Gage snatches me at the waist, and we’re gone in a dizzying instant.
His lips are back on mine in the next, and we’re backing up against a familiar feeling kitchen island. That also starts burning against my skin.
He rips me away from it, staring at it like he’s confused, and I leap onto him, since his clothes are already falling into ashy heaps. The rest of him is clearly fireproof, which is the important part.
Then again, I never questioned if I could hurt him. It’s like I knew I couldn’t.
“What’s going on?” he asks on a rasp whisper, even as I cling to him like a spider monkey. “Am I mad?”
“Mad like crazy or mad like angry? Because I was thinking a little of both, since you threw me against a wall. What the actual hell?”
My legs tighten around his waist, and my arms tighten around his neck, as he reaches up and cups both sides of my face.
“You’re fucking dead,” he finally says, as though he’s trying to convince both of us of this. “And never recycled.”
I push away from his hands and start rubbing my cheek against his like a cat starving for affection, because the pain seems to lessen the longer he’s touching me, or maybe he’s just that distracting.
“I gathered as much when I woke up in a damn coffin,” I tell him, still rather unhappy about that. “You could have at least buried me in the backyard so I could find my way home. Or just let me keep the west wing of the house.”
He laughs a little too wildly, and I pull back as he starts running a hand through his hair. I’m clinging to him without any help, because his hands are no longer touching me.
“I’ve gone crazy. I’ve reached a state of imbalance, and I’ve officially gone as mad as we all worried we’d become.”
“I’m very confused, at the moment,” I tell him, looking around to see the house is a little trashed.
Furniture is flipped over. Windows are broken. It looks like they’ve stopped giving a damn about how pretty their home is. It’s always been kept so clean and almost regal.
Now it looks like they’ve been fighting so hard to stay alive in my absence. How many people have tried to kill them?
“Where are the others?” I ask, worrying about him being alone when I’m possibly too weak to defend him.
“What the fucking hell?” Ezekiel’s voice has me snapping my gaze over, and I grin broadly at the man gaping at me.
“You see her too?” Gage asks, his hysterical laughter tapering off as his hands slide around me at last, helping me hold myself up.
“What is she?” Ezekiel asks, glaring at Gage. “What the hell have you done?”
Gage’s grin slowly spreads. “It’s really her,” he finally says, then looks at me again like he’s finally convinced.
“Yes, it’s me. And just because you’re finally acting happy to see me, that doesn’t mean any of you are off the hook for that terribly simple headstone. Where were my damn quotes? I’ve said some very memorable and insightful things that should be shared with the world.”
Something crashes to the ground, and I look over as a grin starts to spread over Ezekiel’s face, even as he slumps against a table. But it’s seeing Kai gripping the edge of the same table that has me doing a double-take. How long has he been there? And why do they all seem that surprised to see me?
I mean, we met while I was a spirit who’d somehow clawed her way back into existence. It shouldn’t be that hard to believe I’m back again.
A vase lays broken on the ground before them, one that used to don that table, and dead flowers are spilling from it without a drop of water.
“Exactly how long have I been dead?” I decide to ask.
“Just over a month,” Gage says reverently, his eyes raking over my face as I turn to look at a mirror.
My hair is messy for the first time ever, since I never fixed it in phantom form. As a person who hates a messy appearance, it’s rather irksome, but there are far more important things to deal with at the moment.
Besides, I don’t look like a rotting corpse, so I’ll consider it a win.
“I look damn good for a dead girl no matter what form I’m in,” I say aloud, trying to lighten this terribly stuffy air.
“It’s really her,” Kai says, a hesitant grin starting to form.
My body washes over with tingles as the three of them so close starts to push that pain much, much deeper down, almost extinguishing it completely. It’s such a different sort of pain than I’ve ever felt, nothing like the pull of being away from them too long leaves me with.
As the pain ebbs, the reality of the situation slowly starts to sink in.
Gage lets me down when I start wriggling, and I test my theory. The floor doesn’t start burning under me. I knew it was linked to all of them, just like the horrible pain.
They weren’t together, and I couldn’t sense them like usual. I think them being separated from each other was what was making me hurt and tearing my heart in four different directions.
How long have they been apart?
Gage jogs off, and I hear him in the kitchen as the other two just silently gawk at me. Ezekiel even startles back a step when I start toward him.
Determined, I strut right up to him anyway, and throw my arms around him. “Either hug me back, or I swear I’ll never let you sleep peacefully again,” I threaten when he remains still in my grip.
In the next instant, two strong arms almost squeeze me too hard, and a shuddering breath snakes out of him as he trembles just slightly.
I pat his chest, and struggle to get free, but he finally lets me go to Kai.
Kai, unlike Ezekiel, is on me before I can reach him, his hand roughly digging into my hair as he kisses me so hard I feel the bruising power of his relief.
My arms slide around his neck, returning the kiss, as Ezekiel presses against my back again, his lips moving to my neck.
“It’s definitely her,” Kai groans against my lips before tearing his away as he steps back and adjusts his very happy-to-see me erection.
Ezekiel turns me, his lips finding mine just as hungrily. Now this is the reception I expected the first time I came into their lives as a real girl.
Much better than my last experience.
His hands travel down my bare body, pulling closer as the kiss heats. I almost don’t hear Gage talking on his phone in such a quiet voice.
“Just get back. I can’t…I just can’t explain right now. Get back.”
Breaking the kiss with Ezekiel is a little hard to do, now that we’re back to that survival and sex thing being linked. I’m so relieved to be alive that I want to feel it, but I first need to set some things straight before they start teasing me again.
Gage comes jogging back in, tugging on a pair of track pants as his no-longer-black eyes rake over me like he can’t look his fill.
“I’m assuming that was Jude?” I ask, and he nods once.
“Good. While we’re waiting on him to come remove the last bit of pain plaguing me, I have something very important to tell you.”
They all step in closer. I found it so sweet when I first found all those beautiful roses with no thorns. I didn’t have all the details then.
“I died saving you assholes, and you repay me by putting me in a hole that far away from you?!” I snap, watching as their eyes widen and their grins curve up. “Seriously? That’s all you could come up with on my headstone? And for a solid month, the only thing you lazy asses brought me was roses?”
They all dart a gaze behind me, just as I hear Jude’s familiar voice wash over me with surprise and awe.
“It’s her.”
Chapter 13
I whirl around, tempted to go to him, but not emotionally capable of dealing with rejection at this very trying moment.
“Yes,” I say with a bitter smile. “Apparently I’m too stubborn for Death to deal with properly.”
I give him a pointed look, hoping he gets the little pun.
I expect a snappy comeback or some hostile suspicion. What I don’t expect is for him to be across the room in a blur of motion.
His lips crash against mine for the first time, and it’s like a storm pulses in my body. All the pain is gone at last, and warmth travels up through me, as though he finally just sealed the last piece of something into place and made me truly whole.
I moan into his mouth as he grips me closer, his hands moving all over me like he doesn’t know what he wants to touch the most.
I’m beyond drugged and unable to pull back, as I clutch him closer, kissing him so hard that my lips start to hurt. I knew it’d be violent with him. Just as it is with all of them.
It makes the times they’re soft so much more special.
When he breaks the kiss, he’s panting, his entire body shaking against me as his breaths rattle in his chest.
“Now that is how you welcome a girl back from the dead,” I say on a shuddering breath. “Congratulations. You’re finally my favorite again.”
They all look torn between laughing and murdering someone.
Jude forces himself to release me and take a few steps back, his body visibly straining with the effort it takes. I’m a little lightheaded, if I’m being honest.
It really does feel like the final piece has clicked into place. I feel so much stronger now.
I go phantom with ease and zap around the house several times before landing back in front of them with a grin on my lips.
“Much better. Apparently the four of you still make me stronger.”
They don’t look quite as amused as I do.
“Great,” I groan. “What now? What have I missed in the month I’ve been dead that has put all of you in such a terrible mood?” I ask on an exasperated sigh.
Given the condition of the house, I’ve missed a lot.
“Not much,” Ezekiel says, clearing his throat. “No one has tried to kill us since Jude killed Lake. Only the Devil’s highest appointed generals should have been able to kill an escort. It seemed to send a message.”
I look around the house, seeing all of it torn to pieces. Hell, even the chandeliers look like they’re warped.
“Then why does it look like a war raged on in here?” I ask, bringing my gaze back down.
“You were fucking dead,” Gage says again, coming closer as though he has to touch me after saying those words. “We broke laws, hijacked royal escorts, and broke into hell numerous times to find out what happened to you. Not recycled. Not in hell’s throat. Simply fucking dead.”
His hand moves to my cheek, cupping it.
Kai moves forward, reaching his hand out for me. I take it and let him pull me away from Gage and into his arms.
“But what happened to the house?” I ask him, since Gage didn’t answer.
“You fucking died,” Kai says, and this time…I get it.
With a more educated eye, I look around again, seeing the distress and anger that went into destroying this room. Beyond us is the kitchen in the same disarray, but I notice the dents in the walls and pans, the fury that went into all that destruction.