that zinged through her entire body.
She was alive, more now than she had been when running. This was what she’d been waiting for. Under the water, her legs wrapped around his waist, urging him inside of her.
Instead he pulled her back, turned her so she faced away from him and used his fingers between her legs, stroking her to completion. The combination of the heat between her thighs and the cold of the water made for an intense orgasm that came on more suddenly than she’d expected, caused her cry to echo through the woods.
She leaned back against him, her body as liquid as the lake around her. He floated with her in this serene setting, so at odds with what had happened back at the house.
“If we could stay like this . . . forget everything else,” she murmured.
Jinx wished the same damned thing, because here, in this water, with her hands on his shoulders, her body close, there was peace.
But they had so much to conquer still. He figured Rifter and the others were holding meetings back at the house trying to figure out the Gillian and Jinx situations. And soon enough, he’d have to answer to everyone.
For right now, he could just keep Gillian close and pretend nothing else mattered.
Rogue saw Jinx’s blood on the broken glass that was once a picture window. The growling they’d heard outside had retreated momentarily, but he knew what made the sounds weren’t gone. Not by a long shot.
They all watched out the window until Gwen mentioned Gillian and then they all moved away to find her.
She’d gone out the door, though. Rogue had listened for her, knowing she and Jinx were impossibly close. Just the way she’d stood up to Rifter told him that.
He wanted to tell them they shouldn’t go out there, but the questions that would invite were more than he was willing to say.
Trouble, trouble, all around . . .
“We need to talk.”
“Not now, Vice.” Rogue refused to look at the wolf, but knew Vice wasn’t letting this go. At least Vice was able to restrain himself from not doing this when Jinx was there or in front of anyone else, but no way was this discussion going to remain between the two of them.
Rifter was lurking—he believed Rogue knew what was going on with Jinx. And Rogue was torn between his brotherly loyalties and loyalty to his king.
Maybe outing what was happening with Jinx was the only way to get him help.
And maybe it would make him angrier, and the situation more impossible.
Because if Jinx got angry, the monsters who suddenly saw him as the once and future king would go after the Dires and anyone else who got in Jinx’s way. It was a delicate balancing act and Jinx had taken only a few steps on the tightrope, not nearly enough to know if it would hold his weight for any considerable length of time.
“Now.” Vice’s big hand on Rogue’s shoulder turned him around and Rogue bared his teeth as a growl escaped his throat, louder than intended. The tattoos on his skull and face throbbed as though activated by his anger and that scared him in its unexpectedness. The nightmares he could deal with. Unintentional fallout from being marked by hell was in the
“What do you want from me, Vice?”
“What the fuck is wrong with your brother? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vice demanded, not giving a shit if hell itself was on his heels. Rogue should’ve expected this—Vice had no filter, no worries about consequences when he was in the moment. It was the wolf’s nature and Rogue should’ve considered getting the hell out of Dodge the second he looked out the window and saw a hellhound looking back at him.
It cocked its head and looked confused. Sniffed the air and Rogue suddenly understood. They were protecting Jinx since he freed them from purgatory. And by extension, Rogue, since he was part of Jinx.
“Be nice to me or they’ll eat you,” he told Vice.
“You’re serious?” Vice asked, his hands in his pockets, his tone non-threatening.
“They’re Jinx’s protection,” he said.
“Jinx needs protection from us?” Vice looked astonished.
“No. It’s a long story, Vice. And none of you should follow Jinx out there.”
“Obviously, I’m going to need the story,” Vice said and then pointed to Rifter, who was listening by the door. Rogue had been so focused on the hellhounds that he hadn’t heard the other wolf come up behind him.
“I can’t, Rifter.”
“It’s not disloyalty to Jinx—it’s necessity, to help him,” Rifter told him.
“Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me choose.”
“There is no choice in this. There is only goddamned obey.” Rifter’s voice rose to shake-the-house levels. Vice trembled as his wolf struggled to stay contained. Rogue’s glyphs pulsed with pain and he heard Gwen and Kate talking, didn’t want either of them to feel Rifter’s wrath because of him.
But Rifter was circling him and Rogue felt cornered. Something in him was ready to snap, to go over the edge uncontrollably and what if he couldn’t pull himself back?
Jinx had always been able to do that for him. Would if called on again. But bringing his twin here in the first place was a mistake, even if it wasn’t his.
The growling was louder and more inhuman than any wolf he’d ever heard. It sent shivers down the base of his spine, called to him in a way it shouldn’t have.
His wolf wanted to join them and that was wrong on so many levels.
“What the fuck, Rogue?” Vice asked. He was circling the room staring out the window and seeing nothing, but sensing the evil surrounding them.
Vice stopped asking nicely and shook Rogue by the shoulders, which enraged the hellhounds. It was as if they were ready to jump through the windows, and Vice, who wasn’t scared of anything or anybody, didn’t stop pressing Rogue.
Just as suddenly, they were gone. Rogue heard them running, the beats of their paws inside his head, their massive jaws gnashing. He could only imagine what would have drawn them away from their threats outside the Dire house.
Only one thing. “Jinx is in trouble,” he told them, before he shifted and went out the already broken window, following Jinx’s trail of glass and blood.
Chapter 18
Letting the air dry them, Jinx and Gillian walked together through the dark woods, arms around each other. The bruising pattern on her back was looking more glyph-like and she said it was tender to the touch, so he made sure his arm didn’t press on it.
Halfway back to the house, his scenting diverted him. He smelled wereblood, tasted the violence like a bitter wine and he motioned to Gillian to follow him.
Quietly, they wove through a makeshift path that wasn’t here a week earlier. Trappers came here and did things like this all the time—typically, the twins found them and took care of it, re-camouflaging everything and restoring it to its original state. But they’d been caught up with Liam’s war lately.
At the end of the path, he stopped, scanned the area and saw the bodies, hurriedly buried beneath some old leaves. He raced over to them, Gillian on his heels.
Dead Weres. Two of them, younger than Cyd and Cain were when they came to Jinx. They’d been through their first shift, but they hadn’t been shifted during the attack. They hadn’t even been given the chance, probably drugged to make the shift impossible, and wrapped in silver chains to stop it from happening, judging by the burns around their necks and wrists.
He bent to look more closely at the other injuries, saw electrical burns and deep cuts made from a hunting knife. And the way they were tied made it easy for Jinx to assume they’d been raped. Tortured. Held for who knew how long. For what? For being what they were born to be. He knelt next to the bodies, touched their foreheads.
