by Michele Hauf
He’d been punished for falling in love.
Well, it didn’t have to happen that way with her. Sex did not mean love. It was a means to share more of yourself with someone you trusted and cared about. And, strangely, she’d quickly come to trust Ashur. She cared about what happened to him. She wanted to take it to the next level.
“Six!”
She smirked at his name for her. “Coming!”
Chapter 17
Eden could not recall the last time she had seen a pair of jeans hug a man’s hips and legs so sensually. The fabric greedily clung to every part of him, wanting the touch as badly as she.
He wore no shirt or shoes. His coal-black hair looked bed-tousled. His arms arced out from his body, displaying his fine form. Impossible abs and chiseled muscles angled down beyond his jeans and tempted her to trace them. In the hazy afternoon light his body glimmered as if a sheen upon forged metal.
Was it right a demon could look so nummy? Shouldn’t he be ugly and smell like brimstone and make a person want to run in the opposite direction?
Perhaps that was the plan. Lure the hapless female closer and then…
Then what? She’d already learned kissing a demon was beyond incredible.
With images of naked bodies hugging each other under the moonlight zipping through her brain, Eden almost dropped the basket of limestone, but caught it before it slipped from her fingers.
“You wanted me?” Please say yes.
“I need the limestone to draw protection sigils on the floors. And…”
She handed him the basket. Her fingers almost touched his skin, but not quite. “And?”
“I’ll need some of your blood.”
“Seriously? I gave to Red Cross last week. I’m all tapped out.”
His eyebrow arched. “Just a few drops to mix with the limestone. It’s necessary for the ward to protect you in particular.”
“All righty, then. I suppose I can manage another drop or two.” She pointed her index finger up. “You got a pin?”
He reached behind his hip and drew up the wicked-looking knife Eden had seen him wield against the angel. It was like one of those fantasy weapons with a fancy serrated blade that sported three deadly points curving dangerously on each side.
“I thought you said that had poison on it?”
“It won’t affect you…it’s an angel poison. You won’t feel the cut, either.”
Clasping her arms across her chest, she took a big step backward. “I don’t think so. That thing looks like it could sever a limb.”
“Six.” His tone chastised.
Eden did not like being told what to do. “I have a knife in the drawer.”
He gripped her arm as she turned to the cupboard. A fine pain streaked across her forearm. The slice was minute, yet throbbed like a paper cut. And before Eden could protest, glossy crimson dribbled down her arm.
Ashur resheathed the blade and tugged her toward the table. He held her arm above the basket of limestone. Crimson droplets splattered over the dusty white pebbles.
“You’re not much for arguments,” she said.
“This is for your benefit.”
“Right, keeping the angel at bay. Or is this the bait?”
“That should be good.” He dropped her arm, apparently having heard her question, but not about to answer it.
“I don’t think I have bandages.” She inspected the cut. It was long and, though not deep and not at all painful, she would need something to staunch the bleeding.
Again he grabbed her arm and this time he bent to lick the cut. Eden reflexively pulled away, but he held her securely. Licking away her blood from his lips, Ashur freaked her only as long as it took to notice the cut on her arm was no longer there.
“That’s…” Though her heart beat faster, she couldn’t quite get frantic. She was in awe. “That was cool. I forgot you could do that.”
“A trick of the trade.”
“But you just drank my blood. Are you a vampire demon?”
“I did not drink it. I merely licked it clean from your flesh.”
“Yeah, but do you like the taste of it?”
He crushed the limestone with a marble mortar and pestle he’d found in the cupboard. “Everything about you tastes delicious, Six. But I’m not going to start feeding on your blood if that is what worries you. It is not necessary to my survival as it is a vampire.”
She inspected her arm but could not find even a red line where the cut had been. “You’re very commanding, you know.”
“You like it.”
“I do. Why am I so attracted to you?”
He continued to crush the mixture, without looking to her. “You don’t know?”
“I think it’s your honesty. You have a pureness about you. An innocence.”
Ashur scoffed. “As I’ve said, you do not know me.”
Eden wagered that she knew some things about him that he wasn’t willing to admit to. He was a complicated demon, intent on his goal, yet willing to take the time to learn the world—and her.
“Now, you’ll need to change,” he ordered.
“Into what?”
“Less is more,” he said, busy with the crushing. “You must come to the warding unfettered and open to receive the blessing of protection.”
A blessing? Engineered by a demon? She kept her mouth shut.
“Skyclad is preferred.” He studied her, no guile in his expression, though his intense gaze reeked of desire. “I’d ask you to go bare, but I don’t think it necessary. Have you a simple sheath dress or something less confining?”
“Is this your way of trying to get me naked?”
He smiled. “I would remove your clothes with my teeth, and slowly, if that were my intent.”
Pleased, Eden bristled gleefully. When she didn’t move, Ashur nodded for her to run along.
Right. She had to remove articles of clothing for the sexy man. Easily done.
She skipped up the stairs. She hadn’t a nightgown because she usually slept in the buff. If he thought the yoga outfit was too much, she wasn’t sure jeans or even the long skirt she’d brought along would be much different.
Eden stripped to her bra and panties. The red lace matched set had been imported from Paris, made especially to her measurements.
She curved her palms beside her breasts and eyed her figure in the dusty mirror on the vanity. Slender yet curvaceous, she was proud of her curves and her taut stomach. Did she dare? “He did say less is more.”
She hadn’t anything more revealing without stripping naked. This would have to do. It was like wearing a bikini. In fact, Eden was sure she had some bikinis that showed more skin.
“Hello, Angel Slayer, my name is Eden. Want to touch?”
She winked at her reflection. The guy didn’t even know her name. She’d best stop fantasizing—or else start initiating her fantasies—before he was gone without a trace.
When she reentered the kitchen, she almost stepped on a chalk marking dashed upon the floor.
“Avoid the—” Ashur, kneeling near the front door, his torso twisted to look at her, simply stared.
“The marks,” she finished for him. “What’s wrong?”
The man’s jaw dropped. The chalk he held slipped from his fingers. He noticeably swallowed.
Eden posed with hand to hip. Hello, Angel Slayer. “I didn’t have any slip dresses. This is as bare as I could get without going nude. Just think of it as a bikini.”
“Fine,” he croaked, and turned away.
Eden smiled. Someone was getting a hard-on. If all went well with the warding process, she seriously wanted to see how much he liked this ensemble. And why waste those perfect abs that had tightened at the sight of her? They deserved some licking.
“Shouldn’t you get naked?” she asked.
“I am half clad,” he mumbled.
Eden pouted. Should she be more serious about this whole affair? Definitely. Though, it would be very difficult. Eden couldn’t rec
all when she’d been so attracted to a man.
Did she regularly tease men in her underthings? Only after she’d been dating them awhile.
It had to be the allure of the bad boy. She’d never had a dangerous lover before, and she was seriously buying into the appeal of all things dark, dangerous and oh, so sexy.
“What do all these marks mean?” She tiptoed across the kitchen floor. There was one below the stairs, one at the back of the kitchen that lead out to the garden, and he was finishing one that spanned three feet in diameter before the front door. “Are they some kind of angel repellent?”
“Exactly. I’m going up to draw them by the windows and bedroom doors. Stay here, because if you follow me in that attire I, well…” A lift of his chest preceded a lusty exhale. “Just stay here.”
Again she smiled, and sat at the table to toy with the halo. When Ashur returned she jumped up to follow him to the center of the kitchen. “What next? It doesn’t seem like I’m helping all that much.”
“You need to stay in the room. Your energy is important to the ward.” He turned to perhaps grip her shoulders, but instead slapped his palms to his chest, awkwardly uncomfortable. His eyes darted from her breasts to her belly, and lower, appealing to Eden all the more. “Stay back, near the wall. There will be an outburst of…stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“I don’t know how to put it into words you would understand. It is remnants of the universe answering my incantation. I’m going to work here by the door, and I’ll be chanting the ward. I’ll be speaking in tongues.”
“Impressive.”
“Six, it may frighten you. I may, in fact, sound…demonic.” He winced. “To use a term I gathered while learning this world.”
“I’ll be cool.” After all, the demon was protecting her, and she was grateful for that. And who knew? The reward for enduring this whole warding ritual may be some snuggling afterward.
“Good. Go stand by the wall.”
She waited for him to lean down and give her a reassuring kiss, a rub of his palm over her arm, but he instead turned and knelt to his task.
Sighing, Eden wandered over to the wall. Rubbing a palm up her arm, she chased the goose bumps she knew were there—because of the man filling the room and not because of anxiety over the unknown. Could he sense her desire? Hell, what couldn’t he sense about her when clad in a few bits of red lace?
She had better tone it down. He didn’t need the distraction.
Ashur knelt on one knee and bowed over a limestone circle drawn on the stone floor. His back to her, his bared muscles rippled with movement as he stretched his arms out and lowered his head. It was a worshipful pose.
Eden traced her lower lip with her tongue.
Every move he made softened her insistence to keep him at a distance. She could not look away from him, and found the sensual in everything he did.
He was unlike any man she had ever known, and more dangerous. Hell, she had never known a dangerous man. Ashur drew her out of her perfect, ordered, upper-class lifestyle and forced her to comprehend things she could never have imagined. Like the bad boy’s allure. And the precarious call of surrendering to the unknown.
And facing that which scared her.
She had thought she’d faced something pretty horrific when she’d lost the baby. And all those who had shaken their heads pitifully when she’d tried to explain her dreams hadn’t bolstered her confidence level. Yet now a stranger banished from heaven wanted to get her pregnant. How twisted was that?
What she feared most clambered against her personal walls, clawing for her submission.
“Let this work,” she whispered. “Please, let him know what he is doing.”
And then the whispers began. Ashur spoke lowly, head bowed over his work. His voice echoed off the walls, and doubled, then tripled itself. Suddenly his words took weight and presence. Myriad colors formed before Eden, dancing darker and lighter as his voice rose and fell.
His voice continued to multiply until the room was filled with many voices of all colors, slipping over her flesh with untranslatable noise. The sound was eerie and reminded her of strange horror movie effects utilized to creep her out so well. Yet the color was gorgeous and sparkled like a ten-carat diamond beneath the sun.
Now his voice moved through the air as menacing clouds. Eden pressed her spine to the wall.
Ashur rocked forward. Arms still extended, he commanded some otherworldly presence she felt creep along her neck and tickle the hairs upon her scalp.
Something moved over her. Not across her flesh, but rather, through her pores and into her veins. Like molten lava cooled by ice. Its journey was slow, yet she dared not move to shake it off, because it wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be real.
It is real.
He was only trying to protect her.
Ashur thrust back his head and shouted something that sounded like Latin. The house shuddered. His arms were spread, his fingers flexed, and from his palms flashed beams of blue light that danced over the walls in symbols similar to those drawn on the floor. When the blue light lined up with the drawn symbols it was sucked in and the symbol flashed. Limestone dust burst out from the drawn line, fogging the room.
A spinning metal object soared toward Eden. What the— It was the halo! It careened sharply. It buzzed like a storm of insects. Bright blue flashed in her vision.
She dodged and screamed.
The room clouded, and as her muscles gave way, her body hit the floor.
Zaqiel didn’t need to be knocked over the head to sense the repellent wards that rumbled across the countryside. He dropped the puppy he’d been dangling from the leash its owner used to tie it outside the pastry shop.
He strode to the middle of the cobbled street in the Villa Rialto outside Rome. Spreading out his arms and tilting back his head, he read the air upon his closed eyelids and mouth.
The Sinistari was attempting to protect the muse.
The only thing wrong with that plan was Zaqiel now had a lead on their hiding spot.
Dropping his arms and striding forward, Zaqiel decided against flashing there. He’d take his time. All good things came to those who danced when others least expected to find anything on the head of a pin.
Whenever the Sinistari put out energy into the world the psychopomp felt it. They were connected by the shared means of handling souls. Ashuriel was in Italy. He’d put up wards against a Fallen one.
Odd. Blackthorn thought the Sinistari’s only purpose was to slay Fallen. So why the wards? Shouldn’t he be welcoming the angel with open arms and a poisoned blade?
“This demon will not have his way.” Whatever he was up to.
Unceremoniously dropping at the pearly gates the handful of souls he’d been delivering Above, Blackthorn flashed to earth.
Something odd disturbed the air.
Sitting on the hood of his rental car, Michael Donovan looked up from the wind-rumpled map of the Italian countryside and scanned the sky. Didn’t look like rain. The sky was bright and white. He should have picked up some water at the store before venturing away from Rome.
The address on the package he’d found in Eden Campbell’s penthouse had led him across the ocean. After vacillating on stealing the one halo, he’d taken all three she’d had hanging on the coatrack.
All was fair in the game of collectors. At least, that’s the way he saw it. And Miss Campbell could have no idea the greater evil building behind the scenes.
He needed to know where all the halos were, and keep them from the hands of the unsuspecting, from those who could easily be tricked by the evil that would use the halos against them all.
Chapter 18
Eden startled awake to find herself cradled in Ashur’s arms. Worry glistened in the multicolored coronas of his irises.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I just…” She saw flashes of what had happened. The halo careening toward her. The spray of wall plaster hitting her cheek. She grabbed he
r neck. “Oh, my God, my head…”
“It’s still there. And a very pretty head, I must say.”
“I was almost decapitated.”
“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s all over. You fainted. I will lay you on your bed.”
“No, I…” Oh, hell, she was wearing nothing but a bra and panties and he was carrying her! “Set me down. I’m fine now. Still alive. Those halos are deadly! Oh, look at me. I’m covered in white dust!”
He set her down at the open bathroom door. “I told you there would be fallout.”
She hadn’t expected anything like that. The halo had come so close to decapitating her. She stroked her neck again, avoiding the angelkiss.
So much had happened over the last couple of days. She’d discovered that angels were real. And she had thought to seduce a demon. She was out of sorts. She needed time alone to think about this, about where things had gone oh, so wrong.
Brushing the dust from her stomach, she said, “I think I’ll take a bath.”
“I’ll go down and put things in order. I should check the halo didn’t damage the ward.”
“Did it work?”
He called as he descended the stairs, “Won’t know until we need it!”
Great. So her bloodshed and near decapitation could have been in vain.
Eden rubbed her throat, and cautioned herself against scratching the angelkiss. It didn’t itch, actually. Maybe the ward had something to do with that. No matter, she was glad her head was still attached to her body.
She wondered what made the halo take flight like that.
Could Ashur have— No. He’d said the halos were only viable weapons if returned to the original owner.
He’d also said something about the halos containing the angel’s earthbound soul. So if an angel wanted to become human it simply had to find its halo?
Could it belong to Zaqiel? Could any of her halos belong to him?
She thought of her collection at home, hanging so modestly alone in her office. What if they had the ability to attract their original owner? It could explain how, in the entire world, Zaqiel had managed to run into her in Manhattan.
