She took his breath away. “Lara.” He stopped, unsure what came next.
“Over,” she said.
He dragged his sorry ass into the passenger seat and watched her fumble with the seat, the mirror, the ignition.
Careful, controlled, the kind of woman he usually had nothing to do with. When everything was adjusted to her satisfaction, she pulled back onto the freeway.
And almost immediately put on her turn signal.
“What are you doing?” he asked as they rumbled into the exit lane.
“Finding a place to spend the night.”
“You’re wasting our lead. We could be miles away by morning.”
“You need to rest and I’m freezing. We need a hotel.”
He wanted to argue with her. But the truth was, they both needed sleep. If Axton’s crew caught up with them, they were in no shape either to fight or to run.
“Not a hotel. A motel. The cheapest, sleaziest motel you can find.”
“Don’t we have money?”
“I have my pay from my last job. But we need someplace that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions.”
She turned off the exit ramp into a warren of suburban sprawl, dirty brick and broken concrete and signs with the letters falling off. oil ch g. w c me. s rved hot.
Eventual y she found what he was looking for, a long, two-story building with peeling brown paint and sagging white railings and broken glass glittering in the parking lot. She pulled up under the blinking sign, heart of jersey motel. The pink light of the neon heart flickered over her face. Iestyn grinned. “Very romantic.”
She didn’t smile. “I’ll check us in.”
“I’ll do it.”
She engaged the emergency brake. “You can’t go up to the desk like that. You look like you’ve been in a bar fight.”
“Which means I’ll fit right in with their regular clientele. You don’t.”
“I’m just as scruffy as you are.”
“You still don’t look like the kind of girl who rents rooms by the hour. You’ve never been in a place like this.”
She winced. “You have no idea what kind of girl I am or where I’ve been.”
He sure as hell didn’t know what he’d just said to hurt her.
To piss her off. He was no good at relationships that lasted longer than a night or two. He didn’t do touchy-feely.
He didn’t hold hands.
But he reached for hers, covering her fingers on the steering wheel. “What’s the matter?”
“Don’t touch me.”
No good at relationships at all.
So he let her go, keeping his eyes on her face. “All I meant was that you’re too beautiful for some bored night clerk to forget.” For him to ever forget. “We can’t afford to attract attention.”
“I know.” She let go of the wheel, folding her hands together tightly in her lap. “Sorry for overreacting.”
“Not overreacting. You’ve had a rough night.”
She flashed him a grateful glance. “Something like that.”
Woman calmed. Crisis averted. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over, that there was something more.
He did a quick scan of the dark parking lot: empty cars, broken bottles, weeds pushing through pavement. Damn.
He couldn’t even tell her to lock the car doors.
“Anybody comes up to the Jeep while I’m in the office, you lay on the horn.”
She arched her eyebrows. “I thought we didn’t want to attract attention.”
Her flicker of spirit reassured him.
“Just do it,” he said and went to get them a room.
Not a nice room, he thought after they were inside.
He secured the double locks on the door and stood with his hands in his pockets, trying to see it through her eyes: the mirrored wall, the nasty carpet, the broken lamp shade.
The ancient TV was bolted to the dresser. The three porn channels were free, the desk clerk had informed him with a smirk as he handed over the key.
Lara’s arms were folded across her body, like she didn’t want to touch anything. Probably afraid of catching an STD
from the bedspread. Or maybe she was just cold.
Iestyn cleared his throat. “Not exactly what you’re used to.”
“You either.”
“I’ve slept in some pretty rough places.”
“It’s better than the storm cellar.”
“But not as clean.”
She smiled at that, but her back remained rigid. He could feel her discomfort from across the room.
“You can shower first,” he offered, trying not to remember how great she looked in a towel, slim bare legs, pale bare arms, her dark hair damp on her shoulders.
She nodded, but she did not move, her attention apparently riveted by the two double beds that took up most of the floor space.
Reluctant suspicion took hold in his mind. She was, what?
Twenty-two? Twenty-three? She couldn’t possibly be . . .
“You ever stay in a room with a man before?”
She met his gaze, her eyebrows lifting. “Are you asking if I’m a virgin?”
Damn it, he was embarrassed. “Yes.”
“No.”
He leaned one shoulder against the door frame. The boyfriend, he thought. The one with the ponytail. “So angels have sex?”
“The nephilim have human bodies,” she said with dignity.
“We use them in the usual human way.”
“To have sex.”
“And to eat and to sleep. All normal bodily functions. Sex is not that big a deal with us.”
He grinned, feeling better about the boyfriend. “It is if you do it right.”
“I meant, human sex is not a true union. We do not mingle spirits.”
“Just bodies.”
Her brow puckered in annoyance, but he noticed her rigid posture had relaxed. “Why are you making such an issue of this?”
Wasn’t it obvious?
“Because I want to have sex with you,” he said.
Lucy drifted up the circular stair of the prince’s tower. Chinks in the thick walls admitted narrow bands of moonlight, striping the stone.
She shivered in a sharp wind from the sea. She had waited too long to make this climb. Confessing the difficulty she was having coping to Conn felt uncomfortably like another failure. But the longer she kept her feelings to herself, the more the distance between them grew.
She had lost their child.
She would not lose his love.
Blinking, she emerged into the prince’s study at the top of the stairs. Windows pierced the round room, north, south, east, west. The children of the sea did not make or mine, farm or spin. Caer Subai was furnished with the salvage of centuries, plucked from human shipwrecks and restored after the demons’ attack seven years ago: amphorae from Greece and ivory from Africa, Viking gold and Italian silk.
As she entered, Conn looked up from his desk, walnut and iron, rescued from a Spanish galleon off the coast of Cornwall.
“Lucy.” His posture relaxed, but a faint wariness remained in his eyes. She had not sought him here for months.
Time to change that, she thought. But she was at a loss how to begin.
A map spread across the surface of his desk, glowing like the night sky with pricks of multicolored light.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wandering closer.
He straightened. “Looking for your lost boy.”
Her brows pulled together. Her heart quickened in her chest. “What?”
“You know how the map works. Each light represents an elemental’s energy. Not the angels, of course. The children of air are forbidden from interfering in earthly affairs.
But here we are.” He tapped the bright blue cluster off the coast of Scotland, waved a hand at the smattering of stars across the seas. “The children of earth here and here.�
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He traced his finger along the glowing green ridges of the mountains. She walked around the desk to see. As she drew closer, his faint, familiar musk teased her senses.
“Demons here,” Conn continued, with another poke at the map. Red pulsed along the fault lines, spattered across the continents like blood.
“But see here.” He leaned forward over the desk again, making her very aware of the heat of his body, the strength of his arms. “These spots of blue inland? Here, on the Mid-Atlantic coast, and here. These could be your lost . . .”
Children.
“The ones who were lost,” he said stiffly.
Tears choked her throat, swam in her eyes. “You listened.”
He looked down his long nose at her with a hint of his habitual arrogance. “Of course.”
She swayed toward him, more moved by his act of faith than she could say. “Conn . . .”
He moved away from her to stand in front of the window, hands clasped behind his back. “I thought I would leave in the morning,” he said, staring out at the moonlit sea.
“Leave,” Lucy repeated blankly.
He nodded. “It will be an opportunity to see Morgan and your brother Dylan as well. I have not conferred with either of them in weeks. They are wardens. Perhaps they picked up on this sending, too. If you are right, if there is a chance that Iestyn and the others are alive . . .” He broke off, his voice raw.
He cared.
Emotion flooded her heart. Not just for the survival of their kind. He cared for the children he had gathered and protected and finally sent away.
How had she been blind to it until now?
But he had always been good at hiding his feelings. He had learned over centuries of rule to never reveal emotion.
Never admit weakness. And she had been too wrapped up in her own feelings to understand.
“I could come with you,” she said.
Conn’s head raised. His shoulders were rigid against the moonlit glass. “Your power would be . . . a great assistance.
But are you well enough for such a trip?”
His concern touched her. He was putting her feelings before what needed to be done.
“I’m fine. I’m healed.” Physically, at least.
He turned to face her. “We do not need to see your brothers, if you do not wish it.”
“Why wouldn’t I . . . Oh.” Seeing her brothers meant seeing their families. Their children. Caleb’s wife Margred was pregnant again.
Lucy straightened her shoulders. “I want to go with you.”
She held out her empty hands to him. “I don’t want you to be so far away.”
Conn met her gaze. His silver eyes had the sheen of the sea beyond their windows, glazed by the moon. “I am never far from you, Lucy. You are always in my heart.”
She stumbled toward him and he took her hands and pulled her into his arms.
*
“ I want to have sex with you.”
Lara released her breath, oddly relieved now that they’d acknowledged the elephant in the room.
“It is important for you to be open about sex,” Miriam had told her in counseling. “To be honest about how you feel. Shame and fear breed in secrecy.”
But outside of her required therapy sessions, Lara never talked about what had been done to her thirteen years ago.
Not to earnest Jacob, her one sexual partner at Rockhaven, and never, ever to Simon.
Openness was obviously not a problem for Iestyn.
Probably sex wasn’t either.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Thankful?
Resentful?
Intrigued.
She angled her chin, testing her reaction, watching his.
“That’s it? That’s your pickup line?”
He grinned at her, all charm, easy and unthreatening.
“You think it needs work?”
Her pulse quickened. “I think you can do better.”
He strolled forward, all lean grace and golden eyes like a hunting cat. Her stomach fluttered. Not, she thought, with fear.
“Let’s see,” he murmured and bent his head.
His breath was warm, his mouth firm and persuasive.
His lips rubbed and withdrew, pressed and lingered, teasing, tempting, gentle. She closed her eyes, absorbing the flavor and the tenderness of his kiss, feeling her breath go and her knees turn to water.
More warmth. More pressure. Her heart soared, beating in her chest, and yet he did not touch her with anything but his mouth and one hand, cupping the back of her head. His thumb stroked her jaw, and she opened for him, taking his scent deep in her lungs, his tongue inside her mouth.
Too much. Too fast. She was drowning in sensation.
Suffocating.
But even as she stiffened, Iestyn eased away. He kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, on the arch of her eyebrow.
“There’s an all-night Walmart two blocks away,” he murmured against her hair.
She opened her eyes, struggling for a light tone. “Are you asking me on a date?”
His silent laughter brushed her cheek. “If this was a date, I’d buy you flowers, not a change of clothes. What size shoe do you wear?”
His consideration shook her. “You want to buy me clothes.”
“Actually, I’m good with you naked. But you might appreciate something clean after your shower.”
She was dying to shower, desperate to scrub away the smell of smoke. But . . . “You’re going now?”
“Or I could stay and scrub your back.”
The invitation was there, the intent was there, gleaming in his golden eyes, but softened with humor, leashed by his will.
She shivered with nerves and desire, her gaze slipping from his. “No, thanks.”
He frowned, misunderstanding the reason for her trembling.
Or perhaps understanding too well. “You don’t mind being left alone?”
Memory slammed into her. The cheap room. The sound of footsteps stumbling down the hall. Her heart pounding as she hid under the bed. “Angel, I’m back.”
She swallowed a whimper. Straightened her spine.
“Sometimes I prefer it.”
“We’re out of the way here,” Iestyn said. “Second-floor corner unit. And the door double locks.”
She nodded wordlessly.
He frowned. “Unless locks don’t work against demons.”
She pulled herself together. “I can set simple wards. I’m not afraid of demons.” Only ghosts. “Anyway, it’s highly unlikely they followed us here.”
“They found us before.”
“Because we used magic. Power attracts them.”
“Like shit draws flies.”
She scowled. “Don’t you take anything seriously?”
“Yeah. Your safety.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “How do you know they won’t burn the place down while I’m gone?”
His protectiveness warmed her. “They don’t usually attack so openly. First, because they won’t risk attracting Heaven’s attention. And second, because they can’t assemble that much energy in so short a space of time.
Most of the time they must borrow other matter—other bodies.”
“Like in the alley.”
She hugged her arms. “Yes.”
He searched her face. Apparently what he saw satisfied him, because he gave a short nod. Stooping, he unstrapped the dive knife from his ankle and offered it to her, hilt first.
She recoiled slightly. “That’s yours.”
“I’m loaning it to you. You need it more than I do.”
“But I just told you—”
“That you’re safe from demons, yeah, I know. Hell, a knife’s probably no good against demons anyway.”
“Actually, fire needs oxygen to survive,” she said seriously.
“If you cut the body’s airway, the demon must leave its host or die.”
> “Good to know.” He offered the blade again. “Take it.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you gave it to me back in the cellar.”
She stared at him, confused.
He closed his fingers over hers on the hilt. “To remind you you’re not alone.”
*
Lara grabbed the tiny bottle of shampoo, averting her eyes from the coin-operated condom dispenser on the wall above the toilet. She pushed open the mildewed shower curtain and winced. Yuck. Maybe she should wear her wet sneakers into the tub? But then they would never dry by morning. She wasn’t that confident of Iestyn’s ability to return with shoes.
He would return. She was sure of that. And when he did . . .
She shivered and cranked on the shower.
At least the water was hot. She stood under the scalding spray, letting it pound her scalp and sink to her bones, flaying herself with the cheap washcloth as if she could scrub away her memories.
“Sex is not that big a deal with us,” she’d told him.
“Why are you making such an issue of this?”
A chill chased down her back despite the hot spray.
That’s what you get for lying. Sex was an issue for her, too.
Had been an issue. She wasn’t a victim anymore.
And maybe, with him, sex would be different. Easier.
When she was with him, she felt different. Lying with him on the riverbank, she’d felt warm and eager and unafraid.
Something unfurled inside her as she remembered. Her nipples tightened. A flush rose in her skin to match the heat of the water. Shutting off the shower, she reached for a towel.
He was gone long enough for the flush to fade, for her nipples to pucker again with cold. She checked her rudimentary wards: a taw traced in the dirt of the window, another scratched in the paint above the door, two crossed lines like a hilted sword. But until Iestyn came back, she had nothing to do. She paced the narrow space before the dresser, wrapped in a skimpy, scratchy towel, her hair in wet strands down her back, trying not to think. When the knock came, she flew to the peephole.
Iestyn stood on the landing outside, his hands full of plastic bags. She tugged open the door and then hung back, suddenly conscious of her nakedness under the towel.
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