Shane didn’t need to be asked twice, not when the invitation was both sweet and filthy. He nudged her legs apart wider and looped his arms under hers so her head was cradled in his palms and his fingers were twined in her soft hair. Their faces were no more than an inch apart, and he watched her, his eyes open, as he angled himself at her opening. Her eyes widened when he slowly buried himself in her. When she gasped, he slowed even further, barely moving but not withdrawing.
Siobhan closed her eyes and bit her lip. She was tight, so tight. But she was wet and she didn’t resist him. He groaned along with her, and she clawed at his back. Then she said the one thing he needed to hear the most. Just one sharp gasp but she cried, “
More
.”
And he complied, withdrawing almost completely before thrusting hard into her until their bodies were as connected as they could be. He pulled out and repeated the process, meeting the arch of her hips and his breaths matching hers until they were both panting and slick with sweat.
When she cried out again in a way he would dream about for months, they collapsed onto his creaky mattress, limbs woven together and sheets tangled around them.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
She gave a hoarse laugh. “I feel…like I would be useless as a virgin sacrifice.”
Shane nipped her shoulder and teased her sensitive nipple by brushing his thumb over the rigid flesh. She looked over at him, and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“You still look a little untainted,” he said. “I think we might need to do it again, just to be sure.”
With lives on the line, one could never play it too safe.
Chapter Nine
When Siobhan walked into her apartment the next morning, humming a song and smiling more than she thought she should have been, one thing was made abundantly clear.
Having sex was not going to keep her from getting fucked.
“Hello, Siobhan.” Her father was sitting on the end of her bed in the small space she rented in Hell’s Kitchen. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite some time.”
She held her purse close, her hand dipping inside so her fingers could brush the smooth metallic surface of her bow. Though she didn’t think she’d be able to best her father in a one-on-one fight, it made her calmer to know her weapon was within reach.
“Papa,” she said, shutting the door behind her.
Eion O’Malley was a
big
man. Six and a half feet tall with a barrel chest and a bushy red beard, he looked more like a Viking warrior than a Gaelic gatekeeper. But more than anything he looked like a man you didn’t want to mess with, and Siobhan knew that wasn’t posturing. Her father was a dangerous man, and he had no soft spot in his heart for his only daughter. She was just another tool for him to use, and her usefulness was almost at an end, as far as he was concerned.
“I believe you have a birthday coming up.”
“You know I do.”
“Then you know why I’m here. I’ve come to prepare you for the rit—”
“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to participate in the ritual, Papa.”
“Nonsense, girl. It’s your duty, and you
will
do it.”
Siobhan gripped the bow tightly when Eion got to his feet, towering over her, imposing his power by dwarfing her with his mammoth size. But this show was old news to Siobhan, and for once in her life she wouldn’t cower or back down.
“No, I don’t think you understand, sir. I
can’t
be your sacrifice.”
Eion looked flummoxed. “What utter foolishness are you prattling on about, child? Don’t try to play games. The ritual is important.”
“The ritual is for you to sacrifice a virgin to appease the gate with her pure, virtuous blood.”
“Yes, I
know
the ritual, Siobhan.”
When she smiled at him and raised an eyebrow, realization dawned on her father’s ruddy face. His complexion grew red, his cheeks flushed with rage and when he spoke again, it was a bellow that rattled the room’s only window. “
You foolish, useless girl.
Do you have any concept of what you’ve done?”
“I protected myself. From you.”
“You’ve desecrated yourself. Laid waste to the one thing worthwhile about you.” Eion threw a punch at the wall next to her head, and the plaster split beneath his knuckles like it was made of tissue paper. In the instant it took for him to throw his posturing punch, Siobhan had pulled her bow from the purse along with a single arrow, and both were extended to their full size. It was all for show, of course—she hadn’t had time to string the bow—but the wire was wrapped around her wrist, and she was betting she might have enough time to loop it on before he threw another punch.
“Tell me again how useless I am, Papa. I have guarded this gate by myself for a decade. Tell me what a
disappointment
I am as a warrior.” She dropped one of the wire loops to the floor, hooking it on the end of her bow without looking, then strung the other end on tightly with only the slightest pressure on the bow. “Because you haven’t been here. You don’t know a damned thing.”
“You were never a warrior,” Eion huffed, unfazed by the loaded weapon in her hands. “You were only meant to be fodder, and now you can’t even do that right. I should have killed you when you were a babe.”
Siobhan skirted him with her back to the wall until she was on the opposite side of the room with the bed between them.
“I won’t be a pawn for the Claughdid anymore.”
“You were
born
to be our pawn.”
With an arrow aimed at his right kneecap, Siobhan struggled to keep her voice from wavering when she spoke again. “Go home. Go back to Belfast and tell the high council there won’t be any sacrifices in New York next week. I will continue to guard the gate like a true warrior of the clan, but I will
not
be your animal to slit open on the altar of tradition.”
“You make a grand speech,” Eion scoffed. “But you’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“If you won’t be our willing virgin, we’re just going to find ourselves an unwilling one.”
He yanked open the door, and when it slammed closed behind him, the entire room rattled.
Night had settled over the city faster than usual, like a fist closing to trap a moth, all the light blotted out in minutes and not over the course of hours. Heavy, bloated rain clouds dotted the horizon, and streetlights came on an hour sooner than they would have otherwise.
Siobhan wasn’t sure what she was doing out in the streets, but she knew something needed to be done to keep her father and his cohorts from kidnapping and murdering some poor, hapless girl. She’d wanted to save her own life. She’d never thought she’d be bartering someone else’s in the process.
She wanted to call Shane. It had been her first instinct after her father had run out, but she’d told herself it wasn’t a good idea. When she’d disentangled herself from Shane’s arms earlier in the morning, she’d told herself that was it. His purpose had been served, and she wasn’t going to see him again.
But now she was one woman in a city of seven million, and somewhere there was a virgin sacrifice who was going to die because Siobhan had been busy riding Shane like a pony the night before.
Maybe he
should
be the one to help her.
It wasn’t like she was getting anywhere on her own.
He’d entered his phone number into her cell earlier with an all-too-charming, leering wink suggesting if her life needed saving again, he was only a phone call away. She caught herself smiling at the memory.
Well, fuck if the lanky, lumbering bugger hadn’t gone and gotten under her skin.
She pulled out her cell and found his number, and after a moment’s hesitation hit the call button. It rang three times, and she was prepared to hang up as soon as the voicemail kicked in, but on the fourth ring he answered with a bored-sounding, “Hello?”
“Shane?”
A pause, then a rustling noise followed by the sound of him clearing his throat. “Red?”
Her heart thumped traitorously when he used a nickname for her. She’d never mattered enough to anyone before to warrant a nickname.
“Everything okay?” he asked, his tone laced with genuine concern. “You’re not… Are you okay?”
She was not—in fact—at all okay, yet she found herself nodding. She stopped bobbing her head when she remembered he couldn’t see her.
“My father came to see me today.”
“Oh?”
“Shane, I hate to do this…”
“Let me guess.” She could almost hear his cocky grin through the phone. “You need my help?”
Chapter Ten
Shane lived in Brooklyn, and Siobhan didn’t have the patience to wait for him to meet her near her end of town, so she retraced her steps from the previous night and met him halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was hard not to be impressed with the beauty of New York at night when it sprawled out brightly in front of her. She hadn’t been born in the city. She’d been dumped here at fifteen with the eighteen-year-old Percy to help her find her feet.
She’d learned to take care of herself fast as hell when Percy died.
It had happened on an almost identical night, only he’d died in the fall not the spring. They’d finished tracking down a flora-fae that had been making a nuisance of itself by causing ivy to grow over buildings at an alarming rate, to the point of sealing people inside. The fae had been her first live banishment, and she and Percy had been in high spirits.
They hadn’t realized they were being followed. Not until the goblin had Percy by the throat. In the fight that had followed, Siobhan had honestly believed they would both make it out alive. One goblin against two trained druid warriors? The odds should have been stacked in their favor. They had nearly succeeded too. Except Percy hadn’t looked away when she’d cast the goblin out.
And Siobhan had forgotten goblins have two hearts.
When the creature grabbed Percy a second time, there had been nothing she could do to save him. He’d been too close to the circle, and when the banishing was complete, Siobhan had been left alone on the empty street.
She thought she’d hate New York forever after that. But ten years later she still caught herself marveling at the show her second home managed to put on every time the sun went down.
When she reached the second set of arches, the ones on the Brooklyn side, Shane was ambling up the bridge’s pedestrian path, his lean form stretched a few inches higher than most of the other tourists. He wore a leather jacket and motorcycle boots, his hair properly styled into a sexy, tousled, almost Mohawk.
Sexy?
Siobhan caught herself thinking about the way his hair had looked the night before after she’d practically yanked it all out when his head was buried between her legs. Her freckles must have turned a whole new shade of brown as her cheeks flushed deep scarlet. What the hell was wrong with her?
He gave her a crooked smile when he came to stand in front of her, and her knees wobbled.
“Stop that,” she grumbled.
“Stop…what?”
“Look.” She jabbed a finger into his chest, and he winced. “You can’t flirt with me, or be charming, and you have to stop
looking
at me. And…breathing.”
“You think I’m charming?”
“This is
serious
.”
Shane set his mouth in a firm line and held his hands up in surrender before shoving them into the pockets of his jacket. The lapels fanned open briefly, and she saw the two-gun holster he had strapped on over his white wife beater. The undershirt was thin enough she could see the darker skin on his rib cage where his tattoo was. Her throat got dry, and she had to lick her lips to keep them from cracking.
This was why sex was dangerous, she suddenly understood. It made people stupid, zombie-like freaks who just wanted more and more and…
“More?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.
“What?”
“You said
more
.”
“I did not.” Oh Goddess, she had, hadn’t she?
He glanced inside his jacket. “I brought more clips. I’m pretty sure this is all the heat I can manage without bringing backup.” The jacket flapped closed before he could draw any unwanted attention to himself. “Should I have brought backup?”
“You are the backup,” she reminded him.
“So, then…what’s the plan, Red?”
Siobhan wobbled but steadied herself and pretended she’d wedged her boot heel into the boards. Of course it would have been more believable had they actually been walking at the time.
“Before I came up with my…alternate option last night—”
“The sex.”
She hissed a shushing sound at him and started to walk back towards Manhattan. Shane was hot on her heels, catching up with a few long-legged strides. “Focus, Hewitt,” she scolded.
“Okay, but
you
brought it up.”
Siobhan threw her hands in the air because she had to do something with them or she’d hit him. Or grab him. She wasn’t entirely sure.
“Someone’s life is at stake here.”
“I can’t fuck all the virgins in New York. I mean…if that’s the plan here, I hate to disappoint you or make you question my virility, but it’s a tall order. And in some cases is probably
really
illegal.”