Deep in Crimson (A Return to Sanctuary Novel)

by Sarah Gilman

  Savoring being pinned under him, surrounded by his warmth and weight and scent, she nipped at his shoulders.

  He arched his back and tucked his head, taking her right nipple into his mouth, teasing the left with his fingers. He continued to move within her, and the combined sensations compounded the ache low in her belly. The perfect combi-nation of torments sent her over the edge, the orgasm ripping through her body until tears formed at the corners of her eyes and she fought to calm her breath.

  Jett grinned down at her. Smug. Sinful. Pleased. And, even more handsome for it. She could live twenty demon lifetimes and not tire of that face and expression.

  He claimed her mouth in another deep kiss and assumed a faster pace. Finishing, he wrapped his arms around her. After a moment, he lifted her, settling on his knees with her in his lap.

  Holding her face in his hands, he stared at her and assumed a stern expression. “That’s what happens when I can’t think.”

  “Mmm.” She kissed him. “I’ll be more careful in the future.”

  “You better.”

  “I’m thinking…red lace next time.”

  He growled. “You’re going to get it.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Temptress.” He gave her tush a light smack.

  She sucked in a sharp breath and did her best to look offended, but her laughter ruined the effect.

  “Wait here.” He eased her back to the bed and got to his feet. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jett dressed, tucked his weapons back into place, and bolted. He ran as fast as he could, which wasn’t much faster than before his training had begun. The lingering venom in his blood tempted him to lie down and nap, but first things first. Ignoring the paths, he traveled in a straight line through the forest to The Ninth Circle.

  He’d never been intimate with a woman before, and he refused to leave it at the act. He needed to draw the encounter out, make sure she knew he hadn’t just needed an itch scratched, that they were just getting started.

  The tavern he’d frequented since he’d started training had food out twenty-four hours a day and damned good food at that. He might not have survived Devin’s training, and the awful protein bars the Guardian seemed to live on, without the occasional couple minutes of respite he found inside.

  “Morning, Guardian.” Gory, the proprietor, glanced up from filling the display of muffins. The redhead wore jeans and a bright red shirt with a grinning devil cartoon on the back. The elaborate art depicted a massive horned beast with salvia dripping from its jowls.

  “Morning. Nice shirt.”

  “Isn’t it awesome? Dana’s human mate went to Burlington last week and picked it out for me.”

  Jett shook his head chuckled. After listening for years to Lawrence’s preaching, Gory’s humor over the demon stereotype was a welcome change of pace.

  “Any chance you have a box I can use?”

  “To carry food?”

  “Yeah.” Jett scratched behind his ear. “Big enough for two portions.”

  A knowing grin stretched across Glory’s face. “Ah, yes. Lexine. You two looked cozy in here the other day. Now, breakfast delivery? Man, you’re whipped.”

  “Box, Gory.”

  Laughing, the other demon headed through an archway into the back room. Jett filled two plates with scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon.

  “Here.” Gory came back with a tray-like box and a mason jar full of orange juice. “Don’t have any cups with lids.”

  “This is perfect. Thank you much.” Jett tucked the plates, jar, two glasses, and forks into the box.

  “You take care of that female now. She deserves someone decent, especially after last time.”

  “Last time?” Jett paused at the door.

  Gory shoved his hands in his pockets. “She got quite serious with a male about a year back. She’s always seemed overeager for a mate, but that’s none of my business. Anyway, the guy is one of those charming dicks who gets bored with a female before long and moves on to the next. And the next and the next. I don’t know why the girls didn’t get together and throw him in the lake.”

  “His name?”

  Gory smiled, showing his fangs. “While I would sanction his bloody murder at your hands, sorry, Leigh moved to Eden after he ditched Lexine. Guess he ran out of willing females here.” He wrinkled his nose. “He had the gall to tell Lexine her eyes made her unworthy of being anyone’s mate.”

  Jett nearly dropped the box. “Her eyes?”

  “Her lack of night vision. He said she should be cast out of the gene pool. Lexi isn’t a victim-minded female, however. Leigh walked away from that conversation with a bloodied nose and she walked away with her chin high.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “I’m her cousin, and The Ninth Circle tends to be a gossip hub, for better or for worse. So, you see, you need to treat her good. If you hurt her, cliché dictates that I’ll have to attempt to kick your ass. Since you’d crush me into a bloody pulp, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Jett smiled. “Noted. See you around, Gory.”

  “And remember to bring those dishes back!”

  Jett balanced the food and hurried back to the orchard, the flood of anger in his system powering him up the hill in stride. How dare that son-of-a-bitch Leigh treat Lexine that way? Lexine was smart enough to see a bastard like that coming. Why had she dated him in the first place?

  Lexine had said she’d tried to dodge the fate in her recurring dreams by dating. He couldn’t fault her. Even a less-than-perfect mating to a demon would’ve been preferable to a mating with a poacher. Jett had nearly bitten her with that in mind. However, Lexine deserved a good mate. It was everyone else who didn’t deserve her.

  If anyone was worthy of her, Jett was not among their number. He wouldn’t kid himself. If he completed the training and officially became a dedicated Guardian to Raphael’s family, he wouldn’t have time for more than an occasional fling. If that. To be deserving of that female, he’d have to set Raphael’s request aside and put Lexine first.

  Did he want that? The idea of becoming a Guardian gave him purpose, filled a need he barely understood. Lexine gave him…she gave him the enjoyment of living in a given moment.

  He paused outside the winery, his head resting against the wooden door. Perhaps free will wasn’t so wonderful, after all. Being free to choose didn’t make the choices easy.

  Balancing the food with one arm, he lifted his fingers to the gold G on his collar. He’d hate to back out now, but he couldn’t allow Lex to end up with a poacher. What sort of Guardian would he be if he allowed such a thing, anyway?

  He wouldn’t tolerate her mating someone like Leigh, either.

  On one hand, it wasn’t a decision to make hastily. On the other hand, he couldn’t waste Lark’s time when he carried a reservation like this. He’d talk to the Guardian that afternoon, get a feel for his opinion. Jett couldn’t disclose Lexine’s dreams and betray her trust, but taking or not taking a mate was no small issue itself. Hopefully, Lark would be willing to discuss the topic. Something had happened between him and a female at some point, and he clearly carried a lingering wound associated with her.

  Jett opened the door and went upstairs.

  Eyes closed, Lexine lay in bed, the embroidered blanket covering her lower half. Her head rested on her outstretched arm and her loose hair draped over the edge of the bed.

  He ran his tongue over his fangs. “Hello, beauty.”

  “Hey.” She opened her eyes and sat up. “Is that bacon?”

  “You bet.”

  He joined her on the bed, smoothed the blanket, and laid out the plates. Drawn in, he caught her mouth in kiss.

  “Where was it you wanted to take me this morning? Before we got sidetracked.” Lexine went for the bacon first, shutting her eyes as she bit off a piece.

  “My father’s office in the town hall. It’ll be my first time there.”

>   Her eyes widened.

  “I don’t need company. But, I do want yours. If you don’t mind.”

  “I’m glad that you want me with you.”

  Tension eased from his shoulders. “Good.” He con-centrated on her emotions, letting his mind open to them. “We’ll go another day, though. I need to get back to training in a couple hours.”

  Disappointment radiated off her, as well as bitter accept-ance.

  “I won’t let training keep me from seeing you, Lex.”

  Her smile at odds with her emotions, she shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you drama.”

  “I’d rather have drama and honesty than no drama and you keeping things from me.”

  She glowered and folded her arms. “My thoughts are my own, Jett.”

  “I can’t read your thoughts. Just your emotions.”

  “Already?”

  “I need to concentrate, but, yes.”

  She set her empty plate on a table and curled up on her side, her head in his lap. “Honestly? I want to keep you here, all to myself. But I’d never want you to change, either.”

  “And that’s exactly why I think this will work.” He hoped it would work, but a nagging knot in his gut reminded him that nothing beyond their growing connection and friendship was stacked in their favor.

  …

  “It’s the job of the other Guardians to detect intruders crossing onto Sanctuary’s land. Keeping the colony safe is not our job. We are the last line of defense for the archangels.”

  Jett followed Lark through the woods in a circle around the archangel house. Lark alternated between lecturing and lapsing into silence, turning his full attention to his surroundings, always alert. After five total weeks of training, Jett grew more accustomed to the same behavior with each passing day. He listened to his partner’s words but always focused first and foremost on any potential threat from the sounds, scents, and shadows of the forest.

  “Sanctuary has thousands of acres of land and miles of border, outside of which is nothing but tens of thousands of acres of Vermont state forest. Monitoring every foot of the colony’s border at any given moment is impossible, even with the security cameras we’ve acquired. It’s imperative that I, soon you and I, keep a secure perimeter in close proximity to the family. While I prefer to find and fight any threat out here, I—we—need to be close enough to be at the archangels’ sides at a moment’s notice.”

  They completed the trip around the house and came out of the woods at the lakeshore, the stone house towering to their left. Raphael flew overhead, high enough to be a white smudge against the dark blue, early evening sky.

  “Our proximity to the house is a moot point when they’re up there,” Jett said. At least no human would be able to shoot a target that high.

  “They can’t be one hundred percent safe all the time, as aggravating as that is. It’s important to remember that the archangels aren’t helpless, other than the infants, and don’t appreciate being treated as such. I’ve never seen Raphael act like a victim, and I expect no different from Wren from what I’ve seen. When Kora and young Wren were in danger, Raphael took matters into his own hands with a pair of combat knives. He’s not bad at hand-to-hand fighting. I taught him myself. Wren and Ginger have the ability to kill with just skin contact and they’ve both used that psychic talent without hesitation. That said, they aren’t battle-hardened warriors, and wings make for large, clumsy targets on the ground. We’re here to keep them out of fights they cannot hope to win.”

  Lark climbed the gnarled, massive oak tree that dominated the property, its crown wider and taller than the house. Jett followed, and they crouched on thick branches halfway up the tree’s height.

  “I often watch from here at night,” Lark said. “It’s the best view from any one spot, and the acoustics are just right to hear anyone approach from any direction. Ideally, though, we should split up and take opposite ends of the property. At night—when the archangels are all inside, sleeping—is a good time for you to exercise that free will you’re always bellyaching about, and do other things. Scrapbooking, perhaps?”

  “Fuck off.” Jett grinned and turned his attention to the house. Illumination spilled out from the fourth-floor windows—Wren and Ginger’s rooms. Raphael landed on the third-floor flight deck and went inside. More lights came on.

  “That’s the second time he’s gone for a lengthy flight today. He does that when he’s stressed.”

  Jett focused on that inner place in his mind that never seemed to be his own. There, he found emotions that weren’t his, like voices from dreams. Indeed, some days finding them was like trying to remember the details of a dream, but now that he understood the ability, every day showed improvement.

  Yes, Raphael had something on his mind. But the sensation of intense worry gave no clue as to the cause. “Should we go inside and talk to him?”

  Lark shook his head, but frowned deeply. “Not everything that goes on in that house concerns us. If it’s relevant to their safety, he’ll confide in us.”

  “But—”

  “I know it’s frustrating, but this level of security would make them miserable if we didn’t respect their privacy as much as possible.” The frown lifted in a slow grin. “Kora threw a shoe at me once.”

  Jett chuckled. “I’m sure you deserved it.”

  “Certainly not!” A pause. “Maybe a little bit. Raphael, the bastard, thought it was pretty damned funny. The second shoe went in his direction. Justice.”

  Movement drew Jett’s gaze to the single door on the ground level of the house. Lexine stepped outside, spoke for a moment with Ginger, who stood smiling in the doorway, then headed down the path.

  “Tell me the honest truth.”

  Lark cocked his head.

  “With a job like this, would I be able to carve out enough time to devote to her?”

  Lark didn’t answer for a minute. “We could work something out. It wouldn’t be perfect or consistent, but if she’s the right girl, she’d be understanding. It’s a lot of ask of a female.”

  “Yeah. Was it too much to ask of yours?”

  With a low curse, Lark shifted out of his crouch on the branch and sat on his butt, letting his legs dangle. “You’re not going to let that drop.”

  “Nope. I need to decide how to handle this, and I can tell you have experience. A bad one, I’m guessing.”

  “Point taken. It is a lesson I need to teach you.” Lark pulled a dagger from a sheath on his ankle, the hilt more ornate than his typical weapons. An engraving on the blade read Never Fail. “Her name was Caza, and we courted a century ago, not long after Raphael and I moved here at Dante’s invitation. Caza was a dependent sort of female. Timid. Frail. She had many strengths, but independence was not one of them.”

  “So, she had a hell of a time with you constantly working.”

  “She handled that well, actually. At the time, I split some hours with Dante so I could spend time with her each day. At that point, Raphael lived in an apartment on the second floor of the town hall. The arrangement was easy to manage, and Raphael encouraged me when I would have hesitated. He worried about me not having anything else in my life.”

  Lark dropped his head back and stared at the sky, now covered with stars. The cords of his neck grew taut. “About a year in, a group of humans attacked the colony. They weren’t poachers, just religious extremists hoping to rid the earth of a few demons. ‘God’s work,’ blah-blah. It was late fall. No leaves on the trees. Raphael flew over—low, because a storm was coming in—as they were sneaking through the woods, and they shot at him. They missed him, but he had to dodge. He side swept a tall tree fast enough to break the outermost flight feathers of one wing. The imbalance forced him to land.

  “I was elsewhere in the woods on a picnic with Caza when I sensed his distress. I told her to get inside and I rushed into the forest to get to Raphael. Three humans had him cornered. I dispatched them.” Lark dropped his gaze from the stars
and looked Jett in the eye. “The rest of the human group had proceeded to the colony. They didn’t get two steps into the residential area before the Guardians took them all down. However, the humans had happened upon Caza, who’d been too scared to move from the spot where I’d left her, and…”

  Jett swallowed. “They killed her?”

  “Yes.”

  As Lark lapsed into silence, Jett stared hard at the ground. He nodded in grim understanding. “Even if you’d known she wouldn’t go…”

  “I would’ve had to leave her. Hell, at the time, I suspected she wouldn’t go. I saw the fear in her eyes and felt it in my mind. But, I didn’t take the oath to Raphael with reservations or conditions. He comes first. Period. If you go through with this, you’ll take the same oath.”

  “She knew that, though.”

  “Yes. We’d discussed it at length. But I got to tell you, the oath doesn’t justify her death here.” He pressed his palm to his chest. “I still feel the sting of her emotions during her final moments. Think about it long and hard, Jett. No matter the circumstances, you’ll have to turn your back on Lexine if the archangels are in even a small amount of danger. If I could go back, I never would have dated Caza in the first place.”

  At a loss, Jett simply said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Think about it. Remember that it’s a very different situation for the other Guardians. They take mates on a regular basis. We don’t. If you want to become a regular Guardian, neither Raphael nor I will begrudge you. I’ll train you either way.”

  Lark got to his feet, a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Keep watch. I’m going to check the perimeter again.”

  …

  When Lark didn’t return right away, Jett climbed down from the oak tree and began to walk around the house, first across the lawns, then farther out in the woods.

  Where had the demon gone? Everywhere Jett went, he detected Lark’s scent, a result of his constant presence. Jett returned to the house and stepped into the garden. Light spilled from the half-open door of Lark’s little home in the back corner.

  Jett left him alone, certain that Guardian didn’t break down easily or often. If he needed a couple minutes to himself, he wouldn’t take them unless he trusted Jett.