A Mermaid s Kiss

by Joey W. Hill

  He started it at the meeting point between her body and his, brushing over her clit so she moaned again and increased her undulating movements, clamping onto him, the wetness of her body moving her hips up and down, a scant inch or two only. But the look in his eyes, the laboring breath, said he was far from unresponsive to the small area of stimulus.

  Up, up, the tip of the feather trailed up her stomach, under her breasts, then over them, teasing her nipples.

  "Ah . . ." She arched as it brushed her throat as well, made her whole body beg. She turned her face into the fingers holding back her hair, bit him hard, small teeth marking his flesh as her body bucked, wanting him.

  Could she give him Joining Magic this way? He wouldn't hurt her again; she knew it. Even if he didn't want her to, the only thing that would stop her was stopping this, and she knew with the instinct of females from the beginning of time he wouldn't stop now. While logic told her she should respect his wishes, intuition also told her to obey the mindless, primitive urging driving her. Offering him magic was as elemental a knowledge at this moment as the response of her body. No thought or analysis required.

  It spread out from her, a hazy heat. Her clit convulsed, her tissues rippling, that heat growing as she rubbed herself against him, arched against the strands of the feather, tasted his blood in her mouth as she bit down harder.

  "Anna . . . Goddess."

  She cried out, long and low, her body bucking, working furiously against the thick column between her legs, slick with her juices and his, the steady trickle that didn't cool the incredible heat of his cock. She reached behind her now, arching, giving her body to it further, to the orgasmic sensation between her legs, her hair brushing his testicles.

  The climax took her, creaming her against his flesh, creating an even more slippery slope on his enormous length to rock against fiercely. It wasn't enough to send Jonah over, but enough to leave him hard and aching as he watched her work herself on his cock, her body flushed with the orgasm, breasts quivering with her movements, her legs spread wide to clamp around all of him.

  The magic filled him, swept into his stomach, his groin, spread out like heat. Jonah wanted to curse her, but he couldn't. He cursed himself for his weakness instead, and so spoke the words harshly.

  "Change, Anna. Change now."

  Pain. She would feel pain. It was too soon. He remembered, and at the same moment remembered she would refuse him nothing, despite the risk to herself.

  "No." He closed his hand around her, so quickly she squeaked in alarm, though it was the only thing he could think to do to stop it. "Don't. You need to stay like this awhile longer, don't you? To be fully healed."

  The shivering light of transformation starting to enclose her shut off like a lightbulb with a short. She was blinking at him, her body still trembling, shuddering from her aftermath. He could feel the tiny pulse of her pussy against his hard cock and hell, he was so close, so in need. The Joining Magic could be done one-way as she'd done it, but it left a raging desire in the recipient above and beyond the raging desire he'd be feeling anyway. A desire he was not willing to answer with his hand. He wanted Anna. The slick lips between her legs. He wanted to plunder there, stretch her.

  "When you can safely return to your human form," he informed her, "you best be ready for my cock to be hard and deep in you for a good, long while."

  That increased her trembling. Her wings hovered over his curled fingers, quivering. Since her fluids were running down her thighs, he lifted her, used just the tip of his tongue to take it away, clean her, flick over the sensitive, engorged tissues so she squirmed against his hold, gasping. Testing, he took his smallest finger, which was still oversized, and pressed it on her wet folds. Without hesitation, she widened her legs, his name fluttering on her lips. He eased forward, slowly, slowly, and such was her trust, she kept still, now barely breathing. The heat of her narrow channel could just accommodate the rounded tip before he forced himself to stop, knowing he was stretching her hard but wanting so badly to go further, only using a different appendage.

  Withdrawing slowly, he stretched out on the ground and positioned his cupped hand on his abdomen, providing her shelter to rest. Where he could see her, know she was safe. Angels didn't have to sleep, but he was feeling weary. A side effect of their flight he should resent, but because it did take some of the edge off his torturous lust stoked by the Joining Magic, he was grudgingly accepting of it.

  He let his eyes droop closed as she settled down on her hip in his hand, small hands wrapping around the finger he'd had inside her, her cheek nestled against her scent and him. Her legs folded one over the other, one knee forward so the point of her hip was rocked forward. When he passed his finger over it, the bare buttock, she smiled sleepily. Since he could see her bite mark on his hand, he went to sleep with that lingering image, a comfortable curl of healing magic and simmering lust pervading his dreams and nothing else.

  Which was the way he wanted it. As far as he was concerned, the seething, twisting doubt and despair could stay firmly locked down in the underbelly of his subconscious.

  Fourteen

  They need neither tongue nor ears but without the help of any spoken word they exchange with each other their thoughts and their counsels.

  --ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

  DARK Ones!

  He woke in an instant, orienting himself. Shifting, muttering . . . red eyes in the dark, their aura of filth and disease preceding them. Despair and violence.

  It was an hour or so before dawn, so the night was still cloaked in darkness. Anna was sitting up, her gaze meeting his, small wings pressed in close to her body. His gaze shifted about and he gestured to her to seek camouflage in the tree branches just above. After all, it was him they were seeking.

  Instead, she crept up his arm, using the spread of her wings to steady herself until she ducked under the curtain of his hair at his throat and shoulder, camouflaging herself there.

  He was intent on plucking her out by her wings and using her hair to tie her to a branch, but there was no time. They were closing in, fast, and he had no weapon.

  Launching himself from the ground, he cursed the stiffness of the wing, but still managed to hit the lowest branch of the desired size with his shoulder at a speed that snapped it off like a twig and sent it spinning. He snatched it out of the air, muttering his apology to the tree spirit before he rocketed forward and up, trying to get some height, as much height as possible.

  "Hang on, little one."

  There were three that he could see immediately, though it was a small group for a tracking party. He'd hoped for two, counted himself lucky it wasn't four. The first one descended upon him with the screeching that could rupture human eardrums and told him there were others in the area that had just been signaled. The dull gray metal of its axe slashed through the air at him. He ducked it, jammed the jagged end of his weapon in the lower torso, hard enough to punch through, and charged it with energy. He cut short the resulting scream by flipping his cudgel and knocking it into the creature's skull, pivoting to bring the other end into play, connecting with the face of the one closing in behind.

  The third caught the edge of his wing, ripped, and he felt the glancing blow of a dagger as he let the movement swing him around, rather than resisting it. The powerful muscles in his other wing knocked the creature end-over-end through the air.

  "Kara se vot!" A tiny but powerful whisper in his ear, and then there was a bright, blinding light behind him that startled one of the returning attackers enough that it hesitated, long enough for Jonah to flip. His miniature spellcaster launched herself and darted in and around the form of the Dark One she'd stopped with her simple flash spell. While she was moving swiftly, it made Jonah's heart stop in icy fear, for the thing's curved blade was coming perilously close to her. She twisted and slid down the blunt end of the blade, using it to escape the swing of the Dark One's fist, which landed cleverly on the more lethal end of the weapon, eliciting a howl as it cut o
ff one or two of its fingers. As her enchanted light failed, Jonah lost sight of her, not because he couldn't see in the dark but because he couldn't spare a moment for her. Damn it.

  Teeth sank into his shoulder, hands wrapped around his throat, talons piercing his skin. Legs, slimy with the afterbirth of the rift the creature had passed through, locked around his waist. Two more launched themselves on his front, hissing. He spun, somersaulted, using the one strong wing to knock one Dark One off, his fists to dislodge the second, but he was plummeting, his balance and strength not what they should be.

  Anna had helped him, so if they caught her, if she refused to run . . . He'd not allowed her to do the Joining Magic on him, not participated. How much stronger would he have been now if he'd let her do that?

  Fleeting thoughts only, useless for this moment. You are invincible. You are unstoppable. You are a soldier for the Goddess, and there is none stronger than you. Isn't that what he told his angels, that this was the only thought that should be in their minds in a battle? Even if it was the last thought they had when they were struck from the sky?

  With a roar, he righted himself and struck upward on sheer force of will, wresting the dagger from one and driving it into the soft tissue of its face, shouting out the proper chant to infuse the blood, rewarded when the creature burst into flames even as it seared Jonah's skin. The one clinging to his back tore into his smoking flesh with those damnable teeth and talons.

  Holy Goddess, another pair of them. They came at him from the left, knocked him and their fellow into the spreading network of branches of the large tree under which he and Anna had been sleeping. Jonah fought, but the branches slowed him. It did the same to them, but it didn't change the fact they'd taken his wings out of his arsenal, and that was a significant loss, for his reach was far wider than theirs.

  They had him pinned. Savagely, he fought them, teeth, hands, all the power in his body. He had no idea where Anna was, so he wouldn't risk a lightning strike. He wasn't going to make his last conscious act that of killing her, foolish child though she was.

  As if in defiance of that, thunder roared. A lightning shard, precise as a spear, lanced the Dark One farthest from him, exploding it in a burst of foul blood and tissue. The others whipped around, and Jonah took the opportunity to slam his head into the skull of the one still on his back, hard enough to stun it. He grasped one of its limbs, the one around his throat, twisted and bent it back as David came in on the left, long daggers flashing in both hands to decapitate. Seizing the body, the younger angel tossed it free as Lucifer incinerated it in the air before its foul blood could poison the earth.

  Jonah turned on the next one with a snarl. It attempted to scrabble away but he caught it, twisted its neck, heard the snap and ran it into a jutting tree limb, impaling it before he, too, muttered the words and watched it sear to ash without burning the tree further.

  There'd been seven, and he'd taken out four on his own. With fierce satisfaction, he saw David execute a flawless upside-down twist in the air, dodging a pike, and cleave the creature wielding it in half. The young angel fired his blades with blue flame so they incinerated on the way through, a flood of heated topaz consuming and evaporating the Dark One.

  Lucifer used a dagger in combination with the crescent swing of his deadly scythe. He'd hooked one with it, slung it out of the tree, half severing its head with just that maneuver before meeting the creature chest to chest, one of the few angels who could fight hand to hand with the Dark Ones, able to shield himself from the poison that slicked their skin. Jonah had the ability, but since he'd fallen victim to it when he was laid open by the axe, he couldn't claim the same shielding. Right now, at least.

  A last whistling hiss, like a fire roaring away, and the forest was silent.

  Jonah erupted from the branches, nearly taking a tumble to the ground when his wing didn't initially support him as he expected, and in too much of a hurry to care. Blood ran down his back, telling him the juncture point was torn again. The wing had taken a beating, both from how he had pushed it and the fact the Dark Ones had seemed to know to target it specifically. It didn't matter. Only one thing mattered.

  "Anna." He called out her name even before he landed, filled with a sudden cold desperation. "Anna."

  "I'm here, my lord." She emerged from the foliage, human once again and working the skirt of the light dress down around her bare hips. "I'm here." She came right to him, her vibrant eyes seeking his face, trying to see if he was hurt. Whereas all he could focus on was the trickle of blood at her temple where she'd come too close to the Dark One's blade in her game of cat and mouse that had been anything but a game.

  She put her hands in his before he even realized he'd reached out, and gave him a quiet smile. "Angels are not dull traveling companions, my lord. I will say that."

  There was a tremor in her fingers, and her face was pale, but serene. She was calm. Whereas he felt as if he needed to rip open more Dark Ones. Or throw up.

  "What in the name of all Heaven and Hell were you doing?" he demanded. "I told you to take cover. I did not mean on my person."

  "You needed my help." Her lips firmed. "I wasn't going to cower in the bushes while you fought alone."

  "You will do what I tell you to do," he snarled.

  "She acquitted herself well, even as a firefly," David commented, landing next to Jonah and giving her a bow. "David. At your service."

  "Anna." She was going to extend her hand in greeting, but since they were still held by one ominous-looking angel, she settled for a shy nod.

  Quirking a brow at Jonah, David gave a semblance of a teasing smile that seemed to Anna a bit out of place on his serious features. "I can see why you've been out of touch."

  Jonah's gaze shot to him. "You're not him," he said flatly. "Don't try."

  A flash of hurt crossed David's face, but another voice cut across his response, impatient. "What we need to talk about is what you're doing here and why you haven't summoned us. Now that we've found you, we can take you back up to the clouds, get you a proper healer."

  Anna turned as the dark-winged angel landed a few feet away. From the respectful way David turned to him and Jonah's stiffening, she had to concede this angel might be even more highly ranked than her powerful angel. Michael, perhaps? But he wasn't what she'd imagined Michael looking like.

  The dark silk of his feathers swept out in an impressive mantle on either side of him, giving him the look of a landing hawk with his aquiline features and dark, expressionless eyes unexpectedly tinged with red. Power vibrated so strongly from him it made her dizzy, after all the stress of the past few moments. She swayed.

  "Tone it down, Luc," Jonah said shortly. "She's been through enough."

  Luc . . . Lucifer? Anna wasn't sure if knowing his identity wasn't as overpowering as the energy emanating from him, but she struggled to steady herself, sensing she was going to need all her wits about her.

  "Indeed." Whatever he did, the heated weight of the air lifted considerably, and she was able to draw a clean if a bit unsteady breath. "You didn't answer my question. You're lucky your young friend has an ally. David got a summons from the Dark Spawn that you were in danger."

  "Mina." Anna's gaze darted to David. "She is well?"

  "Except for a nearly terminal case of bad temperament, yes." This time a glint of true humor passed through David's somber eyes.

  "Jonah." Luc's tone indicated he would not tolerate being evaded much longer. "Why haven't you called us?"

  "Do I appear lost to you?"

  Luc gave him an even look. "Do you truly seek an answer to that question?"

  Jonah had the grace to flush, but his face otherwise remained hard, resolute. "I'm where I wish to be, for the moment."

  "You're where you wish to be," Lucifer repeated. "Where the Dark Ones are tracking you like hounds after a fugitive, and if they capture you, you can serve their purpose?"

  "And how is that different from what I was doing?"

  David
drew in a breath. Luc seemed to go so still that everything about him was caught in frozen reaction. Anna's gaze shifted between the two angels, cold fear rising in her. Something was wrong here. She'd know it from the hair rising on her nape even if the dark angel's silence wasn't a warning to any creature with a trace of survival instinct. Jonah's face had shuttered closed, except for a simmering energy in his eyes that did not bode well.

  "Our enemies are gathering. They're bolstered by your absence and the possibility of your capture. They'll be launching a strong attack soon. We feel it. Even if you are injured, you can help plan, organize, strategize. You are our Commander. We need you--"

  "For what?" Jonah snarled. Despite herself, Anna flinched, and even David retreated a step. Lucifer took a step forward. Jonah's anger flashed through the glade, ratcheting up the residual heat lingering from their battle. Anna's gaze shifted to the sky at an ominous rumble. "There is no final victory, because they're not going to stop coming. Not until they get what they want."

  The darkness she'd sensed in him was perilously close to the surface now, almost crawling over his skin. David had gripped his daggers unconsciously.

  Lucifer's gaze narrowed. "Jonah, don't."

  "I've been buried in their blood, in ours, for nearly a millennium." Jonah's voice was all sibilant menace, his eyes gone flat and cold, chillingly like her dream. "When I fight them, I don't know where I begin or end, or if there's even a difference anymore. What does it matter whose blood bathes my blade? It's all death. We fight and we fight, Luc. Because we're supposed to. Because we can't tolerate the presence of Dark Ones near us. As if it's in our very cells, making us do exactly what She created us to do."

  "You're being a naive child, wishing the world could be different. You're too old for petulance or running away."