Jayden sucked in a breath. He turned quickly and left the room. She either would join him out here or she would not, but if he stayed in the small room with her one moment more, he would not be responsible for his actions.
Several seconds later, she stepped timidly into the hallway. “Are you serious about this?” she asked softly.
“I am always serious.”
Her doubt lingered heavily in the air.
He would need to move slowly. Help her gain confidence. The truth was, she was much more capable than she guessed herself to be. He turned and walked to the end of the hallway, then pivoted back to face her. “Stand here,” he said, pointing to a spot two feet in front of him.
She moved slowly forward, not yet meeting his eyes. She stopped where he pointed.
“Lesson one,” he began, hoping she would look at him. “Hard to soft.”
She finally did meet his eyes, but it was obvious she did not know what he meant. He held his arm out and pointed to his knuckles and then his elbow. “Hard — ” then he patted his belly, “to soft.”
She made a fist with the hand she had injured trying to punch him yesterday and looked down at it and then back at him disbelievingly.
“This is why you hurt yourself yesterday. Your hand is hard; my breastbone is hard. ’Tis not a good mix.” She continued to stare at him mutely, her loosely formed fist before her. Jayden shifted uncomfortably beneath her stare. “Come on, think, Temptation,” he said gently. “Where on my body am I soft?”
Her eyes roved down his front and then back to his eyes. He felt it like a caress.
“Nowhere?”
He made a noise that sounded oddly like a chuckle. Her widened eyes said she heard it. “No,” he said before he could make a bigger fool of himself. “All men are soft here,” he pointed to his eyes, “here,” his throat, “here,” his stomach, “and here,” his groin.
Her eyes lingered on the last spot.
“Well, usually soft there,” he amended quietly as he felt his body stir under her gaze. “Perhaps not when we are around you.”
Her eyes flew to his face in wide shock at the same time he realized what he said. Dear Lord, was he … flirting with her?
And who said that to someone who had been through what she had been through? He quickly scanned her thoughts; preparing to apologize and try to ease the fear that such a statement would inevitably give her.
Instead, he discovered another flare of pain and lust. He swallowed hard as her eyes drifted from his face and back downward. “So try it,” he blurted out over loud.
Victory. Her eyes returned to safe territory. “Try what?”
“Hit me.”
She laughed. Several seconds later, “Oh, wait. You’re serious?”
“I am always — ”
“Serious.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’ve heard.” She flashed him a brilliant smile that momentarily dazzled him, and then she moved much faster than he anticipated.
Her right fist flew forward and nailed him directly in his abdomen. Her strike had more power than he would have guessed, but it was still nothing. Nevertheless, he forced all of his air from his lungs with a loud oof, and doubled over, placing his hands on his knees. He held his huddled position for some time as he falsely struggled for breath before making a great show of cautiously returning to an upright position. He rubbed his stomach. “Good,” he said with a wince.
“You know,” she said, “that was actually kinda fun.” Pure confidence flowed through her, no fear and no pain.
“Again?” he asked.
She nodded eagerly.
He reached forward and took her hand. As soon as their skin touched, her smile faded. She sucked in a surprised breath, and Jayden found his eyes coming to rest on the way her breasts moved with her gasp.
He forced his eyes back to her face and bent her fingers gently until she was making the peace sign that had grown so popular in the nineteen seventies. He brought her fingers to his face and made a slight jabbing motion toward his eyes. “Very effective move,” he said in a hoarse voice. He let her hand fall back to her side.
She stared at him dumbfounded.
“Go on,” he coached gently.
She tilted her head. “Stab you in the eyes?”
He nodded.
After a moment, she shrugged. Her strike this time was much less fierce out of fear of hurting him, but Jayden threw his hand up as a blade between his eyes to catch her fingers at their crux, stopping her fingertips just short of their mark.
She relaxed and smiled again.
“Excellent,” he said. Her smile grew in response.
This time it was she who asked, “Again?”
Over the next few hours, Jayden showed her a variety of easy moves that boosted her confidence and had her gifting him with dozens of spontaneous smiles. By the time she yawned, Jayden was so worked up from casual contact with her body that he was more than ready to call it a night.
“Bed time, little one,” Jayden said as her fatigue washed over him.
At his words, disappointment wafted through her mind along with anxiety that her thoughts would revert to fanaticizing about him without anything to distract her, but she nodded and turned toward her room. Just as she reached the door, Jayden stopped her.
“Tomorrow,” he said, causing her to turn to him, “we will continue.” He could give her this. With both of their minds and bodies otherwise occupied, they may have a fighting chance.
As soon as the words set in, she smiled brilliantly at him, joy and relief lighting up her gray eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Good night, angel.”
Jayden felt a burning in his cheeks. He smoothed his fingers over his lips only to discover he was smiling back at her.
Her eyes followed his fingers, and her thoughts skittered like butterflies, and he captured each one like it was a treasure. One thought she arrived at again and again: she used to love kissing. Wondered what it would feel like to kiss him.
Jayden felt his smile collapse beneath his fingers as need clenched tightly in his belly.
Her smile faded as well. She turned and went into her room and closed the door.
Jayden remained in the hall and stared at her closed door for several long minutes before going into his own room next door. He moved to the wall that separated them and pressed his hand to it at heart height.
Angel, she called him. With all of his being, he wished she would have said his name. But to do that, she would have to know it.
“Good night,” Jayden whispered to the wall, “Grace.”
Chapter Ten
Jayden was sitting outside his Temptation’s room, huddled against the door, his head buried in his upraised knees while his Temptation’s screams echoed down the hallway.
Physical pain, unlike any Jayden had witnessed in a human before, was tearing through his Temptation’s body. Her thrashings rang clear through the door, as did the mouthy one’s attempts to make things better.
The screams had started this morning. Jayden had been right outside her room when the torturous pain first tore through her. He had stumbled back against the wall, clutching his heart as it tried to beat out of his chest, while the defilers sprinted out of their room and into hers.
And things had only gotten worse.
The blond one eventually left, partly because Jayden’s Temptation’s screams distressed his male sensibilities, partly to think in quiet to try to determine what was happening to the writhing redhead.
Jayden mentally monitored the blond one’s thoughts in a room at the end of the hall. The man was arriving at conclusions and discarding them left and right, but one idea was becoming prevalent, and it scared Jayden to within an inch of his life.
His idea was one Jayden had been considering as well since noticing his Temptation’s self-given orgasm had not succeeded, and the time to act was fast approaching. Jayden could not stand much more of his Temptation’s torture.
Jayden heard the blond one make his way down the
hallway and braced himself. Slowly Jayden raised his head from his knees to look at him.
His Temptation let out a new wail that was so dripping with physical and emotional pain that Jayden watched the blond one wince and felt the same expression on his own face. Jayden closed his eyes tightly; his fingers dug into his knees as he struggled for control. When he opened his eyes again, the blond one’s face had shifted slightly as he looked upon Jayden.
“Her pain does distress you,” he said.
A thousand stinging retorts perched on the edge of Jayden’s tongue. He wished he could deny it — they already guessed too much about his connection to her. But what he longed to say was, More than you will ever know.
Lord of the Most High, he felt her pain. Not the physical pain. No, Jayden never felt physical pain beyond the newly discovered discomfort of arousal. But his connection to this woman enabled him to feel her emotions and thoughts in a way keener than Jayden’s ability allowed him with others. It was part of the reason Jayden had so much trouble resisting her.
And now, her emotional distress — her confusion over what was happening to her, her terror at the pain, her intense longing — was flowing through him as uncut and unfiltered as he had come to expect.
Instead of speaking, Jayden schooled his face into a mask — quite unsuccessfully he imagined — and looked at the blond one.
For the first time in days, the blond one softened toward Jayden. He folded his body into a sitting position across from Jayden in the hall, and said, “I knew you couldn’t be all bad.”
Jayden sneered, lashing out with, “Do not underestimate me, human.”
If the defiler felt the insult Jayden intended, he gave no indication, much to Jayden’s annoyance. Instead, Jayden felt the man calmly collect his thoughts and prepare to speak.
And Jayden felt dread down to the tips of his toes. The man’s theory flowed to him clearly, and now the words left the blond one’s mouth before Jayden could stop them.
“I’ve been thinking about all our own experiences with the Impulse,” the blond one began.
Jayden felt the wariness cross his face and cursed his weakness as the blond one tried to actually calm him.
“Hey, man,” he said softly. “I know this isn’t a comfortable topic, but you need to know.”
“Why,” Jayden blurted before he could stop himself. “Why do I need to know?”
The blond one continued, “We don’t know exactly who you are or exactly why you’re here, but we’re not idiots, angel.” Jayden straightened. Apparently his human-dig had hit a nerve. The blond continued. “You’re on some kind of mission to kill those who have eaten from the Tree of Eternal Life, and we’re all on the list.” The man took a big breath and met Jayden’s eyes. “Fine.”
Jayden blinked. Fine? Well, that was a new reaction to facing imminent death. Jayden had to admit, his interest was piqued. “Fine?” he heard himself echo.
“Yes, fine. We’re doomed. We’re going to die. Whatever.” Jayden frowned, but the man was not done. “But is part of your mission to torture living beings?”
Jayden’s frown deepened.
“It seems to me that a God so concerned with protecting humanity that he would send an angel to ensure that protection would not look too kindly upon his angels prolonging agony in humans, even if those humans were destined to die.” The blond one obviously saw that his words were having an effect, because he decided to tack on, “A kind, merciful, loving God would not want Grace to suffer, would he?”
Jayden ground his teeth. His Temptation was suffering. Jayden, of all living creatures, knew that intimately. To consign her to this suffering for seven more long, torturous months. Well, for one, Jayden would not survive it. “Speak,” he ground out.
Triumph lit the blond one’s eyes. “Okay, in all four of us,” the man actually blushed, “all four of us — me and Dahlia, Eli and Abilene — we all experienced an orgasm within a short period of Impulse-pairing with our mates.”
Jayden frowned and felt a flare of impatience. “So has she,” he said with more venom than he intended.
“Yes,” the blond one said. “But not with you. Her Impulse mate.”
Jayden felt his heart drop. Yes, this was the idea he had been studiously avoiding since he first felt it flit through the man’s mind.
The blond one continued, “Within hours, Eli had given Abilene an orgasm, and I gave Dahlia one after a day or so. What’s the whole point of Impulse pain, man? Think about it.”
Jayden did, and did not like the conclusion. He knew what the point had been for the original Impulse pair. The Most High had needed a way to bring the Impulse pair together. For the purpose of … procreation.
“Out of the question,” Jayden said so softly, so dangerously that the blond one leaned back. Jayden would not procreate with his Temptation. That would be the end. That was how so many of his brothers had Fallen before. Lying with the daughters of men, creating life with the daughters of men — it was forbidden. Unforgivable. A sign of weakness.
And Jayden was not weak. “I will not lie with her.”
A muscle ticked in the blond one’s jaw. “You don’t have to have sexual intercourse with her, angel,” he said. “We didn’t,” he said gesturing to himself and then the direction of his mate. “Not for a while. Eli literally had to die first before Abilene would sleep with him.” The corner of the blond one’s mouth raised slightly in the shadow of a smile.
His Temptation screamed anew, her voice loud and long. And then, suddenly, her scream broke, her voice going hoarse, her sobs echoing out into the hallway.
Jayden’s chest swelled, and he had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from groaning. She had screamed until her voice broke.
The blond one’s attempt at humor hung sourly between them, and the blond one’s face grew grave. “You’re not completely heartless. How can you let that,” he gestured to the closed door beside Jayden, “continue if you can stop it?”
He could not. Jayden knew he could not. It was time to stop kidding himself. If the blond one had not come to him with this idea, put it into words, Jayden would have known it was the only way even without him.
But could he touch her? Lay his hands on her? Look upon her body and ever be the same again? She was his Temptation. His one and only vulnerability. His entire destiny depended upon him abstaining from her.
But her condition does not require consummation, his mind reminded him.
His Temptation’s sobs grew in volume. And then, she did something that set in stone Jayden’s next actions. Clearly and loudly enough so that all heard it, his Temptation cried out, “Angel, please.”
Before he even knew he moved, Jayden was on his feet, her call on him of greater importance than his own. Without a backward glance at the blond one who had jumped to his feet as well, Jayden shoved open the door to his Temptation’s room. It flew in and bounced off of the wall with a crash, swinging back toward him. Jayden stopped it with his splayed hand.
The mouthy one who was standing over his Temptation’s bed, jerked around to look at him with wide eyes.
“Get out,” Jayden ordered.
Her eyes got wider. On the bed, his Temptation began to thrash. “Yes … angel,” she moaned through dry, cracked lips.
“Get out!” Jayden bellowed.
“It’s okay,” the blond one said from behind Jayden. “Do what he says.”
The woman moved toward the door, and Jayden stalked toward his Temptation, not paying any attention to the mouthy one as she began questioning her man, or the sound of the door as it was closed.
He stalled out at the foot of his Temptation’s bed. Doubt plagued him. Am I truly going to do this?
He allowed himself to look upon his Temptation fully for the first time since storming into her space. She had quieted somewhat since Jayden entered the room. The sheets had been kicked completely from the bed, and, Jayden realized with a groan, she was completely naked. The touch of fabric on her skin must hav
e been too much. Her hands were fisted in the sheets, and she twisted them restlessly. She bit into her bottom lip and looked at him, not really seeing him, from eyes burdened with the sheen of tears.
Oh, yes. He was going to do this.
He swallowed hard as his eyes roved over her body, starting with her toes. They were painted a soft, feminine pink color that made Jayden’s stomach lurch. She tried so hard to hide any feminine part of her body, the past few days had only proven that, and yet, here were her pale, perfect feet, tipped with pink. With a trembling hand, Jayden reached for her, trailing his index finger over the top of her foot.
As soon as his finger touched her skin, all of her physical agony fled the room. Jayden literally felt it vanish.
His Temptation gasped in shock. Her eyes cleared. Sharpened slightly. “Angel?”
“Yes,” he said, shocked at how raspy his voice was. How labored his breathing was. Knowing instinctively that removing his finger would bring the pain back. Start small. It would give them both more time to adjust. He trailed the finger down and lightly wrapped his fingers around her ankle.
Her skin burned his like the fires of hell. His knees grew weak. He knew he would embarrass himself unforgivably if he collapsed before her, and so he moved until he could sit on the edge of the bed next to where his hand touched her.
The bed dipped with his weight, and he looked upon where he held her. Her skin was so light and delicate. And soft. Jayden’s hand looked large and dark in comparison, his deep brown skin contrasting with her pale complexion. The sight of his hand on her ankle, the feel of her flesh, sent a jolt of desire straight through Jayden’s stomach, and his shaft filled instantly, swelling and standing straight up beneath his robe.
Jayden closed his eyes and begged for control. Though he knew very little about this intimate facet of humanity, his instincts were strong. He longed to cover her body with his. To bury his shaft within her. To cover her mouth with his lips as she gasped. He balanced on the edge of chaos.
Operation Middle of the Garden 03 - Of Consuming Fire Page 9