shouldn’t have—Gehenna and the Morningstar.”

  “Motherfucker. Think me and him are gonna have a little chat later.”

  Sitting on their rumpled bed, Heather leaned back on her elbows and watched Dante pull on a pair of low-riding black latex jeans. Side laces ran the length of each leg from hip to ankle in double rows of gleaming metal eyelets. The pants fit so well that Heather yearned to peel them off, shove him back onto the bed, and climb on top of him.

  Christ, Wallace, quit visu
ally molesting him. Physically is so much better.

  Dante glanced at her from beneath his lashes as he threaded a belt through the loops, its triple rows of steel studs glinting in the room’s low light. A smile tilted his lips.

  “I heard that, catin.”

  Cheeks burning, Heather tightened her shields. “Dammit. I keep forgetting.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll become second nature with time.”

  “Well, until it does, could you at least pretend not to eavesdrop?”

  “Nope.”

  Just as Heather opened her mouth to verbally flip him off, Dante moved in a blur of black latex and white skin. She felt the fevered touch of his hands everywhere at once—along her hips, across her breasts, tracing her sides, brushing her throat, trailing between her legs—then she found herself flat on her back on the bed, Dante propped on his elbows above her, his body pressed against hers. Mischief and heat smoldered in his dark eyes.

  “Yup. Physically is so much better,” he said. “But visually ain’t bad either.”

  “You cheated. Again,” Heather protested, fire fluttering through her belly. “You said I could cheat the next time.”

  “And you can. It just ain’t next time yet.”

  She smacked his shoulder. “Fibber. In that case—get off.”

  Dante’s eyebrows lifted. “Fibber? That the best you can do?”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire—”

  Dante kissed her thoroughly, effectively ending her chant, his tongue promising all manner of wonderful, toe-curling, pants-on-fire-in-a-good-way things, then he pushed himself away and onto his feet.

  Heather stared at the tin ceiling for a moment, getting her breathing under control and regretting her decision to insist that he get off her. When—not if, I refuse to accept if—things finally quiet down, I’m going to keep him naked and in bed for a week. Maybe two, if I survive the first week. She sat up, tugging down the hem of her tight, moss green sweater.

  Dante sat in the ivy-patterned armchair, strapping on his boots, a smile on his lips. A sexy and wicked smile, damn him. It looked like she needed to start a Dante payback list. Item number one: eavesdropped on my thoughts, then molested me while I was fantasizing about molesting him.