Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel Mari Carr (great books of all time .txt) 📖

English—conversing instead in a litany of guttural groans and breathless cries.

Annalise went over first, crying out his name and Jakob’s as her body trembled with the force of her orgasm. Walt was mere seconds behind her. There was no stopping him. He reached down, gripping his own dick, stroking his fist over it once, twice, before he erupted, his come splashing out on the comforter, some hitting Annalise’s thighs and stomach.

Jakob thrust inside him only a handful of times more before his fingers turned to vises on Walt’s hips, gripping hard enough to bruise as he exploded.

They all remained there, a frozen tableau as they each attempted to land. Jakob moved first, holding on to the end of the condom as he slowly slid out.

“Now you’re gentle,” Walt said with a grin. He pushed himself backwards trying to find the strength to stand. His back was stiff and his knees slightly weak. It had been quite a workout.

“Are you okay?” Jakob asked him, placing a steadying hand on his back.

Walt twisted and gave Jakob a hard kiss that let him know exactly how okay he was.

Together, they turned to Annalise.

“How about you, sweetheart?” Walt asked, belatedly concerned that perhaps they’d gotten too carried away with lust.

Annalise grinned like the cat who’d eaten the canary. “Never been better,” she all but purred.

He and Jakob chuckled as they padded to the bathroom to wash up. Jakob tossed the condom and washed his hands. Walt did the same, then tapped a few ibuprofen into his palm and got a cup of water. Regardless of how happy Annalise looked now, Walt was certain once the post-orgasmic pleasure had waned, she’d be sore again.

They returned to the room together. Annalise sat up to swallow the pills as they climbed into the bed, he and Jakob flanking her. Walt sighed as he sank into the warm soft bed, chuckling as he murmured softly, “I live here now.”

Chapter Twenty

Nikolett rubbed her eyes wearily. She, Nyx, Grigoris, Dimitri and Dimitri’s spouses had been up all night, poring over the video footage from each of the case files off Annalise’s thumb drive. She’d called in the knights and security officers stationed in and around Budapest when she accepted this couldn’t be done with a handful of people in a matter of mere hours. It was going to take more—more work, more people, more focus.

Once briefed on the situation, the new additions were given assignments.

The larger conference room on the second floor, just down the hall from both her and Nyx’s offices, had become the headquarters of the investigation. Eventually they’d spilled into the other conference room as more and more people arrived to help.

She had a moment where she wondered if she was doing the right thing. This killer had operated in her territory, but Alicja Lewandowski wasn’t one of her members. Josephine had been a member, but from Dublin, which—though it was essentially neutral thanks to the presence of the archive—was in England’s territory. England belonged Arthur, Sophia, and James.

And she knew from past conversations with Arthur that the investigation into Josephine’s death was a cold case with both the English knights and the Irish Garda Síochána.

Still, she could have turned this over to England rather than put the resources of her territory toward the investigation—a territory still suffering from the manipulations and abuse perpetuated by their former admiral.

There was no reason for this to be Hungary’s responsibility.

No reason, except that she’d known Petro was duplicitous and manipulative. She’d known there was something wrong and thought she could handle it. That overconfidence, coupled with obedience, had kept her from reaching out and telling someone what was going on.

Though very few people would think of her as “obedient,” she took her oaths very seriously. The oath she took upon joining the Masters’ Admiralty included obedience to her admiral. But leveraging power and allies wasn’t disobedient, so she’d decided to take on Petro the way she’d been trying to change the Hungarian government as a member of Parliament.

Given enough time she’d thought she could build allies within the territory leadership and bring pressure to bear on the admiral that would force him to change. And while she’d been playing a long game and holding her oath of obedience, people died. Petro hurt and killed, and even after his death, his reach was long and bloody.

Now she had a new way of looking at the world. Oaths of obedience held only so long as the person you were to obey was sane, and no authority was beyond being questioned. Including her own. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen Nyx as her vice admiral, and why those in her inner circle routinely questioned and challenged her decisions.

If she could have fit a nice round table in her’s or Nyx’s office, she would have gotten one so they could all sit around it, equals in private, though they would maintain formalities when in the presence of others.

Speaking of Nyx, the former academic had found a whiteboard and hauled it into the conference room. On it were listed the main points from Dr. Fischer’s profile, as well as pictures of Josephine and Alicja.

The picture of Alicja was of her face, but from the autopsy, not her ID photo, and cropped so the severed end of her neck wasn’t visible. Josephine’s was a smiling candid shot of her, alive and happy.

Nikolett didn’t need to see the picture of Josephine’s severed head ever again. It was burned into her memory.

“Admiral,” Dimitri murmured. “Let us do our work. You should sleep.”

She’d sent Vadisk to do precisely that—sleep and eat—hours ago. But Nikolett didn’t believe in asking people to do things she wasn’t willing to do herself.

“When we have something, I will,” she murmured, turning back to her computer.

“You might be missing things,” Nyx said coolly. She hadn’t even looked up from her computer. “If you’re tired, you’ll make mistakes.”

Nikolett arched a brow at her, but then nodded. It was one of the reasons she