Page 53 of Legacy of Chaos

But wouldn’t it be nice if I did? If I could just lie there with Stryke and bask in wave after wave of mind-blowing pleasure?

She immediately struck that thought. She wasn’t going to have sex with Stryke again. That had been a one-time thing to keep him going so they could get off this wretched platform alive.

Hopefully, he was working on that right now. Why else would he have escaped from her as if she were a female Dire Mantis intent on devouring him after mating?

Still, he could have at least said goodbye.

Her fingers shook as she opened the door and slipped out into the empty hallway. No one saw her as she made her way to the bridge, where she'd been told Stryke was two decks below with the submersible.

The rain had stopped again, but fog engulfed her, wrapping her in a stinging, dark sensation as she took the metal stairs down, pausing once for another climax. She clung to the railing, acutely aware of how bizarre it was to experience pleasure while malevolent forces swirled around her. Worse, the vulnerability that came with it left her sweating despite the cold. Anything could climb out of the sea and drag her into the water while she was distracted.

When the pleasure passed, she hurried toward the submersible. The metal sphere hung suspended over a gap in the grating by a massive crane-like structure. Stryke stood next to it, discussing something with Taran.

As she approached, Taran nodded and headed away at a jog. Stryke waved her forward.

“We figured out a way to electrify the sub’s exterior. It might not be effective against leviathans, but it should offer some protection against smaller demons and Earth realm animals affected by the malevolent radiation.”

“Great,” she said. “You wanna talk about what just happened?”

He shot her a look. “What happened between us? No. Nice shirt. Hand me that epoxy.”

“It was dry, and I was freezing.” She didn’t care that it was too big and hung to mid-thigh. She passed him the tube lying on the deck a few feet away. “How long do you have?”

“Until I need sex again?” He shrugged as he wiped a section of the sub dry with his sleeve. “Four to six hours, but hopefully, we’ll be off this thing by then.”

“Then can we talk?”

He carefully applied a layer of glue to the dry spot. “No.”

“No?” She stared at him in disbelief. “Excuse me, but you owe me.”

“For saving my life?” He snorted. “Okay, thank you.”

He. Was. Infuriating.

“Not that, you jackass. You wanna off yourself, I don’t give a shit. What you owe me for is being here in the first place. And you owe me for getting me killed because that’s probably what’s going to happen.”

He pulled a quarter-sized, crimson witchstone from his pocket and affixed it to the glue.

“Okay, fine. I owe you. What’s so important that we need to discuss it right this second instead of, you know, saving the entire world?”

Damn him. He was right. She’d let her emotions reign when she needed to figure out how to repair the other technomancer’s work before a rift between realms opened.

Setting her irritation aside, she studied the witchstone, a type of spell-absorbing stone that allowed magic users to extend the reach of their spells. Most mage magic didn’t work underwater, but the witchstone would act as a slow-release capsule and, in theory, create a temporary barrier from evil.

“If you glue your comms unit to the side of the sub, I can use it to make a secondary protective barrier.”

“Good thinking.” He whipped it off his wrist. “I don’t know how deep it’ll go before it breaks, though.”

“Anything will help.” She gestured, and he tossed it to her. She whistled as she turned it over in her palms. The leather band, encrusted with what she was sure were diamonds, screamed money. “You want to remove the band first? It’s gotta be worth ten grand.”

“Thirty. And no, it’s fine. The diamonds enhance the unit’s performance.”

Okey dokey. “I guess when you’re a bazillionaire, thirty thousand bucks is nothing.”

His gaze bored into hers. “If the watch was worth my entire fortune, I wouldn’t care,” he said. “What I care about are the people on this rig and on this planet who will die if we fail. Evil can’t win, Cyan. I won’t let it, and I don’t care how much it costs.”

And that fast, she felt like a jerk. She had no idea how to respond, so she concentrated on the inner workings of his comms, sending a spell into it to enhance the mage’s barrier. When she was done, she handed it back to him.

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