Kiss of Vengeance (True Immortality 2)
She caressed the leather beneath her and relaxed into her seat. “Wow.”
As they moved through city traffic, Rose fought the urge to close her eyes. She still had questions. “Who is Jada?”
“A friend of Bran’s.”
“She knows what he is?”
“People as wealthy as Jada often find themselves in our world. She and Bran are what you call fuck buddies. Not exclusive. She has a fiancé and Bran has many lovers, male and female. Jada, however, lets him drink from her.”
Rose remembered the vampire tearing into her throat and scowled as she automatically reached for her neck. “Seriously?”
Fionn flicked her a look, saw where her hand was, and turned back to the road. “Rose, it shouldn’t hurt. From what I’ve gathered, a vampire bite provides a human with much sexual pleasure. As they drink, the vampire releases pheromones that causes a chemical reaction. A sexual one. The bastard who bit you was all about the pain, so he didn’t do that.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Rose grumbled. “Both are a violation of a different kind.”
“Not when consent is involved.” Fionn shot her a disapproving look. “Jada consents to the bite and to the sex. Don’t judge what you don’t understand.”
“Says the man who hates what he is.”
At his icy silence, Rose heaved a sigh. “Sorry. I’m just … tired.”
“Then sleep.”
“I would but I don’t know where we’re going and … I keep thinking about these powers of mine. Of ours.”
“What about them?”
“You said witches and warlocks have limitations. That they have to pull from the world, exchange something for the magic.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t. Except for exhaustion, werewolf bites and iron, we don’t have limitations. Do we?”
He was quiet a moment as he seemed to consider her question. “Everyone has limitations. I can knock someone unconscious by visualizing my magic pinching their carotid sinus, which is what I did to the Blackwoods back at the hotel—”
“Seriously?” Rose stroked her throat again. “That’s some trick.”
“But I can’t fly. I can fall with style but I can’t fly.”
She grinned. “Did you just quote Toy Story?”
He frowned at her. “What?”
That would be a no then. Rose chuckled to herself and shook her head. “Nothing. So no flying.”
“Technically, no flying. Traveling has its limitations, as you’ve just experienced. And no cheating bodily functions. You have to eat, sleep, drink, piss, and—”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Fionn frowned. “You have very few limitations, Rose. Once you fully let go of thinking of yourself as human, you’ll discover how far your limits go.”
She nodded, considering this. It was both a thrilling and terrifying concept. Something else occurred to her. “Why borrow this car? Why pay for a personal shopper to deliver clothes to our hotel? If you can just snap your fingers and make it all appear?”
His scowl this time was ferocious. “Because I can’t just make it appear, Rose. If I snap my fingers and make this Bugatti appear, it’s because I’ve stolen it out of Jada’s secure lockup. When you’re this powerful, you have to draw a line. It would be easy to use magic to amass wealth, just as Schneider has done. But what kind of man would that make me? I’m going to be here forever, and I will not spend eternity in lazy indolence, stealing from humans. What I have, I’ve earned. Unless necessary, I do not steal.”
Her heart literally skipped a beat. She was in awe of him. “You have your own code. Your own sense of honor.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it that. But if I viewed the world and everything in it as my due, I’d lose myself. And if someone as powerful as me loses himself, I’d be putting the world in danger.”
“Fionn.”
“Yes?”
“I know you know that you’re physically attractive.”
He tensed. “Rose …”
“You’ve never been more attractive to me than you are right now,” she whispered.
In answer, Fionn flicked her an unreadable look. “Go to sleep, Rose. You’ve had a tough morning.”
Disappointment at his avoidance sank deep in her gut. With a sigh, she replied, “I will when you tell me why we’re going to Orléans.”
The car sped up as Fionn drove them onto the highway that would take them out of Barcelona. “I’m going for a fight.” The words sounded dragged out of him.
“A fight?”
“An underground one.”
Their conversation from yesterday played over in her head. “Places for vamps and werewolves to take that natural aggression they don’t want pouring out around humans. They beat the living daylights out of each other with it instead.”
Rose considered Fionn. “Why do you need to fight?”
That telltale muscle ticked in his jaw. “I need a fight, that’s all.”
“You’re frustrated?” Sexually or otherwise? Rose was hoping it was otherwise because Fionn deciding to take/or give a beating rather than throw her onto a bed somewhere and let their wild sides reign was a little insulting.
“Today the Blackwoods could’ve gotten you. That was my fault. I took too big a risk with you.”
He felt guilty.
Rose relaxed a little. “Fionn, I’m a big girl and I decided to go after the dagger.”
“Because I asked you to.” He shot her a dark look. “Go to sleep, Rose, and give us both some peace.”
She eyed him, in no way put off by his grumpiness. Instead, longing coursed through her as she watched his big hands change gears, pushing the Bugatti to 120 mph. It didn’t even feel like it was doing sixty. Rose sighed, closed her eyes, and settled in to sleep. But before she let slumber come for her, she murmured throatily, “There are better ways to vent your frustration.”
Even though Rose didn’t open her eyes to see his reaction, she felt the air inside the car turn electric as a flood of desire gripped her belly low and deep.
It was foreign.
It was his desire.
Although pleased by the thought, his desire only inspired a natural response from Rose. She shifted in her seat, crossing one leg over the other, and willed her blood to cool. Thankfully, Rose was so goddamn weary from the encounter with the Blackwoods, exhaustion pulled her under.
The arousal never faded, though, pulling her deep into the dark where the only thing that existed was Fionn. Naked. Entwined with her.
There were few streetlights in this district of Orléans. Industrial buildings, sites, and warehouses occupied the street in Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle. Broken chain-link fences, old, tired concrete buildings, rusted corrugated iron, and faded red brick surrounded them.
Fionn had, with much regret, left the Bugatti with a contact at a luxury hotel near the Loire River. He had no idea who the man was, but Bran had trusted him to return the hypercar to Jada. Rose had chuckled sleepily as Fionn handed over the fob with obvious reluctance.
It was probably wrong that not buying a Bugatti before his final trek into Faerie now ranked on his list of top twenty regrets.
The woman at the top of that list, holding the number one spot with a painful, talon-like grip on his soul, watched the shadowed figures disappear into a large warehouse across the street, behind a secure chain link fence.
Fionn had assumed a sleeping Rose would be a reprieve from his unexpected and entirely unwanted attraction. Instead, it had proven the opposite. He didn’t pretend to have the nose of a wolf, but fae had heightened senses. Rose’s scent changed as she slept, becoming musky, feminine, and familiar.
Whatever she was dreaming about, she was enjoying it.
Too much.
Now and then, she’d emit little moans or groans that were driving him wild. At one point Fionn drove so fast down the highway hoping to run from his desires that he’d inadvertently taken the tank too low. Rose had slept through his pit stop a
t the gas station. He’d had to take a minute before getting out of the car or everyone in the fucking vicinity would know Rose had him primed like a prepubescent boy instead of the goddamn immortal warrior he was.