House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)

“Only for official 33rd work,” Hunt said. “I forgot how crappy the barracks are.”

“Your sad little room with its lack of posters.”

His laugh rumbled in her ear. “I’m going to be extra good so she’ll let me go early.”

“I won’t have anyone to watch Beach House Hookup with. You sure I can’t come over there?”

“Not with Pollux and the Hind here. No fucking way.”

Bryce toyed with the hem of her T-shirt. “Even if we stayed in your room?”

“Oh?” His voice dropped low, getting the gist of what she was suggesting. “To do what?”

She smiled to herself. She needed this, after the insanity of today. She hadn’t even dared tell Hunt what had happened with the mystics, not over the phone, where anyone could listen in. But the next time she saw him face-to-face, she’d tell him about everything.

Including the otter Tharion had sent to her two hours ago, as promised, with a note that said, Forgive me yet, Legs? Shall we kiss and make up? She’d laughed—but sent a note back with the screamingly cute otter: Start with kissing my ass and we’ll see how it goes. Another otter had arrived before ten with a note that said, With pleasure.

Now Bryce said to Hunt, mood significantly lifted despite the news, “Things.”

His wings rustled in the background. “What kind of things?”

Her toes curled. “Kissing. And … more.”

“Hmm. Explain what more means.”

She bit her lip. “Licking.”

His laugh was like dark velvet. “Where would you like me to lick you, Quinlan?”

They were doing this, then. Her blood heated. Syrinx must have scented what was up, and took it upon himself to leap off the bed and head into the living room.

Bryce swallowed. “My breasts.”

“Mmm. They are delicious.”

She slickened between her thighs, and rubbed her legs together, nestling further into the pillows. “You like to taste them?”

“I like to taste all of you.” She could barely get a breath down. “I like to taste you, and touch you, and when I can leave these barracks again, I’m going to fly in a straight line to wherever you are so I can thoroughly fuck you.”

She whispered, “Are you touching yourself?”

A hiss. “Yes.”

She whimpered, rubbing her thighs together again.

“Are you?”

Her hand drifted beneath the waistband of her shorts. “Now I am.”

He groaned. “Are you wet?”

“Soaking.”

“Gods,” he begged. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

She flushed. She’d never done anything like this, but if she and Hunt couldn’t be together … she’d take what she could get.

She slid her finger into her sex, moaning softly. “I’m … I have a finger inside myself.”

“Fuck.”

“I wish it was yours.”

“Fuck.”

Was he close, then? “I’m adding another,” she said as she did, and her hips bucked off the bed. “It still doesn’t feel as good as you.”

His breathing turned sharp. “Open up that nightstand, sweetheart.”

Frantic, she grabbed a toy from the drawer. She shimmied off her shorts and her drenched underwear and positioned the vibrator at her entrance. “You’re bigger,” she said, the phone discarded beside her.

Another primal sound of pure need. “Yeah?”

She pushed the vibrator in, her back arching. “Oh gods,” she panted.

“When we fuck for the first time, Quinlan, do you want it hard or do you want a long, smooth ride?”

“Hard,” she managed to say.

“You want to be on top?”

Release gathered through her body like a wave about to break. “I want my turn on top, and then I want you behind me, fucking me like an animal.”

“Fuck!” he shouted, and she heard flesh slapping against flesh in the background.

“I want you to ride me so hard I’m screaming,” she went on, driving the vibrator in and out. Gods, she was going to explode— “Anything you want. Anything you want, Bryce, I’ll give it to you—”

That did it. Not the words, but her name on his tongue.

Bryce moaned, deep in her throat, her pants coming quick and wild, her core clenching around the vibrator as she pumped it in and out, working through her climax.

Hunt groaned again, cursing, and then he fell silent. Only their breathing filled the phone. Bryce lay limp against the bed.

“I want you so badly,” he ground out.

She smiled. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Because I’m going to fuck your brains out when you come home to me.”

He laughed softly, full of sensual promise. “Likewise, Quinlan.”

Tharion sat atop the smooth rock half-submerged by a bend in the middle of the Istros and waited for his queen to respond to his report. But the River Queen, lounging on a bed of river weeds like a pool float, kept her eyes closed against the morning sun, as if she hadn’t heard a single word of what he’d been explaining about the Bone Quarter and the Under-King.

A minute passed, then another. Tharion asked at last, “Is it true?”

Her dark hair floated beyond her raft of weeds, writhing over the surface like sea snakes. “Does it disturb you, to have your soul sent back into the light from whence it came?”

He didn’t need to be Captain of Intelligence to know she was avoiding his question. Tharion said, “It disturbs me that we’re told we rest in peace and contentment, yet we’re basically cattle, waiting for the slaughter.”

“And yet you have no problem with your body being sent back to feed the earth and its creatures. Why is the soul any different?”

Tharion crossed his arms. “Did you know?”

She cracked open a warning eye. But she propped her head on a fist. “Perhaps there is something beyond the secondlight. Someplace our souls go even after that.”

For a glimmer, he could see the world she seemed to want: a world without the Asteri, where the River Queen ruled the waters, and the current system of soul-recycling remained, because hey, it kept the lights on. Literally.

Only those in power would change. Perhaps that was all she wanted Emile for: a weapon to ensure her survival and triumph in any upcoming conflict between Ophion and the Asteri.

But Tharion said, “The search for Emile Renast continues. I thought I had an easier way to find him, but it was a dead end.” Tracking Pippa’s string of bodies would have to remain his only path toward the kid.

“Report when you have anything.” She didn’t look back at him as the river weeds fell apart beneath her and she gently sank into the blue water.

Then she was gone, dissolving into the Istros itself and floating away as glowing blue plankton—like a trail of stars soared through the river.

Was a rebellion worth fighting, if it only put other power-hungry leaders in charge? For the innocents, yes, but … Tharion couldn’t help but wonder if there was a better way to fight this war. Better people to lead it.





41

A week later, Ruhn stood beside Cormac and smiled as Bryce sweated in the Aux facility’s private training ring.

“You’re not concentrating,” Cormac scolded.

“My head literally aches.”

“Focus on that piece of paper and simply step there.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”