Amora
I open my eyes in bed, blinking into the soft darkness of my motel room.
Something woke me—some noise or movement. I sit up, the blankets falling away from me, then shiver as I realize I’m naked.
Frost stands in the corner, his pale eyes glittering. He’s focused on me, his body vibrating with barely restrained tension. A pastel desert print rests on the wall over his head, though it’s watery and insubstantial. More like the suggestion of a painting than the actual thing. Frost’s tattoos wave gently over his skin, just as insubstantial in the darkness. We stare at each other as headlights pass the window and illuminate the sharp angles of his face. Chiseled like granite.
We’ve already done this, I think, confused. The room in Oscura, when I woke up to him watching me right before the shadow attacked.
Although, I wasn’t naked at the time.
I glance around, looking for the shadow that almost killed us both through the poison, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Movement passes in my periphery, and my heart skips a beat. The shadow. It’s here.
But no.
It’s Frost.
He stalks across the thin carpet, silent as a wraith. He passes through a strip of gray moonlight that makes his white-blonde hair shine and his blue eyes flash with a pure blue like the heart of an iceberg. As he reaches the bottom of the mattress, he takes hold of the hem of his t-shirt and tugs it off over his head, revealing every inch of his muscular torso so slowly it sets fire to my body.
My heart races, and desire thrums through my veins.
No. No. No. I can’t want him.
The mate bond is gone.
Everything else should have gone with it.
I’m so fixated on Frost’s lean waist and taut, defined muscles, that I don’t sense Malix beside me until his fingers sink into my hair. He fists a handful and tugs—gently, not like Quinton when he practically tore my hair earlier trying to make me bow before him. Malix’s fingers in my hair are pure ecstasy, and the slightest pressure on my scalp makes my core throb. He tilts my head back, turning my lips up to his for a consuming kiss.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, thoughts poke at me like little needles.
Quinton.
The poison.
The motel room.
I’m dreaming.
Frost’s weight joins us on the bed just as another pair of hands slides around my waist. Malix’s lips brush mine, and Kian’s fingers slide decadently up my bare torso, leaving tiny fires in their wake.
I’m dreaming of them again, just like I have almost every night since they left me broken in the mountains of New Mexico. As the knowledge that this is a dream seeps into my consciousness, I try to gain control over my own thoughts, to put an end to the dream.
But it’s impossible to not want this.
Heat flares between us. Kian’s palms wrap around my breasts, and I arch back into his body, bare skin on bare skin. Malix tightens his grip on my hair and opens my lips to his kiss, his tongue penetrating me, fucking my mouth the way he did my body back in New Mexico. Frost straddles my legs, his lips closing over my desperately pounding pulse. His fingers slide down my stomach. Between my legs.
My emotions are a confusing storm inside my heart. Desire wars with fury. I want to give in to their lips and their hands, but I need to remember who they are. Who I am. Their touch makes it hard for me to remember my own damn name, much less the fact that I need to kill them. And the truth is even harder to process.
I want them.
Even without the mate bond, I still want them.
Malix’s lips move away, and I let out a sound of distress. But his fingers wind tighter, and he turns my face to Kian.
Those gold-ringed brown eyes smolder at me from above. He leans in and captures my lips with all the fiery passion I remember from our night in Montana.
Something about this feels different. I feel different. Or maybe it’s the three of them who are different.
Fuck, I don’t know. I can’t tell if they’re better people than I thought they were or if I’ve become a worse person than I was before. What influence has passed between the four of us? We’re two sides in a war, but I swear, it’s almost like we’ve moved closer to the middle, and the longer I’m around them, the more I question everything.
Frost’s fingers penetrate me, and I moan into Kian’s mouth. I’m a mass of nerves, shivering with need as Frost’s mouth moves lower, cresting over my collarbone, feathering light kisses down my chest. Kian deepens his kiss, his teeth scraping my lips and his fingers digging into my sides. I give into it, too exhausted to fight the way I feel anymore.
As I let my feelings flow through me and relish the warmth of their bodies pressing into mine, I notice a strange sensation. Like an electric static on my skin, a sharp tingling that doesn’t belong.
Opening my eyes, I break the kiss with Kian and look at him, confused.
His tattoos are moving wildly.
I pull back, glancing at Malix, and then at Frost. All three of them go still, their gazes locked on me. Their tattoos—the black marks that show the shadows beneath their skin—are going crazy. Spirals and swirls and spikes wave like flags in hurricane winds.
Then, as I watch, mesmerized by the display, the shadows begin to crawl off their bodies… and onto mine.
I gasp, a chill passing through me and turning my body to ice. The shadows flow like water, covering my skin, crawling and riding over me like they do on Frost all the time.
I glance up and meet Malix’s eyes.
His expression changes from one of hungry lust to shock. His eyes widen, and he grabs my shoulder, shouting my name.
“Amora!”
I wrench awake in my cell, sucking in a painful breath of cold air the moment my eyes pop open.
There’s somebody standing over me, nothing but a vague shape in the darkness of the small building.
No—not a person.
A shadow.