And then I grabbed something a little lower down.
Finally, I had his full attention. Pritkin stared at me, and it was no longer the impatient release-me-woman glare of a moment ago, but more a who-are-you and shit-I’m-in-trouble-now bewilderment. And yes, I thought, squeezing a bit and seeing his eyes pop; yes, you are.
The problem with Pritkin, I thought, as I went to work, one hand fondling the velvety globes, one massaging the silken shaft, and my tongue doing the rest of the work, was that he’d mostly missed the last month or so. And it had been a hell of a month. First, having to find out where Rosier had taken him, then having to break him out of hell—a phrase I’d never really thought to hear myself utter—and then, when I finally managed to get him in front of the demon council, to get their damned, unfair sentence lifted, what did they do instead?
They cursed him out of existence!
I sucked harder in remembered anger, and Pritkin let out a howl. I hope the rooms are soundproofed, I thought, and then remembered the storm, banshee wailing outside. Oh, that was all right, then.
And then came that long, frustrating, seemingly-never-ending chase back through time, with Gertie hounding me and Rosier bitching at me and Pritkin staying always, always, just out of reach! It was enough to send a woman crazy, only I hadn’t gone crazy, possibly because I was already there. What it had done instead was to expand my skill set, because the power teaches the Pythia, or so Agnes had said because she didn’t want to train me. But what she forgot to mention was that it did so only when it thought you needed a new ability—which was usually in the middle of a crisis when you were scared out of your mind!
It had been a brutal apprenticeship, but it had worked, to a degree. I didn’t fool myself that I was at Gertie’s level, but I had learned a lot. I’d been forced to. And not all of that had been about the Pythian power.
Pritkin bucked underneath me, and judging from his face, I wasn’t sure if that was out of pleasure or pain, or a combination of both. I took my mouth off him long enough to ask, “Do you want me to stop?”
“Stop and I’ll scream,” he gritted out.
“You’ll scream anyway,” I promised, and went back to work.
This last month without him had been hard, harder than anything I’d ever gone through in my life. And, considering my life, that was saying something. There were so many times that I’d thought: this is it. You’ve fought a good fight, but you’re not going to get past this. Nobody could get past this.
Yet, somehow, I had. Somehow, I’d found depths within me that I’d never even suspected existed. I was used to doubting myself; how could I not, growing up with Fat Tony, who never missed a chance to tell me how worthless I was, how stupid, how I wouldn’t last a day outside of his scummy court, off in the real world that was supposedly so much worse? And, in fairness, it had been worse, especially lately, but it had been better, too.
Because I wasn’t worthless. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t any of the things he’d always said and that I’d half believed without even realizing it.
I’d started to understand that, in fits and starts, this past summer, as I somehow stayed alive and kept others alive, despite some really long odds against us. But it hadn’t been until the search for Pritkin that I really grasped how much I’d changed. With few allies and a ton of enemies, with a ticking clock constantly in my ears, and with the god that personified war trying to come back and doing a damned good job of it, causing conflict everywhere I turned, yet I just. Kept. Going.
Maybe Jo and I had something in common after all, I thought, as Pritkin writhed and bucked and grabbed my head, trying to let me know what was coming.
As if I didn’t already know, I thought, swallowing him down, and finally hearing that scream I’d promised myself.
It was lost in the storm outside, in the swirl of power around the bed, in the glow of satisfaction that suffu
sed me along with his essence, because I’d earned this. All those terrifying days and sleepless nights, all the times I’d been so exhausted I couldn’t see straight, and muddy and bloody and scared almost literally to death, had been worth it. Because I’d won.
He spilled into my mouth, finally erasing the horrid taste of that potion, and I swallowed him down, staring into his eyes as I did so, and then licking up every drop.
I earned this, I thought again; I’d earned him, and however many obstacles stood in our way, I wasn’t giving him up. I’d find a way, just as I’d found all the others. I would, because—
There was a knock at the door.
I looked at Pritkin, who was lying there, dazed and drunk on the power we’d made together, even with just regular old sex. Which never seemed so regular with him. “You gonna get that?” I asked.
He looked blankly at me.
Guess not.
My body humming happily, I got up, grabbed a robe that somebody had thoughtfully left draped over a chair, and opened the door.
And heard a gasp from the young acolyte standing behind two hulking war mages. I glanced behind me. Damn; I’d forgotten about the coverlet, leaving Pritkin drugged out and sprawled on the bed in what was obviously a sexually satisfied stupor.
The war mages, who had looked menacing and dangerous a second ago, sized up the situation pretty fast. The younger of them blushed. The older raised an eyebrow at me.
“I suppose there’s no emergency?”
“Not so much.”
He nodded and tugged on his buddy’s sleeve. “We have other things to do.”