Duncan groaned with her as he spilled himself inside her, rocking back and forth with the floor and walls. She liked taking him, loved the thought of her body drinking in everything he could give her. The coin on his neck hummed and gave off a dark, loamy glow, and Bela realized it was absorbing her earth energy, magnifying it and sending it down again, straight through her, maybe to the center of the world.
Duncan kept thrusting, slower, slower, sending aftershock after aftershock streaming through her spent body until she couldn’t stand it. She finally pushed herself up and sank her teeth into his shoulder to make him stop.
He kept himself inside her but let her straighten on the mat beneath him, then covered her with his warm, muscled frame and his kisses.
Sweet, total exhaustion wrapped her up like Duncan’s strong arms. Bela’s eyelids fluttered as she traced his muscled shoulders with her fingertips. She didn’t want to close her eyes. If she did, she might miss hours with him, and she didn’t even want to miss minutes.
Duncan’s lips found her ear. His breath a tickle deep in her mind, his tone teasing and gentle, he whispered, “Don’t sleep, Angel. That’s it. Don’t you dare go to sleep.”
(23)
A few hours later, Duncan woke. John was still there in his head, but distant, and letting him be—so Duncan kissed Bela awake and took her home to the brownstone. They found Andy in the living room, dressed in torn jeans and an NYPD T-shirt. She was sprawled on the overstuffed sofa, snoring and hugging a bag of chips and a sack of chocolate cookies. The entire brownstone smelled like ice cream, fudge, and whipped cream, and bowls and spoons covered the big round table in front of the couch.
Andy woke up long enough to burp and mumble, “Dio’s had enough rocky road to kill two grown men. She’s locked in her archives, and Camille’s downstairs in the lab.”
Bela froze mid-step on her way to the kitchen and started swearing.
Andy ignored her and went straight back to sleep.
“I’m taking it that Camille in the lab—that’s a problem?” Duncan caught hold of Bela from behind, then tried not to be distracted by the feel of her soft slacks and shapely hips in his hands. “A big hairy problem?”
Bela turned to face him, her dark eyes snapping. “Are you nuts? There’s a
fire Sibyl
in my laboratory!”
He tried to pull her to him to settle her down, but she let out another string of curses that would have impressed a prison guard and tried to get away from him. He wasn’t ready to let her go, especially with her gaze so wild and the color rising in her cheeks.
Damn
.
Just seeing her like that made him hard, much less touching her. “Don’t you guys share all your important stuff, Angel? Quad unity and all that?”
Bela smacked his chest with her palms. “There’s a fire Sibyl in my lab!”
“I got that part.” Duncan wanted to kiss her so badly he could already taste her lips.
“The machines,” those beautiful lips were saying. “And—and my papers. The one computer that still works—and oh, shit. My chemical cabinet.”
Duncan hated to do it, but he let Bela go and followed her into the kitchen. “Okay, I admit sparks don’t mix with a lot of stuff you’ve got going down there, but Camille’s pretty careful, isn’t she?”
Bela was already opening the door at the top of the stairs, presumably to march down to the basement and earthquake her fire Sibyl into next year. “Camille doesn’t spit smoke and flames like the other fire Sibyls I’ve met,” he said, hoping he was on the right track.
“I really don’t know how Camille might be if she gets angry, or too excited.” Bela headed down the steps, and Duncan tried to stay close. “When she’s scared, her fire energy drops. Could be that other emotions would go the other way.”
He caught her in his arms again, right outside the closed door he assumed hid her bedroom from view, and kissed her. When he could stand pulling back for a second, he said, “I vote for assuming Camille’s level-headed. She’ll be respectful of all your shiny stuff and those microscopes I want to play with when I’ve got time.”
Time
.
The word gigged him when he said it, and he wondered if Bela felt the quick, tense jerk of his muscles. Her steady gaze caressed him just like her long, graceful fingers, running across his face and neck like she was taking a brand-new read on him.
Duncan wasn’t afraid of dying, or what death would be like. He wasn’t worried about turning demon now that he knew Dio or the Mothers would take care of business when he drew his last breath.
No, what hurt him was knowing that time was short, that he wouldn’t have much of it with the beautiful woman he couldn’t stop touching and tasting and wanting.
Bela kissed him, her lips gentle and sweet, moving on his mouth like a whisper. When she finished, she told him, “I’m on to you, Duncan Sharp. What you’re voting for is a tour of my bedroom, or maybe my bed.”
When his lips took hers again, he didn’t want to stop. Fast and deep this time, then long and slow. She felt like dreams and hopes and warm perfection in his arms. “Yeah,” he managed after a minute or two. “That’s my vote.”
She rubbed his cock through his jeans, and he ground his teeth to stop the groan.
Who needed a bedroom?
He could take her right here, up against the wall.
“Don’t do that again, Angel. I can’t take the tease.”
Bela kept her hand on his erection, and her wicked-mischief expression said she was considering doing whatever she wanted. Her gaze shifted to the hallway, toward the laboratory where Camille was working.
“In here.” She let go of him and grabbed the doorknob beside her. With a twist and push, the door swung open, and Duncan followed her into …
An eight-year-old-boy’s room?
Bela’s cheeks flushed as she reached for the wall switch to shut off the light and hide everything Duncan was trying to absorb.
When he wouldn’t let her shut off the light, she started to back them out of the room, but he held her tight, her back to his chest, as he counted ten Knicks posters on the far wall. The other wall had a football Giants schedule and poster for décor, Yankee flags, and a Yankees roster from last year, when they’d made one hell of a pennant run. He noticed a leather tool belt in the corner with a hammer sticking out and saw lying beside it a bunch of figurines along her handcrafted dresser—the 1927 Yankees, he thought—two baseball bats in a chair beside the rumpled full-sized bed, and an ancient pink ball in a cup on her bedside table. An unusual white feather had been tucked behind the pink ball, and the cup had worn, colored drawings painted on it beneath the words
Disney World
.
Duncan bent down and kissed Bela’s neck, enjoying the almond scent and the heat playing across her skin.
“Not what you expected,” she whispered, obviously embarrassed, though he wasn’t really sure why.
“No.” He concentrated on nibbling the spot in the hollow beneath her jaw, and got rewarded by her quick sigh. “But I like surprises where you’re concerned.”
“My father painted those figurines.” Her tone was more serious, so Duncan stopped nibbling at her cheek and enjoyed the silk of her hair instead.
“He did a great job, from what I can see.”
She held his arms tight, like she was scared he was about to back away from her. “The tool belt’s mine.”
“Yeah.” Damn it, his imagination could see her wearing that thing, and not to run upstairs and fix a banister. His erection strained against his jeans.
“I need tools. Sibyls live here. Sibyls with tempers.”
“No argument. It’s just that the rest of the brownstone is kind of … fluffy, compared to this.”
“I’m not friggin’ fluffy. At all.” Then, “I don’t let many people in here, Duncan. I don’t let anybody in here.”
Duncan kissed Bela’s neck again and turned her loose, understanding that she needed a minute to get her bearings, and feeling pleased that she had opened her door to him. His body cooperated, at least for the moment, cooling down enough for him to start wondering about the stuff on her nightstand.
“About the fluffy thing, that’s a matter of opinion,” he said, then pointed to the cup with the ball and feather. “Is that pink thing a Spaldeen? I heard about those old reject tennis balls from guys in my building after I moved here.”
Bela nodded. She started for the nightstand, then stopped, her hand outstretched like she wanted to pick up the cup. “During the week, I had to go to the Motherhouse for training—but on the weekends, when my dad was out on job sites, my friends and I played stickball like fiends, all over the Bronx.”
She leaned forward and brushed her fingers across the pink ball as her cheeks turned about the same color. “I kicked ass with a broomstick for a bat, but since I had sword practice Monday through Friday, I guess pounding on Spaldeens and other kids with a stick might have been cheating.”
Duncan tried to imagine what it would have been like to run the streets as a Bronx kid, then get yanked away to some Russian castle all week long. “We played baseball in empty fields and lots where I’m from, in Georgia, but I didn’t have sword practice on my side.”
Bela’s attention had shifted to the feather, and when she saw Duncan looking at it, too, she said, “It’s an osprey feather. My mother found it on our trip to Disney World when I was eight.”
He could tell from her expression that she wanted to share these things with him, and that touched his heart. He wanted to hold her all over again, but for different reasons now. “Were you an only child, Angel?”
“Yes.” She lifted the feather, with its splashy brown markings.
Duncan watched the feather’s journey to Bela’s cheek, and a new and deeper ache for her, more emotional than sexual, opened up inside him. “Me too.” He coughed, trying to ease the pressure in his chest, and pointed to the Knicks posters. “So, what did your mom think about your sports fetish?”
Bela lowered the feather, then tucked it back in its place behind the Spaldeen. “I don’t know. She died in a Legion attack during a patrol the night after we got home.”
For a moment or two, Duncan didn’t know what to say. Talking about people who’d been killed—he was used to that after the war and from being in law enforcement. But to hear Bela say that in such a matter-of-fact way—well, damn. He rubbed his chin. She’d had it hard since that time when she was a little Bronx brat with a broomstick.
“How long did the Sibyls fight the Legion?” he asked, to begin to get a grasp of just how hard.
Bela’s hand lingered on the Disney cup, and she wasn’t looking at him. “A century, give or take. Good thing Sibyls live a long time, if nothing kills them.”
“A hundred years. Jesus. And I thought the Gulf was bad.” His gaze traveled from Bela to the figurines on the dresser across from where she was standing. Her father had raised her from eight—her father and the old women at Motherhouse Russia.
Did those Mothers really care about her? Mother Keara seemed to, but she wasn’t from Bela’s group of Sibyls. Duncan had a sudden image of Bela as a little girl, sitting quiet and off to herself as everyone in the Motherhouse came and went at whatever they did. Nobody was beside her, holding her hand or talking to her. She was just sitting. Sitting and watching.
Why did that feel so true?
“How many Sibyls did you lose in that war?” Duncan heard the soft crack in his voice when he asked the question.
Bela’s shrug was anything but casual. It was the same shrug that lonely little girl would have given somebody when they finally noticed her and asked if she was okay. “Motherhouse Greece could give you a count. My mother, my first triad—Dio’s sister included—and Camille’s first triad. So many more.”
When Duncan took her in his arms this time, he felt way more than heat and desire. Those other emotions, those stronger ones, they had been inside him and growing, but now they were just … everything.
“What we do isn’t like normal police work with wings and magic and fangs.” Her head rested on his chest, and one of her hands. He covered her fingers with his. “We’re soldiers. We fight wars most of New York City and the rest of the world never even know about, and people die.”
She pulled back just enough for him to see her face, which darkened until Duncan felt her sadness like a weight in his own gut. “Lots of good people die. Sometimes I think I’m moving on, and sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it.”
He ran his thumb along her jaw, brushing away a single tear. “I still dream about the desert all the time, and it’s been nearly twenty years.”
Bela seemed to consider this, then rested her cheek on his chest again. Duncan held her for a long time, but not long enough, because it could never be long enough.
Time …
He didn’t want to think about time, but it ticked in his mind anyway, moving forward whether he tracked it or not.
His world had gone crazy, and Bela was the only sane thing around him. He didn’t want to hurt her or burden her, God, no. Never that. But she didn’t seem like the kind of woman who took on burdens she didn’t want.
Should he trust that?
What were the rules when he only had a few weeks to keep breathing?
To hell with rules, anyway.
He kissed her hair, her ear, then stroked her shoulders and back. “I got one more question. Has your room always looked like this?”
She shifted against his chest, and gave a contented sigh when he held her closer. “I didn’t get the last three Knicks posters until a year ago.”
“Well, that makes it definite, even if I’m an Atlanta Hawks fan.”
She drew back to meet his gaze. “That makes what definite?”
Duncan kept her close. He couldn’t have turned her loose, even if ten demons broke down the door. Every detail flared in his mind, from the silk of her hair on his arms to the way her lips tugged into a little smile that seemed happy and right.
“I love you, Angel.”
Bela’s mouth came open, and her eyes went wide. She didn’t pull away from him, even though the more noble part of him thought she should.
He put two fingers against her soft lips. “I know I’m a selfish bastard, to ask if you’re willing to deal with more death after what you’ve been through—but I’ll do whatever it takes to make you mine for the time I’ve got left.”
Her expression shifted from shock to distance, then seemed to come back to him completely. She slipped his fingers into her mouth, setting him on fire when she ran her warm, soft tongue over his knuckles.
Once. Twice. Again.
Damn, that was tearing him up.
And she knew it.
He could tell by the spark in her dark, beautiful eyes. She let his fingers slide across her lips, making sure her teeth caught the tips as he pulled them free.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she whispered. “I’m already yours.”
Duncan drew her even tighter against him, and her deep, giving kiss sealed her in his heart forever. She lifted her arms for him to pull her shirt and bra over her head, then took his T-shirt off, and his jeans. Her slacks and underwear slipped past her hips when he pushed them down.
Holding her, bare skin to bare skin, had to be the closest thing to heaven he’d ever reach. Duncan was somewhere past hard and aroused, past needing her, even past wanting her. He’d reached craving and starving, but he refused to rush through a single second of making love to her. His woman. His for as long as he could stay alive to please her.