Valkyrie Concealed Page 4

  Busted. Not that Kirby would admit her intent so easily. “Do what?”

  “Fuck him, so you can ignore what’s coming.” Starkad’s accurate accusation hit her back.

  Gwydion kissed along her fingertips. “As long as we’re all coming, I’m not too picky about the circumstances.”

  Kirby reluctantly reclaimed her hand, to lean back into Starkad and pull his arms around her. “Now who’s grumpy?” she teased. “And if Gwydion’s okay with it, I don’t see a problem, spoil sport.”

  “I’m the spoil sport?” Starkad bit her where neck met shoulder, leaving a delicious sting. He nipped hard in a row along her skin. “You say things like that, and I take it as a challenge.” The warning in his words was disrupted by his playful tone.

  Gwydion leaned into the table again, watching with a curious smirk.

  Kirby covered one of Starkad’s hands and slid it under her shirt, to rest on her bare stomach. “It’s not a challenge if it’s true.” She was pushing her luck with the taunting, but that typically meant punishment. Something she was very much in favor of.

  He glided his hand higher, to caress her breast through her bra. His light touch sent shivers of desire racing along her skin. The fact that they were in a public room and other people might join them any minute added to the rush.

  Starkad kneaded her breast and pinched her nipple, pulling her tighter into him. His erection dug into her.

  Kirby’s pulse hammered in her ears and throbbed between her thighs.

  As Gwydion watched, he stroked himself through his trousers.

  Everything about this was deliciously wicked.

  Starkad slid his other hand under the waistband of her jeans. It was a tight fit, denim biting into her hips. She didn’t care, as long as everything kept feeling this good. There was no buildup or play, as he parted her folds to tease her clit.

  She gasped as he traced circles around the swollen button. Her hips swayed and her eyes half-closed as his touch intensified. Climax built inside her, edging her closer to release.

  “Do you really think I’m mean?” Starkad’s low question rumbled through her on a hungry growl that reminded her of the wolf he could become.

  She had to pull herself from pleasure, to make her mouth form words. “You’re a literal sadist.”

  “Fair point.” He pulled away, leaving disappointment and longing in its wake.

  Kirby grasped the lingering corner of pleasure.

  Starkad shoved two slick fingers in her mouth, letting her taste herself.

  She spent several seconds on each, licking them clean and reveling in his groan.

  “You’re right. I always spoil the fun.” He slapped her ass.

  Her disappointment grew, but so did her amusement. She turned so she could see both Starkad and Gwydion. “I still have my original plan.”

  “I’m really up for anything.” Gwydion traced a finger along her bottom lip. “Up. Eager. Hard. Waiting.”

  “The original plan was to convince you first, and use that as a way to tell me I was outvoted and I should give in,” Starkad said.

  Kirby pouted. “You’re giving me far too much credit for thinking this through. It’s only a battle because you’re making it one. Until you said something, I’d gotten as far as, fucking sounds like a fun distraction.”

  “But you wanted me in on it.” Starkad’s confidence was as sexy as the rest of him.

  Kirby usually did. She enjoyed both Starkad and Gwydion separately, but together tended to be best.

  “So if this was about the two of you, am I the backup dick?” Gwydion’s tone was light and playful.

  Starkad shook his head. “You’re King Dick.”

  Did he try to make a dick joke? Their influence was rubbing off on him.

  “I do like being royalty.” Gwydion chuckled. “What’s the next step in this intricately complicated plan that has way too many steps for its own good?”

  “Later.” Starkad’s voice changed in an instant to that all-business snap Kirby loved in the bedroom and hated in the field.

  Their guests had arrived. She knew what—whom—she was going to see when she turned around.

  Still, the sight of Brit, standing next to Min in the doorway, turned her blood to ice and churned her stomach.

  Chapter Five

  Brit recognized Kirby’s laugh halfway down the hall. That happy, musical sound Brit had elicited with ease, once upon a time.

  I brought this on myself. The reminder left a bitter burn in the back of her throat.

  Aeval pointed toward a doorway, and gestured for Min and Brit to enter first. Brit stalled in the entrance at the sight of Kirby, half-turned away, looking so very happy and at ease with Gwydion and Starkad.

  Starkad met Brit’s gaze, and his expression turned to stone. “Later,” he told Kirby.

  His familiar stern tone sliced through Brit. It had never meant good things for her. When Kirby faced them, Brit’s heart skipped against her ribs. Time had never lessened the response, and now that Brit had severed ties with the rest of her past, she didn’t feel obligated to hide her tentative smile.

  Kirby’s glance slid over her, but not without a flicker of recognition and... doubt?

  “Hey. You made it.” Gwydion’s voice sounded unnaturally loud, though it was a normal volume. He crossed the room and pulled Min into a quick hug. “Good to see you again.”

  “You as well.” Min returned the gesture.

  “Everyone’s here. The party can start.” Kirby’s voice wavered.

  Aeval stepped around Brit and to the front of the room. “If there’s tension here, I need to know it can be ignored or that someone is going home.” She glared at Gwydion. “You promised to call people you trust.”

  “You’re looking at everyone,” Gwydion said. “It’s not a long list.”

  Min rested a hand at Brit’s back. “And I take full responsibility for her.”

  Brit had expected awkward, but this... This was cover-her-eyes-and-hide cringe-worthy.

  “Swell.” Kirby had regained her composure. She settled into a chair. “I don’t have a lot of faith in who you vouch for.”

  Aeval swept her arm across the room. “Have a seat. Everyone, please.” She didn’t leave room for argument. No wonder she was a queen. A faery queen, who lived in fucking castle, in faery land. The entire scenario was amazing, and Brit had been raised by gods, so she’d seen some impressive things.

  “Kirby, love, you know I adore you,” Aeval continued, “but we’re talking about my people. Their lives are at risk, and I want them back safe. That means going in with as much firepower as we can get. You.” She stared at Bit. “I understand you may be immortal, but my justice isn’t like theirs. If you fuck me over, there will be consequences.”

  Brit swore the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. “I understand.”

  Min had explained to her that the fae issued retribution in the form of bad luck. Which could have some far-reaching, long term consequences.

  “What do we know? The who, where—all of it,” Starkad said.

  Aeval gestured at the screen behind her, which flickered to life. It was almost a shame it was electrical, and not magical. A photo of an old warehouse popped up. “My people are being sold.” Aeval’s anger was tangible. She looked sweet and dainty, but Brit had seen her fight. She was there in the battle against Hel. “This is where the hand-off is happening. My information says they’ll be here with guards, tonight.”

  “How many of yours are we talking about?” Kirby asked.

  “Not all of them. Maybe ten, if I’m lucky.” Aeval brought up the next slide—a blueprint of the building. “I can deposit us anywhere in the Earth realm. Once we find my fae, I can bring them open a gate back here, and I’ll give Gwydion access to do the same.”

  Was this information for everyone’s benefit, or was Brit the only person who didn’t know it already? “How many guards?” she asked.

  Aeval’s frown deepened. “I don’t know
.”

  “I know that building. We both do.” Kirby’s animosity was gone when she turned to Brit.

  Brit looked again. She’d been so distracted by everything, recognition slipped past her before. “It’s an old TOM training facility.” Her brain should have picked up on that immediately. Another instinct or memory lost in her temporary death. “That means three of us are familiar with it.”

  Starkad shook his head. “They kept me away from field training. For some reason, they never completely trusted me.”

  “Bad news is the structure was made for urban-warfare training. The inside layout isn’t fixed beyond primary supports,” Kirby said.

  Gwydion drummed his fingers on the table. “Is there good news?”

  “There’s a lot of concrete for us to hide behind?” Brit had to reach deep for the information. Why was it so hard to access some of those bits of her life?

  MIN KNEW BETTER THAN to expect this would be a smooth process, but Kirby and Brit’s information was less than reassuring, even given the low bar.

  Aeval radiated stress. He didn’t blame her. TOM had taken her fae—those who served her directly, loyally, and in many cases were close friends, and were doing gods-knew-what with them.

  Not notoriously kind gods, either. The members of the TOM board had earned their bloody and terrifying reputations. Hel had been brutal, but certainly wasn’t at the top of the list.

  “My sources indicate my people will sleep here until buyers are found. I assume that means at least a portion of the layout is habitable, but not necessarily comfortable,” Aeval said.

  “Safe assumption.” Kirby was in the alert, ready-to-strike posture Min had come to associate with her in this life.

  The glimpse he got of her before she knew he and Brit had arrived reminded him more of the woman he had fallen for over and over. It was good she had moments like that, even if they weren’t with him.

  Brit had adopted a similar posture to Kirby’s—back straight and expression stony—but the last few months with her told him she was struggling with several aspects of this.

  “Let’s be blunt,” she said. “They’ll be kept functional—no physical damage, nothing that would keep them from doing whatever they’re sold for. Treated like produce at the grocery store, and probably not a high-end one.”

  Kirby growled.

  “She’s right.” Aeval radiated weariness. “I’m familiar with the trade for magical beings, and I’m not under any illusions that my people’s fate is sunny.”

  “There are still kinder ways to phrase it.” So Kirby did have compassion. It balanced out her training to use people’s prejudices and biases against them, to shoot first and ask questions later, and to climb inside most minds and understand their perspective, regardless of how distasteful it was.

  Min’s perspective, on the other hand. Kirby struggled with that one.

  “Any reason to put this off?” Starkad asked Aeval.

  She shook her head. “My instinct is, of course, the sooner the better. When you’re all rested.”

  “Twenty-four hours, then.” Starkad moved to the front of the room, to stand next to her. “Time to rest. Prepare.” He looked at Brit. “And you and I will talk.”

  “Sure.” Brit’s mask never slipped, but she paled.

  Kirby stood as well. “We’ll go in two teams. Aeval can plant us wherever we need, and she and Gwydion can bring us back here, so we’ll split them.” Gwydion could enter this realm and exit in the same place on Earth, with Aeval’s blessing. “Main floor is the training room. Top floor is most likely where the fae will be kept. Team One on Level One, Team Two upstairs.”

  “Who else makes up each team?” Brit asked.

  Starkad didn’t miss a beat. “That has yet to be determined.”

  On the surface, it looked like Starkad and Kirby had already discussed this. Perhaps they had, but Min suspected their agreement was more a synchronicity of having worked together for many years. It was still undetermined if Brit was joining this operation.

  “Team One will work its way up, Team Two down. Standard signal over the earpiece. No extraneous chatter.” Kirby might be doing an effective job of ignoring Brit, but if she was discussing these plans in front of her, she believed it was all right to do so.

  They finished discussing the basic plan, and Aeval excused herself.

  Starkad looked at Brit. “You, Min, and I can talk in here.”

  “Swell.” Kirby was bouncing on the balls of her feet, and had been for the last several minutes. “I’m going to go wear myself out, hitting something.”

  “I volunteer as tribute.” Gwydion raised his hand.

  Kirby almost smiled. “You don’t make a great punching bag, but I’ve got other uses for you.”

  Min had never given into jealousy. However, it was impossible to ignore the envy that roared in his veins as Kirby and Gwydion left the room, arms linked and unintelligible conversation drifting from them.

  There was one thing Min couldn’t argue with Kirby—she wasn’t the same person he’d fallen for in the past. But he saw traces of that woman and missed her. He didn’t want her to change, to go back to what she’d been in former lives, but it would be nice to better get to know and understand the woman in this one.

  When everyone else was gone, Starkad closed the meeting room door and took the seat directly across the table from Brit.

  She stared back, jaw clenched. “What can I do for you?”

  “Like I said, we’re going to talk.” Starkad searched her face.

  Min saw the stoniness that passed between the two. He also recognized Brit’s flicker of uncertainty. It wasn’t obvious, but he’d spent the last six months living with her. He wasn’t much of a jailer; he preferred company at meals, and conversation when she was in the mood. Which had given him plenty of time to learn the microscopic twitches that were her tells.

  “How have you been?” Starkad’s tone was casual, but his posture was guarded. Coiled and ready to strike at a whisper.

  Brit let out a barking laugh. “Now you want to make small talk? More than five years, and today you care how I am?”

  “You misunderstand the question,” Starkad said. He wasn’t concerned about her welfare; he was looking for a status update.

  Min couldn’t imagine having that level of callousness toward anyone.

  Brit reclined in her chair and propped one foot on the table. “In that case, I’m really fucking good. I can’t die. Not that living came with any sort of additional superpowers. I’m shackled to a god. Again. Still. But at least this is a nice one. Oh, and my favorite thing? I’m no longer in a place where I have to pretend it doesn’t devour me to watch my girlfriend drool all over you.”

  “Ex-girlfriend.” Starkad was still ice.

  This conversation was deteriorating quickly.

  “She was a child when she arrived on campus.” The way Brit sat was deceptive. She wasn’t casual or off-balance. Tension ran through her entire body.

  If Starkad saw it—and why wouldn’t he?—it wasn’t enough to break his mask. “She’s older than me.”

  “No. She was created before you. She has centuries-big gaps in her existence and didn’t have any of those memories when we were in school.”

  The light twitch of Starkad’s fingers against the table was the only indicator his barricade had cracked. “I never approached her.”

  “Until you did.”

  “She was dying.” Starkad regained his composure. “Because you chose to save your own ass, without considering the consequences for her, and she chose the same. To save you.”

  The slump of Brit’s shoulders dissipated a layer of the tension in the room, but the cloud still hung heavily. “I did. It was a selfish mistake I can’t undo, and I’m willing to own that. Are you?”

  “I can. I have. But I don’t owe any of that to you.”

  “That’s fine. Your opinion means shit to me, and I’m not here because of you any more than you want me to be here.”


  The verbal tennis match was fascinating, but Min saw and felt the toll it was having on Brit. She knew her situation was of her own making, but this was the first time he’d seen her bite back since she returned to life. If it was hard for Min to be this close to the woman he loved and not be able to reach out beyond casual conversation, being here had to be devouring Brit.

  “Why are you here?” Starkad asked. “Why did you leave TOM? Why did you go back to Hel? Why are you helping now?”

  Brit pursed her lips, and then her composure was back, mirroring Starkad’s. “That’s a lot of questions. What kind of answer are you looking for?”

  “The truth.”

  This wasn’t just two people who loved the same woman, taking shots at each other. Starkad was probing Brit’s edges to see how she delivered the answers. Because it was always about the game here. Keeping up the lie. Seeing who cracked first.

  Did it ever end?

  “From the top. I left TOM because I was a selfish child who thought I was owed better.” Brit held out her hand and extended her index finger. “I went back to Hel because I hate her and wanted to help in her death.” She ticked up another finger. “And yeah, I did it for Kirby, too. Whether or not anyone believes me. And I’m here now because... what else am I going to do?” Instead of extending a third finger, she retracted the first, flipping off Starkad.

  Starkad rolled his eyes. “Boredom doesn’t make for the most stable motivation.”

  “Sorry we can’t all have centuries of obsession to drive us. The people you work with are pursuing the thing I hate. I don’t have a lot of marketable skills, and I sure as fuck don’t have a past to fall back on, to get a normal job. You think I’d pass any background check for a security job? I could go be a high-priced call girl, except I promised myself I’d die before I ever fucked anyone again that I didn’t want to. Since I probably can’t die...”

  “Nothing new besides the not-being-able-to-die thing?” Starkad asked. “No trace of the power Hel gave you?”

  Brit scrubbed her face and planted both feet on the floor. “Haven’t had a lot of chance to test if I can fly or anything, but no. Kind of faster healing. Same amount of pain. Can’t move any quicker. Can’t lift anything heavy. Still short.”