a tight, icy bliss as that hunger was satisfied bit by bit. The two together had driven me on and on…
Nausea coiled through my stomach at the memory.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The devouring had been horrible and horrifying… and the part of me that had sunk in its ethereal jaws clamored to sate itself all over again.
My fingers had stilled over my erect member. With the thought of other acts, it was starting to wilt. I gave it another stroke, willing the distant past away.
This sensation wasn’t the same kind of pleasure. It wasn’t the same hunger. What I wanted when the heated tingles spread through my groin was not to satisfy myself so much as to create a pleasure that would satisfy her too.
She hadn’t been disturbed by the idea. Recalling her offer that I should come to her if I decided to pursue my desire brought an eager flush into my chest and cheeks.
I wasn’t sure I could control this sensation. I wasn’t sure where tumbling into it would lead me. But it felt like a kindling rather than an obliterating. It was possible, wasn’t it, that this unraveling could be different in that way too? That it might take us someplace good?
I could wait and see how things seemed by the light of day. Proceed with caution—until I couldn’t be cautious anymore, if I took that route.
My thoughts slipped back to Sorsha: to the warmth she’d shown me, to her laugh, to her enduring strength through all the danger we’d faced. If I did dive in, it would be with her. I knew already there was no one else who’d make it worth the risk.
25
Sorsha
“I should have brought a pair of binoculars,” I grumbled, slouching against the leather seat with new-car smell prickling in my nose.
Ruse tsked teasingly at me from the driver’s seat. “Patience, Miss Blaze. Our job is to be ready to drive when the Incredible Hulk gives the word.”
He meant Thorn, who was stationed in the shadows somewhere down the road where he could make out what was going on at Meriden’s house. Those of us keeping our physical bodies were staked out in a driveway a couple of blocks away. Ruse had even made a show of getting out of the car and walking around to the back of the house in case anyone was watching all the way over here and would have thought our arrival odd otherwise.
He’d slipped back through the shadows after, and the sedan’s tinted windows ensured no one was going to be IDing me or my shadowkind friends through the glass. I appeared to have stumbled straight from a slasher flick into a spy caper.
It was a pretty posh car all around. I peered at Ruse from where I was still hunkered down in my seat. “Are you sure the salesman isn’t going to snap out of your little charm spell and realize he’s lost a major chunk of change, plus commission?”
“First off, I assure you there’s nothing ‘little’ about any part of my prowess,” Ruse said. “And yes, you can rest easy. He thinks he got the better end of the deal.”
“But he didn’t. Someone at the dealership is going to notice eventually.”
“Your mortal conscience is so adorable.” Ruse’s smirk softened around the edges with a hint of affection. “If all goes well, we won’t need to keep this lovely piece of machinery for more than a few days, and then I’ll drop it off in the lot. No harm done!”
Other than the potential harm of whatever wear and tear we put it through, which considering how the past few days had gone might be a lot, but since the alternative had been sitting around in the horror-movie motel with my thumb up my ass, I shut up.
I suspected the only reason Thorn had agreed to my coming along at all, yesterday’s apologies about misjudging my commitment aside, was because he’d be more worried leaving me on my own than having me where he could keep an eye on me. As annoying as his own commitment could be, he did take the whole protection racket very seriously.
Across from me, Snap turned his head, following the path of a gray minivan that was cruising by.
“Wrong direction for that to be Meriden,” I said. “And much more the kind of car the white-picket-fence families around here would be driving than a conspiracy of shadowkind hunters.”
He nodded as if taking my observations in stride. If last night’s