With a sharp jerk of her head, Anahita realized where her thoughts had led. So that was what made lust so dangerous.
Before she could have another thought, the man she’d been perusing swung around and began pacing toward her. Her eyes flew to his face, a part of her rejoicing that she would now know what her Temptation looked like.
The first thing she noticed was his vicious scowl, an expression that seemed to match his clenched fists and tight shoulders. When the thrashing man on the cot screamed yet again, her Temptation’s eyes squeezed shut as his chest billowed up and down. That was when she noticed the scar.
Her fingers fluttered across her lips as she struggled to stay silent. Her Temptation’s exquisite face was carved mercilessly. A thick, raised scar slashed the entirety of his features, gruesomely bisecting them.
Oh, Most High. Anahita’s brows shot together as her mind raced through reasons he would be scarred. It didn’t make sense; he was immortal. He had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life. A scar like this would have been healed if he had sustained it before eating the fruit. And after the fruit, his body would never have allowed such a thing to heal—or rather, not heal—in such a manner.
The blond man screamed once more, and as the tormenting screech reached its peak, it wavered and cut off. When the air was still, Anahita’s Temptation relaxed and opened his eyes.
This time, there was no preventing it. A horrified gasp escaped her as Anahita observed his right eye, the one that had been sliced. Everything fell into place.
Her gaze darted to his left eye. It was the color of rich, tilled earth: fathomless and warm. But his right eye—his right eye was nearly colorless. The thick scars on his upper and lower eyelids framed a cornea of the lightest gold, as though the color had leaked from his eye when he sustained the injury.
This was most definitely done to him after he had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life. He would not have survived otherwise. Those vile humans, who had first coerced these men into eating the fruit and then imprisoned them for it, had used the second tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, to scar him permanently—probably by administering the fruit’s juice to a blade and then holding him down and slicing through his face.
Bile rose in Anahita’s throat, and she audibly gagged.
Her Temptation froze, and Anahita silently cursed her weak control. She must remain silent. She was invisible, but any sound she made could be heard by all three of the humans in this cell.
Her Temptation’s eyes were roving over the walls as though he sensed someone was in the cell with them. Anahita ruffled her feathers as she shrank into the corner as far as she could. Her heart began to thunder once more as that mismatched gaze got closer and closer to her hiding spot. She tried to reassure herself that he couldn’t see her, but those eyes fixed directly on her and stayed.
Anahita felt her shoulders curling up toward her ears. Something was not right here. Surely he couldn’t see her.
Her Temptation straightened and cocked his head to the side as his brow furrowed. Anahita heard a breath puff from his nose, and then her Temptation’s hand rose to rest over his heart for a moment before it slowly, so slowly, continued its journey. He covered his right eye with his palm, and she could tell by the way his spine straightened that he had somehow seen her with the eye he now covered.
A rough sound burst from her Temptation’s chest, and he jerked his hand away, piercing her with that golden stare. “Luke.” The name rolled from his lips in the most delicious rumbling bass voice Anahita had ever heard, and the red-haired man sitting on the cot turned his head to look at Anahita’s Temptation. With a shaking hand, her Temptation pointed directly into the corner where Anahita huddled. “Do you fucking see that?” he asked.
Oh, not good. Anahita panicked as the redhead—Luke—turned his head and squinted into her corner. Luke’s eyes relaxed, and then his head turned back to her Temptation. “See what, man?” he asked, his voice low and concerned.
“A woman,” her Temptation said. “With Goddamned wings.” Shocked silence met this declaration as Luke’s head swung back to the corner. But her Temptation wasn’t done yet. He sighed and whispered, “She’s beautiful.”
She saw the look of utter panic that crossed Luke’s face before he turned to face her Temptation once more. “Max,” Luke said, “you see a woman?”
Instead of answering, Max—Anahita felt a thrill at learning her Temptation’s name—once more stroked the center of his chest with an open palm. “So beautiful,” he repeated.
Another emotion, powerful and nameless, flooded Anahita’s belly, nearly causing her to moan. Her Temptation thought she was beautiful. Her lips parted, and she clutched at the stone behind her with numb fingers so she wouldn’t run to him. Wouldn’t trail her fingers up his arm as she wanted to. Wouldn’t replace the hand rubbing his chest with her own.
“Max!” Luke said his name so sharply Anahita jumped. Max’s eyes flicked over to Luke and then back to her. Luke must have taken that as permission to continue, because he asked haltingly, “Did you … hear anything? When you saw her?” Silence reigned while Anahita grew more confused. “Max,” Luke continued, “did what happen to Oliver happen to you?” Luke stood from the cot and clenched and unclenched his fists fitfully. “Come on, Max, talk to me.”
Max’s eyes finally drifted from Anahita’s, and he looked at Luke for a few moments before nodding once.
Even in the dim light, Anahita saw all of the blood drain from Luke’s face. Anahita felt her eyes ping back and forth between the two men as she caught her Temptation staring at her once again.
The expression on Luke’s face continue to grow more horrified. “Max,” Luke said weakly. The next thing Anahita knew, Luke’s face was no longer colorless and wane. An animal-like bellow rent the air, startling Anahita’s eyes back to Luke, and she turned her head just in time to see him launch himself toward the corner where she hid. He crashed into the wall to her left, his fists flying into the stone. “You will not do this to him, too,” Luke snarled as he continued to pummel the stone, working his way toward the corner when his fists found nothing.
It was so startling that Anahita lost her grip on her invisibility. The moment she did, Luke’s eyes snapped to her. They widened. “You’re real,” he breathed. In the next second, the man had redirected his attack, his hands snarled and reaching for her.
Anahita was too flustered to return to invisibility, or to sink through the wall and escape, but as it turned out, she did not need to.
Luke’s renewed attack snapped Max from his stupor. “You don’t touch her,” Max shouted, running across the cell and tackling Luke into the wall before Luke could wrap his fingers around her throat.
The men grappled together, wrapping their arms around each other and slamming against the wall again and again. The rage pouring off of them took Anahita aback, and she cringed further into the corner, dodging the flailing limbs of the men.
In the jumble of her emotions—the ones she should not be feeling—she could not determine why Luke was so angry and why that anger was directed toward her. But Luke’s anger was no match for Max’s, who was functioning on a level she had never seen before in a human.
When Max tackled Luke to the ground and slammed the other man’s head into the unforgiving stone, Anahita jolted forward. “Stop this,” she said too softly to be heard through the two men’s grunts. But the sound of her voice worked on Max like a balm. He dropped Luke so rapidly, the other man’s head hit the ground once more with a thunk that made Anahita wince.
Max’s face turned immediately toward her, and his eyes—the deep brown and otherworldly gold—roved over her face and body before returning to her eyes. She felt the quick perusal of her body as though it had been a caress, and she took a stumbling step toward him, her sandals scuffing on the rough stone floor and bringing Luke’s gaze to her as well, though his was slightly unfocused.
Luke’s eyes widened, and Anahita ruffled h
er wings in a defensive gesture she could not prevent. “Oh,” Luke breathed, his eyes focusing more each moment. “A-angel?” he stuttered.
• • •
Max straddled Luke’s chest and had to fight with each of his billowing breaths not to continue the beating that Luke so desperately deserved for even thinking of harming his winged stranger. No one—no one—would ever harm her. She was his.
The moment he’d seen her, the Voice that sometimes spoke to them all—part instinct, part conscience—whispered The One to him. It was a two-word phrase that he, Luke, and Oliver were very familiar with as it was what had started Oliver’s torment.
Remembering how dire their situation was, how horrendous it was to watch Oliver go through what he was going through, made the worst of Max’s rage toward Luke vanish. Luke was stuttering like a simpleton beneath him, and Max had to focus hard on the other man to figure out what he was saying. He was no longer looking at the winged beauty but at Max himself.
“Is she an angel?” Luke was asking Max.
Max allowed himself the pleasure of gazing at her once more. She shimmered in the dim light, her beauty was so radiant. She was tall for a woman—statuesque in height—but he guessed the top of her head would reach his mouth. She would only need to tip her head back slightly for him to press their lips together. A riot of golden waves tumbled over her shoulders and down to her waist, framing a face that made him want to weep. Her features were delicate—a direct contrast to her sturdy height. Her eyes were the purest blue, and he knew he was not imagining the golden glow emanating from them. They cast a dim light in front of her as she looked at Max. She wore a glistening white robe that fell in tantalizing drapes from her shoulders to the floor. And, of course, two pearlescent wings arched over her shoulders and flared out behind her.
Holy hell, was she an angel? One thing was for certain: Max and the others had learned not to discount any possibility since their imprisonment. It would be asinine for a human who had turned immortal by eating fruit from the Tree of Eternal Life to doubt the existence of heavenly beings.
Max still had not answered Luke’s question, but that didn’t keep the man from continuing his dazed monologue. Just how hard had Max hit his friend’s head against the floor? Remorse tasted bitter. Had he truly been trying to harm Luke?
With a grunt, Max pushed himself to his feet and then reached down to grasp Luke’s hand and help him haul himself to his feet as well. Luke swayed and brought his fingers up to his temple. He pulled them back to examine them, and Max could see the telltale glistening of blood on Luke’s fingertips.
An apology flew to Max’s lips, but he bit it back. Luke had tried to hurt his woman. There would be no apology.
In silent synchronicity, Max and Luke turned to face the elephant in the room: the beautiful angel.
“I can’t believe I tried to hurt an angel,” Luke muttered, threading his fingers back through his hair to feel his injury again.
For some reason, though the word angel had been bandied about many times in the last handful of moments, this time it seem to stick in Max’s mind. An angel. His One was a fucking angel.
With an urgency he hadn’t felt so strongly since first sustaining his scar, Max covered the right side of his face so fast his palm made a slapping sound against his cheek. “This has to be a joke,” Max muttered to himself as he forced his left hand to remain at his side instead of covering the rest of his scar. What cosmic power would put her with him? Did angels even … mate? Was that the word he should use?
Bad luck for her, he couldn’t help but think. He definitely got the better end of this deal.
At that moment, Oliver thrashed with renewed vigor on his cot, and another of his heart-wrenching screams filled the air. The gravity of Max’s situation hit him full force.
When Oliver was conscious in between his dying bits, he spoke of what had happened to him that day two years ago. Back when this hellhole had been bustling with fervent guards, Oliver had seen a woman through the cell bars. She’d looked right at him. The Voice, which they had discovered only spoke to the three of them, had whispered The One to Oliver, and he had immediately wanted her in every way imaginable. Oliver described it as a mating—almost animal-like in its intensity. Within a day, the pain had started. By the third day, Oliver was in severe pain, and by the fifth day, he was in a coma. On the seventh day, Oliver died. His heart stopped; his breathing stopped. But because they were immortal, Oliver didn’t stay dead. The next day, he came back to life, as healthy and pain-free as he had ever been. But then the cycle repeated itself. And it had repeated itself every week for two years.
Max’s gaze focused on the angel he would be dying for. Could she disappear just as easily as she had appeared, leaving him as broken as Oliver?
No. The angel had to stay. Max flinched when Oliver screamed yet again.
He felt a muscle in his jaw clench as he ground his teeth together. Max was no prize—he knew that. But, hopefully, this connection between him and the angel went both ways. With that thought, Max tried to block out Oliver’s anguished shriek and took a step toward his angel. He faked a confidence he didn’t feel, and, turning his right side away from her, extended his hand.
Like magic, she took several stumbling steps toward him immediately, and the surge of something like hope that tumbled through his chest robbed him of breath. That hope dimmed, however, when the angel halted before reaching him. Max curled his fingers two times, beckoning her forward. His lips parted around the words, “Come to me.”
The angel’s fists clenched at her sides, and a look of utter wanting crossed over her stunning face. Max’s body responded to that look in swift arousal, the sudden and powerful erection punching into the front of his well-worn fatigues. Max closed his eyes and fought for control of his body. The desire he had to close the rest of the distance between them and press her against him to grind that insistent arousal into the softness of her belly was almost too strong to ignore. The desperation behind his feelings scared Max even more, and he opened his eyes and repeated his order again, this time more firmly. “Come to me!”
The angel jumped, then swayed forward slightly. But after a beat, she shook her head almost violently.
She doesn’t want me. The thought was accompanied by powerful disappointment tempered with self-loathing. Of course she didn’t want him. He hadn’t seen his face since sustaining his injury, but he knew how he looked. He was a monster. She was an angel.
Max’s hand fell back to his side. He abandoned all finesse along with hope. He began closing the distance between them, and the angel took one step back for every one he took toward her. Lord knew what he looked like right now, but the angel’s retreat was a pretty big clue.
Her back hit the stone corner once again, and Max kept coming, causing the angel to curl in on herself, wrapping her arms around her middle. She was obviously scared, but something told Max she was not necessarily scared of him.
He made himself stop a hair’s-breadth from touching her, but he was close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her body into his. She wasn’t meeting his eyes, and Max turned his face away, allowing only his handsome side to face her, before leaning in and placing his hands on the stone walls by her shoulders, boxing her in.
“You must stay with me,” Max commanded. The air of his words stirred the hair at her temple, and the angel closed her eyes briefly.
“I will,” she said. It was the first time Max had heard her speak, and the melodious, husky quality of her voice caused him to lose focus before he was able to interpret what she said.
His eyes snapped to hers, and he felt his scar pucker as he frowned—a reminder to turn his face aside before she had a chance to look at his ugliness. “You will?”
Her delicate throat worked a few times before those beautiful blue eyes rose to meet his left eye. “I will stay with you,” she said gravely, “because I must kill you.”
Max turned his face to meet her gaze and blinked. S
urely he had misheard her. His brows crashed down. “Do you want to repeat that?” Max asked.
Without flinching away from her words, the angel said, “I’ve been sent to kill you and the other two men. You have violated the holy Tree of Eternal Life, and your lives must be forfeited to pay the price.”
Max straightened, and his hands fell from the wall to rest at his sides. After nine years of imprisonment by what had to be the world’s most eccentric group of quasi soldiers, Max had seldom encountered something or someone who took him by surprise.. But this angel had caught him off guard.
Her statement was at odds with her delicate beauty. She looked as though she should be rescuing kittens from gutters, and here she was calmly and gravely stating that she was here to kill him. Could she even take him in a fight? She was tall, sure, but he was a brute. Just how did she think she was going to kill him?
“And when is this killing going to occur?” Max asked.
The angel’s eyes turned thundercloud blue, and her chin tilted up defiantly. “Now.”
Max raised his left eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. Just as he expected, the angel made no move against him. “Right now, now?” he asked.
And then, the angel’s chin quivered. Fucking quivered. Max felt it down to his toes, and all of his mirth disappeared. His arms uncrossed, and he reached for her, catching himself just in time to prevent an embrace meant to comfort her.
“Alright,” the angel said in a weak voice, “I shall return soon. I will bring the weapon to you rather than you to it. Prepare your souls for death, for you will not escape it.” Before Max could riddle out what the hell she was talking about, she straightened her shoulders and seemed to be gathering her focus.
On instinct, Max knew she was preparing to disappear on him, just as easily as she had appeared. Panic unlike anything he had ever felt launched him into action. Without thought, his hand snapped forward and wrapped around her wrist almost brutally. He relaxed his hold when he felt the delicate bones beneath his fingers, but he did not release her. “You’re not going anywhere,” Max said simply. It was a fact. She would not leave him. She could not.
Of Alliance and Rebellion Page 2
