“But I’m no competition, am I?”
He seemed to debate with himself for a moment. “You won the Roman emperor that time. Nailed me on the basic required language I’d been writing for centuries.”
She managed to laugh. “I remember now. You took it with exceptionally good grace.”
It might have been her imagination, but she thought his expression darkened, a haunted shadow crossing his perfect features. For the first time in her existence, it occurred to her to wonder what consequences he faced for failing. She didn’t meet any repercussions except sorrowful embraces and encouraging words that gave no comfort. What did Damael’s masters do to him when he didn’t deliver?
She hadn’t seen him for a long time after that miraculous victory. A long, long time.
Which begged another question that sent a chill through her. Would he really risk whatever hell might be in store for him by releasing Adam if she gave in?
“How do you feel?” he asked, and she realized she’d been staring up at him longer than she should have. Behind him, the sky was black and glittering with stars, but it had to be nearing dawn. She could escape into that great open expanse right now, be done with all of this. Leave Adam to the doom he’d only brought upon himself.
But she wasn’t doing it. And it was becoming more apparent to her that she wasn’t going to.
She shifted on the ground and winced at the sharp pains that crackled along her limbs. There really was no reason to lie to him. “Not well. I still hurt.”
“Shall I make it better?”
“You can?”
“If you’ll allow me.”
Wariness crept through her, and she furrowed her brow at him. “That depends on what I must allow.”
He withdrew his hand from her hair and rested his elbow on his bent knee. Under ordinary circumstances, his smile might have been described as seductive, but at the moment she found it to be merely cruel. “A kiss.”
Chapter Three
A sound of frustration escaped her, and she turned her face away from him, toward the ground. “You lie. I should have known all of this was leading back to your perverse—”
“It’s the quickest way to draw the energy into myself. Unless you’d rather—”
“Hush. No.”
“Don’t be like that. I can help you.”
“You only want to help yourself.”
“How is that? I’ve offered you everything you want. Adam’s soul. Your healing. I’m a regular good Samaritan here, am I not?”
She gave a bark of laughter and instantly cringed. He couldn’t deny that her vulnerability was tugging at every predatory sense he possessed. She was on the ground, crumpled, helpless. Like a little bird with a broken wing, and he was the cat creeping up on her, step by agonizingly slow step.
Her fingers dug into the ground as another spasm seemed to overtake her, and he made a production of sighing wearily. “This is needless, I’m telling you. I can take it all away.”
“How long will I be this way?”
“Have you never come under attack before?”
“If I have, it’s been so long I can’t remember.”
“Well, then. You could lie here for days if I don’t help you.”
“And why should I believe that?”
“Because it’s the truth?”
“Ha. Unlikely. You only want me to kiss you.”
“That’s a given. But I’m being sincere as well.”
She glanced at him with a sort of desperation in her blue eyes that left him struggling to conceal compassion he had no business feeling. It made him hope his outlandish scheme to heal her would work, but it always had with humans. Maybe she would be no different. “I want to believe you. So much.” Even as a whisper, her words were strained, agonized. “What does that say about me? Please, if there is any vestige of selflessness within you, leave me be. Don’t make me into a fool.”
The longer she’d spoken, the more strength her voice had gained, until finally those eyes were blazing at him with righteous anger. He realized his earlier assertion had been off base. Even while wounded, she was not vulnerable. At least not in spirit.
“You’re a worthy adversary,” he told her. “I’ve always thought that. You don’t give up until the end. You deserve more than to be left on the ground, wallowing in pain.” He reached forward and slid his hands beneath her, seeing her eyes fly open wide in alarm. Weakly, she struggled against him, but he was too strong for her at this point. He lifted her and shifted until he was sitting on the ground, cradling her in his arms.
She felt frail against him, insubstantial. The softness of the wings folded tight against her back made his mouth run dry. He’d never touched anything like that before in his life. Hadn’t known such suppleness existed, until she was in his arms.
Her chest was heaving, her hand gripping his jacket even as she stared up at him apprehensively. He couldn’t interpret whether her reaction was from fear or desire or perhaps a combination of both. Sudden frustration engulfed him whole and chewed him up without mercy.
“Stubborn angel, I give you my word, dammit, and I don’t do that often. Let me help you. But I won’t do it without your permission,” he added, hearing the tight, barely leashed desperation in his own voice. “Give it to me.”
“If you lie to me, I’ll send an extermination squad after you.” The vow was laced with an intensity that made him not doubt her words for a second. And then the coolness of her fingers crept over either side of his face and she pulled his mouth down to hers.
The shock that went through his system was another first. She must have felt it too, because the instant his lips met hers, she gasped and her hands tightened on him. But she didn’t fling him away. A shuddery sigh escaped her, and her air-light body seemed to melt into him. Her hands gentled too, sliding from his face to bury themselves in his hair.
Her lips were cool, pliant, sweeter than all the fruits of the earth. She didn’t stiffen against him or feign any sort of unwillingness or reluctance, and this, more than anything, was his undoing. He could almost believe she was allowing this because she wanted it, not for any favors he could do her.
But he’d given his word.
He opened himself to the darkness coursing through her. As he’d hoped, it responded, drawn back toward its source. He drank it from her, absorbed it, cleansed her of it until not a single particle of Nax’s filth remained in Celeste’s pristine spirit.
He had to be careful not to place any of his own there. He felt as if everything within him was being sucked out by nothing but the tender play of her lips beneath his. She could wring him dry, leave him nothing but a husk, and he would only think it a delicious way to go.
His task was done. She was clean. But he couldn’t release her. She whimpered into his mouth, and he drank in the sound as eagerly as dawn claimed the sky above them. He ached, throbbed, yearned to possess her. The effort of restraining his hands from roaming the softness of her body was as precarious as binding two mad beasts with something as fragile as yarn. One more move, one more sigh from her, and that binding might break…
She stunned him to his core when she lifted herself from his embrace and crawled to her knees without losing the contact with his mouth, without releasing her hold on him. There on the ground, he sat back as she shifted and straddled him, staring up at her with something akin to astonishment. And there in his gaze, she seemed to check herself. She froze, lips hovering mere centimeters from his, fingers digging into his shoulders.
“Oh, God,” she whimpered. Those eyes were so close to his it was like a whole other world opening up in front of his face.
She was going to stop; he was about to lose her. That was…best, really. It was. She would never have to know just how deceptive he truly was. He told himself this as he sat and looked at her and decided he would sell his own soul—or whatever it was he had—to touch her…really, truly allow himself to touch her. Everywhere.
Celeste’s thumb gently traced over his eyebrow, her gaze searching his face. “Your eyes look normal again.”
He opened his mouth to remark that was surprising, considering the agony she’d put him in, but what he said was, “Do I frighten you?”
A crease appeared in her ordinarily smooth, flawless forehead. “Many times you have.”
The thought had occurred to him before. But since she knew he posed no threat to her while they were on assignment, he’d dismissed the notion. She’d often seemed appalled by him, surely exasperated, but never truly afraid.
“I would never hurt you,” he said, and meant it completely.
“Well, you can’t, not while—”
“I wouldn’t. Ever. Hurt you.”
She was trembling against him. One touch, he told himself, that was all. He dropped his hand to her thigh, slid it upward, felt the firmness of the muscle beneath the silky fabric of her robes. Her head lolled back and she pushed her h*ps toward him with exquisite abandon. His thumb brushed the juncture of her thighs through the material, and a tiny cry escaped her swollen lips. The slim white column of her throat bared to him so fully, so trustingly, was too much to resist, and he dragged his mouth down the creamy expanse as his hand sought entrance under her garment.
She stiffened as he gained it, every muscle tight and on alert, but she didn’t pull away. Didn’t stop him. Only gave the most seductive moan he’d ever heard as his fingertips found soft, hot, welcoming wetness—
A sudden sound from the house broke the spell. Celeste jerked away from him, scrambling backwards as if fleeing a venomous snake about to strike. She jumped to her feet, still exhibiting a grace that made him think of an offended feline, and quickly smoothed her robes down with several swipes of her hands.
He sat, forlorn and grudgingly devastated, while she looked down at herself as if just now realizing she could move again instead of only rolling on the ground in agony.
“It worked,” she said wonderingly.
Oh, yes, it worked. It had worked all too well. The dark energy he’d pulled into himself was still boiling, turning his thoughts red. He was so hard the only image his mind could conjure was taking her back to the ground and shoving his aching c*ck as deep inside her as he could get it. Feverishly he wondered if she would arch against him with the same liquid fluidity with which she moved. If her voice would carry its usual sweet lilt when he finally made her cry out his name. Or, even better, would he evoke such fierce, violent reactions in her that she might sound almost as savage as he knew he would?
It was the only relief he could imagine—f**king her until all those centuries of lust were out of his system for good.
And that might take a while.
Now, he managed to compress all that hunger, all that desperation. He beat it into submission and smoothed it over with one carefully controlled utterance. “I told you.”
“Thank you. That was…unexpected.”
“That I kept my word? Or that you liked it?”
Her lips parted as if she meant to snap an automatic retort, then she closed them again. She wouldn’t want to lie, after all. What came out of her mouth then wasn’t what he’d anticipated.