Kings of Blood and Money (Underworld Kings)
Stroking my hand down Remi’s chest, I ask, “What is it you do for the business?” The lazy contentment vanishes, and his body stiffens beside me.
He doesn’t say anything. Eventually, I lift onto my elbow to look down at him. Strain etches across his brow, those blue orbs staring up at the ceiling. “Rem?” I whisper, stroking my thumb over his mouth.
“I do whatever Noah needs me to.” There’s anxiety in his words.
“And what is that?” Do they make him do things he doesn’t want to?
His breathing becomes heavy and unsettled. Suddenly, he moves, cupping my cheeks and lifting his weight over me, pinning me to the soft cotton sheets covering his mattress.
“If I did bad things, would you hate me?” he asks in a painful whisper. The weight of his fear wraps around me, curling like a vise in my stomach.
Covering his hands with my own, I search his eyes for darkness, for evil or malice. He couldn’t do bad things. It’s not in him to. “I could never hate you,” I utter, my heart imploding.
“Could you love me, Freya?” He looks both petrified and free. His words thrum through me, exposing all my vulnerability, giving him the power to utterly break me.
“I do love you.” I’m dying. Can you die from being so intoxicated by another person?
“I love you too.” He exhales the breath he’s been holding. “I love you so fucking much, it’s all I can think about.” Our lips meet, two souls coming together, healing, worshipping. He strips me urgently. His hands lift my thigh, adjusting our positions, until he seats himself inside me. Achy and swollen, my body opens up to claim him.
Limbs entwining, breathing each other in. We move in sync, grinding, feeling, eyes locked as we fall over the edge. Nothing outside this bed matters in this moment. There’s no past, no future, just the now, just the sensations and love growing between us. Where Noah and I weaken each other, takes chunks from each other’s souls, Remi and I strengthen. Noah is the night sky, and we’re the stars who dare to shine within it.
Staring at the stain on the wall from the beer bottle Noah launched earlier, I sip my water. Even in the dark, you can see the discoloration. I wonder if Dominque will do a better job at cleaning it, or will it need a coat of paint?
I re-fill my glass with ice and grab a beer to take up to Remi just as the front door opens. The water in my stomach sloshes around. A tingling zaps through my nerve endings, raising the hair on the back of my neck. I don’t like how we left things. His heavy footsteps make me nervous, my radar for sensing his moods raising in warning.
Waltzing through the kitchen like a man on a mission, he doesn’t even notice my presence behind him, the curve of the cupboards keeping me from detection.
A ringing hums in my ears as he goes to the locked door and punches in the code. Sweat stains the back of his shirt. His hair looks like he's been running his hands through it.
Swinging the door open, he darts inside. Before I even realize I’m doing it, I run on my tiptoes to stop the door from closing all the way. My fingertips just edge the lip. My heart flutters wildly in my chest. He’s speaking to someone, his voice carrying through the space. There’s someone in there. The person in the box?
I push the door open a little, wincing when it squeaks. Lining my eyes up with the slither of space I’ve created, I see Noah, his back to me, at the far end of the corridor, talking through a small space in a door. Shadows pass the space, but I can’t see who’s in there.
“Was it worth it? Look where you are and where he is. He still won. We won. We have her.” Noah’s voice carries to my ears. I remember how silent the doctor room was, but that doesn’t extend to the corridor.
The world falls away as my stomach bottoms out. “You love her,” a deep, throaty voice mocks. “You’re in love with Freya.”
“Don’t speak her name,” Noah warns.
A burst of insidious laughter gushes down the corridor, hitting me like a tidal wave, then that voice. “Freya, Freya, Freya,” he chants from the hole. I spin, the floor falling away beneath me. The memory of that voice, “Come here, Freya.”
I know that voice. I know who that is…
I’m falling…
Twenty-Eight
Remi
Midnight meows at the bedroom door, waiting for his mommy to come back. “Me and you both, pal,” I grunt.
The moment we shared tonight was so different from anything I experienced before. Opening up, letting her truly see me, giving her honesty, telling her I love her…it was the hardest and most freeing thing I’ve ever done. A tether inside me feels anchored to her. A calm washes over me when I’m in her presence, like my soul can breathe. And when I’m inside her, it’s like life makes sense. All the pain, all the people who have come and gone, everything we’ve been through…it all falls away to dust. We create something new, something special.