The Darkest Night

by Jessa Slade

  The warmth drifted down through his belly, and he studied her more closely while taking a wary sip. “So what’s your deal, Bella?”

  She made another soft noise, one he couldn’t identify. “No deals. Actually, I was thinking about charging you.”

  From his wallet, he thumbed out a bill—a big one, although he didn’t check to see how big—and pushed it across the counter. “For your troubles.”

  She touched the corner of the paper. “Worse troubles ahead.”

  He reached for his wallet again, but she just repeated that empty laugh. “Does that always get you out of trouble?”

  “No. I used to chop off heads too.”

  She pocketed the cash. “Ah, a multi-disciplinary approach. You didn’t learn that from the sphericanum.”

  He gave her a reproving look. “You must have learned that cynicism from the talyan.”

  She tipped one shoulder in a careless way that made the red V neckline buckle around her breasts. “I don’t think they’d appreciate your judgmental tone.”

  “The demon-ridden never do.” He drank again to drown the errant notice of her breasts.

  She matched his reckless motion, and when they thumped their empty glasses down at the same time, their knuckles brushed.

  No static charge this time, thankfully, because he thought the slow burn of alcohol in his blood might have burst into flame if there’d been even one stray spark.

  Hell, just standing near the red-on-red mystery girl kindled his senses. The loss of his abraxas’ moderating influence was bad enough, but maybe his losses before were more to blame. It had been so long since he felt this…tempted. No wonder the talyan with their inner demons—repentant demons, but demons nonetheless—felt at home at the Mortal Coil.

  She gave her empty shot glass a spin. “Can I get you something more, ex-warden Fane?”

  His gaze fixed on her mouth as she said his name, the quick bite of her lip, the flick of her tongue against the back of her teeth. Since when did his name look like a sin?

  With difficulty, he focused. “Nothing. I should be going.”

  But he didn’t move. Not even when she boosted her elbows up onto the bar, leaned across the counter, and kissed him.

  Chapter 2

  She didn’t have much time, so Bella brought out the big guns: open mouth, tongue, moan.

  Thank God—well, thank the devil; no, thank her own damn self—for the little secret she’d added to his drink. Despite that crack about judgment, his judgment would be just enough impaired, or so she hoped, to make this easy. To make him easy. He might have a divine entity sharing his skin, but he was a man first, alone, on his way to being drunk. Even the sphericanum couldn’t blame him.

  Well, they probably would, but he wasn’t with them anymore.

  For tonight, he’d be with her.

  Fane had come to the Mortal Coil only a few times before, meeting in back corners with the league warriors. Even without the talyan grumbling afterward, she would have known him for an angel-man. There was a light to him—not an easiness or happiness or flimsiness; not that sort of light, not any sort of obvious glow at all. But the divine entity had marked him, indelibly and invisibly, like the club’s doorman stamped wrists with an ouroboros that shone only under a blacklight.

  In the past, she had ignored him, all her instincts warning her she did not want that searching light turned on her. But tonight, the dark and the cold pressed down hard all around, a threat no one else could see, so she fought back with the soft, vibrant heat of his mouth on hers. If she could just stoke his light a little higher, just for tonight…

  His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb at the point of her chin. She wriggled up higher onto the bar, faintly aware of the crash of glasses he swept aside. She would have laughed—or maybe yelled at him; glassware wasn’t exactly cheap—but with his thumb, he forced her mouth wider and deepened the kiss.

  Oh, he was so deep in her, his hand sliding behind her nape and tightening, tightening. Her heartbeat slammed through her, pushing the dark alcohol to her extremities, setting every nerve ending ablaze, and settling into her core where she felt the cold, hard knot melting, her sex unfurling like a slow out-of-season bloom. His whiskey perfume swirled around her, and she moaned again—helplessly and without artifice this time—around the wet tangle of their tongues.

  His fingers tangled in her hair, triggering the inevitable collapse. He gripped the mass, and she arched her neck at the ruthless pleasure.

  Then he yanked back, ripping her mouth away.

  She gasped, not in pleasure this time.

  “Bella.” His growl roused something darker in her, and she clamped her hand over his, buried in her hair.

  “You’re hurting me.” She thought her whimper would make his fingers spring open, but under her hand, his fist tightened.

  “And you are…” He was still so close his hot, harsh breath scalded her bruised lips. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  She swallowed against the flutter of panic in her throat. Ex-warden he might be, but it was the sphericanum, not the man, who had her in his grip now. “It’s called kissing.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “No, really. It’s called kissing. For a second there, you seemed to get the concept.”

  He released her, too quickly, almost shoving her away. She caught herself, sprawled awkwardly across the bar, and straightened her glasses on her nose. The other glasses were broken on the floor somewhere.

  “Just say no,” she murmured.

  He slammed his open palm on the bar. The counter reverberated under her hands as she eased down to her feet.

  “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “I think you can figure that out.” Shattered glass crunched under her heels. “I wasn’t exactly hiding anything.” Not about that, anyway.

  “Are you working for Thorne?” From the ring of demand in his tone, she wondered if anyone had ever refused him.

  This time she did laugh, loudly. “You really are clueless. Sorry about the kiss then.”

  He muttered something under his breath, something inappropriate for an angelic warden. Even an ex one. “Why are you tempting me?”

  She waved one hand in irritation. “Don’t make it all biblical.” Did it even count as tempting if he resisted so easily? “You don’t represent the sphericanum anymore.”

  “The talyan don’t know what to make of you either.”

  “They shouldn’t be so suspicious. I help them how I can.”

  “They need more.”

  “Don’t we all?” She crouched to sweep up the glass.

  Angelic-possessed humans didn’t have wings, but Fane might as well have flown so quickly and quietly did he arrive behind the bar. He knelt beside her, his big body nudging her aside.

  “Let me do it. You’re going to cut yourself.”

  When was the last time someone had helped her pick up the pieces of anything? She steeled herself against any perilous weakening in her defenses. “What do you care? You just accused me of cahooting with a djinn-man.” She didn’t want to care that he cared, and yet…

  “I don’t want your blood on my hands.” He managed to make it sound like it’d be such an inconvenience.

  “It would be on my hands,” she pointed out. “And anyway, you have enough on your hands you wouldn’t notice a little more.”

  He paused on an indrawn breath, then he let it out slowly as he piled the glass in his palm with precise little clinks. “It was for a good cause, the cause of good.”

  Why the hesitation? Did he regret the demons he’d slain? Or just regret he wasn’t still wielding his flaming sword of retribution? “Whatever,” she grumbled to herself as she stood over him.

  While he finished sweeping up the glass, the warmth of his him seeped into her legs, skin bared between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots. In the same way he nudged her back with his body, his very presence edged out the cold and dark.

  He d
umped the broken glass into the trash can beside the register and washed his hands. The lemony scent of soap cleared some of the lingering boozy air.

  “Thanks for cleaning up,” she said stiffly. “I’ll give your message to the talyan when I see them.”

  “Bella—”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that.”

  “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “You always say it like a warning or an accusation.”

  He ran one hand over his face, muffling his apology, such as it was. “That’s the warden in me.”

  “Ex-warden,” she retorted, then winced. What was the point of poking him with the reminder?

  He leaned in. “Ex.” His breath was a warm whisper against her cheek.

  She startled a little, not realizing he’d come so close. “You can go now.” As she angled her face to track him, her tone lifted too, so the words came out as if she was uncertain, more a question, like she wanted him to stay. Oh, please stay.

  “Bella.” This time, his voice held neither threat nor blame, but still some rough undercurrent, as if he were struggling across a tricky path. “You shocked me. A couple of times, actually.”

  “I would’ve thought you’d seen everything.”

  “Too much maybe, but not everything.” He cracked his knuckles as if his empty hands made him edgy. “I hadn’t made it that far up in the sphericanum.”

  And now he never would, not without his sword. The unspoken words hung between them.

  “There is light in you still,” she said. The divine presence didn’t just evaporate. He would have the angel inside him until he died, even if the terrestrial organization of the sphericanum had no more use for him. She was suddenly, fiercely glad they had lost him, which meant she could find him. That lost light was the part she wanted, needed, as the city spun toward its darkest night. Please stay, and lend me your light until the dawn.

  She took a hesitant step closer, so the fuzzy cuffs of her boots brushed his trousers. The exposed skin of her thighs—just a few inches, but how much more she wanted, needed—heated at his nearness.

  “Cyril,” she murmured and lifted her hand.

  He caught her wrist, and for a breathless moment, she thought he would push her away again, but then he brought her fingertips to his face.

  She traced the hard edges of his jaw and cheekbone, felt the flex of muscle as he swallowed. She touched his lower lip. Almost as hard. An unyielding man. Or was that the angel in him? What other parts of him would be as hard? The want and need welled up, more violently now, weakening her bare knees, and she swayed toward him.

  He anchored one hand at the small of her back and reeled her into his chest.

  This time, she had no opportunity to power up her arsenal. His mouth slanted across hers with ferocious intent, stealing her breath. She leaned into him, giving it up, willing to give more, so much more. Not everything, of course. Some parts he couldn’t be allowed to see, no one must see.

  But the good parts… She loosened the wrap of her dress and let the V gape to her navel.

  Fane dragged his mouth free. His hands went to the edges of the V, eased it wider. “Ah, just looking at you makes me hot.” His voice was an even rougher growl than before, as if his path had not appreciably smoothed but he was determined to find his way.

  Frigid air whispered across her bared skin, and she shivered.

  “But you’re cold,” he murmured.

  “I don’t even feel it,” she said honestly.

  “Let me make sure of that.” He kissed his way down her throat to her collarbone, then lower, over the swell of her breast filling the demi-cup of her bra. “It’s all you in here.” He brushed his lips over her swelling flesh. “I wondered how it could be. You are so…”

  She waited a moment for him to finish, then suggested, “Bosomy?”

  “So beautiful,” he whispered against her skin, still moving down, loosening the wrap with every inch he uncovered. He knelt at her feet. “I can’t believe you…”

  No, he couldn’t, but she didn’t want him to go there. “Angels have to believe,” she reminded him. “Job requirement.”

  “They fired me,” he pointed out.

  “Use that fire for good.”

  He circled his tongue around her navel and she gasped. She braced her hands on his shoulders as the dress fell open, exposing her to his gaze, his hands, his tongue.

  He kissed a line across the top of her panties, his hot breath seeming to infuse the silky fabric, an advance army stealing between her legs. When he tangled his fingers in the fabric over her hips, twisting it tighter, she whimpered at the echoing pull across her sex. His soft laugh sent another flare of heat over her skin, as he slicked his hands down the backs of her thighs, drawing the panties down too, urging her legs apart. But when she complied, he grasped her hips and with one strong boost, rose to his feet, lifting her to the bar counter. He leaned his hips between her spread thighs and kissed her again, his tongue a hot and heavy portent of more to come.

  She tore her mouth away and flexed her fingers on his shoulders, digging for the bulk of muscle beneath the heavy wool of his coat. “Take this off. I want to feel you.”

  Without moving from between her thighs, he wrenched off the coat while her fingers made quick work of the buttons she found centered down his chest. She groaned when she found the T-shirt underneath.

  He chuckled, at least until she grasped the collar and ripped the T-shirt wide open. “Hey now!”

  “I’ve shocked you again,” she guessed. “The trick with tearing a T-shirt, as with most things in life, is not to hesitate. You gotta go all in.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the notch of his throat. “All the way in.”

  Under her kiss, his pulse leaped. She walked her hands down his chest, exploring the faint sprinkling of hair across his pecs that trailed away to nothing until she hooked her fingers into the waist of his trousers and her fingertips brushed his crisp pubic curls.

  His hips jerked. “I want…”

  “Me too,” she promised.

  With a strangled curse, he jerked her closer to the edge of the counter, so her body was flush against his, bare skin to bare skin, their hearts thudding against each other, finding one beat. She speared her fingers through the thick, soft wave of his hair and angled her mouth under his for one last, deep kiss, the kind they called soul kissing.

  She certainly hoped not.

  She broke free and skimmed her hands down his arms, shedding his shirt and remnants of his T-shirt. The button and zipper of his trousers were harder since he was standing so close, but she pushed down the material to bunch at his hips. His cock thrust toward her, hotter than anything in the bar, so hot she almost imagined a glow. Just let the cold dark try to get her now. She had an angel between her thighs.

  “Bella,” he said again.

  “No warnings,” she said.

  “But I didn’t bring—”

  She kicked her booted foot across the space between the bar and the back counter, and her heel caught the cash register. It sprang open, bell pealing. “There.”

  Fane coughed. “You keep your condoms in the cash register?”

  “The money shot.”

  He strained backward to reach without leaving her, and the foil crinkled in his hand. He paused. “These are old.”

  “Is that the angelic way of saying thank you for not being a slut?” She flexed her legs, urging him closer.

  “Exactly one year old.”

  She didn’t like the look of calculation on his face. Time had never been her friend. “My Christmas fuck.”

  “You have such a mouth.” He kissed her again, hard, his strong arms braced on either side of her so she felt like he was consuming her from every direction.

  She whimpered as the fever of him worked deeper. She coiled her legs behind his hips and drew him in.

  “Wait,” he said breathlessly. “I have to—”

  “Let me.” She snatched the open condom wrapper
from his grip and sheathed him. His flesh surged in her hand. “Now, Cyril.”

  “But—”

  She strained toward him. “Talk later.” She might not have a later if she didn’t have him now.

  Still he lingered, his fingers finding the needy bud of her clit and giving her a soft caress. Without her breath, the noise from her mouth was barely a whine—this was no time for games—but that only seemed to embolden him. He stroked her again, still maddeningly gentle when she needed his light as high and bright and fierce as an explosion.

  She lowered her hand between their bodies and gripped his sac. His balls tightened; pleasure or fear she didn’t care. “Cyril, damn it—”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  For half a heartbeat, she wanted to reassure him. Exile from the sphericanum didn’t equal damnation. It took more than that. She ought to know. But if she told him as much, he would question her and where would that get them?

  “Stop thinking, angel-boy.” She gave his balls a squeeze and then a flick of her finger along his crease. He bucked against her hips, she angled just so, and—ah!—finally, he was in her, his flesh sheathed in her, their breath and pulses ratcheting higher. She gasped at the possession, complete and carnal and oh-so human.

  He wasn’t huge—angelic possession didn’t grant everlasting life or superpowers, in bed or anywhere else—but the hard, hot length of him stretched her tight passage with a pressure almost like pain, a reminder she was here, now, pinned to this bar by his cock and his whiskey-drenched mouth. She closed her eyes even as she opened her legs wider to the intimate invasion.

  They couldn’t come for her, not when she was coming.

  He hauled her hips toward him, so her ass hung precariously on the edge of the bar, and she propped her heels on the narrow well. He bent her back, one hand under her breast to plump her nipple over the demi-cup bra. His mouth fastened on the aching tight peak, and the lightning pleasure shot all the way to her clit. She rocked against his pounding flesh, finding a rhythm that would have put her club’s dance remixes to shame, and let his harsh breath in her ear drown out the whisper of winter she heard all around.