“Do you like it so much?” he asked, his lips against her ear as he tightened his arms around her, amazement in his voice. “When I feed on you?”
Miri turned her head to look into his beautiful face.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh of contentment and raised a hand to cup his cheek, gazing deep into his gleaming golden eyes. The fiery sparks in them were quiescent, floating serenely for a change. “I love the feel of your mouth on me, the pleasure you take in me.”
She looked up to where his wing arched over them, enclosed them in a soft intimate space and smiled a little as she lifted a hand to brush her fingers lightly over the thin membrane.
That touch made him shiver. She smiled to feel it.
Ash brushed the hair back from her forehead tenderly, in a wonder of his own, before he lowered his mouth to hers, his cock slipping out of her as she turned to face him, her arms sliding around his neck as her mouth joined with his.
A noise alerted them, a creak of wood where none should be.
Miri went still in his arms as they both listened intently.
His senses alert, Ash took a breath, scented the air. His tongue flicked, tasted what was carried on the breeze that slipped beneath the gap beneath the door. Sweat and machine oil. Men and guns. In his own form, his senses were much sharper than human ones.
With a quick kiss, he rolled from the bed and strode to the window. Gesturing, he banished the light from the tiny candles, leaving only one, so they wouldn’t affect his night vision. He peered between the curtains into the misty shadows of the predawn darkness. Only the faintest glimmer of brightness touched the sky.
Fog had risen during the night and now shrouded everything in thick banks of deeply shadowed gray making it difficult for even his Daemonae-enhanced sight.
Miri watched from the bed, every sense alert for an unfamiliar sound.
Even so, she couldn’t help but admire Ash as he stood by the window peering out.
She sighed with pleasure to look at him.
The flickering light of the candles limned every lovely muscle beneath his scarlet and gold skin clearly. With his long dark hair streaming over his powerful shoulders, his wings springing up from his magnificently muscled back, his twitching tail following the line of his spine to emerge just above his tight and very perfect ass, he was simply gorgeous.
Both his twitching tail and the swirling colors in his skin and eyes betrayed his agitation.
Etched on that smooth gleaming skin were the scars he so hated, dozens of them in darker and lighter stripes, knots and crosses across his broad strong back.
Despite the circumstances, Miri went to him, snatching up her dress along the way, to run her hands around his waist and press her cheek against his strong back. And the scars there. She brushed her cheek over them.
“What do you see?” she asked, softly.
With the bond between them growing – courtesy of the venom – Ash had been aware of her eyes on him, of the emotions that moved through her. To feel her arms wrap around his waist, her firm body against his back sent a rush of warmth through him even under these circumstances.
It also reminded him how much he now had to lose.
If these were Templeton’s men, and he had little doubt of it, what would they do if they were caught? He’d suffer Asmodeus’s fate, wearing bonds of iron and forced to Templeton’s service. Just the thought brought back memories he’d just as soon have stayed, if not forgotten, at least buried. However uneasily. Just stirring them made the muscles in his back tighten reflexively.
And Miri? The same. They would be held hostage to each other’s good behavior.
After the example of having left Asmodeus and Gabriel together, it was unlikely Templeton would take the same chance again. Ash wouldn’t be permitted to see Miri except under constant watch, as a reward for good behavior…or as punishment if he didn’t obey. And the same for her.
The prospect chilled him.
It wouldn’t happen. He’d make certain of it, if not for his own sake then for Miri’s.
Ash lifted his arm and wing over and around her to draw her to his side. He wouldn’t lie to her that was foolish.
“We have company,” he said, his voice tight. With his enhanced sight, he could see the men moving through the deeper shadows. “The question is how did they find us so quickly?”
In the end it didn’t matter. They had. At the rate the men searched, they would reach their room all too soon. They weren’t yet between him and the motorcycle, but they would be if they didn’t act quickly.
Ash reached quickly for his jeans as Miri pulled her dress over her head.
Despite the urgency, Ash watched with regret as the dress slipped over all her lovely curves. As he stepped up behind her to draw up the zipper, he dropped a kiss at the nape of her neck and slid his arms around her briefly to hold her tight.
“Will you trust me?” he asked.
She looked at him and lifted an eyebrow, her green eyes even more ethereal in the light of the single candle.
Ash smiled a little grimly but her gesture eased his worry. The trust lightened him even more.
“When we step outside, just hold on,” he said. “Don’t speak. Not a sound.”
She nodded.
With a wave of his hand, he put out that single candle even as he extended his senses outside the door. He slipped silently out into the darkness of the landing, drawing Miri with him. Sweeping her up in his arms, Ash extended his wings. Two strong nearly silent sweeps lifted them to the roof.
Their combined mass was a strain, even as powerful as his wings were. Unlike those of raptors, they weren’t designed to carry more than his own weight. It had been a long time since they’d been required to do much more than that but it was enough to get them up to the roof. Which was all he required.
Gently, Ash set Miri down on the flat rooftop and released her. Reluctantly.
The fog was thick and close enough that she might be safe up here for a little while.
Miri went still, knowing he was about to leave her. Fear for him shot through her, knowing what he was about to do. Alone. She wouldn’t know what happened, if anything, to him.
“Ash,” she breathed.
His fingers brushed her cheek reassuringly, touched her temple.
I’m here.
That mental voice, a deep echo of his audible one, startled her.
Dropping a soft kiss on her mouth, he sent, “
A gift of the venom, of the bond between us. Just think of me and I’ll hear you. You’ll know how I fare. I won’t leave you alone.
It was some consolation.
Still.
Be careful, Ash
, she thought.
One couldn’t lie mind to mind, it wasn’t possible. Ash could read her heart, too, the words she didn’t say and the fear that was like a tight knot around her heart.
There was no choice, though.
He cupped her cheek for just a moment and then spread his wings, stroked them powerfully, silently, to lift him from the roof before he banked toward the inner courtyard.
In two strong strokes he disappeared into the fog-shrouded darkness so quietly even Miri couldn’t hear him. There was some reassurance in that.
She looked out into the waning night, the deep banks of mist that swirled against the building in the pale moonlight. The natural gas tank looked like a submarine floating on a foggy sea and Ash’s motorcycle below was just a darker shadow within them.
Of Ash she saw nothing and her heart clenched, but, she thought she saw a hint of movement, heard a muffled sound, in the shadowed murk below her.
With an effort, she tried to keep her thoughts quiet. If Ash truly could read her mind, she didn’t want to distract him.
Ash dropped to the courtyard nearly silently, grateful for the concealing fog. Motion would draw attention to him that the silence of his wings didn’t. Much like a bat’s wings or an owl’s, he flew almost as quietly as those creatures did with his wings in this configuration, unlike hawks that relied on speed to take their quarry.
He could fly nearly as fast as a hawk if he chose but it wasn’t necessary. He folded his wings and shifted his weight forward to drive his feet into the back of the man who covered the doorway.
The impact drove the man into the concrete wall next to him. His head struck it with a hollow sound like a melon being dropped. It wasn’t entirely as silent as he’d hoped.
At the sound, Ash sensed the man’s partner inside the room flatten himself beside the door to debate his next move.
Ash knew the next move well, as it was the only one the man inside could take.
Cautiously, leading with his weapon, the man pressed himself against the door even as Ash stepped back along the outer wall beside it.
The man came out in a rush.
Ash caught the weapon, the steel with its iron content burning his hands a little as he jerked the gun free and flung it into the fog. With his left hand, he caught the man by his shirtfront as his right slammed into the man’s jaw. The man’s knees buckled.
It took only seconds.
Ash turned, extended his senses.
He needed to silence those between him, Miri and the motorcycle. With a little luck and the element of surprise, his speed and a touch of magic would take care of the rest.
Turning his head, he listened a moment before he moved swiftly and silently along the row of motel rooms toward the next target.
He tried not to think of Miri on the roof above.
As it did in fog, even the slightest sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Miri tried not to focus on the mist but to let her eyes unfocus so her peripheral vision would catch the hint of movement within the murk.
At first she thought she imagined what she was seeing but then she became sure of it, sensing presences within the fog, some stronger than others. She’d never used her Sight like this before but the need now was too strong. And Ash was out there. Alone. Strong, silent Ash with his pain buried so deep, deeper than the scars etched in his flesh.
This had been the one thing missing in her life, the one thing she’d searched for, this sense of connection, of completeness, that she’d found with him. A day, a month, a year, when you found it you knew it and she’d found it with him.
Keeping low and to the center of the long wing of the hotel roof, she ran lightly and quietly down the length of the building, staring through the thick fog. She willed her senses to be wrong, that those half-seen shadows were nothing more than her imagination.
They weren’t.
Shadows moved in the fog between the building and the exit from the parking lot. Beyond was the white bulk of the propane tank and the tall stands of pine. Even as she watched, she sensed as much as saw figures move among the towering boles of the trees.
There were dozens of them.
For a moment, she was frozen with fear. Not for herself, but Ash. Did he know?
On light feet, she ran back toward the break in the roof that was the landing over the stairs.
She could sense Ash’s determination and beyond him in the distance more men closing in on them.
All of them seeking her.