Richelle Mead: Storm Born

At one point, I leaned toward the bar to slide an empty bottle across it. As I did, I suddenly felt Kiyo’s fingers brush my lower back where my shirt had ridden up. I flinched as electricity crackled through me at that slight, casual touch.

“Here’s more honesty,” he said in a low voice. “I like this tattoo. A lot. Violets again?”

I nodded and sat back in my chair, but he didn’t remove his hand. That tattoo was a chain of violets and leaves that spread across my lower back. A larger cluster of the flowers sat on my tailbone, and then smaller tendrils extended outward on both sides, almost to my hips.

“Violets have sort have become my patron flower,” I explained, “because of my eyes.”

He leaned forward, and I almost stopped breathing at how close his mouth was to mine. “Wow. You’re right. I’ve never seen eyes that color.”

“I’ve got three more.”

“Eyes?”

“Tattoos.”

This got his interest. “Where?”

“They’re covered by the shirt.” I hesitated. “You know anything about Greek mythology?”

He nodded. A cultured man. Cue swooning.

I touched my upper right arm. My sleeve covered the skin. “This one’s a snake wrapped all the way around my arm. It’s for Hecate, the goddess of magic and the crescent moon.” What I didn’t add was that Hecate guarded the crossroads between worlds. It was she who governed transitions to the Otherworld and beyond. This tattoo was my link to her, to facilitate my own journeys and call on her for help when needed.

I moved to my upper left arm. “This one’s a butterfly whose wings wrap around and touch behind my arm. It’s half black and half white.”

“Psyche?” he asked.

“Good guess.” He really was cultured. The goddess Psyche was synonymous with the soul, which the butterfly represented in myth. “Persephone.”

He nodded. “Half black, half white. She lives half her life in this world and half in the Underworld.”

Not unlike my own life. Persephone guided transitions to the world of death. I didn’t travel there myself, but I invoked her to send others across.

“She governs the dark moon. And back here”-I tapped the spot behind me where my neck connected to my back-“is a moon with an abstract woman’s face in it. Selene, the full moon.”

Kiyo’s dark eyes held intense interest. “Why not one of the more common moon goddesses, then? Like Diana?”

I hesitated with my answer. In many ways, Diana would have served the same purpose. She, like Selene, was bound to the human world and could keep me grounded here when I needed it. “The others are…solitary goddesses. Even Persephone, who’s technically married. Diana’s a virgin-she’s alone too. But Selene…well, she doesn’t get a lot of press anymore, but she was a more social goddess. A sexual goddess. She opens herself up to other people. And experiences. So I went with her. I just didn’t think it’d be healthy to be marked with three goddesses who were all alone.”

“What about you? Are you alone, Eugenie?” His voice was velvet against me, and I could have drowned in those eyes. They were like chocolate. Chocolate is an aphrodisiac.

“Aren’t we all alone?” I asked with a rueful smile.

“Yes. I think in the end, we all are, no matter what the songs and happy stories say. I guess it’s just a matter of who we choose to be alone with.”

“That’s why I come here, you know. To be alone with other people. There’s isolation in a crowd. You’re hidden. Safe.”

He looked around at the buzzing, moving sea of people in the bar. They were like a wall surrounding us. There but not there. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here too?”

He glanced back down at me, his expression a little less sexual and a bit more pensive. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I guess maybe I’m here because of you.”

I didn’t have any quick retorts for that, so I started playing with the bottle again. The bartender asked if I wanted another, and I shook my head.

Kiyo touched my shoulder. “You want to dance?”

I was pretty sure I hadn’t danced since high school, but some force compelled me to agree. We stepped out into a crowd of very bad dancers. Most were just sort of floundering around to a fast song with a heavy beat that I’d never heard before. Kiyo and I weren’t much better. But when a slower song came on, he wrapped me to him, pressing us together as close as two people could be. Well, almost as close.

I couldn’t ever remember anything like this happening with a guy I’d just met, a desire for someone I actually wanted and not just someone who was available. His body felt hard and perfect against mine, and my flesh kept concocting ways to touch his. I was already picturing him naked, imagining what it would be like to have his body move against and inside of mine. What was going on with me here? The images were so vivid and real, it was a wonder my feelings weren’t written across my face.

So I didn’t really mind when he slid his hand up the back of my neck and brought his mouth down to kiss me. It wasn’t a tentative kiss either. No first-date kisses here. It was the kind of kiss that meant business, the kind of kiss that said, I want to consume every inch of you and hear you scream my name. I’d never really made out in a public place, but it seemed kind of a trivial concern as that kiss burned between us, our tongues and lips exploring the contours of each other’s mouths.

But when his other hand slid up and cupped my breast, even I was surprised. “Hey,” I said, breaking off slightly. “There are people around.” Amusing, I thought a moment later, that I was less concerned about him doing it than being seen doing it.

He kissed the side of my neck, just below my ear, and when he spoke, his words heated my skin. “People only notice if you make a big deal about it.”

I let him kiss me again and didn’t say anything else about the hand that continued to stroke the curve of my breast and tease my nipple into hardness beneath the shirt. His other hand slid down to my ass and ground me closer to him, letting me feel exactly what was underneath his jeans. The fact that we were doing this in public suddenly made it a lot sexier.

I let out a small, trembling sigh and then broke away from the kiss again. Only this time, it wasn’t because of any prudish feelings. It was from need. My body’s suddenly urgent and excruciating need.

“Are you staying next door?” I asked, indicating the hotel adjacent to the bar.

“No. Out at the Monteblanca.”

I let surprise show on my face. That was in the region near where I lived, in the Santa Catalina foothills. “That’s not a hotel. That’s a resort. A really nice one. Veterinarians must make a lot.”

He smiled and brushed his lips against my cheek. “You want to see it?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I certainly do.”

We were on each other before we even made it to his room. If our actions on the dance floor had been racy, our grappling in the elevator was downright X-rated. Fortunately no one else rode up with us, which was a good thing, considering the disheveled state of our clothing when we finally made it inside.

All the while, some reasonable voice in my mind kept whispering, You don’t do this kind of thing. But I was. And I wanted to, very badly.

It was a nice room, not surprising in such a nice hotel. A king-size bed offered comfort in the moonlit room, and beyond it, a sliding glass door opened out to a balcony that overlooked the desert. I didn’t have time to admire the view because Kiyo pushed me down onto the bed, pulling my shirt off at the same time. I’d already done a fair job at undoing his pants in the elevator, so I had an edge in the race.