Authors: Nalini Singh
21
“D
o not break your word and my faith, Jason.”
“I have never lied to you,” he said, noting the ice that had begun to crawl up the walls, just as Mahiya had described. Mastery over the elements had never before been part of Neha’s repertoire.
It seemed many archangels were evolving.
“No,” she said at long last, the chill in the room retreating a fraction. “Unexpected for a spymaster, but you have honor. It is why I accepted your blood vow.” At that instant, she was the Neha of old, before Eris, before Anoushka. A deadly immortal, but one with a mind unclouded by bitterness or rage. “If you do need to be absent, make it fast.”
“I’ll attempt to negate the need.” Already working out how that could be done, he took his leave and exited to find that Rhys had arrived, along with a forensic team that was as modern as the fort was not.
He would’ve preferred his own team, but his instincts argued against Rhys’s involvement in the murders. Jason had studied the man, understood he was an angel from another time. Though he was imminently capable of killing Shabnam, he wouldn’t have left her with her breasts exposed. “Any signs of life?” Arav was a very powerful immortal—he could conceivably regenerate his head, missing arm, and torn-off wing.
Rhys shook his head. “We’ll give it the night, but his blood’s begun to crystallize. He’s not rising from this.”
Jason sensed the same. The insult from the high-velocity fall had obliterated the other damage, but he had the feeling Arav’s internal organs had been ripped out, along with his spinal cord. Jason could survive such an insult to his body, was certain Rhys could, too, but Arav hadn’t been in that league. “Did the same forensic team cover Shabnam’s death?”
“Yes—the report would’ve been ready tonight but for this,” Rhys answered. “However, Neha allowed no one to touch Eris. He was cremated without any kind of a forensic examination.”
Before, when all signs had seemed to point to Neha, that oversight hadn’t mattered. Now . . . “I need them to retrieve another body,” he said, making the decision to risk trusting the other man, “and I need everyone to stay silent on it.”
Rhys’s eyes darkened. “My lady—”
“Cannot know.” Jason told Rhys what he suspected about the woman whose crumpled body had lain exposed to the elements for far too long.
Rhys thrust a shaking hand through his hair. “The
fools
!” It was a judgment spit out in a low tone that wouldn’t reach beyond Jason. “Audrey was a woman of little wit, but to attempt to make a laughingstock of an archangel? Had she found out, Neha would have—” He bit off his words, suddenly the grim-faced general whose loyalty was to Neha.
“This”—Jason nodded at Arav’s body—“changes things. I do not believe her involved in any of the murders.”
A shuddering exhalation that sounded like relief. Jason didn’t understand the reaction, not when Neha was an archangel, violence part of her nature, until Rhys said, “No matter her rage, if she had murdered Eris, it would’ve eventually driven her mad. My lady loved true.”
Jason had seen the madness of love firsthand, scrubbed its rust red imprint from the walls, smelled the smoky remnants of the inferno, knew the damage it could do. It was the most dangerous, most destructive emotion of them all.
“The world,” Rhys added, “cannot afford a second insane archangel.”
Lijuan, Jason completed silently, was more than enough.
* * *
H
aving left her watch over the body once Jason arrived, Mahiya returned to her rooms, her skin sticky with the scent of death. It took twenty minutes under the pulsing spray of near-scalding water before she finally felt clean. Dressed in a simple black tunic with tapered pants of a deep blue that echoed part of her wings, she dried and loosely pinned up her hair before going out onto the balcony.
It was impossible to think about anything other than the carnage that had turned the fort into an abattoir, images of Shabnam’s violated flesh and Arav’s crushed and savaged body burned onto her irises. Without the evidence of what remained of Arav’s wings, as well as the heavy ring that had survived on a miraculously unshattered finger, she’d never have known it was him.
A quiet footfall.
Leaning over, she saw a servant passing along the softly lit pathway below, called out for him to halt. When she went down to join him, asking whether the servants had heard anything regarding Arav, his face closed up, his expression formal. “It was with great sorrow that we learned of General Arav’s death.”
“No one will punish you for speaking ill of him,” she said, “least of all I.” Everyone knew of her humiliation—she’d worn her heart on her sleeve during her involvement with Arav. “The lady’s fort is being painted bloodred and she wants answers.” Mahiya didn’t mourn Eris or Arav, and Audrey had made her own bed, but Shabnam had been an innocent. “Did Arav cause insult?”
It was clear the servant was torn between obeying the dictates of the archangel who was his liege and self-protective distance. The former won. “He was heard speaking to one who is loyal to Rhys, offering the man a position he did not yet have the ability to provide on the condition the other switch loyalties.”
“When I am consort . . .”
“How was he overheard?” Arav wouldn’t have broached the subject of such treachery in public.
Lashes coming down, head bowed, the servant backed away into the dark. At first, she thought he was refusing to answer, then she realized it
was
his answer. No, Arav hadn’t been stupid, but he’d been arrogant, an angel of nine hundred who considered weaker beings beneath his notice. “I see,” she said as the servant reappeared from the shadows. “Was Rhys aware of Arav’s attempts to subvert his people?”
Another falling of shutters. “I do not know.”
Yes, Rhys knew. He knows everything that happens in this fort.
“But,” she said to Jason when he returned much later, “Rhys has always been far more elegant in eliminating his enemies.” Stepping out onto her half of the balcony where Jason waited, she handed him the cognac she’d poured from the bottle kept for guests.
“I think I’m beyond tea tonight.”
The words had felt inexplicably intimate.
“I eliminated Rhys as a suspect before I knew this piece of information, but even with it, I still do not believe him to be the killer.” He sipped at the dark amber liquid, his throat muscles working. “The way Shabnam was exposed—Rhys, I think, is not capable of such a thing.”
“Yes. He’d never treat a woman with such disrespect, even in death.”
Taking another sip, Jason reached back to put the glass on the window ledge behind them, before turning to lean his bare forearms on the balcony railing. He’d showered and changed, too, wore a plain black T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare. Behind him, his wings fell gracefully to the floor, shadows kin to the night. She’d never seen him this . . . relaxed, as if he’d taken off part of his armor.
Her eyes went to the tie at his nape, the brown skin beneath colorless in the night, and she remembered the brush of his thumb across her lower lip.
“I think, you must decide something tonight.”
Her womb clenched. She hadn’t trusted her body to a man in an eternity, and Jason . . . he had never lied to her.
“May I undo the tie on your hair?”
He went motionless at her soft request, until he could have been the most beautiful gargoyle ever created, his wings of jet. Heart thudding in her throat, she waited . . . until at last he inclined his head in a small nod.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out. Taking care not to touch his nape, not to assume a deeper intimacy, she undid the tie and slid it away. A silken black waterfall spilled across his shoulders, the strands cool but no longer damp, the night air just warm enough to have sucked the moisture away. Unable to resist, she ran her fingertips lightly over the strands before dropping her hand to her side.
“How far would you go?”
Startled at the murmured question, she jumped. “What?”
“As you said, I am your only way out—so, how far would you go?”
Her skin flushed hot then cold. “I was baiting you,” she admitted. “Even to attain my freedom, I would never barter away the one thing that has always been
mine
.” Her body, her desire.
“Good. You’ve made your decision?”
“Yes.” Breath tight in her chest, she raised her hand, hesitated.
“Touch me, Mahiya.”
It was all she needed. Giving in to the need, she ran her fingers through his hair. It felt akin to petting a tiger that had, for quixotic reasons of his own, decided not to bite her hand off. She made no mistake that this showed a crack in the obsidian shields around Jason’s heart, indulged in no daydreams of a deeper relationship.
Still . . . it felt good to be close to a man who had never once treated her as disposable. Even at the very start, he’d given her a formal kind of respect. Now, she saw true respect in those eyes of dark, luxuriant brown. It saddened her deep within that the fragile bond between them would break when this task was done.
Jason, she knew without asking, wasn’t a man who allowed anyone as close as a familiar lover would become. Her chest ached at the knowledge of the hurt that must have shaped him to such endless aloneness, but she also knew she must be so,
so
careful not to fall for him, not to seek more than the dark sexuality that swirled between them, hot and beautifully violent as a desert storm.
* * *
J
ason knew he was walking a dangerous edge with Mahiya, but he also knew he craved her touch too much to turn back. Clenching his jaw to control his shudder as her fingers touched his scalp, stroked down, he forced himself to remain motionless when all he wanted to do was turn, pin her to the wall, and thrust into the lush heat of her body.
He heard the bones in his jaw grind against one another as she stroked again, and suddenly, her touch was gone. “I’m distressing you. I’m sorry.” An edge of horror in her tone. “I would’ve never—”
Pushing off the railing, he halted her apology by the simple expedient of taking her delicately lovely face in his hands. “Stop.”
Her breath rasped in her throat as she sucked in air, her eyes huge. But instead of flinching at the rough speed of his touch or pushing him away, she fisted one hand in the soft cotton of his T-shirt . . . and rose up on tiptoe.
It took every ounce of control he had not to accept the silent invitation at once. “You must understand,” he said, and his voice was a harsh scrape, “this won’t make me stay with you, won’t make me commit. I don’t have that ability.” To bond, to open his heart, to trust that the one he gave it to wouldn’t savage it.
Mahiya’s breath whispered over his lips as she maintained her position. “I know.” Soft words. “I also know that I’d like to share myself with a strong man who doesn’t court me with lies, is honest in his desire.”
He saw her swallow, knew she wasn’t as confident as she was attempting to appear. “Be certain. You’ll never be able to take this back.” And he would not taint an innocent with his darkness, would not turn her bitter because of the lack in him.
Her lips brushed his.
Thrusting both hands into her hair, the strands beginning to unravel, he slanted his mouth over her own, intent on devouring . . . when he felt her spine go taut.
Slow Jason. Slow. She is not a bedmate who is accustomed to seeking pleasure.
It took gut-deep self-control, but he gentled the kiss, suckling her upper lip into his mouth and releasing it, only to court her with sipping kisses that enticed rather than demanded.
Her fingers flexed on his waist, her muscles losing their tautness. Having gone down flat on her feet, she now rose up toward him again, her wings beginning to open. Coaxing her with another petting kiss, he nudged her into her living room, the area lit only by the glow from a single table lamp. He’d used his abilities to cloak them from curious eyes thus far, but the ability required focus, and all of his was now on Mahiya.
Breaking the kiss once they were inside, he murmured, “The front door.”
Pulse a stutter in her throat, she gave a jerky nod and walked to lock the doors into her suite as he shut and locked the ones to the balcony. “I’ve—” Her words ended in a gasp, his chest pressed to her back, his head bent over the curve of her neck.
22
P
lacing his hands on her hips, he held her in position as he tasted her skin, as he drowned in the sense of connection, of being
real
, if only for the fleeting slice of night he’d spend with the woman in his arms. Her scent, that wild spice, it made him drunk, her skin so soft and warm, her body all graceful curves. He wished she wore a sari so he’d have only to stroke up his hands to caress the naked skin of her waist.
Her wings, trapped between them, shifted in tiny, restless movements as he reached up to remove the remainder of the pins she’d used to hold her hair in place. It tumbled over his hands in a cascade of unexpected curls, lush and thick and satiny soft. Fisting one hand in the strands, he tugged back her head, arching her neck for his mouth.
A tremor quaked her frame, her fingers splaying against the wood of the doors.
The flick of his tongue, the intoxicating taste of her.
Her pulse thudded a rapid staccato, her wings moving in as erratic a rhythm. Lifting his free hand from her hip, he closed it firmly over the edge of her left wing and stroked down.
A choked-off sound, her pupils hugely dilated when her lashes flicked up. “Jason.”
Halting the intimate touch before it became too much, he spread his hand flat on her stomach. “How do I get you out of this?”
“The buttons that hold the wing slits closed.” Husky words. “There’s also a hidden zip at the side.”
Wanting her skin against his own, he took a single step away and swept her hair off her back and over her shoulder. The buttons were faceted black crystals, shimmering in the soft light. Slipping out the top buttons without touching the sensitive arch of her wings, he reached down and found the matching buttons at the bottom of her wings.
The center panel at the back fell down, over her lower curves and he watched as she tugged the front section off her arms, holding the crumpled fabric to her chest with a modesty that paradoxically made him burn. Using her free hand, she reached up to her side and pushed down a concealed zipper that went from her ribs to the slit at the bottom of her tunic.
Heat met his knuckles as he brushed them down the centerline of her back, fine tremors traveling over her skin. Were he a better man, he would stop this—Mahiya didn’t respond like a woman who’d had lovers enough to lose her shyness.
“. . . who doesn’t court me with lies, is honest in his desire.”
His desire held no deceit, was a fist in his gut.
Not forcing her to release the front of the tunic, he put his hands on the curve of her hips and pressed up against her again, his wings spread wide behind them. She shuddered at the intimate contact, because while she’d been busy with her tunic, he’d peeled off his T-shirt.
The softness of her feathers against his naked skin rushed sensory information through his mind, a molten river that held him captive. Bending to the sleek slope of her neck once more, he used a finger to brush aside an errant strand of hair, felt her responding shiver through the place where their bodies connected. Even as he pressed his lips to her sensitive skin, he stroked one hand down her arm to close his fingers over the ones she had fisted on her front, holding the tunic in place.
He didn’t force, just gave a gentle tug.
The tiniest hesitation before she uncurled her fingers and allowed him to take one hand, stretch it out to press against the door. When he traced his return journey down the slender warmth of her arm, she kept her hand where he’d put it. Switching sides, he swept her hair over to the other side with luxuriant slowness . . . because now that he was touching her, the fever in him had transformed into a dark sexual patience that promised crushing pleasure.
She knew what was coming this time when he stroked down her arm to her remaining fist, her breathing fast, shallow. Leaving his fingers over her own, he smoothed his free hand over the curve of her waist as he laved her neck with his lips before kissing the slope of one graceful shoulder, his face brushing the upper arch of her wings.
Trembling, she uncurled her fingers from her tunic and allowed him to ease that hand to press flat on the door, too. He caressed his way back down her arm just as slowly, kissing the temptation of her skin the entire time. Then he put both hands to where the tunic bunched at her hips and tugged.
It slipped down to pool at her feet. She stepped out of the fabric, let him kick it away. “The pants have”—a swallow, as if her throat was dry—“hooks at the ankles.”
“They’ll keep,” he said, rising to take in the picture she made, her wings slightly spread, her body naked to the waist, the lush curls of her hair falling over one shoulder. “No need to rush.” Reaching out, he ran his knuckles down the naked center of her back again, this time with deeper pressure, her soft cry a fist around his cock. “Close your wings.”
The second she did, he pressed close and shifted his hand around the waistband of her tapered cotton pants to undo the string-tie that held them up. Only allowing the garment to slide down to her hips, he redid the tie. Her abdomen quivered against the hand he spread on her satiny skin, his ring finger brushing the top edge of her pants . . . which just barely concealed the slick tightness of her.
His body pulsed, thick and hot.
Sensing it, she shivered but didn’t attempt to pull away as he slid his free hand up from her hip to just below her breasts. He didn’t cup the small, ripe mounds, just brushed his fingers along the underside before plucking at one taut nipple.
The sweet need in her responding cry whispered over his skin like a tactile caress. Rewarding her with another teasing brush, another tug that made her tremble, he insinuated his other hand just under the top of her waistband. Her navel tensed, relaxed with a shudder as he caressed her breasts once more.
Kissing her neck, so very sensitive, he moved his hand lower, under the silky roughness of fine lace to touch the delicate curls between her thighs, the damp heat of her the most exquisite temptation.
“Jason.”
Dropping one hand from the door, she reached behind her to touch his hair. “Kiss me.” It was a whispered request.
He halted his erotic exploration and spun her around, her wings spread out in magnificent display behind her as she faced him, a woman with a blush of red over her cheekbones and taut breasts topped with dark nipples he knew he’d soon taste.
“You,” he murmured, closing his fingers over one breast, “are lovely.” Bracing his free arm beside her head, while her own arms wrapped around him as she rose on tiptoe again, he gave her the kiss she’d asked for. It was a naked, wet melding of mouths that had her rubbing against him, her abdomen sliding over his cock.
His hold on the reins slipped.
Reaching between them, he undid the tie on her pants, broke the kiss and her grasp to push them down. Her navel was a lure he couldn’t resist, the kiss he pressed there making her fingers fist in his hair before he ran his thumbs over her hipbones and pulled away. “Don’t move,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the inside of one satiny thigh.
Mahiya sucked in desperate gulps of air, the cadence of her desire music in his blood. It urged him to rip off her pants, but he grit his teeth and took the time to undo the hooks, forcing himself to go slow, to not overwhelm his lover with her sweet passion and willingness to trust him to lead the dance.
Finally the pants were off. He ran his hands slowly up her calves, her thighs, the white lace that was all that covered her now. By the time he rose to his full height, the scent of her musk perfumed the air. “Take them off.” He wanted to see her slick and ready, to taste her in the most erotic of kisses, but first he would have this indication that she remained a willing participant.
Her breath hitched . . . but she ducked her head and hooked her thumbs into the sides of the scrap of lace. He stepped back to watch her push that scrap down and off, because the visual sensation was a feast—though nothing could ever triumph touch for him, tactile pleasure his one true addiction.
Heat blazing over every inch of her skin, she pushed the crumpled lace aside with a slender foot, her lashes hiding her gaze. He reached out, ran the back of one finger over a pebbled nipple. She jerked. Unable to resist, he dipped his head, took part of her breast into his mouth, sucked.
Her knees buckled. “Jason, oh please . . .”
Holding her up as he released her sensitive flesh, he soothed her with a languid kiss that poured fuel on the black storm of his own passion. “Like that,” he murmured against kiss-swollen lips as he continued to seduce her with his mouth, “just like that.” Cock painfully hard, he slid one hand between her thighs and stroked lightly down the centerline of her sex with a single finger.
Over and over . . . and over again.
Her breath turned into jagged gasps, the tip of his finger slick with her need, her hands gripping at his arms. Dazed eyes locked with his own as he broke the kiss, and he knew the pleasure was building in her, a slow crescendo.
“Fly.” It was rough encouragement as he demanded another kiss, craving the contact. “I have you.” He continued with his slow, relentless caress, touching the glistening nub at the apex of her thighs with each stroke now that she’d spread her thighs farther in an effort to deepen the intimate contact.
Her fingernails dug into his arms, her neck arched.
Bending her over his arm, he took part of her neglected breast into his mouth, ran his teeth over the taut flesh as he released it . . . at the same time that he captured the sensitive nub between her thighs in his fingertips and pressed hard.
“Jason!”
Raising his head, he removed his hand before the pleasure racking her body became painful. “I have you,” he repeated, nuzzling his face against the side of hers. “I have you.”
Only when she stopped trembling did he shift his hold to her hips and raise her until she could wrap her legs around his waist. Her eyes were lazy, sated, her kiss languid. Arms twining around his neck, she opened for him with a sensual generosity that made him want to devour, her fingers weaving through his hair. He reached between them to undo his jeans, grip his cock, and position himself at her entrance.
A soft gasp into his mouth as the head of his cock rubbed against her passion-swollen flesh and then he was pushing into the silken welcome of her sheath.
“Oh!” Mahiya gripped him tighter with every part of her body, her internal muscles continuing to ripple with trailing waves of her pleasure.
Shuddering, he dropped his forehead onto her own as he fought the urge to shove. Her body was telling him it hadn’t been used in such a way for a long time, her muscles struggling to stretch around him.
“It’s all right, Jason.” Fingers on his cheek, kisses gentle and tender and unexpected. “I want you so much.”
He drew in a ragged breath, pushed a fraction deeper. A bit more. Scalding heat, feminine muscles pulsing on his rigid flesh. The pleasure was almost pain, the bite exquisite. Turning his mouth to brush against her own, he continued to work his cock into her, slow and relentless.
“Jason.”
Flexing his hips at the whimper of sound, he forced himself to halt. “Does it hurt?” he asked bluntly.
A dazed look. “It burns and yet it feels good. I want you in me.”
That was all he needed to hear.
Sliding his hands under her thighs, he lifted her legs off his hips and pushed her knees up and wide, his strength more than enough to keep her pinned as he thrust into her to the feel of her nails digging into his back as her body spasmed around him, bathing his cock in molten desire.
Then he began to move.