He traced Alexis’s perfect lips before trailing his fingertips down her soft, tear-streaked cheek…and found that he didn’t want to go for a swim in the deep sea. He didn’t want to lose himself in the ocean—he wanted to lose himself in her.

He scooped her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest. He didn’t speak. Didn’t explain. He walked her into her room and hooked his heel on the door before swinging it closed with a bang.

She kissed him first, just as eager to take a break from life, just as desperate to use him to do it.

He set her down on the floor, ripping into her clothing. Pulling off her shirt. Her pants. He paused so she could rip his shirt off, too. He unbuckled and shoved down his pants.

She crawled onto the bed, her watery eyes on him. Scared. Hollow. There was a hole in her heart where Daisy fit. Kieran knew how it felt. But his situation held no hope. Jack would be dead forever.

The lid wobbled again. Emotion threatened to break free.

Settling into her welcoming embrace, he lined himself up and thrust without preamble, physically sinking into her. Emotionally sinking in as well. He let the world drift away, the pleasure of her muffling the pain. He let their mutual love shut out some of the heartache.

“I love you,” he said softly, next to her ear. He pulled out so he could push into her again, groaning with her. Hugging her tight. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Kieran.” She clutched his shoulders and swung her hips up to meet his, crashing against him.

He buried his face into her neck, smelling the sweet perfume of her skin. Their pleasure worked higher. Their desperation to be together mounted. He filled her, over and over.

“Yes, Kieran,” she said, digging her fingertips into his back. “Yes!”

Their magic swirled around them, fusing together, burning across their skin. Pleasure rolled through them, turned them end over end. He lost himself in it. In her. He hit the peak…but then kept going, kept pushing, wanting to forget, giving himself to her totally.

A tidal wave of sensation crashed down onto them. She cried out his name as he shook with the orgasm, so intense that he felt dizzy. Their panting filled the suddenly quiet room, but he still wasn’t ready to release her.

“It’s okay. I won’t tell,” she said, and even though she didn’t give any details, he knew exactly what she was talking about. She could feel the emotion in him. She could read him in a way no one else had ever been able to.

So, despite his upbringing, despite his father’s lectures about what was and was not proper, he trusted her—and finally, for the first time with another human being…let go.

23

Daisy

Pain rattled Daisy’s nerves, pounding through her body from her broken wrist. It dulled the throb in her face from smacking into that wall. That had been a helluva strong push.

A different pain filled her. One of betrayal. She’d thought of Jack like family, the uncle she’d never had. She’d loved that fucking guy like he was blood. Only to have him do this? Betray their pack, as Mordecai would say?

She sucked in a breath as white-hot agony pulsed through her, and not from her arm. Her arm would heal. The loss of Mordecai would not. He’d been more than blood. You didn’t go through a life like they had and come out without an attachment forged from iron.

Jack and that woman would die for what they’d done. They’d die slow, too. Real slow. With much suffering. They’d killed the wrong one of the Daisy-Mordecai pair. For all Mordecai was levelheaded and soft-hearted, Daisy was a monster in a doll’s skin. She was a villain with a cherub face.

She was hell in razor-spiked heels.

But first, she needed to get the hell out of here.

Zorn’s voice floated out of her memory: Step one, assess your surroundings.

In other words, where was here?

A leather office chair hugged her butt, and ropes, loosely and probably clumsily tied, held her hands around the back. Light showered down from a bare bulb suspended from the middle of the ceiling. It didn’t penetrate the black shadows lining the edges of the window, covered with a cream-yellow shade. Linoleum with brown in the cracks lined the floor, not dirty per se, but old. Nothing hung on the walls. A small round handle adorned the cheap wood door.

It was still night, and she’d been stowed in some sort of storage room in an office building. Nothing fancy, and not in a nice part of town, but serviceable. Whoever owned or rented it had been doing so for years. Maybe decades. Otherwise the flooring would’ve been changed out, and little details like the knob would have been updated. It was easier to sell a building when things looked good.

A sort of…dampness filled the air. Not moldy, but…damp. The mustiness carried traces of salt. This place was near-ish the ocean, but not so close that the waves could be heard.

She was being held. It couldn’t be for ransom. The people Lexi and Kieran were messing with had plenty of money. It was probably to bring Lexi to heel, or maybe to control Kieran through Lexi. Hell, maybe they were after some sort of trade. Daisy wasn’t fluent enough in the games of Demigods to know exactly where she fit in. She’d need to work on that. She needed to know enough to make educated guesses, not blindly grasp at straws.

She twisted her chest. The hard hilt of a small blade pushed against her skin between the pads in her bra. Thank God for guys’ obsession with mammary glands. Big boobs helped hide weapons, and the stores were all too happy to sell overpriced bullshit to create that effect. The knife at her waist was gone, of course, having been the cause of Jack breaking her wrist.