The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2 (8 page)

“When?” he asked softly.

She did not pretend to misunderstand. “It will be an autumn wedding, when all the leaves turn red.”

Kenzo offered a sharp look, for red was a dual color. But he did not demur. “So it shall be, Reika.”

Five

To convey his displeasure, Seraphiel greeted them in a huge cavern with a ceiling so high it appeared to be made of darkness. Jagged streaks of lightning crashed overhead, highlighting the stark rock. Other times, this place might appear to be all white, formed of nothing but marble pillars. The leader of the Seraphim was not to be crossed lightly.

First he kept them waiting, and then he manifested in a font of golden light.
When I call, I expect obedience.

Apologies
, Ezekiel offered.

It took considerably longer to appease Seraphiel, and for every moment, Camael expected him to know, but the shields held. And Ezekiel intended for them to maintain this deception for eternity? Impossible. He already felt sick and shaken, not by his actions, but the subsequent efforts to conceal them. No matter the regulations, touching Rei did not
feel
like sin.

At length, they took their orders and went from the divine sanctum. They shook the mountains and painted the sky red, as instructed. It seemed like a great deal of effort in order to change one man’s mind, but they did not question instructions handed down through the hierarchy. Even Seraphiel did not know the reasons behind the commands he gave.

Afterwards, he followed the rest of the host. Once – not long ago – privacy mattered not at all. Now it was crucial. As he watched, Ezekiel shaped the wards that would keep others away. Let them think they discussed some secret orders given by Seraphiel, handed down by the Thrones.

Despite their success, Ezekiel wasn’t pleased.
We must live this way forevermore. You all accept this?

The alternative is losing him
, Nathaniel responded.

Raziel kept even his thoughts to himself, but of them all, he had been closest to Camael, and he could read his kinsman’s brooding silence. He was blisteringly angry.
I never asked for help,
Camael thought.
I would have taken my punishment and left you out of it.

And you truly think I could allow that?
Raziel demanded.
Of us all, you would be destroyed down there. Did you know people call you Camael the Innocent, even here, where
all
are pure?

He hadn’t known that, and it angered him.
Innocent I may have been, but I am not helpless.

No
, Raziel responded.
Just stupid.

Enough.
The force of Ezekiel’s thought silenced them both.
We acted to preserve your secret. You must go now to this human woman. Tell her whatever you must, but there will be an end to it.

He had watched the Morning Lord’s fall, once the most beloved and beautiful. Later, he had seen Gabriel willfully turn his back on his host. Neither hurt so much as the prospect of this – and he did not know why. Only that an ache throbbed deep in the core of him at the prospect of bidding farewell to a beauty he had hardly known.

I will attend to it now.

With a twist of his will, he left them. It was too much to hope he would find her where he had before, and yet that was the first place he looked. Camael matched his appearance to what she had seen before; otherwise, how would she know him? The river had risen since his last visit, which signified rain. How much time had passed? He stood quietly, listening to the water tumbling over the rocks. The trees were a little thinner, somewhat less green, and the air carried a chill. This was the dying season, when the leaves fell, and the world spun toward winter.

It was too cold for bare skin and he thought clothing into existence to cover himself. Not because he felt discomfort on any crucial level, but if another traveller came upon him here, they would call him demon or worse, finding him tarrying so. For the first time, it occurred to him he did not know how to find her. While he could focus on her essence and port to her, it might prove awkward if she were in company. He did not want to cause problems for Rei, or offer trouble she could not explain away.

And so he sought shelter in a cave not far from the river, where he built a fire. It was easy work, a matter of laying wood and willing it to kindle. He could have had fire without fuel, but that too would alarm human travellers. Camael wanted to blend in as best he could. Once he had created a tolerably comfortable space, he sat and sent the call. If Rei felt anything for him, she would be compelled to seek him out. The delay gave him time to accustom himself to her world. This time, he would not be helpless and overwhelmed by so many physical sensations.

On the third day, she found him. She looked different, less girlish. He had no way to gauge the passage of time here.

“It’s you,” she breathed. “And you have aged not even a day.”

He’d wondered if she remembered. He had wondered if he ought to come and tell her there could be nothing more. Perhaps she already knew. But his conscience would not permit him to share such intimacy and then offer only silence thereafter.

The right words – words of farewell – trembled on his tongue and yet he did not speak them. “Did you miss me?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “But when I did not quicken, I thought I dreamed you.”

Would that were so – then he would not feel the awful sensation of being torn in two. He carried Ezekiel’s orders like a weight in his heart, but for the first time, he struggled against them. Camael did not want to obey. He craved a few more moments with her.

“I cannot get you with child,” he said, instead of good-bye.

“Because you are truly not of my world.”

He inclined his head.

“Then it is safe for us to be together.” Before the fire, she began to disrobe. “I relived that afternoon so many times. Nothing ever felt so good or so right.”

This was where he
must
tell her. But instead, he admired the curves of her body, no longer sylph slim, but rounded and succulent. “Rei . . .”

“You make my name sound like singing. No one ever did before.”

When she threw herself into his arms, he was lost, oh, so lost. Camael wrapped his arms about her. He had not touched her thoughts as he did with the host, and it mattered not at all. He knew her. The ache he hadn’t been able to explain before intensified into longing, and then he recognized it.

“I missed you.” Such longing for an absent person; it was wholly new to him.

Six

“And I, you.”

It had been almost five years since she’d first felt him watching her, nearly three since she had lain in his arms. Yet she had never been able to forget him. Rei wondered now whether she was mad. Her father had at last broken down her will to refuse the marriage, and in two weeks’ time, she would become Kenzo’s bride. An alliance between the two villages would improve life for all concerned.

No more raids. No more burning houses or dead livestock. Thus she had been told, over and over again.

So what was she doing here, breaking her vows for a golden dream that had come to seem no more real than the touch of the breeze upon her skin? The answer was simple: she could not deny him. He lived in her blood, like a fever. Yet she could not blame him for what had passed between them. She had seduced him, and if she were honest, that sense of power offered great allure. In her village, she had little, even as chieftain’s daughter. But she had bewitched this impossibly powerful male – and that certainty was heady.

Just once more,
she told herself.
Kenzo will never know.
He had not been promised a virgin bride, after all. Rei had married young, and her husband perished of fever. She had been a widow for some months before she encountered Camael by the river, else she would not have known how to seduce him.

But this time, it was different. She sensed it even before he put his arms around her. He was more centred, more sure of himself. Rei did not yet know what that change signified.

He kissed his brow to hers. “I want to know you.”

Rei thought it a poetic way of asking to make love to her again, so she nodded. Suddenly her mind filled with him, every small shame and unworthy secret – he possessed them all. The moment she tried to resist, he went away again, leaving her alone, and that might be worse.

“What—”

“I thought you gave permission.”

“For
that?”
It seemed wholly more intimate than sharing her body.

“I wanted to know you this time, before . . .”

Before they made love. She understood the impulse, though in her experience, such knowledge came in small trickles, not in a single brush of their minds. But she knew him now, too, and he was unquestionably alien. He had touched no women in this world or any other. Rei could not have explained why that excited her; only that it did. It lit a fire unlike any she’d ever known.

But even so, she wasn’t the aggressor. This time, she could tell he knew what he wanted. His mouth claimed hers, tender but implacable as well, as if his kiss branded her. Madness. Though she had been free three years ago, she was no longer. And yet she could not refuse him. Did not desire to, no matter the cost later. She had been like a shade, echoing the memory of life after vitality had fled. Only in his arms did she kindle beyond that pale shadow.

As he kissed her throat, she shivered. When he stroked her inner thigh, her legs fell open in welcome. There was nothing so divine as a godling slaking his desire. Her breath hitched as he traced the curve of her hip and nibbled behind her ear. Then he slipped his hand around her body, playing with her right breast.

But he wasn’t as sure as he pretended. In the firelight, his oddly innocent eyes asked reassurance. “You like that?”

Mutely, she nodded, not sure if she could speak. Rei’s husband had never taken such care with her. Sometimes she wanted the mating, and sometimes she didn’t; it had all been the same to him. In her world, men most oft felt so. They held all the authority. Despite his otherworldly power, the same did not hold true with Camael. She marvelled at that, even as he caressed her. It seemed to her she had never truly known free will before.

He paused, holding her arms to the light. “Who did this?”

“Kenzo.”

The Tanaka’s firstborn saw no reason to be gentle with a woman. He used his strength instead. Camael bent his head and pressed his lips to the marks. As she watched, they faded with a god’s power to heal. Rei wanted to weep, but instead she answered with a kiss to his throat.

The firelight permitted her to see his response – awe gilded his beautiful face, even as much as the fire did. He revelled in her pleasure and his own ability to invoke those feelings. His lips followed his fingers: full of delicacy, demand, and burgeoning confidence. The heat against her skin was delicious and unexpected; his mouth sliding along her curves made her scrape the soles of her feet against the rock. Groaning in response, he licked until her nipple stood erect, begging for his attention. She cried out when he sucked it into his mouth and teased her with his teeth.

“Tell me what you want now,” he murmured, sounding odd and hoarse.

Unbearable tension rose within her as his golden head surged between her breasts. She did not notice when he slid the robe completely away, baring her body. Aware of a momentary lapse in contact, her senses swam as she tried to focus and received only the sweet shock of his hot skin against hers.

Dipping his fingers into the slick, swollen folds of her femininity, he stroked her, making her hips lurch up to meet him. He found a place that felt to her as if he held lightning against her flesh. Rei tested him in turn, fingers stealing down his abdomen and curling around his man’s flesh. He bucked, strain evident in his face. For long moments, he worked against her cupped palm, moaning with each push.

Oh, now, my love. Now.

She was ready, so ready. But to her surprise, he did not cover her. Instead he slid lower. Since he was innocent, he must have taken this from her darkest and most secret fantasies. No man would stoop to perform this intimacy for a woman. But a god would. Only such a one could possess the self-assurance to humble himself so.

“Camael!” she cried as his mouth found her.

Rei clutched his head, fingers tangled in his gilded hair, and rocked against his mouth. He licked her, just so. Climax shook her, head to toe. Giving her no chance to recover, he slid up and pushed inside. Once, twice, thrice, he thrust, making her moan. He wrapped his arms about her hips, dragging her up to meet each push and she locked her legs about him. His fierce beauty almost hurt her eyes, seeing his intensity so focused on her body.

Her second peak crashed almost as hard as the first, coming in relentless spasms, and it drove him over the edge. Though her own satisfaction had been staggering, she still knew when he shook in the familiar response. But she had never been so fiercely glad of it before. Her husband had used her body, but only Camael made her feel
this
way, and she took visceral pleasure in maddening him in the same fashion. He offered no accompanying gush of seed, however, and she regretted the lack. It was the only imperfect part of their union.