Tamed By Air

  QUINN LOFTIS

  Copyright © 2022 by Quinn Loftis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For all those who continue to read my books. I am humbled and honored.

  Contents

  Play List

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Veiled By Smoke Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Quinn’s Bookshelf

  Play List

  Dynasty- Miia

  Soldier- Fleurie

  Rush- Lewis Capaldi

  Under My Feet- Zach Williams

  Over Again- X62

  Mississippi Blood- Lynyrd Skynyrd

  If You Love her- Forest Black

  I’m Not Me Without You- Ill-Advised Poetry

  Hold My Girl- George Ezra

  Rescue- Lauren Daigle

  Seasons- NEEDTOBREATHE

  Fear Is a Liar- Zach Williams

  Stand By Me- Florence + the Machine

  Eyelids- Paris Jackson

  Running For So Long- Parker Ainsworth

  High- Miley Cyrus

  Shallow- Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper

  Falling- Harry Styles

  Feel It- X62

  Unsteady- X Ambassadors

  Carried Me with You- Brandi Carlile

  If I need You- Rachel Bradshaw

  On My Way- Banditos

  I Get to Love You- Ruelle

  War of Hearts- Ruelle

  Monsters- Ruelle

  The World We Made- Ruelle

  Whatever It Takes- Imagine Dragons

  Girls Like Us- Zoe Week

  Tourniquet- Evanescence

  Remember Me- Eivor

  Brighter Days- Blessing Offer

  I’m Not the Devil- Cody Jinks

  Prologue

  “I’m in hell. That’s not a figure of speech to describe high school what with its horde of hormonal teenage girls swarming the halls who terrorize those they believe are beneath them. You know the ones. Those girls who are so insecure about themselves they feel the need—no, the unending compulsion—to do everything in their power to make others feel inferior. Me, bitter? No way…

  But I’m not in high school. I’m in the actual hell—like the literal underworld. I’ve been kidnapped by an incredibly handsome immortal being that is hell-bent on making me his wife. And an even more handsome immortal being, who is my soul mate, is fighting his way through hell to rescue me. So I’ll let you decide where you’d rather be: hell or high school?” ~Shelly

  “It pisses me off that I can’t tell you to go to hell … or burn in hell … or say anything else that expresses how much I want to condemn you to hell.” Shelly paced the living room of Osiris’s house, which, of course, was literally in hell. “Who has a freaking house in hell, anyway?” She threw her hands in the air. “I mean, other than the people who live in Hollywood. We all know that LA is just the topside version of hell. But let’s not get off topic.”

  “I didn’t know we were having a conversation.” Osiris took a seat on the sofa, propping his ankle on his knee. He leaned back and rested his left arm along the top of the pillows lined up behind him. His dark hair was artfully disheveled, and his—to Shelly’s complete irritation—handsome face was completely relaxed. He didn’t look at all like a man who had just cast a demon to the pits of hell, killed a woman, and dragged Shelly once again to the underworld. He wore a black suit, and—again to Shelly’s annoyance—he wore it well. “I thought you were simply giving me a verbal dressing down.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “Dressing down? How old are you?” Then she quickly held up her hand. “Don’t answer that. I know it was a dumb question. I know you’re literally older than dirt.”

  He shrugged. “But to answer your question as to why I maintain a domicile—”

  “It was rhetorical,” she snapped.

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m the lord of the underworld. Where else would I have a house?”

  “The question is more, why do you need a house?” She stood with her arms folded in front of her. Shelly’s uniform—the one given to her after she was blessed by Aviur with fire elementalist powers and that marked her as a student of the fire elementalist school—was gone. With a snap of his fingers, Osiris had made it vanish, replacing it with a flowing dress made of the finest material in the world … or in hell. She wasn’t sure where Osiris did his shopping. Did they have dress shops in hell? Regardless, she hated how the soft fabric draped so elegantly over her or how it felt so good against her skin. Focus, Shelly. She mentally barked at herself and narrowed her eyes at her captor. “Do you need to sleep or eat or do … other human-type things that we won’t say out loud because that’s just freaking not okay?”

  His lips curved up in a sly smile. “Are you asking me if I use the—”

  “Nope.” Shelly shook her head. “I’m just asking you why you need a house.”

  “Because I like nice things.” He motioned to the surrounding space. “As a general rule, hell is the opposite of nice. Why should I be surrounded by so much unpleasantness?”

  Shelly admitted, albeit not out loud, that the house was just as nice as she remembered it from when she and Ra had been there; it was positively lavish. During that first visit, she and Ra had explored a little, but they’d not looked in every door they’d come to, so this was her first time seeing this particular room. But it didn’t matter how beautiful it was, the room was still a cage. She was a captive, not a guest.

  Shelly had no idea how long she’d been imprisoned … this time around. Time moved differently in the underworld, and she had no way of tracking the days. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d gone to sleep, though she honestly slept little because she couldn’t stop worrying.

  “You don’t deserve nice things.” Shelly barely kept herself from stomping her foot. Osiris’s mouth pinched, and his eyes crinkled in the corners. She shuddered when his gaze upon her became more intense. Maybe I should choose my words more carefully. I don’t want to end up like poor Zuri. Shelly knew she’d never forget the look of complete agony in Zuri’s eyes. It wasn’t the look when the knife slid across the woman’s own throat. Not at all. Instead, it was Zuri’s face when she found out what had happened to Jax. If there was ever any doubt that Zuri loved the earth elementalist, it was erased in that moment. Shelly couldn’t help but think how she would feel if she had to watch Ra killed in battle.

  The thought chased away Shelly’s sense of self-preservation. “You deserve to burn in hell, not live in luxury. You killed a woman in cold blood.”

  “I assure you, little one, my blood is never cold.” He smirked at her. “But, yes, I did eliminate a rather nasty thorn in my side. Though, to be fair, she tried to kill me first.”

  “You’re the devil, genius. You can’t be killed. She was no threat to you. Why not simply let Zuri go and pop back to your posh, hellish home and let her be? I guess that would have been too easy. Instead, you decided her life was worthless. You didn’t consider how her death would affect those who care about her.” Shelly pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. Her head hurt. It wasn’t the first time. Since Osiris had brought her back to hell, however long ago that had been, Shelly had been having periodic headaches. They seemed to be getting progressively worse. And that wasn’t all. She’d also noticed a throbbing in her chest. It started as a dull ache and grew until she was sure that she had to be having a heart attack. The headaches tended to last a half hour or so, while the chest pains subsided after about fifteen minutes. So far, they hadn’t occurred simultaneously, for which Shelly was grateful. She opened her eyes and hoped the pain wouldn’t get any worse.

  “Is your head hurting again?” Osiris asked, his voice lowering a bit. He dropped his arm from the back of the couch and leaned forward.

  Much to her annoyance, Shelly couldn’t hide the pain from her captor. And while Shelly didn’t know what caused the episodes, she had a hunch Osiris knew. Though she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him. “Don’t pretend you care.” Shelly huffed. “If you cared about me at all, you wouldn’t have kidnapped me.”

  “You can hardly blame me for my lack of empathy. As you keep pointing out”—he shrugged—“I’m the devil. You can’t expect me to have emotions.”

  “Oh, you have emotions. Emotions like rage, anger, fury, selfishness—”

  “Selfishness isn’t an emotion.”

  She continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Self-pity, resentment, jealousy, narcissism—”

  He tapped his fingers on the back of the couch, his voice nonchalant as he spoke. “Also not an emotion.”

  “And how about the inability to keep your mouth shut because you always have to have the last word?” Shelly wanted to slap him. It didn�
��t even have to be a big slap. It could be a teeny, tiny slap that left only a hint of redness. Anything that left a mark, that left some evidence that she wasn’t powerless, that she could affect him somehow. Okay, who was she kidding? She wanted to knock the hell out of him. “Ugh. Why is hell in so many of my favorite expressions? The word is irrelevant to me now.”

  Osiris raised his hand as if he was a student in class. Then, like a four-year-old blurting out without being called on, said, “Inability to keep my mouth shut is, obviously, not an emotion.” Shelly opened her mouth to respond, but he held out his palm, and she snapped her jaw closed. “And hell should be anything but an irrelevant word to you, considering it is your home.”

  “No!” she shouted at him before she could restrain herself. With the shout came more pain. It ripped through her skull, and Shelly had to force her arms to remain down to keep from grasping her head. “This is not my home. Don’t ever say that again. My home is with my family, my friends, and with Ra.”

  Osiris leaped to his feet. In the blink of an eye, he stood directly in front of her, his face mere inches from hers. When he spoke, the lord of the underworld’s voice was so deep and cold it sent a chill up Shelly’s spine. “Never, ever speak his name in my presence again.”

  Shelly couldn’t help herself. It was as if someone else had taken over her body. All reason left her. She felt as if she was watching someone else lean into Osiris. Her lips moved closer, a hair’s breadth from his ear. “Ra,” she whispered, breathing out her mate’s name like a prayer, but also a dare to the devil himself. Perhaps it wasn’t her brightest moment.

  He pulled back to look into her eyes. His jaw clenched. Shelly could practically feel his body vibrating as his eyes danced with the flames of his rage. She’d gone too far. She knew at any minute he would whip out a knife and slash it across her throat, just as he had done to Zuri. Then he’d drop her to the ground and laugh while she bled out onto the hardwood floors of his immaculate home. The last thing Shelly would see would be Osiris’s mocking face. Her chest barely rose and fell as she struggled to breathe. Shelly’s body suddenly felt heavy, as if any attempt at movement would be futile. She waited. One heartbeat, two, three. But the knife never came. Nor did any other expression of rage she expected.

  The heat of Osiris’s breath fanned across her face when he finally spoke, the words coming with a calm determination that scared her more than any scream of rage he could have issued. “If it is the last thing I ever do in my great existence, I will convince you to choose me.” Then his hand gripped her arm, firmly but not painfully. In an instant, she materialized in her own room—her prison. But Osiris wasn’t there. He’d released her and disappeared. To where? Shelly couldn’t even guess.

  Her eyes roamed over the room, and she sighed. A bed, covered in black and white pillows and a soft black comforter, dominated the center of the room. Rich, black tapestries hung from the walls. Black—are you beginning to see a pattern here?—silky curtains hung over the windows, which weren’t actually windows at all, but illusions of some kind. Thank goodness. The last thing Shelly wanted was a view of the fire and brimstone outside. Instead, Shelly had discovered, the landscape beyond the windows showed whatever the person looking outward wanted to see at that moment. The first time Shelly had peered through the window, she’d seen the grounds of Terra Academy. Upon seeing the school, she’d fallen to the floor and cried for an hour. Shelly knew the image hadn’t been real, but she’d so desperately wanted it to be. When Osiris came to fetch her the next morning, she’d asked about the windows. After a mirthless chuckle, he’d explained why she’d seen the image. Since then, she’d kept the curtains closed. She didn’t want to sit and stare longingly at what she couldn’t have. Self-torture wasn’t exactly her thing. Unless it was Ra doing the torturing, and he was deliciously teasing her body. That was a kind of torture she could happily endure forever. “Don’t go there, Shelly,” she said out loud. Every time she thought about the man she loved, the headache or the chest pain increased.

  Not thinking about Ra was next to impossible. Thankfully, her room contained a large bookshelf, made of black wood, of course, filled with books that helped distract her. But the respite was never for very long. No matter what she tried to read, from romance novels to self-help books—why in the world did the devil have self-help books?—her mind would eventually drift back to Ra.

  Shelly’s room connected to a lavish bathroom, which contained a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool. She’d used the tub on the first day of her arrival and realized it never ran out of hot water. She’d rolled her eyes. Of course, hell would have an endless supply of hot water. Running out of heated water here would be like Antarctica running out of ice.

  Shelly walked to the bed and sat. “What would Ra do?” It wasn’t lost on her that she’d begun to talk out loud even when she was alone. “He’d unleash a tornado of ass-whipping all over these demons.” She sighed. “But he has all sorts of power, both the fire and pharaoh kind.” Shelly flopped back on the bed, gritting her teeth as she growled. She stared up at the ceiling as agony filled her head. Her heart pounded so hard it felt like it was trying to escape the confines of her body.

  She turned her thoughts toward Tara and Gabby, wondering what her friends were doing. Shelly knew Tara would be going out of her mind. Even though Tara showed little emotion toward her, Shelly knew her best-freaky-friend-forever (BFFF) loved her. Tara would have kicked her to the curb a long time ago if she didn’t care about Shelly. Then her mind turned down a new alley. She thought about Aston, who had been kidnapped by some tough-ass looking chick riding a dragon. Shelly had to admit the woman looked cool as hell riding the beast, and Shelly would be lying if she said she wasn’t just a little jealous. Who doesn’t want to ride a dragon? She wondered if Aston was okay and if “dragon chick” was holding him as a prisoner, too. During the battle at the Devil’s Heart, she remembered the girl saying something about Aston being hers. Did that mean they were … soul bonded? Weird.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” she told the ceiling. “But how?” The ceiling did not help. She wished some magic writing would appear there, telling her what to do. But the ceiling remained frustratingly blank.

  Shelly rolled to her side and propped herself up on an elbow. She wondered how long Osiris would be pissed this time. It had become a hobby of hers to push his buttons, and each time she thought he’d kill her, he simply took her back to her room and left her. Her stomach growled. Moments later, as if on cue, a tray full of food appeared on her bed. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Whenever she felt hungry, food would appear. Somehow Osiris knew when she needed to eat. She’d come to expect it, though the first time it had happened, she’d almost fallen off the bed. Of course, the offered meal wasn’t merely a sandwich and a glass of water. The food Osiris provided looked and tasted as if it had been cooked in a five-star restaurant. The exquisite aromas filled the air, and her mouth watered as she stared at the deliciousness before her.

  She reached for a buttery roll and inwardly berated herself. She felt guilty for eating the food, as if it was a sign of acceptance of her circumstances. But it wasn’t. Shelly ate because starving herself would be stupid. An awesome escape plan was sure to pop into her mind any day now. And she couldn’t escape if she was weak from hunger. With that conviction running through her, Shelly ate until her stomach couldn’t take anymore. Then she grabbed the book she’d been reading—a shifter romance that made her blush a bit at times. She’d let herself escape into a different kind of supernatural world, one where she wasn’t the bride-to-be of the devil, and hell wasn’t her home.

  Chapter

  One

  “So, how did you two meet?”

  Oh, you know, just like everyone else does, I guess. She flew over me while riding a dragon that snatched me up in its talons … and the rest is history … said absolutely no one ever. Until me.” ~Aston Spence