“Hey!” he said. “What?”
“You’re planning to bail,” she said, smacking his arm a second time. “You’re planning to bail out of here… as soon as you’ve fixed yourself enough to get away from me. That’s probably the only reason you’re bothering to fix yourself at all.”
He scowled.
He considered saying nothing to that, too.
Then he realized that would only make it worse.
“It’s not ‘bailing,’” he muttered. “I have to go deal with this. I have to get Jade and Uri back. I have to de-possess Kara. I have to get all of them out of there… preferably before they do whatever this big ritual of theirs is, which I suspect is raising this ‘Father’ demon to wreak hell on planet Earth or whatever.”
“So bring me. Let me help.”
“Absolutely not.” He glared at her. “How is that going to ‘help’? I’d just be worried about you the whole time.”
“Spoken like every wannabe hero asshole.” She scowled at him, biting her lip in a way that made him think she wanted to hit him again. “Do I need to remind you, yet again, that I saved your life yesterday?”
His jaw hardened. “That one demon was talking about calling an ambulance⏤”
“Yeah, and even if that was true, I’m sure that would have gone over great,” she retorted. “You lying in the middle of the road. In a pool of your own blood. Glowing like some kind of demented Christmas tree. They probably would have been afraid to touch you. I don’t know what they would have done with you, Dags, but it wouldn’t have been good.”
“Phoenix⏤” he growled.
“You need my help,” she snapped. “I know you hate that fact with every fiber of your being, but it’s the truth.” Staring at him, her green eyes sparking with anger, she added, “I think even you know it. That’s the really irritating part. You know it, but you hate the idea so much, you’re in full-blown denial about what you know.”
He scowled harder at that, but didn’t have a good answer.
“You know I’m right.” She shoved at his side, again causing him to throw a protective hand up in front of his chest. “It’s why you keep coming here. It’s why you keep letting me come along and pretending like you have no choice… when we both know you could bust out of here any time you want. It’s why you crash-landed on my pool deck the other night⏤”
“I did that?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “You know you did. And stop changing the subject.”
He opened his mouth.
Seeing her expression, he closed it again.
For a handful of seconds, they only looked at each other.
Then she exhaled in frustration, resting her chin back on her crossed arms below the bandage. For a few seconds, she watched him manipulate the blue-green charge, the reflection dancing in her irises. He found himself watching her watch the light.
Again, staring at her seemed almost outside of his control.
When she unfolded her arms, wrapping an arm around his waist, coiling a leg around and between his, he felt his whole body react. He actually worried, for those first few seconds, that the blue-green charge would ignite for real, and he’d scare the shit out of her.
That, or throw her across the room.
Pulling it back with an effort, he watched her prop her jaw on one hand.
She was back to watching him manipulate the charge.
“You can touch it,” he said, speaking before he thought about what he meant to say. “The angel fire. It doesn’t hurt you.”
She nodded against her propped-up hand. “Yes.”
He watched her, puzzled.
“What does it feel like?” he said.
She pulled the arm from around his waist, trailing her fingers through the charge, touching it lightly and playing with it below the wound.
Dags watched the charge coil around her fingers and skin, and again fought a reaction in his gut, feeling his tongue thicken.
“It’s warm,” she said, staring into the light. “It tingles. It’s kind of like getting a low electric shock, but it feels good.” She looked up, as something else occurred to her. “It feels like you. I can feel you in it.”
He opened his mouth to ask, but she shook her head.
“I have no idea how to describe that part,” she said. “It just feels like you. Like it’s got a presence. It feels alive. Like…” She trailed, her lips firming as she thought. “I honestly can’t describe it. It just really feels like you. Like beyond the way I know you like this.”
She motioned up and down him, as if to clarify, but he had no real idea what she meant by that, either.
He really wanted to ask her, but her potential answers made him nervous.
It hit him again just how little he knew about The Change, or what it had really done to him. How could he possibly risk inflicting it on her, when he still had no idea what it had done to him? If the demons were right, he still didn’t know what he was truly capable of.
“Do I even want to know?” she said, exhaling.
“Know what?”
“What you’re thinking right now?” she said.
He frowned, even as her leg tightened around his.
“What are we doing?” he said finally. “Are we ever going to talk about it? Or what those demons said? It’s dangerous to you, me being here.”
“You came here,” she reminded him.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, shaking his head.
She adjusted her head on her hand, frowning at him. “What do you mean, Dags?”
He stared at her, at her deep green eyes, the gold flecks that looked brighter again, reflecting the blue-green lightning coming off his hand and fingers.
He wanted to give her an answer… a real answer.
Instead he found himself stopping where he’d been channeling light into his chest, forcing his eyes off hers. He pulled back the light as he did, tightening his hold over it, so that it pulled back into him physically.
“Are you done?” she said, quirking an eyebrow when he looked over.
He nodded, still focusing on pulling back the light.
She reached out, playing with the remaining wisps and coils of current on his bare skin.
“Does that mean you’re healed now?” she asked.
He thought about that.
Then he lifted the hand he’d been using to channel the light, and laid it on his chest.
It definitely felt different compared to the first time he’d done that.
After touching it tentatively a few times, then prodding it, then pressing his hand down on it with more pressure, he realized he didn’t feel very much pain at all. More than that, he no longer felt a hole there, in that part of his chest. He’d practically seen it through the bandages before, but now all he felt was a kind of itchy, burning sensation.
“Can I see?” she said.
Before he could decide what that meant, she pulled herself up, supporting her weight on her hands and knees. She crawled over him, throwing a leg over his waist and sitting on his hips, resting most of her weight more or less right on his crotch. He sucked in a bare breath, unable to help it, then more or less held it, watching as she bent over him, her eyes concentrated as she began picking at the tape holding down his bandage.
He watched her peel it up carefully, undoing each piece before she started to fold back the bandage itself.
She stared down at the wound, eyes concentrated, her mouth pursed.
He found himself watching her instead of looking at his chest.
“Is it okay?” he said, when she didn’t speak.
Her green eyes flickered to his. Studying his expression, she grunted, nodding, right before she lay the bandage back down, smoothing the tape.
“You can probably take this off,” she said, nodding towards the bandage. “I would hide from the doctor, though, if she comes back to check on you today. You’ll give her a heart attack. She was already freaking out about how fast you were healing.”<
br />
Dags nodded, frowning.
He honestly hadn’t been sure if he dreamed that.
“You might not want to show Karver or Asia, either,” Phoenix added.
Leaning back, she sat on him again, assessing the rest of him with shrewd eyes.
“Do you feel okay?” she asked.
Thinking about that, he nodded. “I’m tired still, but my chest doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s a little tight.”
“That might be the stitches,” she said. “You probably need to get those taken out. We shouldn’t ask the doc to do it. Maybe I can do it.”
He frowned at her, about to protest, but she was already moving.
She leaned over him again, planting her hands on either side of his head, presumably to avoid putting her weight on his chest.
Before he could wrap his mind around how close she was, she lowered her mouth.
She kissed him, still holding herself up on her hands. Pausing briefly, she kissed him again, running her tongue lightly over his lips, then his tongue when his lips parted.
He didn’t think.
His fingers wrapped into her hair.
He pulled her mouth down to his a third time, his hands verging on rough.
She let out a surprised sound when, that time, he kissed her.
They did that for what felt like a really long time, pausing only long enough to take breaths.
He was still trying to hold himself back.
He fought to breathe through the pain in his chest, no longer sure it was from the gunshot wound, or really, if it had anything to do with his body at all.
She pulled away from his mouth long enough to sit up, to rearrange her weight. He let out a low sound when she pressed into his cock, then he caught hold of her hips, rolling with her to her back. She let out a surprised gasp, looking up at him.
Seeing the look in her eyes, he pressed into her with his full weight, and she let out a full-throated moan, one he felt down to his feet.
He held her down, closing his eyes, still fighting to hold it back.
When he opened them, a few heartbeats later, she’d wound her legs around his, her fingers gripping his tattooed arms.
He felt the days and weeks of denying this, of side-stepping it, of pushing it out of his mind. The times he looked at his phone and his chest hurt, just from seeing her number on there, fighting with himself over a million bullshit reasons why it was okay to pick up, why it was okay to call her back, to let himself have this.
He told himself he was a bastard for even contemplating it.
He told himself she was cheating on Karver.
He told himself she would do the same to him.
He told himself she was slumming it, that the novelty of Dags Jourdain, weirdo P.I. and maybe-angel would wear off fast, as soon as she realized he couldn’t even feign normal.
He told himself she probably stepped out on Karver all the time, that it was the pool boy last week, her martial arts instructor the week before that, a director, a producer, maybe a street artist before that.
He told himself it was a publicity stunt, that she was doing it to get caught, to create some drama and buzz for her and Karver’s new movie.
He read those stupid fucking websites and articles dedicated to the two of them, just to see photos of her with Karver, to remind himself what an asshole he was.
He’d fought both sides of that argument for so long in his head, he could barely remember why he was fighting it at all.
He didn’t notice when that control began slipping.
“Hey,” she murmured. “Calm down…”
He blinked, feeling her words like an electric shock.
She was stroking his chest, leaning up to kiss his jaw.
He had no idea when he’d started kissing her again, how long they’d been kissing.
“Calm down… you’re going to hurt yourself…”
He closed his eyes, longer than a blink. He fought to think, to control his breath.
“What?” he managed.
His whole body hurt.
He wasn’t even sure what she was talking about.
He tried to pull his mind back into straight lines. He tried to decide what he’d done. Had he not read the signs from her? Had he pushed her too far? He looked down at his hands, and was relieved to find them in her hair and rubbing the small of her back.
His fingers tightened in her hair, and he nodded.
He had no idea what he was nodding to.
“I wasn’t telling you to stop,” she said, her voice faintly amused. “I’m just worried about you. The doc said you might have broken ribs. Maybe even a concussion. You hit that pavement pretty damned hard… and just now, it looked like you only healed the bullet wound.”
He looked down at his body, confused.
Then he looked up, staring at her face.
He could feel every part of her now.
He could feel way too much of her skin.
Her eyes looked lighter than usual. She was watching him minutely, a faint frown at the edges of her full lips. She had no aura, like always; there was nothing to read, nothing to understand apart from what he could pull out of her facial expression.
It was even more maddening now than usual.
“Why don’t you have one?” he blurted.
She quirked an eyebrow, smiling, almost like she knew he’d been having a conversation with himself in his head, one she hadn’t been privy to.
“One what?” she said. “I think you left out a few words.”
“An aura. Why don’t you have an aura?”
She blinked, staring.
Realizing from her face she had no idea what he was talking about, he shook his head, leaning down to kiss her, but she laid a hand firmly on his unhurt shoulder, holding him up.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You don’t get to just slide that one by without comment.” She studied his eyes. “What do you mean, I don’t have an aura?”
When he didn’t speak, her frown deepened.
“You can see auras? And I don’t have one?”
Hesitating, kicking himself for his big mouth, he nodded, reluctant.
“Yes, you can see auras?” she clarified. “Or yes, I don’t have one?”
“Both.”
“So on everyone else, you see an aura? But not on me?” she said, frowning more.
Again, reluctantly, he nodded. “Yes.”
There was a silence.
In it, Dags still felt he was breathing too much.
He was breathing way too much.
His skin was too hot.
He was intensely conscious of where he was leaning on her, of how much of her skin he could feel. Somewhere, during the kissing he’d lost track of, she’d started massaging his thigh. Her hand slid up to his waist as he thought it, then began exploring his back.
He raised himself up on his hands, with some bare thought of calming himself down, of separating them, even a little. It didn’t really help. Before he’d let himself think about it, one of his hands wrapped around her hip, holding her down, then massaging her side.
“Stop distracting me,” she murmured.
“From what?” he said, watching her face.
“You know what.” She pushed at his chest. “What does that mean, Angel-boy? Me not having an aura… what does that mean?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you think? What do you think the reason is?”
He didn’t really have an answer for that, either.
After a pause, he tilted his head in a half-shrug.
“Bullshit,” she said, pursing her lips. “You think I’m like you. You think that’s why I look different to you, through your angel-vision or whatever. We both thought the same thing, only you had a tangible reason for thinking it.”
Again, reluctantly, he nodded. “Yes.”
“Is there anything else?” she said. “Are there any other things that are different about me? Compared to other people?”
>
Shaking his head, Dags answered truthfully.
“I don’t know.”
She stared up at him, the gold flecks in her eyes catching the sunlight from the enormous window, making them seem to glow from within. Guilt hit him as he stared back at her. In one of those rare moments with her, he actually recognized what he was seeing in her face.
It was fear.
“I’m sorry.” He gripped her hip tighter. “Maybe I should go.”
“Go?” She frowned, and now anger sparked there. “What are you talking about? Go?”
“I just mean… maybe I’m making it worse. Maybe I’m making it more likely you’ll go through the Change.” Looking down at her, he forced himself to hold her gaze. “I know I’m not answering your questions. The truth is, I don’t have good answers. I don’t know why I thought you were like me. It wasn’t the aura thing, not really. I just knew, somehow. I knew, even though I didn’t know shit. I still don’t know anything, Phoenix… which is why I’m worried I’m making it worse. It’s why I walked away. It’s why I wouldn’t pick up when you called.”
The frown lingered at her lips, but he saw understanding in her eyes.
Some of the anger faded as that understanding deepened.
“So why did you come back?” she said.
He shook his head, wincing, as if her words hurt him.
Looking away from her eyes didn’t really help. His eyes drifted down her instead, focusing on where he gripped her hip in one of his hands.
He realized for the first time she wasn’t wearing pants.
She wasn’t wearing a bra, either; just a loose, white T-shirt with black lettering on it, and a pair of black panties. He stared down at her, a lot longer than he should have.
He forced his eyes back up with an effort.
“I’m an asshole,” he said, exhaling, clenching his jaw. “Why do you think?”
She blinked, staring up at him.
Then she surprised him.
She laughed.
Chapter 22
Self Control
His phone rang.
Dags looked at the side table, watching it vibrate on the enamel surface.
He was kind of shocked it worked.
Bad Angel Page 18
