by Misty Dietz
Kai pointed down the hallway. “Second level, southeast corner. It’s the penthouse.”
Ari streamed them there, settling down with Kat in his arms on the semi-circular gray sofa with its sumptuous gold and silver pillows. He whispered her name. Her eyes remained closed, but her breathing and heart rate were returning to normal. Had she simply passed out? He was not aware of any archdemons being able to infect a Guardian with the dark sleep without being powered up by a captured relic. And Leviathan didn’t have the relic Kat guarded.
Yet, anyway.
Ari eased back against the sofa cushions, watching her chest rise and fall, comforted by that little motion and the pink hue blooming on her cheeks the longer she was in his arms. When was the last time she’d had a decent night’s rest? He should’ve known she was too stubborn to ever tell him she was in trouble. Defeating Leviathan wasn’t going to be easy with the archdemon vacillating between self-poise and vulnerability. Two sides of a soul Kat would empathize with, though his compar very rarely let the world see her without her walls firmly in place.
Who was the real Leviathan? The sad, lonely child-inside-the-woman, or the polished chess master who knew how to slide under Kat’s defenses?
He looked down, stroking Katherine’s cheek. He’d layer wards at her home and here at AQUA. He’d make her stronger than she’d ever been and learn what he could about Leviathan. She had to have sensed Kat’s flagging power. That would mean she’d likely make a play for Kat’s relic soon, or she’d try to draw Kat further into her web, hoping she’d fall for her lies.
He’d be ready for either tactic.
But after Leviathan was dealt with—what then? What of Kat’s accusation that he and she were too different to make a relationship work? Everything she said about their personalities was accurate. He’d never taken the time to evaluate the hows and whys of things. He was more about the dos and let’s gos of life.
Katherine liked constants.
He grew restless looking at the same four walls too long.
His temples beaded with perspiration. He looked around the warm, oak-paneled office, pulling his shirt collar away from his neck. He wanted to pace, but forced himself to stay seated for Katherine’s sake. Let her sleep. Don’t. Move.
He drew in a slow, even breath and looked around to distract himself from the fidgety feeling in his legs and the damnably tempting zipper down the front of Kat’s dress. The room was a two-story circle with books from floor to the upper ceiling, polished wood railings ringing the second story. A giant black iron chandelier hung in the middle of it all. There was a permanence to the room with its graceful antique desk, gold and silver silk drapes, stately lamps, and worn spines of hard cover books that huddled on the shelves like old women whispering secrets.
The elegant room suited the glitzy public persona of Katherine Evangelista perfectly. But where was the tribute to who she was under the controlled, condescending mask she put on for the world? His eyes tracked along the shelves, top to bottom. Ah, there. His lips curved slowly, the tall, ardent red Moroccan lantern they’d bought together in a Marrakech market reminding him of the night they’d first made love.
Ari gently shifted her in his arms to feather his lips across hers, feeling the restlessness of being confined to one place fall away. Her black currant and vanilla scent swept him back to memories of a draped bed, saturated fabrics of deep purples and reds, piles of textiles of all weaves and thicknesses, and Kat reclined upon them, her blue-green eyes dark with passion and provocation.
Ari’s breath fanned the blonde wisps of hair at her temples, his hands skimming over the curve of her hip across the denim of her dress. She shifted on a sigh, and his hand paused under the swell of her breast, fingers curling into her, her tiny movement rubbing his groin exquisitely. Thor’s beard, she felt incredible. How he’d missed her. The weight of her, her smell, the insolent set of her lips, the respectable librarian bun that was part of her armor, the smart mouth and inexhaustible mind she used as defensive weapons…
Everything about her revved his motor. Surely that would conquer their differences? At least until their next fight when her well of hatred for him would resurrect all their pain.
He wrapped her tighter in his arms, wanting to set her aside, to avoid what was probably inevitable, but…
He loved her still.
It must be a sickness to love that which promised aught but insecurity. He was letting her emasculate him. What was wrong with him? He was Viking for chrissakes.
Katherine woke all at once, wriggling out of his arms to immediately stride toward her desk where she sat down, pushing stacks of paper around. “What are you doing?” she asked without looking at him. Her color was back to normal, thank Freya.
He pressed back into the sofa and stretched his arms overhead to calm the war in his brain. “Plotting world dominion and helping you save face. You collapsed as soon as you laid hands on the possession in the Devil’s Trap, in case you don’t remember.”
She frowned, a deep blush staining her cheeks. “No, I mean what are you doing here.” She tapped the table with a manicured finger. “AQUA is my club, my business, and you need to leave. I didn’t give you permission to stay.”
Ari stood up from the sofa. “I don’t need your permission to do anything, least of all take care of my compar.”
She made a rude noise. “So we’re back to duty.”
Maybe that’s all it was ever going to be. Maybe this long sojourn on earth—loving Kat, yet never being good enough for her—was meant to be his punishment after all. “I guess we are. You don’t remember the Hell Queen trying to mind fuck you less than an hour ago?”
She waved a hand in the air. “I can handle Leviathan. She and her horde have been loitering for two weeks already. Things are under control.” She sat down and fumbled with a pen and paper with shaky hands. She looked up and caught him watching. She sent him a glare, then started digging in her desk drawer.
“Has she approached you before the two times today?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then she’s used the last two weeks to lull you into complacency. It’s a classic move, Kat. Don’t be naive.”
“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not gullible, you boil brain.”
He would’ve smiled at her old-school insult if he weren’t so agitated by her laidback response to Leviathan, her deteriorating health, and the continued strife between them. “Lulled is exactly what you were an hour ago when that spawn of Satan was talking to you. You were damn near catatonic.”
She leaned back in her chair, her hands smoothing her loose blonde hairs into her bun. “I’m fine, Ari. I’m always fine.”
“You don’t do nonchalant well, Kat. In fact, it’s probably your worst tell. Or should that be, your best tell?”
“For the love of God, call me Katherine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “If you’d say ‘for the love of Odin,’ I might.”
She pursed her lips. “Odin is God, and Buddah’s God, and Allah and Jehovah and Brahman and Jesus…they’re all God. For the love of all of them, please call me Katherine.”
“Your parents hated when people called you Kat. I hate your parents. Fuckers. Ergo, I prefer calling you Kat.”
She stood up, scooting back her desk chair. “You never knew them so you are not at liberty to judge.”
“So snobby. Don’t you remember that turns me on?”
“Thinking with your other brain again, I see. If you pretend to be intelligent, I’ll pretend to care.”
He laughed out loud, the heaviness in his chest easing slightly with their sparring. “You know I’ll end up pissing you off by doing it anyway, so you might as well give me your blessing…Kat.”
“No.”
“No?” he repeated.
“Did I stutter?”
You little shit. He advanced on her, enjoying the minute widening of her eyes. “You’re being needlessly mulish.” Unfortunately for him, it looked good on her.
“Thank you,” she replied tartly, brushing by him to the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my club opens in three hours.”
He shoved a hand on the door to prevent her from opening it. Standing behind her, he could see the pins holding all that thick, silky hair in place. How many would he have to extract before that mass came tumbling down? He wasn’t usually a patient man, but he knew he would wait with baited breath for as long as it took to take them all down.
Because that was one of her triggers.
When her hair came down, her walls tumbled.
He leaned forward to brush his lips against the velvet skin at the side of her neck, knowing full-well that his actions were a slippery slope, but helpless to stop himself when she was this close. She stiffened and her breath arrested, so at odds with the wild gallop of her heartbeat which was as loud to his super sensory hearing as his own.
“I haven’t missed your Vikingness, Ari,” she whispered.
His nails raised goosebumps along her bare arms. He leaned down to sniff her neck again. “You are a terrible liar,” he whispered back. “You feel energized by my nearness. I can see it. Feel it. Your color is better, your pulse is stronger, your eyes have revitalized to that jeweled sea-blue that wakes me in a cold sweat.”
She shifted around to face him, her sudden indrawn breath his cue to place his other hand on the door to bracket her in. The heavy pulse in his groin another slip down that dangerous slope, but he’d worry about the emotional fallout later. He leaned down, but before his lips could take hers, the fingers of her right hand came up to press against his mouth.
“As mentioned earlier, I will talk to Alexios about undoing our match. Surely the powers that be will see their mistake. We are total opposites, and therefore incompatible.”
It came out in such a rush he wondered who she was really trying to convince. He watched her in the silence. Her eyebrows—a darker blonde than her hair—were perfection. He smoothed his thumb across one sweeping arch. “No.”
Her eyebrow tensed under his thumb. “No?”
He smiled slowly. “Did I stutter?”
Deep mauve dotted her cheekbones. “Wow, aren’t you original? Out of my way, peasant.”
He traced the side of his finger across her full lower lip which she promptly slapped away. “When did you become so afraid of your sexuality?” he asked.
“Oh, Christ. Whatever, Viking. Last year I actually read the Kama Sutra, not just looked at the pictures.”
Well, hell. That was hot.
He was ready to grab her thighs and start replicating some classic Kama Sutra moves, but she pursed her lips and closed her eyes—her quintessential I’m-about-to-go-left-brain look. Which meant she was about to spout some rational mumbo jumbo. Always entertaining.
He smiled and waited.
“This…” She opened her eyes and fluttered a hand next to his jaw, “sexual arousal between us is purely physiological. Biologically, we’re both stuck in our twenties, so it’s only natural that we have strong organic responses to sexual stimuli. And since you’re a very large, virile male—which translates anthropologically to being more capable of protecting offspring…”
She faded off, and his gut bottomed out the same time hers must have by the stricken look that passed over her features. He reached for both of her hands. They were as cold as the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland. His heart slugged at his ribcage as he squeezed her hands. “I will always regret not being able to save our child.”
She continued to look at his chest, unblinking. “There was nothing you could do. It was…my fault,” she finished so quietly he wasn’t even sure he heard her right.
He frowned, squeezing her fingers. “Nonsense.” She pulled her hands gradually from his grasp, and something about the action made the blood chill in his veins. He tilted her chin up so she’d look him in the eye. “Miscarriages are devastating, but unfortunately for millions of us, very common. You can’t possibly blame yourself. I never did.”
Her eyes swam with tears that refused to fall. “The days I wished I wasn’t pregnant outnumbered the days I did. I…I didn’t know how much I wanted that child until I l-lost it.” Her hands flew up to cover her face as he watched, frozen, as her tears spilled over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t deserve to be a mother. I would have just continued a sad legacy.”
Rage surged sudden and hot. It scuttled through his sinew and bones, more raw and elemental than the heated aggression that followed him into battles on foreign shores. He shook with it, standing over her as she openly mourned in front of him for the very first time. He curled his fingers roughly into her arms and shook her slightly. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to your parents’ failures. You are nothing like them. You hear me? Nothing.”
She shook her head emphatically, disagreeing, her cries drowning his anger in the need to comfort her. He crouched down to bring himself eye level, tugging her hands from her face. “Katherine, open your eyes.” He brought his palms up to frame her jawline. “See me, elskan. Please.”
Her eyelids snapped opened. He’d never seen her eyes so green. “I hate this, damn you. Why did you have to come back?”
He brushed a kiss on her forehead. “Our love has seen many troubles, and is sure to see many more. But know this…I have never desired anything more than to be with you. And no one can ever shake my confidence that you would be a strong and amazing mother.”
She brushed the moisture from her cheeks. “All the evidence says otherwise.”
“What evidence? That you weren’t sure you were ready to be a first-time mother? What newly pregnant woman doesn’t have that worry at least once? What else? That you might walk in your parents’ shameful footsteps? Well, let’s look at the actual evidence…how about how you’ve been rescuing the oppressed and exploited for years? Look at Konani, Kaikoa, Maddox, Stark…and those are only the ones I know about. How many others have you pulled from despair to give a new life?”
She looked down between them. One of her hairpins was loose, sticking up on the right side of her bun. He reached to pull it out. When she quickly looked up at him, he smiled. “Fortis est veritas. Truth is strong. You can’t argue with the facts.” He leaned over to look for another pin. That one followed the first to the floor. She shivered, and he inched closer. “Plus, you should know by now, I never lie.”
Her hand came up to rest on his chest over his heart. He closed his eyes, marveling at how such a simple act could provide such succor.
Made him realize how many voids he’d been living with. Which pain cut deeper? The one that came with—or without—her?
He kissed her, tasted the salt of her tears, and it was like plunging into the deepest, darkest part of the ocean, fighting for breath, but never wanting to come up for air. He descended into her, fingers weaving into her hair, stripping every last pin, bringing her down into the darkness with him. He groaned into her mouth, the fragrance of her hair intoxicating, the curves and hollows of her skin like fine silk against his fingertips. She moaned low, her hands tracing the muscles of his back under his shirt. He leaned back to hastily unzip the front of her dress, his gaze holding hers. “We should try again.”
Her hands stilled on his heated skin. “What?”
He blew out a breath, not sure what he was even about to say. “Another baby, Kat. When you’re well.”
She eased her hands from his shirt, stepping away gingerly like he was a lunatic with a bomb strapped to his chest. “You can’t be serious.”
He ran his hands through his hair, then dropped them back at his sides. “But I am. More serious than I’ve ever been.”
She visibly swallowed. “Then you’re more insane than I gave you credit for.”
When she moved toward her desk, he resisted the urge to reach out and make her look him in the eye. “I have loved you since the day you rained hell on an Incubus at the turn of the century in that swanky New Orleans brothel. My going away was not because that love had died. It was because
I needed to act.” He balled his fists, then stretched the fingers of both hands as far as they would go. His legs were growing restless in this confined space. “I was determined to find someone from your family. I thought it might ease your grief. I see now I did what I would have wanted done for me. And in doing so, I failed to understand your needs.”
The air in the room seemed to thin, as he waited for a sign that she’d even listened to him. His senses wove through the atmosphere, trying to detect her heart rate and respiration for clues to what she was feeling, but she’d cloaked all her systems. In all the years he’d been away, he’d maintained the belief that they would reconcile. She could cut him into tiny little pieces, throw his gory bits to a pack of demons, and he’d still love her. Which was a sickness perhaps. But he’d also known he craved violence—the warring and wielding of weapons—a little too much to ever dream that he’d eventually find peace.
Maybe this second chance was Hell, instead of the Guardian Purgatory that was meant to purge the stains from his soul. Maybe Hell was individually-based instead of a massive, burning lake of fire like everyone believed. Perhaps his Hell was knowing what he wanted desperately—Kat and a houseful of their children—being able to envision it, to have it appear within his grasp—but never never never being able to make any of it come true.
He looked down at his hands and, for the first time in more than eleven hundred years, saw the blood of hundreds of men’s lives.
His lips opened as a weight filled his chest, making it hard to breathe.
Kat chose that moment to turn around, her face tight with some emotion she was still struggling to master. “Our differences will always make it difficult to see and accommodate each other’s needs.” Her shoulders slumped. “It might work for a little while, but we both know if either of us tried to change, we’d end up miserable. I refuse to bring a child into a situation like that. Even if I could. And believe me, I have zero faith in my body to carry a child at this point.”
In three steps he was by her side, hands on her shoulders. “I refuse to listen to such negativity. If we want a life together, we can make this work.”
