Goddess's Gift (Get Your Rocks Off #4) - Sam Hall Page 0,3

All these petty disputes will be resolved the minute you succeed, Kira. Leave Rutherglen and his people to us. Duke will work with you and help you to develop the requisite connections with your consorts to prepare for what’s to come.”

Connections? When I looked across the room at the men I’d decided to ‘take,’ a shiver went up my spine. Whether it from anticipation or fear, I couldn’t decide.

We’d made the room tense. Everyone ate and talked quietly to the person next to them, everyone but our end of the table.

“Kira,” Lucas said finally, laying down his cutlery, “do you reckon you’d have some time free this afternoon?”

What conversation there was quickly died, eyes swivelling around to me. I sat back against my chair and listened to Lilith purr what she’d like to do with him if given a chance.

“Um…yeah, probably. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, as much as I’d like to eye fuck you into oblivion like these dickheads, what happened when you came for me…” It took me a while to place the expression on Lucas’ face, so foreign was it. Satisfaction, that’s what it was, in the lazy smile and the relaxed set of his shoulders. “I’d like a chance to take you out…wherever there is to take a girl out around here.”

“A date?”

I wasn’t opposed to the idea. Actually, as those pale blue eyes held mine, doing a much more effective job of eye fucking me than the others, I remembered the ache left inside me after we’d been together. Lilith crooned her approval as I settled back in my chair, letting his eyes run over my body as I did the same.

“Yeah, all right,” I said with a nod. “Come for me around five if I haven’t found you.”

“I will.”

His voice was a low rumble, his eyes hungry, promising me things I absolutely wanted to take place.

I thought you weren’t falling into bed with any of them? Lilith asked.

He’s not a consort, not someone I have to be with. I get to choose him, and right now, I choose to get naked and do whatever is going on in that freaky little mind of his.

She laughed at that, low and dark. I have been where you’re going. It’s an amusing place.

Why do I sense a but?

Oh, there’s always a but.

“Mother, should the avatars of the god and goddess be associating?” someone asked farther around the table.

“Pretty sure there ain’t nothing anyone can do to stop the avatar of a goddess,” Duke drawled from where he slouched. “Unless you got some ideas, Layla?”

The woman in question’s lips snapped shut, and he shot me a lazy wink before turning back to Ashanti.

“Yes, well, it’s past time to share what we know. Does anyone have any objections?”

And so it began. Ashanti filled her crew in on what she knew, Aen and I adding missing details. My creation of my own reservoir was of definite interest, as was my memory of Billy’s first interaction with Lilith. He sat there, still as a stone, as I described what I’d seen. Most were about Lilith though. I was an avatar to the goddess in my own right, and she… What was she? Demon, powerful fae, demigoddess? This was argued around and around, until she rose up within me, my eyes going dark, my teeth sharpening.

“When the storms came, so did I,” we said with my lips, and with that, the conversation thread ended. She nodded, satisfied when silence reigned, and then withdrew back into me.

“This is not wise,” one woman muttered. “Lilith was always the consort of—”

“Enough, Bea,” Ashanti said, raising a hand. “So, we’ve consulted with our archives, and opening the doors to Aragide with the aid of your consorts is the first step to your ascension. The next is the completion of the trials. The last time this was undertaken was over two thousand years ago by the Kushian queen named in the Bible as Candace. She was not successful, but she used Aragide as her seat of power. The records that we have of her attempt will help us. Kira, we know you’ll have to undergo a trial with each of your consorts, one based on their elemental affiliation. From my understanding, not all of your chosen possessed elemental power before this.”

“I sure as fuck didn’t,” Jake said, putting his finger in an empty glass and filling it with water. “Seems to work fine now.”

“Mother, you know I had none,” said Marlow. He held out a hand,