Power Trio

Whatever silence covers Dee has a radius to it; as she pounces on the bugbear, his mouth opens and nothing comes out.

Head slammed twice against the windowsill. Arm locked and pinioned back as it reaches for his gun. The trick to putting a blood choke on a bugbear is the adrenaline surge their brain gets right before lights out. The moment you can relax on most people, you gotta hold extra tight. Dee steps in, keeps her legs wrapped tight above his shins until that final thrash, holds him in the crook of one arm as she double-wraps duct tape around his mouth, then lowers him to the ground in a forward fold and zipties his wrists to his ankles.

She stays low, sticks her arm out the window and beckons upward. As Nick stops playing, the blanket lifts. Her own breath shoots back into her ears, louder than she’d ever realized it was.

The orcs fan through the second floor. They stay nonlethal; Dee has a feeling Anise would be very upset otherwise. They pile their trussed victims in the bathroom’s grimy tub. Parag’s mark is the only one who gets a scream out, and it’s a weaselly, gurgling thing.

In a shelf-lined study, they find a safe behind a hinged pastoral painting; Nick’s already zipping his guitar out from the canvas.

He plugs the earbuds into the travel amp’s output, and strings a bud into his ear. The other he holds out to Dee. “Vessel needs to hear it too,” he whispers.

Dee wedges the earbud in as Nick beckons Warrin over and points to the generator. “Kick that up when I say. We keep as quiet as we can until then.” He hunches closer to Dee. “Sorry for the ASMR I gotta do here.”

Dee doesn’t know what that means. She just pats his arm. “Play.”

It’s haphazard at first, the music from his guitar. Dee’s eyes narrow as she tries to get a grip on it. And then she hears the pulse in his low E note. He’s playing two distinct rhythms at once.

His low, honeyed voice filters into her other ear and sends shivers up her spine. She can’t identify the language, but it doesn’t matter. Her eyes flutter as the smooth lullaby in her right ear intermingles and layers upon the jittering calculus in her left, and her field of view widens, telescopes, tessellates…

Nick leans away. “Warrin. Now.” The generator’s whirr chokes to life and Dee feels the pattern fade and shingle back into humdrum reality, but then Nick’s voice is pressed up against her mind again, close enough to kiss, and the world flowers open like a spiraling lotus.

The sound of the generator stutters to a halt at the same time as the headphone amp crackles into silence.

“Open the safe,” Nick whispers, and fills every piece of Dee with power.

She reaches for the safe and swings it out. Metal pops and screeches and then shears away from itself as if it were paper.

Out from behind a bookshelf comes charging the bugbear Dee called Uglier, ejecting from the false wall panic room like a trebuchet stone. He twists Nick to the floor on top of him, and the bard thrashes as a knife presses against the soft rosy flesh of his neck.

Trying for a hostage. He’s not using all the force he has. Before he’s finished the maneuver, Dee’s hand has closed over his, twisting the knife away even as he attempts to follow through and slash Nick’s throat. Instead, all he manages is a shallow cut against Nick’s jaw before the knife is out of his hand and slammed through his shoulder. His anguished howl is clamped shut by Dee’s thick forearm.

“You see,” she hisses, as Graila seizes his thrashing legs, “what you bought yourself.”

The last burst, and he’s out. She zipties him, checks the wound, judges it nonfatal, and breaks his nose with one thick boot for good measure. Warrin extracts the duffel from its sconce, tosses it to her, and for good measure they fill it with everything else in the safe, jewelry and bundled bills. They find a block of cocaine, which Dee tears open and spills across the mahogany desk. She wets her pointer finger and draws a veiny cock in the powdery dust.

Nick rubs the shallow cut on his neck and stares dismally at the blood on his fingertips. Dee shuffles her hand through his hair. “You did fucking amazing tonight, Nicky,” she whispers, pulling him by his wrist back to their infiltration point. “But I gotta teach your ass how to fight.”

* * *

Anise doesn’t ask about the time away or the return of the money or the gauze at Nicky’s neck. She just hugs Dee in the light filtering from the trailer’s window, and breathes deep. “I didn’t tell the band. Far as they know, Alstorum’s a swell town.”

“I, for one, had a grand time.” Dee rests her chin on Anise’s shoulder. The tangr’ak’s gone, so she surprises herself when she sneaks a peek down the curve of the elf’s back to her butt, which is in a pair of yoga pants now, and still quite round.

“Is anyone coming for us?” Anise asks.

“Nah. Not in Vatramor. The governments are all city-state. I mean, knock on wood, but a guy like that gets his nose bloodied, he scurries off to shake someone without a counterpunch.”

Anise’s grip on the hug lightens, then tightens again. “Thank you, Dee.”

“It’s what I do, Ani.” Dee pats the back of Anise’s head. Is she imagining this because of the color of her hair, or does her boss smell a touch like freshly cut grass?

Poor Nick needs to sleep on his opposite side that night. His neck smarts too bad. Dee asks him why he doesn’t just mend himself. “Magic can’t affect the spellcaster,” he tells her. “That’s why I always need a vessel. Not a lot of rules to the game, but that’s one of them.”

Come morning, the tour is rolling again. The pack is abuzz about the infiltration, badgering its members for details. Just about the only conversation that can distract them is talk of the bonfire rite. Dee sighs inwardly when she remembers that thing’s coming up. She’s the packmistress. She has to attend and deliver the invocation. But it needles her, every time, and she always takes her leave once the bonded mates start to tussle and screw.

Legendary lets her use their big wide practice tent to teach Nicky how to fight. It doesn’t do to start this stuff on rocky terrain and she’s not trying to humiliate the guy in public before his packmates. They line the floor with mats. “This’ll be fun, Nicky,” she says. “You’ll see.”

“You’re just excited to kick my ass again.”

She chuckles. “Guilty.”

“Watch the neck. That’s all I’m asking.”

They strip down to gym shorts and tanks, and start with basic footwork and strikes. “It’s all in the pivot.” Dee demonstrates. “Watch my hips. That’s where you get your power.”

Nick obediently watches her hips. She wonders if she should have a longer inseam on these.

On the second day, they transfer to mat work. “This is the real shit,” Dee says. “Choke people out, snap their bones, roll ‘em around. I’m a grappler type chick. Orcs are built for it.”

She shows him a basic single-leg and a double-leg takedown, how to shift it into a mount without letting your opponent bring their guard up. And yes, that involves a certain amount of straddling each other. This is for education.

“Okay, Nicky.” She blows out an exerted breath, straightens up and helps him to his feet. “Try it. Single or double, your choice.”

“Right. Okay.” He shifts from foot to foot.

“C’mon,” she says. “Remember to power through. Get your shoulder up against me.”

He ducks in, wraps his arms around her legs, and shoves into her abdomen. That’s not bad, the force he’s generating.

“Ah ah. Watch the legs.” She does a sweeping reverse, sends him onto his back, and stands. She’s working up a sweat here. “Go on, now. Again. How about you try and get into that mount I showed you?”

He lowers his shoulders, takes a beat, then shoots in again. Fluid and quick, he gets her legs out from under her. She flops onto her belly as he tries to flatten out. She’s surprised and pleased when he avoids her attempt at a trap and lays her out on her back.

She brings her leg up above his, cinches herself into a more advantageous guard beneath him and her hips graze his and is his cock hard?

She finishes the motion, ends up clenched around his midriff. She isn’t sure what she just felt. And anyway, it’s not something to be in your head about, Dee. You’re both grown-ups. You gonna let simple biological reactions get in the way of instructing him?

“Again,” she says. “Do that again and I’ll show you the guard.”

They get up. She’s not used to this climate. She’s sweating. He’s sweating, too. The muscles in his shoulders slide over each other. He’s gotten stronger.

She lets him bear her to the ground. As he goes for the mount, she pulls her knees up over his.

“See now.” She lifts her pelvis off the mat, squeezes his waist between her thighs. Her tank top has scrunched up, revealing her stomach and a sliver of sports bra. “Now I’ve got you in a guard. So, uh.” She swallows. She’s still breathing hard, but it’s not from exertion anymore. “Now I’m on the bottom, but I’ve got some control back.”

He blinks the sweat out of his eyes. A drop of it lands on her exposed stomach, drips down her waist. “Right.”

“And from here I could, uh, I could get a triangle choke cinched in, or do a joint lock, and I’ve got my legs right here around you so I can move you.” She crosses her calves, pulls him closer up between her legs. The smooth-carved lines of his adonis belt peek out over his shorts.

She’s got him hard as a fucking rock. This is not in her head. She wants to roll her hips. She needs to feel more of it.

“But if I can sweep—” She plants a foot on his quad and pushes, sprawling him to the ground and twisting on top of him to straddle his waist. “Now I’m in a mount, and…” She slides her ass back until his length is underneath her and by the bonfires of heaven, it’s thick. And it’s warm. “And I’m in a dominant position.”

He wets his dry lips. “Uh huh.”

“Which would let me strike, or get the leg up and get a choke in that way, or if you’re trying to push me off I can get an armbar going, or… uh…”

He is not trying to push her off. His dark eyes search her face.

“Or I could do a full mount, which is where you get the knees under the armpits, like this.” She leans down into his body heat, her chest squishing softly against his. “And then I could block the airway with my chest, and.” Her breast brushes against his collarbone. And she knows he feels it, her peaked nipples and how stirred and pliable she’s getting with him underneath her. His abs tighten visibly under his skin and bridge up his hips, grinding them against hers. An involuntary whimper drops from her mouth. She has him trapped, right where she wants him. “And I could… uh… I could…”

His lips part.

And her tongue is in his mouth, and her heart is pounding against his. He receives her with feverish intensity, catches her lower lip between his teeth and makes her gasp. Both hands land on her ass with a heavy, rippling slap and she yelps like a vixen in heat, arches into him. He’s so solid, so stable, and she smells his sweat and clutches that firm rose-colored body she’s been watching him develop, skin-on-skin, and she tastes his heat, his desire. They caress each other, fingers digging into fabric with delicious friction, dryhumping like dumb, desperate kids.

He executes a picture-perfect sweep, the same kick-and-twist she showed him. He learns so fast, her Nicky. And now he’s on top of her, his sinewy arms tight below her armpits and his tongue shoving down her throat, and she’s moaning and squirming in his grip, opening her thighs wide and wanton, and his cock is straining against the humid fabric of her pants and she wants it inside so badly she can barely breathe, she is going to come so fucking hard for him—

No. Tend your fire, Dee. Tend your fire right now. And tend his. She plants an elbow on his broad chest and resists her desperate thirst for closeness, pushing him back and shoving her knees up into a butterfly guard.

“Tangr’ak,” she gasps. “It’s tangr’ak messing with us. Control it.”

His face buries in her neck. “I don’t want to control it.” His calloused fingers stroke the soft expanse of her breast and find the firm, sensitive bud of her nipple through her tank top. Her body spasms with need. She spreads her legs before she can think to stop herself, and he falls back into her, reintroduces that weight and heat and that wonderful hardness as she engulfs him in her trembling thighs.

“Nick.” Her fingers twist into his hair, and his name is a command, but not to stop. “Nicky.” His breath is so hot and intermingling with hers. She runs her tongue along the line of his jaw all the way to his ear, and he tastes sweaty and masculine and so achingly ready for her, and if she doesn’t stop this right now, she’s going to rip his clothes off and ride him until sunrise. She wants to uncork herself. She wants to let her steel-banded tangr’ak free. To let the fire roar forth and consume her. She wants to roll him to the floor and fuck him cross-eyed.

No. He’s not the one at the reins. She can’t have him like this. “Nicky, get up. Up. Tend your fire.”

He grunts and slaps his palm into the training mat, and with terrible concentration he pushes himself off of her, stumbling back into a sitting position and panting like he just ran a marathon.

“You know what it feels like now.” She rises into a squat before him, her body already shivering from the deprivation of his touch. “Get a hold of it. Imagine your will as a blanket. Smother it.” She’s saying it to herself as much as to him.

“I want you.” His chest heaves. His face is a war between lust and despair. “I want you so badly, Dee.”

She wants him, too. Oh, Stars, she does. She’s woozy with it. Her hand is febrile on her own thigh. Her fingers twitch. “We’ll tend our fires. We’ll get control. And we’ll talk about it. Breathe with me. Okay?” She takes a deep, demonstrative inhale. He joins her.

She fetches their shirts, tosses him his. She gets back into hers and sets herself down cross-legged in front of him. “Good. Keep breathing, Nicky. I’m here.”

Another rattling vent of his lungs. He shuts his eyes. She breathes in unison on his next inhale. Her tangr’ak is fading, and as its glow flickers to an ember, her frantic appetite is obscured.

Nick is beautiful. His soulful eyes, his tapered nose, his lips full and glistening with their intermingled saliva, and she still wants him. The moment has passed, and the fire is doused, and the fear is back and the scars haven’t faded, and she still wants him.

You could have him. The bonfire rite is tonight. You could have what Kell has.

That’s ridiculous. She’s only known him a few weeks. Sure, she could take him to the rite, but it would just be a quick lay. Or worse, a one-way imprinting. Whose way, she doesn’t even know.

But it might work, her treacherous brain says. You know it might. You feel it when he looks at you, don’t you? You’ve let him in close. Closer than anyone. And you know why. You feel your stars align with his.

He could be your mate.

She scrambles for the words as the silence stretches. Nick takes a final purgative breath and sits up.

Dee unfolds her legs. Fear battles desire. “Nicky…”

And then Nick says the words that change her life forever.