The Fallen 03 - Warrior (27 page)

He moved through the house in search of her. It was easy enough to follow the sweet scent of her skin—even modern soap and shampoo couldn’t mask the erotic imprint she’d made on his senses. He would find her wherever she hid.

She was stretched out on an orange and brown sofa, staring fixedly at a paperback book with a lurid cover. She wasn’t nearly as aware of him as he was of her—she didn’t even notice that he was watching her. He could look his fill at the long legs, her mass of dark hair she tried in vain to control, her breasts . . .

She wasn’t wearing a bra, goddamn her. In the artificial light he could see the darkness of her nipples beneath the thin white cotton, and his arousal quickened at the thought of what he’d like to do with
those breasts. He’d put his mouth on them and suck, hard, till they came to sharp little points in his hungry mouth, and—

They were already forming hard points. As he watched her, motionless, her nipples hardened, and he reached down and shifted himself in the loose khaki pants he’d found in the bedroom. Not loose enough, apparently.

“Stop staring at my breasts.” She hadn’t moved, but her voice was caustic. He caught a flash in her eyes, one of the fleeting images that had haunted him for the last few days. She wanted his mouth on her. She wanted everything he did.

“I wasn’t looking at your breasts.”

“Angels aren’t supposed to lie.”

“I’m a fallen one, remember? I can lie if I really want to, I can drink, I can fornicate.”

She glared at him. “How come when you’re talking in the abstract you use a nice polite word like
fornicate
, but when you’re talking to me specifically you use a word like
fuck
?”

He shouldn’t smile—it would probably infuriate her—but there were times when she was just so damned cute. “Because when I look at you and talk to you, all I think about is fucking. Specifically.”

She sat up quickly, her chest rising and falling with temper. Which was particularly nice without the bra. “You’re . . . Never mind.”

He laughed, and her eyes narrowed. “I’m what?”

She rose, ignoring his question. “I’m going to find
a bed,” she said, heading toward him, clearly expecting him to move out of the way.

“Good idea,” he said, not moving.

She tried to push past him, a big mistake. The moment he felt her body touch his, his arousal went into overdrive, and he caught her arms so she couldn’t run away.

She was barefoot, smaller, and she looked up at him with sudden—it almost looked like fear. Impossible, and the expression vanished immediately, leaving her angry once more.

“Get your hands off me.”

He didn’t. Not at first. “Is that what you really want?”

It wasn’t. He could see the images that flashed through her mind, jumbled, erotic, insistent. He could almost feel her mouth on him, and he wanted to groan.

But she was made of sterner stuff, and she ignored the longing that was suffusing her mind and, by extension, his. “Yes, it is.”

He released her, stepping back, and for a moment she didn’t move. And then she was gone, her bare feet making a creditable stomping noise as she expressed her displeasure.

A
RROGANT ASSHOLE!
C
OMPLETELY
egocentric, self-congratulatory son of a bitch of a bloody archangel, thinking I was standing there just trembling for his touch.

It didn’t matter if it was true. There was no way he could know it. Unfortunately, he seemed to understand everything I was feeling, whether I’d said something or not. He said I had an expressive face, but I’d been very good at hiding my feelings at the
castello
or from the bad-tempered nuns. Only Michael seemed to be able to read my mind.

Oh, God, that was a horrible idea. Because my mind had been running along X-rated lines, particularly when he was close to me. If he knew what I’d secretly, privately been longing for, then you might as well kill me now.

I hated him. He was probably laughing at me, at my poor, pathetic, love-starved self. He had been willing to fuck me, once—I could use that word too—but since then he’d kept as far away from me as he could. He wouldn’t even take the blood he needed so badly, the blood I was foretold to provide. The blood that would keep him strong. No, he would court death rather than drink from me.

Though, come to think of it, why had he given me his tattoos and gone through the Portal unprotected?

Because I was needed. That was why he had come to get me in the first place. The prophecy decreed that I was to come to Sheol and marry the Archangel Michael in order for the Fallen to triumph against the Armies of Heaven. Michael said the Dark City was heaven. If so, did that make Beloch God?

No, I’d forgotten. God had gone on an extended vacation, leaving Uriel in charge. But if that was the case, who the hell was Beloch?

Did I care? Did I care about any of them? The bottom line was that the only kindness and decency I’d experienced had come from the Fallen. No one lied to me in Sheol. No one wanted to smite anyone else; they just wanted to be left alone. The Armies of Heaven were going to attack, not vice versa. The Fallen were doing their best to be ready, but they weren’t the aggressors—no one suggested taking the fight to the enemy.

In the end, heaven and hell seemed equally bad, though I hadn’t had more than a taste of hell. I would make it through the Darkness, get back to Sheol, and help them fight off their attackers. And then I was getting the hell out of there and getting the first angelic/vampiric quickie divorce I could find.

Next time I was forced to speak to Michael—and I hoped I could wait a good long time—I would assure him that I wasn’t about to run off. At least, not until the Bad Guys who thought they were Good Guys were dealt with. He didn’t have to pretend, or take pity on any sexual fantasies that spun from my brain. It had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with my wanting to discover life.

I would make sure that wish got granted. In those few short hours in his narrow bed in Sheol, I had discovered a world of sensuality. I had . . . I had
become too attached to him, but I would get over it. I’d always been a fast healer, and this was no worse than a broken bone or a case of the flu. I’d survive—I always did.

And the saintly Archangel Michael could go fuck himself.

I stomped into the kitchen, embarrassed and furious. I couldn’t even tell him that those fantasies had nothing to do with him. For one thing, the tattoos on his body had played an explicit part in some of them. For another, if I told him to stay the hell out of my mind, we would both have to acknowledge exactly what sort of licentious fantasies had been going on, and it was already humiliating enough. I certainly wasn’t going to discuss why I was having such thoughts. Whether it was because he was the first man I’d slept with in more than six years, the first man who knew more than the absolute basics. Or if it had to do with the fact that he was just so damned pretty. Or maybe I was just bored. It had nothing to do with the fact that he fascinated me, infuriated me, touched me in ways I couldn’t understand. Or that he’d come after me, rescued me, risked his own life again and again for me.

I opened the cabinet door so forcefully it bounced against the wall and snapped back. I was angry, frustrated, ready to explode, and even though I’d just eaten, I figured I’d better stuff something into my mouth before I screamed again.

Nothing to eat, maybe because the Über-God of
Hell knew I wasn’t really hungry. I slammed the cupboard closed again, moving on to the next one.

“Stop having a tantrum.” Michael’s voice floated in from the living room, rich and seductive like everything else about him.

“Go to hell!” I shouted back. He was right, I was being childish, and I didn’t care. I considered myself an intelligent, adaptable, reasonably strong young woman, yet there was a limit to how much I could take, and I had just reached it. I was trapped in this hellish ranch house with a man who turned my knees to water, yet he took me only under duress. He wouldn’t answer my questions, he treated me like an idiot, and just when I was ready to give up on him he suddenly started to take notice. There was a term for that, I remembered, combing my memories. Dog in the manger. He had no interest in eating any of the hay placed there, but he wasn’t going to make way for those who needed it.

The Archangel Michael had no real interest in me, unless you could count his reaction when I’d shown up in his bed, naked. The memory shamed me—he was more than capable of resisting me. I was never going to put myself in that position again. It didn’t matter that I seemed to have developed the equivalent of a teenage crush on him. I wasn’t going to offer again. I slammed the cupboard door as hard as I could and yanked open the refrigerator, my hands hot and tingling.

Oops. Stronger than I realized in my blind rage.
The upper hinge broke, leaving the door hanging lopsided.

There was no separate freezer door, only a small compartment in the center. No ice cream, only ice cubes, and while my frustration and fury burned as hot as my hands, I didn’t think the cubes were going to help.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Michael demanded in a muffled roar.

“Venting my frustrations,” I snapped, pulling the other hinge free and throwing the refrigerator door across the small kitchen with a satisfying crash.

No sound from the living room. I yanked open another cupboard, grabbed one of the plates, and flung it across the room. Oddly enough, the crash was more satisfying than the heavy sound of the refrigerator door, and I reached for another.

Hands closed over my wrists, yanking me around to face Michael’s thunderous expression. I tried to knee him—I was past any sense of fair play—and he sidestepped the crippling blow at the last moment, the flame of fury in his eyes growing hotter. He shook me hard, until I bit my tongue, and in response I smashed my head against his mouth, happy with his muffled cry of pain.

He shook me again, gripping my wrists so tightly that my hands were growing numb. “Had enough?” he demanded furiously.

“Not even close,” I snapped back.

And then we both froze. He looked down at me,
bafflement and rage fading from his face. His mouth was bleeding. “Oh, shit,” he said.

He released my wrists. I didn’t know if he was going to try to pull away, but I wasn’t going to give him that chance.

“Oh, shit, indeed,” I said, my eyes daring him.

His mouth on mine was hard and angry, and I could taste his blood. It should have horrified me. It didn’t. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back, letting my blood mingle with his, and a moment later he picked me up and set me on the kitchen counter, moving between my legs. His hands slid up under my T-shirt and touched my breasts, and I moaned into his mouth, hot pleasure filling me. I needed this so badly, I needed his body against mine, I needed his fingers squeezing my nipples, I needed the hard bulge of his cock between my legs.

I held on to him tightly, half-afraid he’d pull away, but for now he had given up fighting. He lifted his mouth, and the blood on his lower lip was smeared. “You have blood on your mouth,” he said in a rough voice. And he leaned over and licked me, catching it with his tongue.

It was a test, I knew. But it was an easy A. I’d already given him my blood, forced it on him. I felt no squeamish hesitation. In truth, when he had drawn the blood from the cut I’d made in my flesh, the sensation had been disturbingly erotic. I wanted him to do it again.

His hand slid down between us, yanking the skirt
up to my hips. “Shit,” he muttered again when he encountered the underwear. And then the panties were gone, sliding down my legs and sailing across the room to land on the discarded refrigerator door with a lot less noise.

I wanted to touch him. I wanted to kiss him, to suck him, to taste him, but things were moving too fast, and when he touched me I burned, hot and sweet, needing more.

“Christ,” he swore as I arched against him, and I knew a dazed moment of bemusement. Christianity didn’t seem to have anything to do with the Fallen or the strange worlds to which I’d been banished; but then all that left me as he slid his long fingers inside me.

I shattered, letting out a low, keening wail, and he caught the cry from my mouth, drinking it in. Distantly I heard the clang of his belt buckle and the rasp of his zipper, and then he was inside me, sliding deep, pulling my legs around his narrow hips. I was already wet, aroused, my body accepting, and I clung to him, shocked. I felt like a boat on a stormy ocean, adrift in a tempest of sensation so powerful I could focus only on his body and what it was doing to mine. I could feel my nipples contract, almost painfully, as he thrust inside me again and again, and my breath caught, my entire being contracting into a bundle of overpowering sensations.

My head banged against the cupboard above me, and then everything tilted as he picked me up,
swinging me away from the Formica so that he supported me entirely in his strong arms. I could move now, levering myself on his cock, and I clutched his shoulders as I slid down on him. I moved with deliberate slowness, teasing him, savoring him now that the first rush of climax was past.

He was cursing, low, guttural sounds that were even more arousing, and I tightened my legs around him, tightened my core around him, and he turned again, falling back against the opposite counter, bracing himself.