Rogue Soul (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 3) Page 13

  “And you’re doing good work there, with your cures,” Ana said.

  “Yeah. The work has taken decades. For the two cures to be available at the same time, because of the same plant… Huge deal. We had a sample of the plant, Rosa McManus. We just have to find the source of it now.”

  It was the main reason he could never even consider going back to Otherworld.

  Cam blinked. Consider going back to Otherworld? He’d never had that thought before. Was he really considering it? Fuck, ’course not.

  But he looked down at Ana, the one who was suffering in his place there. He rubbed his chest absently. Shit.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ana was screwed. No doubt about it, she was falling hard for the man sitting next to her in the plush seat of the small private jet. She could believe he’d agreed to help her get out of Otherworld—that’s just the kind of guy he was. He’d tried to protect her so many years ago by letting her take his place in Otherworld. It might suck up there, but it was better than being an automaton or having her soul obliterated. He even understood what it was like for her to be away from her bow. He was like Marrek, in the way he understood her.

  If he kept this understanding, protective business up, she’d be a goner.

  “You good?” he asked her.

  She nodded, gratefully eying her bow, which leaned against the wall next to her.

  They’d arrived in London earlier that morning. She’d never truly appreciated aetherwalking until she’d had to wait at a baggage claim for her bow. There were definitely some aspects of being a god that rocked. At least Cam had the contacts to get her a fake passport.

  “Thanks for getting the private charter to Edinburgh,” Ana said.

  Talking to Cam on the last flight had helped her forget most of her anxiety, but she was glad that his thoughtfulness—and deep pockets—kept her from having to go through that again. Not to mention the fact that she was grateful for the hotel room he’d rented them in the airport while the jet was prepared for takeoff. The quick shower made her feel a million times better, not to mention the clean clothes she’d conjured that were more appropriate to the cooler weather. They’d both studiously avoided looking at the bed.

  “Traveling as a mortal takes a decade,” she said as the plane hurtled into the air. By her calculations, they’d been on about three hundred planes in the last few days. Exhaustion should haunt her, but she’d gotten some decent sleep on the last plane.

  He laughed, low and husky, and squeezed her hand briefly. Her mouth kicked up at the corner.

  Yep, she was screwed.

  She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. Though he’d changed into clean clothes in the hotel, he still looked out of place on the plane, just as he had when striding through the London airport. He should fit in here, with his Celtic coloring.

  But he didn’t. He was made for the jungle. Out of his element, the contrast made him more intimidating, more deadly. His eyes and mouth were too hard, too wary. His body too tall and dangerous. No doubt there were places in London where he would fit in, but it wasn’t the airport Hilton. Maybe that was one of the reasons he hung out in the jungle. He looked like a mortal, but didn’t quite pass for one.

  She shifted in her seat. The memory of what he’d looked like in the ring, fighting like an animal, flashed in front of her eyes.

  She could warn herself away from him all she wanted, but it didn’t seem to be working.

  Her eyes trailed down his chest to the long legs that stretched out toward the seat in front of him. She glanced at the door leading to the cockpit. It was visible over the top of the chairs in front of theirs. If one of the pilots came out, she’d be able to see Cam’s head but not much else. There was no flight attendant on this flight.

  Ana gripped the arm rest of her chair, debating. Then grinned. She wanted to live dangerously, right?

  Swiftly, she unbuckled her seatbelt, climbed out of her chair and onto Cam’s lap.

  “What are you—”

  She cut off his question with her mouth and ran her hands up to his shoulders. She waited for him to give assent. It’d been days since they’d touched like this, both of them warily circling each other, and it was torture not to touch all of him.

  He groaned, and she felt his big hands grip her waist. Reveling in the strength of him, she smoothed her palms along his strong chest. She’d admired it on the boat and then again in the hotel room in Bruxa’s Eye.

  But this was the first time that she’d actually gotten to touch, to feel all the hard muscles that could do so much damage.

  His hands tightened briefly on her hips and he dragged his mouth away from hers. “Ana, this is—”

  She pressed a finger against his mouth while she ran her teeth along a straining muscle at his throat. He groaned and his head dropped back.

  His skin tasted amazing, fresh and clean with the faintest bite of salt.

  It made her wonder what the rest of him would taste like. She slid off of him until the hard floor bit into her knees.

  He looked down at her, brows arched and lips parted.

  “Ana, you know this is a bad idea.” His voice was rough, sandpaper once again, and she shivered.

  It was a bad idea. She’d been telling herself that since she first saw him in the Caipora’s Den. But he turned her brain to mush.

  “I want to return the favor.” She reached for the fly of his jeans. “Anyway, it’s just sex, right? Don’t overthink it.” She didn’t believe it even as she said it.

  His hand gripped hers where she’d started to unbuckle his belt, so she slipped the other one up to cup the bulge in his jeans. Heat bloomed between her thighs. She wanted this. Wanted to taste him. Wanted to hear the sounds he made in his pleasure.

  Cam met Ana’s eyes as she massaged his cock through his jeans.

  “Come on, Cam, I’m just returning the favor.” She licked her lips, and his hand tightened on the arm rest. He barely remembered not to crush the small fist he still held in his other hand. “I won’t kiss you anywhere else. Same as what you did for me.”

  Fuck. He dropped his head back against the seat. He got where she was going with this. Less intimacy from less kissing and touching. But hell, what her eyes promised… That was intimacy enough.

  “You need this, Cam. I can feel it.”

  Hell, of course she could. But by her logic, he’d needed it from the first time he saw her at the Caipora’s Den.

  Deftly, she slipped her hand from his and pulled at his belt. He gripped the arm rests and stared at the door to the cockpit. What the fuck was he doing?

  Something he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to. She tugged his jeans down to free his cock. His eyes darted down to see her small hands gripping him. The dusky head of his cock flared above her pale hand.

  She stroked him and his breath caught in his throat.

  The sight of her pink tongue darting out to lick the head made his shaft twitch. The silken glide forced a strangled groan from his throat. He stifled a shout when she took him into the heat of her mouth. She stroked him and sucked until his mind fogged.

  His chest heaved as he watched her. He prayed she’d let him come in her mouth. Not because it was hot, which it was. Because he didn’t think he could recover from it if she wanted to hold his gaze with her own while he came in her fist. A direct parallel to the night in Bruxa’s Eye when he’d wanted to hold her gaze with his own.

  She looked up at him and withdrew her mouth. His heart clutched.

  “Show me what you like.” Her lips were shiny and her cheeks flushed.

  Comprehension and lust hit him hard when she picked up one of his hands and put it to her head. Her eyes told him to add the other as well.

  His eyebrows rose. Seriously?

  “I’m a goddess, Cam. I don’t need to breathe. Show me what you like.” Her voice was firm, husky with arousal.

  He groaned, fisted his hands in her silken hair, and lowered her head until the heat of her mouth env
eloped his cock.

  “Fuck, Ana.” He gritted his teeth, fought to control himself and his movements.

  He set an easy pace, the mere sight of his hands pressing her mouth down onto his cock enough to make his thighs tremble.

  Her low moan vibrated around his cock, and he realized that her hips were unconsciously moving as if she was as turned on as he was by this act. He heaved out a shaky breath, trying to make this last, knowing it wouldn’t.

  Eventually, she seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to put much force behind moving her head. She cradled his balls and took him deeper into her mouth than he’d dared press. Pleasure spiked through him and his hips jerked uncontrollably.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  She didn’t pause and continued to fuck him with her mouth. Soon it became too much—the heat of her, the smell of her, the sounds of her. Heat suffused him and pressure rose in his shaft.

  “Ana, I’m close.” He tugged lightly on her head, but she sped up, heat and wetness and friction working his cock.

  He groaned deep in his throat, well past caring where he was. The orgasm blasted through him, so strong it was almost painful, and it took everything he had not to lose control of his hips and thrust uncontrollably into her mouth.

  When he finally recovered enough to focus again, he looked down to see Ana panting, collapsed back on her heels and watching his face. At some point during the orgasm he’d apparently let go of her head to squeeze the seat’s arm rests. A good thing, considering the grip that he had on them.

  He heaved out a sigh, still shaky from the pleasure.

  “Thanks.” His voice was raspy, as if unused for a thousand years. He reached out to rub a thumb across her cheek.

  She grinned. “No problem.”

  He zipped his fly while she stood and headed back toward the lavatory. His head turned to follow her, disappointed. He’d wanted to kiss her.

  He dropped his head back into the seat, squeezed his eyes closed. Damn it. He was a goner.

  Ana’s hands trembled as she struggled to shove the lock into place in the tiny airplane bathroom. She turned toward the sink, gripped the plastic edge and leaned over it, gasping.

  What the hell had she done? She’d totally wanted that, no doubt. Wanted it so bad that she’d told herself it was just sex and it didn’t matter. Fates, she was actually bullshitting herself and falling for it. The shaking breath that she drew in did little to fill her lungs. Which made sense. Her brain wasn’t working, so why should her lungs?

  Not to mention her heart. She pinched the bridge of her nose. She should not be thinking about her heart. That was ridiculous. But of its own volition, her hand moved from her head to her chest, rubbed absently. Ugh, this was awful.

  When she’d decided to escape Otherworld permanently, she’d wanted all the feelings and emotions to be had on earth. To live and feel and enjoy. But this? This was not what she’d signed up for. This was too much.

  Had she ever felt like this when she was mortal? Like there was a wild thing scrabbling around in her chest, desperate and anxious for something? For him? She had no idea how to deal with it. How to deal with him. Their past was a pit of snakes that she was trying to cross on a tightrope. And now he was the only person who could take her place in Otherworld. And idiot that she was, her chest was going crazy over him. For the man who was probably going to leave her stranded on the tightrope.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Do you come back to Scotland often?” Ana asked Cam. It was the first she’d spoken since they’d departed the Edinburgh airport twenty minutes ago in one of his company’s cars.

  “No. I don’t like it here.”

  “Why not?” she asked from the passenger seat.

  Apparently neither one of them wanted to talk about what had happened on the plane. It was fine with him. That conversation couldn’t go anywhere good, considering that one of them would end up back in Otherworld at the end of this.

  “I just prefer the jungle. And since I’ve been lying low, it’s safer there. The company has staff that deals with things here, like testing and grant writing. And they have excellent research facilities that we partner with. The operation is too big to not be involved with the university. We need staff, and most prefer to live here around other Mytheans. Company meetings usually happen in Rio. That way, I can stay in the jungle.”

  But Scotland, and his past, had managed to creep into the jungle all the same. In the form of Ana. Amazing Ana, who did amazing things with her mouth. She turned his flat world round. It was totally fucked up, but everything that he was doing, the good that he was trying to do with his company, was starting to take a back seat to her. To the feelings that bubbled up whenever he thought of her or looked at her.

  He’d thought he had a handle on it all.

  She proved that he didn’t.

  “So your company arranges for the car like they did the plane?” Ana asked.

  He nodded, grateful for the distraction from his thoughts. “They would have picked us up. But I like to drive.”

  “Yeah, you’re a bit of a control freak.”

  His head whipped toward her. “I’m not.”

  “Kinda.”

  “Fine. You ever come to Edinburgh?” Better to talk about her than about him.

  “Whenever I can. Literally. Whenever there’s a chance to sneak away unnoticed, I do.”

  Cam nodded. Before he’d met her, he’d had no reason or desire to go to earth. The other gods were the same. Earth was a mess of mortal emotions, unappealing to the gods. Most even believed that their presence was required in Otherworld to keep it operational.

  But then he’d found her in the forest all those years ago and changed the entire course of his life. And hers. Guilt tugged at him. It clung to him like the barnacles to the hull of a ship.

  “Why do you come to Edinburgh when you could go anywhere else?” Cam asked as he turned the car onto the less-crowded country road that would take them out to the university.

  “My friend Esha lives here. She works for the university.”

  “You don’t mind it when she drains your power?”

  “No, I like it. Makes me feel mortal again.”

  He supposed it would. “It’s dangerous to be weakened like that.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like having the strength and abilities of a god. But sometimes it’s just nice to feel a bit different. And the world isn’t as bad as it used to be, especially if Esha and I stick to mortal places.”

  She had a point. The university, which was more than just an educational institution, kept tabs on the Mytheans who were too violent or likely to reveal their existence to mortals. Only law-abiding Mytheans were permitted to live in cities. The rest were sent back to their afterworlds when they became a threat to the secrecy of all Mytheans. The university had a department that dealt specifically with keeping track of such things. As a result, Edinburgh was safer for the law-abiding Mytheans than it had been in the past.

  All the dangerous ones were pushed into the fringes, like the jungle, with him. Which was how he liked it.

  “What mortal places do you and Esha visit?” Every minute he spent with her, he wanted to know more about her. Dangerous is what that was.

  “Depends. Bars and clubs if it’s night. Crazy stuff in the day. Scuba diving, skydiving, skiing. Anything exciting. Anything I can’t do in Otherworld.”

  “Makes sense. You’ve lived a long time. Lots of Mytheans seek out thrills.”

  She sighed, and he caught sight of her fiddling with her bow out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not that, really. Being in Otherworld is like being in a coma. It feels like time passes more quickly there. Enough that I feel like I haven’t really lived. I guess I just want to make up for that on earth. All the fun stuff I miss out on when I’m stuck there.”

  The car suddenly felt very quiet and small. The longer he spent with Ana, the more aware he became of what exactly he’d done to her in their past. He’d
been a selfish son of a bitch when he’d stalked her in the forest. He should have left her alone. Instead, he’d brought her to the attention of the gods. It was getting harder and harder to ignore that.

  Being around her brought into sharp focus how much she loved life—how curious and intelligent and passionate she was—and how he’d truly screwed her by getting her stuck in Otherworld. He’d done the best he could in a shit situation, but she’d still gotten screwed. The more he realized how much he liked her, the more he realized how much he didn’t deserve to even be near her. He was a bastard.

  So lost in recriminations was he that he nearly missed the turn for the university. He stomped on the brakes and turned onto the road that was hidden from mortal eyes. The car hurtled through oak trees that were just an illusion until an enormous wrought iron gate loomed before them. It swung open silently, and Cam drove them down the lane toward the cluster of ornate stone buildings in the middle of fields scattered with hardwoods.

  It was beautiful, he supposed, but he didn’t care for it. Too civilized or something. He couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with it, but he didn’t care.

  “I love this place,” Ana said as they pulled up to the ancient buildings that loomed over the main part of campus. She pointed to a gray stone building on the other side of the cobblestone courtyard. “Fiona’s office is in there, I think.”

  She’d called Esha when they’d landed to let her know they’d arrived and to see if she’d learned anything more about Druantia. Esha had told her to go see an Acquirer in the Department of Magical Devices, Fiona Blackwood. Acquirers were like archaeologists who were magically inclined to find artifacts.

  Cam parked in one of the cobblestone parking lots in the middle of a group of stone buildings, one of which held Fiona’s office. Ana climbed out of the car and looked around, taking in the monstrous stone edifices that rose all around. She set off across rain-damp cobbles. They gleamed in the yellow light of the old-fashioned street lamps.

  “Ana!” A feminine voice echoed across the parking lot.

  Ana whirled to see her friend Esha running down the wide stone steps of the biggest building in the square, her scruffy black cat at her heels. Her familiar, Chairman Meow, never left her side, though sometimes it pained him to have to keep up with her. The Chairman liked a nice fire and a tuna steak more than anything in the world, and if he didn’t have both in front of him, he was a bit of a grump.