Devourer of Men (Devourer, #1)

by Nikki St. Crowe

I want to be terrified by Roc. I want to be adored by James. I want it all, all of it and more.

“This is always what I hated most about him,” he admits, his voice low and hoarse. “What?” I coax. “How damn good he looks in a suit.” My jaw drops a little, nose burning. If I needed any further proof, here it is.

“I asked you to stay,” he says. “You refused me.” “You cut off James’s hand.” “If a hand touches what’s mine, then the hand is mine too. And you were mine first.”

didn’t belong to you.” He clucks his tongue. “Yes you did.”

“For someone who thinks she doesn’t know how to dance, you did well.” I swallow and then words are tumbling out of my mouth. “Are you with him?” Roc’s green eyes burn like emeralds in the sun. “Oh, Your Majesty. Jealousy does not become you.”

“What did you say to her? Why did she run away?” “She’s jealous.” “Of what?” “You and I.” He snorts. “There is no you and I.” I clutch at my heart. “You wound me, Captain.” “Oh don’t be ridiculous.”

“You can’t go around threatening to kill someone in a foreign court!” “Now who’s being ridiculous? Of course I can.” “The fact that you never concern yourself with consequences⁠—”` “Is impressive?” I cut in. “No.” His scowl deepens. “Worrisome.” “Ahh. That was going to be my seventh guess.”

“Are you giving me orders?” “If I were, would you abide them?” I shrug and scan the hall. “If you ordered me to please you, I would.” He screws up his mouth. “Well I would never.” His heart ticks up a beat, telling me he’s lying. “Sure sure,” I say. “Now run along, Captain. I have work to do.”

I know what I do to women. It’s a gift and a curse. More gift than curse if I’m honest. I don’t know that my dashing good looks and relentless charm has ever gotten me into trouble. It’s definitely gotten me out of it on more than one occasion.

Another yank and there is enough dead space for me to stick my head around the backside, between the bed and the wall. And there… There’s where I find it. A maker’s mark. A circle with two wings and two intertwined Ms. The Myth Makers. “Well fuck me,” I say on a breath.

The Bone Society and The Myth Makers have, for most of our history, been allies. But that’s because we don’t get in the way of the Myths and they don’t get in ours. But twice now, on two different islands, I’ve found them meddling, expanding, putting their fingers into things they should not be putting their fingers in.

There is no saving the man now. No magic, no miracle will bring his corpse back to life. Because I’d put the rest of my fairy gold on the fact that him lying on death’s door has the Myths’ fingerprints all over it.

The prince says, “What would you like me to do with them, then?” The girl is silent a moment, and then she says, “You keep your attention on your dying father. Leave the queen’s guests to me.” Bloody hell. I turn away from the door and run from the hall. What have we walked into the middle of?

Water droplets collect on his skin skimming over the dark ink that decorates his chest. There are a riot of flowers and vines, with a name in script in the center. Lainey, it says. His sister.

I never would have taken the Crocodile for a sentimental man, but the ink has me questioning that assumption. And didn’t he return to Neverland for his brother? He likes to pretend he loves nothing, but I think he’s lying. I think he loves people from a distance so that if they manage to break his heart, they’re too far away to notice.

“Shouldn’t you get dressed?” “Should I?” “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s poor form.” “Is it?”

“Very well,” he says and then removes the towel and there is no force in the world that could have kept my eyes from looking down. Bloody hell. Like every part of him, he’s perfect.

“If there was any part of you that didn’t want to be toyed with, it wouldn’t be so fucking easy. Now would it?”

“We’re here for Wendy.” “Yes.” “We are not here for one another.” “Aren’t we?” “No.” “Tell that to the bulge between your legs.”

I should leave. I know I should. There is a body part literally missing because of him. Every part of my rational brain is yelling at me to go, but the primal side, the disastrous side, the empty, hungry, desolate side, can never seem to walk away from him.

Can’t my revenge be in taking pleasure from him instead? Let the feel of his touch replace the memory of his pain?

He is a razor blade dragged across my skin, and I am testing his sharpness. Will he cut me? Do I even care anymore? I will bleed black if he does. Every second I am with him, I am courting darkness. His, mine, there is no longer a difference. My father would hate everything about the man I’ve become. Poor form indeed.

“You keep doing that, Captain,” he says, “and I will be blowing in your hand before I have a chance at your ass.”

“Is that what you want?” I ask him. “To have all of me?” I don’t want to sound so needy, but there is nothing I want more than to hear him admit to his desire. “Yes,” he says. “Then do it.”

“It’s your turn to shut the fuck up.” He’s serious now, his voice deep and raspy. “You get six words. More. Harder. Stop. Slower. God. Fuck. Now stop being so difficult and let me take care of you. All right?”

“I’ve missed you all of the days that have stretched between then and now. If I’d known you were here, pregnant with my baby, I would have come, Wendy Darling. I would have saved you or died trying.”

Roc puts his mouth to James’s ear. “Don’t go easy on her, Captain.” James’s gaze darkens. His hook digs into the back of my thigh and pain bites into my skin. “I would suspect the queen needs to be properly fucked,”

Captain and I weren’t able to finish. Not before Wendy Darling burst into my room. Perfect fucking timing. Because now I get to watch her come while the Captain comes, while his ass tightens around me and I fill him up.

Why did I ever hate him? It makes no sense now. I could have been fucking him this entire time. I could have made him mine.

“I’m close,” she warns. “Me too,” the Captain says. “I want to hear you both come,” I order them. “Let me feel your pleasure.”

“Why did you take my hand then?” I lift my hook, gesturing at him. “I mean, I know she is your excuse.” I nod at the line of Wendy’s body tucked beneath the blanket. “But why, exactly? You had no claim to her. And you yourself have admitted you don’t feel love.”

“That’s another lie,” he admits. “I am capable of love. But everything I have ever loved has left me.”

Maybe I was always destined to be forgotten in the dark. Maybe I was never meant to have any life at all. From the moment I was born, I knew I was cursed. I was always at the mercy of someone else.

“I am originally from Lostland,” she tells me. “The home of the Myth Makers.” One of the Isles’ secret societies, the ones always working behind the scenes for power and prestige and wealth.

“The Myth Makers are controlled by a council of seven. They are known as the Myths and at one point, I was to be inducted as one. But the oldest Myth thought I was too, well, feral, and he bypassed me for his nephew. So I killed him. The nephew, not the Myth. That didn’t go over well.”

I’m not sure what to do with myself. I’m still shocked she’s here. I’m still shocked she somehow managed to make herself the prince’s betrothed and then hid in plain sight looking the part of a demure bride-to-be.

“It was a coin toss as to whether William or James—” she tilts her glass toward me “—were the subject of the fortune teller’s prediction, so I took a gamble and chose you. Your father wanted me to fix you, but I just needed a map. So using what little power I had left, I gave you a part of myself, the most important part: my magic.”

“You set sail one day and you never returned,” she says. “Because of course you quite literally stumbled into the Seven Isles when I had been searching for my way through for decades. But once you were there, all I had to do was track my magic and follow you.”

“Voila. I am home. But what I didn’t account for is that you would impregnate a Darling and that the Darling baby would give its mother power too.” My mouth drops open.

“What do you want of Everland?” She smiles. “The Myth I told you about? The one who banished me? He’s dead now. A new Myth reigns and plans are in motion. I am just a cog in the scheme.” “Bloody hell.” “Oh yes, Captain Hook,” she says and tips her glass to me. “It will be bloody indeed.”

“Wendy. Wendy. Wendy.” Theo clucks his tongue as he ambles over. “I had really hoped you’d make this easier on yourself.” “Who paid you, Theo?” I scramble to my feet. “Don’t you know you can’t trust any of them?”

He smiles. Watery blood is coating his teeth. “Maybe you can’t trust the witch, but she’s already given me twice what you have in gold. Did you really expect me to believe you when you said you’d marry me once the old man died? It was easy to say yes to the witch when she propositioned me.”

“What witch? What are you talking about?” “Mareth,” he finally says. “Mareth is the witch.” Hally’s betrothed? That doesn’t s...

“You know,” Roc says as he comes forward with slow, lazy steps, “I made myself a promise when you barged into our room at the inn, when you hit my Captain.” “Oh yeah?” Theo takes a step back as if the way to keep himself safe is to keep a distance between himself and Roc. “I promised myself that at the first opportunity, I’d fucking kill you.”

“Then, after you arrested us and dragged us in front of the queen, you hit me with your baton. Do you remember?” Theo runs his tongue along his teeth. “Not particularly.” “I made myself a second promise. That you were double dead.”

Roc reaches back, steals Asha’s dagger from her hip and sends it sailing through the air. The blade hits Theo in the throat and blood geysers from the wound. Theo blinks wide-eyed and pale. Then Roc darts forward, almost a blur, and takes Theo’s head between his two hands and twists. CRACK.

“There,” Roc says and dusts off his hands. “Double dead.”

Wendy gives me a weak smile. “You were always the best of us, James.” “I’m just a pirate who⁠—” She comes over and swallows my objection with a kiss. Warmth spreads through my chest. “You are not just a pirate,” she says. “You are one of the most caring men I’ve ever met.”

He flashes to his beastly form, then back to his solid form. I surge forward once the ship rights itself, but when I grab Roc by the arm, he disintegrates in my grip like he’s nothing but ocean mist. “Something is wrong,” he rasps and then shifts again.

I turn around just in time to see him re-solidify and crash into a table. When I come up on him, he’s blurred again, but there is a face swirling in his mist. The Myth Maker witch. Christ.