East of Ecstasy (Hearts of the Anemo)

  Owen came to such a sudden halt that the contents of the plate almost slid off. Their house. It was gone. Burned to the ground in the battle with Eurus. Holy Zeus, but they didn’t even have a home for Megan to go back to. Not to mention the little problem of what the human authorities were making of the disaster the battle had left behind.

  For a moment, Owen couldn’t breathe.

  But then he forced a deep breath. And another. They’d figure it out. It would all work out. They’d be fine.

  He’d just keep repeating that until he believed it.

  Because no way could he give Megan the impression he was worried. She and the baby couldn’t stand anymore stress than they’d gone through the past forty-eight hours.

  As bad as it would be to lose one of his brothers—and it would be horrible beyond imagination—Owen would be destroyed if anything happened to Megan and the kids. They were his heart, his life, his very soul.

  With one more deep breath under his belt, Owen forced himself to move again and made his way to the suite of rooms Aeolus had provided for them. Inside the apartment, the spacious living room was formally furnished and luxurious in finish, and except for giving them some floor space for Teddy to play, they hadn’t spent much time in it. His boots thudded against the white marble as he entered a hallway with several bedrooms.

  Owen pushed into the room he shared with his wife. “Hey, Angel,” he said, forcing normalcy into his voice. “I brought some food back.”

  Megan lay curled on the bed staring out the picture window that overlooked lush gardens. Pillows propped up her big belly and supported her back. She was so beautiful it made Owen’s heart hurt. How had he ever been so lucky to find and keep someone like Megan?

  “Hey,” she said, pushing herself into a sitting position.

  Owen settled the plate on the side table, then sat on the edge of the bed next to her. He grasped Megan’s hand, unable to keep from touching her, proving to himself that she was here and she was safe. “Did you get some sleep?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” She tucked wavy blond hair behind her ears.

  Owen smiled and winked. “You’re better than okay.”

  That eked a smile out of her. “I’m going a little stir-crazy, though.”

  “I know. Laney said she’d come visit later,” he added. “How are you feeling?”

  “No more contractions,” she said. “It’d be great to see Laney. Tabitha and Teddy were here for a while, but she took him so he could take a nap.” Funny that their neighbor who sometimes watched Teddy for them was now here in the Realm of the Gods doing the very same thing. The thought beckoned a memory from Owen’s mind, the image of Boreas kissing Tabitha before the battle had begun. With his newly shorn hair, new modern wardrobe, and interest in their neighbor, it was as though Boreas had been coming back to life. And now he was dead.

  The memory nearly sucker punched him.

  Megan’s small, cool hand cupped his jaw. “Thinking of Boreas?” How had she known? Owen’s gaze cut to hers, and she gave a small, sad smile. “You’re not the only one who can read emotions, you know,” she said, her thumb rubbing his cheekbone just under his eye. “And your eyes flared.”

  “I love you, you know that?” Owen said, turning his head to press a kiss into her palm. From across the room, his gaze caught sight of the decorative glass jar into which they’d placed the last gift Boreas had ever given them—three crystal snowflakes infused with his divine energy. He’d apparently made them on Owen’s wedding day to Megan, though Owen had learned of their existence only after Boreas’s death. Owen sighed. “I miss him,” he managed, dragging his gaze back to Megan.

  “Me, too,” she rasped, her eyes going glassy. “So much.” Megan reached forward as if to hug him, but stopped and frowned at her belly. “You have to come hug me. My belly’s in the way.”

  With a chuckle, Owen reached for Megan and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He drew her scent into himself, using it to find a bit of solace. Love for her nearly overwhelmed him, which was a far better feeling than the avalanche of guilt and grief he’d been shouldering the past few days.

  “What did you bring me to eat?” she whispered into his ear. “I’m hungry.”

  Now that’s what he liked to hear. He sat back. “Yeah?”

  Megan smiled. “Yeah.” Owen handed the plate to Megan, who used her belly as a shelf. “I’m going to miss being able to do this,” she said, situating the plate and drawing more laughter from him. Only she could possibly bring him a small spot of joy in the midst of all this grief and chaos. Just another reason—among many—that he loved her. “Now, I know you want to feed me, so don’t even pretend like you’re all nonchalant over there.”

  Owen grinned and picked up a strawberry. “You know me too well.”

  “No such thing,” she said, then she bit into the strawberry he held in his fingers. As her tongue swiped a bit of juice from her lip, he tracked it with his gaze. This gorgeous, arousing woman was all his.

  And he would do anything to make sure she stayed happy and safe.

  Chapter Five

  A scream stuck in Anna’s throat as she whipped around. The Dark Man. Again. A strangled whimper managed to wrest free.

  Except this time, he’d spoken.

  As she stood trembling and staring at her imagination come to life, he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her.

  And also moved.

  Though he radiated a general aura of menace, he took no overt actions to threaten her.

  Hoping against hope, Anna clenched her eyes closed, counted to ten, and with a small, silent plea, opened them again.

  “I’m still here,” he said in a low voice.

  “But, I painted you,” she finally managed to say. “I did what you demanded. You shouldn’t be here.”

  He cocked his head to the opposite side in a slow gesture that seemed full of languid casualness. Butterflies whipped through her stomach, telling her it was a false impression. “And yet”—he held out his arms—“here I am.”

  Anna felt her mouth open, but as her brain couldn’t make sense of the moment, she couldn’t find the right words to say. She pressed her fingers to her lips and shook her head. The exhaustion these paintings brought on, the overwrought grief she’d felt as she’d finished… A nearly euphoric rush of relief flowed through her. That explained this. That explained him. “You’re not real.” Intent on proving it, she barreled forward, dead certain he’d disappear or fade away. Just as he’d done last night when she’d driven through him.

  She crashed full-on into a mountain of rock-hard male. Her face against the unyielding planes of his lean pecs, her hands coming up against the ribs she had no difficulty feeling, her bare feet nearly tangling with his boots.

  He hissed and reared back as if she’d burned him. As if he were the aggrieved party here. The quickness of his movement threw her further off-kilter, making her stumble forward into him.

  “Don’t touch me, human,” he growled.

  That was the moment her brain finally accepted the impossible. The subject of her paintings was a living, breathing, rankly pissed-off man standing in front of her.

  Terror whipped through her, breaking out goose bumps over her flesh and setting her teeth to chattering. Run! Get away! Hide! The instincts whipped through her. The windowless room plunged into darkness.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Instead of fearing the unusual timing of the power outage, Anna silently cheered at the advantage of surprise it gave her. After a split second of adjustment, the outlines of everything in the room became clear, and she bolted hard to the left, intending to skirt around the far side of her worktable and then make a dead run for the door.

  With a terrified shriek, she crashed into something warm and recoiled just as quickly. No. Nonono. Not possible. He couldn’t have moved that fast, that silently. And how had she not seen him? She whipped back around the table. “Oomph!” she uttered disbelievingly when she crashed into him again. Oh, G
od, he’s everywhere! The basest kind of fear flooded through her, erasing all traces of Annalise Fallston and leaving only a human being in a basic fight for survival.

  Her body was already flinging itself away from him. Steely grips settled around her biceps. “Stop,” he bit out. A dim light flared, reminding her of the eyes she’d thought she’d imagined the night before. Except here they were again, just inches from her face, directed at her as though he was looking at her, despite the pitch black. She twisted and pushed and kicked. He gripped her tighter and tugged her nearly against his chest to make it harder to effectively fight with her hands and knees. “Stop now,” he commanded, icy impatience sliding into his tone.

  “Let me go!” she rasped. “Please!”

  “I’ll tell you one last time. Stop fighting me,” he growled. But the veiled threat only ratcheted up her fight-or-flight response. Her nails were useless against his leather jacket, her bare feet not strong enough to impact the toes his boots protected. But that didn’t stop her from trying. When he let go of her right arm, triumph surged through her. Then his hand pressed to her forehead.

  A breeze seemed to unfurl around her. Soft. Lulling. Immediately sedating.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she managed to force out, despite the sluggishness making her limbs heavy and her senses dull. She wasn’t in pain, but she was clearly dying, though her mind rejected that this was how and when her life would end. Grief and regret surged through her. “Daddy,” she mouthed, so, so sorry to leave him when he needed her so much. Her eyelids sagged closed. Sound faded away, and then all feeling. Until she was floating. Until she was nothing at all.

  …

  Devlin stared down at the woman he’d finally had to force into unconsciousness, frustrated yet amazed that she’d struggled against even that. And, gods be damned, she’d fought as if for her life. Not that it was in danger—yet. And, anyway, the fighting would’ve been fruitless even if he’d meant her harm. The darkness had been no impediment to his sight, and in fact had allowed him to easily shift between his elemental and corporeal forms as he prevented her escape from the room. Just as he should’ve done last night.

  At last, his will bested hers and she sagged completely into his arms. Even separated as it was by his clothing, her heat against him was foreign and strange. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been touched in anything other than anger and humiliation, which was why the sudden impact of her body against his had caught him so off guard.

  Light flooded the room.

  Devlin frowned and glared up at the fixture above his head. And then looked back to the human he held. This was the second time the lights had gone out in her presence. Instinct flared and Devlin ran his gaze over her face. If anyone understood the connection between emotions and the manifestation of power, it was him. Both times the lights had gone out, he’d scared her badly. And both times she’d vacated the room—through flight or loss of consciousness—the light had returned.

  No way was that a coincidence.

  As if he needed another mystery to add to the growing list where she was concerned.

  Devlin lifted her into the cradle of his arms, and he was immediately in sensory overload. Her warmth against his abdomen and arms, her scent—all vanilla and woman—surrounding him. She was a slight little thing, small as she was, and it unleashed a wave of protectiveness he had no business feeling. But it couldn’t be helped. Black-souled he might be, but the loss of one brother and the torture of another had ingrained that particular instinct deeply.

  Not that he’d actually ever been any good at protecting those he should.

  He crossed the room, his gaze fixed on a single tear that had leaked from the corner of her eye and slowly rolled down her temple, and settled her onto an old blue couch near the door. Retreating a few paces, Devlin studied her. Small and young as she appeared, she seemed even more so in sleep. And every bit as alluring. Angelic in the purity of her coloring. Devilish in the magnetism of her feminine curves.

  And fierce, too.

  What must it be like to hold your own life so dear that you would fight tooth and nail to protect it? Devlin wouldn’t know. After all, how could he believe he deserved to live when he’d caused the death of another? And not just anyone, but a brother.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands. He could still feel the weight of her in his arms, her softness on his fingers. The sensation agitated him even as part of him missed holding her close. It had been so long, he didn’t realize he’d forgotten how good touch could feel until now.

  With a growl of annoyance, Devlin turned and marched to the door, where he firmly planted his body to ensure she couldn’t leave unless he permitted it. Which he wouldn’t. Not until he had answers. Leaning against the wood, he crossed his arms and settled in. He wasn’t in the habit of interacting with humans, and he had little sense of whether he’d given her a small or large dose of his command to sleep.

  Just one more power he had to hone. Take a number.

  Staring across the room, his gaze settled on the painting she’d just finished. The one that showed him—and the short leather jacket proved it was him and not his father—clutching at the bars to Alastor’s cell. Devlin knew for sure that scene hadn’t happened, because damn it all to Hades but he’d never seen Alastor shackled that way—which made it imperative he find out what it meant and when it took place. One of his major objectives in taking a stand against his father was freeing his youngest brother. Eurus had imprisoned him years ago to force Devlin’s obedience to his authority, so it was on Devlin to make it right by freeing him once and for all. At least, from his shackles and cell. Whether the younger god could free himself from whatever damage Eurus’s torture and deprivation had caused remained to be seen.

  And that would be on Devlin, too.

  If the open eyes could be trusted, at least the painting depicted Alastor still alive. But Devlin felt each passing minute like a collar tightening around his throat. Soon, Eurus’s patience would run out and his rage would overflow. And, given his imprisonment, his brother would undoubtedly get caught in the eye of the storm.

  “Hang on, Alastor. I’m coming for you,” he said, projecting the words in a way his brother should be able to hear—assuming he was lucid. But it had been months since Devlin had heard Alastor’s voice in reply.

  Quiet minutes passed, and Devlin allowed his eyelids to fall shut.

  Complete blackness. Total silence.

  The peace so startled him that his eyes popped open and Devlin pushed off the door, heart suddenly a jackrabbit in the chest. How the hell had he managed that? No concentration, no breathing techniques, no battles against the past. Just…peace.

  Raking his fingers through his hair, Devlin shook his head and paced a few steps, mentally backtracking the past few minutes to see what he’d done differently. What he’d done at all to clear his mind.

  But as he replayed the moments between speaking to Anna for the first time and closing his eyes seconds before, not a single thing stood out to him.

  Dumb luck? What other kind did he have?

  Utter mental exhaustion? More likely. Usually, his mind was such a battlefield that sleep eluded him. Some nights he never even bothered to try. Trying and failing to sleep actually left him more strung out and pissed off than never lying down in the first place.

  Devlin, where are you?

  For a moment, the sound startled him with the possibility that Alastor had finally managed a reply. But the voice was all wrong—too deep, too robust, too commanding. Aeolus. It wasn’t the first time in the past forty-eight hours he’d heard his grandfather’s summons, nor the first time Devlin had ignored it. He didn’t know whether to feel reassured or threatened that Aeolus searched for him.

  Settling in against the door again, Devlin peered down at the woman sprawled in long, lean lines over the worn blue denim of the couch. He needed to figure this situation out first. Because his chest hummed with the certainty that these paintings were significant
. And if his gut was right that she was painting freeze-frames of the future, the next thing that emerged from the tip of her paintbrush might reveal whether Devlin could trust Aeolus or whether, even now, the Anemoi intended to give him a one-way escort to the deepest, blackest pits of Tartarus.

  Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Devlin spent the time struggling to hold onto that quiet blackness, but with every passing second it got more and more difficult, and the horrors of the past crept back in on him, like a slowly rising sea that brought with it the inevitable finality of drowning. Of death.

  Finally, he gave up. And in that acquiescence his ears tuned in to the fact that Anna’s breathing had changed. From slow and shallow, it was now deeper, faster, louder.

  Eyes still closed, her brow furrowed and she licked at her lips. Her hands twitched and dragged up her body to settle on her stomach, pulling the hem of her T-shirt up and exposing a sliver of porcelain skin above her jean shorts.

  Her smooth perfection sucker punched him with a totally unexpected, foreign jolt of lust. He wasn’t a virgin, but for the amount of time that had lapsed since he’d last allowed himself the pleasure and ecstasy of a woman’s body, he might as well have been. Abstinence was hardly a sufficient sacrifice for Farren’s death and Alastor’s torment. Even if it had lasted more than a century.

  Blink of an eye in the life of a god.

  Or so he told himself.

  Besides, from his ruined skin to his battered psyche, he felt dirty down to his very soul.

  Anna’s eyelids fluttered, not yet focusing, not yet seeing, not yet aware of what happened around her.

  He couldn’t imagine laying himself bare to…to someone like her.

  She made a small noise of sleepy confusion and pushed up onto her elbows. “What— Oh, God!” On hands and feet, she scrambled backward into the farthest corner of the couch.