Well, if that wasn’t just a punch to the gut. “I will give him a home and life and family.”
“You’re joking, right? Look around you, Horseman. You live in the middle of nowhere. You killed nearly everyone on the island. Are your vampires going to be his nannies? Are the souls in your armor going to rock him to sleep? And what happens if Uncle Pestilence drops by for a visit? Do you think he’s just going to let you raise this child in peace? Every evil being on the planet is going to try to find and kill this baby in order to break your Seal, and the first place they’ll look for him is here.” She inhaled deeply, more fuel for her rant. “Or what if Pestilence somehow finds where Limos has hidden her agimortus and breaks her Seal? With two broken, the other two will break in a domino effect, right? So yours will follow. What happens to the child then?”
If Ares’s and Thanatos’s Seals broke in the domino effect following the first two broken Seals, both Cara and Than’s son would have to deal with whatever being an agimortus involved.
And chances were that the “deal with” wouldn’t be pleasant. From what he’d seen of Pestilence, evil Horsemen were eager to wipe out all evidence of their happy pasts.
“If my Seal breaks, it won’t matter where he’s living. And I can handle everything else. Including Pestilence.”
“It won’t work, Than. We’ve got to keep this baby secret and safe. He’s going to Kynan.”
“No, he’s not.”
“You blind fool,” she spat. “This isn’t about you or me. It’s about what’s best for the baby.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you forced me to f**k you.” He hurled the crude words at her like a weapon, and her almost imperceptible flinch said his aim was true. But a split-second later, she recovered, her chin up in stubborn defiance.
“I didn’t force you. You said you wanted it.” She blinked hard, as if blinking back tears, but he knew better than that. Regan didn’t cry. “You said you wanted me more than you’d ever wanted anyone, and that you were going to give in.”
God help him, he had wanted her. And in truth, he wasn’t upset about the sex… he was pissed as hell at the deception. But he wasn’t ready to separate the two. “I was drugged.”
“Were you drugged when we got hot and heavy in your gym? When you tore off my underwear and got me off with your hand? When you came—twice—in mine?”
A hot fever broke out over his skin at the memory, and his c**k twitched at her words. “That was different.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? You were all over me. And then there was that … that Horsemen erotica book. The demon who wrote it bragged about how she’d hit the trifecta with you guys …” Regan blinked again. “How did she do that if you were a virgin?”
“My siblings and I can adjust memories. I made her think we’d had sex.”
Her breath hitched. “I didn’t know. If I had—”
“You’d what? You’d have given up your crazy scheme to take my seed?”
She stared at him for a long time before averting her gaze. “I’m sorry, Thanatos. I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want to go through with the plan,” she said, her eyes glued to the mattress. Maybe she was remembering what they’d done on it. “Not after I got to know you.”
“An attack of conscience?” He snorted. “I’d be a little more forgiving if you hadn’t run off. The truth would have gone a long way when I was lying there, exhausted and sated.”
Exhausted, yes … but now that he thought about it, sated … not so much. His virginity had been taken and his Seal hadn’t broken, so he’d been willing to go again. Hell, he’d have gone over and over if she’d climbed back on and rode him into the mattress.
“You wanted me to confess something like that after you threatened to break my neck? Telling you the truth wasn’t an option.”
Yeah, he remembered lying on the bed, pinned while his souls battled to free him from her soul-weapon, and telling her he’d wring her neck when he got free. Still, Regan could have spent a little more time explaining what had just happened.
“So your answer was to take off?”
“I admit,” she murmured, “that I could have handled it better, and if I could change things, I would, but I can’t.”
Could have handled it better? It couldn’t have been handled worse. “No, you can’t change anything, but you can make it up to me.”
Her head snapped up, her gold-spoked eyes flaring wide. “How?”
Smiling, he seized her shoulders and tugged her against him so he could speak directly into her ear. She wasn’t going to miss a word of this.
“You,” he said against the velvety perfection of her skin, “owe me eight months of life you stole from me. So starting now, you’re going to give it back.”
“I-I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
He pinched her earlobe with his teeth and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of her nervousness and beneath it, Regan’s soft, feminine vanilla spice. The very air in his lungs turned to fire as lust surged through his veins. He might be furious with her, might even hate her. But his physical reaction to her was the same today as it was the very first time he laid eyes on her.
“You’re going to pleasure me.” He got a dark, wicked thrill from her sharp inhale. “Whenever I want. At my every whim.”
She jerked in his grip. “I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t think, do you. If you did, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess in the first place. So for the next eight and a half months, you’re going to be mine.” He nipped her jaw before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Every. Night.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No,” he said, as he released her and moved toward the door. “I’m pissed. There’s a difference. If I were crazy, you wouldn’t have nearly as much to fear.”
Seven
Every cell in Thanatos’s body was vibrating with the familiar need to gate himself to a scene of death and add to it. What wasn’t familiar was the new vibration, the one that throbbed in his groin.
He needed sex. Ares and Reseph had always been able to ease their destructive impulses by getting laid, which made sense, since their mother was a sex demon. But Than had never had that alternative, and instead of sex, he went straight for the kill.
Now, maybe, he had another option. The real question was which act—killing or sex—would give him the most satisfaction.
And the most guilt later.
He supposed it would depend on whom he killed or whom he had sex with.
You’re going to pleasure me. Whenever I want. At my every whim. Right. He should storm back into the bedroom and get going on those months Regan owed him.
Except that in the mood he was in he didn’t trust himself to be gentle… and even through his murder-lust haze, that frightened him a little.
“Bludrexe?”
Thanatos snarled, ready to take the head off the day-walker at the end of the hall. Before that happened, he clenched his fists at his sides. He demanded loyalty from his servants, and he got it because he’d never abused them. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—start now.
“What, Artur?”
“Should we prepare a room for your female?”
Thanatos was in Artur’s face before he even knew he’d moved. “She’s not my female.”
“Yes, sir,” Artur said, shrinking back.
“Fuck,” Than breathed. “I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of shit on my mind.” Like the fact that Regan was certain one of his vampires had tried to kill her. His hackles rose at the very thought. “Regan said two of you were taken from here by The Aegis.”
Artur, who was normally unflappable, shifted his gaze. Only for a second, but Than caught it, and in that instant, he went on high alert.
“Artur, tell me. Who?”
The daywalker swallowed. “Jacob, sire.”
“And?” When Artur said nothing, Than stiffened. “Dammit, Artur. What’s going on?”
Artur bowed his head, his long hair brushing the tattoo on his neck that all the daywalkers sported. “The other vampire was not one of ours.”
Now Than understood Artur’s reluctance to talk about this. No vampire visitors were allowed here. His vamps had to go elsewhere for human blood and companionship.
“Who was he? How did he happen to be here for The Aegis to grab?”
“He was…a wilding.”
A hiss escaped Than before he could stop it. “Why was he here?”
“I don’t know, sire.”
Than snared Artur by the throat and slammed him against the stone wall. “You’re lying. You have your finger on every pulse here.”
“The Aegis grabbed him and Jacob before he got a chance to tell us,” Artur said quickly. “But I suspect it had to do with your son.”
“How did this wilding know Regan was pregnant?”
“I don’t know how he knew. Jacob and some others wanted to find her to bring her to you.” Artur’s lip curled. “We were angry at her deception, and we wanted her to be here when you returned.”
The idea that a strange wilding had known of Than’s child before Than himself did made the need to kill seethe wildly inside him. “Did you know where I was?”
Artur nodded. “Limos and Ares let us know you were safe. We wanted to rescue you.”
So Thanatos’s servants had wanted to release him from the prison of his own body, but his brother and sister, his flesh and blood, hadn’t. Nice.
Thanatos stepped away from Artur, his body buzzing, his tattoos coming alive on his skin. The thump of his pulse pounded in his ears, drowning out the voice that demanded he return to the female he’d just told Artur wasn’t his.
Demons. He’d find some demons to kill. Australia was crawling with them. New Zealand was a demon playground. But he didn’t want to leave Regan.
He eyed the entrance to one of the spare bedrooms. Self-gratification had never worked to bring Ares down from battle rages—only full-on sex had done that—but at this point, Than was desperate to try anything.
“Tell the others that Regan is not to leave the keep,” he told Artur. “Go.”
The vampire scurried off, and Than shut himself in the bedroom. The darkness closed in on him as he turned into the wall and rested his forehead against the cool stone. It wasn’t cool enough. If it were made of ice, it wouldn’t be enough to ease the fever in his blood. Not when Regan was only a couple of doors down. All he could think about was her talented mouth, her warm hands, and the hot place between her thighs.
And as he untied his sweats and palmed himself, he prayed this would work. Prayed it would release some of the awful tension raging inside him, because if it didn’t, someone was going to die.
Regan was forcing herself not to freak out.
Thanatos was beyond angry. Irrational.
Not that she could blame him. Even if things hadn’t gone down the way they had that night, even if he hadn’t been a virgin, even if he’d eagerly jumped into bed with her, he still had every right to be furious about being used.
Every night since then, she’d tried to come up with a way to explain it to him, to apologize, to do anything to make it better. But spending the better part of a year as his personal sex slave? She wasn’t sure if the idea terrified her or thrilled her, but it definitely wasn’t going to happen.
She needed to be with people she trusted, the only family she’d ever known. And she knew exactly how to get out of here. Thanatos kept a fleet of snowmobiles and ATVs outside his monstrous castle for his servants to ride to the Harrowgate a couple of miles away. If she could get to a phone, she could call Kynan and have him meet her there to get her through the gate. Sucked, but humans, unless they were special in some immortal way, died if they went through a stationary Harrowgate while conscious.
Once she was back with The Aegis, maybe they could spin up a ward for the baby so Thanatos couldn’t find her.
But standing here wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She needed a plan if she ran into vampire trouble.
I can sense the life within you. I’m going to enjoy feeling it snuff out.
Yeah, she definitely needed a way to protect herself, especially since Thanatos didn’t believe her about how dangerous his vampires were. Unfortunately, the Horseman didn’t have jugs of holy water or a bag of wooden stakes lying around. But she’d always been resourceful, and the wooden desk chair looked like just the thing…
It took one good smash of the chair on the floor to break one of the legs. She waited a minute to see if the noise brought anyone running, and when it didn’t she gripped the wooden chair leg, pointy end all ready to stab, and slowly opened the door. Thanatos and his vamps were nowhere to be seen. The arrogant jerk probably thought she had nowhere to go and no way out.
She made it to his library without being seen. Quickly, she ducked inside, found his phone, and gaped in disbelief. She’d spent entire days with her nose in his books, but she’d never noticed this.
He had a freaking rotary phone. Who still used those relics? Thanatos, apparently. Unbelievable. She dialed Kynan’s cell number, but he didn’t answer, and the stupid phone wouldn’t let her press one to leave a message. She had to waste precious time waiting for the other option of holding, and when the voicemail finally picked up, she whispered that she’d meet him at the Greenland Harrowgate. Hopefully, he’d check his messages soon.
“You’re joking, right? Look around you, Horseman. You live in the middle of nowhere. You killed nearly everyone on the island. Are your vampires going to be his nannies? Are the souls in your armor going to rock him to sleep? And what happens if Uncle Pestilence drops by for a visit? Do you think he’s just going to let you raise this child in peace? Every evil being on the planet is going to try to find and kill this baby in order to break your Seal, and the first place they’ll look for him is here.” She inhaled deeply, more fuel for her rant. “Or what if Pestilence somehow finds where Limos has hidden her agimortus and breaks her Seal? With two broken, the other two will break in a domino effect, right? So yours will follow. What happens to the child then?”
If Ares’s and Thanatos’s Seals broke in the domino effect following the first two broken Seals, both Cara and Than’s son would have to deal with whatever being an agimortus involved.
And chances were that the “deal with” wouldn’t be pleasant. From what he’d seen of Pestilence, evil Horsemen were eager to wipe out all evidence of their happy pasts.
“If my Seal breaks, it won’t matter where he’s living. And I can handle everything else. Including Pestilence.”
“It won’t work, Than. We’ve got to keep this baby secret and safe. He’s going to Kynan.”
“No, he’s not.”
“You blind fool,” she spat. “This isn’t about you or me. It’s about what’s best for the baby.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you forced me to f**k you.” He hurled the crude words at her like a weapon, and her almost imperceptible flinch said his aim was true. But a split-second later, she recovered, her chin up in stubborn defiance.
“I didn’t force you. You said you wanted it.” She blinked hard, as if blinking back tears, but he knew better than that. Regan didn’t cry. “You said you wanted me more than you’d ever wanted anyone, and that you were going to give in.”
God help him, he had wanted her. And in truth, he wasn’t upset about the sex… he was pissed as hell at the deception. But he wasn’t ready to separate the two. “I was drugged.”
“Were you drugged when we got hot and heavy in your gym? When you tore off my underwear and got me off with your hand? When you came—twice—in mine?”
A hot fever broke out over his skin at the memory, and his c**k twitched at her words. “That was different.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know? You were all over me. And then there was that … that Horsemen erotica book. The demon who wrote it bragged about how she’d hit the trifecta with you guys …” Regan blinked again. “How did she do that if you were a virgin?”
“My siblings and I can adjust memories. I made her think we’d had sex.”
Her breath hitched. “I didn’t know. If I had—”
“You’d what? You’d have given up your crazy scheme to take my seed?”
She stared at him for a long time before averting her gaze. “I’m sorry, Thanatos. I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want to go through with the plan,” she said, her eyes glued to the mattress. Maybe she was remembering what they’d done on it. “Not after I got to know you.”
“An attack of conscience?” He snorted. “I’d be a little more forgiving if you hadn’t run off. The truth would have gone a long way when I was lying there, exhausted and sated.”
Exhausted, yes … but now that he thought about it, sated … not so much. His virginity had been taken and his Seal hadn’t broken, so he’d been willing to go again. Hell, he’d have gone over and over if she’d climbed back on and rode him into the mattress.
“You wanted me to confess something like that after you threatened to break my neck? Telling you the truth wasn’t an option.”
Yeah, he remembered lying on the bed, pinned while his souls battled to free him from her soul-weapon, and telling her he’d wring her neck when he got free. Still, Regan could have spent a little more time explaining what had just happened.
“So your answer was to take off?”
“I admit,” she murmured, “that I could have handled it better, and if I could change things, I would, but I can’t.”
Could have handled it better? It couldn’t have been handled worse. “No, you can’t change anything, but you can make it up to me.”
Her head snapped up, her gold-spoked eyes flaring wide. “How?”
Smiling, he seized her shoulders and tugged her against him so he could speak directly into her ear. She wasn’t going to miss a word of this.
“You,” he said against the velvety perfection of her skin, “owe me eight months of life you stole from me. So starting now, you’re going to give it back.”
“I-I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
He pinched her earlobe with his teeth and inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of her nervousness and beneath it, Regan’s soft, feminine vanilla spice. The very air in his lungs turned to fire as lust surged through his veins. He might be furious with her, might even hate her. But his physical reaction to her was the same today as it was the very first time he laid eyes on her.
“You’re going to pleasure me.” He got a dark, wicked thrill from her sharp inhale. “Whenever I want. At my every whim.”
She jerked in his grip. “I don’t think—”
“No, you don’t think, do you. If you did, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess in the first place. So for the next eight and a half months, you’re going to be mine.” He nipped her jaw before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Every. Night.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No,” he said, as he released her and moved toward the door. “I’m pissed. There’s a difference. If I were crazy, you wouldn’t have nearly as much to fear.”
Seven
Every cell in Thanatos’s body was vibrating with the familiar need to gate himself to a scene of death and add to it. What wasn’t familiar was the new vibration, the one that throbbed in his groin.
He needed sex. Ares and Reseph had always been able to ease their destructive impulses by getting laid, which made sense, since their mother was a sex demon. But Than had never had that alternative, and instead of sex, he went straight for the kill.
Now, maybe, he had another option. The real question was which act—killing or sex—would give him the most satisfaction.
And the most guilt later.
He supposed it would depend on whom he killed or whom he had sex with.
You’re going to pleasure me. Whenever I want. At my every whim. Right. He should storm back into the bedroom and get going on those months Regan owed him.
Except that in the mood he was in he didn’t trust himself to be gentle… and even through his murder-lust haze, that frightened him a little.
“Bludrexe?”
Thanatos snarled, ready to take the head off the day-walker at the end of the hall. Before that happened, he clenched his fists at his sides. He demanded loyalty from his servants, and he got it because he’d never abused them. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—start now.
“What, Artur?”
“Should we prepare a room for your female?”
Thanatos was in Artur’s face before he even knew he’d moved. “She’s not my female.”
“Yes, sir,” Artur said, shrinking back.
“Fuck,” Than breathed. “I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of shit on my mind.” Like the fact that Regan was certain one of his vampires had tried to kill her. His hackles rose at the very thought. “Regan said two of you were taken from here by The Aegis.”
Artur, who was normally unflappable, shifted his gaze. Only for a second, but Than caught it, and in that instant, he went on high alert.
“Artur, tell me. Who?”
The daywalker swallowed. “Jacob, sire.”
“And?” When Artur said nothing, Than stiffened. “Dammit, Artur. What’s going on?”
Artur bowed his head, his long hair brushing the tattoo on his neck that all the daywalkers sported. “The other vampire was not one of ours.”
Now Than understood Artur’s reluctance to talk about this. No vampire visitors were allowed here. His vamps had to go elsewhere for human blood and companionship.
“Who was he? How did he happen to be here for The Aegis to grab?”
“He was…a wilding.”
A hiss escaped Than before he could stop it. “Why was he here?”
“I don’t know, sire.”
Than snared Artur by the throat and slammed him against the stone wall. “You’re lying. You have your finger on every pulse here.”
“The Aegis grabbed him and Jacob before he got a chance to tell us,” Artur said quickly. “But I suspect it had to do with your son.”
“How did this wilding know Regan was pregnant?”
“I don’t know how he knew. Jacob and some others wanted to find her to bring her to you.” Artur’s lip curled. “We were angry at her deception, and we wanted her to be here when you returned.”
The idea that a strange wilding had known of Than’s child before Than himself did made the need to kill seethe wildly inside him. “Did you know where I was?”
Artur nodded. “Limos and Ares let us know you were safe. We wanted to rescue you.”
So Thanatos’s servants had wanted to release him from the prison of his own body, but his brother and sister, his flesh and blood, hadn’t. Nice.
Thanatos stepped away from Artur, his body buzzing, his tattoos coming alive on his skin. The thump of his pulse pounded in his ears, drowning out the voice that demanded he return to the female he’d just told Artur wasn’t his.
Demons. He’d find some demons to kill. Australia was crawling with them. New Zealand was a demon playground. But he didn’t want to leave Regan.
He eyed the entrance to one of the spare bedrooms. Self-gratification had never worked to bring Ares down from battle rages—only full-on sex had done that—but at this point, Than was desperate to try anything.
“Tell the others that Regan is not to leave the keep,” he told Artur. “Go.”
The vampire scurried off, and Than shut himself in the bedroom. The darkness closed in on him as he turned into the wall and rested his forehead against the cool stone. It wasn’t cool enough. If it were made of ice, it wouldn’t be enough to ease the fever in his blood. Not when Regan was only a couple of doors down. All he could think about was her talented mouth, her warm hands, and the hot place between her thighs.
And as he untied his sweats and palmed himself, he prayed this would work. Prayed it would release some of the awful tension raging inside him, because if it didn’t, someone was going to die.
Regan was forcing herself not to freak out.
Thanatos was beyond angry. Irrational.
Not that she could blame him. Even if things hadn’t gone down the way they had that night, even if he hadn’t been a virgin, even if he’d eagerly jumped into bed with her, he still had every right to be furious about being used.
Every night since then, she’d tried to come up with a way to explain it to him, to apologize, to do anything to make it better. But spending the better part of a year as his personal sex slave? She wasn’t sure if the idea terrified her or thrilled her, but it definitely wasn’t going to happen.
She needed to be with people she trusted, the only family she’d ever known. And she knew exactly how to get out of here. Thanatos kept a fleet of snowmobiles and ATVs outside his monstrous castle for his servants to ride to the Harrowgate a couple of miles away. If she could get to a phone, she could call Kynan and have him meet her there to get her through the gate. Sucked, but humans, unless they were special in some immortal way, died if they went through a stationary Harrowgate while conscious.
Once she was back with The Aegis, maybe they could spin up a ward for the baby so Thanatos couldn’t find her.
But standing here wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She needed a plan if she ran into vampire trouble.
I can sense the life within you. I’m going to enjoy feeling it snuff out.
Yeah, she definitely needed a way to protect herself, especially since Thanatos didn’t believe her about how dangerous his vampires were. Unfortunately, the Horseman didn’t have jugs of holy water or a bag of wooden stakes lying around. But she’d always been resourceful, and the wooden desk chair looked like just the thing…
It took one good smash of the chair on the floor to break one of the legs. She waited a minute to see if the noise brought anyone running, and when it didn’t she gripped the wooden chair leg, pointy end all ready to stab, and slowly opened the door. Thanatos and his vamps were nowhere to be seen. The arrogant jerk probably thought she had nowhere to go and no way out.
She made it to his library without being seen. Quickly, she ducked inside, found his phone, and gaped in disbelief. She’d spent entire days with her nose in his books, but she’d never noticed this.
He had a freaking rotary phone. Who still used those relics? Thanatos, apparently. Unbelievable. She dialed Kynan’s cell number, but he didn’t answer, and the stupid phone wouldn’t let her press one to leave a message. She had to waste precious time waiting for the other option of holding, and when the voicemail finally picked up, she whispered that she’d meet him at the Greenland Harrowgate. Hopefully, he’d check his messages soon.
