by Michele Hauf
“Remind me to get you a cell phone after the apocalypse.”
“I wouldn’t have anyone to call.”
“You could call me.”
A smile curved his lips, as if it jumped upon him and, once there, he liked it so much it spread further, barely able to contain his glee.
Again, Cassandra tilted her head down, but this time it was to hide a rosy blush.
She carefully extracted the metal device from the box and pulled away the Bubble Wrap. It had been advertised as a titanium punch, but thanks to her basic research on vampires, she’d known exactly what it was when she’d seen the circular crest emblazoned on the side of the cylindrical object.
Mortals not in the know wouldn’t have a clue, which was why she’d been able to nab this handy-dandy thingamabobbie for fifty euros.
She studied the crest imprinted on the titanium column. A circle with the points of four stakes meeting in the center was surrounded by the name of the organization that used this weapon.
“The Order of the Stake,” she read.
“I haven’t heard of them,” Sam said, leaning forward to look over what she held.
“They are an ancient order, rumored to be formed by King Henry III of France at the end of the sixteenth century. Or maybe Charles IX. History is a little shady which Valois king it was, if indeed it was a king.” The cylinder fit her grip nicely, and she wielded it as if to stab. “The order is made up of knighted mortals who hunt vampires, and this is their weapon of choice.”
In demonstration, she smacked her free palm against the weapon’s base. “Plant this against a vampire’s chest, and…”
She took her hand away and with her other hand compressed the spring-action clamps in the grip with a squeeze. A titanium spike pinioned out from the cylinder, eight inches long and sharpened to a deadly point. The force of the action bobbed her hand.
“That’ll leave a mark,” Sam said.
She spun the stake as if a majorette’s baton. “What it’ll leave is a pile of ash.”
“Let me see that thing, bunny.”
He studied it from end to end, figuring out the return mechanism, a button on the end, which snapped the stake back into the cylinder. Experimentally, he stabbed the air with it. “As we’d say in the ranks, this will smite nicely.”
Cassandra took it back. “It’s mine. You’ve your halo and a demon blade to do your smiting.”
“Fair enough.” He patted the halo at his hip, but Cassandra didn’t notice the blade was missing. “I wager you’ll do some damage with that thing.”
“Oh, yeah.” She stabbed it in the air a couple times.
For a woman of her petite size and limited strength this was exactly what she needed to force the stake through flesh, muscle, bone and, finally, heart.
According to her research, most young vampires could be extinguished with a stake through the heart. A few older, tough ones also required decapitation. She wasn’t into hacking off heads, so she hoped if she did come face-to-face with a vampire again, it was less than a century old.
Sliding off the bed, she poked the stake at an invisible vampire. Performing a high roundhouse, she swiped her arm around, aiming at the bloodsucker. She dodged and swung underhanded with the stake to its heart. Score! If she would have had this in the alleyway, those thug vampires wouldn’t have stood a chance.
She spun around to find Sam grinning bemusedly at her. Shrugging and looking aside to hide her blush, she returned the stake to the cylinder.
Sam thumbed his lower lip and followed her movements as she sorted through the backpack. She could feel his gaze on her skin as if gently stroking fingers, but a breath away from a real touch.
“What’s wrong?” she asked without looking at him, still trying to look busy.
“Can we kiss again?” he asked.
Oh, yeah? Cassandra straightened.
Times like this a girl should stake out on the roof and wait for the big bads to approach. The world was falling apart and darkness threatened now that a nephilim walked the land. But it was cold on the roof. And they’d pulled vampire duty, which wasn’t possible until the sun went down. Which should happen any minute now, but the curtains were drawn, so she couldn’t be held responsible for knowing the exact moment darkness fell.
That was all the argument she could summon.
Cassandra tossed the stake on the bed and straddled Sam on the chair. His surprise at her easy compliance made her want to giggle, but she was too focused on the gorgeous lines of his square jaw. Cut solid and straight, as if from stone or silver, yet so real.
But not a mortal man. Don’t forget that. And not a man who wanted to stick around after the glory was gained. Double don’t forget that, Caz.
She leaned in and kissed his mouth, a mouth that accepted without directing, received without demanding. He was still new to intimacy, and his inexperience emboldened her. Hard to believe she had ever worried about him attacking her.
But it was possible; that had already been proved.
Disregarding niggling intuition, Cassandra followed her decadent heart into a dangerous place, where she felt most comfortable.
Sam spread his hand up her spine and pulled her tightly against him. The warmth of him was real. The sinuous glide of his muscles beneath her palms heightened her desire. Everything about him seduced her to drop her guard.
Tracing the fresh stubble darkening his jaw with a fingertip, she then brushed her lips over the sexy scruff. The rough sensation stimulated her nerve endings, and she dashed her tongue along his jaw where perhaps God himself had carved this man from an ineffable substance. Too incredible to fathom, and yet had she not also been created by Him?
Kissing along his jaw, she took his measure, finding the crease where his ear met his head a particularly enticing spot to tuck her tongue. His deep, longing moan signaled approval.
Down his neck she placed a kiss against the vein that did not pulse, and there, up under his chin, and then to the hard Adam’s apple, before licking the cool flesh at the base of his neck.
“Cassandra,” he murmured. “Cass…”
Had she rendered him speechless? Ha! Score one for the muse and hand her the control. She needed to feel that right now. If she could manage one aspect of her crazy life, she could then, hopefully, control many more.
Lifting the sweater emblazoned over the breast with the AquaDom logo over his head, she tugged it off and tossed it aside. Bowing over him, she explored hard pectorals too solid to be anything but sculpture, yet his skin begged for her to press her palms flat to take in as much of him as possible. His nipple grew harder when she dashed her tongue over it.
Sam gasped and thrust back his head. His fingers slid into her hair, gently claiming her and keeping her upon him. The ribbons within her hair slipped over his chest and arms. She teased her tongue to the other nipple and he gripped the nape of her neck, wanting to pull her hard against him but somehow resisting that dominant move.
The muscles in his arms tensed against her rib cage, and his thighs flexed under hers. She was giving him a new experience, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. But how far dare she take it?
She wasn’t ready to go all the way. Would she ever be ready for that? It was foolish to think she could enjoy the fun of sex without the very real consequences of—no, she wasn’t going to think of that peril right now.
Why not? You love danger. Angel boy, here, offers it in spades.
Pressing an ear to his chest, she listened, but it only confirmed what Granny Stevens had told her. “Your heart doesn’t beat.”
“My heart is solid glass. It cannot beat.”
“Not without a soul.” Her hand strayed to flick a nail across the halo at his hip. The key to his soul.
“Does that trouble you?” he asked.
She studied his eyes of azure, gold and violet, freckled with emerald. She had been given the facts. She wasn’t a skeptic. “It’s just different.”
He touched her bottom lip with h
is forefinger. “Our one difference.”
Cassandra licked his fingertip and noticed it was smooth. Really smooth. She studied his finger, searching for the whorls. “You’ve no fingerprints.”
“Without a soul, I’ve not the unique prints that make you mortals what you are.”
Pressing his finger aside her cheek, she held him there, fascinated and a little freaked.
Danger, Cassandra. Don’t stop now. You don’t have much time left before the world falls down around you.
“Right,” she whispered, and then sat back and pulled her sweater off over her head.
Sam’s eyes widened. He couldn’t repress that sexy innocence-chasing-charming smirk. So she wasn’t much for bras. Her 32Bs liked the freedom.
“Those are so…wow.” His hand on her hip flexed. “Can I…can I touch them?”
She took his hand and placed it over her heart. “Touch me. Feel my heart beat.”
He exhaled and conformed his printless fingers over her heart, which covered her entire bare breast. “It’s pounding.”
“It’s excited about something,” she offered with a surprising flush of heat to her neck. That heat moved through her being, warming her everywhere and moistening her between her legs.
This was no tease. She knew exactly what she wanted from this man.
Sam flattened his hand upon her chest and his fingers paralleled her hard nipple. “They’re so round. They fit perfectly in my hands. Now I understand why men like them so much.” He cupped her other breast. “Does it feel as good for you as when you licked mine?”
“Give it a try,” she dared on a husky voice. Intimacy always brought out her inner harlot. And when in the presence of a Biblical being? Well, then…
Arching her spine, she met his mouth with her breast as he bent to taste her flesh. A moan hummed in her throat. A tilt of her head swept her beribboned hair across her bare back.
In answer to her desirous moan, Sam closed his mouth around her nipple. He didn’t lick at it with his tongue, but she didn’t need that. The intense connection radiated through her being, tendering every inch of flesh with a giddy tingle.
As he moved to kiss her other nipple, Cassandra squeezed her thighs against his, wanting to capture the warm hum coiling in her groin, but also toying with the untouchable sensation’s fleeting tease.
When the world was falling apart around her, she needed a reminder of the sweetness reality could offer, the utter, breathtaking intensity that formed when two beings touched and learned one another.
Sam pressed an ear to her chest and listened, chuckling softly. “That’s you, breathing, living, being. It’s remarkable.”
Not so remarkable as touching an angel. This man was her enemy? The one who would threaten the world’s safety by merely having sex with her? It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be.
Well, she knew the Fallen was only capable of procreating while in half form. He had to shift and his wings must be unfurled for her to become pregnant. So in this complete human form, could they get busy without worry of her becoming a nephilim baby mama?
Don’t even consider it!
She wore birth control implants in her upper arm. She couldn’t get pregnant—not by a mortal man. But she wasn’t stupid, and would not believe such precautions made her safe in this situation.
A pinch to her nipple stirred a chirp of delight. “You think so?”
“I want more,” he said, and kissed his way down her chest to her stomach. “All of you.”
Cassandra raked her fingers through his hair and tilted his head back to study his eyes. Emerald, violet and a sparkle of gold. She need fear him only if they glowed blue.
“What?” he asked.
“Just checking. I, uh…I don’t want to take chances, Sam.” Oh, really, Danger Girl?
“Chance is one of life’s great joys. You open yourself to opportunity and experience. Look at me. I love chance!”
“I mean with you going all evil angel on me. Can we…” She sucked in her lower lip, not wanting to have this discussion, but not so stupid she would avoid it. “Can we do this? Without you…you know?”
“If a chance of my harming you existed, I would not have allowed this to happen. I can control the shift to half form. You’re safe with me, Cassandra.”
“I want to believe that. But Granny told me the Fallen have this compulsion. A compulsion means something you can’t resist. And you’ve even talked about it. So why can you resist right now?”
“I’m not resisting. I want to touch you everywhere, taste every inch of your skin and feel your softness. Mmm…” He kissed her breast. “Suck on you until you moan.”
She pressed fingers to his mouth. “If we had sex would you turn all nasty-winged Fallen on me? How do you know the compulsion won’t come upon you when you’re…in the throes?”
“Ah.” He winced and trailed his fingers over her bare stomach. “I don’t know. I’ve…never gone that far with a woman so I’m not sure how far I can take this before the compulsion strikes.”
“That’s not good.”
“What we’re doing right now is good.”
She kissed him and pressed her forehead to his. “It is, but I don’t want to have to stake you should you suddenly decide to make a nephilim with me.”
“Stakes aren’t effective against me.”
“Sam, you don’t understand.”
“Yes, I do. You don’t want to take the risk of what our intimacy could lead to.”
“Oh, I’m all about the risk. I just don’t want this to go so far I…” Allow emotion to enter the picture, like love and want and need. Because those things threatened far more than becoming a baby mama.
Was she retreating so quickly? She had engaged them in this intimate dance.
“I guess I do have the repellant spell. If you go evil angel on me, it’ll give me a minute to escape.”
“I hate that we need a precaution like that, sweetie bunny mine.”
That one was over-the-top, but it still made her smile. “You do. You…really do care about me?”
He nodded.
“But I’m the only woman you’ve gotten a chance to know. Who’s to say once you’ve spent some time on earth, chatted up a few more ladies, you won’t feel the same attraction to them? There’s nothing special about me. And don’t bring up the sigil and our destinies.”
“Then I’ve no argument. All I know is right now I want you, Cassandra. Just like this. Our skin brushing against one another. Our mouths giving and taking breath. Beyond that, it’s all new to me.”
A statement in no need of further argument. Cassandra bent and opened his mouth with a deep kiss and wrapped her legs about him and the chair.
“Mmm,” he murmured. “You smell so good.”
They kissed and Sam stroked her breasts until she began to feel the beginnings of orgasm humming in her core. And while her body was ready to fly and take the angel along with her, some insistently prudish part of her demanded she take it slower. Resist the release, because it wasn’t right yet. They were yet so new to each other.
Tilting back her head, Cassandra bit her lip as a pinch to her nipple twisted the coil in her belly to a tightness too good to resist. Then she heard the public safety alarm beep on the television that jabbered quietly behind them.
“What’s wrong, bunny? Am I doing this wrong?”
Her attention averted to the television, Cassandra’s libido dropped off the scale. Pushing away from the best kisses she had ever received, she went to the bed and stood before the TV, arms crossed over her sensitive breasts.
She narrowed her gaze to study the brief, grainy video being looped over and over on the screen. The newscaster stated a strange being had been sighted in Berlin. Bystanders described it as tall and deformed, but most definitely human. It growled and stomped about on club feet, and had knocked down a streetlight and damaged three cars. It was considered dangerous, and people should run if they saw it.
Cassandra stepped
backward, right onto Sam’s foot. She wobbled, and he caught her shoulders, supporting her. “Do you think that is the…?”
“I’ve never seen one before. The image is very poor. It could be anything.”
“I’ve got to call Coco.” She scrambled for her cell phone and found it under the backpack.
Sam angled his head to study the blurred image of what was obviously a bald, distorted head. The mouth was wide and opened in a roar. Beyond that, there was no evidence to show that it was anything more than a man with a multitude of exterior defects. But he knew. Something inside his hard glass heart pulsed. And it wasn’t a pulse of desire or happiness.
He did not fear, such as did mortal men. But what he saw on the television injected horror into his being. A nephilim walked the earth.
Chapter 8
Sam tossed Cassandra her backpack, which was loaded with the necessary weapons. “We need to take action. If there’s a nephilim stalking the streets of Berlin, we have to find it.”
“I agree. But Coco and Zane are on its trail. And I trust they’ve got a handle on that situation.” She slid on her coat and then the backpack. He hadn’t liked it when she’d put on her shirt, covering those gorgeous breasts. But he couldn’t think about the sensual things he wanted to do to her body right now.
“Although,” she said, “it’s only been an hour since I talked to Coco, and she was still in Hamburg. It’s a three-hour drive from there to Berlin. They couldn’t possibly have kept up with it.”
Sam grabbed her arm, stopping her from leaving the room. Apparently she did not gauge the seriousness of the situation. “I will not endanger another being by getting them involved in our troubles. Most especially not a relative of yours. We can do this alone. We must.”
“I don’t think so, buddy.” She tugged from his grasp.
“My name is not buddy. And you will respect me for the skills I bring to the table. I have experience with this sort of thing.”
She opened the hotel room door and swung a doubting look at him. “Really? How many nephilim have you tracked and slain?”
