“But not nearly as interesting,” she said, shooting for light and breezy, but failing miserably. She sounded breathless and desperate. Horny.
He opened the book to what appeared to be the very spot where she’d left off. One pale eyebrow lifted as he read, and then the other, and then… was that a touch of pink on his cheeks? Yes, yes it was.
Good. Maybe he was as embarrassed as she was.
“His fingers found my swollen pearl, wet with my honey,” he read, and okay, so maybe he wasn’t embarrassed. “He pushed one inside me, and I moaned as my body exploded with pleasure.”
Regan cleared her throat. “I see you can read. Impressive. Can we stop now?”
“You don’t want to know what happens next?”
“I assume she earned some sort of honor for banging all three of you and now has a commemorative tramp stamp on the small of her back or at the base of her tail or whatever.”
Thanatos stared at her for a moment, and then he threw back his head and laughed, and dear Lord, she had just revised her definition of melt-my-panties-hot.
“She does not have a tramp stamp,” he said, when he’d finished laughing, but the smile remained. “At least, I don’t think she does. Haven’t seen her in centuries. She gave birth to a few dozen little hellspawns and went her own way.” He closed the book. “And no, none of the demonlings are ours.”
“Demonlings?”
“It’s what Reseph calls them.” The smile fell from his lips, replaced by the familiar scowl. “Used to call them. I’m guessing now he calls them dinner.”
It was surprising to see his reaction to his brother’s transformation—up until now, she’d seen little from Thanatos but anger. Well, there was the little blip of amusement, but it was gone so fast she sort of wondered if she’d imagined it. Except that her heightened body temperature and racing heart were pretty clear evidence that he’d affected her in more than the angry way.
“Were you close to him?” she asked.
“He’s my brother.” He peeled off his coat and shoved up the sleeves of his black turtleneck.
“That’s not an answer.”
His gaze glittered like canary diamonds in the sun. “We shared a womb. We shared battle, pain, loss, and drink. He is my brother.”
So… that was a yes to her question. The intensity rolling off him shocked her. Not that she’d expected anything less of the Horseman who would be Death, but she hadn’t been prepared for the depth of his feelings for his siblings. Somehow that humanized him in her eyes… and at the same time, shamed her. She’d never loved anyone. Not like that.
She rubbed her arms, though she was anything but cold. “So even now, after what he’s become—”
“What he’s become is his own personal nightmare,” he interrupted. “We’ll find a way to change him back.”
“You’ve got to have some idea how.” Yeah, she was one to talk, since The Aegis still had no idea how Death’s child could save the world. Her stomach churned a little at that thought, because she’d been concentrating so hard on how to get Thanatos into bed that she hadn’t thought much about the consequences.
“I do have an idea. I’ve finally made a breakthrough.” He took a thick book off a top shelf and splayed it open on his desk. As he flipped pages, she realized it was a scrapbook, filled with notes, pictures, clippings from newspapers, even, and from what she could tell, most of it had to do with Pestilence. “I believe this is a clue.” He drew out the parchment he’d had her inspect the other day. “I’ve translated the text, and it basically says that disease is cured by death.”
“Well… yeah. Death sort of cures everything.”
He shook his head. “A few days ago, I found this in a demon temple dedicated to Pestilence’s worship. It was on an altar that wasn’t there the last time I checked, and it was wrapped around exact metal and wooden replicas of Deliverance and a scythe… my symbol.”
“Pestilence has a temple dedicated to him?”
“We all do.” He said it like a normal person would confirm that of course they had milk in the fridge. Like, who didn’t? He traced his finger over a photo taped to the next page. “Beneath the replicas was this writing carved into the stone altar. It’s a warning that Deliverance, if wielded by me at a precise moment, will restore Pestilence to his weakness, which, in evil demon terms, means he’ll become Reseph again.”
“So that’s it? You stab him and he’s better?”
t="to hi
He paused, his gaze focused on the parchment. “We forged Deliverance so that stabbing him in the heart will kill him. Or any of us. But if this new information is to be believed, a perfectly timed jab of the blade will return him to Reseph. We just need to find out what that ‘precise moment’ is.” He tapped the writing with his forefinger. “At least the first part of the mystery is solved.” On his arm, the horse tattoo kicked. He looked down and ran his finger over the shoulder, and the lines seemed to settle down. So weird.
But he’d just given her the opening she needed to get her hands on him. “Can I touch it?”
His head snapped back. “What?”
“The horse. Can I touch it?”
“Why?”
Because in the Horsemen erotica it says you feel everything the horse feels in corresponding parts of your body. Oh, yes, she could use this to arouse him, to make him crave more of her touch.
“It’s fascinating,” she said truthfully. She might have ulterior motives, but she was also curious as hell. “Your other tattoos are multicolored and metallic. This one… it’s like a henna tattoo. Just lines, but it moves.”
“Because it’s alive,” he said. “Surely you’re aware that our horses are part of us.”
“Yes, and that’s what’s so interesting.” She stepped closer. “May I?”
He looked at her like she’d asked if she could chop his head off, but finally, he gave a curt, sharp nod and held out his arm. It was odd how the other tattoos were layered on top of each other, which should have caused a jumbled mess, but somehow they were distinct, multi-dimensional. But the horse lay flat on his skin with no other tattoos beneath or on top.
She took Thanatos’s hand, palm up, in hers, and his entire body tensed. Hers did too, as the inked bones on his wrist took on lives of their own, and in her head, she got their story—how they’d gotten there, and oh, wow… this Horseman was holding on to some serious pain.
She saw the female demon who was responsible for putting the tats on his skin. Regan wasn’t sure how it worked, but this demon took memories and feelings out of her customers’ heads and put them on their bodies. But why? These tattooed bones told her so much… the death he’d caused in one day. Demons… a demon war. He’d fought on the side of humans, had taken dead demons to a pit to be rendered down to their bones.
Her stomach rolled, and quickly, she shut off her unwelcome gift.
“You okay, Aegi? You’re turning green.”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat of the raspiness. “Just overwhelmed. You know, being here with a legend.” Oh, gag, she sounded like a teeny-bopper mooning over Justin Bieber. But hey, flattery got you everywhere, right?
He made an indecipherable grunting noise, and she went back to what she was doing, which was trying to seduce the guy. Or, at least, le, aflattery garn the key to seducing him.
Tentatively, she touched the tip of her finger to the horse’s long neck. Even though she’d shut off her gift, faint stirrings of confusion, annoyance, and anger filtered in, but she couldn’t tell if it was coming from the horse or from Thanatos.
She traced the lines, working her way over the animal’s ears, jaw, nose, then down the front of his throat. When she slowly drew her finger along its chest, Thanatos inhaled harshly, and his pulse picked up, hammering into her thumb. He liked this, so she lingered, stroked. In the silence marked only by the crackle of the fire, she eased her fingertip along the beast’s belly and then up, over its back and down around the curve of its rump.
Again, she stroked, feeling the textures in Thanatos’s skin, the hard, pulsing veins that shot through the stallion’s lines. And under her thumb, his pulse quickened more.
“What are you doing?”
She blinked up at him innocently. “Tracing the lines. It’s exquisite. Can the horse feel it?”
A muscle in his jaw leaped. “Yes.”
“So he’s aware that I’m touching him?”
Another leap of muscle. “Yes.”
“Does he like it?”
“Yes.”
Hiding a smile, she ran her thumb over its belly again, and Thanatos hissed softly. “If your horse—Styx, right? If he was standing here, would he let me pet him?”
“He’s ill-tempered.”
“Like his master?”
“You’re funny.” He watched her fingers play, his throat flexing with his frequent swallows. “He seems to like… this. So he will probably allow your touch in person.”
What about his master? She didn’t say anything, but she did decide to forge a new path and see how far he’d let her walk down it. Pretending to be in awe of his other markings—which wasn’t hard, since she kind of was—she slid her hand up to the image of a bow and arrow that was half-hidden under his sleeve.
“And what’s this?”
“It’s the weapon I used to kill the man who raised me,” he said, his voice flat, toneless, and it turned the warm room cold. He pulled his arm out of her grip. “Enough. It’s late.”
She glanced at her watch, and sure enough, it was two in the morning. “Do you mind if I take one of these books to read in bed?”
“Can I make a suggestion?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Sure.”