Inked Destiny

Two

Etaín burned but there was no escaping the heat. It consumed her, traveling through the ink she wore, radiating inward like fire turned against itself, flame reaching into her very core.

She struggled against it but there was no respite until finally she dreamed, aware she was dreaming. Magic she thought and heard its voice say yesss, sibilant like a snake’s hiss as coils encased her, pulling her downward into an ocean of blackness where images from the last week, both real and imagined, played across the screen of her mind.

That first glimpse of Cathal as he stood outside Stylin’ Ink.

Passing through the wards at Aesirs. Recognizing the symbols carved into the doorway without understanding their meaning.

Eamon’s approach, the tattoos on her forearms writhing and rippling as if soaking in his presence, raging fire and stormy seas, the call of like to like.

A hospital room with her brother Parker and his partner Trent at her back. Stealing memories from a victim of the Harlequin Rapist.

Then stealing additional memories, this time from Cathal’s cousin Brianna.

Cathal’s father and uncle, envisioned, imagined as they delivered vengeance, the deadly justice of men whose code and livelihood were bordered by violence—aiming, firing, the recoil from their weapons pulsing through Etaín like a shockwave, plummeting her stomach as the all-too-real repercussions of their actions made her chest tighten.

The police arriving at her apartment and taking her to the floor. Cuffing her. Incarcerating her in a windowless interrogation room. Photographs of four murdered boys. The barriers falling, sending her into the loop of Brianna’s relived memories. The pain slashing, clawing through her heart as the suspicion that Cathal’s campaign of seduction had been about getting her to use her gift firmed, and then was confirmed with the touch of her palms to his skin.

Images fast-forwarded to those moments of peace and connection after her reconciliation with Cathal. A day of lovemaking interspersed with working ink into his arms.

I ssseee, the voice said, coils tightening mercilessly as she fought to wake, panicked in a blackness that was the absence of color, the roar in her head getting louder and louder as fire returned, burning in her chest, hotter and hotter, pressure building, building until reality became a hundred thin highways writ in gold.

Slowly they winked out, all but one of them. Then it too faded, becoming a dream where she sat in a moving car.

Through the window she recognized an Oakland street she’d driven the Harley down only days ago. She turned, heartbeat ratcheting up when she saw her companions wearing ski masks, then felt the same against her face and glanced down to find black gloves on her hands.

The coiled constriction was no longer present. She renewed her struggles, trying to surface from what she knew was the beginning of a nightmare, but against the backs of her eyelids she could see sigils writ in red twined with blue and understood they were Eamon’s, a magical command like a wave holding her beneath it, making escape impossible.

The bar where the Curs hung out came into sight. She counted seven motorcycles and feared what would come next in the dream, this splintered reality, the aftereffects of the last couple of days when the barriers she’d erected against all the memories she’d stolen from those who’d survived horrendous, brutal crimes, had begun tumbling down.

Days ago she’d come to this bar in an effort to help the police identify the Harlequin Rapist. She’d been hunting…and in turn was being hunted.

For an instant the interior of the car blurred, becoming the metal cell of a shipping container filled with terror. Her own. That of other victims of rape and torture.

She shivered and whimpered, once again trying to escape the dream, once again failing. This time looking down to find a gun in her hand, made longer and more terrifying by the silencer attached to it.

The car stopped a few feet away from where she’d parked the Harley when she went there to talk to Anton, a few feet from where she and Eamon had fought a little while later.

She was first out of the car. Her companions followed, four others, all of them moving with purpose toward the bar.

Lifting the gun, she waved the barrel in a silent order. Two of the four peeled away, hurrying down the sides of the building toward the back.

She and the remaining two took up positions on either side of the front door. A moment later the phone in her back pocket vibrated.

She gave a thumbs-up, going in first.

Aiming.

Firing.

Curs. Their women. Their hangers-on. The trigger pulls fast, the weight of a second gun there at the center of her back, jammed beneath the waistband of jeans.

The club wannabe who’d tried to claim her when she went to see Anton fell from a bullet she fired. Movement, and she locked onto the guy who’d racked the pool balls when she and Anton played.

He went down, somebody else’s bullet adding to the carnage. Everywhere there were bodies. Most were still but a few moved, bleeding and crying, though there was only silence in her head as another bullet ensured their deaths.

She took care of one section of the room as her companions handled others. Swapped out guns when she’d emptied the weapon she came in with, everything methodical, planned, as though it were a military exercise, timed so that an internal clock went off and she motioned toward the door.

The two black-masked figures went ahead of her. She followed.

Steps away from the entrance she felt the burn at her wrists, a tight circle of it that climbed upward into the vines on her arms, searing heat and an awareness that someone nearby wore her ink. Spinning, she saw a hand reaching for a gun that one of those already dead had never drawn. A face lifted, and she renewed her struggle to wake at recognizing Vontae.

No! A silent scream and there was hesitation in her nightmare self. Then the gun in her hand barked, jerked, the pull of the trigger and the horror of seeing blood coat Vontae’s face in an explosion of red finally enough to free her from the dream.

She woke gasping, trembling, her heart rabbiting in her chest and her skin coated with sweat.

“Fuck, Etaín, fuck!” Cathal said, sitting up, arms like bands of steel as he pulled her onto his lap. “What the hell was that?”

“You saw?” Shock added to the frantic, trapped wildness in her chest.

“Hell yeah, I saw.”

Against her back his heart pounded as furiously as hers.

“Jesus. Stolen memories? Something you got from someone your father or brother asked you to touch?”

“No. Just a bad dream.” But uncertainty shivered through her because her gift was changing, turning into something that felt alien. “Where did the dream start for you?”

“Outside of a club.” She felt the skittering of his heartbeat when he added, “I guess this is a side effect of the…magic, the connection that let me find you.”

“Yes.” What other explanation was there? But his physical reaction to it had her turning in his lap to—

“Don’t go there,” he said, covering her lips with his, silencing her concerns with the thrust of his tongue against hers.

Eamon felt the early dissolution of the sleep spell like a boomerang crashing into his personal shield. He quickened his steps, entering the room where his second and third in command played backgammon.

Rhys glanced up from his study of the board. The red sun dangling from his ear caught in room light. Its brilliance was no less than the rounded, polished rubies he’d chosen as game pawns.

Across from him Liam had chosen onyx pawns, their color as black as an assassin’s heart was said to be. But where Rhys couched his greeting and question in silence and the lift of eyebrows, Eamon’s third did him no such favor. A wicked smile slashed across dark features. The braided mane of Liam’s hair left the impression of a lion in a night lit by only the barest of moons.

“Tired already of sharing your intended?” Liam asked, laughter in his voice. “Had you but asked, I would have tendered my services.” His deadly, very fatal services. “You know I live to make your life easier.”

Eamon refrained from challenging the statement, directing his comment to Rhys. “Call Myk and Heath home, then take what humans you deem necessary and go to Etaín’s apartment. Settle her lease and move her things here.”

The red sun of Rhys’s earring shimmered in a hint of movement, suppressed amusement or unspoken objection, it could have been either, though neither was present in his voice when he said, “You do live dangerously, Lord.”

“An understatement,” Liam said. “Lucky for us, we’ve got front rows seats to this grand courtship. I can hardly wait to witness the next act given how interesting the first one was.”

Liam’s comment coaxed a laugh from Rhys. He stood, the backgammon game abandoned for the moment. “I’ll see to my task and hope you’re not banished by the time I return.”

“Hardly a likelihood considering the humans our Lord must now be concerned about thanks to his intended’s choices.”

“True. You might yet get to kill someone who offers a bit of a challenge.”

Liam snorted. “Among humans? You come very close to insulting me.” But all lightheartedness fell away when their attention landed on Eamon’s ears, and the additional protections he now wore above the sigil-inscribed studs that served as focal points and magical draws.

“She grows stronger,” Rhys said.

“Her gift changes.” In the garden, in the sacred circle where he’d worked Etaín’s hair into a charm and activated the earrings he typically didn’t wear unless summoned to the queen’s court or traveling into another’s territory, he had come to view the grab and pull of magic through him as a positive sign that her magic now tasted his more deeply in preparation for a bond between them, though he would not leave himself unprotected again.

Eamon placed the thin twine of honey-gold hair on the table next to Liam. “I won’t require this of you.”

But his third was already lifting the charm and touching it to his wrist, the contact all that was necessary for the ends to seek and find each other, to lock tight, creating a magical leash between his intended and his assassin, in case she should manage to escape the estate.

A nod of thanks and Eamon returned to the bedroom, cock filling and rising again despite what had happened with the last hot rush of semen when he was buried in her depths. He hardened further at entering the room to see Etaín on Cathal’s lap, at feeling her magic slide against his flesh as if freed by lovemaking, coiling around him as if checking his defenses and finding them solid. This time, the element of danger only filled his testicles and shaft with the scorching heat of desire.

He joined them on the bed, leaning in to kiss her shoulder, expecting welcome but stilling when Etaín’s lips left Cathal’s and her head turned to send a glare in his direction. “Don’t ever do that to Cathal or me again, Eamon.”

“It was necessary.”

Her confusion made it plain that she had not felt the grab and pull of magic, yet given the crash of a broken spell against his shield and her greeting, she must have been aware that he’d put her, them, to sleep.

“What’s going on here, Etaín?” There was an edge to Cathal’s voice, hostility, and Eamon read in her expression the desire to avoid conflict though she couldn’t take back what had already been said.

“Etaín’s gift is changing,” Eamon answered, hoping to ease the tension. “You are safe from it, but I have been careless.”

Fear tightened her features. “I nearly stripped your mind.” Said on a whisper and he wondered if she would attempt to distance herself from him. “That’s why you did the sleep spell.”

“I’m not sure what might have happened. I reacted defensively and Cathal fell to my spell as well.”

“Don’t do it again.” Cathal’s words were a low growl, his anger embodying the natural fear at losing control, and a human’s reaction to the use of magic.

Eamon tilted his head, acknowledging Cathal’s edict without agreeing to it. He could not offer Cathal the reassurance he sought, not when he wore Etaín’s ink and now was bound by magic to her.

Etaín flinched away when Eamon reached out, fear pulsing through her. “Maybe it would be better if Cathal and I left. Safer for you.”

“I believe I am safe now. The time you slept was put to good use.”

He traced the rim of her ear, halting at the tip, his delicate circling strokes sending shivers of erotic pleasure through her. He followed it with the brush of his mouth against hers, the slide of his tongue between parted lips in a shallow foray hinting at a much deeper, much fuller penetration.

“There is no way to test it, not without this,” he murmured, and her body clenched in anticipation then in protest with a knock on the bedroom door.

From the other side of the door, Liam said, “There is a matter requiring your attention, Lord.”

Eamon’s groan held the same frustration she felt. “I’ll return as quickly as I can.”

He left, the door closing behind him before Cathal broke his silence again. “Lord of what? Assholes?”

The truth of his emotions pierced her skin and poured into her bloodstream. Anger resurfacing, at having to share her. But that anger was trumped by fear, by the sense of a life spinning out of control.

She attempted to slide off his lap, to break the physical contact and gain some breathing room. His arms tightened, preventing it, allowing only enough movement for her to change position on his lap.

She straddled him so she could see his expression and he could see hers. “Sorry now?” she asked, encompassing all of it—magic, Eamon, their relationship, though Cathal had sought her out, and by his actions, brought her to Eamon’s attention in the first place.

“No.” He touched his mouth to lips still glistening from the press of Eamon’s mouth to them. “Never.”

“Never say never.”

“So you told me once before and now I’m wearing your ink. When it comes to you, I seem to be a slow learner.” His tongue teased the seam of her lips and desire coiled hot and tight in her belly, spilling downward to her cunt.

“A slow learner, are you sure about that?” She opened for him, enticing him to enter her mouth so her lips could clamp down on his tongue and with a suck, gain the instant reward of feeling him harden against her stomach.

Hands speared into her hair on a moan, his fingers tangling there as her own combed through the luxurious dark mat on his chest and found a tiny male nipple. A brush of fingertips against it, the tug and twist of possession had his mouth leaving hers to say, “We’ll make this work, Etaín. No regrets.”

No regrets. She wanted it to always be that way, but she feared…

“Say it, Etaín,” he demanded.

“No regrets.” How could she have them? She’d needed him in her life all along, though she rarely admitted to feelings of loneliness.

Love, it swelled inside her, fierce and tender at the same time, and she wanted to give him pleasure, to express it in a way that would have him crying out in ecstasy.

He moaned in protest when she took her mouth from his, fingers tightening in her hair in a demand that she return.

“Let me,” she murmured against his ear, detouring there for the quick brush of lips and dart of tongue.

His hips lifted off the mattress, hard cock driving against mound and clit and abdomen, distracting her from her intentions.

“Maybe I should make you come on my belly,” she said, rubbing her clit against his length, fiery sensation streaking to her toes so they curled against soft sheets. “Isn’t that a popular male fantasy? To come on a woman’s pussy and breasts?”

His hands left her hair to grip her ass as she continued to rub and grind against his cock. “Have you been watching porn?”

She laughed. “I don’t need to now that I have you and Eamon.”

He gave a low growl at the mention of Eamon, tried to lift and settle her onto his cock. She resisted, feminine satisfaction a hot spread through her chest when she felt the spasm of his cock against her belly, the tip wet now with arousal, the musky, intoxicating scent of desire making her fight herself as well as him.

He shifted their positions so penetration became impossible, turning her into the one with the fierce need to come instead of the siren who’d wanted him to.

She moved, breath catching with each strike, each press and rub of her clit to his cock.

“Put your mouth on me,” she pleaded, hands leaving his hair to cup her breasts, to squeeze and twist and tug nipples tightened into knots of ache.

His nostrils flared. His hunger intensifying the desire. “Say please.”

“Please.” It was whispered feminine submission.

His smile was a flash of victory. “Another night I’m going to make you beg even prettier.”

“And another still, I’ll make you do the same.”

He laughed, a man anticipating rather than one afraid. “You can try.”

His mouth replaced her fingers to suck, each pull making her channel clamp and release, clamp and release.

Her head went back, eyes closing as her movements quickened, her clit swollen, erect, a throbbing center of pleasure between her thighs.

Her breath came in short pants. Arousal streamed from her slit, wetting him, wetting her inner thighs.

His breath was equally ragged, his mouth savage, inflicting heated torment with tugs and bites to her nipple, with the swirl of his tongue and hungry sucking.

The hands gripping her pulled her lower body more tightly to his. Hers was not the only frantic movement.

He thrust against her, freed her nipple to say, “Fuck, Etaín. Fuck, you make me crazy.”

“Good.” She didn’t want to be alone in her addiction, didn’t want to be the only one made helpless by a craving that intensified rather than abated.

Good. That single word echoed through Cathal like a challenge, like a red flag waved in front of a bull.

From the very first she’d had him by the cock, and now she held him with her ink, by magic. No regrets. It was the absolute truth, but he’d show her just what type of man she’d bound to her.

“Come for me,” he growled, his balls hard and tight with the need to do the same, his hands changing the angle where their bodies touched. Her clit a hot firm knob he worked against his cock, exulting in each of her whimpers, in the way she touched herself, fingers reclaiming nipples.

She was totally uninhibited. A goddess dedicated to pleasure. So sensuous he fought against lifting her, filling her and pounding into her until release took him.

“Come for me,” he said, grinding against her, watching her face flush as orgasm claimed her, giving her those moments before he lifted and positioned her onto hands and knees.

She went immediately to her elbows, canting her hips and spreading her thighs to reveal a glistening pink slit and plump folds, an offer so primal and carnal he gripped his cock to keep from immediately covering and thrusting inside her.

He was in control here. Not her.

Reaching out, he traced the seam between her buttocks, gave a husky laugh when her ass cheeks clamped in instinctive denial. He hadn’t taken her there, yet. But he wanted to, he would. The driving urge to claim and dominate lying just below the surface was a lesson he’d learned about himself thanks to her.

He traced the seam again, fingers slick with arousal coating the puckered rosette of her back entrance. “Maybe next time I’ll fuck you here. Are you going to say no?”

She shivered, erotic fear, anticipation, he didn’t know which, but it had fire streaking through his cock, everything inside him screaming for him to join his body to hers.

“Maybe I’ll say yes because I want you both inside me at the same time.”

It was his turn to react with instinctive denial, an automatic response to any allusion to Eamon. He did it with the thrust of his cock through parted cunt lips and into wet, tight heat. With pounding movement, a furious beat meant to eradicate her need for anyone but him.

She rocked backward, meeting his thrusts, driving him deeper. She took him as he took her, the sound of flesh against flesh accenting his low grunts. The feel of his balls hanging heavy and full between his thighs, striking her clit and making her cry out, filled him with savage possessiveness and feelings of power.

He staved off orgasm until hers was done, one last masculine victory before pleasure rendered him helpless, before semen jetted through his cock to fill her and the two of them collapsed to the mattress, bodies still joined.