Princess Ninja Warrior (House of Garner Book 4) Page 15

  “Harder,” I begged, wanting him to make me ache a bit too. I let my head fall back and cried out when he did, my body already going crazy. I finished and found his lips, kissing him with all I had as I held on tighter. “That slut was wrong about you. You are more than a big cock. You are so much more. I should have hit her again and made her see how you like my pussy better.”

  “I do, fuck, I do,” he moaned, moving faster. “You are heaven and she was insignificant, I promise. I forgot her. I could never forget you. I love only you, Inez.”

  “Damn right you do,” I hissed, my fangs coming out. I sank them in his neck and drank him down, smirking when he came, bringing me again as well. I stared up at him. “Bite your princess and take her again.”

  “This was supposed to be an easy night,” he reminded me gently. He cupped my face when I went to argue. “Sleep, my love. We have the rest of our immortal lives to make love again and again, but baby vampires need sleep.”

  I nodded, my eyelids getting heavy. “I’m still going to hit her again if I see her.”

  “Of course you are, Princess Ninja Warrior,” he teased me. “She’s itching even as she’s falling asleep. Damnit.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. We’ll take you to get it out,” he murmured.

  I nodded, trusting him. I dozed, but he must have cleaned me up because he woke me somewhere to fix more train engines before swooping me back up in his arms.

  “Love me enough to never leave me,” I whispered as I hugged him.

  I was out before I ever heard his response.

  12

  The next morning I was so excited to have some fun that I didn’t even give them shit for the outfit they’d laid out for me. The green cargo pants were low-rise and the boots were my normal work ones. Fine, good call.

  The top however was a zip-up bustier bralette camo thing with tiny straps, and showed my stomach. I put it on and shook my head, going for my rifle.

  “When I get sunburned, there better be a lot of offers to slather me with aloe.”

  “We would normally and always offer that,” Jaxon muttered. “You look hot. Like really hot.”

  I snorted and kept going. I looked like one of those gun magazines that had all the half naked women modeling with the guns, as if they actually came with the guns if bought. That sort of thing that made women roll their eyes, but whatever, I would do it to make them smile.

  Or to distract James, because his eyes filled with heat when I walked into the ballroom for breakfast.

  “Nice, sexy bite,” he muttered, his gaze raking over me. “I might ask you to wear that when I win.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I want a date,” he told me.

  I frowned. “I don’t think a goofy bet is okay for asking that.”

  He frowned then. “You wouldn’t have dinner with me normally?”

  “Yes, but you’re making it sound like a date, date, where you expect something.”

  “No, just to get to spend some time with you without everyone or your nobles hovering.”

  I licked my lips, not sure I liked this development. “Are you asking to court me?”

  He opened his mouth but then closed it. “No. No, I wouldn’t ever want that with a princess.”

  I nodded, feeling like a punch to the stomach that he wouldn’t ever like me enough to look past that. I slapped on a smile.

  “Good, because I wouldn’t do that to the rest of your family and complicate things. We know the line then. Kisses, snuggles, and friends.” I headed for the coffee.

  “Inez, wait,” James whispered.

  “Leave it, unless you want to change your answer,” Darius warned under his breath but then came with me. “You okay?”

  “Um, yeah, fine,” I lied.

  “Inez, please don’t lie to me, not ever,” he whispered gently.

  “I’ve never had someone state it so clearly that I wasn’t worth the baggage I come with,” I admitted, turning away from everyone else. “Kristof didn’t know me when he said he never would serve a princess or whatever. That was… This felt really pointed.”

  “But you don’t want to cross that line with him?”

  I nodded. “It would change too much. We’re all flirty, snuggly friends.” I frowned at my coffee. “Maybe we shouldn’t be. Maybe I’m messing up by not being clearer?”

  “No, you’ve been very clear that’s the line and you just were with him as well,” Jaxon comforted, leaning in and kissing my cheek. “You can be attracted to your friends, but you felt something else for Darius and I, and you know it. You’ve said it. Let James figure out his own everything and let’s have fun.”

  “Maybe no more sitting on his lap until he knows what he wants better,” Cerdic advised quietly and I agreed.

  Especially because I wasn’t sure James didn’t go in that same category of feeling something else than my other knights.

  “Before you eat quickly and head out to your fun, a group of the princesses are leaving with one of our nobles to help facilitate and approve the teams that will be working under our people,” Matilda informed me. “As you allowed one gun store to be cleaned out for us to split, we are sending them back with what they need to clear areas, ports, and landing strips.”

  I nodded, finding it amusing that I would have a formal goodbye when I never really greeted them in the first place, and I still didn’t know their names. I was in a much better mood when I found out not only one store was cleaned out but six, and the train was already headed to where we were storing the cars closer to the coven. And two cars were actually pushed to St. Louis so they were further away.

  I held out my fist to Matilda, who gave me a look like it wasn’t happening. “Come on, join the kids and shed the regal-ness for a moment and just have fun.”

  She sighed and quickly tapped my fist, shaking her head at my antics. Hey, as long as I was amusing, people were happy. I was happy at forty-eight train cars of weapons and bullets already pulled out of Cincinnati.

  In one night.

  This could actually work, and well.

  I said goodbye to the princesses, thanking them for their friendship and willingness to help clear the world of evil, pumping up their egos, but they seemed to appreciate that after being more background characters almost. After they departed, we hurried to eat, ready for the fun.

  We split up the nobles and old vamps from the other covens helping between the teams and we headed out.

  We started in Minneapolis where we’d found all the damn turkeys and I laughed as I realized my nobles—which I now included Branko in that, as we were officially courting—and the three old guys had planned a lot more than they’d told me. They had a table and chair set up for me in the middle of a once major road downtown, and from there they started herding turkeys out of the side streets.

  It was hysterical. I mean, it was sad and crazy that turkeys had taken over Minneapolis like that, but they had already herded them from the outskirts of the city with grains and bait to downtown. Nice.

  I went through the first sixty round drum magazine like nothing, changing them out and emptying another mag before taking a break. It was seriously like shooting fish in a barrel. They didn’t hear the shots with the silencer and were so busy being distracted with what had herded them into the street, they weren’t noticing those around them going down.

  I realized the nobles helping were waiting for me to get some more before clearing them out, and I went back to shooting. It was a trip and a bit scary how fast I took down a couple hundred turkeys, but people were hungry and there were gobs of birds all over the damn city. There had to have been millions of birds.

  Yeah, not kidding, millions. They were just everywhere. I’d seen pictures of how farming used to be, a caption telling me of a few thousand turkeys filled a barn waiting for the Thanksgiving rush.

  This was way more than that. They were filling huge downtown city streets from side to side for blocks. There were millions. Th
ere had to be.

  Yum. Dinner. And turkey sandwiches for lunch because of all the leftovers.

  I did make sure to keep going all in one section, so it wasn’t like I’d make them dance all around to get them. I changed to the other side of the street and saw our helpers hurrying to start getting the dead birds out of there.

  I had a moment to think that dragging them all back to Grand Forks was going to be a massive pain, but then I saw they were using huge fifty cubic foot bags made for moving stuff by forklift to bag up the turkeys. And they carried it on their backs before taking off.

  Wow. Okay, yeah, sure, that made things easier.

  Then again, the food would mostly be going back to their covens where everyone had been strapped thin. It made me smile as I fired off the next magazine.

  Sorry, turkeys, people are hungry. We’ll be grateful, I promise.

  I set down another empty magazine as Tian plopped down boxes of bullets, shrugging when I gave him a questioning look. He muttered something about he might as well refill instead of standing around and it was hard not to laugh.

  We were being so goofy with all of this. I mean, they could have grabbed turkeys and snapped necks like nothing, and here we were using bullets.

  We needed laughs in the apocalypse, it seemed.

  After I left enough of a mess to be cleaned up with a few thousand dead birds, we moved onto a huge herd of deer. I swallowed the need to laugh when I saw all the salt licks and bait boxes they had set up to get all the deer grouped up. This time, I worked from the outskirts, as shooting in a group of deer even with the silencer would spook them as they would note someone going down.

  “You are a really good shot,” Sisay praised as he tossed me up a few more magazines.

  “Lots of practice,” I admitted, not wanting to talk about how many bazillions of corrupted I’d shot or had to fight off just to survive.

  I ended up getting about a dozen bears as well, as they came to either check out the deer gathered or something left for bait they liked the smell of. That would add to the weight totals for sure.

  Then again, a lot of the deer I’d killed were big boys and girls. Everything in the area had grown wild, and without humans around to trample things, they must have found some good places for food, even in winter.

  “You are very much in the lead,” Sebastian told me. “And they ask you come power up some more batteries, as they hooked up a bunch of plucking machines, but they need the birds to dry faster after they’re plucked and cleaned so they can get bagged and loaded. Plus, they didn’t think about the containers being plugged in before they reached the ship.”

  “Alright, but James has to take a time-out too,” I told him, smiling when he did.

  We blurred to Grand Forks and they had batteries ready for me. I quickly charged them, but then they wanted me to destroy several restaurants they had already cleared out of anything perishable.

  I listened as the guy explained there was a lot of plastic there, including benches and seats and more. I waved him to go on and smiled when he admitted that he could reform energy beads into synthetics, like Jaxon for organics and Darius for inorganics. I did the first one and waited for him to show me, blinking when he made a huge plastic shipping crate the size of a pallet, but two would stack to be trailer height.

  “I want some of these,” I muttered, studying them. “We’re doing one full container of food for Seattle as well for their freezers, so make sure there’s one full of an array for them.”

  “Yes, Princess,” he agreed, dipping his head to me. The truth was, I could probably remake the energy beads into those containers, but yeah, let them help when they’d been holding out on me for sure.

  What I didn’t realize was the place we had gotten running again wasn’t just a butcher but a slaughterhouse… And the teams really knew what they were doing. I watched as they washed off the deer coming in and hooked them up by their hind legs. I turned away before the gore and shook my head at Jaxon when he looked amused.

  “Nope, don’t want to see that. I will do the shooting and the eating, but the in between I would like to skip, please.” I bounced that around for a moment. “I’ll do the cooking.” I moved over to him and leaned against him. “I loved our jerky making dates after all.”

  “Me too,” he murmured, leaning down and brushing his lips over mine. “I won you over with my honey rubs and knowledge of spices.”

  “Yeah, that was what did it,” I chuckled. I glanced across the street and noticed something, taking his hand and bringing him over there. “Let me guess, someone hoped I noticed this and offered it?”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked, biting back a smile.

  “The last time I was here, there were trucks and a bunch of shit in the way all over this part of the street,” I drawled. “And just right here, catty-corner from the slaughterhouse is clean when other parts they haven’t gotten to yet?”

  “And your answer?” Sebastian asked as he joined us with several others.

  I shrugged. “I see nothing wrong with a nice bonus for filling fifty shipping containers last night. Maybe a few pounds of jerky would be nice.”

  “Only a few pounds?” Jaxon asked me, raising an eyebrow.

  “Maybe I’ll give something extra to the team that loads the most tankers tonight,” I offered. “That’s the plan, right?” I asked Sebastian. “You’re in charge of Columbus and getting the fuels out of everywhere you can. Think you can do more than fifty?”

  He smirked at me. “We’ll hit a hundred. Is that worth you firing the place up and killing some extra elk and deer?”

  “Oh yeah,” I chuckled. “You get four tankers then. You guys are hard up for fuel over there too, aren’t you?”

  “Desperately,” he admitted. “Though the electric vehicles have helped greatly, so it’s not so bad. You fixed a dozen engines in Columbus last night and one can pull a hundred tankers easily. We’re putting what’s for us separate to head to St. Louis, and once the ship is heading back after this next load, we’ll start sending them up to Seattle.”

  “As long as everyone has plans and knows what’s what,” I agreed. I went into the place and realized I didn’t have the juice to get it all going. I turned and gave Cerdic a heated look. “We didn’t have tai chi today. Want to limber me up a bit?”

  He nodded and swooped me up, blurring us away from everyone so they didn’t get to hear our fun. He picked a romantic spot by a river to lay me on plush grass.

  “I love you, Inez,” he whispered against my lips.

  “I love you too,” I murmured, my heart soaring when he bit his finger and rubbed his blood all over his engagement ring. I wanted to never forget how much it meant to me that they swore to be mine, the love we shared, or took it for granted. I unzipped my top and moaned when he attacked my breasts. We made quick work of our clothes, and then he spread my legs as wide as they would go as he thrust in me.

  I moaned in pleasure, arching my back when his fangs came out, letting me know he was as into it as I was. He cut his hands and rubbed his blood all over me, way more than a bit of flirty fun. More than a few mouthfuls even. The fire roared in me as my skin absorbed it, but he didn’t stop, giving me more and more of what I needed.

  “I don’t like my princess on empty,” he explained in between thrusts. “My princess should always have what she needs.”

  “I have all I need,” I promised, moving my hand to his to interlock our fingers. I pulled him down to me and offered him my neck, shivering when he growled in approval, the Zen master getting aggressive with me, which was rare.

  And I loved it. He only did it for me, just like Kristof was only gentle with me. They each showed me a side of themselves that was just mine.

  In return, I gave them all of me. It was all for them.

  When he bit me, we both finished, and just for good measure, I bit him too. He nuzzled my neck when we were done, his larger frame surrounding me completely.

  “I don’t wan
t to leave you,” he whispered in my ear. “I won’t ever leave you, Inez.”

  I knew he didn’t mean just us being connected during sex. I rolled us, staring down at him and licking my fangs. “I would chase you if you tried to. You are mine, Cerdic. All of you is mine.” I struck hard and fast, riding him the same until we both finished again. I ran my tongue around his ear how he liked as I gasped for air. “I love when my Zen master gets aggressive with me. I’m all yours too.”

  “Not yet, but one day you will be,” he growled, cupping my face and kissing me breathless. “Fuck, I want you again and again.” He burst out laughing and hugged me to him. “I never thought it would be like this. I thought it would—thank you for loving us more than any other princess would.”

  “You’re just too lovable,” I murmured, knowing how scared they all were to give their hearts to someone who wouldn’t have taken such care with them.

  Wasn’t everyone afraid of that though? I mean, I was terrified of the same, as I fell deep and deeper for Cerdic and Kristof.

  “There’s an early lunch coming,” Jaxon informed us. “Apparently Nick found something fun and had an idea to start helping to get the trading going.”

  I nodded, knowing that was a hurdle, as the clans who were taking over areas were worried that they were going to give everything they were doing and not get anything. Some of them were alive from when that was how the lords of the land or whatever handled things, so I got it, but I didn’t get it.

  If that made any sense.

  We cleaned up, and I was scratching so bad I was drawing blood without even realizing it. Kristof carried me off and set me on my feet, smirking when my legs were a bit wobbly, as he knew how that had happened.

  Still, I got the jerky factory back online and even demolished few blocks of restaurants for them to use the energy beads for whatever they needed.

  My body flushed as Kristof knelt and licked the scratches I’d made on my stomach. He kept licking when he saw I liked it, then he stood and covered his ring in his blood, smirking still when I moaned at how good it felt.