Seduced by the Storm (24 page)

"Ancient
history," she said with a dismissive wave.

"Why
the Q and A anyway?"

She
played with a single noodle, using a finger to push it around the plate.

"Tell
me," he urged.

She
sighed. "I guess finding out your parents are still alive made me realize
how little I know you."

"You
know me better than anyone ever has, Annika."

"Maybe
I know who you are now, but I don’t know about your past. I’ve been too selfish
to ask or even care until now. God, I’m such a shit." She couldn’t even
look at him, she was so ashamed.

"If
you weren’t, you wouldn’t be the Annika I fell in—"

Her
breath froze. Then she felt the harsh rise and fall of her chest as her lungs
tried to catch up. "Fell in what?" she asked softly.

He
winced, and she wondered if Kat had done something to him. "Bed. If you
weren’t so tough, you wouldn’t be the Annika I fell into bed with at Dev’s
mansion."

"Right,"
she snapped, disappointed at the lameness of his I-fell-into-bed crap, when he
should have said he loved her. "Bed. That’s what it’s always about, isn’t
it? Bed or Dev."

Panic
squeezed her chest, because what the hell? Love? Was she really ready for that?
Creed was looking at her like she’d grown another head, and she knew she was
all over the place with her emotions.

"Annika,"
he said tiredly, "you’re the one who always makes it about sex. As for
Dev—"

"Let’s
not go there." She squeezed his knee again, gently. "Not tonight. I’m
exhausted and I still have a martial arts class to teach."

"For
the record, I know you’re trying."

She
smiled. "For the record, I don’t have to try that hard."

THE
OLD GUARD at ACRO called Oz a rogue, a gypsy, a charlatan. Oz was fine with the
first two labels, resented the last one because he’d never deceived anyone who
didn’t want to be deceived.

They
were worried about Devlin—he got that. But they never did realize that Oz would
be the last person ever to hurt Dev.

A
then seventeen-year-old Devlin had walked into the bar Oz had been hanging out
in—living above, actually, and working in most nights, bartending to pay the
rent. Oz had been waiting for him. Oz had known his own destiny, his fate,
since he was fifteen years old and his spirit posse revealed it, laid out his
life’s path like a board game. There was nothing he could do to change or alter
it.

You’ll
fall in love with this man. Totally and completely. You’ll do anything for this
man. You’ll
have
to do anything.

And
dammit, Oz had fallen, madly and completely, for the tall, handsome young
man—and Devlin had fallen for him as well.

Of
course, Dev hadn’t known just how much hell both men would have to go through
in order to just be together. Never would.

And
it’s not over yet,
Oz reminded
himself. It was only Devlin’s second day back at ACRO, and as of a few hours
ago, Haley confirmed that Hurricane Lily was now an imminent threat to New York
City. Dev had stopped home to rest for a few hours, was exhausted, but the
second he’d laid eyes on Oz, it was apparent that neither man was going to get
rest anytime soon.

Their
lovemaking had been fast, furious. So much was imminent now, so many things Oz
needed to reveal—some he could and some he couldn’t, but all of it was his
destiny, always had been. And so he sat on the edge of Dev’s bed, in the dark.
Though they’d spent time with each other since Dev’s return, this would be
their first full night together in four months, since Oz had helped Devlin
banish a ghost named Darius from Devlin’s own body—a possession that was
fourteen years in the making and had taken so much from both of them.

You’re
together now. That’s what counts.

And
still, the chills that had wracked his body all day long remained, his feet and
hands numb from cold and pain—pins and needles no matter how many blankets he
piled on or how much he massaged them.

The
only thing that helped was Dev touching him. "Dev?" he whispered over
his shoulder, and Dev was there, pressing his naked chest to Oz’s back in the
darkness.

"I’m
here," Dev whispered.

Yes,
Dev was here, and still there was so much left unfinished—so much left to do.

"This
is too much on you," Dev said. "I’m back now. Things are handled at
ACRO. You’ve got to tell Creed everything. Soon."

Dammit,
he should’ve known that Dev knew all about Creed. Dev knew just about
everything. "How long have you known?" Oz asked, suddenly feeling too
vulnerable to have this discussion.

"That
Creed is your brother? Nothing I hadn’t suspected for years."

"Bullshit,
you suspected. You’ve been reading me while we’ve been fucking."

"It
was the only way I could find out more about you," Dev said, and no, he
wouldn’t let himself get pulled into Oz’s anger—Oz knew that, hated and loved
him for it.

"You
knew that I loved you—and that was everything you needed to know," Oz
said.

"You’d
never tell me about how you grew up. Always wanted to keep it such a deep, dark
mystery," Dev murmured against his neck, his chest pressed to Oz’s back as
Oz tried not to think about his past.

It
didn’t matter anymore. Oz knew that Dev had discovered it bit by bit, had mined
for the information year after year until Oz was so open to him that he
couldn’t keep his mind blocked. He hadn’t wanted to either, had found it almost
a relief that someone else knew his burdens.

"I
keep thinking about you…all alone, no one to watch over you." Dev’s hand
smoothed down his chest, palm ending up over Oz’s heart in a protective grasp.

Oz
had grown up as a kid of the streets. He’d been too old when his mother
abandoned him and his day-old brother to get into any kind of decent adoption
deal, and he’d already been abused so severely for his powers by his own mother
that he’d decided he’d rather just be on his own.

"You’ve
been seeing them—your spirits—as long as you can remember," Dev continued.
"It was a normal way of life for you. For your mother."

Oz
shook his head. "It wasn’t normal for her."

His
mother was a haunted ghost-seer too—but she found it overwhelming, took drugs
to quell the voices and eventually overdosed on the streets a day after giving
birth to Creed, essentially abandoning both Creed and Oz.

She’d
managed to stay clean throughout her entire pregnancy. She’d been beautiful and
brilliant and temperamental, much like Oz himself, and there was no way Oz
could blame her.

The
abuse he blamed on the priests, who told her that by locking Oz in a dark
closet for days at a time, the evil spirits could be driven from him.

"Those
priests were wrong," Dev said, breaking into Oz’s thoughts, the way he’d
broken into Oz’s life years and years earlier.

Dev
always thought he needed Oz more than Oz needed him, but Dev was wrong about
that. So goddamned wrong.

"I
know the priests were wrong." His spirit posse wasn’t evil—they were more
like the bad boys of the spirit world, attracting troubled souls like rock
stars collected an entourage. The souls were forever changing—some of them
finally got it that they were dead and went toward the light, some got tired of
him and his I-have-no-fucking-sympathy-for-the-dead routine. Some of them
latched on to other mediums. So change was a constant in Oz’s life, as though
preparing him for the biggest change of all.

"I
wanted to keep Creed with me, Dev. It killed me to have to leave him like
that." He remembered holding the smiling baby, remembered clearly casting
the spell and calling out to the spirit who could help him, waiting for the
protective tattoos to appear. They’d come up as if being drawn before Oz’s
eyes, the intricate scrollwork patterning the lifeline Creed would have.

Quaty
had been the spirit that had answered the call first, the one whom Oz had
entrusted to be the protective, possessive spirit for his brother. She’d been
both a blessing and a curse, and Oz had always known there was sometimes very
little distance between the two things.

"You
knew the McCabes would find him," Dev said.

"I
knew. I heard there were ghost hunters in the area, searching for the Bell
Witch’s spirit in that cave."

"They
would’ve taken you in too," Dev said quietly, but that was something Oz
didn’t want to hear.

"My
gift was always much darker than Creed’s."

"Creed
needed the protection, but he couldn’t have caught your gift, Oz."

How
could he tell Dev that it was his own fault that his brother was saddled with a
spirit who tried to rule his love life, who tried to keep him from finding
everlasting happiness?

For
someone as realistic as Oz, that shouldn’t have bothered him. And when Dev got
quiet, Oz could sense his partner’s frustration as he tried to unravel the one
part of the story he couldn’t see.

No,
Dev would never see that part, not with his second sight or with the help of
any of the ACRO psychics—he would never know just what destiny had in store for
both of them, until it was too late. Oz kept that information partitioned and
blocked, thanks to his spirit posse, and it was better that way. It was the
only way to ensure Devlin’s happiness.

"I
shadowed him," Oz said, in an attempt to stop Dev from thinking too much.
"I watched how Martha and Dave treated him."

To
keep an eye on Creed, he’d gotten a job in the tarot shop in the town where
ACRO was located, reading fortunes and doing a damned good job of it. Until he
realized that most people were upset with the truth and he learned to sugarcoat
the impressions he doled out to them. He’d worked there until ACRO tapped him,
and for two years he avoided his fate—and Dev—until the day Dev sauntered into
the bar.

He
held on to Dev’s hand, which was still on his heart.

"Like
I said before, you’re doing the right thing. For Creed and for Annika
too," Dev reassured him. "True love needs to run its course."

There
was a possibility that Creed could lose his powers in exchange for true
love—and as tempting as losing his own powers sounded to Oz, he knew he’d be
lost without the dead.

Dev
was probably the only one who understood that, even though his powers were far
different from Oz’s.

How
Creed would deal with it was anyone’s guess at this point, but his love for
Annika was strong.

Dev
was pulling him back into the bed, pulled him until Oz relented and lay with
his head on the pillows, Dev poised above him.

"Would
you give up your spirit posse for me?" Dev asked.

"You’d
never ask me to."

Dev
smiled before his tongue smoothed along Oz’s neck, traced a slow, lazy path
down his pecs and ended up circling a nipple. Oz jumped slightly, the way he
always did when Dev played there—since his triumphant return to ACRO his touch
was more electric than ever.

"Make
it better, Dev. Even if it’s just for an hour."

Dev
raised an eyebrow. "An hour? Have you completely lost faith in me?"

Oz
felt the smile play on his own lips—a smile for the first time in days, as he
closed his eyes and let Dev move over his body.

He
tensed, the way he always did when Dev decided he wanted to be on top, until
Dev’s mouth and hands began to work their magic and things began to fall away.

But
when Dev pulled out the ropes, Oz shook his head. "No, not tonight."

"Yes,
tonight." Dev grabbed Oz’s wrist and yanked it upward, over his head.
"Get on your stomach."

"No."

But
even as he argued, Oz knew it was a losing battle. Dev knew plenty more moves
than he did, could overpower him in half the time. Especially now.

Dev
hauled him up and onto his knees, even as his arms remained bound tightly by
the wrists to the bedposts, stretched out on either side of his head so he was
pulled taut as a bow. He arched involuntarily as Dev’s tongue traveled down
every bump of his spine, and Oz tried desperately to move somewhere, anywhere,
before Dev’s tongue reached its final destination. The place that would make Oz
come undone, completely and totally, and Dev knew that.

And
when Dev’s tongue turned to steel and began to rim Oz mercilessly, Oz bowed his
head to the pillows and gave up the fight, shoved his ass against Dev’s face
until he heard himself begging Dev to
fuck me now
.

Dev
wrapped his hand around the base of Oz’s cock, stopping him from coming, and he
didn’t listen to Oz’s pleas, not until Oz was floating in that space where
nothing else mattered. And when Dev finally entered him in a long, hard thrust
that sucked the breath from Oz’s body, Oz accepted him easily. Hungrily.

"Are
you mine, Oz? All mine?" Dev asked, fucking him so hard that he was nearly
incoherent, so that his head hit the headboard, and either way he was seeing
stars.