by Anne Marsh
The geneticist in her was categorizing, identifying racial lines and possible antecedents. Too dark to be Mediterranean, and the cheekbones were wrong for Middle Eastern. He could have been Israeli; Mossad, based on the arsenal he was packing. Her feminine side, however, purred with unexpected awareness. He was dark, and the hard planes of his face were the perfect foil for an even harder body. His hair was cropped too close to his head for her to tell what the natural texture was, but those cheekbones would have guaranteed him bookings at any Manhattan modeling agency until the booker took a good look at those eyes. Those eyes weren’t human. The dark irises were a rich black color. And they glowed with heat and emotion. Forget the small scars that flirted with the edge of his cheeks as if life had tattooed a warning sign on his face for all to see. This male was dark. Feral. And damned if that wasn’t a possessive gleam in his eyes.
He also wasn’t human, and he was way out of her league, even if she did have one extra chromosome.
She ran her eyes over that face again. Yeah, that coloring, that bone structure, told her all she really needed to know. His genetics were right there on display.
“Goblin,” she identified. “Fallen angel.” So, he clearly wasn’t here to listen to her lecture on introductory genetics or to discuss her recent paper on the Book of Numbers. Lines and patterns. Relationships. All neat and tidy on paper. Probably messier than hell in real life, not to mention vaguely incestuous. Of course, if you went by the glazed-over look of her students, not too many people found it interesting. At all. So, she was a freak in more ways than one. It still didn’t explain why he was here or why he had an interest in manhandling her.
Her fingers curled around his wrists, tugging. He let her—probably because it amused him, the bastard. Her futile efforts only managed to dislodge the sleeves of his leather duster, revealing dark bands of ink around both those thick wrists. When a Goblin and a human bonded, that bond was literally imprinted on the skin of both, dark swirls of ink-like black markings on their wrists and forearms. Rumor claimed that the larger the favor, the thicker and darker those markings were. She didn’t think Zer’s marks were natural, which meant he wasn’t bonded. He’d gotten the art for his own reasons.
He shifted on top of her, and she sucked in a much-needed breath before the weight returned. “Yeah. Like what you see, doc?”
She did, but she wasn’t stupid, just having a really, really bad day. He’d traumatized her entire undergraduate seminar, pinned her to the floor, and, from the sounds coming from outside her hall, he wasn’t alone. Still, the distant crackle and pop of gunfire indicated that campus security might finally be riding to the rescue.
Oh, God. Maybe she’d never woken up at all this morning. Maybe the nightmare of the dean’s office and this unthinkable disruption of her lecture were all part of the same nightmare. Maybe, if she concentrated hard enough, she’d wake up. Unfortunately, she was desperate, not crazy, and the two hundred-plus pounds of male atop her was no dream.
“Get off me.” She didn’t think he’d budge, but that wasn’t going to stop her from registering a protest. He had no right to just stride in here and manhandle her. He didn’t own her soul and never would.
She refused to focus on the frisson of fear the sounds outside her lecture hall provoked. First, she needed to get free. Then, she could panic.
“You are the doc, aren’t you?” His eyes examined her face, as if he expected to find a name and number stamped there for his convenience.
She considered refusing to answer his questions—after all, wasn’t that what members of the military were trained to do? Provide only rank and number when they fell into hostile hands?—but one large thumb was now stroking slowly over her exposed collarbone in a little absentminded motion that could have been unconscious on his part. Except she didn’t think so. His eyes didn’t budge from her face.
He knew exactly what he was doing, and that unwilling little trickle of heat that shot straight to her groin was a warning. God, was she stupid? He’d chased her, pinned her. And yet she couldn’t help noticing the delicious heat and weight of his too-large body.
“Tell me your name,” he demanded, giving her more of his weight. Breathing became a concern again, as the air whooshed from her lungs. He wasn’t hurting her, not yet, but the message was loud and clear. Her assailant was in charge here, and he planned to have her dancing to his tune.
Her eyes narrowed. Not if she had anything to say about it.
When he reached over her for her dropped laptop, however, she fought back panic. Had she backed up? What if the automatic software hadn’t done its job? This bastard wasn’t taking her data.
“Nessa St. James,” she said quickly, breathing more easily when the large hand retreated from the titanium casing of her laptop. The backup software had a 99 percent accuracy rate, but she wasn’t chancing that 1 percent. Outliers were a bitch.
“Nessa St. James.”
“That’s what I said,” she snapped, because she wasn’t going to let him know that she was scared. She was tired of being scared. Tired of running from her problems, even if today’s current problem outweighed her at least two to one. From the feel of him, he was six-foot plus and a good two hundred pounds. “You want to let me up now, I’ll get my purse. Show you some ID.”
A hard, mean smile creased those sexy lips of his. “I’m not ready to let you up, baby,” he said, making the innocuous words sound like the dirtiest of promises. Shamefully, she felt an unexpected dampness slick her sex. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to this Neanderthal.
“The hell you’re not.” She focused on the noise outside. The snap-crackle-and-pop was louder now, but she didn’t know if campus security was up to this job.
He rolled, taking her with him, tucking her into the protective shadow of his body as he rose smoothly to his feet in a half crouch. One large hand reached down toward her and stopped.
“Zer.” That grunt must have counted as an introduction in his book. No one had ever accused the Fallen of having manners. She didn’t like lying flat on her back, staring up at him, so she sat up. He was watching her, and the look in his eye said she was prey.
“So, Zer, why are you here?” She waved a hand around the carnage of her lecture hall. “If you’d wanted to audit my course, you’d have come to my office hours.” And she would have made him ask nicely. No. Scratch that. She would have made him beg. She suspected no one had the upper hand around this Zer, but she’d take whatever opportunities life handed her.
His eyes assessed the smashed-in door. “We need to get out of here.”
For once, they were in agreement. She thought of her ruined lecture, the screaming students, and decided that she’d had enough of his alpha-male crap for one afternoon. He could kill her and get it over with, or he could damn well let her go.
“I agree,” she said, ignoring his hand and shoving to her feet. “I’m done here. You’re done here. I suggest you head on out that door you stove in and explain to campus security what was undoubtedly a very good reason for acting like a complete Neanderthal. In the meantime, I’m going to leave through the other door and see if there’s anything salvageable of this day.”
“No,” he said in that low, raspy growl of a voice. “I can’t let you do that, baby.”
She’d play his game. “Why not?”
Explanations were clearly killing him. Not a big one for talking, she decided, or he just couldn’t be bothered wasting words on her.
“Come with me,” he demanded.
She ran through a list of possible reasons to walk out of there with him and came up blank. “No.”
When he reached for her again, she scrambled backward.
“Listen to me,” he said, and she got the impression that he would only explain once. He didn’t strike her as the negotiating type of guy. No, he’d take what he wanted, and if she couldn’t stop him, he’d figure he was right. “I need you to come with me. Right now.”
Damn it, where was campus s
ecurity? They were supposed to keep her safe. When she was finished here, she’d be having words with the dean about this situation.
When she flinched, the Fallen pulled back his hand, crossing his arms over that broad chest of his. The soft cotton of his black T-shirt pulled over impossibly large muscles. Her unwanted companion was seriously built.
“You know what I am, right?” the male asked her.
“Besides an unwelcome intrusion breaking up my afternoon lecture?” When he gave her that cold-eyed stare of his, she decided it might be wiser to humor him. “You’re a Goblin.” She shrugged and assessed the distance to the door. She wouldn’t make it before he’d be on her. Unfortunately. “You’re one of the Fallen.”
He nodded, as if she was a particularly gifted student. Straining her senses, she listened intently. The sounds of panicked, fleeing students had faded, but she should have been hearing the heavy thud of booted feet as campus security came through the lobby.
Instead, she got dead silence, and that couldn’t possibly be good.
“You know what the Goblin bond is?” He eyed her like a stranger offering candy. “You heard of the favor?”
Goblin favors were legend. One favor, any favor at all. The catch was, though, you had to be willing to rent your soul out to the bastard doing the favor. Nothing in this life was free. “You ever thought about it?” His voice was a dark, liquid rasp that promised straight-up sex and pleasure, and she had to remind herself that she had no interest in a Goblin bond. Ever. She’d worked damn hard to get where she was, without owing anyone. “What you might ask for if you had the chance?”
“Pass,” she said when he stopped, clearly waiting for an answer. “I’m not interested in whatever you and the rest of your gang are selling.”
“You come with me,” he said, the words half dragged out of him, “and you can have that favor. Anything you want. You want this?” He waved a hand around the lecture hall. “It’s all yours. Tenure. Department chair. Unlimited funding.” He said the words as if he were waving an American Express black card and magic wand rolled into one. And maybe he was. He’d clearly done his research and maybe even knew what had transpired in the dean’s office. Well, she had a new research partner on the hook—the ubiquitous Genecore—so she didn’t need his damn money. Or anything else he had to offer.
“Fuck off,” she spat. Could the day get any worse? “My soul isn’t for sale.”
“You know what’s out there in your lobby?” he pressed. She just kept doing that subtle backward hitch that wasn’t as subtle as she’d hoped because, clearly, he knew she was jonesing to make a break for it. “You got at least one dead human. Think my offer over.”
Okay. So she’d been mistaken. The day clearly could get worse. “Did you kill him?”
Zer shook his head. “The security guard? No, I didn’t. A rogue did, and if my boys and I hadn’t killed him, he’d be in here gunning for you. You don’t know what you’re up against, my Nessa, and that shit’s going to get you killed.”
“Why would anyone be coming after me?” He had, a small voice whispered.
“The Fallen want to bond with you,” he insisted without answering her questions, sliding one booted foot closer to her.
“All of you?”
“No.” He shoved a hand through that so-short hair of his. “One of us.”
“You?”
“Hell. No.” He looked appalled, and that offended her in a way that all of his manhandling hadn’t. “I’m going to take you back to G2’s, introduce you to the brothers. One of them will bond with you.”
Right. And apparently her free will didn’t factor into this at all in his Neanderthal worldview. She was done playing his game, and she wasn’t taking a field trip to one of the most notorious clubs in M City. Junior faculty who wanted to make tenure didn’t spend time in those kinds of venues. “Pass. My life doesn’t require the complication”—the added complication, that traitorous little voice whispered in her head—“of taking on a Goblin bond. Look elsewhere,” she suggested sweetly. “Try the French lecture on Thursday afternoons. Maybe you can find a taker there.”
She wasn’t a sofa or a framed piece of artwork. Sure, he was sexy as hell, but clearly he saw her as little more than an object to be passed around among those like him, hung up on a wall until they found the place where she worked best. Her wishes didn’t come in to it. He could damn well find someone else, someone who needed that Goblin favor. She was off the market as far as he was concerned.
“No good,” he said, and he dropped his bombshell. “It has to be you.”
She knew she wasn’t that special. “Find someone else,” she snapped. No way was she buying into his silver-tongued promises. “I don’t want what you have to offer. I like my life as it is just fine. Anything that’s missing, I’ll get for myself. I don’t want your handouts and—news flash—my soul’s not for sale.”
His business hand, the one that had never let go of a knife, came up, and she felt her heart stutter. She didn’t want, she realized, to die.
The knife flashed, but that hard edge wasn’t headed her way. No, it was moving toward the muscle-bound male loping through the shattered doorway. A big, hard, mean fighter with the cold eyes of a stone-cold killer. Not half as bad, however, as what he chased into her auditorium.
The noise should have been her first clue, the inhuman growling of a predator who’d scented prey. The second was the darkened face and twisted, brutal jut of the male’s jaw. Her mind was cataloging the features, tracking the male’s bloodline, even as the words came out of her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “He’s one of you.”
“Not anymore,” her strange protector said. “Now, he’s rogue.”
Any killing done here in this room, Zer was doing it.
Primitive instincts he hadn’t known he possessed roared for him to protect her. She wasn’t safe, and that made him unexpectedly angry. He was going to make things safe for Nessa St. James, and killing this rogue was just the first step.
“No worries, darling.” Palming his blades, Zer threw. “Time to break up this party.”
Before Zer was halfway up the aisle, the rogue launched his counterattack, snarling as he pulled a fyreblade. Only Dominions, first-line angelic defenders of the Celestial throne, were supposed to carry those blades—and only in the Heavens. This was the second fyreblade Zer had seen in as many months. Someone who clearly hadn’t gotten the memo had boosted a load of forbidden weapons—and distributed them to the lowest of the low. The rogues.
The blade landed and bit at his flesh, the angelfyre leaping from blade to wound, burrowing through the thick leather of his duster. Blocking the pain, Zer reached for the cold discipline he’d mastered in another lifetime when he’d fought for what was right and what was good. Pain didn’t matter, only defeating his opponent. No way this motherfucker was leaving the auditorium. One quick glance upward showed that that direction was no option, even if the rogue had himself a pair of wings. No windows, just too-narrow skylights.
The rogue slashed down again with the blade, forcing Zer to feint. “My soul, Fallen,” it hissed. “Nessa St. James comes with me.”
Yeah, well, Zer wasn’t in the market for leftovers, and he sure as hell wasn’t sharing this new female. He’d always hunted for himself. Before, a little voice mocked in his head. Flowing smoothly from one defensive position to the next, he brought his own blade up to block the next lethal downward stroke. That blade hit deep—hell, if it hit the leather of his duster one too many times, he was toast. Eventually, those blades cut straight to the soul.
He countered smoothly, pushing the rogue backward with sheer, brute force. This time, the rogue’s fyreblade sliced cleanly through the expensive leather coat. For the second time. Fuck it. He was done playing. He’d liked that coat.
Vaulting over the rogue’s head, he positioned himself between the rogue and the professor. She swore and wisely backtracked behind the lectern.
Zer slashed left and right
, blades dancing in his hands. Circling, he waited for his opening.
His own inner rogue too close to the surface, he could feel his features growing darker, more savage. Michael’s curse threatened to devour the Fallen angel and leave only the rogue. No more squeaks from his human companion now. Instead, she was staring, and she wasn’t watching the rogue charging back up the aisle.
No, she was staring straight at Zer.
Zer knew what she was seeing, and he scared the shit out of himself, too.
“Head for the door, baby,” he growled, scooping up her laptop and throwing it to her. She caught it like he’d thrown her some sort of bizarre lifeline, then took off in a staggering run in those impractical little heels of hers. Yeah, she was good to go. Nael was already moving effortlessly to intercept her if need be.
Zer glided in smoothly. The rogue didn’t understand that Zer was the deadlier predator. Or that, this close, Zer’s steel blade would be just as effective as a fyreblade. No, instead the rogue launched himself in a running line, making straight for Zer, fyreblade out like a damned battering ram.
Surging forward, Zer delivered a powerful kick to the rogue’s chest. Jerked sharply down on the unprotected blade arm. There was a crack as bone gave and then the rogue’s high-pitched whine of pain, but Zer’s blade was already sliding through leather and skin, along the ribs and home.
The blade shut the rogue up, but the doubts remained.
“We’ve got more company coming,” Nael warned. “Rogue in the lobby, he’s out for the count. But there’s more of his kind blazing a path across campus. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
“Options?”
“We take her out the side door.” Nael shrugged. “Or we go up, across the roof. If the bastards have their wings back, though, we might as well paint a bull’s eye on her back now if we go that way.”
No concealment had him opting for the side door. “Transport’s waiting?”
“Outside.” Vkhin spoke. His cold, precise accent clipped the word to the bare minimum. “She ready to roll?”
