The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (21 page)

“I have to go now, Ryan.”

Santo stepped in and closed the door behind him. He’d shaved, and his cheeks looked smooth and lean, his face imperfectly scarred and all the more interesting for it.

“I’ll call again when I can,” she said into the phone.

Ryan wasn’t happy to let her go. She could hear it in his voice. But he said, “Be safe.”

“I will. Give Ruby a hug for me. Tell her I love her. You, too, Ryan. I . . .”

“Just get your ass home alive.”

Still caught in Santo’s gaze, she said good-bye and set the phone on the nightstand beside her. The air felt thin, dissipated by the man who moved like a jungle cat through it, bare feet padding against the wooden planks. She waited for him to speak, wanting him to break the tension that had grown so thick since their argument, but he said nothing.

“Why are you staring at me?” she finally asked.

“Just wondering when I went from
fuck off
to a
good man
.”

“You didn’t. I only said it so Ryan wouldn’t worry about me so much.”

He gave her a veiled look. “Are you doing better now?” he asked.

“Better than what?”

“Better than you were before you called your brother,” he said, brows raised.

He moved to the side of the bed and sat down. She scooted to the other edge and stood, intending to put the room between them. He leaned over, caught her wrist, and towed her back before she made it.

Mouth dry, she sat quietly beside him, chin down, avoiding the probing stare she felt on her face.

“Why can’t I ever tell what you’re thinking?” he murmured.

She didn’t know why, but she was glad for it. She felt transparent where Santo was concerned and he riled too many emotions for her to share her thoughts with him.

“I’m sorry I told you to fuck off,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean it.”

His fingers skimmed up her arm, pulling her a little closer. “I was out of line. I shouldn’t have pried.”

He leaned back against the pillows and tugged her down next to him. She resisted for about half a second before laying her head on his shoulder. He smelled of soap and cotton and Santo. She pressed her nose against him and breathed him in.

“What did your brother have to say?”

“That you’re probably a demon, too, and I shouldn’t trust you.”

He nodded, as if he’d expected it. “You didn’t have trouble convincing him that you’d seen demons?”

“He knows I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

“But?”

“He’s got this crazy idea that I wanted to stay dead the last time I died. That I might want to go there again.”

Santo tucked his chin against his chest so he could look down at her. “What gave him that idea?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Of course Santo didn’t let her get away with that.

“Are you afraid it’s true?” he asked quietly.

She laughed. “I’m afraid of everything, Santo. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Let’s think about this. You heard a gun and charged into the kitchen to help your brother. You tried to jump out of the van to save that kid, the delivery guy you didn’t even know, when hellhounds attacked. You’d have died trying but that didn’t stop you.”

“Maybe I knew you’d pull me back.”

“Maybe you should give yourself some credit. You’ve got some stones, lady. Big ones.”

She didn’t know if he said it to make her feel better or if he really believed it. Either way, it worked. She settled her hand on his belly and the muscles tightened beneath her palm. He answered by wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight.

“Is being in this house hard on you?” she asked. “The memories?”

“No. I thought it would be.” She felt his shrug. “For so long I’ve been carrying her memory like a weight. But now . . . it’s hard to explain.”

“She’s moved from your head back into your heart where she belongs.”

He exhaled heavily. “Yeah.”

Roxanne propped her head on her hand so she could see his face. He had a strong profile, marked by the black brow, long nose, and firm chin. She remembered
how flustered he’d made her when he’d entered the bar and looked at her with those midnight eyes. Had some part of her recognized even then that he would change her world?

“Are there other angels like you, Santo?”

He hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“You know. Living here among us? Angels who have lives. Who know how we feel when we lose someone we love.”

He lowered his lashes. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“You don’t see each other?”

“You mean at church or something? No.”

“But how does it work? Your being here? And don’t even think about filtering.”

He raised his brows. “Filtering?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been doing it since you met me. I deserve the truth. All of it.”

She held his gaze until he nodded.

“Have you always known what you are?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Did your wife know?”

He shook his head.

“That’s a pretty big thing not to share with her. Why didn’t you tell her?”

He shifted uneasily. Roxanne watched him, trying to crack the
Santo Code
. Because there was definitely a hidden message being sent, if only she could decipher it. His words said one thing, but his body told a different
tale. She could almost see the tension in him. The fight he waged before revealing each fact.

He wasn’t sifting and it didn’t
feel
like a lie. But deep water ran beneath his answers.

“At first, because it’s not something I told anyone,” he said at last. “Later, because too much time had passed.”

“What about when you got married? When she got pregnant?” Roxanne tried again.

“No.”

It seemed impossible that he would have kept it from the woman he claimed to love, but his response left no room for doubt. What did that say about him?

He gazed into her eyes and she saw something there that made her feel like his next words would be monumental, filled with more subtext that she’d have to be sharp to understand.

“I guess I was afraid if I told her what I really am, she’d leave me.”

“Why?” Roxanne breathed.

“I’m not human.” He swallowed hard. “She might have found that . . . abhorrent.”

He was serious. The look on his face was too naked, too raw for anything less.

“She wouldn’t have,” Roxanne said softly.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Trust me on this one, Santo. You’re pretty much the opposite of abhorrent.”

He blushed, looking so open and vulnerable that in that moment, Roxanne teetered over an edge she hadn’t realized she’d been skirting and fell a little bit in love.

“Were you sent to watch over your wife like you were me?” she asked.

He shook his head and she felt him choosing his words again. When he spoke, they were flat and dispassionate.

“Humans aren’t necessarily important to the Beyond. Not individuals, anyway.”

It took a moment for that one to register and another for the lingering emotions he’d stirred to ease enough for her to understand.

“What
is
important to the Beyond?”

“Rules. The natural order of things.”

“Things like demons running around in Tempe?” she said derisively.

“For one.”

“What about you, Santo? Are humans important to you?”

“I’ve lived here. I have a different perspective.”

“A
human
one?”

He looked almost shy as he nodded.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said with a smile. At last, he met her eyes, but something still shadowed his. She smoothed the worry from his brow with her fingertips.

“What happens after we find my brother?”

“We destroy the demons and send them back to Abaddon.”

“How do we do that? Because in case you didn’t notice, bullets only slowed them down.”

Santo looked away. “I’m still working on it.”

Roxanne stared at him with shock. He didn’t know how to destroy them? They’d sent him to protect her and hadn’t explained how to kill the bad guys? That circled in her mind, inciting other questions, making her doubt his motives even as her heart urged her to trust what she knew. She’d only just told Ryan that Santo had protected her without thinking of his own well-being too many times for her to start doubting him now.

“You’re losing faith in me already, aren’t you?” he asked.

“No. I mean . . .” She shook her head. “No. I’m not. But I am wondering . . . if humans aren’t important, why am I? Why are you helping me?”

“Because you’re important to me,” he said, rolling on his side to face her. For a long moment, he simply stared, his gaze so intent she felt as if he was memorizing her features. Emotions echoed in that look. Emotions she felt reverberating deep inside her. He touched her cheek with gentle fingers.

“You’re important to me.”

The words were a balm to her battered soul. She
let them sink in and begin to heal wounds she hadn’t known she’d been nursing.

“I don’t mean to push you away,” she said in a low voice. “If that’s what you think I’m doing. It’s not on purpose.”

“That’s good news. Because I wasn’t going to let you.”

He rotated smoothly, tucking her body beneath his and bracing above her. Without waiting for permission this time, he pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her softly. His tongue made a lazy sweep of her lips before parting them. Roxanne let her questions fade at the same time she let herself be swept away.

He tasted of toothpaste and heat, a drugging combination that made her want to lose herself in him and never surface. His weight pressed her back into the softness of the mattress, the hard shape of him filling an emptiness that had grown huge and hot since he’d touched her for the first time.

He didn’t kiss like an angel. He kissed like sin itself.

His eyes were closed, his lashes fanned against his cheeks. He shifted his hips against hers and her legs fell open, letting him slide between. If he asked her to make cake-eating babies with him right now, she’d say yes without hesitation.

Her breasts felt heavy, sensitive to his touch, her nipples pebble hard. With his lips, he explored her throat, the hollows around her collarbone, the shell of
her ear. But always he returned to her mouth and the melting kisses that she couldn’t get enough of.

He’d said he was the one and she felt the truth of that with every cell in her body.

“Louisa’s just in the kitchen,” Roxanne breathed when his hands slipped beneath the waist of her stretchy pants.

Santo dropped his head and sighed. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked with a solemn look.

“I want you to lock the door.”

He rolled off her and onto his feet in a single, graceful move. She heard the click of the lock and then he was back, stripping as he came. Long of limb, heavy with muscle, he was lean at the hips and belly, bulging in the places he should be. He lifted her shirt over her head and skimmed her pants down her legs, following each layer with kisses that turned her bones soft and her senses alive. His breathing was choppy, and his heartbeat raced beneath her hands.

He rested his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes. “I had to feel you,” he said, his fingers moving from her bare thigh to her waist to her breast in a warm, possessive caress.

“Me, too.”

Santo captured her mouth and kissed her again, seeming to lose himself in the heat. He shifted between her legs, his fingers hot and skilled as they circled the
sensitive center of her. Roxanne forgot where she was as a groan of pleasure passed her lips. He watched her face as she arched into him.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

It certainly felt as if he knew everything, but she couldn’t find the words to say it. “What didn’t you know?” she managed.

“That you’d be so beautiful.”

He replaced his fingers with his mouth and she forgot everything but how he made her feel. He found the very heart of her and devoted himself to setting her blood on fire.

She dragged her fingers through his hair and pulled him up, needing to feel him inside her with a passion she barely understood. Was it because of what he was that his touch was so electric? Or was it because of how she felt about him? From hello, he’d been chipping away at her defenses. Pushing her.
Seeing
her like no one had ever done before. He made her feel safe in the jaws of danger, alive in the sights of death. He made Ryan’s fear that she’d choose darkness over
this
seem ridiculous.

Santo braced his weight, his gaze unfocused and his muscles bunched as she lifted her knees and locked her ankles behind him. He entered her in one long stroke that seated him to the hilt and made her head fall back into the softness of the pillows. He filled her, pulsing
and hot, so hard that he stretched her swollen flesh and compelled her hips to move against his.

He buried his face in her shoulder and bit down so gently. “I didn’t know,” he said again, the words muffled against her skin.

He began to move in a slow, steady rhythm, driving his length deep inside her and pulling out just so. Just where she wanted him.

Her orgasm built fast and tore through her body, bowing it and clenching it tight around him. She covered her mouth with her pillow to muffle her cry. Santo muttered something in her ear that was both crude and exciting and he began to rock faster, pumping in and out, and before she knew it a second climax raged through her like a storm. Santo held her face, kissed her deeply, and came with low sound that revved her up all over again.

Her breath was shallow. So was his. He held her body so close that their lungs filled in tandem, each breath taking the space vacated by the other.

“You matter to
me
,” he breathed and the words filled her as completely as he did.

The knock on the door startled them both. Roxanne’s eyes went wide, and Santo gave a silent laugh and mouthed, “Great timing,” at her before calling out, “Yes, Louisa?”

“Dinner is ready. You are hungry,
sí
?”