And then, Oliver’s body completely relaxed as his scream abruptly ceased. His head lolled back on Luke’s arm, and Max could see the flat, lifeless gleam in Oliver’s wide-open eyes.
Oliver was dead. Again.
Luke laid Oliver flat on the cot once more, and then reached forward and closed the man’s eyes. Heavy silence prevailed before Luke seemed to deflate, burying his face in his hands and releasing a shuddering sigh.
Not only was Max shaking where he stood, but a low, rumbling sound was rolling from his chest. His hands were clenched at his sides, and he could feel his own fingernails digging into his palms.
With a mind of its own, Max’s body turned away from the tableau of Luke and Oliver. Max’s bare feet shuffled against the stone floor, and the next thing he knew, he was facing the angel.
She looked stricken by what she’d just witnessed. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, and her fingers were pressed over her mouth. Her eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them, and tears swam along her lower lids, perched on the edge of rolling down her cheeks.
But all Max saw was a problem. His problem. Luke’s problem. Even Oliver’s problem. This angel was just as bad as Oliver’s mystery woman. Oliver may never get the chance to act against his mate, but Max was here in a cell with his. She was in his power.
Max knew he could never hurt her; he couldn’t even entertain the possibility. But he could prevent this sort of thing from happening to him.
Before he was quite sure what he was going to do, Max found himself stalking forward, the angel in his sights.
Chapter Four
The angel’s wide eyes snapped away from Luke and Oliver and landed on him. If he were in her position, watching a perfect stranger charge him like a freight train, he’d be scared—or at the very least, apprehensive.
The angel didn’t seem to be so. She calmly returned his stare, and Max again got the feeling that she was both good and evil. Not realizing what he was doing as he did it, Max leaned over and snatched at the frayed bonds that tied the angel’s wrists to the cot. They disintegrated in his hands, and Max felt his eyes narrow as his gaze swung to the angel’s face.
She could have escaped at any time. Just what in the hell was she doing here? At that moment, the evil part of her seemed to swell so greatly that it blocked out the good in Max’s regard.
Max grabbed the angel around her upper arms and hauled her to her feet. As he did so, the fine muscles in her slim arms flexed beneath his fingers, and Max had to re-evaluate his thoughts of her as delicate. There was quiet strength beneath his grip.
She didn’t fight him as he brought her to her feet, and Max regretted walking across the cell to her. Now that they were both standing in each other’s personal space, Max couldn’t prevent his hands from skimming down skin smoother than satin. He jerked them away with a grunt.
No caressing. That went without saying.
The angel’s eyes turned up to meet his, large and luminous and rendering her the most vulnerable, innocent creature Max had ever encountered. He flexed his fists at his sides to keep himself from stroking the soft skin beneath her eyes with his fingertips.
“That poor man,” the angel whispered in her whiskey voice. “He was in such pain.”
The angel was treading on dangerous ground and didn’t even realize it. She had no right to mention Oliver to him. Max’s teeth were so tightly gritted that he feared he might break them.
“I am so sorry for you all,” the angel continued at her own peril. “Are you alright, Max?”
It was the first time she had ever used his name, and he wondered how she knew it before he remembered Luke had used it in her presence. So, she was watching them and gleaning information on top of threatening to kill them. More to pile onto the list of things that made her an unacceptable risk in Max’s life. “Stop talking,” Max ground out through his teeth. “Now.” Before I do something we’ll both regret.
As Max had the thought, he feared it was too late. She asked if he was alright. Was she kidding? Max cursed beneath his breath, and the angel’s eyes widened.
“You are not, of course,” the angel muttered. And then she sealed her fate. Max watched in horror as her finely boned hand rose between them. He was so shocked at what her obvious intent was that he made no move to avoid her as her fingertips brushed over his shoulder and then made their way to his face. Max felt the whiskers of his beard stir as she skimmed over it, and then like a fire brand, her pointer finger touched his scar where it emerged from his beard on his left cheek. She traced it over the arch of his nose, and Max’s eyes closed as she continued to follow it over his right eyelid and into his hairline. “So much pain in you all,” the angel whispered.
It was the first time someone had touched him gently in nine years. A broken sound slipped past Max’s lips, and his right hand snapped through the air, tightening around the angel’s wrist and jerking it away. She gasped as Max took two quick steps forward, backing her into the wall behind her. The wrist clutched in his right hand he pinned to the wall above her head. He growled as her body arched into the awkward position, thrusting her chest into his. Her breasts were small, high, and firm, and they scorched his skin through both of their clothing.
Max realized his mistake as soon as his hips came into contact with hers. Damn his lack of control—his lack of a hold on himself. The memory of how her body felt against his was now a permanent part of him. He could never forget—never wanted to forget.
And then, contrary to what he expected, the angel relaxed against him. She softened, and her body contoured to his even more. Max zeroed in on her face as her eyes drifted closed, and then her lips parted around a breathy sigh.
That sigh jolted through him, and his fingers spasmed around her wrist. Her eyes opened once more, and she stared into his gaze. Heat rose to his cheeks, and before he could stop himself, he snapped, “Don’t look at me!”
Rather than obey him immediately, her eyes softened and swept over his entire face—scar, unruly hair, ragged beard—and then back to his eyes. “I fear I like looking at you too well to stop,” she muttered.
Max dropped her wrist as though it were the vilest of things instead of something he never wanted to release. As he made to move away from her, however, the hand he’d just released sprang forward and clutched at his T-shirt. At the same time, she made a sound akin to that of a wounded animal.
Max froze. He felt his face morph into a dangerous mask of rage, and he turned to glare at her once more. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he bit out word by word.
The angel shook her head, but did not release her grasp on his shirt. “I do not know,” she said. “Just—” Her fingers tightened, and he felt his T-shirt pull at his neck. “Do not move away yet,” she said, seemingly against her will, as the skin around her eyes tightened. “Please.”
Max moved forward slowly, dangerously, until she was pinned between him and the wall once more. He fought desire and attempted in vain to supplant it with the rage that was always just beneath the surface. “I will destroy you,” he said, leaning down the small bit required to put them eye to eye.
“No,” the angel said. Her hand relaxed until it no longer clenched his shirt. Now her palm rested over his pectoral, and the heat of it burned. “I believe I will destroy you.”
It was something she never should have said. With a groan made of equal parts grief and relief, Max lost a bit more of his control.
• • •
He was so imperfectly beautiful, Anahita couldn’t catch her breath around him. That scar that bisected his face disturbed him to the point of pain, but Anahita had been around perfect beings her entire life. Beings whose lives had been too easy. She had never laid eyes on an angel that carried the physical evidence of struggle, and she found it startlingly arousing. He was so different from those she had been surrounded by since birth; he was a breath of fresh air. She shook her head. Perhaps, fresh was a bit optimistic.
Those disparate ey
es that wouldn’t meet hers for more than a handful of seconds together were so filled with anger and loathing as they focused on the stone wall beside her ear. His body was rigid as stone; she knew so because it was pressed against hers from chest to knees.
Anahita could safely say she had never been pressed to another being before, and certainly not a man. His body was so different from hers. Anahita was not a soft woman, she knew that. She had often looked upon the curvy mortals that had been the focus of her brethren’s missions with envy. Where they were petite and lush of form, Anahita was taller than most men and muscled where she should be supple. But Max’s body was much harder than hers. The wall of his chest was packed with muscles she could feel pressing against her breasts unforgivingly—a sensation that made Anahita weak in the knees.
As she tried to keep her hand where it lay instead of allowing it to trail down the curve of his pectoral, Max shifted and brought his hips more firmly against hers.
He leaned in until his lips were beside her ear. She felt a breeze on the sensitive skin of her earlobe as his chest rose with an intake of air. “You should not have reminded me of your intent, angel.”
The words were soft, but they were not gentle, despite the fact that feeling them spoken in puffs of breath, as well as hearing them, made Anahita want to wrap her arms around the man.
“I would have walked away from you if you hadn’t opened your mouth.”
A trail of goosebumps broke out on the skin behind her ear and traveled down her neck to race across her chest, causing her nipples to harden into aching little points.
A rumbling sounded next to her ear, and Max pressed his chest into hers even harder until her hand almost didn’t have room to rest on his pectoral anymore. “Is the skin of your neck sensitive, pretty angel?”
Anahita tried to take a breath, to exhale a breath—anything. Her lungs were frozen and felt simultaneously empty and too, too full. He could feel the effect he had on her breasts! How was his body so in tune with hers?
And, yet, hers was so very in tune with his: the way his stomach brushed into and receded from hers with every movement he made, the way his knee had shifted to come between her legs and now rubbed against the inside of her thigh. And between his stomach and knees, where their hips touched, she felt a part of his body begin to change just as her breasts had. When it kept growing and pressed into her, Anahita’s lungs released their iron grip on her air, and then she gasped. Her fingers flexed on his chest, and she wrenched her hand away when she felt her nails scrape through his shirt and into his flesh. “I am sorry,” she breathed desperately. She had clawed him!
Air stirred by her ear again, almost as though he had chuckled. “Don’t be. No need to be sorry unless you stop.”
Anahita’s head snapped to the right, and she found herself staring at his ear as it peeked through his long, ragged hair. She blinked at the sight in silence. He’d liked being clawed?
“Your hand, angel,” Max said gruffly. “Return it.”
She could scarcely believe she had permission to touch him when it was what she’d been longing to do since stepping through the wall of this cell and laying eyes upon him for the first time.
Her fingers trembled as she raised her hand and placed it over the place that was still warm from her palm. The muscles of his chest jumped beneath her hand, and Anahita had to swallow another gasp.
“Now, move it around, angel,” Max whispered. “You want to, don’t you?”
Anahita wanted to draw her head back, to gaze into Max’s eyes, but the wall at the back of her head was unforgiving. She knew there was some reason she should not be touching him, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what it was.
He was so warm. She rotated her hand on his chest, and the changes in his body structure were a tantalizing mystery she could not wait to solve. She pulled her palm back to trail her fingertips over the pad of his muscle and downward. Max leaned away from her a little to allow her fingers passage, and Anahita was delighted to discover that his nipples had hardened as well. When she passed her pointer finger around the taut nub, Max groaned heavily, his breath stirring her hair.
The harsh sound startled Anahita, and she jerked her fingers away, her elbow colliding with the stone wall in a loud crack that sent pain radiating up her arm. That was strange. Anahita usually never felt pain. Why the change? And, more importantly, why was she fighting the feeling that she should not touch Max?
“R-release me,” Anahita stuttered as she felt her brows furrow. She needed a moment to regroup—to gather her thoughts. Something important was attached to this man, and she couldn’t discern it or remember it with his distracting body pressed against hers.
Rather than obey her, however, Max reached forward, and next she knew, his fingers were brushing hers. He grasped her hand and brought it back to his chest, where he pressed her palm down. “You really want me to release you?” he asked in a husky whisper. “Then ask me again.”
When her lips parted to do just that, Max laid his palm over the back of her hand, intertwined their fingers, and began to trail her hand down the front of his body.
Lord of the Most High, his body was magnificent. The heavy muscles of his chest curved downward to tantalizing lines that spread horizontally across his torso—what the humans would call a six-pack. Or it very well could be an eight-pack. Anahita could not tell while he wore his shirt, and she wished his shirt gone with a desperation that bordered on despair.
She barely registered when Max removed his hand from hers and allowed her to continue to explore his body without his aid. She was too involved in the way his stomach muscles leapt to her fingers as she continued to trail her hand down the front of his body. When one of her fingers dipped into his navel, his hips flexed forward, surging that hard, prodding piece of flesh into her in a way that wrenched a moan from her lips.
But, too soon, his hips withdrew, creating space between their lower bodies. She was too overwhelmed with disappointment to realize why he had moved until he whispered hoarsely, “Continue down, angel.” His tone no longer carried the casual distance it had since he’d pinned her to the wall. “Let your curiosity guide you.”
Curiosity? Yes, that was all this was. She was curious about his body. She’d never felt one before, so of course she would want to when given the opportunity. She shoved aside the doubts that still plagued her and let her fingers continue southward. As soon as she reached the waistband of his fatigues, she felt the change in his body—not just physically, as his abdomen flattened out and narrowed. She’d thought him tense before, but as her fingers brushed the button holding his pants together, his body tensed even more, and in her peripheral vision, she saw his hands clench into fists where they rested on the stone on either side of her head.
She was suddenly and intensely nervous, and she couldn’t say why. If this was mere curiosity, there were no stakes, and she had no reason to be alarmed. For some reason, however, she wanted him to enjoy what she was doing. What she was about to do. That she couldn’t look at him and gauge if he was or not was beginning to bother her.
“Don’t stop now,” Max breathed. “Please.” His voice broke on the single syllable, and with that, some of Anahita’s nervousness disappeared. He had to be enjoying this to some degree or he wouldn’t wish it to continue.
As she began to move her fingers down again, the fabric she was feeling tented outward until she ran into the turgid ridge of flesh that had been pressed into her. She closed her eyes and swallowed a moan that did not come from mere curiosity as her fingers traced it down, and down—she had not expected it to be so long—into the leg of his trousers where it seemed to be painfully pinned between his thigh and the constricting seam of his pants. When her fingers encountered a raised ridge of flesh several inches down his pant leg, Max sucked in a ragged breath and then cursed softly into her hair.
Her hand tried to close around what it held, but the fabric of his pants prevented her, and she felt an uncharacteristic
flare of impatience that manifested itself in a breathy moan.
In answer, Max brushed his cheek against hers, the bristling texture of his beard chaffing her just right, and whispered, “You don’t have to stay on the outside of my pants, you know.”
• • •
Max held his breath and cursed himself as soon as the words left his lips. You don’t have to stay on the outside of my pants? Fucking shady. And where was this confidence coming from? He was speaking to the angel the way he’d spoken to women before his capture. Before his scarring. But that was when he had his looks on his side. He couldn’t even stare Oliver and Luke in the eyes these days, and here he was pinning an exquisite angel to the wall and whispering filthy orders to her.
The skin of her cheek was so soft that Max wanted to stay here, pressing his face against it, for the rest of his miserable existence. And that unwelcome sentiment was exactly why Max jerked his face away from hers. So far, he’d kept contact to a minimum—only their clothed bodies touching—and that was the one thing that was keeping him sane. Though he ached with every ounce of his restraint to run his hands over her exposed skin, and her unexposed skin, for that matter, Max kept them firmly planted on the stone wall behind the angel.
He hadn’t been touched by a woman in nine years, and the angel’s heady, unpracticed sweeps of her hand were about to unman him—in more than one way. Max feared he’d spill in her palm, but more than that, he feared he’d spill tears. He’d had no idea he’d been so starved for any kind of physical affection. He found himself wishing that he’d allowed Luke’s attempts at those damn hugs he was always trying to give over the years.
When the angel had brushed her fingers over the head of his aching erection, Max ground his teeth against the broken pleas that threatened to burst from him. What had slipped out instead was that little beauty about shoving her hand down his pants.
Max closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of her perfect, blond waves, as he hoped she would ignore what he’d just said. Or at the very least, not rip his limbs off with the strength he suspected she possessed but held at bay.
Of Alliance and Rebellion Page 4
