by Mary Calmes
He scowled. “She’s not my intended. She—”
“She’s a sentinel too, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you know her family.”
“Jaka—”
“It’s in the bag, right?”
“You know you’re the only one that actually listens when I tell you all these things, and I tell you because I have to, not because I want to, so it’s quite disconcerting to have it all thrown back in my face!”
I shrugged.
“Which is why I say again, you will make an excellent sentinel when it comes time.”
“Great.” I dismissed him. “What’s her name again?”
“Deidre.” He breathed it out.
“Uh-huh.”
He leaned back in his seat. “She might not like what she sees.”
But for a guy in his midfifties, he looked pretty good. He looked great, in fact. The lady was gonna lose her mind as long as she didn’t mind the stiff neck from looking up at him all the time. “Wait, how tall is she?”
“Why does this matter?”
I gestured at him to just tell me.
“I believe she’s five eleven.”
“Oh, you’re lucky, ’cause what’re you? Seven one?”
He squinted. “I’m six seven; I’m only an inch taller than Marot and two inches taller than Malic. You’re six two, for goodness sake, you’re not exactly small.”
But he looked huge. We all thought of Jael as a giant. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure what?”
“That you’re only six seven?”
He made a face like I was the most annoying man on the planet and got up to go to the kitchen.
“So while you’re gone, we shouldn’t do anything stupid, right?” I called after him.
“If you could manage.”
I would really try; I couldn’t speak for anybody else.
JAEL TOLD all the others about Frank, and the following night, when I was on patrol with Leith, he gave me the third degree. He wanted to know how I had handled things with him, and when Malic and Marcus joined us, I had to recount the story all over again.
I told Malic again that he needed to patch things up with Rene.
“You guys were friends a long time,” Marcus told him.
He turned his bright blue eyes on his best friend. Malic’s eyes were strange; they were this Technicolor turquoise that didn’t match his somber disposition in any way. “If Rene was going out with Joe, would I be talking to him?”
Marcus was easily the coolest guy I knew. Ice water ran through him, and he was completely unflappable. Nothing ever shook him. Even in a fight he retained his precise outlook on things. He compartmentalized his feelings from his actions, and what worked in battle also worked in the courtroom. The word was that he would make partner at his law firm this year. All of that flew out the window, however, when you were talking about the man he had spent the last five years of his life with. Joseph Locke was the one singular piece of Marcus Roth’s world that could shake him to the core.
He turned and looked at me. “Sorry, Jacks,” he said quickly and then looked back at Malic. “Agreed.”
“Good,” Malic said, bumping him with his shoulder. “We have to go talk to my friend Adrian Chen tonight. He thinks he’s got a jiang shi in his building and asked me to check it out.”
“Christ, Malic,” I groused. “Is there anyone in your life that doesn’t know you’re a warder?”
“Lots.” He smiled wickedly. “But unlike you, I know who to trust.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means besides Cielo, who have you ever told?”
I thought about it a minute. “Frank,” I told them.
Leith laughed beside me, and we all turned to look.
“What?”
Marcus’s smile was huge. “Maybe it’s time to bust out of your comfort zone, there, Jacks.”
Maybe it was.
VI
I WAS looking for him, and a week later I was finally rewarded with a glimpse of him. I followed fast, running, racing along the pavement to catch up. He flew behind three men into a vacant warehouse, and when I reached them, I was stunned at what I saw.
The men were on the wall, held there against their will by some invisible force that kept them dangling several feet off the ground. Raphael was in the middle of the room, frozen, head back, breathing hard.
“Why are you chasing me?”
I walked into the room, the leather soles of my dress shoes scratching through the dirt as I advanced. “I wanted to talk to you,” I said softly. “What are you doing with these guys?”
He looked over his shoulder at me, and I was struck by how raw his eyes looked. “Why do you care? They’re demons.”
But whatever he had planned might actually hurt him more than them. It might take a toll on his soul. “I don’t care, but tell me what you’re going to do.”
“I’m going to skin them alive and then transport them back to the siphon world they came from.”
“Who are they?”
He turned to face me. “Ever since I helped your fellow warder’s pet––”
“Simon. We’re talking about Leith’s hearth right?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “Ever since then the demon lord Saudrian has put a bounty on my head, and since kyries are solitary and I have no patron, I’m kind of on my own.”
He sounded almost sad.
“I’m sorry.”
I got a shrug and a wry smile. “Not that it will matter soon anyway.” He gestured at the demons held plastered to the wall. “My transformation is coming. I can feel it so—”
“What does that mean?”
He squinted at me. “That means that I’m going to change into a demon soon. Kyries do unless they’re—kyries change.”
“Unless what?”
“What are you doing here?” he growled, changing the subject.
I gave him a smile. “Well, I was thinking that I never properly thanked you for saving Simon.”
“Simon saved himself and his warder.”
“Yeah, but like you said, you helped. Without you they would have never made it out.”
He was glaring at me.
“So again, I should thank you.”
“Don’t tease me, warder, I bite.”
I arched an eyebrow for him.
“Go away,” he muttered gruffly, and I could tell he was purposely trying to sound mean.
“C’mon, just let them go. I wanna talk to you.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Please.”
“No!” he snarled, flashing his teeth. “You use that word, that stupid, simple word, and you make me do things, make lots of people do things, and I hate it. You can’t just say please and expect—”
“Why are you angry?” I asked softly, moving closer, reaching for him. “And why did you disappear? You’ve been so good at stalking me, showing up wherever I am, and then what? I lost my appeal after I almost bled to death on your boots?”
He sucked in a breath, and the demons fell from the walls. They started forward, the menace there in their slow stride, moving to attack us, but I lifted my head so they could see me, let a pulse of power run out of me and hit them. We could all do it, every warder, push a wave of energy through our own bodies and release it. And every creature from the pit knew what it was, what it felt like when it touched them and what it meant.
“Warder,” one of the demons said under his breath before each of them threw their heads back, dimmed, and disappeared.
I returned my eyes to Raphael’s and found him squinting at me.
“How can you say that to me?” he asked, furious.
“Say what?” I asked, reaching for the heavy black motorcycle jacket.
He meant to step away, but I grabbed and held him. “This is a nice change from the leather duster. It fits your bad-guy image without being over the top.”
&nbs
p; “Don’t—”
“Don’t what?” I asked, easing him closer, putting my other hand on his hip, leaning forward, inhaling his musky scent, letting it soothe me.
“You were almost killed because of me, and I made up my mind that night that I would no longer put you in danger. My life is filled with horrors that—”
“So is mine,” I told him, moving my hands, one to the back of his neck, the other burrowing up under the cable-knit sweater he had on, under the T-shirt, until I hit warm skin.
The sound that came out of him, whine, moan, whimper all at once, told me everything I needed to know.
“I’m not afraid of your world. I live there already.”
“But you—you don’t, I’m going to change and—”
“Kyries only change,” I said, sliding my hand over the small of his back, stroking his bare skin, “if they are not claimed. Isn’t that so?”
He tipped his head back, offering, and I leaned in and pressed my parted lips to the pulse beating at the base of his throat.
“Isn’t that so?” I repeated, smiling, kissing up the length of his throat and wedging my thigh against his groin at the same time.
The noises he made, the moans that came from the back of his throat as he clutched at my biceps, holding me tight through the zippered cardigan, made me smile.
“So then why run from me? Stick around.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he almost cried, shoving me off him, stepping back.
I saw it then, all his pain, all his desire, there in his ragged, red-rimmed eyes.
“Come here.” I called him gruffly.
He pointed at me. “Because of me, you almost died. I don’t want you to die, warder. I’d rather stay away from you than—”
“I want you.” And I did. The desire for him, just to sleep with him, was nearly overwhelming. There was no one else I craved at all, no one else I really even saw. He was it, the only bright, terrible point of light around.
“You have no idea what you’re saying.”
“I do.”
“You don’t,” he shouted. “You don’t make idle promises to a kyrie. It’s not like breaking up with your whiny-ass bitch of a boyfriend. It’s a gift and grants you dominion, and once it’s given, you can’t take it back. I will always be there; you’ll never be free. It’s what your sentinel warned Malic about—the thrall of a demon.”
“You’re not a demon,” I reminded him.
The muscles in his jaw corded with the effort it took for him not to yell.
“And I’m not afraid.”
“You’re not afraid because you place no value on your own life.”
Perhaps.
“But soon you’re going to pull free of this haze of”—he shook his head—“sadness or whatever the fuck it is, and then—”
“Why’re you fighting with me?”
“You cannot take this pledge so light—”
“I’m not. I swear I’m not. Just c’mere.”
“You are! You said you wanted me,” he yelled, “and if you do, truly do, then I’m yours, Jackson Tybalt, but once given, once you take me once, have me once, it’s done.”
“So the thrall of a kyrie has nothing to do with blood?”
“It has everything to do with blood, but not me taking yours, you drinking mine!”
“Show me.”
He rushed back to my side, and as he came, he pulled a knife from behind his back. There were hidden sheaths in the jacket, hiding all manner of weaponry, I was sure, but the knife, dragged across his wrist in one fluid motion, the knife he cut into himself with was the only one I cared about.
“For crissakes, don’t hurt yourself.”
His flickering smile was breathtaking. “You’re worried… about me….”
“Don’t cry,” I teased him gently.
He shook his head and then grabbed me, shoving his wrist against my lips, clutching the back of my head tight, his hand fisted in my hair.
I had to open my mouth, I couldn’t breathe, and the second I did, I tasted metal and felt the liquid warmth on my tongue. I swallowed, sucked, and swallowed again. I felt like a fiend and got my hands on him and wrenched free. I fell back, hitting the ground hard, and scrambled to sit up. He was on his knees close to me.
“I—”
“Look.”
I lifted my eyes, and his wrist was pristine—no cut, no blood, nothing.
“Perfect,” he proclaimed, and I saw that the soft, gentle look in his face was replaced by obvious hunger. The predatory look went right to my groin.
“Raphael.”
“If the bond works, I heal.”
“And if it didn’t?”
“I’d be dead at your feet.”
I caught my breath. “You stupid son of a—”
“I healed, warder.”
He had.
“I’m yours.”
I would have said something, but I was flat on my back with two hundred pounds of hard-muscled man on top of me, straddling my thighs, dragging his ass over my painfully engorged erection a second later.
“I belong to you now, warder.”
The magnitude of what I had done, without thinking, hit me hard. And then I saw the flutter of eyelashes as he stilled above me.
“You don’t want—”
“Oh, I want.” I cut him off, hands on the granite thighs, pulling him forward, lifting my legs to support his back. “Come home with me.”
His eyes were slits as he stared down at me. “This is not a romance, warder.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“That means that you’re not ready.” He studied me, my face.
“Ready for what?”
He rose fast, dragged me to my feet after him, wrenched me sideways, and then drove me across the floor face-first into the wall. The impact pushed all the air from my lungs. As I stood, gasping for breath, he yanked and tugged at me, unbuckling my belt, working the button fly open, shucking my jeans and briefs down in a violent motion.
“What the fuck are—”
“Say stop,” he whispered, his breath hot and wet in my ear. His chest was shoved against my back, and I felt his hands sliding over my ass, thighs, and hips. “Tell me to stop, even once, and I will, warder. I will.”
His hands felt so good biting into my flesh, learning new territory, pressing, stroking, and then he fisted my cock, and I let my head fall back on his shoulder.
“What do you deserve, warder?”
I had no idea what he meant.
“Are you a good man?”
Was I?
“Jackson?”
I shook my head no. I was not a good man. I had driven away my hearth because I wanted too much and had nothing to give back.
“I will take as you did,” he said, sliding two of his fingers into my mouth.
I licked them because I knew what was happening, coated them thoroughly, making sure they were slick and wet.
“I can hardly wait to feel that tongue on my cock.”
My heart hurt, and then I felt a finger slip between my cheeks at the same time he stroked my shaft from base to head.
“Please,” I begged him, my voice a throaty whisper.
I heard him spit, felt him working his fingers inside me, and it burned, the pressure, the opening not gentle but rough and jarring. My lips parted to tell him to get off me, but his hand tugging on my cock, pulling, eclipsed all else. The first throb vibrated through me, and I pushed back on his fingers, felt my muscles give a fraction, and caught the scent of precome before the head of his shaft was pressed against my entrance.
I was vulnerable, giving, which I never did, and his hand slid over my shaft, milking it as he sank slowly inside me. His cock was thick and long, and it felt like I was split in half as he pressed into me, stretching, filling, the tight rings of muscle resistant until he thrust hard and deep, buried to his balls in my ass.
It was agony until he pulled back and slid back in, slower, scraping his
cock over my prostate at the same time he spit into his right hand and took hold of my still leaking shaft. He began a slow, sensual rhythm, in and out, thrusting, impaling, and the pinching sensation changed. I felt my balls tightening, drawing up, and the persistent edge of pain was finally replaced by sizzling heat as I let out a deep, guttural cry.
“Jackson,” he whispered against my ear. “You’re so hot and tight.”
I trembled as he drove in and out of me, harder and deeper with every plunge, slipping an arm around my neck to hold me against him.
“My smell is on your skin.”
The thought of him claiming me, cruelly, ravenously, of his hands on me, his mouth, his fangs sinking into my flesh, his shaft buried inside me, tore the orgasm from the base of my spine and dragged it though my body in a blinding release that had me writhing in violent ecstasy, screaming his name.
My muscles clutched around him, squeezing him tight, and he erupted inside me, pumping come deep into my clenching channel, his climax only seconds behind my own.
We stood together, shuddering with the aftershocks, pressed together, my forehead leaning into the crook of his arm as he braced it against the wall. As my brain cleared, the weight of what I had just done hit me on all levels.
“Should there have been a condom?” I asked breathlessly.
He shoved back away from me, and I gasped at the suddenness of the movement, the pain, the relief, all swirling together.
I was cold when he was gone, the warmth of his skin, his breath, sharply missed.
“A kyrie does not catch or transmit filthy human diseases, warder,” he said disdainfully. “We are above such mediocrity.”
I turned and looked at him over my shoulder as he scoffed. “You’re a prick.”
“Which you loved,” he sneered, slapping my ass hard enough to leave a mark.
I faced the wall so he couldn’t see my face, see that his words hurt and how true they were. To be manhandled and taken had been what I needed, what I deserved, what I craved, but I felt empty inside because nothing, none of it, had been anything but skin-deep. For the sex to hold meaning, the connection had to be there. I had thought that maybe he would be the balm for my broken heart since he was evil just like me, and we could be a horror together. But as it turned out he didn’t want anything to do with my heart, broken or otherwise.
