Bond with Me

by Anne Marsh

  It did. Better yet, she new that he was aware that it was her touching him. Her acceptance mattered to him.

  “You like it when I touch your wings.” What if she kissed him? she wondered as she traced an erotic path from shoulder blade to neck, curling her legs around his waist.

  His hands wrapped around her waist, lifting her. “I’m coming in,” he warned, and a jolt of liquid heat shot through her. The heavy weight of his cock arched toward her, as greedy for her as she was for him.

  When the blunt head separated her slick folds, she was lost in the luscious pleasure as he slid, slow and thick, inside her.

  Whatever, whoever, he was, she still wanted him.

  Afterward, with the sheets tangled up around them, Brends slowly let his wings fold back into a dark tattoo that covered the golden skin of his back, and she lay on his chest drinking in the quiet enjoyment. The steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek was rock solid. Like him. For a moment, she let her lashes flutter against the heat-slicked skin. “Butterfly kisses.”

  She felt rather than saw his smile at the small silliness.

  Outside was waiting to come in and she didn’t want it to.

  “I have to leave, baby,” he said, and she rolled off his chest before he could move her. She’d wanted longer.

  The muscles of his abdomen rippled as he stretched, pulling the cotton T-shirt over his head and locating the boots half kicked under the bed. His duster was a dark pool of formless leather, but there was no overlooking the glint of weapons. He hadn’t had the patience to remove his clothing in his usual disciplined fashion and that pleased her on a primitive level.

  She’d taken him every bit as much as he’d taken her.

  “Don’t go,” she said. She didn’t want him to go, didn’t want to let him leave their bed, knowing he’d be after that rogue and that there was every chance he wouldn’t be coming back.

  “I have to.” He ran a possessive hand down her arm. “This—the wings—changes things. I can’t not go, baby. If I can Shift, if I have half the power I used to have, that rebalances the whole equation and we both know it.”

  “Let someone else go,” she begged. “Why does it matter so much?” Because it did. And he wouldn’t let someone else do what he could do so well. She knew it. But she had to ask, because things had shifted in the last hour and she hadn’t realized what she’d be risking when he went off to fight.

  When he didn’t reach for his weapons, however, she knew their time wasn’t up.

  Not yet.

  The daggers mocked her, reminding her that she was the one who’d decided to take on a trained warrior. She’d known who and what he was, and nothing could change him.

  She didn’t want to change him, however, just keep him safe.

  If he left, he was going into battle. She had no illusions about that. He was a warrior. It was what he did. The hard kiss he planted on her mouth dismissed her concerns faster than his words did.

  “I found her on a night like this.”

  “Who? Who did you find?”

  “My pairling,” he said, reaching for the stack of clothing. “My sire got two of us on my birth mother. It wasn’t unusual.” He shrugged. “But we were always close. She mattered to me.” His shuttered face said this unknown angel had more than mattered.

  “And she died.”

  “No,” he said fiercely. “She was murdered. By Michael.”

  Maybe it had been his fault. Esrene had wanted to make her own choices, but he was firstborn and those few seconds made him the protector. Esrene knew that, accepted that. When Michael had indicated his interest in her, Brends had let her know that the pairing was more than acceptable to him.

  He’d entrusted his girl to a monster and hadn’t recognized that truth until he found Michael standing there, over her.

  He would never forget those memories.

  “You killed her.” His hand had gone to his fyreblade, but the gesture had been pure habit. Dominions were forbidden to raise their weapons against the archangels. Michael’s weary, infinitely wise eyes had mocked him, mocked his trust.

  “Yes.” Michael hadn’t sounded anguished or tortured or even satisfied. He had sounded cold. Just very, very cold and distant. “I have, Brends.”

  Brends had never expected betrayal from this source. When the first deaths had happened, ripping apart the tranquility of the Heavens, Brends hadn’t known what to think. Dominions protected. They were the Heavens’ cowboys, guarding their first frontiers. He was a fucking protector—and yet he’d failed to spot this danger.

  “How could you do this?” he asked. Michael was their leader. Their very best.

  “I don’t know.” For the first time, Michael’s icy facade had wavered. Cracked. He had looked briefly confused, staring down at the knife in his hand.

  “Figure it out,” Brends had snarled as the need for revenge beat in his blood. “And let me know, because you’ve just signed your own death warrant.”

  Michael had sighed, shaken his head. “Brends—” he’d begun, but Brends was done listening.

  “She was my pairling,” he’d shouted, “and I trusted you with her. How could you do this?”

  To me.

  Drawing the blade, he’d launched himself at the older angel.

  “Brends,” Michael had tried again, sidestepping the first blow. “Don’t do this. Listen to me.”

  “Did you kill her?” He’d stared at his mentor, feeling the cold hatred sweep over him, freezing his heart. If Michael was a cold-blooded killer, what did that make him?

  “Yes,” Michael had sighed, “I suppose you could say that I did. Or,” Michael had added sadly, looking at Brends with those too-familiar eyes, “you did.”

  “Michael killed her.”

  “I killed her,” he said. “I sent her out there with him. To die. I paired her with a monster and she went.”

  “No,” she argued. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No worries.” He slid into the leather duster. “Everything’s going to be fine, baby.” She hated the dismissive tone in his voice. She didn’t want platitudes, she decided. No, what she wanted was truth.

  “Brends, tell me what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Rogues aren’t as complicated as you’re making them out to be.” He shrugged, a lazy roll of his shoulders. “They don’t have higher cognitive reasoning skills, Mischka,” he said patiently. “They’re beasts. Nothing more.”

  She’d seen cornered animals. And she’d been face-to-face with Eilor. The male might have gone rogue, but he wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t like trapping a rabid dog, and she said so.

  “But it is.” Brends shook his head. “Trust me, baby.”

  Because he was confident that nothing could go wrong, her fear escalated irrationally. It was just the threat of violence, wasn’t it? She couldn’t possibly care if her fallen angel got his wings singed?

  “Stay here,” she said. “Stay with me. There must be another way to stop Eilor. We could find it together.”

  He sighed, took a step toward her and wrapped her in a hard embrace. When he pressed the hot, lean length of him against her, she wanted to curl into him like a cat in a sunny spot. She liked it too much, she realized. She adored the heat of him, the reassuring weight.

  “I’ll come back, dushka,” he promised. “I’ll always come back for you.”

  His lips found hers in the darkness. Delicately, his mouth nipped at hers, making wordless promises of pleasure. Flames licked at her skin, and her sex was suddenly all creamy.

  Well, hell.

  She was sure that he meant his words, or believed that he meant them. That was the problem, after all. How could he guarantee anything, particularly if this damn psycho killer was waiting for him out in the dark?

  He couldn’t.

  He stepped away from her, swiping the duster from the floor and moving to the door. “Looks like rain,” he said finally, staring out at the plum-colored sky. “Storm’s coming.”


  Twenty

  He didn’t leave, despite his words, but the rain came, sweeping through the thick carpet of green that shrouded the burned-out lake house. The stinging drops were cool but exhilarating. Perhaps it was the elemental nature of the angel-kind: they had an intimate connection with nature, with the shifting weather and winds. The rain started out at first with small droplets; even before he moved outside the shell of the house, Brends could hear the pounding sheets of water moving closer and closer.

  Through their bond, Mischka sensed images from Brends, flashes of memory, fragmented moments from long-gone decades. A summer folly. Aristocratic tea parties in the luxurious, sleep-making heat of summer. Pages of old novels and older operas dancing through his head. He’d enjoyed those decades, even though he’d concealed who and what he was. Here on the veranda, the delicate lattice prevented the heaviest of the rain from reaching them until it was rather like standing beneath a gigantic waterfall. The water poured and trickled, wending its way down from the sky. With the water came the scents: crushed grass, the earthy scent of wet dirt, and the faintest whiff of some animal spoor. No roads, no buildings, no human stench. He’d forgotten how much more at home he felt out here, even in the open, away from the artificial lights and colors of M City.

  She enjoyed remembering with him, adding that little piece of him to her own memories.

  Pulling off the heavy leather duster he’d just donned, he stashed it beneath a bench. He wouldn’t need its warmth until much later. His heavy shitkickers were next, until he stood there clad only in a cotton T-shirt and pants. Wind lashed his hair around his face.

  He hesitated and then unbuckled the leather holster for his two longblades. Steel throwing knives. Lethally sharp, the curved edges of the blades caught the light. He didn’t hesitate, his hands moving competently over the collection. The tools of his trade. She’d known the weapons were there. Had understood the reason why. But seeing them was different. She ran a finger over one sharp edge, ignoring the bright prick of pain. He fought. He defended.

  He was going to keep her safe.

  So many weapons. So many ways to hurt.

  And to defend.

  While she hesitated, undecided, he stepped off the veranda. Instinctively, she knew he preferred this, the wild, untamed weather of the countryside, because rain in the city lacked the raw passion of this untamed assault. When he was newly fallen, it had seemed almost as if he could fly up into the face of the storm pounding across the mountains, that the howling air would suck him upward, launch him back into the skies where he could no longer fly. When the wind pulled the damp fabric against his frame, he threw back his head.

  No one would tame him. Not Michael. Not her.

  She fed him her awe and, yes, her arousal, through their bond. Let him know how he made her feel. What the sight of drenched fabric clinging to taut male nipples did to her, how she wanted to touch those strong legs and arms. Raindrops disappeared in a tantalizing procession beneath the collar of his shirt, tracing damp paths against his golden skin.

  Pagan. Untamed.

  Hers.

  “Come out and join me,” he said without opening his eyes. “Dance with me.” He extended one large hand to her and she took it, letting him pull her out of the porch’s shelter and into the wet.

  “You feel this?” His face tightened, tilting up. “This is what we’re living for, Mischka. Moments like these.”

  The dark outline of the new ink on his back was a powerful reminder as he turned away from her. He was alien but not. Hard. Powerful. And yeah, she wanted him. Muscles of his back rippled as if her gaze were a physical touch he could feel. Maybe he could. She could live a thousand years and not fully understand this bond they had between them.

  Maybe understanding didn’t matter as much as feeling it.

  The cold bite of the rain was invigorating. Her nipples tightened into needy puckers against her shirt. Delighted, she let him pull her up against his body, swaying softly in place to imagined music. The rain kept falling around them, her clothes slowly plastering themselves to her legs as she moved with him.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. Anything louder seemed like blasphemy.

  “Yes,” he agreed. He drew her up against him until she rested quietly in the drumming rain. The sting of the drops over their shoulders and heads, sliding between their bodies, was strangely soporific. She inhaled and drew the warm earthy scent of him deep into her lungs.

  She was not surprised when he lowered his face slowly to hers, pressing his lips softly against hers. The simple press of his lips warmed her, a hot contrast to the chill rainwater washing over them both. Thunder sounded in the distance and rain swept in a steady susurration across the exposed rock. Lips moved against hers, softly, slowly. Yes, she thought. How perfect. She reveled in her own stillness, sinking into the moment, into him. The unaccustomed passivity was like the greeting from a beloved friend after a long absence. Slow, sweet, intimate. His lips wandered over hers, exploring with small kisses like soft bee stings, firm and gentle. Alone in a cocoon of wetness.

  When she shivered, her spine arched until she was pressing her breasts against him. His hands rested loosely on her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing small circles against the delicate skin of her collarbone, a heavy, welcome pressure that kept her anchored to the ground. He felt good. Like curling up in front of a warm fire on a wet day, or a cup of steaming, sugar-sweet cocoa. Guilty pleasures. They should be doing something practical with their time; they should be figuring out the killer’s next move, reconnoitering the countryside for unusual paranormal activity, preparing for tomorrow. Instead, they were stealing moments.

  “Yes,” he said, as if he read her mind. “Time for us. Just for us.”

  How many generations of M City teenagers had stolen away up here, making love in the drenching rain while they looked back toward the muted glow of the city lights, with the trees and the summer pavilion at their backs? When she let her back rest against his chest, pressing her hips backward, the thick weight of his erection bumped against her.

  “I want you now.” Her hands reached behind her, pulling at the wet folds of his clothes. “I want you to fill me now.”

  “Yes.” He helped her strip off her clothes. It felt more intimate to pull and tug awkwardly at the sodden material, laughing together at the unexpected heaviness of the cloth and their combined awkwardness.

  He pressed a series of kisses from the tender skin behind her ear to her breastbone, chasing the chilled flesh with his tongue, laving the blue map of veins with his tongue until she wriggled impatiently.

  Sliding down, he pushed her legs apart with his shoulders, slipping between her thighs so that his tongue stroked her outer labia, dipping between the creamy lips to explore the drenched sweetness. His index and middle fingers created a delicious friction, moving over and over her heated flesh.

  “Now,” she demanded. “Come inside me now.” His bond with her was a sweet hum in the back of his mind, a hypersensitive awareness of the maelstrom of feelings rushing through her body.

  Yes, he thought. Want me as I want you.

  His penis nudged at the seam of her thighs, begging for entrance and then sliding in shallow strokes in and out of that soft cradle of skin until her legs parted. Sweet cream slicked her labia.

  “Now,” she demanded again.

  “Yes,” he breathed, pushing inside her. She squeezed him tightly, a hot, slick fisting that milked the pleasure from him. Sweet pressure built deep inside him. He slipped his hand down her stomach, stroking through the damp cloth of her panties. The shock of wet fabric against her heated clitoris elated him. Right now, right here, she did want him, if only like this. He pressed his advantage, tracing small circles in her hot flesh that echoed his steady thrusting.

  “Give you pleasure,” he muttered against her neck. His hair fell about her face in long waves, tangling with her own. She pushed back against him, seeking that same end. The thick, endless spurts of his semen fille
d her wet sex and ran down her thighs.

  His voice broke as the orgasm rolled over them both, breathing small unfamiliar words of pleasure and praise against her skin.

  If only the world weren’t waiting for them.

  “Hide here,” he groaned, and heard her silent agreement.

  She didn’t want to leave, either. Didn’t want the real world, real responsibilities to intrude. These were stolen moments, and yeah, they both knew it.

  Twenty-One

  Zer flipped open his cell. He hated to interrupt Brends, but they had an emergency and duty came first. Angrily, he punched the speed-dial button, already striding toward the caravan of SUVs waiting to roll out. As he’d expected, Brends answered before Zer had his ass firmly planted in the driver’s seat.

  “We’ve got a situation.” With one hand, he steered the SUV, which had been reinforced with enough heavy plating to resist a small mortar strike. His team fell in around him.

  “We’ve spotted our rogue.” On the other end of the line, Brends swore. “Get your ass in gear,” he continued. “He’s got Dathan pinned down.”

  He snapped the cell shut and tossed it onto the empty passenger seat. Behind him, Nael was loading a small arsenal of black-market weapons.

  A cold smile spread across his face.

  Showtime.

  Far below Eilor, the SUV barreled along the abandoned highway.

  The Fallen had taken the bait. That was clearly the problem with being so chivalrous. It got you royally fucked. If he took the bastard down now, he’d achieve half his goal. Because Mischka Baran would be a dead woman if her bond mate croaked it. That was how the bond worked. On the other hand, she got handed immortality on the proverbial platter if her mate kept on breathing.

  Not really such a bad deal, all things considered.

  Unfortunately for her, he was going to kill that mate.

  First, though, he had to let Brends spot him.

  Draw the beast out of its lair. Away from his beloved.