Rogue Soul (The Mythean Arcana Series Book 3) (9 page)

She’d come here for some company, to make up for all the lost time she’d spent hanging around alone in Otherworld. Cam was too complicated. Being involved with him would get her heart broken again.
 

She needed a distraction.
 

“Kiss me.” She reached up to grab Kon’s big shoulders.

He grinned, a sexy white swath that cut across his tan face. His green eyes sparkled with appreciation as he yanked her toward him and captured her mouth with his own. Hot and hard, he kissed her, and a jolt of lust streaked through her.
 

Yes.
This was what she’d been missing. This was what she needed. Just as she opened her mouth to return his kiss, hard hands gripped her upper arms and lifted her away from Kon.

“Time to be going.” Cam's voice, rough before, was gravel at her ear as he all but carried her out of the bar. Kon yelled after them, but he shut up as soon as Cam swung his head around to pin the man with a gaze that promised pain.

“Hey!” she said as the bar door swung closed behind them. “I was having a good time.”

“I saw,” he growled down at her. “But it’s time to go. I’ll carry you back if I have to.”

The idea made Ana swallow hard as she looked up at him. He towered above her, his huge form cutting out the weak glow of the streetlights so that she couldn’t make out his expression. But his anger—that she could feel. It enclosed her as tightly as the humid air of the jungle.

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand. His big stride ate up the muddy walkway, and she had to trot to keep up.

“What the hell is your problem?” Though she had to admit that part of her was thrilled he was dragging her out of the bar and that she was holding his hand. He was the one she really wanted. No question. She’d have really regretted it with Kon.

“You’re my problem.”
 

They’d reached the boat, and he lifted her by the waist to swing her on board. His hands burned into her skin. He hadn’t touched her since last night when she’d found him in the Caipora’s Den. He released her too soon and made quick work of untying the boat.

“Where are we going? We’re leaving Havre already?” she asked.

He grunted and pointed to some moorings a short way from shore. What a caveman. But her eyes followed him as he climbed quickly into the pilothouse and gunned the engines.

She stood, her breathing too heavy and a faint sweat on her skin as he maneuvered to the moorings. He killed the engines. Silence crashed around them. His speed made her dizzy as he tied off to the two moorings so that the boat wouldn’t drift—but then, he was performing a two-man job in the middle of a river.

The lights of Havre gleamed in the distance, fainter now. The little village looked romantic rather than shabby from far away.
 

She rubbed her arms, looking for a distraction from the heat between her thighs. It’d been too long. And earth was just too much. All the energy of the bar, all the joy and anger and lust that had bombarded her since she’d stepped into Havre, was wreaking havoc with her senses. It was nearly overwhelming.

“Why are we all the way out here?” she asked.

“Safer.” He was stomping about the boat, checking lines and the machinery, his movements too jerky and forceful for a normal nighttime routine. With a start, she realized he was as worked up as she was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cam threw the last of the lines into the hatch and stood over it, chest heaving. He clenched his fists, staring down into the blackness of the hold as he tried to get himself together.

He’d just dragged her out of the bar. Tossed her on the boat. What the hell had he been thinking?
 

But as soon as he’d seen that bastard’s mouth all over hers, something in him had snapped. It felt like he was only now gaining consciousness, his mind surfacing from the black tar of jealousy and rage that had swamped it.
 

Damn it, it wasn’t his business who she kissed. He stared down at his hands, too big and too strong. Strong enough to do damage. But he’d used them to drag her out of the bar and down the street. He had no idea how gentle he’d been. Probably not enough. It didn’t matter that she was immortal and would heal. He shouldn’t have done it.

He heaved a disgusted sigh. He was an asshole, and worse, he couldn’t seem to help it. He hadn’t deserved the affections of someone like her in the past, and he didn’t deserve them now.

“Why the hell did you haul me out of there?” Andrasta's voice sent a jolt through him.

He looked up to see her standing only a couple feet from him, her back against the wall of the bunkhouse.

“You don’t care about me, so why do you care who I kiss?” she asked.

He shoved his hand through his hair, unsure of how to answer because he didn’t understand it himself. He did care about her, damn it, and it felt weird as hell. Gods shouldn’t have emotions, yet he had. And still did.
 

He had them because of her. He’d felt nothing before he’d met her all those years ago. She was brave, skilled, smart, and beautiful. More than that. Yet it wasn’t just those qualities that had drawn him to her. They were admirable qualities, but not enough to incite the birth of emotion in him.

The problem was, he had no idea why she had triggered it. It was the damned mystery of his life.

Worse, being with her for the last day and a half had reminded him how much he’d liked her company all those years ago. How much he liked
her.
 

It was unnatural.
He
was unnatural. A failed god who felt emotion. It was a mess inside his head that he tried to silence however he could.

Except he couldn’t silence it with her.
 

And now she stood in front of him, tiny and curvy and strong and irresistible, her breath heaving. It shouldn’t have sounded louder than the howls of the animals in the jungle, but it did. It reached inside him and squeezed, drawing him to her.

He crowded her, pressed his hands to the wall on either side of her head.

“Cam?” Her voice trembled, but the way she licked her lips, the way her eyes heated, gave him all the clues he needed.
 

She wanted him. Hell, she was fresh from Otherworld. She wanted anyone. He remembered what it was like to arrive on earth and be sensitive to all the feelings that weren’t present in Otherworld. It made one hot as hell in a way that wasn’t entirely natural.
 

The knowledge that she’d have settled for the guy back at the bar didn’t deter him. She wanted anyone, and he wanted only her. It made a pang of loneliness shoot through his chest. But it wasn’t enough to push him away from her. He’d wanted only her since he’d seen her so many years ago. He’d wanted her enough to ruin her life, to change his.
 

“Andrasta,” he rasped.
 

Her face tilted up to meet his, desire in her eyes.

“It’s Ana,” she whispered, gripping his shirt with her small fists. Her cheeks flushed and she licked her lips again. “What are you doing to me?”
 

He leaned in, close enough to feel her breath. Held himself back with the knowledge that for her, it was just the effect of being on earth, being bombarded by all the feelings that were repressed in Otherworld. It wasn’t about him. But he couldn’t stop himself from answering. From prolonging this torture.
 

“Nothing. Ana.” He liked the way her name felt on his tongue. Andrasta was from the past. Ana—the same, but so different—was from now. He wanted to do all the things to her that he’d never had a chance to before.
 

His shaft pressed painfully hard against his fly, and his breath came harshly as he resisted the urge to pull her against him. There were so many reasons not to.

Like the fact that she didn’t stand a chance of getting out of Otherworld. Not unless he went back. And there was no way he’d be doing that. The mere idea sent a cold wave over him.

“You’re right, Ana. I don’t care about you.” The words scraped his throat, leaving scars that would stick. It was a bastard thing to say, but it was the only thing that would break the moment between them. “You were making a fucking scene in that bar, and I didn’t want to leave anything memorable for the gods to track us with if they followed your signal downriver.”

He pushed away from her, steeled his heart against the sight of her shocked and trembling against the wall of the bunkhouse.
 

He was a bastard. He’d never deserved to be a god, not with his fucked-up wiring, and he certainly didn’t deserve someone like Ana. He’d screwed her by getting her stuck in Otherworld. Then he’d run from his responsibilities there and run from her, abandoning her to a miserable fate.

From her perch on the boat’s roof, Ana eyed the jaguar lounging on the shore. He blended into the shade of the jungle.

The sound of Cam starting the engines had woken her a few hours ago, and she’d joined him on deck. She’d climbed onto the rooftop to act as lookout while he piloted them downstream. Now that she’d been gone from Otherworld for two nights—the longest she’d ever stayed away—she was sure the other gods knew she was gone. Getting to Druantia first was the only thing that would save her.

The sun beat upon her skin as she peered into the jungle, trying to keep her mind on her task and off of last night.
 

After Cam had delivered his parting shot and stormed off, she’d lain on the sparse mattress in the bunkhouse, in sheets that smelled of Cam, with the doors and windows open in an attempt to cool off.
 

The breeze hadn’t been nearly enough to douse the fire within her. Despite their past and the fact that he was a moody bastard, she wanted Cam. What she’d gotten was her own hand.
 

She’d tried to keep quiet, but at a certain point, she just hadn’t cared. Cam had been a jerk. Whether he meant what he said or not, she wasn’t sure. But she’d gotten off to the thought of him anyway. Like hate-fucking. But solo.

When she’d finally lain exhausted on the bed, with the worst of the damnable tension and arousal gone, she’d decided to pretend that their near-kiss had never happened.

“Why is your boat named the
Clara G.
?” She asked over her shoulder from where she sat on the roof. She couldn’t stand the silence or the tension anymore. Had Clara been a woman he’d once loved? She was just curious. Not jealous. There was a difference.
 

Fates, she was a bad liar, even to herself.

“It’s named after the original owner’s wife. Clara Goddard. First female pilot on the Yukon River. Bad luck to change a boat’s name. And I like the idea of her.”

Ana grinned, absentmindedly twirling an arrow in her hand. He liked tough women. No surprise, from such a tough man.
 

She watched the jungle pass by, enjoying the unfamiliar sight. If she longed for life and excitement, this was the place to get it.
 

“So your pharmaceutical company is close to a couple big cures?” she asked.

“Yeah. Medicines that could cause remission.”

“That’s really nice.”

“It’s fun. I like it down here, and looking for new plants for cures gives me something to do.”

“Sure, Mr. President or CEO or whatever you are.”

“That’s just a title. In reality, I’m just the muscle.”

You sure are. But that’s not all.
 

“I’ve got smart people running operations back in Scotland for me,” he said.

“Back in Scotland? At the Immortal University?”

The Immortal University, located outside of Edinburgh, was the educational center and informal governing body of Mytheans in Great Britain. It performed a number of functions, the most important of which was overseeing British Mytheans and keeping them under the radar of mortals.
 

The university also provided services that Mytheans couldn’t get elsewhere, lest mortals figured out that their clients never died. Things like education, a hospital, banking. Everyday stuff, but for supernatural creatures that she’d never dreamed existed when she’d been mortal. The idea that mortal beliefs had willed Mytheans into existence had been a hell of a shock.