Kiss of Vengeance (True Immortality 2)

Before he could make a move, Rose kicked up off her feet onto one hand, suspended in a one-handed handstand for a moment before leaning her weight over and off the building.

His heart lurched into his throat as she fell too fast, too hard.

Even if he caught her, her neck would break on impact.

“Rose,” he whispered, the word choking him as helplessness paralyzed his body.

But then the air changed and her shadowed body slowed just before she hit the ground.

Rose landed on the stone paving in front of him with the grace of a panther, stunning him.

The shadows melted from her body and the anxiety he felt melted with them.

Deciding the emotions he’d experienced as she’d fallen were far too complicated to contemplate, he focused on her cockiness.

The bloody woman just did a bloody handspring off La bloody Sagrada Familia.

He settled his face into a blank mask. “Show-off.”

The sensation of falling stayed with Rose as she followed Fionn, both traveling out of the church grounds to a shadowed corner behind the walls that protected it.

She was getting better at that too.

Still, Rose took a minute before hurrying to catch up with Fionn, already marching toward their hotel. He’d accused her of showing off but that wasn’t what the handspring off the spire was. What Fionn had forgotten to mention was that traveling to the top of that spire was dangerous in itself. The precision required of a newbie was asking a lot.

She’d ended up on one of the construction cranes instead, and it had taken her a moment to gather the courage to travel to the spire.

The fearlessness she’d felt inside the church abandoned her.

It was all well and good to say to yourself, “Hey, I’m unkillable!” It was another to stand five hundred feet above the ground and jump. Fionn was asking too much. He must have known the possibility of her smashing her body to pieces was high.

She should have smacked him to the floor until she knocked some emotion into him.

The handspring off the spire was the only way she could convince herself to fall. Rose pretended the spire was merely an uneven bar in gymnastics. Then as she fell at amazing velocity, it had become a battle of survival versus panic. The world below was coming up to meet her way too fast, yet at the last second, she’d remembered Fionn telling her about using the wind to break her fall. Magic became imaginary wings on her back, flapping around her and slowing her descent.

The experience wasn’t something Rose wanted to repeat, but it was nice to know she could do it.

Although she wouldn’t admit that to Fionn.

He was lucky she didn’t blindfold him, force him back up to the top of the damn church, and push him off. See how he liked it!

“You know, you take coaching to an illegal level of limit pushing,” she commented as she caught up to him.

He grunted.

Rose sighed. “So, I guess training is over for the night?”

Fionn flicked a hand at her. “You’re a natural.”

Despite the pride his compliment made her feel, she frowned. “We won’t be training anymore?”

“You still have much to learn so, yes, we will. But tonight, we rest. The auction is tomorrow evening and we need to steal back An Breitheamh before that.”

Un Bre-huv. There was that foreign-sounding word again. Whatever it was. “This is the part you tell me all about that.”

Fionn stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He cast a look down an alley between two restaurants and then strode into the awaiting darkness. Frowning, Rose followed, trying to breathe through her mouth when they passed the most god-awful-smelling dumpster.

“What are we doing down here?”

“Last lesson of the night. Back in Zagreb, you tried to travel to my hotel and couldn’t. I want you to try again. Travel to your hotel room.”

“And if I end up traveling into an oncoming bus?”

He shrugged. “I’ll clean up the mess.”

She pulled her lip back in a growl. “I’m tired, I don’t know why we’re here, I just jumped off the La Sagrada Familia, and it would be nice if you could remember that smashing to the ground or being hit by a bus will still cause me emotional trauma, if not physical. I’m not over two thousand years old and used to piecing myself back together like a ninety-year-old plastic surgery junkie.”

“I think I liked it better when you flirted,” he griped.

“Just remember, in all your ‘I don’t care if you get squashed like a bug just as long as you learn’ style of coaching, you need me to feed that hero complex of yours.”

“I don’t need you, Rose. You need me. Now get back to the hotel room.”

Thankfully, Rose succeeded in hiding her hurt at his words. “I’m feeling the need for a little space, so I’m going to walk back. I’ll meet you there.” She turned around and let out a yelp to find Fionn blocking her path. Heart in her throat, she hissed, “Don’t do that to me.”

He stepped into her personal space, the top of her head just reaching his chin. Which meant she was faced with the impressive, hard breadth of his chest. Fionn bent his head toward her, and she inhaled the smell of his expensive cologne just as he spoke in a menacingly soft voice. “There is no time for space. If you want me to save your life, you’ll do as I say, when I say it. Nod if you understand.”

Blinding indignation rose inside her at his condescending attempt to master her. Perhaps his two-thousand year old mentality needed a reminder this was the twenty-first century.

“You know, I’ve been wondering something,” she whispered, a careful glimmer in her eyes as she lifted a hand to trail a finger across abs.

She felt Fionn stiffen at her touch and fought very hard not to smirk.

Their eyes met and held, something undecipherable working behind his.

“How does it feel”—she cocked her head to the side as she gripped tight to his biceps—“when a fae gets kneed in the balls?”

Not giving him time to process that question, Rose launched her kneecap as hard as her fae strength would allow, right into his junk.

Pain strained Fionn’s features as he dropped silently to one knee, his face turning red as he fought to hold back what she knew had to be sounds of major discomfort. He glared balefully up at her, his expression promising retribution.

Rose stepped back to enjoy the view and chuckled. “That would be ‘painful,’ then,” she said.

As he pushed back to his feet, she spoke before he could. “Never try to bully me again. I’m here of my own free will. I am not your plaything to command.” With a careful step back, she prepared to travel. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

The world turned black for just a second as she concentrated on her hotel room, and then a blur of color met her eyes before the unlit room settled into place.

Rose blew out a breath and smiled.

She’d done it.

She’d traveled back to her room—

“Ah!” A strong arm wrapped around her waist and she found herself airborne. She’d barely made the landing on the bed when she was pinned flat on her back by Fionn straddling her, her wrists held down at either side of her head in his brutal grasp.

It took her a second to catch her breath as he loomed over her in the dark room.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” he warned, his voice a terrifying low growl.

Or at least it should have been.

Now that Rose had asserted herself with him, she was feeling less annoyed and more turned on by their current position. “I made my point, didn’t I?”

“I’d prefer it”—his mouth was inches from her as he spoke—“if you found other ways to communicate that didn’t involve the abuse of my balls.”

She tried not to grin and failed.