by S. J. Day
“I didn’t smell them.”
“Then how did you know?”
He glanced at her. “One of those boys just got his number called.”
It took a heartbeat’s length of time before she understood. “You?”
“Yeah. Me.” He urged her to the register. “Our stay in Upland just got a lot more complicated.”
Reed’s fingers were sliding between Sara’s thighs when he felt the first wave of Eve’s terror. Like ripples on water, the distance between them made the feeling faint, but it was unmistakable nevertheless.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he rested his forehead against the window where he’d pinned Sara. There were other sensations to process beyond Eve and the woman in his arms—there were the other twenty Marks under his watch, orders from the seraphim, and the occasional check-in from Raguel’s switchboard.
“Tease,” Sara whispered, her lips to his ear.
Distracted, he moved by instinct, parting her and stroking through her slickness. She moaned. He knew just how to touch her, how to pleasure her, how to give her exactly what she wanted.
Her teeth nipped his ear and he reacted accordingly. The hand he had pressed against the window for leverage moved to her throat. Reed fought the urge to hurry the business along. He had to keep her busy long enough to make their agreement worth Sara’s while. Otherwise, she could withdraw her Marks from his command before they had a chance to be put into play.
Sara’s manicured fingertips dug into his waist and her lungs labored, pushing against his chest in an elevated rhythm. Sex was one of the few times when a celestially enhanced body responded without restraint. Orgasm-induced endorphins were the drug of choice for many, including Reed.
As Eve’s distress peaked, goose bumps swept across Reed’s skin. Sweat dotted his upper lip and pooled in the small of his back. The urge to go to her was so strong he quivered with it. He told himself it was because she was untrained and therefore dangerously vulnerable. It was an occupational reaction, nothing more.
“I love it when you shake for me,” Sara purred, her nails raking the length of his back.
Reed kept his eyes closed, imagining that the silky tissues that clutched at his thrusting fingers belonged to another woman.
I-I don’t normally . . . do things like . . . this.
Eve’s trembling voice whispered through his mind. She didn’t know it—and he wasn’t certain he would ever tell her—but their coupling in the stairwell had been raw in more than just the fierceness of the sex. He had compelled her away from the crowd, but once they were alone he’d done nothing to keep her there. He hadn’t been able to, because he was too focused on her—the smell of her, the feel of her, the depth of her hunger. It had been as intimate an encounter as he’d ever experienced.
Sara liked rough sex, period. The person administering the roughness was moot. It was the thrill and the acts that she relished, not her partner. Eve, on the other hand, had been completely taken aback by her enjoyment of his handling. It had been him she responded to. No other man could have reached her the same way.
“Hurry,” Sara hissed, her sex sucking voraciously at his pumping fingers. She released his waist and pushed impatiently at her wide-legged slacks. They fell to the floor in an expensive pool around her Manolos.
He stepped back long enough to shed his own pants. He briefly noted her black garter belt and silk stockings, then he gave a hard tug to her thong and dropped the ruined undergarment to the floor. She couldn’t shrug out of her jacket fast enough. Before she could loosen her tie, he’d shoved her back into the window, pinning her to the cool glass.
Her smile lit up the room.
There was a brief moment when Reed thought about bending her over the desk and fucking her from behind. But this way had memories he was relying on to perform over the next several hours.
With his hands behind her thighs, he lifted her. Then he paused, his gaze locked with hers. “You know what to do.”
Sara reached between them and positioned him at her entrance. He stepped forward and dropped her simultaneously, impaling her in one hard thrust. Her cry pierced the air and charged his nerve endings. With his erection clasped in slick, liquid heat, his body took over from his brain. Finally.
Using his arms and thighs, Reed moved her up and down over him, stroking deep and fast. The erotic slapping of their bodies filled the room and spurred his lust. He focused on the feel of her clenching and releasing around his aching cock, the sensation hardening him further, making him throb with the sudden rush of blood to the swollen head of his dick.
She moaned as he filled her, stretched her, the grip of her body becoming fistlike in its intensity. Physically, it was damn good. He worked her up and down his cock with greater fervency, charging forward in his drive to culmination. His balls drew up, his spine tightened, his lungs heaved with his exertions. Sara’s orgasm rippled along his length, bathing him in the creamy, fiery wash of release. Her moans only added to his pleasure. For all her angelic beauty, Sara sounded like a porn star during sex. It roused the animal in him, turning him on to a near fevered pitch.
Which was still nowhere near as hot as he’d been in the stairwell.
Emotionally, he and Sara were on different continents. Sara’s eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her thoughts her own. Reed’s mind was with Eve, his sexual energy focused on her, his soul directed toward soothing the fear he felt in her.
His rhythm faltered when he sensed her reaching back, a chaste touch, like a handhold in the darkness. Her spirit brushed across his as ephemerally as smoke, yet it rocked him to the core. With a roar, he climaxed. Sara shivered into another orgasm with a high-pitched squeal.
Eve brought him to his knees before the glass, with Sara scratching at his back and hours of servicing her left ahead of him. In the aftermath, he gasped for breath and longed for a shower. Left unguarded by the force of his release, he wasn’t prepared for the sudden piercing agony that broke his connection to Evangeline.
One of his Marks was dying.
Reed groaned in agony and pushed Sara away. His back arched, thrusting his chest forward and his arms out. Pain and sorrow radiated from him with white-hot heat. His skin glowed with the effort to contain the herald of his charge—an instinctive cry for help from Mark to handler that was occasionally so powerful it was sometimes sensed by mortals. A sixth sense, some called it. The feeling of something being “wrong” or “off,” but they didn’t know what.
“Takeo,” he gasped, calling out the name of his charge. Takeo had waited too long to call for help; Reed could feel the power of the mark draining from him. It was an aching feeling of loss that was amplified through Reed and sent outward to the firm. The death of a Mark was news that was carried through the soul and not through secular lines of communication. As the force of the herald left him, Reed collapsed forward, gulping in air.
“I have to go,” he panted.
“You cannot save your Mark.” Sara’s lovely face was flushed, her lips red and swollen even though he hadn’t kissed her. “And if you leave before we are done, you will not save her either.”
“Her?” Reed reached for his slacks.
“Evangeline.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You think a woman does not know when the man she is fucking is thinking about someone else?”
“Sara . . .” he warned, his fists clenching.
“It is too late to save Takeo and you know it. You just want to alleviate your guilt by consoling him in his final moments.” She stabbed a perfectly painted red nail into his pectoral. “I want you to live with that guilt. I want you to remember how you failed your Mark because you were whoring for your brother’s lover.”
He slapped her, open-handed across the face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She laughed and rubbed at the red mark left by his palm. Then she spread her legs, revealing the glistening pink folds of her sex. “Get to work, before I decide you are not worth the inconvenience you have caused me.”
/>
“How did you get called?” Eve asked, as Alec led her quickly across the parking lot back to the motel.
“The mark tingles,” he said, “then burns. Toss me the car keys.”
She did as he asked. “Like when you lie?”
He shot her an arch glance. “I don’t lie.”
“I did. And the mark burned.”
Alec gave a wry laugh.
“It also burned when I entered Mrs. Basso’s condo,” she said. “It gave me the energy to break through the locks.”
The line of his mouth thinned. “I know. The burning of your mark is just like getting an FTA—a failure to appear notice for a bail bond skip.”
He unlocked her car door, then rounded the vehicle to the driver’s side and climbed in.
“You didn’t mention the door-breaking thing to Gadara,” Eve said, just realizing that omission.
She accepted the bag of merchandise he set in her lap, moving it to the floorboards between her feet. Straightening, Eve was arrested by a sudden rush of warmth moving through her chilled veins. The sensation felt almost as if a warm blanket had been tossed around her shoulders. A blanket that smelled distinctly like Reed.
“I wanted to see if Abel would say anything.” Alec turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the parking spot. “He’s the one who triggered your mark. That’s his job as your handler.”
Eve watched him maneuver into traffic, still processing the rapid disbursement of her fear. One moment she was scared out of her mind, the next she felt cocooned and protected.
As if he was guided by radar, Alec quickly found the two boys strolling down a side street and fell into a safe surveillance distance behind them.
“What does that mean?” she queried. “Did he know about Mrs. Basso?”
“Handlers aren’t necessarily aware of the particulars of the crime. They usually only know what class of demon the target is and which Mark in their stable is both local and qualified.”
“Well, you can’t get any more local than right next door.”
“Or any less qualified that an untrained novice.” He exhaled harshly. “Abel’s job is to assign the most capable bounty hunter to each individual hunt, even if that means the Mark has to travel like we did today.”
Eve’s hands fisted in her lap. “Once a Mark is assigned, can another one step in?”
“Another Mark won’t get the call, no.”
Reed saved him for me.
Warmth blossomed in her chest, which scared her. She was grateful to be given a chance to kill. What did that make her? Besides homicidal?
“Raguel knew nothing about Abel assigning the Nix to you,” Alec continued grimly, “which means Abel is acting on his own.”
“Do handlers work for multiple firm leaders?”
Alec shook his head. “They work for one firm, that’s it. But they are somewhat autonomous. They’re mal’aks—angels—so they have full use of their gifts. They can route assignments to whomever they wish.”
“Perhaps Reed doesn’t trust Gadara either.”
“Or maybe Raguel deserves the benefit of the doubt and my brother has something crafty up his sleeve,” he snapped. “But I guess you don’t want to think about that.”
“Hey.” Eve twisted in her seat, adjusting her seat belt for comfort. “Don’t get pissy.”
“Raguel is an archangel, Eve. His love for God is absolute.”
“I don’t buy it, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen a drop of compassion in that guy. A lot of self-interest and bullshit, but love and compassion? Not at all.”
“And you’ve seen love and compassion in Abel?” he scoffed. “When exactly was this? When he was banging you into servitude in the stairwell? Or when he blew off your training to assign you to a demon bent on killing you?”
Alec pulled the car over to the curb just before a cul de sac. The street sign named it Falcon Circle. The boys had turned the corner just a minute earlier. Eve hopped out before the vehicle stopped rolling. She continued on foot, anger and frustration riding her hard. On the left side of the road, the streets were open-ended. On the right side—the side she was traversing—all the streets were dead ends that butted up against a short field with a copse of trees beyond it.
The engine shut off and the driver’s-side door slammed shut behind her, but Eve kept going. When she reached the corner, she paused and watched the two young men enter a home at the very end of the street. It was a two-story house with a deeply arched roof. The paint was a popular eighties-era scheme of light brown with chocolate trim. In the yard was a tricycle that had seen better days, and a lawn with bare patches and weed-infested flower beds. A covered car sat on one side of the driveway, while the adjacent side was stained with the remnants of an oil leak.
The day was bright and sunny, but a massive overgrown tree shaded the house and kept it in darkness. The residence was depressing, especially amid the other homes that showed signs of owner pride and attention. Alec’s prey lived in the neighborhood eyesore, and the air of decay and neglect gave Eve the chills.
“Now what?” she asked when he drew abreast of her.
“Now I wait until the time is right. I know where to find him.”
“Can you tell me how we’re expected to get anything done? You’re getting called . . . I’m getting called . . . we’re both getting called together. How much shit is God going to throw at us?”
“He doesn’t know what’s happening, angel.”
She snorted. “The all-seeing, all-knowing creator of everything is clueless?”
“He listens, He doesn’t watch.”
Eve opened her mouth to argue that point when she remembered that God hadn’t known Alec had killed his brother. He’d had to ask to find out. “Maybe you should tell him to give us a break, then.”
“Usually, a mentor’s sole job is to teach. As Raguel said, once a mentor/Mark team is created, they are inseparable until the Mark is capable of functioning alone.” Alec gestured impatiently back at the car. “In my case, God wasn’t willing to lose me as an individual unit. I told Him I would do both jobs at the same time. It was the only way to be with you.”
Eve’s pique drained away in a rush. “Alec—”
“That doesn’t explain why Abel is giving you hazardous assignments before you’re ready or why Raguel doesn’t know about it.”
“You don’t trust your brother at all.”
“No, I don’t. I have yet to see him give a shit about anything besides himself.”
“That isn’t how the popular story goes, you know.”
The look he shot her was derisive. He opened the passenger door and waited for her to get in. “I know.”
“So tell me what happened. What have you two been fighting about all these years?” She had to wait for him to settle into the seat beside her. Though it only took a minute or so, it seemed like forever.
As he pushed the key into the ignition, Alec kept his gaze straight ahead. “What do all men fight about?”
“Territory, goods, women.”
“Right.”
“Well, which is it?”
He put the transmission into gear and turned the car around, heading back the way they’d come. “All of the above.”
Raguel returned to the pent house suite of the Mondego Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, which he owned. It had been a long day and since it was only six o’clock in the evening, it was nowhere near over. The red tape involved in renovating a resort was daunting and exhausting. There were months of meetings and mountains of permits to file. Soon he would need Ms. Hollis’s input to continue. It would give them plenty of time to work together and forge a bond, a bond that would assist him in managing Cain.
Raguel briefly noted the panoramic views afforded by the walls of windows around him, before turning his attention to the desk in the corner.
“Report,” he ordered the secretary who waited there. Kathy Bowes wore dark slacks and a white turtleneck sweater, and looked every bit as young as she’d been
when marked at the tender age of fourteen. She was kept close to home to keep her alive. There was more than one way to kill a demon, and some Marks were best suited to safer tasks than a physical hunt.
The secretary stood and read from a pad of paper in her hands. “Three Marks lost today. Two Marks acquired. Possible sighting of a new breed of Infernal. Uriel called and would like you to call him back—”
Raguel scowled. “Three Marks? Who were the handlers?”
“Mariel lost a mentor/Mark team to the Infernal she didn’t recognize—”
“Is that the possible new breed sighting?”
“Yes.”
He loosened his tie. “I want her full report.”
“The recording is on your desk.”
“Who else?”
“Abel lost one.”
Raguel paused, disquieted. “Who did Abel lose?”
“Takeo, a former Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza member. He was very good. Forty-seven kills.”
Relief flooded the archangel, and reminded him that he was taking a dangerous gamble. The loss of Evangeline Hollis would create an enemy in Cain that would jeopardize centuries of work. But the possible rewards were worth the risk.
Raguel knew that Ms. Hollis needed to find self-confidence in her abilities in spite of Cain rather than because of him. Past observations of her had revealed that she was ambitious and determined. Cain’s mentoring of her had been a curve Raguel wasn’t expecting, but he believed it was still possible for her to achieve an identity separate from her mentor.
The seven archangels were tasked with the training of new Mark recruits. They rotated the duties for the sake of fairness. For seven weeks a year, each archangel was given free rein to use his or her powers in the training process. Raguel had deliberately delayed Ms. Hollis’s training so that it would fall into his rotation. He would give her a level of attention he’d never bestowed on any other Mark. A bond would form organically. He fully intended for her to align with him so completely that she related to him more than with her mentor and her handler.
Cain responded to stress with aggression; he always had. By keeping him edgy and off-guard, Raguel would promote tension between him and Ms. Hollis. Abel’s obvious infatuation with his brother’s lover would assist with that. She couldn’t have both of them, and being torn between the two would prevent a deep attachment from forming with either one.
