Chapter Thirteen

“So, chica, what do you think of snow?”

Tabithia picked the orange slice off the little plastic sword on the side of her drink and settled deeper in her soft beach lounge chair. The waves crashing mere yards from their feet made her smile. Or maybe remembering the expression on Aeros’ face the day before when she’d knocked him on his butt was what was keeping her grin in place. Either way, she was enjoying the day so far. She still felt a bit antsy, but hey, whatever. Within the day they would be home and this trip and the sexy Spartan would be behind her.

And that was so not making her grumpy.

Dare coughed, and Tab glanced over to the other woman.

“I like snow. Am I going where there’s snow?”

Dare looked much better—almost superstar better. She still sported the light buzz cut, but she’d showered and her haircut fitted her now. Kinda rock star. Well, she had taken four showers, actually, but Tab figured, after that long without taking a shower, she would have refused to leave the bathroom for weeks. Now, the woman across from her was so clean she practically squeaked. Dressed in a soft, pale cream sundress and flip-flops, she almost looked up to date with this century. If she’d quit jumping at every sound, gesture, or beep from an electronic device, she might blend in a wee bit better.

“Well, it might be best. I have some pull with a guy who has a place down south.” She had the crazy idea that breaking Dare into this century might be best, and where else to do that but deep in the frozen tundra, with a guy who made hermits look like the guy voted most popular. But, hey, the warlock owed her a favour or two. Or three. She’d saved his butt in Russia a few years back when Trouble had got them into some deep shit up in the former USSR.

“I thought this was south?”

“Well, sure, of like Hadrian’s Wall. But this is like bottom of the world south—Antarctica. He has running water,” she hurried to add when Dare immediately stuck her bottom lip out.

Dare looked down at her lobster salad and ran a finger around the white porcelain plate. They were at the ritziest resort in Belize that Tabithia could find on short notice. Dare might have been able to shift them, but they’d decided not to take the chance this soon. The witch needed some downtime. She was fidgety, making Tabithia nearly crazy on their mad dash through the jungle. The other woman had kept up, but broken down in tears unexpectedly only to turn around the next minute and cuss Ares bad enough to make Aeros’ language look clean. Dare’s emotions had swung back and forth until Tabithia was ready to knock her out and carry her over her shoulder caveman-style.

Tabithia simply didn’t have any idea how to deal with the emotional mess, since, heck, she’d never swung so up and down in her life. She had dark moods. She cut herself when drinking and dangerous escapades didn’t quell the needs. One look at the pretty witch, though, and she doubted the girl would like the taste of steel on flesh, the quick burn and pleasant warm rush of bright blood.

“Well, I’m not certain if I want to be around a man.”

Tabithia nearly fell off her chair. Okay, that was funny. Maybe. Wait. Tabithia felt her mouth gaping open. She was serious.

What. The. Shit?

“Wait, are you…? Do you…? Oh, gods, tell me you don’t like, as in love, Ares?”

Dare’s forehead creased in a frown, but she didn’t deny it. The woman was even pretty when she frowned. She fiddled with her silver fork, moving salad greens around on her plate into little lanes of lettuce with rows of stacked lobster-looking houses.

Holy hell.

“How can you like, as in love, him? He held you prisoner!”

Okay, this sucked. Really.

Had she got blisters on her heels and sweated gallons of yuck for no reason? Had she left the first man who made her feel safe enough to want to have sex for nothing?

There, she’d thought it. Yeah, she wanted him. She wanted Aeros in a way that had her inner thighs constantly achy. She wanted to drive him on, wrap her legs around his lean hips as he powered into her. She wanted to hear the headboard hit the wall as he took her with aggressive, pounding strokes while he groaned deeply in pleasure. She wanted to feel the weight of him on top of her as he drove them closer and closer to climax. She wanted to feel the warmth of his skin gliding over hers. She wanted to press her breasts against his hot flesh and rub herself all up against the dark hair on his chest. She wanted all of it. And him.

Things she’d never imagined before, she now thought about all the time. Even to the point of being unable to sleep for fear of waking up touching herself.

Darkness tugged at her, stabbing her with doubts. What would she do with him if she did have him?

His firm sexy words had thrown her. Heck, she was still thrown. He’d sounded so determined.

Why? Because I wanted to kiss you since I first saw you. Fuck, I’ve wanted to goddamn do more than that.

And there was the shitty part of this. Tabithia didn’t think she could do more than what they’d already done. Heck, she’d held his erection in her hand. Stroked him. Come in his arms. But sex. Real, body to body sex. Oh, she wanted to, until she thought of him seeing her naked. Not in a dim cave, but in the harsh light of day? She grew sick to her stomach just thinking about it. The cave had been dim. He’d not really seen her, seen her. What if he looked at her with distaste? With revulsion?

Dare dropped her fork against the porcelain plate with a loud clatter. The sound broke Tabithia out of her miserable thoughts. Sipping her drink, she watched Dare sit back with a long sigh.

“I know, I know, and he’ll have to pay for that, and a few other things,” Dare muttered. She lifted her chin and met her gaze with a determined expression. Very, very determined. “He’s mine.”

It took Tabithia’s brain several moments to put those words together to make any kind of sense out of them. When she did, she saw Dare through a haze of red. She’d left a man buried in the jungle to save a woman from a man who she wanted?

“Excuse me?”

Dare sighed as if Tabithia was dim-witted.

Hello? She’d just brought down a cave on a man for this crazy witch.

“You heard me. He’s mine.” She moved her rows of lobster houses aside and exhaled through her little nose. “I’m going to punish him, for a very long time, but I’m not going to let him go.”

Oh, hell. Tabithia fell back on her lounger and contemplated the brilliant blue sky—cloudless, perfectly blue sky. Now this, this kind of thing just was not right. Couldn’t be right.

Her first mission and just when she thought she’d hammered out a pretty good conclusion, even come away with all her ducks in a row, the witch threw this in her face?

Trouble was going to laugh her ass off. Or never trust her again to drive the mission.

“Let me see if I have this right. You want him. He—” She broke off to scrub her hands over her face. She felt a headache coming on—a big one. Maybe she could talk some sense into Dare. “He was with other women, wasn’t he? When you were there?”

Tab heard Dare set down her silverware against the porcelain and shift in her chair before she said, “Well, yes, and no.”

Tabithia rolled her head over to the side to squint at Dare. The woman had lost her mind.

“He tried, but…couldn’t.”

Okay, that was…funny.

“Like he couldn’t get, er, well, an erection?” Tabithia asked. Was that even possible? He was a god, right?

Dare’s small face coloured, and she looked pissed off, but she finally shook her head. “No, he got hard. That’s why he’s getting punished.” Dare demolished the rows of food with one angry swipe of her fork. “Among other reasons.”

“So, he got hard and…what? Stalled out?”

Dare lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “He couldn’t follow through.”

“Because you did something?”

Dare paused so long that Tabithia was forced to fist her hands—because shaking a member of her coven was not cool.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“So, let me get this straight. He had all these women there, and he didn’t use them? Touch them? And, you know, do the dirty?”

Looking even more uncomfortable, Dare nodded. She shifted on her chair, straightened out her plate, and set her fork down. “No, he didn’t.”

“All this time?”

Dared nodded silently, but with a pissed-off if-you-ask-one-more-question-I’ll-murder-you look in her eyes.

Tabithia closed her eyes. This was too much. Too much.

“But I don’t want to go back, not yet. He needs to suffer for a while. Maybe he will trust me after he learns how much he needs me. And understand who he belongs to.”

Holy hell. Well, this is just the shit.

How would Trouble handle this? Trouble would tie Dare up and ship her off to some remote location for a long overdue reality check.

“Are you angry with me, Tabithia?”

Geesh, she didn’t want Dare to think that, but, damn, this was hard. She’d broken some big rules—the first being that once you start a job, you finish it. Get the chalice, hand it over, get paid. She’d done none of those. Not one. And, in the meantime, she’d pissed off some very badass Greeks.

“No, no, not angry. Confused, but hey, whatever. All is fair in love and war, right?” Tabithia grumbled.

“I’m sorry. I will punish him.”

Dare said that like it should make Tabithia feel better. “He’s, like, a god,” Tab said. “What on earth can you do to him?”

The other witch sat back, curled one foot under her butt, and said, “Not let him see me or know where I am.”

She sounded so smug Tabithia raised her eyebrows. “So?”

A small smile blossomed on Dare’s face, lighting her up from inside out. “So, let’s just say, he can’t live without me.”

Aeros stood in Ares’ hall, watching Ares pace angrily from one end of his glorious home to the other.

“Let me get this straight. You didn’t recover the godhead. It’s lost. Buried beneath the jungle.”

Aeros nodded. He’d already given Ares the rundown. As had all the men. Ares still stalked from one end of the room to the other before heading back to glare at him. He’d ditched his robes and his war gear, and now wore jeans and a dark T-shirt.

Aeros had stalked in, ready to lay down the way things had to be to his god, and, instead, he’d stood at the threshold to Ares’ temple, his mouth gaping. No women lounged on the lush cushions. There were no cushions. Ares stood with his back to him, dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. No robes. No war gear. No sword. Glancing around the amphitheatre-sized hall, Aeros frowned. There wasn’t much of anything here.

“Aeros, to say I am disappointed in you is an understatement. Instead, I will simply say, you will go back out. You will find the godhead—”

“You mean woman, don’t you?”

Ares jerked to a halt and turned slowly to face him. “What did you say?”

“I met her. I saved her from a chupacabra. Ancient, ugly beast, big fangs, poison—”

Ares held a palm out for silence. “I know what a chupacabra is, Aeros.”

“Then you know she might have died, if not for me.”

Ares jammed his fingers through his hair and tugged on the thick strands before dropping his arms heavily to his sides.

“She might be here if not for your fuck-up, too.”

Aeros didn’t respond. What was the point? He had lost the woman. Couldn’t Ares simply get another? One look at the god and he knew the answer. No. It seemed he’d lost two women. His and his god’s.

“Aeros, you have less than two weeks to get her back—”

“How the hell am I to do that? You know as well as I do that she’s hidden now. Gone.”

Ares’ face darkened dangerously. His obsidian eyes lit up with something close to madness. “Listen to me, Aeros. Be very careful what you say.” Two deep exhales and Ares turned his back on him. “You will find her. You will bring her back and you will do it within the time allotted.”

Turning back, Ares gave him a glowering look. “Or we will both be dead.”

Dead.

Was that even possible?

Ares reached up and rubbed the centre of his chest. His hand trembled. Anger simmered under his calm surface, but underneath, Aeros could tell panic fluttered its dark wings.

Ares. Dead.

Could it be?

“I will cease to exist, Aeros.”

“Sonofabitch.” The chill settled in his bones, blocking the heat from his body.

“And every man in my command.” Eyes bright, Ares narrowed his gaze to a brilliant blast of black power. “Bring her to me, Aeros, no matter the consequences, or neither one of us will live long enough to claim our woman.”