by Mary Calmes
I lifted his face, bent, and kissed him. The deep, husky moan tore through me as I slanted my mouth over his. My tongue slid between his lips as I took possession of the kiss, letting him know that he was mine.
There was the sound of a throat clearing, and it took every drop of willpower I possessed to break the kiss and look up at the ice man towering over the bed. But he wasn’t looking at me.
“I ask again, is he going out with us to hunt demons tonight?”
“Yes.” Ryan caught his breath. “He is.”
“And what if he’s killed, what will you do then? You just found your precious hearth. If he dies, who will you fuck then?” The tone of the question was aggressive. He sounded like a jilted lover more than anything else.
“I’ll protect him,” Ryan promised. “I’ll ask Leith, see if he can come help me, or Jackson or Marcus. I know you won’t help watch him, but one of them will.”
“I’ll watch him. I would no more allow your hearth to be harmed than any of the others. You insult me by suggesting I would be anything but vigilant.”
Ryan grunted as he rolled off the bed to his feet in one seamless movement. It was like he was boneless.
“This is the one man you’ve found that you can fuck and not kill. Why would I let you lose him?”
I saw Ryan deciding whether he was going to take offense at the other man’s wording. After several moments, he nodded. “I’ll meet you at midnight down by the marina.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Malic agreed, walking out of the room, slamming the bedroom door after him.
“Hey.” Ryan turned around to face me. “What’s with you and him?”
“It was years ago,” he admitted, no game playing between us, no making me dig. “Malic and me, it didn’t work, and two warders together is so much more than simply a bad idea.”
I let out a deep sigh. “I don’t think he’s over you.”
“We’re different men,” he told me. “And we want different things. Maybe as more time passes, Malic will find his own home and hearth, but for now, he has no one and does not seem all that interested in finding one.”
“I thought it was dangerous for warders not to have hearths?”
“It is, so we all watch him, but even Jael can’t force Malic to love someone if he doesn’t or can’t. We may be scary warriors fighting against supernatural forces, but we’re still guys, ya know? If you don’t feel it, you don’t feel it.”
I squinted at him. “So with me, it’s there, right?”
He swallowed hard, looking overwhelmed suddenly.
I opened my arms, and he moved fast to fill them, his head down on my shoulder, hugging me tight. “Can I ask you a small favor?”
It was funny how he leaned back slowly and peered up at me.
“I promise it’s not a big deal.”
The disbelief was all over his face, and my smile helped nothing. “Oh God, what?”
I softened my request by kissing him so hard and long that he had to shove me off of him so he could breathe. I took advantage of the moment, and he agreed before he realized he’d made a deal with the devil… well, with me.
VI
“HOW COME I don’t have a sword?” Cash asked, looking from Ryan to Malic and back again. Malic did the slow pan to Ryan, who let out a deep breath before looking at me.
“What?”
“Remind me to kill you.”
“Why?” I chuckled, trying not to laugh, but the absurdity of the entire situation was simply too much for me. I was going to start giggling any second, and I never giggled. I was a grown-up, for heaven’s sake.
If Ryan wanted me for his partner, he got Cash too. There was no way around it. I would not keep the biggest event in my life from my best friend. I explained to Ryan that it was like having a bigger safety net, now he had Cash, and Phoebe, who was not along but dying to know what happened. She was pregnant; she did not get to see demons being killed. Ryan and Malic were stunned at how easy it was for my best friend and his wife to wrap their brains around the fact there were actual things that went bump in the night that had to be destroyed. And Phoebe, like me, who watched every single scary show on the CW and FOX and every horror movie that came out, was very excited to be in on their whole big secret. She was all ready to help make fake IDs, spread salt around doorways, or banish angels back to heaven. She watched way too much Supernatural.
“Jules?”
I turned to look at Ryan.
“This is the one and only time you and Cash are allowed here with us. Do you understand?”
I had already made the same promise at least ten times, but I understood that the arrangement was giving him an ulcer. It was really very sweet. “Yes, Ry.”
“Could we all please fuckin’ focus?” Malic growled beside me.
My eyes moved to him. We were all crouched behind some stacked pallets at the wharf, looking at the empty space in front of us through the slats.
“What?” he asked irritably.
“Jael calls Ryan ‘Rindahl’, but it’s like his call sign or something, it’s not his name. What’s your real name, Malic?”
“It’s just Malic,” he said between clenched teeth.
“It is.” Cash nodded, bumping my shoulder. “Remember? He owns that strip club that Ben and Carlene did the grand opening for, like, six months ago. I thought at the time that Malic was a cool-ass name.”
Malic’s cold eyes flicked to Cash, but instead of looking away, Cash stared right back. My money was on my best friend, and it turned out I was right. Malic could not hold his gaze long.
“There,” Ryan said suddenly, his voice guttural and icy.
Before I could caution him to be careful, he stood, and from that standing position, bent his knees and leaped straight up into the air and over the stack we were hiding behind.
“Jesus,” Cash breathed as Malic followed right behind him.
I had expected, from many seasons of Angel and everything else, demons with horns, big heads, scaly skin, or fangs. What I saw were men, or things that looked like men, all in black, looking more like assassins than creatures from the pit. The eyes, though, their bleeding eyes, under the glow from the streetlamps, were a dead giveaway.
I heard Ryan growl low in his throat, and in a blur of movement, he pulled his two swords from the twin scabbards on his back and rushed toward the demons.
Cash roared out a warning as Ryan was quickly surrounded, but he was already moving. As I watched, I was frightened for the man who had become more important with every passing second I spent with him, but it was beautiful at the same time, the synchronization, more a dance than war.
“I’ll cut out your heart,” one of the creatures snarled at Ryan.
“Try, servant, try,” Ryan baited him, the swords spinning in his hands as he lunged forward.
I was breathless watching him. His sword cut through the air in arches and circles, whirling fast, like a fan, sweeping from side to side, moving in studied steps, intricately executed, each maneuver able to cause instant death if contact were made.
I looked for Malic, found him, and watched as he rolled, leaped, froze still as stone, and then dove into a somersault and landed light on his feet once more. Swords struck one another hard, steel ringing against steel, the only sound on the empty dock. Malic and his adversary stopped suddenly, frozen together in statuesque form. Malic’s body in an arch above the ground, one hand on the dock, splayed fingers gripping the wood, the other holding his sword straight up to ward off the death strike. His adversary was poised above him, driving down with his stroke, his legs braced apart, the other hand filled now with a dagger no one else had seen. He had thought to deliver the last blow, but Ryan’s yell turned the demon’s head at the last moment. The moment of fractured focus was taken full advantage of. Malic collapsed to the ground and somersaulted to his feet in a seamless movement that was like watching a dancer.
I turned to look for Ryan and watched as he sprinted past where Cash and I were
and ran up the side of a building with a demon not more than a breath behind him. I watched as the demon flew after Ryan, both arms outstretched like wings, each wielding a razor sharp weapon meant to take my lover’s life.
Ryan spun in mid-air, whipped around, and beheaded the demon instantly. The ground opened up, and just as it had done before in my apartment, there seemed to be a yawning, blowing black hole that sucked the headless corpse down into it. And I saw suddenly where Ryan would complete his leap as well as what he didn’t see: the two demons there.
Charging out from behind the pallet with Cash right behind me, I ran up on the creature as Ryan found himself at the end of his strike. The demon adjusted his stance and drove forward, the honed edge of the sword down, ready to cut through Ryan’s heart and sever him in two.
I swung hard with the bat I had brought along, catching the demon in the chest, driving him back. Before I could turn, he recovered and charged forward. The sword would have driven through my abdomen, but it was knocked sideways by a three iron. Cash had brought a gold club, and with it, he saved my life.
I watched as he swept the demon’s feet out from under him, but before I could be impressed, I gasped as I saw an ax arcing toward my best friend’s neck.
Caught fast between twin swords, the ax was wrenched free of the demon’s hand with such force that I heard a cry of pain. Ryan was there, between Cash and death, and I instinctively grabbed his arm and squeezed it tight.
“Run to the street,” he growled at me.
I turned in time to see a flash of steel and watched, spellbound, as the edge of a hatchet stopped inches from my stomach. The flat side of the sword had intercepted the weapon, and as I followed the length of it up to the face of the demon, I found that there was no head to view as it was no longer there. I pushed the carcass away from me before it fell forward, and a stream of thick liquid coursed from the neck stem splattering the wooden dock at my feet. I was bumped sharply out of the way, and I saw beside me another vacuum of a black hole. Ryan had kept me from being sucked into it.
“Now run,” he ordered, grabbing hold of Cash’s jacket and shoving him forward in front of me.
As I bolted down the dock, Cash pounding after me, I saw Malic rush by me. A safe distance away, both of us turned to look. Malic leaped high in the air, spinning at the same time, and landed effortlessly on the roof of a restaurant before turning on the demons there. Looking for Ryan, I saw him hacking his way through one man after another with his savagely wielded swords, turning living beings to corpses before my very eyes. Those further away began to run instead of standing by, spellbound, to meet their fate. I understood their trancelike state, as I myself could not take my eyes from Ryan Dean, riveted, at the same time revolted, bearing witness to the carnage.
I heard a sound behind me, and turning, saw a demon. Bloody eyes swept over us before he lunged forward. I didn’t have time to register Ryan’s presence before he suddenly stopped just behind the creature, standing still and silent, his body frozen in position. He stood in a lunging stride, right leg forward, one sword held tight in both hands now against his left side, as though he had finished an arc of movement. It took me a moment to realize that he had not missed as I had thought at first.
When the demon tried to speak, blood gushed from his mouth, coursing over his lips and chin in gulping spasms, staining the entire front of his shirt bright crimson. His head fell back in agonizing slowness, opening a gaping wound before falling to the pavement with a sickening wet sound. The body stood for a moment and then lurched forward into a swirling black wind tunnel. My head lifted, and my eyes met Ryan’s as Malic suddenly appeared at his side.
“Never again,” Ryan said, releasing a deep breath. “But thank you for interfering on my behalf.” The last part was spoken to not only me, but Cash, as well.
“Even though you interrupted a killing stroke,” Ryan’s fellow warder groused, glowering at Cash and me. “Neither he nor I ever take our eyes from one another in battle.”
I looked back at Ryan.
“It’s true,” he said gruffly. “Now I want you and Cash to go home. As we had to intervene here to save you, others escaped, and we have to hunt them down. It’s gonna take a while.”
Malic growled, bumping my shoulder hard as he stalked by me.
“I’m sorry, Ry,” I exhaled, “I just wanted to know what you did, but me being here put you in danger.”
He didn’t disagree, but I got a hint of a smile before he put his hand briefly on my cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Go home and go to bed, Jules. You have to work in the morning.”
“So do you,” Cash said.
“But I don’t have to be at the museum to tape the date-night piece until nine,” he sighed, brushing by me, following after Malic.
I watched him walk away, flicking his sword sharply so drops of blood flew off of it before he sheathed it across the other on his back. Malic turned to look at him before he took off running. Ryan broke into a sprint, and when Malic leaped high into the air, over the roof of the building he had been on earlier, Ryan followed right on his heels.
“They’re amazing.” Cash spoke my thoughts out loud.
I turned back to my best friend. “Why does Ryan need me if he has Malic?”
Cash pointed at my face. “You’ve got blood splatter on your glasses.”
“Perfect,” I groaned, taking them off to clean the lenses on my T-shirt.
I walked with Cash silently back to his Lexus. Leaning on the open door, one hand resting on the roof of the car, he looked at me.
“What?”
“It seems like Ryan’s got backup when he’s fighting, right?”
I shrugged.
“From what you said earlier about a hearth and what he said when I asked him, seems like the part that you’re gonna do is to recharge his batteries. Just like when I come home from a shitty day at work, and my beautiful wife is there waiting for me with her own story about her own shitty day—I feel better just looking at her.” He stared at me. “Isn’t it your part to just love him and make everything better?”
I stared back. “You saw that… how do you feel better after that?”
“I dunno how it is with you guys, Jules, but just holding my girl in my arms fixes a helluva lot for me.”
And hadn’t Ryan said as much?
“I’ll think about it.”
“Well, that’s what you do, Jules,” Cash chuckled as he got into the car, “you think.”
Now what the hell did that mean?
He let out a snort of laughter at the look I gave him once I was seat-belted in.
VII
I GOT no sleep because I was worried about Ryan. I couldn’t concentrate at our Monday morning meeting and finally had to excuse myself since I was climbing the walls. I had to go and make sure he was all right.
I was waiting at the elevator to go down, and when the doors swooshed open, found myself face to face with Peyton Wilson.
“Julian.” He coughed, flushing bright pink, his ears turning red. “How are… you? I’m so sorry for Friday night and everything. It was a mess.”
So much had happened in three days, and the guy I had been seeing having sex with the man in front of me didn’t even register as important anymore. “It’s fine,” I assured him, getting on the elevator as he got off. “Honestly.”
He took a breath. “Really?” The man sounded so confused.
“Yes, Peyton, we’re good.”
“Jesus, Julian,” he said, catching the doors so they couldn’t close. “You are seriously the coldest son of a bitch I have ever met in my life.”
“Could you move?”
“Christ, if I lost a hot piece of ass like Channing Isner, I would feel like shit.”
Since I had never had a piece of said ass, I had no idea what I was missing. Not that I cared. “Okay, can you move?”
“Julian, I—”
“How ’bout this: let’s not talk ever again,” I suggested as I pushed him
back and the doors slid shut. I had never anticipated him giving me crap. I had figured him for scared and hopeful that our working relationship would not suffer. But in the big picture, as he worked for Cash, neither he nor Channing were any of my concern.
Only one thing mattered: Ryan Dean.
I took a cab to his apartment, and when the doorman saw me, remembering me from Friday night, he let me in immediately. I had my hand up to knock on his door when it opened.
“Hey.” Ryan smiled at me, his eyes sparkling with all the kaleidoscope colors I loved, green, brown, and gold, holding up his BlackBerry so I could see it. “I was just gonna call you and—”
I lunged at him, hands on his face, kissing him hard and deep. His moan was hoarse, needy. “I was so worried.”
“Why?” He smiled as I kissed his throat, his chin, his cheeks, his nose, and finally his mouth again, claiming his lips, his tongue. His hands fisted on the lapels of my cashmere trench coat. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth, nibbling it gently.
“Jules, I… need… I hafta be somewhere, and you’re making it really hard to—you’re making me hard.”
I could not get enough of him, knowing he was safe, the warmth of his body seeping through his clothes. I was rough and bruising as I prolonged the kiss, devouring his sweet mouth until I got the whimper I was after. His arms were wrapped around my neck, and I could feel his heart beating though his dress shirt. We stood together, in his doorway, wrapped around each other, kissing like lovesick teenagers until I finally had to breathe. My head was pounding as I lifted my lips from his.
“Forget what I said,” he said, “you go ahead and worry.”
“I want you to move in today. Hire movers, pack up your shit, and come home. I never want to sleep without you again—not that I did any sleeping.”
He shifted his stance, easing back so he could look into my face. “Yeah, you look a little wrung out,” he said gently, pushing my glasses up on my nose. “Those are hot, you know. Guys who wear glasses, brainy guys, do it for me, big time.”
