House of Earth and Blood

He had a long-lost love he was still holding a torch for. And she’d just gone too long without sex. Cthona’s tits, it’d been weeks since that hookup with the lion shifter in the Raven’s bathroom. And with Hunt here, she hadn’t dared open up her left nightstand to take care of herself.

Keep telling yourself all that, a small voice said.

The muscles in Hunt’s back stiffened. His hands paused whatever they were doing.

Shit, he could smell this kind of thing, couldn’t he? Most Vanir males could. The shifts in a person’s scent: fear and arousal being the two big ones.

He was the Umbra Mortis. Off-limits in ten million ways. And the Umbra Mortis didn’t date—no, it’d be all or nothing with him.

Hunt asked, voice like gravel, “What are you thinking about?” He didn’t turn from the stove.

You. Like a fucking idiot, I’m thinking about you.

“There’s a sample sale at one of the designer stores this afternoon,” she lied.

Hunt glanced over his shoulder. Fuck, his eyes were dark. “Is that so?”

Was that a purr in his voice?

She couldn’t help the step she took back, bumping into the kitchen island. “Yes,” she said, unable to look away.

Hunt’s eyes darkened further. He said nothing.

She couldn’t breathe properly with that stare fixed on her. That stare that told her he scented everything going on in her body.

Her nipples pebbled under that stare.

Hunt went preternaturally still. His eyes dipped downward. Saw her breasts. The thighs she now clamped together—as if it’d stop the throbbing beginning to torture her between them.

His face went positively feral. A mountain cat ready to pounce. “I didn’t know clothing sales got you so hot and bothered, Quinlan.”

She nearly whimpered. Forced herself to keep still. “It’s the little things in life, Athalar.”

“Is that what you think about when you open up that left nightstand? Clothing sales?” He faced her fully now. She didn’t dare let her gaze drop.

“Yes,” she breathed. “All those clothes, all over my body.” She had no idea what the fuck was coming out of her mouth.

How was it possible all the air in the apartment, the city, had been sucked out?

“Maybe you should buy some new underwear,” he murmured, nodding to her bare legs. “Seems like you’re out.”

She couldn’t stop it—the image that blazed over her senses: Hunt putting those big hands on her waist and hoisting her onto the counter currently pressing into her spine, shoving her T-shirt over her midriff—his T-shirt, actually—and spreading her legs wide. Fucking her with his tongue, then his cock, until she was sobbing in pleasure, screaming with it, she didn’t care just so long as he was touching her, inside her—

“Quinlan.” He seemed to be shaking now. As if only a tether of pure will kept him in place. As if he’d seen the same burning image and was just waiting for her nod.

It’d complicate everything. The investigation, whatever he felt for Shahar, her own life—

To fucking Hel with all that. They’d figure it out later. They’d—

Burning smoke filled the air between them. Gross, nose-stinging smoke.

“Fuck,” Hunt hissed, whirling to the stove and the eggs he’d left on the burner.

As if a witch spell had snapped, Bryce blinked, the dizzying heat vanishing. Oh gods. His emotions had to be all over the place after last night, and hers were a mess on a good day, and—

“I have to get dressed for work,” she managed to say, and hurried toward her bedroom before he could turn from the burning breakfast.

She’d lost her mind, she told herself in the shower, in the bathroom, on the too-quiet walk to work with Syrinx, Hunt trailing overhead. Keeping his distance. As if he realized the same thing.

Let someone in, give them the power to hurt you, and they’d do exactly that, in the end.

She couldn’t do it. Endure it.

Bryce had resigned herself to that fact by the time she reached the gallery. A glance upward showed Hunt making his descent as Syrinx yipped happily, and the thought of a day in an enclosed space with him, with only Lehabah as a buffer …

Thank fucking Urd, her phone rang as she opened the gallery door. But it wasn’t Ruhn calling to check in, and it wasn’t Juniper with an earful about missing the dance class. “Jesiba.”

The sorceress didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Get the back door open. Now.”

“Oh, it’s horrible, BB,” Lehabah whispered in the dimness of the library. “Just horrible.”

Staring up at the massive, dimly lit tank, Bryce felt her arm hair stand on end as she watched their new addition explore its environment. Hunt crossed his arms and peered into the gloom. Any thoughts of getting naked with him had vanished an hour ago.

A dark, scaled hand slapped against the thick glass, ivory claws scraping. Bryce swallowed. “I want to know where anyone even found a nøkk in these waters.” From what she’d heard, they existed only in the icy seas of the north, and mostly in Pangera.

“I preferred the kelpie,” Lehabah whispered, shrinking behind her little divan, her flame a quivering yellow.

As if it had heard them, the nøkk paused before the glass and smiled.

At more than eight feet long, the nøkk might have very well been the Helish twin to a mer male. But instead of humanoid features, the nøkk presented a jutting lower jaw with a too-wide, lipless mouth, full of needle-thin teeth. Its overlarge eyes were milky, like some of the fishes of the deep. Its tail was mostly translucent—bony and sharp—and above it, a warped, muscled torso rose.

No hair covered its chest or head, and its four-fingered hands ended in daggerlike claws.

With the tank spanning the entire length of one side of the library, there would be no escaping its presence, unless the nøkk went down to the cluster of dark rocks at the bottom. The creature dragged those claws over the glass again. The inked SPQM gleamed stark white on his greenish-gray wrist.

Bryce lifted her phone to her ear. Jesiba picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”

“We have a problem.”

“With the Korsaki contract?” Jesiba’s voice was low, as if she didn’t want to be overheard.

“No.” Bryce scowled at the nøkk. “The creep in the aquarium needs to go.”

“I’m in a meeting.”

“Lehabah is scared as Hel.”

Air was lethal to nøkks—if one was exposed for more than a few seconds, its vital organs would begin shutting down, its skin peeling away as if burned. But Bryce had still gone up the small stairwell to the right of the tank to ensure that the feeding hatch built into the grate atop the water was thoroughly locked. The hatch itself was a square platform that could be raised and lowered into the water, operated by a panel of controls in the rear of the space atop the tank, and Bryce had triple-checked that the machine was completely turned off.

When she’d returned to the library, she’d found Lehabah curled into a ball behind a book, the sprite’s flame a sputtering yellow.

Lehabah whispered from her couch, “He’s a hateful, horrible creature.”

Bryce shushed her. “Can’t you gift him to some macho loser in Pangera?”