The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)(22)

With a savage grin on her beautiful face, Tahyra held up the head in her grip and started to laugh.

“If you try that again,” she threatened, “I will kill them all.

It should have angered him, another blatant show of disobedience, but it didn’t.

It didn’t because…

Her red eyes were flickering. Red to brown, red to brown…

This wasn’t anger. It wasn’t dominance or aggression, nor was it a situation of kill or be killed.

This was jealousy, and jealousy was a very human emotion. If Tahyra was capable of a human emotion, it meant…

Tahyra still had her soul. It was buried deep within her, cocooned and hidden in dark magic, but it was there.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, fat?,” he said and leaped.

Moving lightning fast, he barreled into her middle, knocking her down into the snow. Tahyra let out a low purring growl filled with lascivious intent. Beneath him, she rolled her body and lifted her backside in offering.

Shandor felt the beast rising. He could feel it clawing and scratching its way back to the surface.

He had to keep it together.

He had to…

First, he had to stop f*cking her like a goddamn dog.

Flipping her over, he spread her legs and pushed inside of her.

“You’re beautiful, Tayhra,” he growled softly. “The face of a goddess, with the body of a whore. Fat?, you’re a goddamn work of art.”

Red eyes blinked up at him—once, twice, three times.

“You’re the sort of beautiful a man doesn’t just want to f*ck. You’re the kind a man wants to watch fall apart beneath him, so he knows that it was him who broke her.”

A small exhale of air escaped Tahyra’s parted lips, diverting his attention. When he looked back up into her eyes, he found that they were brown. He watched, shocked and elated, as a single tear fell from the corner of her eye, slid down the side of her face, and disappeared beneath his hand.

Shandor didn’t need to rein in the beast after that.

He made love to her as a man.





Chapter Thirteen


Hockey placed his glowing palm against the frosted windowsill and watched as the ice quickly melted beneath it. It was a fruitless action. Nightfall was nearly upon them, the storm outside was still raging, nothing but white as far as the eye could see, and it was only getting worse.

Turning, he looked around the city row house he and Mira had broken into. They had been there for…weeks? Maybe; he wasn’t sure. During their fruitless search for food, unable to see where they were going, Mira had collapsed. Since she was half-frozen and near exhaustion, Hockey had picked her up and began backtracking to the warehouse. It took him only minutes to realize they were lost and instead of continuing to walk in circles, he’d found the nearest shelter.

He was still thanking God the place he’d chosen had a working fireplace and enough salvageable canned goods to last them a month, more if they ate sparingly. Worse, he didn’t have any idea how the four helpless people they’d left behind were faring.

It was times like this Hockey wished he had a jug of Jericho’s ?uic? to drown his sorrows in.

Sighing, he started back through the foyer and headed down the long empty hallway toward the one room inside this house they’d been able to heat properly.

Inside the study, the temperature change from the rest of the home was drastic. His skin began to loosen and he could no longer see his breath.

Look what I did,” Mira said proudly. Moving aside, she revealed a large rectangular plastic container the size of a clothing trunk that she’d overfilled with snow. “Ta da!” she said. “Now, you just need to heat it.”

Jesus, he’d gone so long without a bath. Other than a quick wipe down every so often, always so consumed with thoughts of how to survive, he’d forgotten entirely about bathing.

Excited, he headed for the container and thrust his hands deep into the snow.

“Don’t boil it,” Mira warned. “You don’t want to melt the container.”

Hockey burst out laughing. He knew how to contain his magic to one entity without disturbing the other, and within seconds he’d melted the snow, leaving the container unscathed.

“Magic water,” he announced happily, removing his hands.

“Do you want to go first?” Mira was bouncing, practically vibrating with excitement.

“You first,” he said, laughing.

Squealing, Mira hurriedly began unbuttoning her flannel shirt. Hockey spun around and headed for the fireplace. He wasn’t a stranger to nudity. Quite the opposite, most of his life he’d bathed in creeks and lakes alongside his clan members, both male and female. But this was different. At least, it felt different…as if looking upon another woman was a betrayal to Becki. Especially when said woman slept beside him every night, her arms wrapped around his middle, his hands on her back, her face buried in the crook of his neck.

Grabbing a nearby chair, he turned it on its side and slammed his booted foot down. He repeated this several times until the wood had cracked, weakening enough for him to break the structure apart.

After tossing several pieces of wood into the fire, he wondered what to do next that didn’t involve turning around and taking a good, long look at the beautiful woman he knew was naked behind him. Mira was attractive. In fact, she was downright adorable. He admired her spunky personality and her determination and her seemingly innate ability to continue surviving and…