by Stacy Gail
That Molotov cocktail must have hit me dead-on and I’m in shock, delirious and dying. That has to be it.
Only that wasn’t it, because he wasn’t on fire. There was no pain, no delirium, no death. But he had shock in spades as Sara, indescribably beautiful in an ethereal, otherworldly way, glowed before his stunned eyes.
“Macbeth, call off the locals ASAP, do you read me? Call them the hell off!” From far away he heard the bald man shrieking into his walkie-talkie. “Sara’s absorbing the fire, repeat—Sara is absorbing the fire. We cannot let anyone witness this, so you make sure you stop them at all costs, you read me? You bastard,” he raged, and the change in tone dragged Gideon’s attention to the other man who was glaring pure murder at him. “She did this to save your sorry ass, when you shouldn’t even be out here. If she dies—”
A scream from above snapped their attention up to Sara, now an indistinct figure in all the brightness. Without warning a fireball expelled from what looked like the center of her chest, exploding straight upward to flame out into the sky. The force of the expelled fire shot her in the opposite direction, the six wings now white-hot as they wrapped around her so that she looked like a comet as she smashed back down to earth.
* * *
Hot. Hot. Hot.
Time lost all relevance for Sara. That made sense, since it had come to a stop. She was stuck in a river of lava that had no beginning and no end, with no memory of how she got there and no hope of finding her way out.
Wait.
Was she dead?
Maybe she was. Maybe this was hell. Though no one in her family knew for sure, there had always been a worry buried deep in the collective psyche of the Savitch bloodline that no matter what they did, this would always be the final judgment for their kind.
Not fair. Not fair.
The cold came next—a horrific, bone-breaking cold that she knew would freeze her flesh solid and crack it into a thousand pieces. She struggled against that the most. The heat was something expected, a burden her body had a better chance of handling. But there was no defense against the cold. She screamed, more out of rage and a growing fear than of pain. This wasn’t right, nothing was right, the pain wasn’t coming to an end and she couldn’t escape it no matter what she did...
Oblivion came.
Eons passed. A glimpse of awareness echoed once in a great while on the fringes of her molten universe. It was irrelevant. Nothing mattered. She didn’t want any of it to exist anymore. She just wanted it all to disappear forever.
“Sara.”
No. No, no, no...
“Sara. Please.”
She knew that voice. That beautiful, important voice. That was one voice she didn’t want to disappear. That was the one voice that mattered.
How she loved that voice.
Her eyes cracked open on their own volition, crusty and feverish, and she stared through a twilight dimness at the ceiling above her with no recognition.
“Sara? Can you hear me?”
It took a small eternity to figure out where the voice was coming from. At last she turned her head just a fraction—sparking a wave of dizziness while the roots of her hair hurt as if with a fever—and looked into an intense chocolate brown gaze behind rimless glasses.
The memory of a wave of fire enveloping him slammed into her, and she said the first thing that came to mind. “Are. You. Okay?”
“Am I okay?” His smile was a dazzling, brilliant thing, as if he were enjoying some sort of joke. “Yes, I’m fine, Sara.”
“Good.” She wasn’t sure she said the word or merely thought it, as that lovely oblivion came to swallow her in one nerve-numbing gulp.
It went on like that for an untold time. Every now and again she would surface, sometimes finding her father by her side, or KJ applying those hateful icepacks. Once she thought Marcel was scolding her for being too fussy. But no matter on whom she fixated in those baffling moments of near-lucidity, there was always another presence in the background. Gideon never vanished like the others. He always seemed to be there, a rock-solid anchor to which she could cling when her awareness would have otherwise drifted away. That numb drifting appealed so much, but it was the promise of seeing Gideon again that pulled her back.
When Sara’s eyes finally opened, the room was almost completely dark, save for a small chrome gooseneck lamp at the bedside. The high ceilings and smoked-glass curtainless windows, whitewashed brick walls and ironwork bed frame told her she was in her own bedroom. Disoriented, she tried to figure out how she got there before a gush of memories uncorked, and sick understanding swamped her until she wanted to curl up and die. She’d been transferred, no doubt in secret, to her own virtually fireproof sanctuary after eating up the fires at the Mandeville estate. And she had done this in plain view of the one man with whom she’d never intended to share her secret.
Feel nothing. Feel nothing...
But she did feel, damn it all. For God’s sake, she was only human. She could do nothing but feel.
“Sara? Are you awake?”
There was movement beside her. She closed her eyes, trying to will herself into sinking into the mattress so she would disappear forever, then wanted to cry when it didn’t happen. No great surprise there. Invisibility wasn’t one of her special talents.
Setting the world on fire was.
“According to ancient legend, the Nephilim were a hybrid race born from humans and angels,” she said to the ceiling, dry-eyed and wondering why she hadn’t died in a great and glorious fireball like so many ancestors before her. A quick flame-out death would have been a snap compared to this. “Supposedly, when Lucifer fell and took a third of the heavenly host with him, a war between the angels broke out. There’s a specific type of angel who are, for want of a better description, heaven’s Secret Service called the Seraphim—or, if you’re feeling poetic, the Burning Ones. The Seraphim were created for the sole purpose of being heaven’s soldiers, wildly burning savages that exist only to guard the throne of God. So naturally when trouble popped up, the Seraphim went to war with those who had Fallen, and this is where my bloodline’s progenitor comes from. According to our family’s oral history, a wounded Seraph was discovered by a human. She took pity on this celestial warrior and nursed him back to health. But somewhere along the way that Seraph did something he shouldn’t have, and...a terrible mistake was born.”
She shifted, only to realize two things—one, her skin was as tender as if it she had gone twelve rounds with a scouring pad and lost, and two, she wasn’t wearing anything but a sheet and enough towel-wrapped ice packs to keep a polar bear comfortable. “As time went on, the Nephilim grew too powerful, congregating to dominate mankind. Biblical history states that they were taken out by the great flood, as they were intolerable abominations in God’s eyes. Obviously a few survived. They scattered all over the globe, and never again would they gather together out of fear of another celestial smackdown. No one knows why these few Nephilim survived, whether it was something that was allowed, or if they were just overlooked. I do know it’s been thousands of years since that time, so my family...we’re not Nephilim, in the strictest sense. We’re not, no matter how the heavenly host might think otherwise. I look at myself as human, just as my father before me. We are human, just with certain...extras. Extras like the six wings of fire that can appear and disappear at will, heightened senses and agility, super speed, and the ability to manipulate and if necessary, devour fire, though that last bit usually winds up being a death sentence.” When she realized she was babbling about what had to be painfully obvious, she closed her eyes and tried again. “These are the abilities that make my family perfect warriors, but that doesn’t make us any different from anyone else dedicated to protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Of course, I don’t expect you to accept that. The best thing for you to do would be to simply walk away, now, and never give me or anything you saw another thought. Please, do both of us a favor and forget I exist.” And with that, she turne
d on her side, and hoped the vision of a back now free of wings of fire would be enough for him to get the hint.
For a moment Sara thought she was in the clear. Exhausted from bearing her darkest secret as much as from the effort simply to move, she began to drift back into the numb void before there was faint movement beside her, and the sound of shifting ice reached her ears as the annoying packs were set aside. She didn’t give that a thought until the mattress suddenly dipped. In an instant she struggled to sit up, but a gentle yet firm hand pressed her back down, even as the solid length of a powerful male body stretched out next to hers, with nothing more than the thin veil of a sheet separating them.
“Nice try on dismissing me,” Gideon murmured before resting his head on the pillow. He sighed, and it held a world of weariness. “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s not going to be that easy. Get some sleep. There will be plenty of time to talk in the morning.”
Chapter Nine
Sara had a talent for being impossible. It wasn’t a trait she was particularly proud of, and it wasn’t a part of her personality she trotted out often. But on rare occasions, it came in handy.
An occasion like waking up naked in the arms of her one-night stand, for instance.
The last thing she remembered was being certain she’d never be able to sleep with Gideon lying next to her as if he had every right to be in her bed. The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes to weak morning light trickling in through the window, the sweet trill of birds welcoming the new day, and her head pillowed on his shoulder while her arm wrapped around his flat stomach as if he was her favorite teddy bear.
Out-frigging-standing.
Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, Sara made herself look down the length of their intertwined bodies and had to bite her lip to keep from spewing every swear word she knew. As if things couldn’t get any more awkward, at some point during the night she’d kicked off the suffocating veil of the sheet so that it now only covered a negligible part of her hip and thigh. Of course, there was always the hope that Gideon wasn’t awake yet, but even as that thought crossed her mind his hand moved, as light as a breeze over her back in a slow, rhythmic caress that felt surprisingly good on her feverish flesh.
But really, this was unacceptable.
She almost broke his arm when she rolled away from him in a flurry of movement, then nearly face-planted off the bed when sick enervation and dizziness conspired to steal what little consciousness she’d managed to regain.
Damn it.
“Easy now, Sara. Just take it easy.”
“You take it easy.” Like a storm-tossed castaway, she clung to the edge of the mattress while gravity tried to have its wicked way with her. With more luck than coordinated skill, she managed to snag up the throw she kept at the foot of the bed and huddled under it. Not much of a defense when she’d already done the naked-snuggle with him all night long, but it would do in a pinch.
“Gideon.” Weak, dizzy to the point of tossing her cookies and assailed with the uncharacteristic urge to just sit there and cry, Sara closed her eyes. “Go. Away. Now.”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine. I think I liked you better when you were asleep.”
A growl escaped her before a wave of exhaustion hit her broadside. Helpless, she slumped back against the iron bedpost. “Leave now, or I’ll...”
“What, faint on me? Like that’s a threat.”
In that moment, she was positive she hated him. “Shut up, you ass.”
“Call me all the names you want, sweetheart, it’s not going to change a thing. As a member of the medical profession I can’t in good conscience leave you when you’re in this condition.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not even in the neighborhood of fine. Even if my father hadn’t told me about how weak and delirious your dad had been after his bout of fire-eating fifteen years ago, it would still go against my Hippocratic oath to leave a helpless woman to fend for herself when her temperature is stuck at a hundred and five.”
“I’m a descendant of the Burning Ones. A hundred and five is a walk in the park.” Then she readjusted her throw and wished with all her heart she could just lie down and die. “So Noah finally told you the details about meeting my father?”
“Once I stopped babbling you were an angel of fire, he assured me that he’d had pretty much the same reaction when he saw William spread those wings of fire and suck up an explosion that would have killed him otherwise. They had quite the adventure, from the sound of it.”
“I wouldn’t call getting kidnapped by a cartel during a violent gang war, and escaping via my dad flying out of there amidst a hail of bullets and grenades an adventure, but maybe I’m just an alarmist.” She sagged a little lower, hardly able to keep her eyes open. “What do I have to do to get rid of you?”
“Can’t think of a thing. Come on.” He patted the bed space she’d abandoned, a stretch of lovely mattress that looked so inviting it was almost painful. “Come back to bed before you pass out. I’ll make you some breakfast—nothing daunting, maybe a little oatmeal or a bit of scrambled egg—and you can sleep for the rest of the morning. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
God, yes. “You get up first.”
A snort of amusement escaped him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I already am up. Not that I have any plans for the moment to do anything about it.”
Before she could check herself, Sara glanced down the length of his lean, fit body. Her already sky-high temperature inched up another couple degrees when she spotted the unmistakable bulge behind the zipper of his jeans.
“Oh, my.” It never occurred to her to stifle her shock, and not just because that was basically how shock worked. She was flat-out flabbergasted he could have that sort of reaction to her now that he knew what she was. Hell, he’d seen her. How was it possible he could desire someone like her, someone who wasn’t anywhere near normal?
Someone, for that matter, who was born to be a warrior.
Maybe men just had that automatic up-and-at-’em response to a naked woman, no matter how repulsive she might be otherwise.
Another amused sound rumbled from him before he rolled to the other side of the bed and pushed to his feet with understandable care. “Oh my pretty much sums it up. Lie back down and try to stay awake long enough to eat a little something, okay? You haven’t had anything except water for two days, so the sooner I get a bit of sustenance into you, the better we’ll both feel.”
“Two days?” Not too proud to crawl, she waited for his back to be turned before she returned to the nest of pillows, and wanted to dissolve into a puddle of mingled relief and exhaustion when she was able to pull the sheet back up over her. “How’s Noah?”
“Well protected with your father by his side. Though it was tough for him to leave you when you were at your worst,” he added with a micro-grimace, turning back to glance at her. Maybe it was a trick of her fevered brain, but she could have sworn his gaze lingered over her with an almost loverlike intensity. “I must admit, I’m glad he’s there instead of here, for several reasons. S. William Savitch is not exactly a fan of mine, and I can’t say I blame him. You saved my life by absorbing that fire, but you wouldn’t have been put at risk if I had just trusted you enough to do your job.”
“Why were you out there?”
“It was a dangerous situation. I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Oh, yes. Her fevered brain was definitely playing tricks on her. No way in the world would he admit to being worried about her. “It’s my job to put myself in dangerous situations for my clients. That should be irrelevant to you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not. Nothing about you is irrelevant.”
She would have loved to pursue that more, but her leaden eyelids were mutinying on her. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She heard him swing open the hollow metal door of her bedroom. “Try not to fall out of bed while I’m gone.”
* * *
Self-torture. Until very recently, Gideon never realized he had such a twisted taste for it.
Jaw tight, he stood in Sara’s incendiary-proof, post-industrial brick and steel-floored kitchen, and tried his damnedest to focus on not burning the mess of scrambled eggs cooking away in a skillet. But the simple task wasn’t nearly enough to distract him from the unparalleled glory of a naked Sara lying in his arms as if she had been custom-made to fit his body. What a ham-handed jackass he’d been a year ago, to take her without savoring her delectable feminine perfection. She should have smacked his horny, sorry self to his knees for not giving such a goddess the reverence she deserved.
He reached for a nearby peppermill and added a couple twists to the eggs, his movements automatic while he focused on the woman upstairs, who was no doubt trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Sara had made her rejection of him abundantly clear both last night and now, though he was beginning to wonder if it was purely rejection on her part, or something else. She didn’t know he’d already gotten the full story of the Savitch family from his father, and he’d had all this time to absorb the mind-bending reality of it. By the time Sara had at last surfaced from her delirium and offered up her revelation, it was old news. Yet she seemed to think it would make him cringe away in hysterical, pants-wetting horror.
Did he really seem that spineless?
Maybe he wasn’t warrior-born like Sara, he acknowledged, scowling as he hunted through her cabinets for a plate. Maybe as a doctor his natural tendency was to save lives rather than take them. But so what? That didn’t make him any less of a man, and it sure as hell didn’t mean he wasn’t man enough for the likes of Sara Savitch.
That much was evident when it came to the raw chemistry boiling between them. His skin grew pleasantly tight just thinking about how her eyes had traveled over his body like a hungry caress. It was obvious she saw him not just as a man, but a man worthy of her sensual attention. No, what held her back was something else, and after analyzing what she’d told him last night, Gideon had to wonder if she was somehow expecting him to look at her differently now that he knew her secret.